| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Someone who is neutral often has good intentions, but is unwilling to go out of their way to act on those intentions.The second problem is that people think you have to be "bwahahahaaaa I hurt that guy" evil to be evil. That does not exist. Nobody does evil to hurt someone else. The hurting happens for some other reason, such as needing to assert dominance, protecting a fragile ego, etc. What is evil is not caring.What would you suggest distinguishes evil from neutral?So would you think a morally lazy good person is neutral? (I'm referring to someone who wants to look after others' interests but can't be bothered actually putting that desire into action).
In other words, most of us are neutral.In case it isnt clear, I dont think alignment exists in reality, so I'm not asking for real-world examples. I mean in your game.
I think evil entails a desire for harming others and good entails a desire for helping others. The way I play it, indifference to others is a mark of neutrality on the moral axis (not evil as Sissyl suggested).
Pretty much what Sissyl said.
I don't care for the Team Good vs. Team Evil way of handling alignment, so I essentially treat alignments as a spectrum of morality. (They're not nice little boxes that non-outsiders fit neatly into.) Also, I don't think about it too hard.
Anyway, here is the Good-Evil spectrum according to TS:
Evil can manifest as an active desire to harm others, as in the case of Hitler, but there's always a reason beyond Becuz Im Evil LOL. But more often, evil is "I don't want to hurt you, but you're standing in my way..."
Neutrality is humanity's natural state. A person who cares strongly for his family and close friends, but lacks the commitment to go out of his way for anyone else is an example of a N person. Good and Evil require not only thought, but action in the pursuit of either altruism or selfishness. So neutrality is defined by the unwillingness to act selflessly or selfishly in a notable manner.
Good is the consideration of others; their welfare and their happiness. You don't have to be Huma Dragonsbane to be a Good Guy, but you have to make sacrifices or go out of your way to help others. Maybe you give to charity on a regular basis, maybe you stand up for others against bullies, or maybe you practice idealism at your own risk and expense.
Another way to think of the spectrum is: villain, antihero, hero. Though those labels share the same risk as alignments: everyone has their own perception of those terms, so they don't necessarily convey my ideas on alignment.
Like Sissyl said -- your game, your rules.
Cheers.
It's Wrex.
I don't get people who go full renegade. It's just a game is not an excuse. You have to consciously pick a bad, jerk, evil choice. I couldn't.
Its worth it to punch that nosey reporter in the face, or so I've been told. It's also a much different and aggressive approach, and your character is much more likely to get what he wants and how he wants.
Again though, I prefer this options not to be linked to some growing alignment. In Fable at least I always had a choices but the choices were reflected on me for example, but in Mass Effect your alignment actually determines what actions you can make later down the road, and being neutral is punished. Similarly, in DnD sometimes people turn it into a straightjacket, instead of just letting me play a character. Alignment restrictions feel similar, in that it tries to get me to play a certain kind of character when I want to play my own.
WREX! Miranda! Why were you both such big jerks! Sheperd, why'd you destroy the cure for the Genophage! There was so much wrong in that mission!
What happens if you go neutral?
Do you die alone? lol
What happens if you go neutral?
Do you die alone? lol
In Mass Effect you lose out on rewards and can't talk someone into doing something in a few cases. In particular the example in the spoilers.
In Fable... Nothing bad happens, but to be fair many of the options are good/evil, and later pure/corrupt. Never played 3, but I'd suppose its the same?
In Pathfinder... Table Variation happens. Maybe your told your being too much of something? You get perks like not being hit by spells/smite that targets evil/good, I know that much!
In futurama, you care neither strongly one way or the other.
Tequila said it pretty well. A neutral cares for those who matter to her. She isn't quite willing to throw everyone else under the bus, and while she may indeed do occasional pissy or even callous things, she has a conscience and shows consideration if it doesn't cost her too much. The pleas of Good people to get her to help them improving the world are similarly rarely answered. Most of us are neutral.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
It's Wrex.
I don't get people who go full renegade. It's just a game is not an excuse. You have to consciously pick a bad, jerk, evil choice. I couldn't.
The Renegade options, for the most part, aren't "I'm evil" it's "I don't do things by the book/Screw the rules I'm doing what's right".
A lot of the Paragon options are handling things diplomatically, going through the proper channels, and making friends.
Renegade...isn't. You basically come across as the usual action hero in the vein of Steven Segal or Bruce Willis movies. Trying to do the right thing, but straight up not giving a f%@& what other people think.
Also, punching the reporter is worth it. I laughed my ass off in the third game when she finally ducked the punch.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
And then you headbutt her. I used paragon options on her, made her look an ass in front of her viewers.
Full renegade Shepards have significantly lower readiness rating in the last game though.
Why the heck would i kill Wrex for being pissed that the council effectively neutered his entire species?
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
On the tangent of alignment and video games, Star Wars: The Old Republic tended to have the Jedi vs. Sith plotlines mired in a freakish perception of good vs. evil, in that the 'light side' choices tended to be the most sensible and optimal choices, and the 'dark side' choices were short-sighted and counter-productive. I found it annoying playing a Bounty Hunter or Sith that I had to destroy information or equipment or resources that would be useful to my side or kill potential allies (or slaves, whatever) or make enemies out of neutral people by deliberately choosing the most dickish option of dealing with them to earn 'dark side' points.
No wonder they always lost. It wasn't that they were evil, it was that they were idiots.
Too often, IMO, partially as a result of stuff like the Comics Code, which forbade bad-guys from ever being able to win to avoid 'glorifying crime' or whatever, bad-guys in fiction are portrayed as scorpions from the fable, incapable of *not* betraying everyone around them (or taking similarly short-sighted and bewilderingly incompetent actions), and, *inevitably,* getting bitten in the *** by that choice.
Worse, the more staggeringly self-defeating the enemies become, the less 'heroic' the protagonist appears to be, since, at the end of the day, he could have just stayed home, since the bad-guys were fated to turn on each other and defeat themselves anyway...
On the tangent of alignment and video games, Star Wars: The Old Republic tended to have the Jedi vs. Sith plotlines mired in a freakish perception of good vs. evil, in that the 'light side' choices tended to be the most sensible and optimal choices, and the 'dark side' choices were short-sighted and counter-productive.
Speaking of those games, I totally spaced if knights of the old republic II was good about alignment. I remember it had some interesting characters, but I did space on the moral plotlines. I know another bioware game, Jade Empire, had way of closed fist/open palm instead of good evil. Been too long since I've played either of those games to remember how well the alignment worked out.
4 scales? You mean like 8 total directions? I just want choices, I'm not a big fan of attaching them to morality. Attaching it to morality can be limiting, and it can make it feel like your only going in one direction if your trying to be good for instance.
As a dm, I use alignment but I also factor in allegiances and culture/race.
Sometimes, allegiances are a lot more important, and you are hardly going to convince someone to genocide their own people.
Something like an Andoranean hobgoblin, may be very much culturally an Andoranean, not a LE hob.
For those who do not like alignment, here is a piece on Russia, poets and "the only choice was between bloody chaos and ruthless order."
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113386/pushkin-putin-sad-tale-democracy- russia#
This illustrates the intent vs. effect aspect. Do you judge an action on the intent, or the result? The effect of the ruling makes it easier for the majority in a state to deny rights to a minority...Let's return to a real-world example of applying alignment to a complicated situation- the Supreme Court ruling on DOMA. I framed marriage and DOMA in the context of tax benefits and legal rights. The Supreme Court ruling restores those rights to same-sex couples, but increase each state government's power to take away those rights in the future. How do you judge the alignment of that? At first glance it looks like a good things, but it effectively increases each state's power to take away tax breaks and legal rights.It's a good decision that could have been a lot better.
The SC's ruling declared DOMA unconstitutional, meaning that lawsuits filed under it have no legal ground to stand on...or something. I don't follow the news closely enough to know all the details. Anyway, this is a good thing.
The SC's ruling also left the field wide open for individual states to pass discriminatory laws. This is not such a good thing.
Thus my comment that the ruling is a good thing that could have been much better. So, you can safely say I'm more about result than I am about intent. (Though intent of course plays a part.)
Did states not have the right to pass discriminatory laws to begin with? My assessment is based on me thinking they did.
Oh, alignment gets messy when applying it to anything beyond fairytale scenarios, no doubt.
That's one of the reasons I just don't worry about alignment.
On the tangent of alignment and video games, Star Wars: The Old Republic tended to have the Jedi vs. Sith plotlines mired in a freakish perception of good vs. evil, in that the 'light side' choices tended to be the most sensible and optimal choices, and the 'dark side' choices were short-sighted and counter-productive. I found it annoying playing a Bounty Hunter or Sith that I had to destroy information or equipment or resources that would be useful to my side or kill potential allies (or slaves, whatever) or make enemies out of neutral people by deliberately choosing the most dickish option of dealing with them to earn 'dark side' points.
No wonder they always lost. It wasn't that they were evil, it was that they were idiots.
The Jedi saw themselves as Light and the Sith darkness, and were on a quest to destroy the darkness, whereas the Sith were darkness, and lost due to their Blindsightedness ( In the Emperor, consciencelessness, and in the case of Darth Vader, being mezmerized by the aforementioned Conscience-blind Emperor. . . ). I don't see Anakin as being evil, simply deceived by the Emperor, who was deeply Blind. The Jedi were also blind, but not in conscience, but in having a view of anything dark as being neccessary to conquer, as opposed to light and darkness being both neccessary parts of the universe.
What doesn't figure in is conscience-blindness. *THAT*, IMHO, is where the true *EVIL* is, not in a naturally occuring part of the cosmos....
|
I still stand by my Philosophy 101 definition of Evil as privation. Its a corruption, a lack where they should be something, or some sort of damage to a good thing that comprises an evil thing, as opposed to Tim Curry wearing prosthesis and being a sort of personification of 'Pure Evil.' Pure evil in my view being something that can't exist since existing itself is a sort of good.
Star Wars with the Sith suffers from the Jedi's state as designated protagonists. Skywalker, who ironically would have been considered a bad jedi prior to the purge, is probably one of the few I'd peg as having good alignment. A majority of the jedi come across as LN or N at best.
I do admit that my 'spoiled goodness' approach to evil does throw off the standard RPGs dynamics though, so I have evil apparently ascendant while in fact they are constantly fighting a losing war, the forces of balance are actually an enemy because they try to shore up a side who never should have existed in the first place, and heroes can actually fix things in worlds slowly marching towards a looming apocalypse (as a DM I'm rather happy that my players upon hearing that in the end times 'All that is not good will cease to be' got the sort of willies that the end times should invoke).
Good always seems to end up getting the short end of the awesome stick.