Quote Originally Posted by ti'esar View Post
To paraphrase past comments by the Giant on the subject, I'm a little disturbed that finding a "reason" for an entire culture of sentient beings to be evil is considered the "neater" story here.
I didn't intend to disturb. It's simpler and, well, for lack of a better term, cleaner, to treat everything, alignment-wise, like humans. Basically neutral and free to choose their destinies. There are evil empires and good kingdoms and such, but people/goblins/dragons/etc are still free and generally unaligned. I think, though I may be wrong, that's what the Giant wants.

For myself, if I'm working in a system where mechanics such as "(Almost) Always Evil" exist, well, I'd like to explore those mechanics. Give a reason for why they're there. Explain exactly what "Smite Evil" is and how it works. If I'm going to play God- which is basically what world-building is- I get to write the laws of physics and magic. For me, at least, that's pretty dang fun.

So, in a world of Magic, it seems feasible for a "cursed species" to exist. Consider the Wendigo, a cursed being brought about by people resorting to cannibalism. What would happen if you extended that a few generations? Hell, it would be a pretty fun quest to try to discover and lift that curse, redeeming entire future lines of that species.

To reject a literary or gaming mechanic entirely is one, perfectly valid, option. I just happen to think that rebuilding it is another.