Would you buy a Book of Exalted Deeds?

[The Sigil]

...Villians are easy to make: their motivations and means are not a puzzle, and are sadly a bit too common place.

What makes a hero, on the other hand, intrigues me- what leads a person to stand up to the wicked with no care of their own sacrifice or cost?

If being a hero was easy, then we would have more of them in the world.

Mind if I drop this into my .sig for a while, Furn?

--The Sigil

 

[MeepoTheMighty]

However evil is all essentially deviation from one of the standards of good.

Not necessarily. There are a lot of grey areas, not to mention the fact that "standards of good" change constantly. What about evil done in the name of good? That's a rather complicated subject that doesn't fall neatly under "a deviation from a standard of good."

There are only about ten ways to break the commandments.

Assuming, of course, that you feel the ten commandments are the be-all and end-all of wickedness. Personally, I don't see many archvillians whose sole motivation is to dishonor thier mother and father. And even with only ten commandments, there's an infinite number of ways to break them.

How much difference is there really between the atrocities of Hitler, Stalin, Mugabe, Pol Pot, the Romans, that southern California creep, Charles Manson, the Aztec sacrifices, and the worship of Molech?

Considering how you could write several volumes about each of those "villians" - again, not sure that I'd lump the Romans or Aztecs in with "villians" - I'd say there's a lot of differences.

How much difference the between the good embodied by St. Augustine, St. Boniface, and St. Francis? How about between Jesus, Socrates, Confucius, and Bhudda?)

Lots of variation there, as well. Again though, I wouldn't necessarily call Socrates a do-gooder. An influential thinker, to be sure, but not the first thing that springs to mind when you think of a hero.

Plus it's very easy to rip evil from the headlines of the news and current events. Try to do that with good and heroism. Other than the police and firement of 9/11, you won't come up with much.

Just because the news media reports a lot of evil doesn't mean there isn't good being done. People really aren't as wicked as the news media would have you believe.

 

[Furn_Darkside]

Mind if I drop this into my .sig for a while, Furn?

--The Sigil

You can even make it more coherent, if you wish.

FD

 

[Furn_Darkside]

Not necessarily. There are a lot of grey areas, not to mention the fact that "standards of good" change constantly.

Err.. well, this is really opinion. I personally don't believe much grey exists at all.

FD

 

[MeepoTheMighty]

What makes a hero, on the other hand, intrigues me- what leads a person to stand up to the wicked with no care of their own sacrifice or cost?

Clearly, the answer is phat lewt.

Honestly though, talking about what creates heroes in the d&d game is a weird situation, since the characters are created to be heroes in the first place. It's a backwards situation of trying to retrofit the backstory to the hero, rather than the hero developing naturally.

And a lot of what heroes in d&d do is pretty evil anyways. Racism, genocide, pillaging, etc are all commonplace. I'd rather be a black/Catholic/Jew in Alabama during the heyday of the KKK than an orc in Faerun.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

I was just thinking that I'd like to see such a book.

 

[Maraxle]

A lot of people will probably hate me for this post, but oh well. If Mr. Hickman can speak his mind, so can I.

why did Wizards decide that the Book of Vile Darkness would be a good seller?

That's an easy one. If it's "forbidden" or "bad" then all the 14 year olds out there will eat it up. It's the same reason why things like Spawn is/was popular. It has a dark edge, so it makes all the otherwise "good" kids feel like they're being rebels. When I was 14 I would have been dying for a book like this. Now at 24, I look at it and say, "BORING!"

So my question is this: would you be interested in a Book of Exalted Deeds to the same degree as you would be interested in the Book of Vile Darkness?

Nope. I would be much MORE interested in a Book of Exalted Deeds than the Book of Vile Darkness. Villains are easy to write. They require very little imagination, even for the most complex evil plots. Gross-outs are easy too (like the maggots and such from Dragon). Addiction and torture rules? I don't need them. To me, those are story elements, and therefore don't require rules. My imagination can handle that.

I can't state what makes heroes so much more complex than villains better than Furn Darkside did, so I'm not even going to attempt it.

 

[Katerek]

I would buy anything that made the paladin not suck

 

[Furn_Darkside]

And a lot of what heroes in d&d do is pretty evil anyways. Racism, genocide, pillaging, etc are all commonplace. I'd rather be a black/Catholic/Jew in Alabama during the heyday of the KKK than an orc in Faerun.

In your campeigns, I guess you have to deal with that.

In my campeigns, that is not true.

FD

 

[S'mon]

With all the fervor around the recent inclusion of "vile" material in the latest Dragon (and before you ask, no I don't want to talk about that topic here - there are 2 threads much better suited to that task, with loads of good comments on both sides of the discussion), I got to thinking, why did Wizards decide that the Book of Vile Darkness would be a good seller?

So my question is this: would you be interested in a Book of Exalted Deeds to the same degree as you would be interested in the Book of Vile Darkness?

Yeah, if it were well done, I'd probably find it more interesting than 'vile darkness' - Evil is ten a penny, Good is hard to do well!
Ideas on creating Good organisations and prestige classes, with examples like the Guardian Mages and Sentinel Knights in my own game), different views on what 'Good' entails - militant, pacifist, etc , Lawful vs Chaotic good conflict, interesting Good spells (eg altruistic healing magic where the caster takes the harm into themselves), and so on. I think it could be great!