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Those evil slaad.
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<blockquote data-quote="Mr. Kaze" data-source="post: 1740920" data-attributes="member: 8848"><p>See, I've always had a problem with "good" and "evil" with regards to "I'm evil because I'm higher than you on the food chain." Take, for example, your average Ogre. It speaks giant, not common. So when it bashes in the head of a human commoner to make a nice meal, the human commoner is speaking in common (not giant) and is therefore completely non-understandable to the Ogre. Ogre doesn't know that it's done something especially wrong, just especially belly-filling. It won't be around when the family is lamenting that the commoner didn't have life insurace.</p><p></p><p>Compare to a human warrior who goes out and kills an entire generation of Orc males, but leaves the women and children untouched because they're "innocent", but also leaves them to grow up in a decimated society knowing that their civilization was brought to what it was by the humans. It'd be wildly abnormal for the "innocent" children to not start hating the humans for what the humans had done to them which, oddly enough, will cause them to be evil, not just neutral like the humans. But the humans, having created this evil are now evil, too. It's a bit of a downward spiral which only a purely defensive society can avoid getting into -- and very few adventurers are purely defensive.</p><p></p><p>Now what does this have to do with the Slaadi? Simple. Point the first: if they're doing what comes naturally to them (implantation and such), then they're acting with regards to their own wants and needs and not the needs of others without taking any moral action outside of their animal nature -- chaotic neutral. Praying mantises still mate even though the males should know better, you know... Point the second: being outsiders, they probably consider our society pretty screwed up with regards to morals and goals. Likewise, the <em>humans</em> who are afraid of Ogres and Trolls and other such creatures that are higher on the food chain and not generally bright enough to be sympathetic to needs of lesser creatures probably don't have a full understanding of what the Slaads are up to, but realizes that not quite every encounter ends in somebody being dead, and therefore consider them to be Chaotic Neutral. But, point the third, if you consider the downstream impacts from an action like the implantation and such and how it impacts the society that will be surviving the consequences, then many more civilizations are going to be considered evil than either "good" or "neutral". Thus, it's important to figure out how much responsibility you're going to be holding your PCs and NPCs to with their decision-making and regards to their alignment. More in-depth decision making also makes for a richer, fuller storyline, but also tends to make lots of people evil.</p><p></p><p>::Kaze (should probably look into the alignment-less system Monte came up with, but he's too lazy at the moment)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Mr. Kaze, post: 1740920, member: 8848"] See, I've always had a problem with "good" and "evil" with regards to "I'm evil because I'm higher than you on the food chain." Take, for example, your average Ogre. It speaks giant, not common. So when it bashes in the head of a human commoner to make a nice meal, the human commoner is speaking in common (not giant) and is therefore completely non-understandable to the Ogre. Ogre doesn't know that it's done something especially wrong, just especially belly-filling. It won't be around when the family is lamenting that the commoner didn't have life insurace. Compare to a human warrior who goes out and kills an entire generation of Orc males, but leaves the women and children untouched because they're "innocent", but also leaves them to grow up in a decimated society knowing that their civilization was brought to what it was by the humans. It'd be wildly abnormal for the "innocent" children to not start hating the humans for what the humans had done to them which, oddly enough, will cause them to be evil, not just neutral like the humans. But the humans, having created this evil are now evil, too. It's a bit of a downward spiral which only a purely defensive society can avoid getting into -- and very few adventurers are purely defensive. Now what does this have to do with the Slaadi? Simple. Point the first: if they're doing what comes naturally to them (implantation and such), then they're acting with regards to their own wants and needs and not the needs of others without taking any moral action outside of their animal nature -- chaotic neutral. Praying mantises still mate even though the males should know better, you know... Point the second: being outsiders, they probably consider our society pretty screwed up with regards to morals and goals. Likewise, the [i]humans[/i] who are afraid of Ogres and Trolls and other such creatures that are higher on the food chain and not generally bright enough to be sympathetic to needs of lesser creatures probably don't have a full understanding of what the Slaads are up to, but realizes that not quite every encounter ends in somebody being dead, and therefore consider them to be Chaotic Neutral. But, point the third, if you consider the downstream impacts from an action like the implantation and such and how it impacts the society that will be surviving the consequences, then many more civilizations are going to be considered evil than either "good" or "neutral". Thus, it's important to figure out how much responsibility you're going to be holding your PCs and NPCs to with their decision-making and regards to their alignment. More in-depth decision making also makes for a richer, fuller storyline, but also tends to make lots of people evil. ::Kaze (should probably look into the alignment-less system Monte came up with, but he's too lazy at the moment) [/QUOTE]
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