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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5009369" data-attributes="member: 4937">Let me try to pull this thread back on topic before it dies.Mechanically, one of the ways that you end up with 'evil is good' is assuming an equality between defences and attacks when no such equality actually exists.  If you make 'good' purely passive and defensive, and you give 'evil' all the active, takes initiative, agressive powers, then because being active, taking the initiative, and being aggressive tends to be more effective than not doing so, you tend to make 'evil' cool and its converse weak.You can see this most explict in early editions of WotC's other game - Magic the Gathering.  Early on, there is an assumed symmetry between 'protection' and 'attack'.  That is to say that if they printed a card that did 3 damage, then they tended to print a card for the same cost that prevented 3 damage.  And, because the 'good' colors of Green and White tended to be defensive in conception and the 'evil' colors of Black and Red tended to be offensive in conception the result tended to be that they printed no good white or green cards.  To see why this must be so, imagine a deck made up of just cards that deal 3 damage ('lightning bolts') + resources to enable them ('mountains') facing off against a deck of just cards that prevent 3 damage ('healing salve') + resources to enable them ('plains').  First, it should be clear that if the goal of the game is to reduce life from some score (20) to zero, then the 'plains' deck can't possibly win.  Secondly, it should be clear that you can always use a lightning bolt, but you can only use a healing salve in a reactive manner and that there will be times when the opponent has a lightning bolt and you don't have a healing salve (and thus take damage) and other times when the opponent does have a lightning bolt and you do have a healing salve and so can't do anything (I'm simplifying the real cards to make the point).  What might be less clear is that in an infinitely long game the 'lightning bolt' deck always wins.  If he play forever, there will eventually be a random series where the 'plains' deck draws only 'plains' but no 'healing salves' while the other deck draws 'lightning bolts' and that this series is gauranteed over a sufficiently long period to be long enough to reduce the 'plains' player to 0 life no matter how much life he has (that's why it doesn't matter than I'm simplifying the cards).I find this sort of idea that 'good' is passive, defensive, unresisting and ultimately therefore weak and impotent turning up all over the place.  One upshot of it is that it promotes 'dark heroism', in as much that if you believe good is weak and unable to avail itself of weaponry then it follows that the only way to fight back against evil is with evil.  So the result of this viewpoint is that you see alot of 'heroes' that are themselves reformed villains or even just somewhat less depraved villains, or even often as not merely just villainous victims who have been wronged and therefore can 'justly' mete out whatever retribution and evil that they desire because they have (or are supposed to have) our sympathy.  And RPGs tend to mechanically reinforce this idea by giving the 'good stuff' to the bad guys.</blockquote>

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