Editorial More of Avellone's Morals: What is evil?

[easychord]

Maybe he will calm down if I spend a while answering every item on his bullet point list.

 

[Unradscorpion]

You should totally do that, what else can we do?
Go outside and meet sexy girls? No sire!

 

[The Vanished One]

If this is how the "best" of our developers define evil, I really need to get to work on finishing American Hare.

I hear it will be released the same day as Duke Nukem Forever and Grimoire III. Is it true?

 

[Gragt]

Square thought that Harriet was so shallow and sucked so much that they found a way to have her murdered during the course of the game, that people cried during that scene shows how much our civilisation is declining.

Then of course Square realized how popular she become because of that move (basically a plot-hole to suck that character in forever) and decided to cash in on it and include her in other games.

 

[Xor]

Why doesn't Mareus have a dumbfuck tag yet?

 

[Rhombus]

Why does he go on about a Baldur's Gate Triology... BG3 got canned right.. or did I miss something?

 

[JarlFrank]

but I think one of the most interesting aspects of moral choices is actually in massively multiplayer online games

OH NOES!!! :shock:

Heh, the kind of MMO he's talking about doesn't exist yet. And probably will never exist because players in MMOs don't roleplay, they just powergame. When in most MMOs people speak 1337 even on RP servers, you know the genre is doomed to be retarded.

 

[Xor]

I would love a cRPG-type MMO where roleplaying was actually enforced. Even if there were only a handful of players, it would still be fun.

 

[MetalCraze]

why would you make your way from Beregost (a -town-, which has 2 taverns where you can spend a night and wait for some hero to help you) to Friendly Arms Inn just because your home is infested with spiders, considering that the road between those two places has much more dangerous shit travelling in packs?

 

[Jasede]

I would love a cRPG-type MMO where roleplaying was actually enforced. Even if there were only a handful of players, it would still be fun.

But there's a lot of these. Well, they're never "massive" because not many like this. They come in all degrees, too: RP with DMs on NWN servers; hardcore permadeath super-stict RP in a Dark Sun world on MUCKs, light RP-speckled grindfests... there's a lot of variety. Good luck finding something like this with more than 40 players on and peak times though.

 

[Chefe]

If this is how the "best" of our developers define evil, I really need to get to work on finishing American Hare.

I hear it will be released the same day as Duke Nukem Forever and Grimoire III. Is it true?

We have this tri-release agreement.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

I would love a cRPG-type MMO where roleplaying was actually enforced. Even if there were only a handful of players, it would still be fun.

NWN persistent worlds. Narfell was awesome. No idea what the scene is like now, though.

 

[Jasede]

However, these aren't as strict as MUCKs which tend to expect a (long) application if you want to play on them, as well as seperate applications for each character; and the really hardcore ones won't let you play more than one and enforce permanent death and kinda ban you if you say anything OOC at all unless it is absolutely imperative.

NWN PWs with good DMs are Escape from Underdark and City of Arabel. The former has the more experienced and ingenious DMs. In MUCKs/MUDs the best RP one is incredibly elitist and high-brow and called Armageddon; just getting your first application approved before you can play requires a lot of reading. Conversely, this is played mostly by 30+ aged people who tend to all be working a lot when they don't play, judging by the forums.

 

[Xor]

Interesting, I'll have to check some of these out.


Although I don't really want to dig through my giant chest of computer-stuff to find my NWN CDs.

 

[sabishii]

However, these aren't as strict as MUCKs which tend to expect a (long) application if you want to play on them, as well as seperate applications for each character; and the really hardcore ones won't let you play more than one and enforce permanent death and kinda ban you if you say anything OOC at all unless it is absolutely imperative.

NWN PWs with good DMs are Escape from Underdark and City of Arabel. The former has the more experienced and ingenious DMs. In MUCKs/MUDs the best RP one is incredibly elitist and high-brow and called Armageddon; just getting your first application approved before you can play requires a lot of reading. Conversely, this is played mostly by 30+ aged people who tend to all be working a lot when they don't play, judging by the forums.

Are there any good NWN2 PWs? I used to play on City of Arabel a looong time ago but it seems like nobody plays Tales of Moonsea, which the staff from CoA developed I think.

 

[Armacalypse]

Interesting necroed thread. According to Avellone I'm kinda evil.
But then what are sadists and hateful people like Hitler then? Ultra next-gen evil?

And yeah, I agree that MMOs contain by far the best moral choices of all games.

You can perform selfish acts like: Steal loot, betray your guild/clan/team for another, scam people, or even be an EVIL capitalist that buys goods and sells them for a higher price.
It's also surprisingly popular to perform sadistic acts like griefing, where you make the playing experience hell for a player.
Or you can help people with quests, give money to beggars, equip newbies, help the guild as a whole etc.

The best part is that they are real decisions that affect real people.

It's too bad all MMOs suck.

 

[RK47]

It's not. it just takes too much effort to achieve something gainful in game. Something that developers think will lengthen the subscription period per customers. Time that people usually don't have enough with already with their real lives. It's quite sickening to think you have to plan your real life with raid scheduling, it's just too intrusive.

If they had a perma loss RP WoW server I'm definitely into it. They also would have to allow same faction pvp (alliance v alliance etc) to have some sort of 'dynamics' instead of throwing insults and duel flags in stormwind.

 

[Texas Red]

But then what are sadists and hateful people like Hitler then? Ultra next-gen evil?

wut

Hitler was a vegetarian and a general lover of animals who wanted to turn his country in to a true power, devoid of people from whom he has suffered all his life. Sharing nationalistic and antisemit ideas, like most did in that time in Europe, isn't exactly "evil". He was a painter and a thinker who thought he knew how to help his fellow man. How is it to adhere to you primordial sense of patriotism and wanting to improve the life of your people it evil? Calling him, or anyone for that matter, evil is retarded. It's as if though you wouldn't want to see the Arabs nuked and Europe/USA prosper without illegal immigrants.

 

[Redeye]

.It's as if though you wouldn't want to see the Arabs nuked and Europe/USA prosper without illegal immigrants.

Driving today I saw many, many hispanics waiting for the bus. Also, a carload of hispanic maids showed up at a place.

Short and fat, like a template.


oh noes I be racist


related thought:

Why don't native (pre-colombian) north americans reproduce at a rate comparable to south and central american natives?

 

[Ogg]

The first time I read about AD&D (I was rather young I guess), I saw the Light in the alignment system. Why hadn't I thought about it sooner? The world wasn't divided between Good and Evil but between Law and Chaos. I suddenly understood: Chaos is where I belong.

 

[Xi]

This thread is evil and the moral is not to post. Dirty whores!

 

[Armacalypse]

It's not. it just takes too much effort to achieve something gainful in game. Something that developers think will lengthen the subscription period per customers. Time that people usually don't have enough with already with their real lives. It's quite sickening to think you have to plan your real life with raid scheduling, it's just too intrusive.

Yes, that's why all MMOs suck. No matter how awesome design and gameplay is in a normal MMO it will never make up for the fact that it demands that you change your life for it.

But then what are sadists and hateful people like Hitler then? Ultra next-gen evil?

wut

Hitler was a vegetarian and a general lover of animals who wanted to turn his country in to a true power, devoid of people from whom he has suffered all his life. Sharing nationalistic and antisemit ideas, like most did in that time in Europe, isn't exactly "evil". He was a painter and a thinker who thought he knew how to help his fellow man. How is it to adhere to you primordial sense of patriotism and wanting to improve the life of your people it evil? Calling him, or anyone for that matter, evil is retarded. It's as if though you wouldn't want to see the Arabs nuked and Europe/USA prosper without illegal immigrants.

I think you are partly right.

Since morals are completely subjective, the simplest possible definition of Good is wanting to help people for no reason (other than the emotional motivation), and the simplest definition of Evil is the opposite; wanting to hurt people for no reason.
And since both sympathy and "love" makes you want to help people, being sympathetic and/or loving is Good. Since both sadism and hate makes you want to hurt people, being sadistic and/or hateful is Evil.

But since Good and Evil thus aren't mutually exclusive for one person, and since neither Good or Evil are about the self in any way, you can't say selfishness is the middle ground between the two.
So if you really insist on using an "alignment system", it would have to be two separate values, one representing Good, and the other Evil, where the absence of both would mean you are selfish.

So if you now want to call Hitler either Good or Evil, you'd have to bear in mind both his love for his country or somesuch, and his hate for jews. So that would be pretty complicated.

In the end, the terms "Good" and "Evil" are retarded, and so are the alignment systems in games, because it can't tell you what a person's moral values are anyway.

 

[Hory]

Hitler was a vegetarian and a general lover of animals who wanted to turn his country in to a true power, devoid of people from whom he has suffered all his life.

So? He just extended the "self" to incorporate the nation. Other people extend the self to their women, to their family, to their hood gang or to their empire. If you put that self before others simply because you are part of it, you are evil. Germans have no right of superiority. It is evil to claim so.

Sharing nationalistic and antisemit ideas, like most did in that time in Europe, isn't exactly "evil".

Maybe this justifies how he came to have these beliefs, but he still acted in an evil manner. Hell, I think it should also be considered evil if one blindly follows society norms, without applying any of his own objective and rational thinking. Men should be able to break free from the upbringing of society. Unfortunately, Hitler only did it in ways that reinforced and deepened the evilness.

He was a painter and a thinker who thought he knew how to help his fellow man.

A man who applied preferential treatment for his race while trying to exterminate other races. That's why racism is considered evil and you're Dumbfuck x 3 because you can't understand this.

How is it to adhere to you primordial sense of patriotism and wanting to improve the life of your people it evil?

A lot of primordial, reptilian instincts are bad, if you desire the wellness of each man. Patriotism is evil. Anything less than humanism is. Even humanism can be considered evil once aliens are discovered. Maybe "life-ism" will be the next step.

Calling him, or anyone for that matter, evil is retarded. It's as if though you wouldn't want to see the Arabs nuked and Europe/USA prosper without illegal immigrants.

If I would like to see something unlikely, I would like to see positive things, like Arabs being civilized and respectful; I would like to share with them my culture and learn from theirs. I would like it if they would contribute to the development of the human race as much as they did thousands of years ago, I would like if we didn't have the problem of immigration simply because everyone could get along and bring something to the positive development of whatever country he is in.
Nuking them might be beneficial for the west. It would also be selfish - and evil.

 

[Azarkon]

There's a problem saying that "evil" is the equivalent of "self-serving" - namely, it's too common. If we go by this definition, most people in the world are evil, and the rest simply have different self-interests. I like the circular definition about evil people not caring about the morality of their acts (ie they'd lie, steal, kill, etc. to further their ends), but seriously, what makes those acts evil? The alignment system doesn't say. That's another problem.

Truth is, good and evil are still defined in terms of good old-fashioned Christian values, which are a superpset of the common, human values shared across cultures. With a few exceptions, most people would agree that imparting suffering, sewing carnage, & playing with people's lives are all evil acts. Guess what, extreme forms of evil in the D&D world (demons, devils, evil deities) do exactly that. It's not because they're selfish that they're super-evil (most if not all gods in Faerun are selfish). It's because their intentions and acts are evil in a very specific way, and that evil can be quantified beyond the weak-kneed definition of being self-serving.

So what's wrong with saying that evil people are people who enjoy making others suffer, who intend carnage, and who manipulate others for the fun of it?

Simple - it's too psycopathic. If that was the definition of evil in D&D, most villains wouldn't qualify, and the game becomes "too black and white."

For you see, the extremes make perfect sense. Anybody can dream up angels vs. demons and offer it up as compelling evidence for why the alignment system is cool. But if you ever try creating human characters in this sort of system you'll realize that almost everybody is, inevitably, good or neutral.

So you change the definition of evil. Now, there are two definitions of evil: the original one, which applies to monsters, gods, etc., and the new one, which applies to humans. All well and good, except it's never easy coming up with a new definition of morality, and so we're left with the vague idea that somehow, being selfish is evil - except when you're just being selfish, and not evil. Then you're not evil, but neutral. Or maybe, good is actually evil, because, well, you know - crusaders - which is just a /facepalm moment (bringing moral relativity into a world where alignments are neatly categorized on your character sheet).

That's the problem with the D&D alignment system - it's stereotypes trying to be deep. You're better off viewing and playing D&D as a translation of classic good vs. evil, as defined by everyday values, than to use the actual alignment descriptions as guidelines.

 

[muds_animal_friend]

So what's wrong with saying that evil people are people who enjoy making others suffer, who intend carnage, and who manipulate others for the fun of it?

Such people are clearly mentally ill; they're examples of sadistic personality disorder. Whereas those described by Chris Avellone's statement:

An evil character puts their self before all others, and lets others die or suffer if there is something to gain by it. They are the ones who kill anyone who blocks their progress, steal from others, lie to gain trust, and do anything to get ahead.

are suffering from dissocial personality disorder.

So in both these extreme cases "evil" is a form of insanity. Such characters can make fun adversaries in RPGs but their monomaniac nature renders them rather two-dimensional. What bugs me is that ethics has been discussed ad infinitum by some of the finest minds humanity has had to offer so why don't game developers get off their butts and read the relevant literature? Hell, they don’t even have to go that high brow. Charles Dickens created particularly memorable villains who are more complex characters than simply being tEh evAl!11 Complex characterisation appears to be regarded as either redunant or confusing so far as games development in concerned.