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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jenka" data-source="post: 1925224" data-attributes="member: 25042">John,Having carefully read both your post and then gone and read the book. Clearing my mind of 1st and 2nd edition clutter lying around.  As far as D&D is concerned to a large extent your right and my game master and I need to have a long talk about my own alignment and the alignment of others in the game. However I’m enjoying this discussion and I wrote this bloody long post before finishing my research so here it is <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> It’s minions and worshipers we are killing off here.  The Rat Queen and the King of Plagues would be gods.  When you have a bunch of Walking Talking Semi-omnipotent beings.   Creatures who are not abstracts but capable of directly affecting the world at large.  Detect Good and detect Evil aren’t really. They are detect cult enemy. Who your god is and what your culture is will guide you.  In D&D you are correct that there are specific definitions of good and evil.  But the book is written from the players perspective. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Yes this is kind of splitting hairs but I’ve played games (Runequest) where the rules were written from the POV of a specific game culture and it’s implied that different cultures would have different game rules.   Good and Evil are by culturally weighted words.  The very concepts of what is right and wrong. Of what it means to be Good or Evil are things you are taught as a child and they are not universal.  Only self-interest is.   To use the Goblin example given above.  From the Goblins point of view Humans are evil.  They come and kill us.  They have land that we want or that they have taken from us.  They worship the foul gods of goodness. They talk funny. We KNOW they are evil!   Our detect Evil (known to the humans as detect good) tells us! See how they act! They kill the women and children!  We must fight them and destroy them wherever we find them! Worshipers of the Rat Queen are by my own definition Foul.  I never said they were harmless.   They kidnap and murder people to appease their god and other gods of the community.  And the gods are real!  That means there are good and sound reasons for doing something even something “evil” because there is some one who will come and punish you directly if you don’t act.   The players in this situation are responsible.  Actions have and should have consequences.   They have destroyed either knowingly or unknowingly a part of their community.  Reacted to a situation that is abhorrent to them and in the process committed a grave injury to their community.  A situation that perhaps has no right answer.  But the extreme alignments as you have defined them deal only in absolutes.  Good is inflexible and once your inflexible you start to wander down roads where you might not have gone.  Things like detect evil reinforce this.  They tell you that it is good and right that you should go and slaughter goblins because they are incurably viciously evil. Unalloyed Good is inherently intolerant just as evil is of its opposite. When you play with unalloyed alignment there is a problem where either end of the spectrum become very like the other in action though with completely different motives and desires.   I.e The priests of the Rat Queen have sacrificed 80 people on the blood soaked alter of their god so that she will keep the land free of disease.  While the Players have sacrificed 80 goblins on the blood soaked ground of the caves so that they can keep the local villagers safe.  When you deal in absolutes you deal in inherent cruelty. It’s unavoidable.  That is why I prefer a world of grays.  In my opinion the only true evil is that of unalloyed self-interest.  Slaughtering people (or goblins) for personal aggrandizement or increase in personal power.  Believing that your needs are greater than the needs of the community around you and then acting to either destroy or manipulate that community to get what satisfies your needs and does nothing for the community. That is true foulness.  Jenka “The perhaps inarticulate” Tamar P.S.  I agree that the Inquisition is over hyped a bit but that doesn’t change the fact that in our culture it’s an abomination and in the culture of the day it was right and good.</blockquote>

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