Evil: individuals or entire nations?

[Hand of Evil]

A little of both but I am going to go with entire nations because were leaders lead the population follows building those cutlural taboos and views of right and wrong, let us call it the science of propaganda but it could be manifest destiny, it will make the nation evil and yet have good people that perform evil acts because that is what is expected by their fellows. This is why I define good and evil in my games, it is the cultral taboos the players are faced with and I have changed that defention from nation to nation.

Example are my rural people (no nation, Barbarians, rangers, and druids) may be told that entering a camp site announced and leaving a fire unattended are evil acts. They would see those that did it as evil, their gods may forgive (not detect) them for ignorance (one or two times) but if they always did it they would be detected as evil by the gods of the rural people.

 

[John Morrow]

The basis for the ethical system is that we have, innately, a benevolent desire to see good be done.

Actually, it's a bit more complicated than that, which is why a lot of game theory doesn't work the way that mathematicians predict it should. The human brain actually takes a lot of irrational emotional short cuts and is also interested in fairness, among other things, even to the point of causing more unhappiness to get revenge for an injustice.

You might find this article, concerning how the brain makes ethical assessments based on MRI studies, interesting:

http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~camerer/web_material/latimes050204.htm

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Nations probably fall more or less good or evil in my worlds, but an evil nation's population won't be monolithically or even mostly evil. Almost all populations, in fact, will be Lawful Neutral in public life. Privately, good and evil characters appear in all factions.

But then, I don't use alignment.

 

[Tonguez]

Good and Evil does NOT apply to nations - Law and Chaos does

A Chaotic Nation with an 'Evil authority' in power is going to see lots of violence and killing as Warlords attempt to secure a position, despite the deisre of the populace to be left alone. Ethnic cleansing and intimidation will be the 'rule'

A Lawful Nation lead by an evil authority (monarch, theocracy whatever) is going to appear draconian as the ruling evil guy starts to use the structures of government to enforce his evil desires. Of course a clever villain might appear to be doing good cleaning up the streets and giving jobs to decent citizens - at least until somebody notices that Jim the dwarf baker has disappeared, so has Moggy the old Dwarf astrologer from down the lane, and infact they haven't seen one of those stinkin' Dwarf scabs for a while.

Anyway the propaganda is sure to start and the persecution is sure to follow

 

[Tonguez]

Mongols under Genghis Khan, !

and Please don't compare Hitler with Genghis Khan - Genghis Khan is consider a national hero to the mongolian people, he unified warring factions, imposed a strict code of laws, introduced an effective pony express communication system and brought peace to much of Asia.
The Mongol empire did not persecute people but instead embraced them allowing them to become 'citizens' (yes those who refused the offer were often slaughtered, but that was the standard of the era). In fact it was said that during his reign it was possible for an unarmed girl to carry a bag of gold walking from one side of the empire to the other without her being harmed. Genghis Khans techniques were no more brutal than was standard for the era - he was just very very good at it.