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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 366855" data-attributes="member: 3146">Well, this is a bit too much philosophy for a thread that's just would you buy a book of Exalted Deeds so I'll try to keep it brief.MeepotheMighty wrote:Well, leaving relativism out of the picture, evil done in the name of good is, I think, a clear case. What makes it interesting is not the evil that is done but rather the good that it is attempting to accomplish. In this case, as in many others, what makes a villain interesting is not how vile he is but his good qualities that were corrupted. Darth Vader wouldn't be a very interesting villain if he didn't care about Luke. If he had died in the final Star Wars movie without redemption, he would have most likely been a boring and one dimensional character. What made him interesting was not the evil that he wallowed in but the good that was still inside of him.True but all of them committed atrocities. The differences and the subjects for interesting books don't lie there. Sure, the Aztecs sacrificed thousands to their gods and the Romans crucified thousands as warnings against the price of rebellion. Those aren't the interesting things about Roman or Aztec civilization though. Again, the interesting bits are not the evil of the civilizations.Well, I think I made poor choices by including both Socrates, and Confucius. They are usually admired for the same thing--their teaching. But that aside, the points I was making with the examples are first that in the people we consider good, that good is what we find interesting about them. And second that, unlike the evil of villains which tends to be the same, there is a great variety in the "goods" we admire. Well, the news media actually goes a long way to cover up the wickedness of some people--when was the last time you heard about the torture of prisoners in China, for instance. But I certainly agree with you that the media does not portray an accurate picture of humanity.Still, the point I was trying to make is that contemporary evil is very similar to simply drag and drop into a D&D game. That's much harder to do with contemporary heroism. That is partially because we do not live in a society that ordinarily honors heroism. It is also partially because the character of modern heroism is tied more closely to the circumstances of modern life than is modern villainy. Consequently, it's more difficult to execute the "drag and drop" that can be done with villains.</blockquote>

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