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Is necromancy evil or only as harmless as talking to your dead grandmother?
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<blockquote data-quote="Rechan" data-source="post: 5190604" data-attributes="member: 54846"><p>This reminds me of a thread that popped up about a year, year and a half ago. The question boiled down to: Do you think Orcs are born evil or raised evil? </p><p></p><p>The thread was split. </p><p></p><p>One camp thought that orcs were inherently evil. You take a baby orc, you send it to an orphanage, you clean it up and put nice clothes on it and give it everything it wants and it will try to cut your throat the minute you aren't looking. This group <em>wants</em> Orcs to be Evil, end of Discussion, because: 1) It's Traditional. 2) They wanted the luxury of not having to question whether slaughtering the orcs was a moral question, they wanted something they knew was evil they felt utterly justified in killing. </p><p></p><p>One camp saw orcs as being raised evil, and thought that there were more variety of potential orc cultures and ways to use orcs in different manners. If the Orc was raised evil, then if you changed the culture you changed the orc, and thus you could have your noble savages, your primitive neanderthals, or your viking barbarian hordes that are just inclined to rampage, without the big neon EVIL sign flashing above their head. </p><p></p><p>And this gets back to this thread. Some want necromancy to be evil, and others want the actions that necromancy is used to be evil. To me, the latter offers more opportunities to present it in interesting ways (Hollowfaust, undead fighting necromancers, the above poster using the purifier necromancer). I understand the need to have the fantasy Nazis, who everyone can feel good about fighting, but I don't put necros in that group, as I think that takes some of the Fun out of them; as soon as you declare them evil from the get-go, you take some of the Personality away from it, none of the PCs care about the guy now because he's just Evil. </p><p></p><p>But to an even deeper extent, I dislike the idea that "You touch this and you're Evil. No question." I think necromancy is cool, but I don't want to be forced to be evil just to play it. It takes away story potential and forces one narrative. I think Necromancy, the Infernal or the Far Realms stuff being a highly <em>Tempting force</em> - you do one, it gets easier to take the next step down the downward spiral and you lose sight of right and wrong - is more interesting because it also means that someone who gets involved and <em>isn't</em> evil has real strength of character, real willpower, and a line in the sand they won't cross, or possibly an established Tradition that is offering some ethical guide. It also lets you have the conversation of "What is evil" in this action vs that action. That's a much more fun avenue to explore in a game for me.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Rechan, post: 5190604, member: 54846"] This reminds me of a thread that popped up about a year, year and a half ago. The question boiled down to: Do you think Orcs are born evil or raised evil? The thread was split. One camp thought that orcs were inherently evil. You take a baby orc, you send it to an orphanage, you clean it up and put nice clothes on it and give it everything it wants and it will try to cut your throat the minute you aren't looking. This group [I]wants[/I] Orcs to be Evil, end of Discussion, because: 1) It's Traditional. 2) They wanted the luxury of not having to question whether slaughtering the orcs was a moral question, they wanted something they knew was evil they felt utterly justified in killing. One camp saw orcs as being raised evil, and thought that there were more variety of potential orc cultures and ways to use orcs in different manners. If the Orc was raised evil, then if you changed the culture you changed the orc, and thus you could have your noble savages, your primitive neanderthals, or your viking barbarian hordes that are just inclined to rampage, without the big neon EVIL sign flashing above their head. And this gets back to this thread. Some want necromancy to be evil, and others want the actions that necromancy is used to be evil. To me, the latter offers more opportunities to present it in interesting ways (Hollowfaust, undead fighting necromancers, the above poster using the purifier necromancer). I understand the need to have the fantasy Nazis, who everyone can feel good about fighting, but I don't put necros in that group, as I think that takes some of the Fun out of them; as soon as you declare them evil from the get-go, you take some of the Personality away from it, none of the PCs care about the guy now because he's just Evil. But to an even deeper extent, I dislike the idea that "You touch this and you're Evil. No question." I think necromancy is cool, but I don't want to be forced to be evil just to play it. It takes away story potential and forces one narrative. I think Necromancy, the Infernal or the Far Realms stuff being a highly [I]Tempting force[/I] - you do one, it gets easier to take the next step down the downward spiral and you lose sight of right and wrong - is more interesting because it also means that someone who gets involved and [I]isn't[/I] evil has real strength of character, real willpower, and a line in the sand they won't cross, or possibly an established Tradition that is offering some ethical guide. It also lets you have the conversation of "What is evil" in this action vs that action. That's a much more fun avenue to explore in a game for me. [/QUOTE]
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