Dungeons & Dragons (2022)

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Cybsled

Cybsled

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Mist said:
To a degree, maybe. I don't think you could operate a society with more than 20% explicitly evil people. Societies only work because most people want to cooperate most of the time. What percentage of people are evil, and what percentage of those people get away with it or are even rewarded for it, are what differentiates a society.
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There was a youtube series that covered societies or villains in fiction and tried to breakdown how they made absolutely no sense in terms of a viable entity that could actually flourish. Like Mirror Universe Terran Empire in Star Trek - they were constantly backstabbing each other (figurative and literal), yet they had technology on par with current Trek era. Even if you tried to explain shit away as "they stole it while conquering", that only gets you so far.
 
Aldarion

Aldarion

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Mist said:
To a degree, maybe. I don't think you could operate a society with more than 20% explicitly evil people. Societies only work because most people want to cooperate most of the time. What percentage of people are evil, and what percentage of those people get away with it or are even rewarded for it, are what differentiates a society.
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I knew you'd get predictably pissy about my comment.

People who make statements like yours have a cartoon view of evil. Once you acknowledge what evil actually is, and look around, you realize my statement was correct. I dunno where you came up with 20% but we probably always have at least that level in all societies.

Modern American society is majority evil. Well over 50%.

Evil doesnt wear a black hat and announce its evil.
 
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Gavinmad

Gavinmad

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Rabbit_Games said:
Like I said about Drizzt... the exception, not the rule.
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Or his own father Zaknafein. Hell the idea of a playable non-evil drow outcast actually predates Salvatore's first book by 3 years, and Ed Greenwood's original concept of Eilistraee also predates Drizzt although she wasnt officially published in detail until 3 years later.
 
Seananigans

Seananigans

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Mist said:
imo, anything in D&D where "all X are Y" or "99.999% of X are Y" is boring, with the explicit exception of planar/outsider stuff, because planar creatures are explicitly tied to elemental or ideological axis.

All drow being evil does not make sense because they have something resembling a society. You cannot have a society where everyone is evil, that is not how societies work.

Things like goblins make more sense to tend mostly towards evil, because they don't really have societies.

Drow would make more sense if they were like Romulans.
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They'd be Lawful Evil to have functional society. So yeah, there's a mismatch between their supposed stock alignment and the reality of their existence.
 
Seananigans

Seananigans

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Mist said:
To a degree, maybe. I don't think you could operate a society with more than 20% explicitly evil people. Societies only work because most people want to cooperate most of the time. What percentage of people are evil, and what percentage of those people get away with it or are even rewarded for it, are what differentiates a society.
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The fact that Drow houses were routinely being wiped out, and within houses Drow nobles were stabbing their brothers/sisters in the back for advancement, was a core piece of Drow existence. This is what an evil society looks like, it's not impossible, it's just fucked up.
 
Pasteton

Pasteton

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How many fucking Glenn greenwalds do we have on these forums? If america is so bad where the fuck is it better? Most of you need to undergo the Brittany grinder therapy
 
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Phazael

Phazael

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Mist said:
To a degree, maybe. I don't think you could operate a society with more than 20% explicitly evil people. Societies only work because most people want to cooperate most of the time. What percentage of people are evil, and what percentage of those people get away with it or are even rewarded for it, are what differentiates a society.
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You literally bitch about how at LEAST half of our own country is evil and I will go out on a limb and assume you think worse of Islamic countries and likely Russia. Our county is the youngest of that batch (unless you want to call the CCP and Russia different nations) and all are operating currently. Mutual greed and self interest can make people band up just as surely as some bullshit lofty idealism.

Worst Nihilist Ever.....
 
Mist

Mist

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Phazael said:
You literally bitch about how at LEAST half of our own country is evil and I will go out on a limb and assume you think worse of Islamic countries and likely Russia. Our county is the youngest of that batch (unless you want to call the CCP and Russia different nations) and all are operating currently. Mutual greed and self interest can make people band up just as surely as some bullshit lofty idealism.

Worst Nihilist Ever.....
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[This doesn't belong here, but...]

The middle-eastern Islamic countries are not societies, they are evil tribes of cavemen who happen to live atop of oil fields. If not for their oil fields, they would be stabbing each other in the chest with stone swords or whatever they were doing before they had something the west wanted. They are a great example of what I'm talking about, thanks for bringing them up.

For the US and Russia, I think you're confusing "ignorance in aggregate" with evil. Every society in any time is going to have an utterly ignorant 30% of the bell curve. That's not the same thing as evil, it's just how IQ and other expressed behaviors that map onto a standard distribution aggregate across a population.

I would put less than 6% of Americans as "evil" (as in remorseless psychopathy) and even if you look at the ~0.1% of the population that our system puts in command of capital, probably less than a third of them are "evil." Most "moral" arguments that Americans have with each other are simply semantic ones (ie "terminating a pregnancy" vs "baby-killer") enflamed by a media ecosystem chasing bad incentives. If you start thinking of your neighbors as "evil" rather than simply misled, you're letting the media win, and by media, I mean :emoji_nose:media:emoji_nose:. Most Americans are nice.
 
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Aldarion

Aldarion

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Mist said:
I would put less than 6% of Americans as "evil" (as in remorseless psychopathy) and even if you look at the ~0.1% of the population that our system puts in command of capital, probably less than a third of them are "evil." Most "moral" arguments that Americans have with each other are simply semantic ones (ie "terminating a pregnancy" vs "baby-killer") enflamed by a media ecosystem chasing bad incentives. If you start thinking of your neighbors as "evil" rather than simply misled, you're letting the media win, and by media, I mean :emoji_nose:media:emoji_nose:. Most Americans are nice.
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This is what I mean. You're wrong about what evil is, and that leads to your inaccurate statement.

I will quote here from the authority,
Players Handbook 2nd Edition said:
Evil is the antithesis of good and appears in many ways, some overt and others quite subtle. Only a few people of evil nature actively seek to cause harm or destruction. Most simply do not recognize that what they do is destructive or disruptive. People and things that obstruct the evil character’s plans are mere hindrances that must be overcome. If someone is harmed in the process…well, that’s too bad. Remember that evil, like good, is interpreted differently in different societies.
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You have a cartoonish view of evil. You pretend that only psychopaths -- who by definition are abberations -- are evil. Read the definition given above. I say again - more than half of modern Americans are evil.

For an oldschool RPG geek to have such a cartoonish view of evil is sad.
 
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Mist

Mist

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Aldarion said:
You have a cartoonish view of evil. You pretend that only psychopaths -- who by definition are abberations -- are evil. Read the definition given above. I say again - more than half of modern Americans are evil.

For an oldschool RPG geek to have such a cartoonish view of evil is sad.
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You sound like a caricature of a 'woke' person with this nonsense. This is the same as the "because they're ignorant of their privilege, they're evil racists!" argument.
 
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Harshaw

Harshaw

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the wolf of wall street idgaf GIF
 
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Phazael

Phazael

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Mist said:
[This doesn't belong here, but...]

The middle-eastern Islamic countries are not societies, they are evil tribes of cavemen who happen to live atop of oil fields. If not for their oil fields, they would be stabbing each other in the chest with stone swords or whatever they were doing before they had something the west wanted. They are a great example of what I'm talking about, thanks for bringing them up.

For the US and Russia, I think you're confusing "ignorance in aggregate" with evil. Every society in any time is going to have an utterly ignorant 30% of the bell curve. That's not the same thing as evil, it's just how IQ and other expressed behaviors that map onto a standard distribution aggregate across a population.

I would put less than 6% of Americans as "evil" (as in remorseless psychopathy) and even if you look at the ~0.1% of the population that our system puts in command of capital, probably less than a third of them are "evil." Most "moral" arguments that Americans have with each other are simply semantic ones (ie "terminating a pregnancy" vs "baby-killer") enflamed by a media ecosystem chasing bad incentives. If you start thinking of your neighbors as "evil" rather than simply misled, you're letting the media win, and by media, I mean :emoji_nose:media:emoji_nose:. Most Americans are nice.
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Nice to see you come around and be both based and optimistic. Never thought I would live to see a day where your opinion of fellow humans was higher than mine.

I am actually being sincere, btw.
 
Mist

Mist

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Phazael said:
Nice to see you come around and be both based and optimistic. Never thought I would live to see a day where your opinion of fellow humans was higher than mine.

I am actually being sincere, btw.
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I've always had high amounts of faith in 'people' as individuals, and low amounts of faith in 'people' as a group.

Most individuals do the right thing. Most groups only do the right thing only after they've fucked up every possible other way first.

My pessimism comes from the fact that most of the problems humans face in the present and near future require collective action, and, well, see above.^^
 
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Phazael

Phazael

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Fair enough, but I maintain that anyone who thinks societies composed of mostly evil individuals cannot function does not really know or understand much of human history. All a society needs are shared values, even if they are immoral and even in a western society. Nazi Germany had plenty of evil to go around and was flourishing up until it picked a fight with the entire rest of Europe, both economically and socially. Soviets killed millions and only collapsed back into Russia because they decided to engage in a money printing war with Ronnie. Thats just two modern empires. History is jam packed with examples of strong empires where the shared values of its citizenry were pretty fucking twisted, like damn near any South American civilization for some prominent examples.

A world with magic and literal demons? I don't think its far fetched that a society with rampant backstabbing and intrigue could exist, where the dominant factions are constantly shifting, because we have already seen civilizations like that in human history. This is especially true if it had a single unifying harmful religion or philosophy that the populace all subscribed to, so there are your long running Middle Eastern style empires we have seen in our history. And it would weed out the weak really fucking fast. But it might be dependent on war, slavery, and espionage to maintain itself, I agree, which does kind of sound like the post WW2 USA if you really think about it. Finally, never underestimate the degree to which people will be sheep and go along with even absurdly heinous shit to fit in (see current western civilization).
 
Mist

Mist

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Phazael said:
A world with magic and literal demons? I don't think its far fetched that a society with rampant backstabbing and intrigue could exist, where the dominant factions are constantly shifting, because we have already seen civilizations like that in human history.
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I mean, this brings up a good point of what I hate about fantasy societies: They make no sense.

Nearly every fantasy world is based around a societies that have stagnated for thousands of years.

This is so antithetical to the world we actually live in.

Most fantasy settings are very boring to me. I like stories that take place in periods of great upheaval and/or change.
 
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