Apparently the place I went to for a short vacation has computer access, and so while I don’t have my various other works, I can write a short piece. I was lurking on Order of the Stick forums, and I noticed an interesting alignment discussion about a party who accidentally kills orc non combatants unknowingly in the middle of the raid. Now, most Alignment discussions tend to boil down to lots of mudthrowing and insults, but this one was actually, shockingly civil and maturely handled, the presence of Tempus Fanatic, Fixer, and hamishspence most likely was a major factor in that, cause they are awesome. But the debate quickly diverted onto the idea of how to properly handle generally evil races like orcs and non combatants. The Book of Exalted Deeds says that killing noncombatants is clearly evil unless they are posing a direct threat, like actively attacking you, and says that a good adventurers should try their best to remake the society after destroying it in a good image. A daunting prospect, but hey, good is never easy. Anyways, the question arose of how many orcs within a society would be evil, and the consequences of judging creatures based upon their alignment. Now, D&D makes it clear that you can’t kill a creature based upon its Aligniment, being evil isn’t a crime, its when you’re evil and doing something hurtful that its bad. For example, the Viking raiders are most likely evil, but that doesn’t justify just going into their homes and murdering the whole lot, same with various corrupt businessmen. You can kill or hurt them to prevent them from hurting others, but only if they are actively doing something evil. Killing a band of orcs who are living in there own land hunting is far different from say, killing a band of orcish raiders, even if both are evil. Now, within D&D, aligniments are presented within different context, such as “Usually Chaotic Evil” means that there is still a sizable non CE population within the creature’s demographic, opposed to “Always Chaotic Evil” which means something about the race of creatures themselves makes them inclined to evil, like demons or devils. In 2nd edition, evil races, like drow or orcs (opposed to evil creatures, like demons or devils) were still almost entirely evil, with very rare exceptions. That’s why Drizzt in R.A. Salvator’s books seems like one of the rare exceptions, which seems odd when in “modern” Forgotten Realms, IE, 3.5, non evil drown are quite common, cause Drizzt was invented earlier. However in 3E, a greater distinction was made. Some races are Often evil, some are usually evil, and some are always evil ect. Basically, I’ve changed this within my games, to cover more ground, but the system itself is sound. So I suppose, my first homebrew, sorry if it is unimpressive.
Basically, when it comes to determining a creature’s alignment, and how much of the population follows the conventional one, this is how I do it. I’m using Chaotic evil as the example for this case
1) Frequently Chaotic Evil. The creature/group has no physical/magical ties towards the evil alignment and the culture isn’t especially disposed to cruelty or brutality, they do have cultural predisposition to evil. About 40% of the group is evil, with the rest of the alignments being greatly mixed. For example, the British Army in the America revolution, would frequently be Lawful Evil, as many acts were tolerated at the time that aren’t today (slavery, mistreating women, cruelty towards non whites, killing natives) not to mention various evil acts against the Americans (I know most of those were exaggerated, Boston Massacre being the most famous example, but there were some) so the army would be generally Lawful Evil (lawful because well, the British Army). But there was plenty of room for other moral views within the ranks, many good or neutral. Its just the most common percent, but not the majority of the population. A chaotic evil example might be, but I’m not an expert on the culture, the Gaelic tribes before the Romans took over, while the warriors would lead brutal raids, and the world was unlawful, the civilians were pretty content to stay home and try to keep the family alive (I don’t know if they had slavery or evil customs like sacrifice).
2) Commonly chaotic evil. The race is still not magically inclined to evil, but the culture is very much given to evil, but it isn’t so prevalent that every single member would be evil. Maybe 50-60% of the population is a single alignment, with the rest being a mix of moralities and ethics. For example, I’d say Ancient Rome, at least before the time of Marius and Sculla, would be commonly Lawful evil. Slavery was legal, women were treated badly, conquered people’s were oppressed and the roman’s were infamously brutal when they took over an area (the sack of Carthage for example, through many Romans objected to this). However, while the slave owners and many of the solders would be evil, along with many of the average citizens but, many people were just content to be left alone to do there own thing. Even some ethical people who wanted to reform the system, most likely after reading a bit too much Greek poetry, but they would be few and far between among the Romans at least. But still, people who try to help the poor existed, as well as those who worked for the betterment of the common man. A Chaotic Evil example might be the Vikings, who’s raiders and slavers were very cruel (through not total monsters), but the people at home and the non combatants would be more focused on just bettering there lives.
3) Often Chaotic Evil. The population worships an evil Deity, and has strong cultural connections to evil, but they aren’t supernaturally compelled to do evil, nor is there society rigid enough that evil is forced upon them. The About 70% percent of the population. Spanish conquerors of America would be a good example of often Neutral Evil, as they are actively engaged in oppression, rape and genocide, through not every single one was actively engaged or even supported the regime, they certainly weren’t complaining.
4) Usually chaotic evil. The society is generally evil by nature, actively worshipping an evil god, involved as a race in evil schemes, or has customs/practices that make everyone involved evil. While the race isn’t magically compelled to be evil, and a child stolen from that culture and raised on its own is no more inclined to be evil than any other race, and small communities can exist who follow a different ethical code, as well as those within the main society who’s ethics different from the rest. 85% of the race would be this alignment. Drow in D&D are the prime example, not inherently evil, but strongly culturally evil, Aztecs and Nazi Germany might be real life examples of always Neutral Evil.
5) Always Chaotic evil. This group has some sort of connection, of a supernatural nature to evil, which compels them towards evil inherently. There very nature is made up as evil, and thus, unlike all of the other examples, it is more ok to assume evil first (through murder is still murder). 99.5% of this race is Chaotic Evil, and that tiny amount left is mostly some other form of evil or neutral. Now, while they are supernaturally inclided towards evil, it isn’t totally irredeemable. No real life examples obviously, but a D&D example would be the Dragonspawn of Tiamant, or Lichs/Vampires, creatures who’s nature is evil, and often turn towards evil, but still have the possibility of free will. While there very nature is abhorrent, there is a absurdly remote chance of redemption. Within my games, it pretty much assumed that these guys are evil, thus the murder rules are a little more hazy, but that really depends how these creatures are played in your games. And if one of them does do something to demonstrate that he is the exception then murder is still evil. Dragons are lumped into this category, but that is a rule that even core D&D doesn’t seem to take seriously, so I always put them in the “Usually” or “Often” evil category.
6) Always Chaotic Evil/Evil Subtype- These creatures are evil. There very nature is evil. They are spawned out of pure evil. Evil is inherent in their very existence, they are beings who’s mere existence is an evil action. Simply thinking about good deeds goes against there very nature, violates the very purpose of their existence, threatens the very nature of their being. These creatures, quite simply, have no souls, and are abominations who quite simply…must be purged. Demons, Devils, Daomons, and other such beings are literally, the literal manifestation of evil within the universe, who’s very existence is a violation of all that is good and holy about the world, and make up the realms of Hell, the Abyss and other absurdly evil planes. As of such, these beings are not protected by the same rules as other evil beings. Killing them is always justified, simply because there existence is an evil act. Torturing them for information, such as pouring holy water on them til they talk, is permissibly as is using other wise “Dishonorable” methods, like special poisons or mind control (the latter is a separate alignment issue). The only rule is that the good person in question should not torture them for his own personal enjoyment, simply to get the job done, and must be sure it is in fact a fiend. However, there existence is an abomination, so anything goes. There are two exceptions to this rule, however slight. One is that special spells/items exist that can change the alignment of a being, now matter what it is, and thus force it to be good. However, the creature is still evil, just acting against its will, but even so, it will detect as good, so then different story. The final exception to this rule is, that, by the rules of the system they are 100% evil, but sometimes the nature of the universe has glitches, and a non Chaotic evil one might appear, but these absurdly rare creatures make up less than .1 percent of the population, and most of those would be some other form of evil. However these absurdly rare examples are fluxes, mistakes, freaks within the system, who somehow possess free will. Should a paladin learn of the creatures special existence, then he is obligated to treat the creature like any other good being, but killing such a being unknowingly is not an evil act, cause it is a flux in the system, and even if the creature is good, its existence is still evil.
7) Finally, Evil Subtype, without Always evil Alignment. These creatures are magically drawn to be evil, but are only slightly more likely to be evil than an normal person in that category. These creatures are normally half Fiends of some sort.
So first homebrew yeah. Insert self mocking statement here
From
EE
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
First homebrew/briefly aligniment system
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
An Idiot in the Wasteland
Day 1.
I wanted to get Fallout 3, I really did. First I went to Wal-mart, which I never do, and they didn’t have it. Neither did Gamestop or Best Buy, so I settled for a boxed set of Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics. It was one of those very, very budget releases, one disc, no manual, but hey, three games for twenty bucks? Sign me up.
So I installed them all, and fired up Fallout. My immediate impression was ‘this game has the coolest opening video of all time.’ Then I went, made myself a custom character focusing on Intelligence, Agility, Perception with a side of Charisma, and specializing in Energy Weapons, First Aid, and something else. These choices where based on knowing that talking to people is good, Intelligence has something to do with skills, and lasers are cool. There was another, somewhat less awesome video telling me I needed to go get some sort of water purifier, a first person cutscene that really, really made me wish I was playing Fallout 3, and then boom, I’m in the game.
And I’m in a little underground cave. Populated by rats. My first thought was ‘this color palate makes Gears of War look like a rainbow.’ Second thought, ‘rats? Really? A game often hailed as the pinnacle of western RPGs starts in a dungeon with rats? Usually you at least get to wander around the starting town for a few minutes before the rat cave.’ Needless to say, this did not blow me out of the water.
Nevertheless, only mildly daunted, I wander out of the dungeon, past the rats, and on to some grayer rock that transports me to a very large world map. I click around on it for a while, and watch a little green arrow trail a red line around. Eventually it got where I clicked. Nothing happened. I clicked the arrow, there was a very brief loading screen as my computer laughed at the puny amount of data the game was throwing at it, and then I was standing in the middle of a mountainous region. I click to walk around for a while, but there’s nothing. Absolutely nothing.
I suppose this is a realistic representation of a post nuclear world, but it hella boring. A gutsy statement from a design point of view, but rather short. Like this sentence.
After some reflection, I decide there has to more to the game that some brown mountains. Pressing the ‘map’ button doesn’t do anything useful, like take me back to that overland map that allows me to travel. Using my keen gaming senses, I decide that clearly I need to find an exit point, but there’s really not anything obvious around. There are two of those shaded regions on the sides of the screen, but the curser turns to a red X whenever I click on one, which I take to mean I can’t walk there. At this point I’m rather tired of completely lifeless brown, and so do the only logical thing, I hit escape, and quit the game.
Tomorrow, I play Fallout having perused the manual.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Blood the last vampire expectations
My expectations for the Blood Movie
Basically, I cannot publish the articles I already have written for a week due to computer issues, so for now I just wanted to write something easy before I go away for a week. So yeah, Blood, cause I saw a trailer for it. For those who don’t know, and I imagine considering how this movie isn’t exactly mainstream by any standard, for somewhat good reason. Basically this is a remake of an animated movie of the same name. Now the film itself was actually pretty unremarkable, basically following a Japanese school girl massacre a bunch of Demon vampire things with a katana…actually that was pretty much it, there literally was next to no plot. It had a few things going for it, very well animated, cool fight scenes, fairly realistic gore without getting outright excessive, and at least tried to be realistic in a few scenes, my favorite being when the characters sword turns out to be a replica and is thus, totally useless. But it was forgettable and would have been nothing more than a sorta pulp hack and slash movie, enjoyable but nothing big, but it was turned into a shockingly good Anime series called Blood Plus, which basically took the basic theory of the movie and added plot, and by plot, I mean 51 episodes of extremely complex storyline. Now I watched the first 20 or so, before getting distracted by other thigns, but I did admire them for adding in a lot of storyline where there really wasn’t any before. So since the new movie is life action and based after the actual film Blood Last Vampire, directed by the same dude who did Hero and House of Flying Daggers. So basically, just taking the original movie and adding in more fight scenes is my guess. Through basically, here I think, if they add any form of plot, it would be an improvement, so we finally have an action movie that I’m willing to endorse….i might not bother to see it but hey
From
EE
Thursday, July 16, 2009
No country for old men
ah stranger dangerOk, when I was reviewing Claymore, my problem was my total lack of emotion that I felt from the series as a whole; it was good, just not profound. So I figured, for the summer I’d better review something that got a real emotional response out of me, and that tends to happen if a movie is really popular but isn’t really good (it being good requires me to like it, clichéd egomaniacs joke there). So, as the title indicates, I’m going to be attacking one of the most popular films of the last few years, “No Country for Old Men”. No Country for Old Men, a 2007 film made by the Cohen brothers, it guys who made Fargo.
The movie takes place in Texas where a hunter/cowboy person named Llewelyn Moss who comes across a botched drug deal, and finds two millions dollars. However, the mafia finds out who he is and send a man named Chigurh to kill him, (yes it’s a play off sugar), who is the poster boy for disturbing serial killers, but nobody seems to be able to catch on. Chigurh tracks Moss while mowing down all of the Mexican gangsters who get in his way with a shot gun that has a silencer on it (did I mention this movie takes place in 1980), eventually fighting moss with shot guns in the middle of a city, where nobody seems to notice. And then another operative shows up to make a deal with moss, and then Chigurh some how he knows where he lives and kills him and…ok no this stuff is absurd. The plot is just nonsensical violence, broken up by long scenes of people staring at things. But the plot is nothing more than a series of fights and Chigurh implausibly avoiding getting caught.
Now the film is cinematically impressive, and I think that is the main reason why this was so well accepted. If you look at it from a fully cinematic viewpoint, this thing will blow your mind, and most of the praise for this film comes, justifiably, from the extremely high quality of the film. The landscape shots are mind-blowing, and the editing ins profound, the props look and feel realistic in the characters hands, and the audio effects are superb, giving the effect that you are actually at these locations feeling what the characters feel. In fact, it reminded me of “The Shining”, in the sense that the tension and the emotions comes from the feeling that you are present at the location. And it has that same great quality of the tension being in the atmosphere of the scene, rather than any particular event, like the first coin toss scene in the film, all of the emotion is in what will happen next, and the expectations and eventually defying the viewers expectations. They both also have a talent for generating a lot of fear and suspense in fairly normal situations, without a climax (shut up Freud), and still be horrifying. Like the scene in “The Shining” where the boy I standing by the forbidden hotel room and is considering opening it but doesn’t? Even when the boy eventually chooses the anti climatic solution and doesn’t open the door, the tension is still there, and the scene is still far more suspenseful than any actual monster hunt, and that is because it taps into some very inner primal fears. Very few American movie goings have actually been chased by a monster or been chased by a psychotic hit man, but many of us know the primal fear of what is on the other side of a creepy door into the scary room, or been alone in a passage way when you suddenly feel a sense of fear, or have run into a really creepy guy at work. When the movie choices showing suspense in simplicity, it is brilliant. However, the effect is ruined by the sheer absurdity of the evens that occur. Does nobody in this city know how to use a phone, when you see a shotgun fight in a hotel room, police do something about it. It wastes its best quality in its absurdity, and just becomes a well-made action movie. One thing the movie does deserve massive credit for is that it has a total lack of background music. None, the entire movie goes without any background music at all, which gives it massive kudo points in the grand scheme of things. Now, I’m not against background music as an idea, and I think it can be used to great affect (The Shining again). But I like movies experimenting with new things, and in terms of drama, I think the lack of background music worked almost entirely in this movie. And lets be honest, technically speaking, this is nothing short of a masterpiece. However, that doesn’t excuse the actual biggest fault of the movie, and that’s well…the story.
The film, based upon a book of the same name, is a film trying to be a deconstruction of the typical western, as well as the clichéd Hollywood format, by showing that life isn’t fair and evil triumphs over good. Now, I think that is a good message, it is easy to get disgusted with he sappy, corny, and sickenly clichéd happy endings that always seem to come out in Hollywood movies. Now I don’t object to happy endings, but I do get sick with the extremely implausible happy endings, where everything works out in an utterly implausible manner (Disney is particularly guilty of this). One of my top dislikes of films that are painfully optimistic or painfully idealistic (I don’t mind idealism, but it has to be contrasted with reality for me to take it seriously, Pan’s Labyrinth did this very well) without a sense of realism. Sappy, overly sweet endings in particular are a personal pet hatred of mine (again, Slumdog pulled this off well by making the characters earn their happy ending), cause its sappy, cliché, and horribly false. However, and I’m sure you can see what I’m building up to, some films go too far in the other direction, in trying to show how dark, unfair, and unjust the world is, they make everything so absurdly horrible and life so dismal that it just comes off as absurd, cause people realize that it isn’t accurate. Anything by Frank Miller (Sin City, I’m looking at you), suffers from this, as well as racism and crappy writing, because the violence, sex, drugs and cursing is so gratuitous and over the top, that it is just as unrealistic as a description of the Native Americans and English settles living happy idealistic lives. The trap that film makers fall into, and No Country for Old Men is a painful example of this, is that it is so absurdly dark and cynical, that its message of “this is the harsh reality” comes off as just silly rather than moving, most likely because the directors are desperate to show off the unfair nature of the world they just go straight into the realm of impossibility. Cynical works can be effective, if they feel like they could actually happen, “Song of Ice and Fire” is a good example of this cause dark as the world may be, its feels like a retelling of Historical England, which was pretty dark. But the most cynical, dark and idealistically shattering thing I’ve ever seen was in a work that contained no blood, no cursing, no fighting and no sex. The English TV show, “Yes Minister” and its sequel Series “Yes Prime Minister” depict a far darker reality than the over the top violence of “No Country for Old Men”. Both shows are basically dramas about how politics actually work in England, with the weak willed but idealistic minister Hacker butting heads with the cynical and corrupt secretary Sir Humphrey. Within the show, many good ideas and competent solutions to the nations various problems are proposed, but are shot down, delayed, or tainted by the inefficient, back biting, and corrupt British Government (this corrupt isn’t limited to Britain, France and the US are shown quite negatively as well). The show very accurately shows why blind idealism doesn’t work so well in the real world, and it does this so effectively cause it feels real. The reason why it is so chilling is because you know, that to an extent, the politics of the show are real, and the way politics works is real. The cynicism, the corruption, the incompetence and the nepotism all take place in our own government; the show just displays how it works. “No Country for Old Men” makes the claim it isn’t a typical Hollywood movie, but in a sense it is, the plot armor is instead protecting the villain instead of the hero. Chigurh by rights should have been killed or caught long before the ending. I mean, in the opening he kills a cop with a pair of hand-cuffs, and a random man on the street, and considering his name and appearance, not to mention the body trail he leaves behind, he shouldn’t be that hard to track. I mean, now inept to the police have to be to not notice two shot gun fights in the middle of a city and a motel? And then he comes backs to the motel, and murders another man; does anybody go outside their houses in this town? Not to mention his seeming omnipotence, always knowing where his enemy is, such as the second assassin who appears with a lot of build up, and is then quickly killed off (just like how Halloran is killed off in the Shinning after a massive build up, which I thought was great), but Chigurh somehow both knows he is in town, and where he is staying. Not to mention how a guy with a shotgun fighting men with machineguns never seems to get hit by any bullets.
Now people mention that he is like some kind of unstoppable force or deity, but the thing is, it feels cheap. The man is a hired hit man by a gang sent to retrieve money, that man being the symbolic incarnation of fate just seems petty. And in the film he gets called out for being a human being near the end. So the whole angle of painting him as some sort of angle of Death just doesn’t feel right, he is clearly a human and clearly a sociopath, not some person who ought to maintain judgment over life and death. And its not even random chance, cause despite his flipping a coin, he is the one who chooses who has to get that choice. And the whole concept of him being some sort of force of nature falls flat when he is killing Mexican gangsters for cash. The whole concepts has been done before and done better. Take the classic Swedish film “Seventh Seal”, which his about the man who plays chess with death. He is also running away from an unstoppably dark antagonist who is the metaphorical representation of death and inevitability. However, it has a context, the knight has played chess with death and is targeted for death, and it takes place during the time of the Black Death. And there is this whole theme about fate vs. faith vs. despair, so it’s all part of the story. In “No Country for Old Men”, the whole “unbeatably avatar of death” angle feels out of place, cause it has no real part of the story. The protagonist is marked for death but apart from materialistic money dealings…um, why? Why is fate against this guy, he hasn’t really done anything that seems to justify the fates aligning against him, and it doesn’t seem to mesh well with the whole story, cause it doesn’t relate.
In short, while the movie is impressive, it ruins all of its best moments just by not being well written. The best parts of the movie are I admit, but, there are only a few scenes where both the technological genius combines with actual good writing. The best example of course, are at the end, and are both massive spoilers, even more so than everything else I’ve said, so if you ever plan of watching the movie and care about these sort of things, then stop reading now, leave the blog alone, then come back when you finished. For you people, my final words are going to be “It isn’t at all worth the hype, and suffers from some truly painful writing, but is certainly worth watching simply for the quality of the film itself alone. I wouldn’t put it on any “best movies list”, but it does deserve some of its praise for the technical achievements, and all of the actors, but in the end, just watch Fargo”
For those of you who’ve seen it, or don’t care about spoilers, here are the two scenes that I think actually deserve praise. The most shocking of course is that the main character dies…off screen. The last scene we see him in is seeing the Mexican Gangsters (opposed to Chigurh) coming to his door and his preparing himself for a fight. Then we cut away, and when we cut back Chigurh finds Moss’ corpse surrounded by dead gangsters, and then moves on. Basically, its like the film just skipped over the massive fight where the main character brings down like half the gang before being shot and mortally wounded, having a brief flashback to his wife or something, then with his last dying strength unleashing his full fury upon the remaining gangsters and dies looking up at the sky taking about yada yada yada we’ve all been here before. It’s a standard cliché in action movie, and the fact that the movie actually skipped it actually legitimately shocked me. Up until now, while there were a few “oh, didn’t see that coming” moments, this was the only time I actually was pretty shocked, cause we’ve grown to expect the main character dying in a final blaze of shotgun cocking (shut up Freud) glory, that the final 20 mins of the film being nothing but a long shooting happy moment is kinda taken for granted, so I will give the film points for simply skipping over all of that and spending the final 20 mins of the film doing something a bit more plot related, not to mention how much that shocked the audience. It also kinda makes a point on how the final explosive final, isn’t actually that needed in a film, by not showing it, the entire concept is kinda made to look silly and unneeded, so kudos to the film for spending its ending on something more time worthy. And in that, we get the second good part of the film, the final 20 mins. Now these aren’t actually good, just unlike the rest of the film, something is keeping your attention apart from the film quality and the actors, and is the first time Chigurh gets any real humanization in his confrontation with the wife where somebody finally calls him out for being a psycho. And then getting hit by a car, which is the only time the world actually seems remotely unfair (the other driver doesn’t seem eager to talk to him through, normally the driver is worried bout the whole insurance angle), and the symbolism made sense, cross roads being the crossroads of life ect ect. But these too scenes don’t make up for the movie as a whole. In the end…wait I already told you what I thought. Oh fine. Worth watching, but shockingly forgettable.
From
EE
Sunday, July 12, 2009
evil PCs
Come on i could totally see it
Evil PCs
Right, since I Still haven’t gotten my computer back, and editing isn’t done, lets talk about of the more misunderstood issues of D&D, evil PCs, or evil parties. Now, almost all of the official D&D material condemn the very idea of evil PCs, and are strongly against the very idea of it. 4th edition pretty much out right forbids it (insert one of my many criticism of 4E here), and while none of the other editions go that far, they are all strongly opposed to the idea. Now, this prejudice has two basic arguments behind it, and both of them are fairly justified. The first one is that people don’t know how to play evil. And, while I think this is a fallacy, it has some basic logic behind it. I know that the first evil characters in my games simply acted psychotic, randomly killing NPCs, kidnapping women at the various inns, and randomly betraying the main party. You know, basically Belkar in Order of the Stick, but not as a comedic character. And when you get an party of Evil PCs, you get a band of psychotic armed warriors pillaging, raping and murdering everything that gets in there path…a bit like General Santa Anna actually, but less classy (I’d say Andrew Jackson in Florida, but I make fun of him a lot, and his ghost is eventually going to beat me to a pulp). People just play evil with wild abandon and go crazy, playing evil people so ridiculously over the top that they resemble villains from children’s cartoons (I’d reference Captain Planet, but then it would seem like I’m ripping off Yahtzee….wait) rather than legitimately evil people. Now as I said, this is generally logical, but I still think it is a fallacy that evil parties don’t work because they inevitable give way to backstabbing and infighting. Now I think that evil parties have that option open to them, but if you think about it, psychotic evil people aren’t actually good representation of evil. A truly evil person would pretend to be good and use that to take power. I mean, one of my few complaints about the otherwise amazing Baldur’s Gate series is that evil characters will leave your party if your group’s reputation got to high. It didn’t make sense, why would evil people object to getting discount prices and being declared heroes by the common people. But more upon this later.
The second main argument against evil parties is that the game is designed for heroic fantasy, with good guys defeating the forces of evil and helping people across the world. Considering the sheer depths of evil that exist within the game, demons, devils, evil gods, and the depravity that they can steep to, it is really hard to sympathize with them, and the feeling that good guys should go out and put them down is natural. And I’m not saying that the truly evil creatures should be removed, on the contrary, I like how the supernatural forms of evil are utterly inhuman, because it provides some cool contrasts to humanity, people get use to the truly vile evil, that they ignore the more “tone down” evil, the evil of normal men and women. Against the truly evil creatures, the idea of supporting evil characters seems…revolting and justifiable so. Playing a servant of hell who is determined to destroy all humanity and devote of goodness isn’t really that cool, its…icky. I mean, when ever I played the villain in very early parties, I just felt, well, ill trying to be evil. Murdering innocents for fun, hurting people for its own sake, and destroying the forces of good, its hard to feel good with yourself. Maybe this is just me, but I just found the “typical” evil, approach, IE fighting against good the way good fights against evil, just sickening. Destroying a village of innocents, desecrating a temple to a good god, slaying good heroes, it didn’t make me feel cool or empowered it made me feel…wrong. But that was the only way to play evil characters right, because evil has to be in opposition to good. So the idea of playing evil is not only dysfunctional, its disturbing right?
It wasn’t until later that I realized it is very narrow minded to a simply assume that evil was as polite and understanding to manifest just as open attackers of all things good and decent. Because, if you haven’t noticed by my articles on the subject, being good is tough. There is a pretty high standard set, especially if you consider real life morality and bring the alignments of historical figures/cultures into play, good is a pretty high standard, one which people can slip easily. A man can be evil for assassinating political rivals, killing civilians in time of war, torturing terrorists for information (hey, no subtly political jab there…nope). So, while the extreme and truly dark evil still exists in D&D, the more “human” way of playing evil characters exist. I’ve always been a fan of flawed characters, or villain protagonists, as long as it is clear that the characters are in fact flawed, and not being glorified. Within the elements of Role playing game, playing flawed and not perfect characters is something that I think is perfectly workable. Playing as a roman legionnaire, a Viking warrior, Spanish conqueror, or a pirate are all interesting concepts, but most of those are evil because they are products of their culture. But they can still have honor, friends, loved ones, and a sense of duty.
Even with more openly evil/amoral PCs, there is nothing that keeps the group from being friendly with each other, or even having some ethics. Darken (webcomic) is a very good example of this. Even if the character are all tragic heroes, a sense of comradely and personal loyalty. Hell, if you think about it, most real life mercenaries were (and are) pretty dark folk, but they get along with each other, Evil Adventures are basically just bandits with shiny stuff. Evil characters aren’t by default psychopaths and won’t pathologically murder each other, through the option to do is often what keeps DMs from encouraging it. Here is the thing through, the reason why people play evil immaturely is that it is the only way we are told evil functions. In a moral system as strict as D&D, evil is a very broad category, but D&D always shows evil as nothing more than psychopathic. Now I’m not saying that Evil needs to be show more positively, it is evil for a reason, but I do feel like the complexity of evil needs to be shown. It isn’t just for the serial killers and sociopaths, it is where all of the fallen dwell, from those who are simply not particularly ethical, such as dubious sellswords, to misguided warriors, to simply the ignorant. Nobody in real life is wholly evil.
From
EE
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
This means war
from
EE
Aligniment of V (from OOTS)
Wait, no i meant the elf who...actually thats pretty good
Now I started my article on racism in D&D, and I still haven’t gotten my computer back, but I realized that talking about racism is such a delicate issue in any context, so I’m going to take awhile to edit that one. And seeing as there is a thread on this on OOTS forum, I figured I might as well contribute. The alignment of everyone’s favorite elf of unknown gender, Vaarsuvius. Now for the rest of the article, I am calling her V, because I don’t want to spell that out a million times. And I will be referring to V as a girl, because I think she is female, just go with it. Oh and spoilers, so heads up now.
So throughout most of the comic, I’d peg V as neutral. She certainly isn’t evil*, as proven by Miko, and she helps the order do various good deeds, but she has always been ambitious and power-hungry, and as seen by the dirt farmer incident*, isn’t especially eager to help others, even if she isn’t a cruel or vindictive person. She can be rather petty however, assaulting and abusing Belkar*, which, through somewhat justified, is a little extreme. She also attempts to blow up (non fatally, but that’s D&D for you) Miko* and the horse seller*. So I’m guessing neutral, through good is still a possibility, as she does act guilty about conning people, even if they brought it upon themselves*.
But to cut to the chase, the thing everybody has been talking about, what is her Alignment currently after the
Then we have the fiend incident.* Again, evil. Now, in D&D, any sort of contact with fiends is evil, summoning a fiendish hamster to give treats to orphans is still evil. Now, V committed not one, but three evil acts here
1) She asked the imp to summon the fiends to make a deal. Now, this one isn’t really that evil, she was desperate and didn’t actually summon them so much as let them know that she was willing to deal, but she did still get an imp to try to get her an evil deal.
2) Her accepting the deal, even if it was a normal deal, is quite evil, just by accepting a deal with fiends is an evil act in itself. However, the other thing about this through, her back wasn’t totally against a wall. One of the friends offered a legitimate solution to her problem, one that wasn’t evil and effective. But V took their deal anyways, most because of ego.
3) Finally, knowing that there was another solution, she took the deal knowing that her soul would be used by the three fiends for evil purposes, and that is willing allow her own power to aid the forces of evil. And as she is going to grow more powerful, she will be stronger in aiding the forces of evil. What’s more, she took the deal knowing that the three fiends would try to unit the evil outsider races as a group, to fight the forces of good, something that nobody wants. And it is noteworthy, when her mate asked if she could just end the spell early so her soul would not be in there power as long, but she kept it up none the less, because she was high off the power.
Finally, the most infamous evil deed is Familicide, killing every creature related to the dragon that tired to kill her family, effectively wiping out ¼ of all black dragons in the world. Now this is the one that bugs me the most when people defend this action as not being evil, saying that it was good cause V killed a lot of evil creatures. Here is the thing, killing evil creatures isn’t a good act. Killing in D&D is never a good act, it is at best neutral, and that’s when it’s in self defense. Now, I know that Black Dragons in D&D are “Always Evil” in alignment, but first off, nobody actually follows that rule, cause t doesn’t make sense (dragons aren’t evil outsiders nor spiritual creatures why are they always evil?), Forgotten Realms doesn’t follow it, Ebberon doesn’t follow it, I don’t even know if Dragonlance follows it. But in OOTS, maybe they do follow the always evil description, the thing is, that doesn’t justify murdering them. They don’t have the evil outsider subtype like Demons and Devils, so they aren’t evil due to their make up (killing Demons and Devils is always justified as they are literal embodiments of evil), and so they are not hundred percent evil. The Book of Exalted Deeds notes that they are redeemable, even if it is difficult. And being evil isn’t a crime; a paladin who walks through town killing anyone who has the evil alignment is still evil, because that is murder. Killing a whole species, including babies, that’s genocide. I mean, literally murdering ¼ of a race is by definition genocide. And even if you accepted every dragon was hundred percent, irredeemably evil, half dragons are murdered too, as shown in the comic. Half Dragon’s alignments are more viable, and thus you can have as many good half dragons as evil and neutral, and even the evil ones can be redeemed. Thus that is murder. Now some people have said killing 500 evil dragons for 4 good half dragons is a good deal, but the thing is, good doesn’t work on that utilitarian level. Murder is murder, each good/neutral dragon or half dragon that died is a separate murder. In fact, every single victim of that spell is a separate murder, it isn’t a single evil action, and every single death is a separate stain on her alignment.
Finally, and I know this pales in comparison to the rest, she didn’t do it for any reason other than sadism. Raising the dead dragon simply to force it watch the death of its family, that’s just sadistic. Even if V just wanted to protect her family from vendettas (which is silly, cause Tiamat isn’t going to like the death of her children), she didn’t need to raise the dragon for it. And murdering an enemies family to protect yourself from reprisals has been an excuse for murder and infanticide throughout history (
In short V is, of this writing (comic 667), is evil. If this will change remains to be seen (I just wish somebody could link this).
from
EE
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Good Vs.Nice
He will save your life, doesn't mean he will be nice about it
Right, so last time I talk about how people with an Evil Alignment can still be friendly, polite, and even loving (and how that is what makes them scarier), so now I’m going to talk about good characters, and how they aren’t required to be nice to everybody. Now I want to say how there is a stereotype that good characters are a bunch of painfully nice flow children who frolic in the sunlight while petting puppies and sniffing flowers. Not to mention that they never swear, they never kill people even when people are charging at them, and they believe everything that people tell them too. Except…that isn’t really a stereotype. It’s more like an insult, used by people trying to justify/defend more dark/edgy characters, by trying to make good people look silly. That being said, the assumption of good characters being absurdly nice is a bit of a common assumption, which makes sense because people who care about ethics and morality are more likely to be you know…nice. But it can get tiresome for good characters to always have to be generic perfect poster children for kindness, manners and dental hygiene, especially if that is the only assumption for what they can be. Non conformity aside, it is important to note that being a good person, IE having a good Alignment doesn’t mean you have to be happy, polite, or even nice. Being good is based upon actions and intentions more than mannerism or personality, so somebody could be a real jerk, but still be good, if they do good things.
You could have a good person who not only a jerk, but outright mean. He can snap at people, be dismissive of other’s feelings, and be a raging egomaniac, but he can still have good intentions, and do good things. Clint Eastwood’s character “The Stranger” in “Fist Full of Dollars” is a good example of a total jerk that still is good, same with the Yojimbo played by Mifune from the Japanese film of the same name, which the former is based on. This is of course back before Clint directed the westerns and thus they were still good. Both characters were total jerks, but were still good people. On the flip side through, some people do good things, but for the wrong intentions, even if they aren’t evil intentions. A depressed knight who simply does his job out of a sense of duty opposed to any sense of actual decency is an example of that, a charity worker who is in it for the fame and glory, a lawyer who cares about the money. House, from the show by the same name wouldn’t be good, because he doesn’t care about other people while being a jerk, through he isn’t evil certainly (CN). However, an antisocial, rude, and egomaniacal man can still be a good person. Hell, from many accounts, Gandhi was really hard to put up with in person, but he was certainly a really good person from everything I know about him (granted I haven’t studied Indian history in depth sadly, so I only know the popular legend of Gandhi, but everything I know about him is really good). Another example is
Now being rude or mean isn’t exactly evil, but an argument has to be made for verbal abuse however. Being nasty and short tempered isn’t evil, just anti social, but considering how we know that psychological damage can be inflicted through words, as well as long term mental trauma, the issue gets a bit more complicated. For example, is neglecting your kid evil? A good deal of mental scaring can come from children who’s parents didn’t give them attention or properly raise them, but there is a vast difference from a parents who work all the time and can’t give there kids the time they need, and parents who simple ignore there children and snap at them, and leaving them without proper care. Or a parent who criticizing there kid sarcastically for bad grades and one who puts their child down for all types of trivial things for the sole purpose of hurting her/him. Sadly, child abuse is a massive and extremely complicated issue, so I think that as a general note, it is evil if the verbal abusing knows that the other person will be hurt by his/her comments. But even then, it is an extremely complicated and delicate issue, so I think that is a more case by case basis. On verbal abuse through, there is also a difference between being snarky to a comrade and being outright cruel. However is verbal cruelty really evil? I mean, the popular girls in everybody’s high school who torment the guys for looking funny, or subtly hurt other girls. Are they really evil, or are they just being mean/bitchy? Again, that is more a case by case basis.
Now apart from verbal abuse, there are other actions that are rather grey, but aren’t exactly evil. For example, and lets just prove Freud wrong as quickly as possible, sex. Now if you look at many Christian/Islamic/Jewish faiths, (Puritans for example), sex is an necessary evil, cause it is a vice and sinful ect. But D&D evil isn’t about vice. Vice itself isn’t actually evil in D&D, or most vices at least, it’s when it hurts others that it become a problem. Not to mention plenty of real world religions, philosophies, and ideals are pretty open minded about sex. So sex isn’t evil, but what about adultery? The Ten Commandments famous forbid it (for an Atheist, I bring religion up a lot it seems), not to mention numerous other faiths/beliefs, but in D&D is it actually evil? No. Being a ladies man and sleeping around isn’t evil, it just can lead to evil things if not controlled but there is nothing inherently evil. Now and again this is the whole “Good and Evil don’t = right and wrong” a lot of people, including various deities might not agree with it and will condemn premarital sex, adultery, polygamy, or for that matter, homosexuality as evil, or corrupt or impure, not to mention some players may find upsetting personally, or characters (personally I find polygamy revolting), but within D&D non of those are evil. Somebody might cheat on there wife cause they are a jerk, or because they are stuck in an unhappy relationship and have et somebody. Somebody might honestly fall in love and have sex before marriage, or manage a solid relationship with multiple women (or men I suppose), or a loving homosexual relationship. None of those are evil in any sense of the word, through again, some people within the world would object to any or all of them. However, it is worth noting, killing or harming somebody simply because they practice one of the above. For example, a priest might not allow a gay couple join his church, but he can’t kill them simply for being gay. Sleeping around isn’t evil either, for example, Martin Luther King Jr. was an infamous ladies man, and that guy a was amazing. It is worth noting however, that rape, pedophilia and (according to the Book of Vile Darkness) necrophilia are always evil.
Drinking is another one that can be iffy. Now I think the Book of Vile Darkness said that drug use is evil, (I don’t own it, so not sure there), which makes drinking kinda of odd as it is a pretty damaging substance. Especially for the underage, but drinking and driving isn’t an issue in D&D, so yeah. Basically, ignoring the fact that other drugs are evil, but alcohol isn’t, whatever, drinking itself isn’t evil, it just can easily lead to evil, such as abusive drinking parent, or rape during a party. But drinking itself isn’t evil, it can just lead people to do evil things (note, being drunk doesn’t excuse people from doing evil deeds).
Now I wanted to go into the final thing, racism, but that almost an article unto itself, so I’ll put that up later.
From
EE
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Can evil have friends?
Evil can be nice as well
Since my other computer is being fixed, which has my reviews, I’m going to go into a brief Alignment article.Basically, while lurking on the OOTs forum, I ran across this
“And Tourniquets. Evil creatures or persons cannot have REAL friends. I don't believe in that. Friendship can only happen if you are a good person. Being evil forbids you to sacrifice yourself for sake of a friend, for example.
I'm not saying that evil persons cannot have relationships with good or other evil persons. What I'm saying is that they cannot befriend any other person. A relationship between evil persons, at best, will never be anything more than a degenerated kind of friendship, because evil persons do not have enough "goodness" in themselves to be able to look forward the good of any other person. Sometimes, not even of themselves.
That happens because evil is nothing else than the absence of the good. That means the evil person is someone who lacks practical knowledge, and sometimes theoretical too, of what is good. If you lack that knowledge, in practical ways, that means you cannot mean to do good to anyone. I acknowledge that evil persons may have pleasure in the company of some other person, good or evil, but having pleasure in the company of someone does not equal true friendship, but a degenerated or partial form of it.”
I figured I’d address two issues in terms of D&D evil. Can evil have friends, and can evil be effective PC players. The first is simply a response to the above statement. The idea that evil can’t have feelings of love or comradely is a fallacy. Evil, unlike good, isn’t a moral code. It’s the lack of a moral code. Good people are obligated to commit certain deeds, protect the innocent, not resort to torture, and uphold the standards of good ect. The details vary on Law/Chaos but in general good has some sort of centralized code. Evil in contrast isn’t a sort of code; you don’t fail to be evil because you have friend or pet kittens. A serial killer who lives in a hole and comes out only to kill and eat passer bys isn’t “more evil” than a brave and honorable fighter who wants to protect his family, loves his wife, sends presents to his family, and also systematically wipes out families of natives for the land he wishes to settle (Andrew Jackson anyone). Ok the former is a far worst person and is certainly more evil in terms of the damage he does and how many negative traits he possess, but in terms of being evil, both of them are clearly of the Evil Alignment, through the latter is a far more decent human being, genocide notwithstanding. To be evil, you don’t need to constantly kick puppies and laugh at old ladies to stay evil, unlike good there is no set quota for evil deeds you need to do to stay evil, you just need to have committed enough to slide you into evil (which varies depending on your beginning alignment and the deeds in question, but ten is pushing it I think). A man who murdered his elder brother because he felt he was more qualified to rule (regardless of weather or not that was true) is still evil, even if he spends the rest of his rule doing nothing at all bad, as long as he has not admitted that his prior action was wrong or repented for it, he is still evil. Committing good acts, like giving to charity and healing the sick, don’t turn an evil person good, other wise he could function on some sort of weird scale, where he could slaughter dozens of innocents one day, and then pet half a million puppies and suddenly be good. Unless you’re in Fable of course, but again, I’m trying to talk about an alignment system that actually makes sense (say what you will about 3E, it makes sense with the exception of a few loop holes, through it is understandable if you don’t like it).
So, onto the actual quote, that isn’t describing an evil person. That is describing a sociopath. Now, I’d be one to argue that almost all sociopaths are evil (mental illness and alignment are a different issue I’ll tackle later), but not everybody who is evil is a sociopath. Considering how sociopaths are a tiny percent of the world’s population that would make ethical issues a lot simpler, a lot more black and white, and a lot more juvenile. I mean, if evil can’t have friends, then a lot of really horrible people in history are going to seem funny.
Breaking Godwin’s Law (look it up if you haven’t heard of it), lets talk about the S.S., IE the elite Nazi troops who were the ones who actually ran the death camps during WWII. For example, the Einsatzgruppen was a unite charged with rounding up Jews, Poles, Gypsies and other “unpure” peoples, gathering them up and slaughtering them near ditches, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Now, clearly, both within D&D context and without, evil men, but they were not all sociopaths. Yes, they were cruel mass murderers, and I in no way intent to justify there crimes, but if you read there diaries, letters, or even watch the interviews with those who are still alive, they were people who had families, friends, loved ones and…moral values, horrible and twisted as those ethics may be. While it is easier for people to assume the SS were simply sociopath monsters who had no friends nor loved ones, in fact from all accounts, there was a sense of comradely among the lower level Nazi troops (while the upper ranks were full of infighting and inefficiency). They did horrible things, and their actions still stand as some of the greatest atrocities of world history, but they weren’t simply a bunch of soulless serial killers who drank the blood of children from birth. They had friends, families, loved ones, but were also evil murdering bastards. Hell, Himmler was by all accounts, a really friendly guy in person and a family man, as well as being one of the most evil people in human history. Mao was apparently a pretty nice guy in person, and very loyal to his comrades, but also takes the cake as the greatest mass murderer in human history. In fact, if you look to history, most of the worlds cruel conquerors were pretty nice people to there friends. The Khan, killed millions of people over his long career, modern estimates put his list of victims at 15 million (through that is almost certainly exaggerated greatly) and contemporary ones put it at even higher (again, more absurd). But he was far more democratic than most states around him, running dictatorship based more upon merit than birth, integrating massive amounts of people, and promoting religious tolerance and the preservation of learning, leading to on of the most advanced, if somewhat short lived, empires in the world. Julies Caesar committed Genocide, mass slavery, and unjust conquest in
Next, either Evil PCs or can good people be jerks, if I don’t get my computer back with my reviews.
From
EE