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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sundragon2012" data-source="post: 3747315" data-attributes="member: 7624">I believe that the Great Wheel supports a moral relativism and moral equivalency that undermines the fundamental premise of high/heroic fantasy. The moral relativism of the Great Wheel makes all moral/ethical positions cosmically equal. Regardless of what the heroes do, the multiverse simply sees them as equals on a spectrum of moral equaivalents. In the layout of the Great Wheel there is nothing better about moral good over evil. Odin is no more correct than Asmodeus, Tyr is no more correct than Orcus, it all depends on where you stand on the wheel. Who is there to really say that a villian as wicked as Stalin or Pol Pot is any worse than a hero with the heart of Mother Theresa or Martin Luther King when in the end the very wicked and the very good are just points on a philosophical compass? Who can say who is really correct, the Solar or the Pit Fiend? Can anyone be more morally right than another when the multiverse seems to support all points of view with equal ease?A balor general who wants to commit genocide of all mortals on a given prime material world is only somone of a different point of view from the saint who died saving the kingdom from a demon horde according to the Great Wheel. I say this because according to it's structure there is no alignment more fundamentally valid than another. Personally I have never used this atrocious idea and even though I once used the Great Wheel I made sure my players knew that conscious sentient creatures of "elemental" evil were wrong. I'm not speaking of what people call "natural" evils such as flood, earthquake, fires, etc. I am speaking of moral evil. High Fantasy is best supported when the heroes actually have right on their side as opposed to merely believing they have right on their side.Gandalf and Sauron are not morally equivalent agents of cosmic powers who merely have different points of view, the universe (the Valar, Eru) frown on Melkor and Sauron and work against them. The evil ones are unnatural and deserve destruction. I am using Tolkien as an example but I have yet to see the idea of philosophical equivalency used in regards to good and evil in ANY fantasy genre EXCEPT badly conceived D&D tropes like the Great (alignment) Wheel of the planes.I know that those who love playing murdering, robbing, miscreants may cry foul but that doesn't change the fact that high/heroic fantasy presupposes that good is better and fundamentally more valid than evil. In the real world there is greater moral ambiguity than in even the most morally ambivalent game setting, but that's because we don't know the truth of things for sure. In D&D, and high fantasy in general, it is often possible to be certain that you are right (good) and the enemy is wrong (evil) above and beyond your personal opinion.If the TRUTH is that good and evil are equal yet different positions then the whole thing, all the heroics, all the battling against darkness, all the heroic sacrifices against insurmountable odds, all of it is nothing more than a petty battle of opinions.Please feel free to agree or disagree..this isn't merely a polemic, but my point of view offered up as fodder for discussion.  <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=";)" /> Sundragon</blockquote>

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