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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kobold Boots" data-source="post: 5732434" data-attributes="member: 92239">So here's my take.  Good and Evil are descriptors and in any campaign world or background setting there are going to be exemplars of anything that's described.  Additionally anything that's described is going to have to take into account the perspectives of those doing the describing.Good is fundamentally defined as anything that furthers the general well being of more than one person.  This is an ethical norm across the majority of religions and cultures but is interpreted differently between cultures when what is good for one religion or culture is not good for another.Evil is fundamentally defined as anything that is the polar opposite of the above definition and again, what is evil for one religion or culture is not for another.  The first question, therefore is what is your base perspective?  If your game is told from the perspective of one particular race, in a particular area of the world, with specific needs, then your basis for good and evil is pretty well defined.    From there you can postulate what your exemplars are (eating human flesh is pretty bad if your perspective is human and what's eating flesh is proximal to your town) and what your abstractions are.. (the psychic thing that needs suffering also ensures that the fields are ready for crops that feed the town.. so planned suffering is a necessary thing).Best way to answer the good/evil questions in any campaign is to start with a small area of land (couple or four towns and the surrounding 30 square miles).  Determine who the major inhabitants are and their races.. then determine how their cultures developed taking into account the hardships they endured.  More than anything else, those hardships determine the steps they needed to take to survive and what is considered good (things that abated hardships) and evil (things that nearly killed people)The most accessible liturgical example happens to be the 10 commandments, but any study into cultural relativity will eventually end up showing that killing things and taking important items without permission are generally the only absolute evils within any given culture.  Everything else can be justified in the right context.Once the above exercise is done, you then have the basis for good and evil in that area of the world.  Any additional areas can be slightly askew, wholly askew, or right in line with what you've already done depending on how much conflict you want to generate.</blockquote>

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