D&D General Inherently Evil?

[Jfdlsjfd]

What about people who don't feel comfortable with an elf game encouraging their friends to morally judge how they play their characters?

Is Chaotic Good an acceptable answer?

 

[SkidAce]

Some of it, of course, depends on the motivations of the creature doing the eating. "Because it's meat," isn't particularly evil. "Because other creatures are only meat" is fairly evil. "To ensure their essence and strength remains among our people and to honor our ancestors" isn't evil. "To devour their soul and steal their strength for myself" is fairly evil.

Quoted for truth.

Even though I feel there can be objective evil, this covers many gameplay situations.

 

[Maxperson]

If Cthulhu is inherently evil, that would make any human who treads on an ant inherently evil.

"The short story that first mentions Cthulhu, "The Call of Cthulhu", was published in Weird Tales in 1928, and established the character as a malevolent entity, hibernating within R'lyeh"

"The imprisoned Cthulhu is apparently the source of constant subconscious anxiety for all mankind..."

Cthulhu - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

So awakening Cthulhu would end burn-out, bore-out and all work related anxiety? I say ftaghn to this !

 

[Vaalingrade]

The idea that Cthulu invented toxic corporate culture might be the one thing to Make Lovecraftian tropes remotely interesting to me.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

The idea that Cthulu invented toxic corporate culture might be the one thing to Make Lovecraftian tropes remotely interesting to me.

Residents of Innsmouth had made a horrible pact. As a result, their children, reaching around mid-life, underwent an horrible transformation leaving them unable to do anything productive, embraced evil, harboring ill-will to any other being and longing for the next stage of their woeful transformation. This phenomenon was called the Curse of the Deep One, or, as it is better known among the Whateley family, "promotion to middle management".

 

[Unwise]

We have always just played that not every species is wired the same (our group is older, we come from a different time). What is common in one species is a mental illness in another.

Tieflings have a pull towards damnation. Where a human would feel only a moral compass, they also have an immoral compass, telling them the evil thing to do in the moment. They don't have to listen to it, but it is there an nagging. Whichever moral/immoral compass they follow gets stronger over time.

High Elves are prone to bouts of melancholy that are so deep and enduring that in humans it would be a depressive illness. They live so long though that it is not overly concerning for them, it is just a 'season'.

Dwarves are prone to 'dragon sickness' when in the presence of large amounts of gold. They also commonly develop compulsions and OCDs related to gathering wealth and protecting what is theirs.

Goblins have no ability to empathise. In human terms they are all psychopaths.

Orcs are prone to 'roid rage and have very little ability to regulate their emotions and behaviours. Like an anger disorder & steroid use mixed with fetal alcohol syndrome.

Lizardfolk 'feel' no moral qualms. They are not inherently repulsed by any behaviour. They are also not prone to fits of negative emotional responses. Any morality is based on logic and reasoning. They have no gut-feelings about things being wrong.

None of these things make individuals evil, but you can see how they could skew a society towards it. Psychopaths walk amongst us all the time without breaking the law or doing anything horrific. A goblin could too. Most people would not trust one as a babysitter though.

 

[Mirtek]

Not in 5e, no. It was explicitly the case in Planescape.

Was it? Wasn't only the prime material plane explicitly made of of the building blocks from the inner planes and the outer planes were made of pure alignment/belief that just mimicked the properties of the true material from the inner planes?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Not in 5e, no. It was explicitly the case in Planescape.

It was at least strongly implied, if not directly stated, in the 1st edition DMG, that the inner planes (elemental, positive, negative) provided the building blocks of the prime material plane.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

"The short story that first mentions Cthulhu, "The Call of Cthulhu", was published in Weird Tales in 1928, and established the character as a malevolent entity, hibernating within R'lyeh"

"The imprisoned Cthulhu is apparently the source of constant subconscious anxiety for all mankind..."

Cthulhu - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The Call of Cthulhu is a first person narrative. Therefore malevolence is only the narrator's interpretation, not Word of God.