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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wombat" data-source="post: 1098283" data-attributes="member: 8447">Rome extends political franchise and involvement to non-Romans -- generally considered a "Good" act.Romans had gladiatoral games, evil; Rome ban direction human sacrifice, good.Rome has lots of laws, Lawful, but has a tiny bureaucracy, Neutral.Rome expects loyalty to state, LawfulThese (and many, many others) are labels we can apply all day.  But let us consider this -- could Rome have been considered Evil by any prevailing standards of its time and place?  No.  If anything, they were flaming liberals just for extending political franchise.  And many of the so-called "germanic" tribes wanted to get into Rome and become Romans because they saw it as a far better way of life.So here is the conundrum:  by what Moral Absolutes are we to judge any historical culture?  And are to expect any culture prior to our own to match the standards of our society?  Slavery being "Evil" is a pretty modern notion; in 1800 you would have found a fair minority that would have agreed with you, but only a minority; in 1700 that number was far smaller, almost negligible; in 1600, nearly nonexistent.  Human sacrifice?  Many cultures at one point or another thought it was absolutely necessary.What standards that we accept at this very moment will be labelled as Evil in 200+ years?  Is there any way we can abide by the standards of that future time?  The alignment system does not work for the RealWorld (tm).  Don't even try to apply it.  Keep it where it belongs, in pure fantasy books.Yes, I realize I made most of these points before, but I think some of them were missed  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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