I had an idea for the foundations of a game world and I need suggestions to define it. In the setting, there's a universal conflict involving gods and outsiders, but the only people really privy and participatory in the conflict are adventurers. The lay people are mostly oblivious. This isn't exactly breaking new ground, I know, but I need to define the conflict in what I hope is a fresh way.
Good vs Evil carries too many moral implications.
Light vs Dark is an obvious choice, but it seems tired and unoriginal.
Order vs Chaos has always inspired me much less than other tropes.
Any suggestions? I'd like to make the conflict something that could be fairly universal, enough so to involve gods at least. Doesn't have to be good vs evil necessarily; there could be both good and evil on both sides, conceivably. Something elemental maybe? Help me out.
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Individualism vs. Collective
It's something I saw in an old Hellstorm, Son of Satan comic. Heaven stood on the side of Collectivism. A oneness that all beings could be a part of, Souls who asscend to heaven give up individuality to become a part of the whole. There is no conflict, there is no discrimination, all are one.
Hell meanwhile championed individuality and the sense of self. Conflict is enevitable because each being has their own goals and purpose.
I always felt it was an interesting take on things.
Individualism vs. Collective
This is a very succinct way of expressing what I've recently done in my own games. I've called the two forces CHAOS and ORDER, but they are not analogous to Chaos/Law of the alignment spectrum, nor to Good/Evil.
Order demands obedience and offers safe passage. Chaos promises salted earth but broken chains.
Order sees itself as a force for stability and protector of the weak. Order claims that its victory will ensure a world where everyone can live in harmony and society can reach its fullest potential. The land will be prosperous and just, with fear and suffering exterminated from the world. Meanwhile, Chaos sees Order as a shortsighted tyrant overreaching its boundaries that puts shackles on others in an attempt to enslave them to a misguided moral code. Chaos claims that Order’s victory will mean a world of endless chains and faceless judges where passion is dead and free will is long gone.
Chaos sees itself as a force for emotion and a bringer of freedom. Chaos claims that its victory will ensure a world without limitations, where the strong can pursue their passions and live life to the fullest. The individual will be free to fulfill his potential, unrestricted and glorious. Meanwhile, Order sees Chaos as a destructive and selfish individualist, willing to trample the weak on its path to power without regard for the cost. Order claims that Chaos’ victory will bring an end to civilization, a world of anarchy and ruin where the only rule is by violence and the only peace lies in death.
The key to this dynamic is that both forces are "good" in their milder forms, and "evil" in their extreme forms. In its milder forms, Order is about working together and building something that is greater than the sum of its parts. In its extreme forms, it's about total dominance and control, excising subversion and imposing itself regardless of the cost to the individual. Meanwhile, Chaos in its milder forms is about passion and surpassing limitations. Taken to the extreme, it's about power at any cost, unfettered greed and ambition, and the utter destruction of any obstacle to its freedom.
The average person, then, might lean more one way or another, but fears the true attention of either force. Demons and angels might both be likely to enslave or destroy your home, but for different reasons- the demon because he is power-hungry, the angel because he thinks you corrupt and incapable of proper self-governance.
What are you defining as a god and an outsider? Do you mean outsider as in something like angels and demons, do you mean something like the things from Far Realm, or do you mean something else entirely?
In the case of deities vs outsiders (angels/demons/whatever), it could be something like Thomas proposed - perhaps the deities are distant and those who serve them engage with mortals and sympathize. Now there is a war because the deities want things to stay the same and those that serve them want things to change.
In the case of deities vs Far Realmers, it could be that the things from the Far Realm are always trying to slip in and the deities need to keep them out. The Far Realm could represent the chaos from before the beginning of the universe or it could simply be a realm beyond that occasionally gets in and causes issues. Those from the Far Realm need not be malicious, they simply are incapable of understanding the trouble they cause.
For anything else, it's going to depend on what else you want them fighting, but instead of good and evil it could be anything that is argued about. Undoubtedly this is going to leave occasional marks on the Prime, but if one side or the other wins things are very likely going to change.
@Greylurker, that is a really cool idea. I might run with that as my new law vs chaos, even if I don't use it in this context I'm working on now! Thanks.
@Withouthisfoot, that's heavy stuff. I really like the richness of it and the idea that they can both be both good and evil. It made me think of The Golden Compass and the Magisterium. Very cool.
@Indigare, after re-reading what I wrote, I see how you got that I'd pit the gods against the outsiders. I intended to explain that it was more of a planar conflict and the world was a neutral battleground. I imagine camps of allied deities and their accompanying outsiders fighting against opposed camps. Again, none of this is innovative storytelling. Bottom line, I'm just looking for an original conflict that I can build a setting around. High-level philosophy is probably not where I want to go, in this case. Just something fun and interesting. I keep coming back to Light vs Darkness, but that's just so overdone. I'm thinking of like Matter vs Dark Matter. Or Arcane vs Divine. Or Life vs Unlife. Or Fire vs Water vs Air vs Earth. Something along those lines. Just something different from Good vs Evil.
Hive Mind Angels, speaking in unison or splitting sentences up amongst them selves when they speak.
Raise dead might be difficult because you have to pull a soul out of the Collectivness of the One after it's been absorbed. Maybe they don't always come back "right"
Azata's would be on the Individualist side, bestowing bursts of creativity on mortals spuring artistic creativity and individuality that borders on madness.
Demons trying to save mortals souls by forcibly reaping them from the living and draging them to hell for their own good.
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In your opening post you hint at an interesting idea... gods vs. the outsiders that serve them. Like the story of Lucifer and his rebel angels turning against God (check out Paradise Lost for inspiration). Or like the the Greek Olympian gods overthrowing their predecessors the titans.
Maybe society has been gradually turning away from religion and turning towards technology/arcane magic. It reaches a point that the benevolent gods and the evil gods agree that the sentient races of the world are irredeemably flawed. Good and evil deities alike form a pact to cleanse the world of all life and begin anew. Their servants, the various outsiders, deal more directly with the peoples of the world and more invested in it. The good outsiders want to see the various humanoids who have remained faithful rewarded, and to keep up their good works. The evil outsiders have invested too much of their power in building up cults of humanoid followers and forming pacts with humanoid spell-casters. If the gods can so quickly turn on the mortals, who's to say the outsiders won't be next. Reluctantly the greatest of the good outsiders and the evil outsiders band together to declare war on the gods and to save mankind/elfkind/orckind/etc.
PCs would of course be caught in the middle, probably siding with the outsiders, and the outsiders' ultimate goal might be to ascend to godhood and replace the deities they destroy.
Self-Determination versus Co-Dependence is always a good one. No real right or wrong here. Essentially one side is for free will, the other side is all about the "greater good".
Where the conflict comes in, of course, is the methodology. At either extreme you have anarchists and dictators, while even closer to the more moderate ends of each spectrum you can have a clash of one side wanting freedom of choice and the other side wanting to assign things where they feel they would do the most good.
This is sort of several ideas in one, and lends itself to more of an overall theme of various plots that may or may not be directly connected rather than a more concrete clash of ideals.
The Free Republic can clash just as harshly with the Benevolent Dictatorship, the strict Meritocracy, or the perfect Socialist Utopia as it can with the standard Evil Empire fare, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
@edross, whoa! That's a cool idea. I'd get to summon both succubi AND hound archons to fight for me!
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Ah, dichotomies. Magic versus science. Nature versus nurture. Arcane versus divine. Paper versus plastic.
One of the older types of dualities, which goes with what Jeven wrote, are the current deities vs older deities (Olympians vs Titans) or current deities against other deities or entities (the Aesir vs the Vanir or the Aesir vs the Jotuns).
Depending how race relations are, it's certainly possible to have the pantheons of different races in conflict. Though this tends to be human, dwarf, elf etc vs orc, goblin, troll etc there's no reason that elf and dwarf deities might not fight (they tend to have a long rivalry). This could present an interesting situation among deities if all camps have a mix of good and evil, so that you can have orc and elf deities on the same side or something similar. Shifting planar alliances could make things awkward for any divine spellcaster.
You could have deities representing civilization against deities of nature. You can always have dreams vs nightmares. Maybe the world is due for a change and the deities are holding rounds of fighting like a celestial football game and the ultimate winners get to reshape the world and races.
could always do supernatural route, sure there's good and evil lurking around, but the most evil things with the most power are like the Leviathans, Extremely Lawful evil. In supernatural they farm humans(in their "natural" habitat) as opposed to attacking them in dark alleys and what not.
I'd second Jevan. Make it more "us vs them" than anything else. It lets you work all kinds of grey areas in, and gives the opportunity to occasionally have the players need to work against their own side, to shake things up.
The "Dresdenverse" has a rather interesting approach to the duality struggle when dealing with the courts of the fey.
Essentially it boils down to Summer versus Winter. The interesting thing is that to begin with it seems like the standard good vs evil, but the more in depth you go you begin to see that they are really just 2 sides of the 1 coin, ie winter appear to be the baddies because they are cold and unforgiving of weakness (very school of hard knocks), and summer very nurturing and forgiving. But either approach can be good or bad depending on the circumstance, if training someone for combat for example its better to be a bit rough with them then it is to coddle them and leave them un-prepared for when an opponent will not give them a moment to catch their breath in the middle of a fight.
The best part is one of the core problems the hero has to deal with is that its bad if either side "wins" or even gets too much of an upper hand, if winter wins world gets an ice age and if summer wins then world one massive dessert. So the main theme ends up being balance is whats important.
"the greater good" or
"evil is good"
basically: there is a threat so horrible, either a natural force or enemies that the only way to combat it is to turn to dark arts.
Hellbound.
The concept I'm going for is something more like the warhammer 40k setting. Maybe the world itself is unravelling and the only way to avoid the decline is to sacrifice magicians. So until we find a better way, we hunt them and sacrifice them in an ongoing grand ritual at the worldheart. most people don't know about this and only know of the holy (if your faction of choice responsible is religious) or stalwart adventurers that are fighting to protect the land. the borders are patrolled harshly to avoid knowledge about the end to spread.
the further you travel from the know lands the more the world is broken: bits of land floating in the air, crazy weather, worse monsters and beasts. weird people travel in the outskirts, some say that the key to saving us all is lost outside the known land in the cataclysm.
-so it's basically the plot from bastion through the eyes of darker than black with a sprinkle of cheliax.
Socrates once asked is it good because the gods love it or do the gods love because it is good.
Meaning is dogma only on the arbitrary declaration of the gods. Or is dogma something the gods submit. This presents 2 solutions authoritarian and ideology.
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"the greater good" or
"evil is good"basically: there is a threat so horrible, either a natural force or enemies that the only way to combat it is to turn to dark arts.
Hellbound.
The concept I'm going for is something more like the warhammer 40k setting. Maybe the world itself is unravelling and the only way to avoid the decline is to sacrifice magicians. So until we find a better way, we hunt them and sacrifice them in an ongoing grand ritual at the worldheart. most people don't know about this and only know of the holy (if your faction of choice responsible is religious) or stalwart adventurers that are fighting to protect the land. the borders are patrolled harshly to avoid knowledge about the end to spread.
the further you travel from the know lands the more the world is broken: bits of land floating in the air, crazy weather, worse monsters and beasts. weird people travel in the outskirts, some say that the key to saving us all is lost outside the known land in the cataclysm.-so it's basically the plot from bastion through the eyes of darker than black with a sprinkle of cheliax.
As an adaption of this, if you wanted to take advantage of players that live by the creed "Spell Casters = Win!" you could make it that it turns out that magic is finite and all those casters casting all those spells has lead to the unraveling of the world, now secret squads are being sent out to hunt down and kill any spell caster they can find meanwhile other heroes must venture out into the cataclysm in search of the dingus that will refill the worlds magic reserves
As an adaption of this, if you wanted to take advantage of players that live by the creed "Spell Casters = Win!" you could make it that it turns out that magic is finite and all those casters casting all those spells has lead to the unraveling of the world, now secret squads are being sent out to hunt down and kill any spell caster they can find meanwhile other heroes must venture out into the cataclysm in search of the dingus that will refill the worlds magic reserves"the greater good" or
"evil is good"basically: there is a threat so horrible, either a natural force or enemies that the only way to combat it is to turn to dark arts.
Hellbound.
The concept I'm going for is something more like the warhammer 40k setting. Maybe the world itself is unravelling and the only way to avoid the decline is to sacrifice magicians. So until we find a better way, we hunt them and sacrifice them in an ongoing grand ritual at the worldheart. most people don't know about this and only know of the holy (if your faction of choice responsible is religious) or stalwart adventurers that are fighting to protect the land. the borders are patrolled harshly to avoid knowledge about the end to spread.
the further you travel from the know lands the more the world is broken: bits of land floating in the air, crazy weather, worse monsters and beasts. weird people travel in the outskirts, some say that the key to saving us all is lost outside the known land in the cataclysm.-so it's basically the plot from bastion through the eyes of darker than black with a sprinkle of cheliax.
you sir, just found the theme for the 3rd season of this game :)
(the 1st would be struggle against evil spellcasters, the 2nd would be innocence lost as they relize what the captives and/or corpses are used for.)
Could bring in some good old Darksun stuff. Arcane Magic eats away at the world making it uninhabitable. Mages become a blight, damaging the world just by existing. Need to be hunted down before they grow so powerful that they could bring a kingdom to ruin just from spellcasting a single fight.
Or maybe Magic leave some sort of radiation. Contaminating the area where spells are cast, leading to wierd mutations (EX: Griffons, Manticores and other magical beasts)
could always do supernatural route, sure there's good and evil lurking around, but the most evil things with the most power are like the Leviathans, Extremely Lawful evil. In supernatural they farm humans(in their "natural" habitat) as opposed to attacking them in dark alleys and what not.
I loved the Leviathan story-line; admittedly, I've enjoyed the series much less since they became obsessed with their Heaven-based storyline. Lotta great ideas came out if that series - Crowley is the best.
I like the idea of "Nature" vs "Progress".
Both sides can live in the same community. One wants to let the land do its thing and or live in harmony with it, the other wants to exploit the land for financial/personal gain.
Individualism vs. CollectiveThis is a very succinct way of expressing what I've recently done in my own games. I've called the two forces CHAOS and ORDER, but they are not analogous to Chaos/Law of the alignment spectrum, nor to Good/Evil.
Order demands obedience and offers safe passage. Chaos promises salted earth but broken chains.
** spoiler omitted **
Funny thing is, this IS how I run the Law/Order and Chaos alignment spectrum in my games.
Developed a home brew world that revolved around Tradition v Progress.
There were many nations, yet only two central pantheons. The Pantheons were in a sort of Cold War rivalry as various nations sided with one or the other pantheon. There was a prophecy that the pantheons would one day war, yet no one knows which side would win. Political shenanigans left any nation just as likely to war or make peace with other nations no matter the religion - it was just simpler to use religion as a tool to justify war if the opposing nation favored the opposite religion.
Fantasy literature-wise,
Order and chaos is a central concept to Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion realms (Elric, Corum, Etc.)
How about 2 "layers" of good vs. evil?
Layer 1: Cosmic good vs evil
Layer 2: Moral good vs evil
Cosmic goods and evils are defined by the gods, like stakes in the ground. They often coincide with moral good vs evil, but not always. These also dictate magic descriptors, outsiders, planar traits and the like.
Moral good and evil is about thinking creatures and their behavior, like IRL stuff.
This would allow for paladins to commit moral atrocities for the sake of cosmic good. I'm talking bad on the level of genocide and torture here.
This also allows outsiders (who are cosmic-aligned by design) to act in good or evil ways without alignment being considered... however they always operate as agents for their cosmic alignment. For example, demons would help a demon worshiping people to raise well adjusted and educated children, complete with love and attention, while also indoctrinating them against the "hypocrisy of Good".
This would effectively create a cosmic culture war with altruistic and vile behaviors on both sides.
There should be some level of parallels:
This also REALLY eases the strain on alignment versus behavior. Players can join whatever cosmic alignment "club" they prefer, and have to meet certain criteria, but are otherwise free to be whoever they want.
With respect to others, extreme Individualism vs Collectivism reminds me too much of today's political debates.
Here are some additionals:
The Value of Karma: Due to a bad agreement, all souls are doomed for hell, or heaven is just picky. In this system, there really is a weights and measures system. Heroism is one method.
Mixed Mythology: Heaven and Hell are a mythology crafted by the human dreamstate. Therefore, you have multiple Heavens and multiple Hells. The power of the mortal is really the power of its dreaming state and imagination, which causes such things to be real and is one of the reasons that all forms of Hell quest for the mortal soul. This does not mean that good or evil do not exist; only that while the core of them may be similar, the particulars vary from place to place, and the actual, living mythologies enforce it.
Right to Destiny: A different take on the above could be that Hell was the original creators, but the mortals, once slaves, were able to dream themselves free. This is the true value of the soul: to give dreams energy and power, over time. (Because this happens over time, how or if you have this mechanic fit into the game world is up to the DM).
It was then that mortals created Heaven. Heaven was the wish of all their dreams and wants. It is perhaps: A pure realm that Hell fights against their achieving by draining their souls and in the meantime, they're stuck in this middle, or only partly-achieved state. Alternately, perhaps heaven is too pure of a realm, and mortals find themselves doubly trapped. Even more alternately, heaven-as-made-by-mortals is really mixed up (some people are just twisted, and this was created by the shared dreams of -everyone-). It can save them from Hell, but is it worth it?
Heaven as Pure Ideas, Hell as Impure Fragments: In this, Heaven represents the purest form of creation, the purest forms of philosophy, of ideals, concepts, and ideas. The plane of fire might as well be one of Heaven's many parts. Most of Heaven is unviewable by mortal eyes, and is incomprehensible to the uncleansed body. Hell becomes the unworkable, castoff fragments of these ideals, who over time, go mad on their own. It is merely a consequence of creation and nothing is to be done for it. Think of it as the leftover parts of a sculpture, as broken clocks, untruths, as a shattered landscape and the fallen buildings of an architectual failure.
The war of mortals then is to protect their own plane of existence. While imperfect, the Mortal Realm is comprehensible to them, it is livable and new creations (from Heaven, this place of pure concept, etc.) filter downwards and generally do not harm them.
However, the leftovers do, these bits of bitter, useless leftover creation who did not "make the cut." Mortals train themselves to combat these fragments. The nature of the Mortal Realm, with its position between the Pure and the Impure, makes it the perfect battleground.
Faithwise, this world could be very practical with "what is good" being focused on local customs or survival...or it could worship ideals, which Heaven embodies. Good would be honoring what is Ideal and rebuking what is Corrupt of that Ideal. For example, an engineer would strive to embody and honor true design and strong safety measures, while rebuking what caused buildings to crumble. An engineer warped by Hell would infuse buildings with flaws, or build bridges to fall.
An artist could be both a savior and a sinner. On the one hand, an artist might use art as war, reclaiming fallen structures and giving them purpose. On the other, a deconstructivist would stand for exactly the opposite: tearing down what was once Ideal and rending it to rubble.
You could go old-school, Howard-style. This article by Thulsa is a good read regarding the Howard-based Pantheon for Conan and his style of writing. I'm quite fond of it.
It's not so much about good versus evil (more like holding back the inevitable), however, which is why I like it so much.
Actually, I made a gaming world, a mish-mash of the Stormbringer/Elric, the Christian biblical story, history, and HP Lovecraft... but really my own thing.
Elves are ruled by a Chaotic Evil arcane elite who bind their souls to demonic patron in exchange for power. They're kind of like the Melniboneans. They live in the Western Old World.
Dwarves are ruled by Devils who their clergy worships in lieu of the gods (who abandoned the mortal world after mortals were very very naughty). They live beneath the Old World, along the mountain ranges that separate the West from the East.
Gnomes are very few, and are insanely powerful, alien-minded travelers from another dimension. They came to this reality to perform strange and terrifying experiments with some unknown purpose. Their region is plagued by insane cults of savage humanoids who worship them and the horrific monstrosities they create (usually aberrations, but also constructs, magical beasts and hybrid species). They exist in the Eastern Old World, and even the Elves and Dwarves are scared of them.
Humans are currently the closest thing to being good, because they have exalted their messiah into godhood (good aligned) after he united Human tribes, and then led them across the desert to find the New World (part Exodus, part Columbus, part Chinese emperor). After, they were corrupted by the Elves and Dwarves (who tried to gain their favor, as they have a bona-fide god), their god incited an uprising and caused a worldwide flood. This turned the desert they crossed into an ocean and supposedly wiped out the Old World, including the evil Elves and Dwarves (but didn't: the Elven Wizard King was tricked by his nephew into burning up all his power to surround the entire Old World with a permanent Control Water spell... that weakened King escaped his nephew, who took the throne, and is hiding in the outskirts of the New World among savage Humans that worship his patron demon). As such, Humans have just re-established themselves after a bloody crusade against their own demon-wizards and devil-bishops.
Halflings founded a small enlightened society in the Southern Old World (a la Greeks), led by a metallic Dragon in disguise. They have liberated Humans who are now 30% of the population, and also some Elves and Dwarves, and they reconnected with the Old Gods (good and evil). They keep pretty quiet.
The Savage Kingdoms, which are in the South of both the New and Old worlds, are overrun by reptilians - lizardfolk - who thrive among the bones of an ancient and lost Elven civilization (Egyptian and Mayan style). They claim to be the spawn of dragons, and the heirs of the world. They worship many things, from images of dragons, to symbols of pure darkness, to vile nightmarish things which would fit in among the Gnomish lands. Their wild claims eerily coincide with those of the Kobolds (who live in pockets in Elven lands). Even the now-extinct Troglotydes made this claim thousands of years ago, before committing mass-suicide, ending war with the then-good Dwarves: the Dwarven record confirms their oath to rise up and take the world back in an "ecstasy of slaughter" when the stars are right.