96 réponses à ce sujet

[kamal_]

Nevertheless, I had a significant number of people who said they were disturbed, turned off, etc by Path of Evil because of the things you could do. I even had a few low votes citing that reason specifically. I view it as a positive of human nature that some people seem to be inherently good.

I should write up a basic walkthrough of how to play PoE while committing a minimum of evil acts. The actual number of evil acts that are plot critical are small, some robberies, and one murder (of someone who is evil). You'd skip a lot of sidequests in favor of random OM areas to get your xp.

edit: I'm glad I managed to get that reaction, means I succeeded in making an evil campaign.

Modifié par kamal_, 31 juillet 2011 - 02:46 .

[likeorasgod]

Wait they complain that you Mod is evil? Hello that is why it's called Path of Evil. You very clearly state it's about playing the bad guy.

[kamal_]

likeorasgod wrote...

Wait they complain that you Mod is evil? Hello that is why it's called Path of Evil. You very clearly state it's about playing the bad guy.

I had a couple of complaints, yes.
"6.00 Pretty good, an extraordinary amount of work put into this submission--but, once the mission was to murder an entire family I thought: why would I want to be a cold-blooded murderer, even in avatar form. For me that was enough
and I quit. D&D is for heroes. A little bad/evil is interesting, but this lost my interest--so here's my vote based on my play experience."

I had another person who thought they were forced to kill their mentor in Neverwinter, even though the journal says it's entirely optional. They quit at that point and gave me a low score.

Edit: There's now a spoilerific walkthough of "minimal evil" on the Vault, for pansies. :happy:

Modifié par kamal_, 06 août 2011 - 08:07 .

[likeorasgod]

That is so funny, and D&D is not just about heroes. They should never tried any of our TT games back when I was in the military. We had good guy games, bad guy games and a mix. We had PC's kill each other off and some do great deads and others dreaded. It's about RP and enjoying yourself. Some mods won't be for every one.

Which reminds me I need to get back into your mod...have yet to finish it up.

[XEternalXDreamX]

I always like to play L.G. [I personally like helping others, keeping the kingdom in power (I'm not talking about real-life..there is too much political Bs involved) but I like playing C.E. to just see what people's reactions are, what changes in the environment, not to mention what happens when you take the Thieves route instead of the Watch.

As for your characters reflection your inner being, I can't agree or disagree. Therefore, I am neutral. Lol.
What I mean.. If someone is playing with their moral compass during their playthrough, than yes. If someone is playing for the fun of it, than no.
We are all Lawful Good/Neutral in RL. And some others to an extent.
Otherwise, you are in jail. Sooo.. being evil in NwN2 allows for some kind of freedom to see what happens when you are Allowed to be evil.

This may be off topic but I have a question that relates to real life regarding the fantasy alignment or may not relate..

When you take over the counter drugs, you are obeying the law by using the drugs they want to provide.

When you take "street" drugs, you are not obeying the law, thus you are chaotic but many people look at it in the aspect of being evil. But yes, question is.. does alignments in the game also can be used to describe how our feelings are expressed for actions in real life?

[Skypezee]

I have a hard time choosing evil options unless I am doing evil things because the person (or persons) I am about to do bad things to had it coming (as in they were jerks anyway). There are only a few games out there where I don't mind being evil but overall I don't like doing evil deeds, especially if it nets a reaction from most of my party members since I do care about what they think.

Although I do get away with petty theft =V My reasoning for that is I'm the one risking my butt to save these people so I need all the resources I can get to get the job done.

[XEternalXDreamX]

Sounds to me that you killed the Watchman who were bribed? Lol. Sleight of Hand for theft? Yes, you are the True Neutral. Or Neutral Good! ;P Very rare, indeed.

[Dann-J]

I've played many evil characters, and it often seems that the lawful/chaotic part of their alignment is mainly what drives their behaviour. I'd trust a lawful evil companion over a chaotic neutral one any day - at least there's a degree of predictability about the former.

I did try playing as a thoroughly despicable chaotic evil cleric/war priest, and tried my hardest to earn the 'Dreadmaster of the Keep' epithet - but no matter how psychotic or self-serving my choices, I never seemed to reach Dreadmaster status. At least I got to turn him into a minor god at the end of MotB (One of Many practically declared his love for the character!).

I find myself in the opposite situation to Lord Spanky - I'm unable to bring myself to play a lawful good character. It annoyed me to no end that my completely neutral character in MotB ended up lawful good at the end because of the alignment hits he took from the 'eternal rest' ability.

[mungbean]

Eternal Dream, the very big problem about trying to apply fiction to real life is holistic complex evolutionary diversity. Fiction is in terms of scientific postulate a closed system, where the rules are designed to suit the conception, it isn't derivative.

In the real world pretty much everything is derivative. That serial killer had his poo pushed in by dad since he was five years old and not only did nobody give two hoots, it took until he was 12 before the authorities even believed him or listened, and then when finally child services stepped in he got tossed to the paedophile pastime of foster parenting so a bunch of strangers all did it to him again, when he got fed up with everyone telling him he probably exaggerated and now is just making it up, basically because the paedo foster dad sucks off the judge who sent you there, and hey here's a wake up call folks, no kidding, this is what people do. This is it, this is human society. Denial and irresponsibility and a big fat lazy game of musical chairs for anything you don't want, and a big fat greedy competition for anything you do want. This is it, this is human beings.

That's what turns the dude evil. He aint. You are.

see how that works?


Here's how you play an evil character. In history studies many of the classical religions were quite brutal in reality and paganism fits into the categories of seminal or fertility cultism and animism, which makes classical religions look tame morally. In Mesopotamia you might get your hands cut off for failing to bow deeply enough on a state holiday festivity, in rural Greece your daughter might get disembowelled for having red hair and being born on a wednesday.

So just keep in mind the Church of Ilmater, Helm, whichever, espouses goodness and performs evil. Now as a PC go and set about putting it right.
There you go, instant evil character.

Politics, such fun isn't it.

Modifié par mungbean, 16 septembre 2011 - 05:11 .

[mungbean]

Hey you know it might be the only good plot point developed in TSL but the one thing it delivered quite intelligently was the whole subjectivity of alignment. The PC is written in Kotor II as evil. The plot goes that way no matter what you do, the Jedi Council hates you and tries to kill you, and even explains why and how you are so evil no matter what your choices have been in game, it comes down to your character backstory. Set in stone.

The point is in TSL your alignment shows on the character sheet as relative to you, not others. Your alignment gets shifted by what you do in game and companion alignment shifts by PC influence. So even though you're evil in the eyes of the Jedi Council and nothing is going to change that, you may not be evil in your eyes depending on your PC choices. And the game mechanics reflect your character sheet alignment.
In fact the evil Sith Lord master villain turns out to be your protector against the Jedi Council. Of course then you kill her later because she's evil and only kept you alive to do worse to you herself.

More insight into how this whole good/evil thing actually works conceptually.


One more point, in etymology the term evil (a term not a word) is derived from spelling living in reverse. It means literally to define the world using an aberrant psychological appreciation. Like the way someone in mourning might become bad tempered, they are threatening to become evil as a form of revenge in classical terms.
It came from Aramaic (archaic hebrew) meaning "unlife" but in Latin/English is just the word "live" spelled backwards. That's mostly because Aramaic is an awkward and very limited language that doesn't transliterate very well to any other cultural upbringing at all.

Modifié par mungbean, 16 septembre 2011 - 05:57 .

[XEternalXDreamX]

You are smart Mungbean!

I would +1 or Like your post if I could. lol
All-in-all, you are right.

Modifié par XEternalXDreamX, 17 septembre 2011 - 01:09 .

[mungbean]

I did an online IQ/aptitude test with Washington State iirc once and it told me I was a philosopher

Basically I can talk about a glass of water for hours, the way the light sparkles off it, etc.

[nino1979]

Here is coupla exemples of being in evil according to DnD alligement system:
+Lawfull evil:tyrrant,corupted watchman,basicly person that obyes law but only so to gratify themselves or to gain something from society(Torio makes good exemple and so does boss of shadow thives);
+Neutral evil:assasin that completes his objective without regard how many bodies he has to pile on; they obey order to some extent but not by much
+Chaotic evil:People how don't give rat's ass about society or lives they take;marauding barbarian hordes;Lorne;Moire

[bokhi]

Skadison wrote...

I think this is a good thing.  I don't think this is just a game because even the things you think or joke about can give an indication of the person you truly are.  Eventhough this is just a game the characters you play are a reflection of yourself, so the reason why you choose good is because you want to be a good person.

I do realise it's just a game but if a person likes playing evil characters you got to ask yourself what would that person do if they could get away with it.  When you play NWN you essentially have the opportunity to do evil and possibly get off scot free.  In HoTU you get to do something truly horrible to an individual.  Why in Gods name would you want to do that even in a game?

When I play a good character it makes me want to be a good person in real life.  If you constantly play an evil character how can that not affect you at all?  What you do, think and read has an affect on you.   I'm not saying these games will create monsters but I'm saying it's not just a game, the characters you play say something about the person you are.

P.S.  I haven't completed the game I'm on the eyegouger section, please be merciful with spoliers.  I just had to reply to the topic.

I think this is a mass generalization that doesn't give enough credence to the interfering powers of human cognition to any social theory. 

Whereas it's true that one can argue jokes do indeed come from *somewhere* within a person's psyche, I would also argue that there are thoughtful ways to tell a joke regarding a sensitive subject, and thoughtless ways to do it; to put it in more applicable terms, I would argue that people who play evil RP do so for a variety of reasons, and whereas some might fall under "fantasy role-playing of an under-the radar sociopath"***, others would not. 

Some people are simply curious as to how game designers implement good/evil alignment in a system, while others use it as a platform with which to explore morality (some would cite your average LG paladin as being intensely hypocritical, after all; and by and by, many aspects of moral behaviour are socially constructed), while others would perhap gleefully perpetuate cyber-carnage because they know it's a game and are expert knowing compartamentalizers. There's no way of knowing if the latter are a group of would-be criminals, because if they are basing their morality on harm done to living people or creatures, RPG-carnage would be completely innocous; no one is actually getting harmed. By that same standard, they are unlikely to behave in criminal ways in the real world as they can cognitively tell the difference between computer bytes being deleted and actual people (or animals) being victimized. On the other hand, if a person was basing their morality on whether he or she will get caught (which you appear to be worrying about), then yes, it may be somewhat worrying. But there is no way of knowing who falls into what pool just because they are RPing "evil". 

Generally, there are more nuances to human behaviours and it's a pet peeve of mine when mass generalizations are made without any suitable parameters. 

And to be perfectly frank, morality is not so cut and dry as you imply, either. Are you familiar with the Stanford Prison Experiment and Milgram's Shock Experiments? The moral high horse is the most dangerous one, imo. 


***or would-be criminal, whichever

Modifié par bokhi, 11 octobre 2011 - 05:55 .

[Dann-J]

There are no truly lawful good characters in RPGs anyway - they all carry lethal weapons and/or spells and don't seem overly bothered about taking lives. A truly lawful good character would rely on charisma, diplomacy, or even bluff checks to avoid combat entirely. Or reinforced back armour for when they have to run away from a fight they can't avoid.

I've always found paladins to be particularly hypocritical. "Look at me - I'm a paragon of virtue. Just ignore the gore-soaked weapon in my hand..."

[bokhi]

@DannJ: But a goblin is an evil creature, DannJ! Even the children! THEY MUST BE PUUURRRGEEED. FOR GREAAAT JUSTICE!

Besides, how am I supposed to level up without hordes of evil goblins invading Targos Town?

[Avalon Aurora]

DannJ wrote...

There are no truly lawful good characters in RPGs anyway - they all carry lethal weapons and/or spells and don't seem overly bothered about taking lives. A truly lawful good character would rely on charisma, diplomacy, or even bluff checks to avoid combat entirely. Or reinforced back armour for when they have to run away from a fight they can't avoid.

I've always found paladins to be particularly hypocritical. "Look at me - I'm a paragon of virtue. Just ignore the gore-soaked weapon in my hand..."

You have some serious misconceptions about D&D morality systems and paladins. You should take the time to read the Book of Exalted Deeds if you want to understand how it actually works. It is one of the 3.5 supplement books, although a mature rated title. Part of your issue might be a Christian centered view on morality combined with the whole non-killing heroes vibe a lot of modern super-hero characters, like Superman and Batman, pull off. Lawful good tends to be more pragmatic than that in D&D.

Part of it comes down to the idea that killing evil, even redeemable evil, is not evil, nor is killing in self-defense or the defense of others who are good or others who are innocent, even if the enemy isn't evil, just misguided. The paladin is not meant to be a martyr who will sacrifice their own safety to take chances to redeem the enemy.

There are also numerous falacies involved in the way people like to discount paladins. The whole 'orc/goblin/mind-flayer/demon babies' thing is one of the big ones. In the case of mind-flayers and demons, they are 'born' fully mature and irredeemably evil, there is no babies in the first place, while there is an exalted spell in the Book of Exalted Deeds that can turn them good, it really transforms them into another type of being when it comes down to it, and it isn't truly a willing redemption, regardless of being a 'true' and permanent effect. The orcs and goblins are only 'usually evil', you should not be killing the babies, but you shouldn't spare the adults who might be attacking a village or something just because you are worried about killing their parents will leave them abandoned or something. If it comes down to it, you can go and take the babies back to your church to be raised as orphans, and preferably among a good, rather than evil culture, although this might not overcome their savage instincts. The paladin's job is as a warrior anyway, if some goblin tribe is attacking other villages because they won't make it through the winter without stealing food, this doesn't make their behavior excuseable, partly because the origins of this behavior lie in the fact that they don't try to properly farm and stuff themselves, and being a paladin is about fighting them in defense of the village, not about making sure everyone survives the winter. There might be another lawful good character who _is_ concerned about that, such as a cleric of some god of plenty or survival or something, but at most, the paladin should be alerting the cleric of some starving goblin village, not letting the goblins through to attack the village just because they won't survive without the stolen food. Especially in the case of goblins actually, because many goblin cultures tend to treat other intelligent humanoids, including other goblins, as a food source.

The paladin does not also go around scanning for evil with their detect evil and killing anyone who registers, the paladin's lawful aspect means they need to be reasonably sure this person is actively doing something bad, like they've been assasinating people or stealing from starving families, and the paladin should be trying to work within the bounds of the law in orderly scocieties if they can. They aren't allowed to kill someone who is 'evil' just because they are a selfish jerk, but hasn't really done anything truly worthy of being slain over, like murder, rape, or such.

It's a bunch of complex issues, and I'm not doing it justice as the Book of Exalted Deeds did, but I hope I expressed the gist of it.

Partly back to the thread's initial topic, I don't like the idea of playing evil as well, although for me it is often less about the evil and more about my own tastes, intelligence, and pragmatism, partly because a lot of the 'evil' in most games tends to come out as rather short-sighted 'evil stupid', or lacks any appeal in the first place, at least for me. They also tend to do good and chaotic very poorly at times, but usually do better justice to good than any of the other alignments, lawful, evil, or chaotic. They do pretty terribly for neutral, although this is more of a game mechanics and subtle issue. Games are supposed to be fun, so if an alignment isn't fun for you in the game, don't play it.

[kevL]

Practical situation: Paladin comes across a gang of Duergar, who are minding their own business in their gem mine. They tell the Paladin to get lost, naturally. Paladin turns to leave but the rogue slips by and loots their treasure chest. Duergar go aggro on the rogue, so Paladin has to rescue his party member from certain death!

work'd fer me

[I_Raps]

kevL wrote...

Practical situation: Paladin comes across a gang of Duergar, who are minding their own business in their gem mine. They tell the Paladin to get lost, naturally. Paladin turns to leave but the rogue slips by and loots their treasure chest. Duergar go aggro on the rogue, so Paladin has to rescue his party member from certain death!

work'd fer me

What if they're standard dwarves, just way off the beaten track in some exotic tropical island?

[Dann-J]

The whole problem with the paladin outlook is that they make themselves judge, jury and executioner. That just doesn't seem particularly 'lawful' to me. Subduing someone and delivering them to the nearest authorities for a trial would be much more lawful.

Then again, the real-life paladins were a product of the crusades, when apparently the commandment "Thou shalt not kill" (one of the central tenets of most major religions) was edited to include an asterix and a footnote. Once the code of chivalry was dead, so-called 'holy knights' were permitted to kill non-believers without having to do penance afterwards. Even women and children were fair game if they didn't follow your particular religion.

When I try to decide how a truly lawful good character would behave, I ask myself: what would Gandhi have done? I have a hard time picturing Gandhi in heavy armour wielding a weapon.

RPGs in general tend to be biased towards sort-of good characters who don't mind a bit of wet-work with a weapon. Often evil characters find themselves lagging behind in experience because they refuse to help some scruffy street urchin find her dolly (or other such 'good' quests). Truly lawful good characters (opposed to killing in any form) also often lack non-violent options for resolving situations. You get the occasional diplomacy or bluff check, but when enemies turn hostile it's not enough to just incapacitate them with sleep, stun or fear spells. You have to complete the kill to earn the XP.

A truly balanced RPG would award evil characters for telling the little girl what she can do with her lost doll quest, and allow subdued enemies to be captured alive so that the truly lawful could hand them over to the local authorities to face trial (for XP and a possible reward).

[kevL]

I_Raps wrote...

kevL wrote...

Practical situation: Paladin comes across a gang of Duergar, who are minding their own business in their gem mine. They tell the Paladin to get lost, naturally. Paladin turns to leave but the rogue slips by and loots their treasure chest. Duergar go aggro on the rogue, so Paladin has to rescue his party member from certain death!

work'd fer me

What if they're standard dwarves, just way off the beaten track in some exotic tropical island?

Then I, the player, probably wouldn't have had my rogue loot 'em ( the Paladin was my main ). But that's hypothetical ..

There are more things in heaven and on earth, Horatio


trust me, I_Raps, if I code up a dungeon where ya get to go around pilfering there's going to be alignment hits.


well put, DannJ. Killing should be a last resort, although that's also why we have incontrovertibly evil monsters for; and I for one would like to see lawful-oriented modules designed with well built subdual systems.

[Bayz]

I will never get it. People who say they can't play evil are like people who say they can't play opposite gender characters...it is an RPG, the point is playing as something completely different each time, why would I want to play the embodiment number 895th of goody-male-human-<insert class here>?

In Neverwinter Nights 2 it is a bit less painful though, you get to ****** off everybody and may end up killing your party and one of the most annoying characters in the history of D&D based computer games in my opinion (history wise, you never kill him directly).

MotB is gold in the evil path though, again IMO.

I guess people play for different reasons, if you can't "stand oh play evil because OMG EVIL" then do not...but quit going to the internet and write "Mah play'd the evulz! Mah brain huuurrtssss!"

That said, playing evil in NWN was a pain IMHO, not for the evil actions but for the Chaotic Stupid of them...and that doing bad stuff only gave you -5 points most of the time, while doing the good deeds gave you +10 sometimes, it was fun playing the other way round though with my paladin of Ilmater extorting people's money, not giving a crap about the people and stuff and then doing a good ass licking to lady Aribeth and recovering all my good points...yeah...roleplay a Lawful Evil character and you'll end up Lawful Good statwise, funny, and disturbing at the same time.

[Bayz]

Pallies in D&D kill evil that they consider unredeemable. Pallies in the Forgotten Realms setting kill neutral in case they get in between them and their prey. It is ok and happens a lot of the time. Evil in D&D is a tangible force, not a subjective point of view like in RL.

tl;dr Do not force rl morals in D&D, they are just completely different animals.

[Dann-J]

Bayz wrote...
Do not force real morals in D&D, they are just completely different animals.

I suppose life is cheap in a world where resurrection is an every-day event.

There was a quest in Baldur's Gate where you had to retreive a little girl's cat. When you return its dead body to her, she's not upset at all. It turned out that her father was a cleric or necromancer who had apparently resurrected the cat several times before.

[nino1979]

Plus what they did not apply in game is Sense Aligment feat.That's a thing that Paladin or BlackGuard use to figure if u are goody or psycho;and Paladin wise they are actully militant hands of their gods not some wimpy cleric or monk,so as it goes if u are evil u die,no bargins or remorse.