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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5079163" data-attributes="member: 2067">I love this question. As a bit of a scholar of religion and morality, it enters into all of my world designs on some level, and I really like playing with it in the different settings.For me, it mostly depends on the setting I'm going for. Usually, in D&D, with its alignments, there is a clear Good and clear Evil (and clear Law and Chaos, too). Morality is something like the radioactive spider bite -- it gives you superpowers. In a setting like Planescape, the idea is played with a little bit more. There's certainly a Good and an Evil, but which individual actions might work toward which ends are much more ambiguous (a Celestial is selling weapons to fiends in the hope that they will eliminate each other, but these weapons are also used on innocents. Acceptable loss, or is this celestial falling and just doesn't know it yet?). I like prodding the issue in more mundane settings too, but it isn't always apt.I also have run a fantasy setting where judeo-christian-islamic philosophy and mysticism is taken to be literal truth (you can go right up to the gates of the Garden of Eden and talk with the Cherub there, if you want), but even within that model, you have things like Paradise Lost where there is some sympathy for the Devil, even if the Devil is ultimately evil, and The Divine Comedy, where church authorities burn in hell while Love is enshrined in heaven, and Arabian poetry, where demons are a natural part of creation just as angels are, and the like. It is clear what is evil and what is good, but what an individual does is less clear, because the only true and accurate judge is God Himself (and you can only hope and guess at his desires through the Revelations in the Holy Books, assuming that no mortals have tampered with them...). So I find most of my settings deal with morality in one way or another, but generally leaves the fine distinction purposefully obscure. You don't know if your individual action is good or evil, and your character probably won't know until long after their death and ultimate reward/punishment, unless you make it obvious. You must continually question yourself. Which, to me, plays like a moral gray line, but with consequences. Of course, I've played in more nihilistic settings, or amoral settings, too, and they have been fun. I am drawn to the moral question personally though, so it's reflected in a lot of the D&D stuff I create.</blockquote>

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