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Evil Monster Ancestries - Yay or Nay?
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<blockquote data-quote="CleverNickName" data-source="post: 9287638" data-attributes="member: 50987"><p>Sure, and that sounds like a lot of fun. The player could write "Neutral Evil" on their character sheet, add the evil rune to their backstory, and be off to the races. My point is that I don't care for settings where all creatures of a certain species are inherently evil with rare exception. I don't mind a setting where "this particular kobold is evil," the part I don't like is "<em>all </em>kobolds are evil."</p><p></p><p></p><p>Well that, and it's just lazy storytelling. "If it's a goblin, it's automatically our enemy and we respond accordingly." I like to go a little deeper with my stories. In my campaign, goblins are no more or less evil than any other sentient humanoid. They're just angry hobbits with <em>terrible </em>manners (they throw a good party, tho.)</p><p></p><p></p><p>There is a difference between being "unlike humans" and "evil," though. Evil is a human ideal. For anything to be "evil," it has to at least be "human enough" to understand things like ambition, greed, vanity, and morality. When I start talking about things that are so alien and un-human that they don't/can't understand these concepts, or lack the free will to choose between doing the right thing and doing the wrong thing, I would say they are Unaligned.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Same here. I even go a little more unorthodox--I only assign alignments to specific NPCs. All living creatures in my games are "Usually Neutral" unless a specific NPCs stat block says otherwise.</p><p></p><p>The only difference between an angel and a devil in my campaign, for example, is ideology: devils are fallen angels, the cultists who sided with Lucifer to overthrow Heaven, and failed. Devils chose evil, they weren't born into it.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="CleverNickName, post: 9287638, member: 50987"] Sure, and that sounds like a lot of fun. The player could write "Neutral Evil" on their character sheet, add the evil rune to their backstory, and be off to the races. My point is that I don't care for settings where all creatures of a certain species are inherently evil with rare exception. I don't mind a setting where "this particular kobold is evil," the part I don't like is "[I]all [/I]kobolds are evil." Well that, and it's just lazy storytelling. "If it's a goblin, it's automatically our enemy and we respond accordingly." I like to go a little deeper with my stories. In my campaign, goblins are no more or less evil than any other sentient humanoid. They're just angry hobbits with [I]terrible [/I]manners (they throw a good party, tho.) There is a difference between being "unlike humans" and "evil," though. Evil is a human ideal. For anything to be "evil," it has to at least be "human enough" to understand things like ambition, greed, vanity, and morality. When I start talking about things that are so alien and un-human that they don't/can't understand these concepts, or lack the free will to choose between doing the right thing and doing the wrong thing, I would say they are Unaligned. Same here. I even go a little more unorthodox--I only assign alignments to specific NPCs. All living creatures in my games are "Usually Neutral" unless a specific NPCs stat block says otherwise. The only difference between an angel and a devil in my campaign, for example, is ideology: devils are fallen angels, the cultists who sided with Lucifer to overthrow Heaven, and failed. Devils chose evil, they weren't born into it. [/QUOTE]
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