Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 4004661" data-attributes="member: 2067">About Evil[sblock]This is an unfortunate misconception. Moral complexity DOES work when good and evil are tangible forces, and it works quite well. Indeed, one of my favorite aspects of the alignment system is that it ADDS complexity to otherwise irrelevant philosophy. It makes belief concrete rather than purely speculative. Systems without alignment loose that sort of cosmological "proof." With regards to the Blood War, this means that these creatures are created out of the things that are Evil -- they exist as living embodiments of hate, cruelty, anger, manipulation...and because "Evil Is Self-Destructive" is a fantasy archetype, having different flavors of evil fighting each other is a very potent metaphor for that.The problem with this is that there are no "Evil" people (as D&D defines the term) in real life. It's a fantasy construct for a game, not a reflection of real moral philosophy. People don't have alignments in real life, and using real life to try and figure out how demons and devils in D&D should behave is rather a backwards way of thinking about it. Some evil creatures in D&D can get along fairly well. Some can't. Real people don't enter into it. You are completely disregarding a lot of the subtlety of alignment here. Lawful Evil and Chaotic Evil are really just different ways to kill "guys with black hats." Lawful Evil people make it an offense punishable by permenant incarceration in a gulag. Chaotic Evil people rip the head off (though not without making sure that all of his friends have their heads ripped off, too). With the way that alignment worked Pre-4e, it was important to have kind of a working definition before you sat down to play because it directly affected your character. The nature of evil was listed in the PHB. Your character already knew it before they embarked upon their path in life.Roleplaying descisions were made with a definition of Evil in mind.I don't think 4e is going to be drastically different in this regard. We know the Necromancer King is Evil. Our job is to stop him. It's not going to be much of a question of what they are, merely why, in what way, and with what consequences they are that way.This is the depth in an absolute alignment, after all. Knowing something is 'evil' doesn't tell you a whole lot about it, really. The thing is, I see this in 2e and 3e, too. I see it in all the PS material, I see it in the absolute alignments, and I see it as *especially* interesting with those absolute alignments. Because you know the hobgoblin is Evil. But you aren't. You worship the same god, have some of the same goals...exploring that difference, determining why you aren't evil, but he is...and dedicating yourself to the things that make you different from him.This happened all the time in 2e and 3e for me, and will likely continue to happen in 4e, but it didn't need to open up the alignments to achieve that. Not that I think it's bad to have a broader 'unaligned' category, just that absolute alignments do give these questions a cosmological weight that they would lack in a world without tangible Evil and Good and Law and Chaos. [/sblock]More Generally[sblock]I agree witih this. The Blood War is flavorful and interesting and a good metaphor, but it's not essential to the conceptions of what these extraplanar evils are. While possibly true, I don't object because the blood war isn't an essential part of what these creatuers are. It's cool, but you can add it back in easily and I won't miss it not being there in campaigns I don't want it in. It doesn't actually do any of that. It is strongly implied in most Blood War stuff that Good WON'T triumph because the blood war makes Evil stronger, and that this is perhaps why both sides of Evil enjoy the blood war. It's not stupid to prepare for true war (against Good) by engaging in minor war (against other Evils). Evil is self-destructive, but another cliche is that evil is never truly extinguished. These work in concert to create a permenant evil that fights itself, but that grows stronger in doing so, because fighting itself deepens it's own evil. But there are many and sundry ways that the Blood War actually does influence play itself in a positive and creative manner. I can list a few more if you want. <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=";)" /> The question of motive might already be 'known' (in a broad sense), but the cause (or, at least, the STATED cause) of many wars is known, and that doesn't preclude secondary desires, hidden causes, and the actual consequences of the war. The Players already know, the Characters either know or discover it quickly, but that knowledge isn't doing anything to save the village caught in the path of the war unless the PC's DO something.[/sblock]</blockquote>

Verification