The Power of EVIL!

FatR · Post by **FatR** » Fri Dec 19, 2008 9:16 am

Mister_Sinister wrote:I would like to echo Kaelik, but go further: position 1 is STUPID. It isn't interesting, fun or cool, it's DUMB. If you claim that a full quarter of your cosmology is delusional, your setting sucks and I don't wanna play in your games.

Signing up with evil side in, for example, Warhammer (any variant) or just about any of the White Wolf games is pointless at best, but usually delusional and self-destructive (although recruiting agents of the resident evils often won't tell you that or they are deluded themselves). However, these settings happen to not suck, as their popularity attests, and, as everyone knows, they are not exactly simplistic or black-and-white.
For that matter, being Evil in DnD isn't exactly a fun time, if you look at any actual setting examples. Fiends like it, or at least bear with it, but from any sane human standpoint, being an eminently replaceable gear of ruthless hierarchy where your superiors can and will ass-rape you for slightest infractions or failures, or just because they are in bad mood; or living next to a bunch of violent, bullying, murderous sickos and under rulership of a brutal tyrant is not really an alluring perspective - and only absolutely miniscule percentage of Evil people gets position and power to protect themselves from worst abuses, although, of course, everyone in the know thinks, that they will end up in the latter category.
Also, Evil, that is not, in fact, evil is not interesting, fun or cool. It is competely lame. Egocentrists, backstabbing powermongers, greedy bastards and psychopaths, whose worst qualities were heightened and distilled, being nice to newcomers or fair to their servants? Lame and illogical.

Mister_Sinister wrote:If you are to make Good, Evil or whatever else COSMIC forces, you have eternal outsiders, and gods too, who are fighting tooth, nail and tentacle for their beliefs. Fighting an eternity for 'being delusional' is something I expect to come from Paizils or WotC idiots, not reasonable people. If your Evil happens to be a cosmic force, supported by a full quarter of your cosmology, it better damn be worth it. Otherwise, it just plainly makes no coherent sense.

From the viewpoint of evil gods, archdevils, demon princes and other people at the top, it is totally worth it. However, from their viewpoint, "exploiting, expending and abusing your underlings" is one of the perks of the job, because they are, you know, evil. And the underlings largely have no choice, because they are formed from destructive impulses of elemental Evil given form or are made to serve. Their best hope is to aim for the top, so that they can make up for their own suffering by lashing at the new generations of minor demons (and the rest of the universe). Actually, biggest bastards in the world giving reasonable job offers and living a nice life in servitude to the force of eternal malice is what makes absolutely no coherent sense. As I remember, Faces of Evil (2E Planescape supplement and, perhaps, the most detailed source about fiends) defines "evil" as "being willfully and maliciously indiffirent to the needs of others, just for the sake of doing so, not necessarily because you gain something from it". Well, consciously working for beings that embody this quality might be worth it, if you're a major asshole yorself, and are sure about your ability to secure a decent position in their hierarchy, but, I imagine, that most evil mortals don't know for what they're signing up, or, if there is common belief that personality is erased upon death (if I, again, remember correctly, this is what usually happended in 2E Planescape), simply don't care that their life force is going to hell.
But I must repeat: primordial Evil, that is not, in fact, evil, is lame. And, what's worse, completely pointless. At least this DnD authors usually realize. Cosmic horrors of pure malice do not offer good jobs, nor should they, if the setting is supposed to make sense (if you don't want this, just to not include such things in the setting). As to how they still can recruit plently of servants, see my first post in this thread.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Dec 19, 2008 11:44 am

Signing up with evil side in, for example, Warhammer (any variant) or just about any of the White Wolf games is pointless at best, but usually delusional and self-destructive (although recruiting agents of the resident evils often won't tell you that or they are deluded themselves).

Warhammer certainly, although those settings are rally depressing and joining up with the "good" teams leaves you pretty fucked as well.

Last I checked in White Wolf all the factions were evil, and joining up with the more evil factions didn't seem to give you a worse deal than joining with the less evil factions. I'd rather be a Progenitor than a Verbena. It's pretty much the same but I get to bathe regularly. Hell, I'd rather be a Black Spiral Dancer than a Red Talon. The constant fighting is pretty much the same, but snorting coke off the ass of an underaged prostitute in a Setite whore house sounds a lot more fun than running off into the wilds of Wyoming and having sex with dogs.

-Username17

Bigode · Post by **Bigode** » Fri Dec 19, 2008 4:05 pm

Talisman wrote:I need to remember that 99% of the people in D&D land don't know for a fact what the afterlife is like (or shouldn't - 9th-level clerics have better things to do than run tours to Heaven, even if their deity is OK with that).

Do note that 99% is the part of the population no one gives a damn about individually. All adventurers, even low-leveled, likely fit into the 1%.

FrankTrollman wrote:The constant fighting is pretty much the same, but snorting coke off the ass of an underaged prostitute in a Setite whore house sounds a lot more fun than running off into the wilds of Wyoming and having sex with dogs.

Explain. Slowly.

Count Arioch the 28th · Fri Dec 19, 2008 6:04 pm

FatR wrote: Signing up with evil side in, for example, Warhammer (any variant) or just about any of the White Wolf games is pointless at best, but usually delusional and self-destructive (although recruiting agents of the resident evils often won't tell you that or they are deluded themselves).

I wasn't aware there was a side that WASN'T evil in Warhammer universe. Well, Fantasy is a bit better, but I would consider all sides to be assholey even in Fantasy. ('Course, I play an evil faction that has both the most fleshed-out flavor text and the worst army list.)

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Sat Dec 20, 2008 1:13 am

Bigode wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:The constant fighting is pretty much the same, but snorting coke off the ass of an underaged prostitute in a Setite whore house sounds a lot more fun than running off into the wilds of Wyoming and having sex with dogs.
Explain. Slowly.

Black Spirals are insane, corrupt and evil werewolves. And kill people a lot.

Red Talons are 'wolf supremacists'. They hate and kill humans a lot. And they only breed with wolves. Oh, and they're theoretically good werewolves (at least, you could play them out of the book).

Talisman · Post by **Talisman** » Sat Dec 20, 2008 2:55 am

Voss wrote:Red Talons are 'wolf supremacists'. They hate and kill humans a lot. And they only breed with wolves. Oh, and they're theoretically good werewolves (at least, you could play them out of the book).

To elaborate a little: there are 13 tribes of "good" (with big quotation marks) werewolves, and the Red Talons hate, and are hated by, almost all of them. There's also:

~The berserk Nordic kill-em-all tribe;
~The inbred, slightly deranged, power-mad "leader" tribe;
~The despised, diseased, homeless, trash-grubbing tribe;
~The corporate CEO tribe with teleport-through-phone-lines powers (not even slightly kidding)

koz · Post by **koz** » Sat Dec 20, 2008 2:57 am

FatR wrote: Signing up with evil side in, for example, Warhammer (any variant) or just about any of the White Wolf games is pointless at best, but usually delusional and self-destructive (although recruiting agents of the resident evils often won't tell you that or they are deluded themselves). However, these settings happen to not suck, as their popularity attests, and, as everyone knows, they are not exactly simplistic or black-and-white.
For that matter, being Evil in DnD isn't exactly a fun time, if you look at any actual setting examples. Fiends like it, or at least bear with it, but from any sane human standpoint, being an eminently replaceable gear of ruthless hierarchy where your superiors can and will ass-rape you for slightest infractions or failures, or just because they are in bad mood; or living next to a bunch of violent, bullying, murderous sickos and under rulership of a brutal tyrant is not really an alluring perspective - and only absolutely miniscule percentage of Evil people gets position and power to protect themselves from worst abuses, although, of course, everyone in the know thinks, that they will end up in the latter category.
Also, Evil, that is not, in fact, evil is not interesting, fun or cool. It is competely lame. Egocentrists, backstabbing powermongers, greedy bastards and psychopaths, whose worst qualities were heightened and distilled, being nice to newcomers or fair to their servants? Lame and illogical.

This is precisely the kind of thing I am railing against. You just applied a ridiculous and inapplicable metric based on fluff written by people who apply that metric, to DnD, drew a bunch of conclusions which make no sense, and then extend it to two other settings, which people later point out, again, these conclusions frankly don't belong in. Honestly.

FatR wrote: From the viewpoint of evil gods, archdevils, demon princes and other people at the top, it is totally worth it. However, from their viewpoint, "exploiting, expending and abusing your underlings" is one of the perks of the job, because they are, you know, evil. And the underlings largely have no choice, because they are formed from destructive impulses of elemental Evil given form or are made to serve. Their best hope is to aim for the top, so that they can make up for their own suffering by lashing at the new generations of minor demons (and the rest of the universe). Actually, biggest bastards in the world giving reasonable job offers and living a nice life in servitude to the force of eternal malice is what makes absolutely no coherent sense. As I remember, Faces of Evil (2E Planescape supplement and, perhaps, the most detailed source about fiends) defines "evil" as "being willfully and maliciously indiffirent to the needs of others, just for the sake of doing so, not necessarily because you gain something from it". Well, consciously working for beings that embody this quality might be worth it, if you're a major asshole yorself, and are sure about your ability to secure a decent position in their hierarchy, but, I imagine, that most evil mortals don't know for what they're signing up, or, if there is common belief that personality is erased upon death (if I, again, remember correctly, this is what usually happended in 2E Planescape), simply don't care that their life force is going to hell.
But I must repeat: primordial Evil, that is not, in fact, evil, is lame. And, what's worse, completely pointless. At least this DnD authors usually realize. Cosmic horrors of pure malice do not offer good jobs, nor should they, if the setting is supposed to make sense (if you don't want this, just to not include such things in the setting). As to how they still can recruit plently of servants, see my first post in this thread.

Umm... seriously dude, I am saying that this position is dumb. You counter with a bunch of irrelevant examples which do not work for any side in a cosmic conflict where evil is not predestined to lose, and then make the claim "Well, designers said so, thus it's true.".

Under Judeo-Christian thinking, which all DnD designers seem to have stapled to their penile implants, evil is PREDESTINED to lose. This is NOT how DnD works, because if that's the case, it is ridiculous and fails at its own claims. NOBODY in their right mind would work for a side they are destined to lose with, and NOBODY would serve a side where they would number in the oppressed millions because they have a CHANCE at the top, especially when they live forever.

Furthermore, you seem to be using DF terminology a lot. Since their stance on evil is CERTIFIED SUBJECTIVE (thus not derivable into general principles) and so full of LDS Christianity it makes my brain hurt, I'm honestly not gonna listen to any further statements you make on the subject of such things.

Elennsar · Post by **Elennsar** » Sat Dec 20, 2008 4:27 am

Thus my preference for something where Evil is believed to be going to lose (assuming a God vs. Antigod or Good vs. Evil pantheons) but which it isn't certain (predestination is a religious theory which I take almost as seriously as people who don't see how the Second Coming of Jesus Christ can be made into a pun).

So yes, the Forces of Cosmic Evil are giant dicks.

A loyal blackguard is likely to become something better than Joe Cultist.

It still sucks, because working for a giant dick ultimately isn't satisfying. Unfortunately, its not obvious. Because if Evil made it clear that they tortured its loyal servants just because they could, they'd run out of loyal servants.

So the rulers and their "favored" get a halfway decent deal. If you're willing to commit such horrible atrocities that if you had any sense of right and wrong it would cause you to kill yourself.

Unfortunately, getting a harem is one of those things that sounds more appealing than it really is.

So you wind up bitter and hate-filled and all those other things that make you do evil because you do enjoy that and the fact your life is shit is okay because you joined evil for the power, not for ultimate satisfaction.

After all, the Good guys don't give out power very generously.

None of this works particularly well with D&D as is, but D&D as is doesn't work very well with any coherent system because its roots are so very incoherent.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Sat Dec 20, 2008 4:49 am

I'm suddenly at a loss as to why its impossible to have intelligent evil as opposed to stupid evil (ie, not stabbing your own servants in the back). Or, indeed, why its 'lame'.

Villains that are actually effective don't seem lame to me. Neither does evil beyond 'gar, rar, kill indiscriminately'.

Elennsar · Post by **Elennsar** » Sat Dec 20, 2008 4:52 am

Effective is one thing. Having being evil be more rational than being good leads to "honorable equals naive" and Game of Thrones by "Let's Kill every character you might actually like"Martin.

Thus my preference for "ultimately short sighted" over "stupid".

Villains that are pragmatists despite being utterly without conscience are about as appealing as villains that are so stupid you're surprised they remember to breathe.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Dec 20, 2008 5:28 am

Elennsar wrote:Effective is one thing. Having being evil be more rational than being good leads to "honorable equals naive" and Game of Thrones by "Let's Kill every character you might actually like"Martin.

Thus my preference for "ultimately short sighted" over "stupid".

Villains that are pragmatists despite being utterly without conscience are about as appealing as villains that are so stupid you're surprised they remember to breathe.

And what part of "equally rational" do you still not get? I mean, other then your stern unwillingness to ever change your mind about anything no matter how many false premises your initial opinion was based on.

Elennsar · Post by **Elennsar** » Sat Dec 20, 2008 5:31 am

What part of "I disagree with having Good be meaningless and Evil be so logical that it never does anything that would interfer with being practical as part of being evil" do you intend to ignore?

I'm perfectly willing to change my mind if you have a legitimate point that works better than anything I can come up with for what I'm interested in using (since I have no interest in imposing any system I develop on anyone else's game other than by showing how it works), but saying "I want to do it entirely differently!" doesn't matter to me, so you fail here.

So far as I can tell from discussing with Sinister, the following are sound:

Law: THE community
Chaos: ALL individuals
Good: ALL communities
Evil: THE individual

Thusly...

LG: A well regulated social order for the benefit of all.
LE: A well regulated social order with maximum benefit for those on top.
CG: A loosely regulated society where all contribute for the "common defense" and such, but that would be about it.
CE: Society? I don't need no stinkin' society. MORE ALE, WENCH!

So serving a Chaotic Evil guy is a great way to get screwed, and a LE guy...well, depends.

Note: Credit to the text in bold goes to Sinister.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Sat Dec 20, 2008 6:02 am

"I want to do it entirely differently!" doesn't matter to me.

It would really, really help if you weren't constantly doing this yourself. You may not want to impose your 'system' on anyone, but there is absolutely no need to constantly interject that you want to do it differently, which serves no purpose at all. If you want to do it differently, than do it- don't share. You don't have constantly to derail threads with the minutiae of your thought process.

Stating your preferences doesn't add to the discussion. And in most of your posts, thats all you are doing. Case in point, your response to my statement:

Elennsar wrote:Effective is one thing. Having being evil be more rational than being good leads to "honorable equals naive" and Game of Thrones by "Let's Kill every character you might actually like"Martin.

Personal opinion, and preference for a book series that isn't even relevant.

Thus my preference for "ultimately short sighted" over "stupid".

Again, yep. Irrelevant opinion

Villains that are pragmatists despite being utterly without conscience are about as appealing as villains that are so stupid you're surprised they remember to breathe.

Hey, look, you want to do it different. Without a legitimate point or even an argument.

Elennsar · Post by **Elennsar** » Sat Dec 20, 2008 6:14 am

It would really, really help if you weren't constantly doing this yourself.

It would really, really help if you actually read what I typed in full instead of taking small parts out of context and missing the entire point.

Me not wanting to impose something on others as "DO IT MY WAY!" and not wanting to share or encourage others to look at how I'd do something are two very different things.

It is not derailing a thread to share what I think, just because I think that what I think and what I would prefer is relevant to the discussion.

Sure, you might not want a God/antiGod setting. Maybe I do (I don't, this is used hypothetically), but discussing its merits in regards to dealing with this is as legitimate as if you and I both did.

I don't think its possible to have a setting where people serve genuinely Evil beings and have those evil beings be perfectly good in any recognizable sense to their servants without those beings not being Evil in any recognizable sense. So dealing with "okay, so how would evil beings treat their servants and how would evil people act" is important to get something that accomplishes what appears to be the desired result (that evil people aren't just irrational morons).

Personal opinion, and preference for a book series that isn't even relevant.

Nonpreference. And very relevant to rational or irrational behavior by good or evil people.

Again, yep. Irrelevant opinion

No more irrelevant than any other opinion on this thread.

Hey, look, you want to do it different. Without a legitimate point or even an argument.

Hey, look, you don't want to read what other people think. At all.

I don't mind if Kaelik wants to do something differently than I do, but the fact he wants to do something differently than I do is not the same as having a convincing reason why I should find it appealing either for fun or making sense, which is what is behind refering to him failing.

So hey, if you want to have a discussion where no one ever shares an opinion on how something should work or why they think something is a fine idea other than what the groupthink came up with, that's your problem.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Dec 20, 2008 7:18 am

Elennsar. No one cares that you want D&D deities to act differently then they are defined as acting.

They don't. This is a thread for describing their motives, and for saying how they actually act.

And now, to try for the last time to explain to you why Evil is not better then Good without automatically being stupid:

1) Good is Seeing other people as valuable in themselves, rather then as just tools. This means you help people even when it doesn't directly benefit you, and in return, other good people help you, even when it doesn't directly benefit them.

2) Evil means looking out for your own goals, and not caring about other people, except as they relate to you. This means you don't help people who can't help you, and you can't expect help in return. It means when someone is no longer useful, and might become a detriment, you betray them, and in return, someone might betray you.

These are different but equal ways of living your life. With different ones being better or worse depending on how strong the community is, and how good communication is.

How this affects evil creatures is, you want to remain useful to your evil god. It is stupid, not evil, to feast on your competent servant. Not powerful servant, Competent. Imps exist in hell for a reason. They do good paperwork. And Asmodeus needs lots of paperwork done, so he doesn't kill them, he makes them do what they did for him in real life. He does not torture them, because then they wouldn't do paperwork as well.

A minor cultist of Vecna who dies can expect to have his body animated and his soul will go to Vecna, and become some weird undead that is themed along his former abilities, so that he can keep animating dead, or killing shit or whatever it was he did.

Elennsar · Post by **Elennsar** » Sat Dec 20, 2008 7:20 am

Kaelik: No one cares that you're incapable of accepting any arguement based on "As things are set up now, it isn't working, so what would work to get a set up like what Talisman said he would like to get"?

As for Evil: I am not in favor of or arguing for "Evil being stupid".

I am in favor of being a servant of Evil being a worse deal than being a servant of Good because Evil doesn't take good care of its servants and evil people tend to be too short sighted.

Note: Lolth (Lloth?) as written is irrational to the point of stupid. Unless 4e changed something for the better for once.

One of the orc gods in Faerun prior to the setting being changed actually has "stupidity" in his portfolio.

So there are definately evil, dysfunctional gods as written, so refering to such is not wandering off into anything.