EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Okay. So you do actually think that Good would agree to curtail its activities--would accept not "ending the world"--if "muscular" Neutrals existed that did not give consent.The conceit I'm working with is, "The cosmos works like what Muscular Neutrality says it works like - that if Good or Evil get 'too much' power, the balance tips, and the setting ends somehow. The only way to preserve the setting is to keep the balance."
And then asking, "How can one still be actually Good in that setting? Is it possible to be Good, knowing it will end the world if too many people are Good?" Not evil-by-another-name, not abandoning the traits that make one Good (altruism, compassion, a respect for life, etc.), but being Good, fighting for Good, knowing that it could tip the scales too far.
And finding, yeah, there's definitely ways to embrace apocalyptic Good. Good is not incompatible with the idea of the end of the world. It's just very particular about how you'd have to achieve it. With consent.
And then playing with that very interesting idea about consenting to the end of the world.
In most D&D contexts, "everyone lived happily ever after" is a fine ending, one that Good strives for. However, it's a fantasy game, and the cosmos is our plaything. I'm not committed to a cosmos where "everyone lived happily ever after" is a possible ending. So if we remove that possibility, as the Muscular Neutrals have done, what happens to the setting and the characters in it? If everyone being happy means that nobody lives? Or if everyone lived, they couldn't be happy forever after? Very juicy fantasy topics to explore.
As long as we're on the same page with regard to that, I have no issue here. The issue is when something claiming the label "Good" purports to pursue this end-of-the-world thing without consent. Doing it because it is (allegedly) the "right" thing to do, even though doing so would hurt people (probably a lot of people). Your previous posts had red very much as "oh no, this [so-called] Good would 100% inflict this upon the rest of reality regardless of how those other people feel about it." Which, to my ears, is Evil with delusions of utopia. And to be clear, "Evil with delusions of utopia" is a common trope! But it isn't Good anymore. It's a person or a force or a group that either used to be Good or believes it has always been Good, but which has fallen from that.