Do you have an "Evil" race in your world?

[Psyren]

I linked to a college level encyclopedia entry on a philosophy concept. Those are notorious for being harder to follow than what most people are used to. I do not expect you to follow it (even I cannot follow the entire article and I have the background). However I do believe you will pick up some of the meaning if you reread that 1st paragraph of section 4 a few times.

For reference for everyone else:

To briefly summarize it: One example of Amoral is the disbelief in good & evil.

It's worth pointing out however that simply identifying as Amoral does not keep one from becoming Immoral. (Case in point.)

On Five Colour Morality: Well this took a lot of mulling it over, and I there are probably refinements I could still make. I had (am having) a bit of trouble wrapping my head... rather unwrapping my head from my own usual meanings I have for some words. All that said I think I can say something intelligent now.

First off the moral vs. amoral axis makes more sense to me framed in terms of responsibility and correctness. White has almost universal responsibility, while black rejects the notion entirely. White goes with this idea and, since the responsibility is wide it is effectively to a single universal thing, creates a single correct path to fill it. Same destination, same path. Black, having rejected the idea of responsibility also rejects the idea of a correct path. Or correct in the sense white would define it, with no other reason to pick a path you just pick the best one.
...
So where does that leave the Moral vs. Amoral axis. Well the original axis I was thinking about certainly is not the one that separates White & Black. That one does sort of spear through the colour wheel. So what about the new axis? Actually I think they did a good job balancing it out so it is pretty neutral the whole way across. That being said I feel the black end is more likely to be... problematic. Simply because in my experience more problems come from people caring too little than caring too much.

MaRo himself has said, and I agree, that Morality in Magic comes from the colors being more or less balanced, whereas Immorality comes from one or a couple dominating the rest.

This very dynamic is why Black tends to be the villain so often - its very nature is to put itself out of balance with the others, and thus simply is not satisfied with the kind of equilibrium where goodness would thrive. As the most selfish color, its goal is to get whatever it can get, by any means necessary. In addition, Black's dominion over portfolios like death and decay makes it ascendant in nearly every fantasy setting because entropy is usually a constant. Life meanwhile is the force that typically has to struggle to exist, and so the "scrappy underdog" spot is almost always claimed by Green and/or White.

This is all sorts of lacking in nuance.

If it's just culture, they can perhaps be reasoned with or integrated if you get a sufficient power advantage, and more importantly, orc children raised outside orc society should be fine to interact with, and "traitors to the culture" can potentially be trusted. If they're inherently Evil, none of that applies.

In D&D at least, the answer appears to be "you should at least try, Paladin, even if it's a Drow or something."

This expectation gets relaxed for non-humanoids however - aberrations, chromatic dragons, intelligent undead, and of course Fiends.

[anti-ninja]

Besides things like aberrations and demons not really .
But monstrous races like goblins in my world are often things like pirates , so The question is how many villages do they have to burn ,how any dead family members do they have to create before the pc's can feel justified in killing them.

They are by no means inherently evil, but because of their chosen trade it's perfectly rational to respond upon sighting a group of armed goblins with violence.

[Ninjaxenomorph]

In the setting I work on, the only 'always evil' race is the Orgruk; also the only race that is solidly a non-player race. The Orgruk spun off of the standard Orc race (mechanically, the orc race is new and the Orgruk use normal orc stats), and are of the 'supernatural tampering' variety. They can literally make more of themselves by spawning from muck. If demons were a thing in the setting, they would be demonic. We've also incorporated ogres and ogrekin into the race as racial variants, along with mixing and matching all those with the Fiendish and Half-Fiend templates.

[ArcanaGuy]

Well, I read ... most ... of the thread, skimmed some of it, so I hope I'm not repeating too much of something here, but...

One of the main things I see as a problem in D&D based roleplaying in general is a conflation of multiple meanings of the words used in the alignment grid. In 3.0, 3.5, and Pathfinder, at least, "Good" and "Evil" are not nebulous terms. They are specific rules keywords. I am aware that the Original Poster did not specify a game world, but I'm going to use 3.0/3.5/Pathfinder for reference, specifically because the concepts of 'detect evil' and the like have popped up several times in this discussion, and this is a very convenient set of rules to demonstrate exactly why we need to be careful about which meaning of the word we're using.

More specifically, good and evil, as we discuss them philosophically, have a great many connotations associated with them - this is what makes them nebulous for philosophy. However, good and evil have very specific meanings in the 3.0/3.5/pathfinder world, and do NOT have most of the connotations we usually associate with the words. Stealing, lying, racism, sexism, etc - have nothing to do with good and evil, and much more to do with law vs. chaos. Good and Evil, very specifically, in the rules, have to do with one's attitude towards individual life. Do you value and protect individual (sentient/sapient) life, or do you disregard it? That's all it has to do with. "Detect Good" and "Detect Evil," along with many other spells associated with these key words, are pretty much only detectors for a specific value of a specific ethical viewpoint, and NOT on the whole set of connotations we usually associate with the words.

When you work with a system which has 'good' and 'evil' as natural forces which can be scientifically deduced and reliably tested for in repeatable laboratory experiments, you need to very carefully look at that system and determine what, rules-wise, do those keywords mean? Once one realizes the difference between the game term 'Good' and 'Evil' and the way we usually use the words in casual conversation, it becomes easier to answer the original question.

"Do I use evil races in my settings?"

Yes. And no.

I have the truly 'good' races - Angels and metallic dragons. They're good, not just because they're made that way, but because if they were to become not-good, they'd change into something else. (I also do metallic kobolds)

I have the 'goodly' races - which are good by culture, not by race. The civilized races which try to encourage good behavior and punish bad behavior. There are individuals who are evil, and individuals who are good, and you have to judge individually, but in general, you can feel relatively safe around goodly races unless you make them feel threatened.

Then you have the 'monstrous' races - which are evil by culture, not by race. These are the ones like orcs and drow who are evil because their culture has drilled it into them to kill others as a matter of social interaction, but who might have good individuals around them. Killing them because of you know that particular group is dangerous is OK, but there might be better ways. Killing them because they're an 'evil race' and you know all of that race is evil might involve alignment hits.

Then you have the 'Blessed with suck' races. This is the Illithids category. They *have* to be evil in order to survive. They have to kill intelligent beings just to live. Most of them are evil because the nature of their metabolism forces them to be so - but it's possible that you might run across an Illithid that rejects its biology and its fellows and tries to feed only off of evil individuals. It's really just an extreme example of the monstrous races.

Then you have the 'broken' races. I put Goblins into this category, because I love the Pathfinder write-up of them as racially sociopathic. They're adorable and vicious and they literally *cannot* care about others by their very physical nature. That being said, it's possible some mad wizarding or clerical genius might be able to do some experiments to 'fix' that broken wire in the goblins' brain.

Finally, I have the truly 'evil' races - demons and chromatic dragons. They're evil, not just because they're made that way, but because if they were to become not-evil, they'd change into something else. (I also do chromatic kobolds)

I like having a nice, wide variety of concepts to choose from, to fit into the story as needed. To know exactly how all of these races fit into the game-term morality, and then not use the game-term morality to skip out on the moral/ethical philosophy which expands far beyond the physics of the world. And in every instance above, you can see that there's at least one way to solve a problem of 'evil' other than killing. But convincing a demon to convert to an angel is an mythic-level event.

But then, I also played the evil PC once who was literally sociopathic and *could not* care about individual life other than his own ... but was trying really hard to do things the proper way because... well... he was aware he was a sociopath and logically deduced that he should care... he just... couldn't. The best he could do was ethics 'by the numbers'. He was the one who would kill one innocent person to save five others without feeling guilty about it, and not understand why his teammates were facepalming so hard.

[Max_Killjoy]

Problem is, by using the words "good" and "evil", and encoding one particular narrow definition into the rules (spells, keywords, alignments, etc) when there's that whole universe of moral and philosophical debate out there, what a game is actually doing is saying "here's exact meaning of good and evil that we're baking into the very rules of the game and making objectively true inside the games that use these rules".

[ArcanaGuy]

No more than it does by setting a rules-keyword definition of 'grapple' or defining 'magic'. That doesn't mean that 'grapple' in this universe can no longer mean 'a latch that holds you onto something', or that music and artwork can no longer be described as 'magical'.

Just like in our real world, a scientific 'theory' and a detective's 'theory' are two very different things.

Just because something is marked as a rules-keyword for such a word doesn't mean that's the only definition the word can have. Just because one technical field has a specific meaning for a word doesn't mean that another technical field with the same word can't mean something else by it. In this case, philosophy and magic would use the same word but have different meanings.

And some pedants within universe would declaim "But good has a scientifically designated meaning! Why are you bothering to debate it?" and the philosophers of that universe would roll their eyes and respond, "Understanding does not come from measured absolutes, but from our perception and consideration of the world around us. Knowing that a piece of wood is eight feet tall does nothing for you if you do not understand what a foot is. Just because the wood is a tree does not mean it cannot also be a home."

[Max_Killjoy]

No more than it does by setting a rules-keyword definition of 'grapple' or defining 'magic'. That doesn't mean that 'grapple' in this universe can no longer mean 'a latch that holds you onto something', or that music and artwork can no longer be described as 'magical'.

Just like in our real world, a scientific 'theory' and a detective's 'theory' are two very different things.

Just because something is marked as a rules-keyword for such a word doesn't mean that's the only definition the word can have. Just because one technical field has a specific meaning for a word doesn't mean that another technical field with the same word can't mean something else by it. In this case, philosophy and magic would use the same word but have different meanings.

Those other words to not have the baggage that "good and evil" have, and claiming that the problems of defining them to no more of a challenge than defining "grapple" is... missing a lot.

The very notion of good and evil as simple qualitative tags that can be applied to a creature or even object is troublesome to begin with.

There's no history of people killing each other over the definition of "grapple", or people (or PCs, even) claiming that it's OK to kill someone "as long as they're a grappler". Most games do not, as far as I'm aware, have "Smite Grappler" as a spell option.

[ArcanaGuy]

Those other words to not have the baggage that "good and evil" have, and claiming that the problems of defining them to no more of a challenge than defining "grapple" is... missing a lot.

The very notion of good and evil as simple qualitative tags that can be applied to a creature or even object is troublesome to begin with.

There's no history of people killing each other over the definition of "grapple", or people (or PCs, even) claiming that it's OK to kill someone "as long as they're a grappler". Most games do not, as far as I'm aware, have "Smite Grappler" as a spell option.

You went for the easy route. Listen to what happens if you try to make that same argument with my other example.

"There's no history of people killing each other over the definition of "magic", or people (or PCs, even) claiming that it's OK to kill someone "as long as they do magic". Most games do not, as far as I'm aware, have "Counter Magic" as a spell option."

[Max_Killjoy]

You went for the easy route.

I did what?

I am not the one who asserted that a rules-definition meaning for "grapple" was equivalent to trying to hard-code into the rules an absolutist "qualitative tag" answer to the millennia-long and sometimes-bloody history of debate over the nature and meaning of "good" and "evil"... or the same subject's long history of derailing gaming sessions with too-often heated arguments.

[ArcanaGuy]

I did what?

I am not the one who asserted that a rules-definition meaning for "grapple" was equivalent to trying to hard-code into the rules an absolutist "qualitative tag" answer to the millennia-long and sometimes-bloody history of debate over the nature and meaning of "good" and "evil"... or the same subject's long history of derailing gaming sessions with too-often heated arguments.

No, but you did decide to use my example of 'grapple' instead of my example of 'magic'.

Not to mention, I didn't assert that, either. That is a severe misrepresentation of what I said.

Regardless of pre-existing connotations and whether you believe there is absolute 'good' and 'evil' definitions in the real world or not, there are game worlds which have declared an absolute and measurable definition thereof. What I did assert is that having a seed of absolute good and evil does not in any way prevent or invalidate just as much in-universe philosophical exploration nor meta-exploration of such topics. And part of the reason for this is because words have multiple meanings.

[Max_Killjoy]

No, but you did decide to use my example of 'grapple' instead of my example of 'magic'.

Not to mention, I didn't assert that, either. That is a severe misrepresentation of what I said.

Regardless of pre-existing connotations and whether you believe there is absolute 'good' and 'evil' definitions in the real world or not, there are game worlds which have declared an absolute and measurable definition thereof. What I did assert is that having a seed of absolute good and evil does not in any way prevent or invalidate just as much in-universe philosophical exploration nor meta-exploration of such topics. And part of the reason for this is because words have multiple meanings.

If you put an "evil tag" in the game that is assigned to certain creatures or characters or objects, once someone can cast "detect evil" and always get an accurate answer, then you've established in-setting objective answers to "what is evil?" and "is this creature evil?" Once you bake that "tag" into the rules, you've made it clear that all in-setting debate on the matter has an objectively correct answer, and all other answers are objectively incorrect -- which is a fundamental departure from any such debate in our real world, and tells the players that no matter how much they disagree, one particular set of answers is hard-coded into the game.

Saying "there's an objective evil keyword in the rules, but that doesn't create an objective answer to "what is evil?" in the setting", is a fine example of disassociated rules, a total disconnect between the rules/mechanics and the setting -- your map is no longer accurate to the territory.

[Dr paradox]

If you put an "evil tag" in the game that is assigned to certain creatures or characters or objects, once someone can cast "detect evil" and always get an accurate answer, then you've established in-setting objective answers to "what is evil?" and "is this creature evil?" Once you bake that "tag" into the rules, you've made it clear that all in-setting debate on the matter has an objectively correct answer, and all other answers are objectively incorrect -- which is a fundamental departure from any such debate in our real world, and tells the players that no matter how much they disagree, one particular set of answers is hard-coded into the game.

Saying "there's an objective evil keyword in the rules, but that doesn't create an objective answer to "what is evil?" in the setting", is a fine example of disassociated rules, a total disconnect between the rules/mechanics and the setting -- your map is no longer accurate to the territory.

Well, that's not necessarily true. I could imagine a world in which a group of wizards works to create the first detect evil spell, burning through shelves of ethics and philosophy books trying to find the perfect criteria for their spell to check, and they get real close... But can't get it 100% perfect, because they can't solve ethics. It's an accurate measure 99.9% of the time, but it's not objectively perfect.

Of course, that's just headcanon, and for most editions of D&D, unfounded. But, I also wanted to bring up 5th edition.

In 5th edition, the alignment tags are just flavor for roleplay. Paladins no longer key off of alignment, and detect evil only detects undead, outsiders, fey, and aberrations, plus desecrated ground. I think most people would agree that demons and devil's are always evil, since I believe that even if they somehow change their alignment, they then physically transform into an angel or a modron or whatever. Is that true in D&D? I heard that somewhere and never checked again.

[RazorChain]

Well, that's not necessarily true. I could imagine a world in which a group of wizards works to create the first detect evil spell, burning through shelves of ethics and philosophy books trying to find the perfect criteria for their spell to check, and they get real close... But can't get it 100% perfect, because they can't solve ethics. It's an accurate measure 99.9% of the time, but it's not objectively perfect.

Of course, that's just headcanon, and for most editions of D&D, unfounded. But, I also wanted to bring up 5th edition.

In 5th edition, the alignment tags are just flavor for roleplay. Paladins no longer key off of alignment, and detect evil only detects undead, outsiders, fey, and aberrations, plus desecrated ground. I think most people would agree that demons and devil's are always evil, since I believe that even if they somehow change their alignment, they then physically transform into an angel or a modron or whatever. Is that true in D&D? I heard that somewhere and never checked again.

Well then you have to explain how the spell detect evil works as either there is an immutable evil or subjective evil. There is almost no way to be objective about what evil is. If evil is subjective, what might be considered evil in one culture might not be evil in another culture. So if an "evil" Drow makes a detect evil spell it will detect different criteria than if a "good" human might have made the same spell. To the Drow, humans are an evil race.

[Vrock_Summoner]

I think I mentioned this elsewhere, but one way I diffused an alignment argument in one of my campaigns was making the very association of the "alignment" energies with moral principles an in-setting cultural decision. The alignment energies are boosted or waned by certain actions and feelings, based on whether those things trend towards affecting certain types of growth in the universe. These largely coincided with primary cultural ideas of morality, causing many people to take the alignment energies as actual indicators of moral truth, when in reality they have nothing to do with good, evil, law, or chaos on any objective level. That said, they are objective, so changing cultural norms won't cause shifts in how alignment works. And some of the non-primary cultures, with very different ideas of what's morally right and wrong, give the alignments different names - for example, an extremely loose, community-based society, which the primary culture would consider Chaotic, wouldn't necessarily call the primary society's energy Lawful, but instead something like Oppressive or Tyrannical.

[Dr paradox]

Well then you have to explain how the spell detect evil works as either there is an immutable evil or subjective evil. There is almost no way to be objective about what evil is. If evil is subjective, what might be considered evil in one culture might not be evil in another culture. So if an "evil" Drow makes a detect evil spell it will detect different criteria than if a "good" human might have made the same spell. To the Drow, humans are an evil race.

I guess that's sort of open to interpretation, but I figured that since good and evil aren't teams, but distinct qualities, drow wouldn't percieve the lack of evil in humans as abhorrent, just stupid on our part. That is to say, they don't hate us. Hate would imply they thought we were a danger. They just snicker at our idiot religions with their poor-boxes and lack of blood rites.

Second, that sounds like a cool setting element! I've already got a thing where comprehend languages needs to be "patched" as new languages are discovered, this is pretty similar.

[Dr paradox]

These largely coincided with primary cultural ideas of morality, causing many people to take the alignment energies as actual indicators of moral truth, when in reality they have nothing to do with good, evil, law, or chaos on any objective level. That said, they are objective, so changing cultural norms won't cause shifts in how alignment works.

Interesting! How does alignment energy fall along lines of, say, slavery, or forced impressment into the military? Or heathen burning? It's interesting to think how that kind of guiding force might cause a culture to stagnate ethically if they buy into it as an objective code for morality. Any time someone tries to free slaves, the alignment energy goes negative in reaction to theft, so the society never questions of slavery is good or not.

Not saying that's necessarily an outgrowth of the idea in your setting, just mulling it over.

[PersonMan]

I think most people would agree that demons and devil's are always evil, since I believe that even if they somehow change their alignment, they then physically transform into an angel or a modron or whatever. Is that true in D&D? I heard that somewhere and never checked again.

I don't think that's the case - but I don't know if 4e or 5e changed it so it's true for the newer editions. For 3.5e it isn't the case, though.

[Dr paradox]

I don't think that's the case - but I don't know if 4e or 5e changed it so it's true for the newer editions. For 3.5e it isn't the case, though.

Hm. On reflection, I think I might be extrapolating from the 4e mm entry for the rakshasa, which said that rakshasa are evil reincarnations of Devas, and vice versa. So, in 3e can demons just never be good, or what?

[PersonMan]

They can, actually - the famous example is the Succubus Paladin from a WotC online article.

[Dr paradox]

They can, actually - the famous example is the Succubus Paladin from a WotC online article.

What? Wait, then what's the point of even having demons?

Are there evil angels?

[AMFV]

What? Wait, then what's the point of even having demons?

Are there evil angels?

Well in 3.5 that's the root of some of the Devils. Asmodus for example was a Celestial of some shape or form who fell. Although that's different in different editions. Presumably if Asmodus can fall, then an Evil Entity could redeem. Of course in a different setting or cosmology that changes pretty heavily.

[Dr paradox]

Well in 3.5 that's the root of some of the Devils. Asmodus for example was a Celestial of some shape or form who fell. Although that's different in different editions. Presumably if Asmodus can fall, then an Evil Entity could redeem. Of course in a different setting or cosmology that changes pretty heavily.

Well, sure, that's basic Milton, but when Asmodeus fell, he ceased to be an angel and became a devil. King. God. Something. I thought that the reverse would be true, but apparently not.

[AMFV]

Well, sure, that's basic Milton, but when Asmodeus fell, he ceased to be an angel and became a devil. King. God. Something. I thought that the reverse would be true, but apparently not.

That is a really interesting theory. To be fair the only example of a "Good" Demon we have is one that winds up going Evil again at the end (transferring levels to Blackguard as I recall). So it's possible that the Chaotic aspects of the Succubus overwhelmed the inherent predisposition towards Evil, and possibly temporarily even their aversion to law. After which point they later pulled it back. Although I can't really speak too much to it. D&D Cosmologies tend to be a pretty ridiculous mess.

Edit: It's also possible that the transition from Angel to Devil took years and wasn't an instantaneous thing. I mean as far that's concerned in 3.5 that's so far back in time that very few entities are aware of it, even most deities tend to be from a period after that, so it's probably at DM discretion.

[MrConsideration]

Yes, Gnolls and Orcs (but also arguably a number of human nations). The game explicitly marks slavery and war for plunder as the actions of 'evil' individuals, so almost the entirety of human history was spent in the deep end of the alignment pool...

Gnolls in my world simply do not see other creatures, sapient or not, as anything other than meat or slaves. Their in-group preference is enormously strong: they have bonds as strong as humans do with close family with anything they recognise as Gnoll. They are a single pack, ruled by a biocultural imperative. They see hunting screaming Halfling children for meat as the average human sees hunting a skittish doe.

Orcs in my world were an engineered soldier race, so if they don't engage in violence they experience languor, ennui and depression. Whereas a human might get over a break-up with a night on the town or casual sex, an Orc gets over a break up by plundering a village. As they get more 'hits' of the addictive violence, they need more and more extreme violence to get the same thrill. As a result, their actions become more and more depraved* the longer they campaign - this is why the sort of massacres an Orc army loose in a city can commit are so horrifying.

This also explains why so many of them work for other beings as cannon fodder - they have a psychological need for some kind of authority figure who directs their rage. It's a itch they can otherwise never scratch.

'Civilised' Orcs need to use alcohol, drugs or meditation to try and control their murderous rage. They are not always successful.

*I'm talking Sranc levels of depraved for those who have read R. Scott Bakker.

[Frozen_Feet]

Once you bake that "tag" into the rules, you've made it clear that all in-setting debate on the matter has an objectively correct answer, and all other answers are objectively incorrect -- which is a fundamental departure from any such debate in our real world, and tells the players that no matter how much they disagree, one particular set of answers is hard-coded into the game.

And?

All this means that in the context of the game, some characters are wrong. F.ex. if Drows ping Evil on Detect Evil, nothing stops Drows from proclaiming Evil is really good and what others call Good is just a collectivist-fascist system created by "Good" gods to coddle the weak and prevent the strong from flourishing.

So I as a player know the Drow are objectively wrong. So what?

I've yet to see this prevent players from playing such characters.

It's not a problem and it's not troublesome. Your opponent was precisely right in comparing it to grapple rules and magic. All aspects of game and its setting are arbitrary - truth values of things are what the arbitrator (usually the GM) decides they are. From an in-character perspective, it's nonetheless possible to disbelieve setting facts, be ignorant of or argue against them. The game having objective facts does not preclude characters from rejecting those on subjective grounds. Just like reality having objective facts does not preclude conspiracy theorists from existing.

[Max_Killjoy]

D&D Cosmologies tend to be a pretty ridiculous mess.

Quoted for insane levels of truth.

[ArcanaGuy]

Wow, this conversation really got moving this morning! how wonderful!

First and most important that I'd like to address:

Your opponent was precisely right

That would be referring to me, and while I appreciate the voice chiming up in agreement with me, I'd really like to not term myself such. I'm certainly disagreeing with Max, but I'm not setting myself against Max. 'Opponent' makes it sound like a debate, and the intent of a debate is not 'finding truth' - a debate is a contest intended to measure social skill. I don't care which of us has better social skills, I'm enjoying talking about in-game philosophy and how to interpret rules on a particular subject which often prompts discord in groups.

My two goals here are (1) to just enjoy myself nitpicking over rules, which as a GM I need practice with when I'm not in the middle of a game, and (2) to help prevent such discord in groups in the future. To my eyes, this involves helping folks understand the difference between 'good' the philosophical concept and 'good' the game term.

If you put an "evil tag" in the game that is assigned to certain creatures or characters or objects, once someone can cast "detect evil" and always get an accurate answer, then you've established in-setting objective answers to "what is evil?" and "is this creature evil?" Once you bake that "tag" into the rules, you've made it clear that all in-setting debate on the matter has an objectively correct answer, and all other answers are objectively incorrect -- which is a fundamental departure from any such debate in our real world, and tells the players that no matter how much they disagree, one particular set of answers is hard-coded into the game.

Saying "there's an objective evil keyword in the rules, but that doesn't create an objective answer to "what is evil?" in the setting", is a fine example of disassociated rules, a total disconnect between the rules/mechanics and the setting -- your map is no longer accurate to the territory.

I am delighted you brought up the map/territory disconnect - all too often I have to explain what that means to poeple.

However, I'm focusing on something else, first - I've taken the liberty of highlighting the line where I feel you make an incorrect leap of logic. Other answers on 'what is evil' are only wrong if they touch on the core objective seed. IE: saying that "Yes, he detects evil, but just worshipping an evil god doesn't MAKE him evil!" Technically this is actually true! Someone can be lawful neutral and worship a lawful evil god, but will still detect as evil. This is because, at some level, they're contributing to an evil end, even if indirectly. Right there, even by the rules, we have a matter of some debate. Someone who does not have an evil alignment can detect as evil.

However, let's bring up the point of ... a previous player I've had. He once adopted a little mostrous critter that had popped out of a cursed amulet and loved hunting humans. The rest of the group felt it was evil - he didn't want to believe it. He contended that we didn't know it was intelligent - and if it wasn't intelligent, then it was just a beast. If it was just a beast, then it wasn't evil for killing humans, it was just neutral and didn't know better. (I, in fact, knew it had a better intelligence, but hadn't told anyone its intelligence score). This is a valid contention for the beast's alignment, and they had no one to cast 'detect evil' on it. However, I informed the player that if he didn't do something to stop it from killing humans, then *he* would be considered evil. He contended, "No, because I'm letting nature continue its course!" And I replied, "That only works as an argument if your intelligence is less than 3. Once anything has an intelligence of 3 or more, then they get good or evil alignments depending on how they feel about the killing of intelligent life." The player was quite upset.

But in-universe, it worked. They didn't *have* a cleric in the group. They were a starting group, and didn't have much in the way of gold to just go out and get a 'detect good' spell cast. So there *was* a lack of knowledge as to whether or not this was good or evil. True, it wandered OOC from a lack of knowledge of the rules, but the in-character debate occurred. It was fascinating!

Point being that ... this is where someone is objectively wrong - because they tried to say that not caring that humans were dying by something in their control was not evil, which is objectively not true.

However, that is, as I said, a 'seed'. That does not mean that saying 'slavery is evil' or 'racism' is evil is objectively untrue. 'good' and 'evil' are words applied to this fact of physics, as well as to a wider variety of actions which aren't covered at all by that physics. "Slavery", for instance, cannot have 'detect evil' cast on it. The closest one might get would be casting it on a random sampling of slavers and slave-owners, and finding what percentage of them detect as evil. For the person arguing that slavery is evil, perhaps they would point out that all the actions revolving around slavery indicate a complete disrespect for intelligent life in its requirement of dehumanizing the slaves. The person arguing that slavery is not evil would point out that the other is using only one concept of slavery as relevant to their upbringing - that other cultures have concepts of slavery which are quite different and less dehumanizing - it's just that it creates a situation where evil people are drawn to the potential abuse.

And suddenly, even with that seed, you have a valid debate on whether or not something is evil. Now, I'm firmly and immovably on the side of the 'slavery is evil' person... but that doesn't mean I couldn't write both sides of the debate with some validity to them.

Let me provide a quote from the lawful-evil god I've created for the campaign I'm starting next year. I was tired of having mustache-twirling demonic evil deities. I wanted a charismatic evil deity.

"What does it mean to be evil? In short, it means one does not value the individual life. Is this so bad, by itself? Even good people do this. We revere the hero that defeats a tyrant and rescues his people - we do not call that person a murderer, and mourn the tyrant. But when a vizier disagrees with how a 'goodly' king governs his people, and arranges the king's death so he can make the improvements he sees fit, this we see as murder. The individual life is not so important to us all as whether or not their ethics agree with ours. For me, it is a matter of mathematics. If, by the death of five people, you can save 50, is that not worth doing? What is the point of feeling guilt over the death of those five? If the painful death of 50 people can bring us the medical knowledge to save 5000, is this not even better? And if the death of 5000 people in medical experiments can change the face of the world, creating a longer and more fulfilling life for every person that will ever live, is it even a question as to whether or not these experiments should be done? Yes, I do not value the life of the individual. I value the existence of all peoples, and the individual that makes their life worth valuing."

Now, this is all BS. He doesn't lie until the end when he says 'I value the existence of all peoples' - and even then it's not so much a lie as it's just stretching the truth. He values all people because without 'all people', he wouldn't have worshippers, test subjects, etc. Make no doubt that even while confusing the issue and sounding very reasonable and genteel ... he's evil as heck. He's got so much evil going on in the background. But he rationalizes the bejeebers out of it - by making people question whether that objective 'good' and 'evil' is even important.

These are just three examples of ways in which you can still have philosophical debate, wrong, right, or otherwise, in a universe which has an objective seed of good and evil. There's a lot more. Is that race evil? Well, certainly any random sampling of that race would give you all evil results - the outlier is statistically irrelevant, right? Someone else says, that just means the race isn't evil, their culture is evil. Doesn't prevent the disagreement in philosophy... Is the first person evil for their racism? They just dehumanized an entire race. Is the word 'dehumanize' evil? It suggests that only humans are worth considering. Not to mention that not every evil act instantly causes someone to be evil. When someone finally slips over that threshold - what *is* all the acts which led to that final rejudgement by the universe? You, as a game-master, know why they're evil. For everyone inside the universe, who cannot cast 'detect evil' on individual actions, they don't know! They have to judge by proxy, by the actions of good individuals compared to the actions of evil individuals. At which point you get the fantasy world equivelent of Godwin's Law.

They can, actually - the famous example is the Succubus Paladin from a WotC online article.

Well, sure, that's basic Milton, but when Asmodeus fell, he ceased to be an angel and became a devil. King. God. Something. I thought that the reverse would be true, but apparently not.

Honestly, I feel that as they continued to need regular material to feed the fanbase, they often get people making stuff that doesn't... match, as a whole. There's plenty of examples of it. Remember the match of Raistlin vs. Elminster? They ended up judging against Elminster because he had a divine intervention without having cleric on his character sheet. Except he DOES have cleric on his character sheet! Oops. And even in that succubus paladin article, they reference paladins as needing patrons. Except they don't! Paladins specifically, in 3.X, never get their powers from deities. Oops! They are not clerics with swords and full plate. The article also references her as only being good so long as she gets something from it.

In other words, I'm not sure she's a valid example.

And?

All this means that in the context of the game, some characters are wrong. F.ex. if Drows ping Evil on Detect Evil, nothing stops Drows from proclaiming Evil is really good and what others call Good is just a collectivist-fascist system created by "Good" gods to coddle the weak and prevent the strong from flourishing.

Ahhh... so very right. Love this. You're *quite* right. they would argue, "It's not evil, it's just what we decided to CALL evil! We're not evil by fiat of the universe! We're evil by a choice of language! If we'd kept our conversation of good and evil separate from this other thing... and called those spells 'Detect Ipth' and 'Detect Oopth', would we even be having this discussion?"

Just like reality having objective facts does not preclude conspiracy theorists from existing.

Also very true. However! As you can see above, it's also not just a matter of in-universe folks being 'wrong', which is part of what his point is. Max would probably point out that "yes, but at the same time, we know, out of the game, that everyone who thinks that way is wrong. They just don't know it yet." The right/wrong aspect is keyed in from the very beginning. However, my response above already details a number of ways in which someone doesn't have to be wrong in order to have a philosophical debate on good and evil. You're not wrong in what you say, and I feel you really added some nice points to this discussion, but I'm just pointing out that what you're saying doesn't really disagree with what Max is saying.

[Max_Killjoy]

This is starting to sound a lot like wanting to have your cake and eat it too.

The only way an "evil tag" actually makes any damn sense is if there is some sort of objective quality, that a person or creature or thing either has, or does not have.

And if someone worships and evil god but that doesn't make them evil... then why would it give them an evil tag and why would they set off a detect evil spell?

[ArcanaGuy]

This is starting to sound a lot like wanting to have your cake and eat it too.

Well that's ... just ... insulting. Also disappointing. I thought we were having a nice discussion. If you have a reason behind that, it's up for discussion, but without a reason, it's ... really just name-calling ... do you have a reason?

*EDIT* I see that after I asked that, you went back and edited your response to have more to it. Thank you! Although I wish you had just responded instead of editing a post I'd already responded to...

The only way an "evil tag" actually makes any damn sense is if there is some sort of objective quality, that a person or creature or thing either has, or does not have.

True!

And if someone worships and evil god but that doesn't make them evil... then why would it give them an evil tag and why would they set off a detect evil spell?

Because they're aligning themselves with a power they know to be evil. The evil magic of their dark god courses through them. They can try to use that power towards a non-evil end, but the power itself is from an evil source. The spell is detecting the evil god through proxy, not so much the person themself.

Also, because the rules say so, but don't inherently say why, so we get to talk philosophy to figure it out!

[Max_Killjoy]

Well that's ... just ... insulting. Also disappointing. I thought we were having a nice discussion. If you have a reason behind that, it's up for discussion, but without a reason, it's ... really just name-calling ... do you have a reason?

How else would you describe wanting to have something that only works with an objectively defined binary "evil or not evil" checkbox on every person, creature, and thing in a fictional reality...

...but going on at length trying to avoid the inherent consequences of that decision for the broader setting, and instead trying to work around and have everything else just like a setting in which "evil" isn't an objectively identifiable quality or energy or force or whatever?


E: and it's not just directed at you, but rather at entire swaths of this thread.