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Message: <blockquote data-quote="PMárk" data-source="post: 6915866" data-attributes="member: 6804619">So, basically every humanoid and monster could be a nuanced person, good, or bad, but vampires couldn't. I think we're disagreeing here. That kind of definitive pure evil, I reserve it for outsiders, especially demons. Note, that I'm not saying vampires are in general poor, brooding misunderstood antiheroes. No-no. In general they are amoral, inhuman predators, indeed. Both in D&D and in Vampire. Especially in D&D, vampire is much more elaborated and I'm not ashamed to admit that game and the stories that inspired it and was inspired by it shaped my view on the topic in a large way. Yet, I still like truly monstrous vampires as antagonists. I just think there's room for, even in a fantasy game for the oddball contrary, and I think relatable, understandable backstories just makes better villains than "he is evil because he's a vampire and always been evil". That's just a bit boring to me. Another example: Cardinal Richeliou. In the earlier movies he was a one-dimensional, sniveling weasel. In the novels he is a much more complex character and not even what I'd consider a bad guy, just someone whose interests happened to contradict the protagonists'. The last movie and the recent tv show pictured him more like that and I'm preferring vastly that approach. Again, no, I didn't say that religion couldn't be a backdrop for nuanced characters and deep character development. Look, I'm not a religious person, never was. The whole mindset is alien to me. I'm not saying that there couldn't be perfectly fine religious characters. Of course there could. I'm just not into the whole speaking from the moral high perch, because my god said what is wrong and what is right and condemning others based on what they are (like, vampires or witches, etc.) not on what they do thing. Especially when not considering their circumstances. I just prefer moral dilemmas, grey areas, not clear-cut truths, things like that. Yes, I prefer antiheros in contrast to knights in shining armor, because stories about a character with flaws, who nonetheless does the best she could, even when grudgingly so, or with a good amount of selfishness  are more interesting than paragons to me. That said I also read novels, in which there was sympathetic priests/clerics, or paladins/paladinlike characters. But I read a lot more when I just groaned at them.What should I say? I always liked Jarlaxle and Entreri more than Drizzt, especially in the later books.That aside, I'm still not saying that paladins for example are necessarily one-dimensional. I just don't like zealots.Oh, and picking up older literature is not entirely fair, because at those times there wasn't really such thing in the western world as non-religious ethics and philosophy.</blockquote>

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