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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 1085980" data-attributes="member: 3146">Well that makes a lot more sense then. I agree with you that D&D uses good and evil as a mechanic for making a lot of myths and stories work in the context of the game. However, I don't think that D&D dissociates good and evil from the real-world meanings of the words. (And, since most D&D players have vaguely modern notions of the meanings of those words and apply them to D&D societies, D&D societies tend to end up looking like modern "enlightened" societies with some ancient window dressing).What you're suggesting is dissociating good and evil from our (the players' and DM's) understanding of their meaning and attaching a pseudo-Aztec meaning to them. I'm not certain that's possible or desirable. Despite relativist claims to the contrary, good and evil--especially evil--are pretty securely ensconced in our language as objective terms. (I think that's one of the reasons why a lot of people make relativistic objections (the most common being "simple-minded") to political speeches that include the terms good and evil in the context of the war on terror: because using that terminology presupposes a morally non-relative world). Consequently, I think that doing as you suggest would probably result in more confusion and misunderstanding than it's worth. It's one thing to acknowledge that the Mexica thought human sacrifice to be good. It's another entirely to call it [good] myself--or to try and adopt view of good in the game that allows for it even though my real views don't. (I also think that, if successful, it could not help but muddy the meaning of the terms making it harder to think clearly in terms of good and evil--as Orwell said, confused language makes it easier to think confused thoughts).In that context, I think it would be easier to jettison the good-evil axis of D&D alignments (which seem to be quite strongly based on an act-ethic) and, instead begin with a little discussion of how good people (people even we moderns would tend to think of as good) might participate in Aztec society. Alternately, once could try to switch D&D's good-evil axis to accomodate a virtue-ethic. Moral value would be located in people rather than in actions and the ethics would be virtue based (courage, justice, wisdom, piety, moderation, etc.=good; cowardice, injustice, foolishness, impiety, immoderation, etc=bad). The alignment based spells, might be shoehorned into that schema (although I doubt they would then serve their purpose well) or simply converted into (The gods' Protection (Prot evil), Magic Circle against spirits/magic (evil), Holy Smite (effects enemies), etc).-Edit-BTW, Fungasite, I've just noticed you live in Vancouver; are you part of the VGG? Just curious about whether or not I actually know you. . . .</blockquote>

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