Beyond the RPG --- Gripes with Good and Evil March 22, 2005 By: Travis J. Lee

Where to begin, where to begin. I could start with Evil, since everyone seems to love it so...Sounds like a good idea, so lets begin.

Evil for All Seasons....

All right, so we've got our army of doom. The Orcish forces are howling, the Guild of Darkity Dark Wizards are casting spells of doomy goodness, Goblin cannon fodder is being herded up front, and of course only the Clerics of the most Evil gods are overseeing the proceedings for the Dark Overlord of the Pit/Inferno/Wal-Mart/etc.

A standard scene, yes? Now lets take a look at its real world equivalent.

The dark forces stand ready. The Hard Line Fundamentalist Christians have brought only their best abortion clinic bombers and gay beaters, the Ultimate Fist of Allah Jihadists are brandishing scimitars, a sea of Neo-Nazi cannon fodder is shrieking for blood, and the whole thing is catered by Mafia arms dealers.

Okay, that was kinda bizarre.

And so is the notion that all evil groups have the same drives and motivations. Most of these real world groups spend as much time hating each other as anyone else, and the Mafia is probably too busy getting paid to care about any of their causes. As a point of reference, the only people pushing the notion of 'evil empires' are those wishing to lump all their enemies into one easily understandable space. Kind of like the Satanic Panic movement where people were saying gamers were conspiring with Black Sabbath and the Wiccans to take over the world through animal sacrifice. Lets be more imaginative, shall we?

Finding the Evil Emperor

Whether you're a Democrat or Republican, you're probably not overly fond of the opposition's leadership. You might in fact hate them with a fiery burning passion. Why do you dislike them? Because of their views and how they enforce them. You had to go out, actively listen (at least in theory) to what they were saying, and what others were saying about them (more likely) to work out what those views were. But as a general rule, you couldn't tell you were going to dislike them just by looking at them. Bill Clinton has never been seen brandishing his Mace of Virtue Slaying before the Liberal army, and to my knowledge George W. Bush has never been filmed shrieking blasphemies from the heart of an infernal temple. I'm not saying that there aren't obviously evil leaders (Hitler, Bin Laden, etc), but for the general run you'd have to look a bit more closely.

Where's my Evil Motivation?

The standard fantasy motivations for evil seem to be comic book level ambitions, and service to 'Dark Gods'. We'll get to the first one later, and the second one never has enough detail to be credible. I once saw an episode of Angel in which a henchman was giving this speech about how he was so powerful because he 'believed in evil'. Huh? Nobody 'worships evil'. If you're going to see anyone doing evil in the name of a deity, it's almost always an otherwise perfectly serviceable religion which has been twisted by its followers. Even most real world Satanists simply follow a moral code which puts their needs largely first. Not good, but certainly not comic book level ambition by any stretch.

Now, since we're on the subject of motivation and tools of the trade, lets take a step back and look at some more general topics...

What's my Motivation in General?

Lets take a look at what conquers the world in real life. I mean really conquers, takes a big section and keeps a lasting hold for centuries. Coming up with any individual people? Of course not. It's almost never a person that conquers, it's an ideology. Whether Christianity, Islam, or even Communism, ideas are what rule the world. Even the Roman Empire, ostensibly conquering for plunder and slaves, held power by replacing the cultures of the conquered with their own, and showing people why they'd want to 'trade up'. Conversely, single individuals (e.g. Alexander the Great), and ideologies based around short-sited greed and vengeance (e.g. Nazism) tend to either last exactly as long as the leader is alive, or are relegated to the fringes due to their inherent fraud and untenability. Unfortunately many game designers seem to think that evil and conquest are their own rewards, and can somehow hold massive sway over nations filled with mindlessly driven peons eager to fulfill the will of 'The Leader' for no discernable reward or set of beliefs.

Tools of the Trade

Here's one of my pet peeves, so I'll get straight to the point. Poison, Treachery, and Dirty Tactics aren't inherently moral issues. Lets think about it here. The average US Navy SEAL or Special Forces member must routinely use 'underhanded' tactics to win against much larger forces. Most revolutionaries (the American ones included) use all sorts of 'dirty tricks' to win the day. And yet these tactics are forbidden to whole classes of good 'aligned' people and treated as moral issues. Lets be real clear; there is NO DIFFERENCE morally speaking between the twink paladin who lives for nothing more than carving up legions of her foes, and the clever rogue who slips past the fray to take out the enemy leader with a knife in the back. Either way your character is a killer. Certain 'dishonorable' tactics can certainly be proscribed as part of a specific order/group/etc. but should never be inherently proscribed due to 'moral' concerns in the way they generally are, and should be kept strictly to rules based ethical situations for specific groups.

The Gods are Listening (and Watching)

Here's my other pet peeve about D&D; and related games. Take a look at the average listings and descriptions for the god/desses. You've got what, three or four paragraphs? A portfolio of spells for clerics? One or two vague descriptors and suggested behavior for worshippers? Now contrast that with the Bible, the Koran, and everything we know about, oh say, Egyptian and Celtic religious practices. You'll notice the real world selections involve huge books, filled with history, rituals, and lots of detail on how the faithful are supposed to comport themselves in just about every situation imaginable.

Most of the writing on religion in fantasy gaming tends towards the vaguely underdone at best. Admittedly this isn't helped by the similar lack of detail in the average fantasy novel, but that's no excuse. While I recognize that the average setting book has a lot of ground to cover, the fact is that religion is a core part of many people's existences, and would have been even more so in worlds where technology and modern cynicism are vague ideas at best, and the gods openly walk the earth.

This problem manifests in both aid for believers, and for clerics and paladins. For those playing believers, it leaves them with, well, nothing to believe in. Just a name under the gods worshipped heading on a character sheet. For the priests and paladins, it leaves a field of characters whose only real difference is the symbol they wear and a few spells. This is, quite simply, inexcusably unrealistic. In my time I've met or had occasion to be around Protestant Ministers, Catholic priests and monks, worshippers of the Hindu gods, and devout clergy of both Thor and the Morrigan. And trust me when I say that all of these individuals were very, very obviously different in their religious styles, what acts they considered good or bad (and encouraged others to view as well), and even how they viewed daily life. They were different because they had different sets of laws, traditions, and rituals upon which they drew for their spiritual lives.

And now that we've covered some general points, we return to the specific. Specifically the most misunderstood portion of moral alignments in gaming, the cause of good...

Stupid Lawful Tricks

Lawful Good is not Lawful Stupid. There, I've said it. Most fantasy role-playing games have some sort of moral alignment like this, and they're usually poorly done and avoided by players. This should not be the case. Why do I say this? It's simple: the average person is Lawful Good. You simply generally believe that most laws should be kept, and most of the (generally minor) laws you'd actually think about breaking you still don't violate out of fear of prosecution. It's that simple. Nothing stops you from violating laws that are truly evil, or rising against truly evil leaders. Most people have had their view of this moral stance poisoned by the poorly conceived Paladin D20/D&D; class, a mass of bizarre edicts which are based on a system of 'chivalry' which never even remotely existed in real life. The way most people view Lawful Good is an annoying Combination of Dudly Do-Right and a Dachau guard who must blindly follow the law even if it's evil. No, and the second part is Lawful Neutral. A lawful good person might obey questionable laws, but they'd still work to change them, and out and out evil should certainly bring an (potentially violent) opposing response.

Real Weakness

Lesson Two: Good Does Not Mean Weak. Most people (myself included when I was in this faze) decide to play evil characters because they're perceived as stronger. I'll freely admit, I went through a Vampire: the Masquerade freak phase where all I wanted to play was alien monsters and insane serial killers. My friends and I would make fun of anyone trying to be heroic in their gaming. But, as my interests changed and, to be blunt, I grew up, I came to a surprising conclusion. Evil characters certainly aren't 'stronger', or more powerful than good characters. They just have an excuse to throw off 'propriety' and do what they want. At least that's how most people play, or write gaming texts. No real strength, just a juvenile power trip. How is that so much stronger than the united front of Good that repeatedly crushes evil in fantasy and more than holds its own in real life? Don't get me wrong, I still have fun playing the villain, but I know I'm playing a flawed, corrupt individual who, at the end of the night, is as much a threat to himself due to greed or delusions, as any force of good.

There're my beefs, take them as you will. Some you might agree with, others not. As I stated in the intro, this topic has been long discussed, and tends towards the subjective. But, subjective or not, I'd say there's more than enough basic truth in my assertions to make stating them worthwhile.

Okay, okay, Getting off the soapbox now. Hopefully my computer will stay functional long enough so that I can actually get back to doing these things on time.