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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9738250" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Keeping a promise when it hurts you is detrimental. I agree that getting a reputation for breaking promises can be a problem. But that's ill-advisedness, not the evil in general.I've frequently seen people fall down that slope. The thing you described above: people telling lies because lies are easier, simpler, faster. Because shanking a prisoner is so much less work than keeping them until you can get them to a proper jail cell. Because swindling shopkeepers and then disappearing into the night is easy, and gets you a ton of valuables.You only build a reputation if you keep working with the exact same people over and over again. Adventurers frequently don't ever see the same people more than two or three times total. Even then, all you have to do is break promises "for a good reason" and suddenly all is forgiven. Attempts at deception are a dime a dozen. Selfishness? Everyone's selfish, why would that be such a horrible thing?It seems to me that you've presumed a world where everyone knows everyone's extensive moral-choice history. I don't see how you enforce that.Frankly, a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_incredulity" target="_blank">lack of imagination argument </a>isn't a very strong one.So, they were done in because they were either Chaotic Stupid, or Stupid Evil.I think you'll find that if you add in the Lawful Stupid and Stupid Good possibilities, they balance out more than adequately. Which then leaves the places where people aren't being stupid--and when you're doing it smart, Evil is always more net-productive than Good in the short term, and D&D characters live their lives on short-term interactions: monsters die after single encounters, shopkeepers are rarely if ever seen again, whole continents might be traversed if necessary. Moving to a new place where you have no reputation is as easy as continuing to adventure, which the players were going to do anyway.</blockquote>

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