Good and Evil

[tashiro]

Thought:  I wonder when we'll grow out of the idea of 'evil for evil's sake' in fiction and RPGs.  Especially in RPGs.  I mean, sure, there's something pure about knowing your opposition is an irredeemable monster - it makes it that much simpler to just try to kill them, knowing you're doing "good".  But why on earth should anything be just... evil

Comments

[brother_dour]

That has mystified me as well. I can understand how it became a D&D trope, but like you said- haven't we outgrown it by now?

It -is- fun sometimes to play a good old-fashioned 'kill the evil necromancer and his undead minions' or 'keep the Zhentarim from conquering Cormyr' campaign once in awhile. But it's more fun IMHO to play a character who is a person, in conflict with other people who all have a different idea about what is right and wrong.

I know a LJ user who is a HUGE nut about World War II, to the point that she writes historical fiction about it. And she gets criticism for the fact that her main character, a Luftwaffe pilot, is a good guy. Heaven forbid that a WWII-era German should be portrayed as anything but an evil, puppy-kicking monster! I mean, really? Are people THAT stuck on seeing everything in black and white?!

[tashiro]

Now, admittedly, the evil necromancer with his undead minions can be an evil necromancer, but the question then becomes -- why? That should be part and parcel of trying to take him down. As for the Zhentarim, sure, they're trying to conquer Cormyr, but the reason shouldn't be 'because they're evil'. That would actually more likely be pressures on Zhentarim society from some factor - famine, for example. An emperor rarely just goes 'I want that place' - because the logistics involved in waging war, and the resources you have to spend...

And yeah, I once had a similar discussion with Cat, involving fiction with WWII as the backdrop, and using Germans as something other than the bad guys.

[tashiro]

By the way: Measure twice, cut once. Every time you edit your post, I get another e-mail. Four emails for one reply is a bit much. ;)

Point taken

[brother_dour]

Guh. I didn't realize that. Sorry!

[shiftercat]

Donna Barr got a great deal of crap about The Desert Peach -- a fun, mostly light-hearted comic about Erwin Rommel's (fictional) flamboyantly gay brother.