Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 julescarv Mar 10, 2009 22:41:03	I'm not sure where to talk about alignment in a manner disconnected from specific in-game problems best, so I suppose I'll put it in the off-topic tavern I don't think St. Augustine was really on the right track when it came to reconciling the state of the world with an omnipotent benevolent God, but I do think that there was something there when it comes to describing alignment in-game. One of the problems with D&D's handling of alignment is how it gives evil an independent status comparable with good. I think that this causes problems which evil as privation of good doesn't really cause. (Evil as radical privation of good -- moderate privation of good is more neutrality.) What is evil? Fourth edition probably handles this question the worst, claiming that it is simply selfishness and egotism. Evil's maxim being "It is my right to claim what others possess," and Chaotic Evil's being "I don’t care what I have to do to get what I want." Under this system, as I've said before, Mohamed Atta has no alignment at all. He wasn't evil, because he was extremely unselfish, sacrificing his own life for his cause. He wasn't good, because he lead a conspiracy that killed thousands of innocent people. He wasn't even unaligned, because "If you’re unaligned, you don’t actively seek to harm others or wish them ill," while Mohamed Atta did seek to harm others, and very effectively. 3e is a touch better, but not much. It doesn't completely reduce evil to selfishness, like 4e, and includes privisions for "idealistic evil" at the end of each evil alignment description: "Some lawful evil people and creatures commit themselves to evil with a zeal like that of a crusader committed to good." "Some neutral evil villains hold up evil as an ideal, committing evil for its own sake." "If [a chaotic evil villain] is committed to the spread of evil and chaos, he is even worse." Still, 3e ascribes one of two motives to evil: selfishness, or dedication to evil itself. While Mohamed Atta was an evil idealist, he was not dedicated to evil, but to a particularly violent political-religious ideology with Islamic roots. Essentially, the advantage of the Privatio Boni view of evil is that it gives up on dealing with the nature of evil. It defines good, then lets neutrality be some deviation from goodness, and lets evil be a large deviation from goodness. A selfish landlord who sends thugs to beat up yeoman farmers so that he can acquire their land are bargain prices, an idealistic terrorist who kills thousands, a dictator determined to mould his subjects into a new kind of people -- all are designated evil by their common disregard for others' interests: in short, by the motive that they lack, not whatever motives they have. However, I'm wondering what implications this view might have for cosmology. D&D gives evil an independent cosmic existence, and creates various forces as exemplars of evil. If evil is just privation of good, what implications would that have for cosmology? If we were to use Great Wheel cosmology, where alignment is critical, then I might imagine that the "good" plane, rather than being at the top of the wheel, would be in the center -- where the Outlands currently are. As one moves away from the center, the neutral planes might be in ring around the central good planes. The evil planes might be in an outer ring, furthest from the good center. For 4e cosmology, where planes aren't defined by alignment but by nature (astral sea, elemental chaos, feywild, shadowfell), then I suppose that it wouldn't have so big an impact. It still might have an impact on the nature of demons and devils, though. Do you have any thoughts?
#2 crossroads_wanderer Mar 10, 2009 22:54:44	I think that evil is defined pretty well in 3e if you read the Book of Vile Darkness. It talks about the psychological conditions of evil pretty well. 4e D&D seems to take a step back from alignment if you ask me. Many classes that were heavily alignment restricted in 3e (paladins being the best example) have very little alignment restriction in 4e. There is also the reduction in the number of alignments. They have essentially grouped together NG with CG and LE with NE, which doesn't make much sense to me. I think that people have a tendency to fall into more neutral alignments, but grouping in two of the neutral alignments with one of their extreme counterparts takes away from this. It makes it seem like the alignments are LG, CG, N, LE, and CE. This makes the alignment system seem less realistic, which to me means that it really isn't a good idea to try to apply it to the real world. This could even be what they were going for as they have tried to skirt real-world morality issues in the past.
#3 Titanium_Dragon Mar 10, 2009 23:29:14	The problem is, more or less, that they did away with the double axis system, when the double axis system is a far more reasonable representation. An evil person can be honorable, and a good person can be dishonest. Incidentally, you're simply wrong about Mohammad Atta. Per 4th edition he's chaotic evil; he didn't care what he had to do to get what he wanted. Suicide bombers would be the ultimate in CE in 4th edition, because they care so little they are willing to throw -themselves- away in pursuit of what they desire. Ironic, really, that the most evil and the most good person share selflessness as an attribute, but its really the opposite sorts of selflessness. It isn't that the angelic don't care about themselves so much as it is they care about other people as much as they do about themselves, and they care about EVERYONE a great deal. Conversely, the worst demon cares about no one at all, not even themselves. The angel places a high value on everyone, whereas the demon places no value on anyone. So while selflessness is a common attribute between the two, it arises for very different reasons. Ultimately, I think it is the value people place on people which defines them as good or evil. An evil person places little value in other people, whereas a good person places a high value in them.
#4 pigknight Mar 10, 2009 23:29:30	I only label NPCs/PCs as evil if they are crazy evil. Such as Dormir, Blade or Shadowpaw from the Edition War. They care for no one and want the world to burn. Everyone else is neutral or good.
#5 crossroads_wanderer Mar 10, 2009 23:33:57	Sociopathic and crazy are very different things. Sociopaths often show little or no emotion, so while people don't consider them crazy, they really are evil. Just look at most murder cases on the news. The friends and neighbors say that they never expected it from the person, that they were a normal person. This is because sociopaths don't stick out until they do something truly evil.
#6 pigknight Mar 10, 2009 23:36:26	My evil guys tend to be card carrying villians. Dormir hissed...a lot.
#7 crossroads_wanderer Mar 10, 2009 23:42:56	Artemis Entreri, from FR, is not a card-carrying villain, but he is portrayed to be utterly, soullessly evil.
#8 julescarv Mar 10, 2009 23:53:25	Incidentally, you're simply wrong about Mohammad Atta. Per 4th edition he's chaotic evil; he didn't care what he had to do to get what he wanted. Suicide bombers would be the ultimate in CE in 4th edition, because they care so little they are willing to throw -themselves- away in pursuit of what they desire. The thing is, while your description fits the CE "maxim," ("I don’t care what I have to do to get what I want."), the CE description as a whole puts egotism and pursuit of self-interest as the motive of CE characters, not generic pursuit of goals which may or may not be self-interested: "Chaotic evil characters have a complete disregard for others. Each believes he or she is the only being that matters and kills, steals, and betrays others to gain power. Their word is meaningless and their actions destructive. Their worldviews can be so warped that they destroy anything and anyone that doesn’t directly contribute to their interests."
#9 crossroads_wanderer Mar 11, 2009 0:01:08	I think you just have to use common sense to some extent when you are dealing with the alignment descriptions. Even philosophers have a hard time defining good and evil, so the people who work at WotC have little hope of pegging it right. Furthermore, it's possible that they have tried to leave some aspects intentionally vague because morality is a touchy topic and they have tried to stay pretty hands off in the past to avoid offending people.
#10 Titanium_Dragon Mar 11, 2009 0:31:55	Sociopathic and crazy are very different things. Sociopaths often show little or no emotion, so while people don't consider them crazy, they really are evil. Just look at most murder cases on the news. The friends and neighbors say that they never expected it from the person, that they were a normal person. This is because sociopaths don't stick out until they do something truly evil. Actually, very few crimes are committed by sociopaths. People only link criminal activity and sociopathy because it makes it easier for them to depersonalize criminals. Sociopaths are rare, and many of them are not criminals. The reason neighbors say they didn't notice anything is because they A) don't actually care about their neighbors, so don't pay attention to them and B) because they don't want to look like they knew something and just didn't care enough to do anything about it. Most criminals are more like dogs than sociopaths; acting out of animal instinct and emotion. Sociopaths are the opposite, people who simply put up a facade of personality. "Chaotic evil characters have a complete disregard for others. Each believes he or she is the only being that matters and kills, steals, and betrays others to gain power. Their word is meaningless and their actions destructive. Their worldviews can be so warped that they destroy anything and anyone that doesn’t directly contribute to their interests." It fits a suicide bomber well.
#11 spectralphoenix Mar 11, 2009 0:38:53	First of all, you have to decide whether you're using objective or subjective alignments. Subjective alignments are when someone's alignment is determined by how they follow their own moral standards (which is kind of the way 4e treats the evil alignments) or else determined purely by intent. In a subjective system, Mohammad Atta would be Good - he sacrificed himself for what he believed was right. This tends to run into all sorts of problems. A creature like a demon who does evil for the sake of doing evil doesn't even make sense. Very few creatures would be evil, since most of them would have a moral code that allows them to do what they do. Objective alignments are when their is an inherent morality in the universe, set forth by God(s) or somehow intrinsically part of the mechanics (the assumption for 3e.) Mohammad Atta would be Evil because his actions/intents are defined by the universe as being evil. This has the advantage that it allows for creatures of ultimate goodness or evil, and means that Good and Evil creatures will generally act in a manner we see as good or evil. The problem lies in the line between actions and intent - how misguided do you have to be to absolve you of responsibility for your actions? Additionally, it lacks the simplicity of a subjective system. In order to adjudicate whether an action is good or evil, you need to know the universe's moral code, not just whether the creature in question thought s/he was doing the right thing. Writing a complete moral code isn't easy, and results in all the "Paladin killing drow babies" threads that are oh-so-popular on these boards. If you're going with an objective system, privation would certainly be a valid approach (the question is somewhat moot in a subjective system.) Devils could certainly still exist - they tempt people towards evil to harvest their souls and increase their own power. You could include Demons too, though they probably wouldn't so much tempt people towards evil as just eat their faces. Additionally, demons and devils don't think like people. It may not make much sense for a person to venerate evil in the abstract, but perhaps demons are simply wired that way. They might be beings so far from the light of Goodness that they hate everything that is Good, and seek to make mortals avoid Good as well. On the other hand, a dualistic system, sufficiently described (not as easy as it sounds,) would avoid the problems mentioned in the OP. The problems with the one presented in the 3e PHB are sins of omission - if the descriptions were extended to include the entire range of evil behavior, the system would be quite workable. The only problem is that such a list would probably require more pages than the rest of 3e put together. Most groups end up compromising somewhat - ascribing to the idea that good and evil are cosmically defined, but only questioning behaviors as they come up.
#12 julescarv Mar 11, 2009 3:05:23	It fits a suicide bomber well. I simply don't get where you're coming from. It seems pretty self-evident to me that if you regard yourself as "the only being that matters," you would not sacrifice your life for the sake of a greater cause (i.e., a cause greater than yourself) in a pre-meditated act.
#13 cherubaddon Mar 11, 2009 9:14:05	The trouble, I believe, is that D&D tries to handle evil as a viable alternative to good. There are evil planes, evil outsiders, and evil gods, and if you serve them well, your afterlife will be just as rewarding as it might otherwise have been in Celestia. In Christian philosophy, however, evil is the exact opposite: it is a very short-sighted alternative to good. It basically gets you more (power/fun/whatever) now for less - a LOT less - later. So really, for D&D, you'd need outsiders who are like fallen angels. I mean, real fallen angels. You need a place so bad it can barely be described as the evil plane, and you would need malevolent gods. Not gods saying: "I support in doing w/e you must to achieve your goals", but gods who, no matter what they say, are constantly trying to screw you along with everyone else. The problem is that in a world filled with D&D wizards, that doesn't really work. Nobody votes for team evil if people know they will get screwed - and with sending, teleport and plane shift, it's pretty sure that once it happens, everyone you might possibly care about (i.e., characters of level 5 and over) will know. So in D&D, evil actually has to be a viable alternative to good. Hence, the confusion. And if evil can't be the shortcut to power, to remain attractive, it needs to be the path to greater power than that accessible via being good. Which is how it's supposed to be (in D&D), except that would blow mechanically, which is why we have unplayable PrCs with whacky abilities and awesome fluff for the evil side, and weird high-powered PrCs with ludicrous background for the good one.