Good, Evil, or Gray

[Tormenet]

Are good and evil cultures clearly defined in your campaign or is there a lot of gray? As a player do you like clearly defined cultural alignments? A player in my campaign took me to task because he felt there was too much overlap.

In my homebrew, the Ionian Bastiyaani are a settled people, descended from conquerors and colonists. They are based on the Greek-Bactrian nation that arose from the weakened Seleucid Empire.

The Jola are nomads that bind their children’s skulls, causing disfiguration as they grow. The also ritually scar their children’s faces. They bear names like Throatslitter and Slayer of Nations. The idea, from their point of view, is to be as intimidating to outsiders as possible. They are based on the Scythians (actually its more like the Xiongnu), with Mongol and Hun traits thrown in. They collect scalps. They raid Bastiyaan.

To the Bastiyaani people this behavior is evil; to Jola it is just being manly.

The two groups are traditional enemies, but circumstances are driving them into a shaky alliance.

When a Jola joined a party that included two Ionians my players role played the mixing of opposed cultures well, they were hostile but recognized the need for an alliance. It got very amusing at times.

Outside of game time, one player expressed his feeling that letting an “evil” Jola join the good party was questionable. We debated the notion a bit, in the most friendly and pleasant way, and agreed to disagree. (Then I slew his PC and made him a minion of evil, HA, HA, HA…ahem…kidding.)

Anyway, the conversation is still rolling through my mind a few months later so I thought I’d look into the feelings of folks here.

Tormenet

 

[Desdichado]

My campaign doesn't even use alignment at all. I don't like it.

Although, for the record, I'm not one of those alignment hatahs who feels the need to preach against it. I don't have a problem with alignment, I just don't particularly like it. Even in basic D&D, I marginalize it to the point where it plays little role. In my more cobbled together d20 system, I've eliminated it entirely.

Great setting, by the way. I've been working on a setting that incorporates a lot of the Chinese Turkestan c. 500 B.C. - 500 A.D. timeframe, with Hsiung-nu, Wu-sun, Saka, Qianli, Yuezhi and other cultures similar to the typical "barbarians" coming into contact with the more settled Agni, Kucha, Qasqar, Loulan, etc. ring of statelets. I like the aspect of it being a frontier zone, but also the battleground for a potential cold war-like existence between the Han and Sassanid/Parthian empires.

In so many words. I'm not directly calquing any of those cultures into my setting.

Geez, is it me, or have I wandered a bit off-topic?

 

[Mr. Kaze]

Are good and evil cultures clearly defined in your campaign or is there a lot of gray?

The conclusion that I came to while running an "evil" game with a Troll PC in it is this: The Good/Neutral/Evil distinction is purely relative to a human farmer (or human Monster Manual author) on the food chain.

Evil = Higher than the farmer on the food chain. This would be an ogre or a troll or cannibal.

Neutral = Lower than the farmer on the food chain, and without sufficient personality to make the farmer feel bad about eating it.

Good = Lower than the farmer on the food chain, but with enough personality such that the farmer doesn't want to eat it.

(See also: "...but a dog's got personality -- personality goes a long ways." -- Pulp Fiction)

But, at a guess, that's probably a major part of why Monte Cook got rid of alignment in Arcana Unearthed. The other major part, of course, being the definition of "Lawful".

::Kaze (finds alignments useful for putting on extra pain in a normal Good vs. Evil game... but doesn't tend to play straight Good vs. Evil games, really...)

 

[Tormenet]

My campaign doesn't even use alignment at all. I don't like it.

Although, for the record, I'm not one of those alignment hatahs who feels the need to preach against it. I don't have a problem with alignment, I just don't particularly like it. Even in basic D&D, I marginalize it to the point where it plays little role. In my more cobbled together d20 system, I've eliminated it entirely. QUOTE]

I agree, I never liked the alignment concept that much either. I'm very loose about it in this campaign. In the next one it will be gone.

I think the thing here is more the idea of allowing what is viewed as an "evil" culture join forces with a "good" one.

Thanks for your kind words on the campaign setting. If yours is similar I may have to visit your site and do some looting.

 

[AIM-54]

Sounds like you have a fascinating and well-designed campaign world going there.

To the question at hand, that's exactly how I like my settings to be, more realistic with plenty of gray areas. I think settings where things are clear cut make things too simplistic and take away from more complex and, to me, interesting scenarios, dilemmas and the like. But I also prefer to play without the whole alignment system as I think it's somewhat silly...

But I may have just played too much Shadowrun

 

[Desdichado]

Thanks for your kind words on the campaign setting. If yours is similar I may have to visit your site and do some looting.

It sounds like it, but most of that similarity comes from material that's not on the website, as it so happens. Heck, I'm just always interested in a campaign that has a more Central Asian theme. It's such a wonderful, yet unexplored well of ideas for RPGs. And it seems so few people are really very knowledgeable about it, notwithstanding the sensationalist journalism surrounding the Tarim basin mummies.

 

[Crothian]

IMC , there is clear cut good, there is clear cut evil, and there is plenty of grey. I've never had a problem with alignments and mixing things up.

 

[LizardWizard]

Good is good, and evil is evil.
Situational ethics has no place in D&D, as it does in real life.

 

[AIM-54]

Good is good, and evil is evil.
Situational ethics has no place in D&D, as it does in real life.

Too simplistic for my taste.

My current DM has done a good job creating some very interesting situations involving moral quandaries and the nature of good and evil.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Too simplistic for my taste.

Me too. While I prefer running games where the PCs are generally good, that's just because I like heroic fantasy. I want my characters--PCs and NPCs alike--to be people, first and foremost. That means not always having clearcut, non-culture-specific definitions of good and evil.

(Of course, I do believe that some things do exist in moral absolutes even in the real world, and I carry that belief over into games. But those are the exception, not the rule.)