Most black and white setting in existence.

[Morithias]

Well after my "white and grey" world 1 campaign setting made it BRUTALLY hard to make villains (seriously trying to come up with a legit reason for why every single creature went to crime or evil and keep them people that are D&D like was hard) I've decided to turn to the official books for ideas about pantheons.

I am looking for the most black and white setting's portfolio and afterlife in existence. A realm where there is no or little grey area. You see a demon, you lop her head off. Alignment is not up for debate.

I'm hoping this will be a bit easier to write for and less driving myself up the wall writing tons of backstory.

[HunterOfJello]

Ravenloft.


It's very black and white. Or rather, it's black and extra black.

[The Dark Fiddler]

If you play it straight, Dark Heresy (or other Warhammer systems) could be pretty black and white. Suffer not the Xenos to live and all that, you kill all aliens and kill all demons.

[Friv]

As a bare-bones pastiche of Greyhawk, I would say that the setting of Advanced Fighting Fantasy is about as black and white as they get.

Alternately, Mutants & Masterminds being played Silver Age.

[Jack of Spades]

If you play it straight, Dark Heresy (or other Warhammer systems) could be pretty black and white. Suffer not the Xenos to live and all that, you kill all aliens and kill all demons.

Heh, well that's more super-grey which every character has been taught to see as completely black and white, but same thing

Anyhow, OT. Star Wars. By which I mean Star Wars as portrayed by the movies. A character goes from loving others and treating people with respect to killing defenseless children in the space of a single screenplay. Everyone else is either puppy-kicking evil or a paragon of all that is good and just. Ugh.

Straight black and white is a lot easier to write for because it implies a longstanding status quo. Demons are evil, so we kill them. Angels are good, so we help them. That's how it's always been. They're probably in an eternal war or something. Not much space for complexity in the backstory of a really black and white setting.

[Morithias]

Straight black and white is a lot easier to write for because it implies a longstanding status quo. Demons are evil, so we kill them. Angels are good, so we help them. That's how it's always been. They're probably in an eternal war or something. Not much space for complexity in the backstory of a really black and white setting.

That's basically what I'm looking for...

Ravenloft doesn't work cause I'm looking for black and white, not black and black (don't get me wrong I LOVE ravenloft's fluff and monsters).

Eberron doesn't work cause their alignment system has some grey areas like the good aligned queen who wants to take over the world.

Faerun..I"m not touching. I'm sorry I have major personal hatred for Faerun, and I'm not going to say what least I start a real world religious debate.

Greyhawk seems like an interesting thing, what is it's afterlife like? Just the wheel?

[Craft (Cheese)]

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[/smartass]

Seriously though, Greyhawk's the best suggestion so far.

[Kelb_Panthera]

The standard setting (technically greyhawk in all but name as I understand it) can work for this. Ultimately black and white can only work if you don't think about it too much.

You have to throw out logic and say the badguys are evil because they're the bad guys and the evil people are bad guys 'cause they're evil.

Any serious critical thinking will inevitably lead to "why are they evil?" or "why are they the enemy?" The only other option is black and white not as morality or alignment, but simply as a matter of survival. They are the enemy and they want us all dead. Nothing else matters because circumstance says that either they die or we do. The kaorti (FF) come to mind, if you adjust the fluff so that they're trying to drag the whole world back into the far realm with them.

Naturally, setting the campaign in the outer realms and asking the players to play celestial creatures and only throwing fiends at them works too.

[Arbane]

The multigenre (as in, different universes with different laws of reality) game TORG had the Nile Empire, which was Pulp Adventure (with added sphinxes). It was an actual law of nature that everyone there was Good or Evil (with capital letters), but most normal people seemed to be genre-blind to this fact.

[navar100]

Not sure if it's still around, but the Scarred Lands campaign setting can work as well. The gods defeated the titans in a war. The titans are Team Evil except for one who sided with the gods and represents the druid faith. All races who worship the titans are Team Evil and are to be destroyed - goblins, orcs, kobolds, etc. There are nine gods, one for each alignment. They are Teams Good, Neutral, and Evil. Evil gods and their worshipers hate the titans and their worshipers as well, but Team Good and Team Evil fight each other.

[Ashtagon]

Diablo seems fairly strong on this trope, at least in its first incarnation.

Torg's Nile Empire has it, but Torg's Aysle also had it.

[Kane0]

Diablo would have been my first response too, except for as the games progress you find that the angels can be just as nasty as demons...

Then again that could work to your advantage. Both demons and angels kill humans almost on sight, so why not vice versa?

[Glaurung]

The answer will depend a great deal on how a setting is interpreted by a dungeon master. Greyhawk would not be my first choice. Some of established NPCs (especially the iconic Greyhawk wizards) were neutrally aligned. But I could make Greyhawk back and white quite easily.

Thinking of D&D/AD&D official settings, I think that you could do quite well with Dragonlance, especially if the play during the "War of the Lance" period. But that setting in that most black and white of eras can easily get slippery when it comes to alignment if a DM makes it so (reintroduction of clerical magic should prove destabilizing to any society after a long absence...).

[Kelb_Panthera]

The answer will depend a great deal on how a setting is interpreted by a dungeon master. Greyhawk would not be my first choice. Some of established NPCs (especially the iconic Greyhawk wizards) were neutrally aligned. But I could make Greyhawk back and white quite easily.

Thinking of D&D/AD&D official settings, I think that you could do quite well with Dragonlance, especially if the play during the "War of the Lance" period. But that setting in that most black and white of eras can easily get slippery when it comes to alignment if a DM makes it so (reintroduction of clerical magic should prove destabilizing to any society after a long absence...).

OOOooooh, I forgt about DL.

The chaos war is a great period for us V them black and white.

If you're considering reading Dragons of Summer Flame, don't open the spoiler.

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All of the gods and the mortals of all alignments had to work together to avoid an apocalypse at the hands of an elder-god and his minions.

[SowZ]

What is your issue with the good queen trying to take over the world? You don't like super extremist good characters? If she had been lawful evil, would she have had to act 'more' evil to fit or should she be neutral? A game where everyone's alignment is clear to all would lend to more boring characters, I think.

[Kelb_Panthera]

What is your issue with the good queen trying to take over the world? You don't like super extremist good characters? If she had been lawful evil, would she have had to act 'more' evil to fit or should she be neutral? A game where everyone's alignment is clear to all would lend to more boring characters, I think.

For some, interesting characters aren't as important as fun gameplay. If you're the type that has a blast kicking down doors and bashing heads, does it really matter what was going on in that head before you spread it across a nearby wall?

[Jeff the Green]

Well, since this isn't in the 3.5 thread, I'm going to mention some book settings that are pretty black and white that I think would be fun to play in.

The world of the Sparhawk novels (The Elenium and The Tamuli) by David and Leigh Eddings. There are the Elder Gods of Styricum, who are strictly evil. There's the Younger Gods of Styricum, who are good but fickle. There's the Elene god, who is good but distant. Human politics can get murky, but that's less because people are grey than that organizations have a mix of the black and the white and the good guys sometimes often always disagree about how to go about doing the right thing.

The world of the Belgarion novels, also by David and Leigh Eddings. Though hard to play in because of the Big Damn Heroes and the prophesiesy that runs the world.

Middle Earth. Duh.

Narnia. Also duh, but harder to play in.

[Morithias]

What is your issue with the good queen trying to take over the world? You don't like super extremist good characters? If she had been lawful evil, would she have had to act 'more' evil to fit or should she be neutral? A game where everyone's alignment is clear to all would lend to more boring characters, I think.

I have nothing wrong with that character in terms of eberron and how it works, but it's not what I'm looking for. In my personal opinion "Extremist" does not equal "good". Cutting someone's tongue out cause they told a lie is torture, and in accordance to the BOVD and BOED which I am going to use as my base line for alignment that's wrong.

I want a campaign setting where there is no question about who the bad guy is. If the guy is part of a devil cult, either take him to prison or lop his head off. I'm looking for hmmm..."Nodwick" I guess. Where raiding a dragon's cave is socially acceptable solely cause it's got red skin.

So kinda like order of the stick, only without all the deconstruction and great story telling. I'm looking for a divine portfolio and afterlife system that is very black and white so that I don't have to worry about grey areas and complex morality debates. I want something that is EASY to dm, cause quite frankly I'm this close to quitting as a DM, and if it weren't for 1. My love of the game 2. The fact that I'm the only person in my group that seems to have anything close to free time anymore 3. My recent girlfriend who doesn't know 3.5 yet and 4. The fact my one friend won't get off his bloody ass and start working on the war campaign, so I need to have something to run when the group finally does meet after 6 months or so just so we have something to play. I would hang up the DM coat.

In short, I'm tried of writing complex character driven plots that go nowhere. I once planned out a campaign that would've lasted from level 3 to 32 IN FULL, that was basically a giant tribute to the best of the JRPG genre and guess how far we got in it? ONE star, ONE crystal star out of SEVEN.

Quite frankly I want something simple, where when they ask me "Why is Dark Lord O kitten squasher evil" I can say "He is, deal with it" with a straight face.

[Jeff the Green]

So, two things. First, I'm not sure a black and white setting is all that much easier to DM. Unless you have someone playing a class with a code of conduct, your characters are free to do what they want without complex morality debates. In fact, an alignment-free game might alleviate some of the strees of morality.

Second, it sounds like you're close to burning out. Maybe play a low-RP dungeoncrawl game for a while or a published adventure. If you really want one with clearly evil antagonists, Expedition to Castle Ravenloft is a good one.

[Morithias]

So, two things. First, I'm not sure a black and white setting is all that much easier to DM. Unless you have someone playing a class with a code of conduct, your characters are free to do what they want without complex morality debates. In fact, an alignment-free game might alleviate some of the strees of morality.

Second, it sounds like you're close to burning out. Maybe play a low-RP dungeoncrawl game for a while or a published adventure. If you really want one with clearly evil antagonists, Expedition to Castle Ravenloft is a good one.

It's less "burn out" and more "group hasn't met for 6 months, and most of the group never contacts me period." It's almost like they're ignoring me. I'm seriously getting close to finding a new group or just playing with the girlfriend. The only thing that keeps me from doing so is...well...the fact that maybe once every 3 weeks one will log into msn for five minutes and say hi..you know what screw that. Now that I think about it none of them have treated me like a friend for months. I have bloody ex-girlfriends that I talk to more often.

Lock and close the thread, I think I'm going to hang up the coat. Now if you excuse me I have a mass email to send. Thank you for all the help this forum has given me with setting design, character design, and so on over the years. I seriously would not have grown into half the player or dm I am now if it wasn't for you guys.

Now if you excuse me, I'm going to send that email, and find a play-by-post game. I still need my D&D fix, an if my main group isn't going to play, I'm going to find a new one. Maybe that's all I really need as a DM, players that actually care.

[Yora]

Black and White settings are totally easy to run. Because they are so incredibly simplistic that you just kill everything that is Evil, and everything that is not evil is perfect good.
Of course, it's also just boring because there isn't anything to do but simply killing everything that is evil.

Diablo is certainly not Black and White. There is lots of black, but almost no white at all. Tyrael seems to be good and Decard Cain is presented as a nice guy, but his entire motivation is to prevent the world from becomming hell. you don't need to be good to do that.

[Kelb_Panthera]

That last post from the OP definitely sounds like a combination of DM burn-out (which is not the same as D&D burn-out) and general frustration with a group that's not really a play-group as much as several aquaintences that (maybe) share a common interest, but only tangentially.

I think taking a DM'ing break and just playing for a while is the order of the day.

Like I said, no setting is utterly black and white, though some scenarios can be.

Try to find a group that'll let you roll with them on a couple dungeon crawls as a player and come back to DM'ing when you feel inspired to do so again. Forcing yourself isn't going to make it fun. Bad gaming is worse than no gaming.

[Yora]

Best solution is to play a setting that does not have alignment. There are just people and some of them occasionally do really nasty things.
PCs don't make descisions based on what people are good and evil or if they are good or evil, but based on what they think they won't let others get away with.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Best solution is to play a setting that does not have alignment. There are just people and some of them occasionally do really nasty things.
PCs don't make descisions based on what people are good and evil or if they are good or evil, but based on what they think they won't let others get away with.

That actually sounds to me like just the opposite of what the op -was- looking for. It seems to me he was wanting to get away from the complexity of human behavior and have a way to put a simple, "these are the bad guys" tag on the enemy. Asking the players to make good characters and making, or more likely simply picking, a set of evil foes for them to stand against is a pretty obvious way to do that.

Alignment, or more accurately morality, is inherently complex, but that doesn't mean you can't ignore that complexity and just use it as a red team/blue team tag.


Ultimately it's all moot now anyway. The OP has made his decision, and that's to lay down the DM's hat for a while, except maybe for a one-on-one with his GF. I understand from some other threads he's made recently that he's already got something in mind for that. He can, of course, correct me if I'm wrong about that.

[Morithias]

Ultimately it's all moot now anyway. The OP has made his decision, and that's to lay down the DM's hat for a while, except maybe for a one-on-one with his GF. I understand from some other threads he's made recently that he's already got something in mind for that. He can, of course, correct me if I'm wrong about that.

I am so sorry for wasting your time with this thread. Kelb is right though, for the next little while unless something REALLY big comes up I'm probably going to just be a PC.

And yes, The "Alchemists of Al-revis" campaign is for her and me. The one that brought up the "railroading" thread.

Kelb, I must say you certainly seem to be a very active member on this forum and reply to almost every thread I make. I would greatly enjoy a game with you sometime if you're ever up for one. We may not agree on everything, but you seem like a rational, intelligent, player.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I am so sorry for wasting your time with this thread. Kelb is right though, for the next little while unless something REALLY big comes up I'm probably going to just be a PC.

And yes, The "Alchemists of Al-revis" campaign is for her and me. The one that brought up the "railroading" thread.

Kelb, I must say you certainly seem to be a very active member on this forum and reply to almost every thread I make. I would greatly enjoy a game with you sometime if you're ever up for one. We may not agree on everything, but you seem like a rational, intelligent, player.

No apologies necessary. I'd hazard a guess that most of us are here specifically to waste time anyway.

[hamlet]

Middle Earth. Duh.

No.

Not even a little.

[navar100]

Narnia. Also duh, but harder to play in.

What fun to play an Awakened Mouse Crusader or Pathfinder Paladin to follow in the footsteps of the Honorable Reepicheep!

[Wardog]

Middle Earth. Duh.

No.

Not even a little.

Yeah, LotR looks like a straight-up black & white Good vs. Evil setting. But even there, all the "bad guys" are formerly good (or at least neutral) people who tragically fell - including Sauron. And even Gandalf and Galadriel knew that they would eventually be corrupted if they tried to control the Ring.

Then consider the Hobbit, where the Wood Elves were mostly Jerkish Neutral alignment, rather than the stereotypical (alleged) perfect race of perfectness.

And then when you take account of the Silmarillion, and the Sons of Hurin where many of the major heroes (Turin, the sons of Faenor) are -by modern standards at least - extremely dark anti-heroes. (Although fairly typical heroes by the stadards of ancient mythology).

Even Melkor was - arguably - not evil to begin with, although he fell pretty much straight away. (Alternatively: Eru intentionally created him evil). Nor were the balrogs originally evil, but rather they were those spirits of fire that chose to serve Melkor (the Sun being a spirit of fire that remained loyal to Eru and the Valar).


I think the only inherently and unambiguously evil beings in the whole of the Tolkien mythos would be Ungoliant and her descendents.

[LibraryOgre]

As mentioned above, Dragonlance is the most black and white of the D&D settings... and Greyhawk always struck me as VERY grey, while Forgotten Realms seemed very four-color, vs. Eberron's pulp, Dark Sun's actinic glare, and Birthrights blues and purples (as either royal or bruise colored, depending on your status).

For example, in Greyhawk, the Circle of Eight (the group of powerful mages who influence a lot of politics) are mostly Neutral, and a little bit good. The Free City of Greyhawk has a huge an active theives' guild. You've got the Scarlett Brotherhood in the South, yeah, but you've also got the Theocracy of the Pale, which is pretty much everything bad about LG you can have.... but they're facing an actual evil deity in the North.