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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 372645" data-attributes="member: 2067">All the above. ^_^I have alignments, and these alignments are certainly forces themselves.But just because there is a force of EVIL doesn't mean that everything evil should be eradicated, or that you can nessecarily tell what's evil and what's good.And just because someone can detect you as "evil" doesn't mean that you're incapable of good, or that it gives them a free excuse to kill you.Evil, IMC, is ingrained in human nature. It's the taking of pleasure in the harming of others -- you can't destroy an evil orc stronghold and be happy about it. You can't take joy in a victorious battle. Everybody, at all times, is tempted to be evil, and even Lawful Good Paladins are capble of being evil every once in a while. The alignments aren't exclusive. They're just a description for motives.See, this doesn't mitigate themes like violence, sex, or all those taboo things at all. It doesn't destroy the touchy subjects by saying "it's a maddening force and only villains do it." Everyone is evil, commits evil, does evil...it's part of being alive. Just as even the most debauched villain probably does a few good things.My villains are motivated by anything anybody else is motivated by. Power. Greed. Success. Life itself. Vengeance. Protection of that which they love. The reason they're villains is because they're opposing the PC's, pretty much. Just because they're the enemy doesn't mean they're evil, nor does it mean that the PC's are nessecarily good simply by virtue of opposing them. It's quite possible to have a Lawful Good villain, who just seems to have the idea that in order to make everyone lawful good (and thus happy), he needs a mind-controlling artifact.He's Lawful Good. He's pure and upright. But since most PC's very much value freedom of thought (and a lot of normal people do, too), he's in opposition to them. They probably aren't Evil (and may even be lawful themselves), just of a different mind.I think it's a mistake to link in-game alignment evil with any question of real-world evil. Alignments can describe motives in fantasy, but they don't well describe the complex actions of those of us who live a real life. At most, one can consider Good and Evil determined by some outside force, and then either not told, or disseminated through prophets and the like. No human being, because we are all relative creatures, can truly define a universal Good and a universal Evil, any motive or act that is always one or the other.Also, human beings *always* believe that *they* are right. Those who oppose them are wrong. As Right came to equal Good and Wrong came to equal Evil, they largely just became the name for Those on the Other Side. I don't think the D&D alignments really apply when You = Good and Those Who Oppose You = Evil.I think they work well enough when they are defined and solid, absolute, and the PC's generally know (meta-game) what they are. But I avoid defining it in-game because, in real life, the PC's are hardly aware of what is good and what is evil.</blockquote>

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