Good, Evil, or Gray

[Sejs]

I'm another Grey fan, myself. In my games, the only place where something walks around with a name tag that reads "Hello, my name is: Chaotic Evil" is in the outer planes.

For the most part, the only people who choose to do what they know and believe to be wrong, are psychopaths. Most rational people choose to do what they think is right, or just, or necessary, or acceptable - based on their point of view. That point of view can be pretty darn skewed when viewed from the outside, mind you. Culture A's right and wrong can be quite different from Culture B's right and wrong.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

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.

I don't find the notion that there are good and evil people/cultures in the world to be simplistic at all, nor have I found the existence of such to make moral quandaries any less complex when presented. But perhaps that's just me.

I do not believe (as some seem to here,) that there is no true good nor true evil in real life, but that such things only exist in the fantasty of a "simplistic" D&D game. As such, my games do at times present creatures that are truly evil, and individuals or forces that are truly good.

Are most people this way? No. They tend to be in the middle somewhere. But that does not mean the extreme poles are nonexistent.

 

[Zappo]

I play Planescape. I think that we can agree that demons are evil and angels are good. There's a bit of gray there, but not much. Now, on the other hand, if we're talking about races that are not actually composed of living goodness or evilness, most or all races in all my campaigns exhibit a variability comparable to humans (though the mean will sometimes be closer to one of the alignments, eg. the proportion of lawful people is higher among dwarves).

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.

Well, I think that has more to do with the eating of sentient creatures, and the fact that of the myriad of sentient creatures in D&D, human farmers are some of the very weakest (possibly only kobold farmers are weaker). So, anyone who's eating intelligent creatures will eat human farmers.

Human farmers make good eating. *slurp*

 

[dekrass]

IMC alignment usually only comes up with paladins and outer-planar creatures.

It's always there but my group tends to judge more on known actions, not detect alignment.

 

[Ibram]

My campaign has quite a bit of grey in it, yet beacuse of it Good shines abit brighte, and Evil seems a bit darker.

 

[Three_Haligonians]

Sigh.

The good/evil alignment thing is so wonderfully simple and yet so annoyingly complex, isn't it? On the one hand, when I roleplay, I like to think of my characters as killing evil things, it makes morality so simple, doesn't it? Plus, I love all those spells that are good/evil dependant. At the same time, Tormenet, I find myself dealing with problems very similar to yours.

For instance, in my last game I lead, the PC's came across a ghost. This ghost was the spirit of a gaurd who basically stood by while hundreds of people were tortured by his employers. The paladin used his "detect evil" on the ghost. As the ghost's alignment is that of the original person, I was torn. Ask the prosecuters at Nuremburg and they'll tell you "just doing your job" is no excuse. But, then, you'd have to consider the ghost's motivation as well. Was he just trying to find a way to feed his eight starving children and this was the only employment he could find? Would that make a difference? ARG!

Honestly, I find it just as difficult as you do. But, generally, in our games we find most members of the intellegent non-magical races are not, in fact evil. Demons, devils: different story. But humans, orcs, pixies, usually not, as my gm would say, "eat your children evil".

It is important to ask these questions in game, and outside of game. I would say the fact that you and your players have these debates is fantastic, and is usually the result of an engaging game. Congrats!

T from Three Haligonians

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Well, the game I'm gearing up to run is supposed to have something like a faerie tale feel so I imagine that I should probably put some effort into making the main culture good. However, my instinct is that nice cultures are generally neutral and others are somewhat ambiguously neutral. Good cultures? What Good cultures? Every culture has too much corruption and compromise--and too many evil people--in it for all of its practices to be unambiguously good. I might try making a dwarven, gnomish, or elvish culture that was basically good but I suspect it would feel rather phoney and alien.

Of course, none of that precludes cultural practices from being good or evil. In fact, it's the simple fact that there are clear and unambiguous cases of good and evil in most cultures that 1. makes them interesting and 2. enables us to have moral dilemmas and conflicts in gaming at all. We don't have big debates about whether or not it's right to ally with people who butter their bread on the other side or who use margerine instead of butter (except maybe in Wisconsin) for the simple reason that we don't see that as wrong. We do have such debates about whether or not to ally with people who flay their captured prisoners of war alive and impale their bodies on a forest of spears to intimidate and demoralize their enemies then follows their demoralized enemies back to their cities, defeats them in battle, kills every male and every pregnant female (and every woman too old to bear children or be useful as a slave) and takes all the nubile women as slaves. We have those debates because it is bloodthirsty, barbaric, and evil to behave in that way. Obscuring the difference between good and evil only serves to take the edge off of the debate and make it easier to avoid the question by pretending not to know that something is evil.

 

[Wombat]

I dunno. I can't imagine an evil (or worse yet, chaotic) society lasting very long. Then again, I can't imagine a good society lasting all that long, either. Lawful, sure. All shades of Neutral.

Most "societies" would end up being Lawful Neutral in my world, if I assigned alignments.

 

[AIM-54]

Of course, this is generally using late 20th Century moral principles and declaring them absolute, when things were much different during the actual time periods most fantasy worlds claim to take as their model. But that's what most people who play these games want. I just find it tedious after awhile.

 

[Kaleon Moonshae]

I play Planescape. I think that we can agree that demons are evil and angels are good. There's a bit of gray there, but not much. Now, on the other hand, if we're talking about races that are not actually composed of living goodness or evilness, most or all races in all my campaigns exhibit a variability comparable to humans (though the mean will sometimes be closer to one of the alignments, eg. the proportion of lawful people is higher among dwarves).Well, I think that has more to do with the eating of sentient creatures, and the fact that of the myriad of sentient creatures in D&D, human farmers are some of the very weakest (possibly only kobold farmers are weaker). So, anyone who's eating intelligent creatures will eat human farmers.

Human farmers make good eating. *slurp*

Actually, I don't agree that angels are good and demons are bad. I guess I am a little more hardcore gray than some people, but that may be because I read too much Moorcock as a child and am also a taoist.

I think a lot of the angels with lawful-good alignment are closer to evil than good, maybe not in their "end goal" but then Hitler's "goal" was not to be evil, it was to bring his country out of poverty so I think the ends are just an excuse. I mean a demon will do a "good" act to further his "goal" which goes to back up my feeling in my own mind.

I don't believe in good or evil, I believe in relativity. The only alignments I tend to use in my own games are Law/Chaos/Balance. I beleive too far in either direction is "bad" and only that fine balance, tao, whatever, is "good."

I do not think we should do away with alignment, it works for some people and easily ignored by the rest of us, I just don't use it. I still have spells like 'detect evil' and 'protection from good' but they take on a whole new meaning in my games where you are never sure if they will work or not, since there are no hard and fast rules concerning good and evil.

Just my two cents