How is "Evil", or for that matter "Good", defined in your campaign world?  Is there an objective, universal standard of "evil"? No situational ethics, no differing codes of morality between different societies. A cosmic Evil is what seems to be presupposed by D&D type alignment. The Orcs are Evil and behave in Evil ways because that is their nature.  Which does raise the thorny question of why only Player Characters and a few importat NPCs get free will on questions of morality.

As for the Aztecs I am certain they thought their society and culture was good.  Human sacrifice was needed to keep the gods happy and ensure the continuation of the world. A different world view than the Europeans who considered human sacrifice evil.

My understanding is the Aztecs also conquered other tribes in a way we would call 'imperialistic' today. My question isn't how they viewed themselves but how one would view them in a game system. Obviously the Nazis didn't view themselves as evil either but I doubt there'd be much interest from many sane gamers is acting out the Shoah from the Nazis viewpoint.

Steve Perrin of Runequest fame designed an interesting evil society supplement for FR called Dreams of the Red Wizards.

Quote from: Spinachcat;949119Your campaign sounds awesome!!

Thanks, really it's pretty half assed and off the cuff.  At least they've stuck to it a bit.  We used to jump systems so often that I stopped trying to do any prep.

One of the cities in my home campaign is an "evil" society. Long story short: a janitor got the one ring and decided he was the new king of evil, and polymorphed the entire government, starting at the top, until he had equal parts army of monsters and loyal toadies.

So when characters are wandering around the city, they'll see things like former nobles pulling rickshaws for the newly politically-empowered ruling class of young necromancers, or gargoyles circling and dropping people from overhead, or zombies randomly crawling out of a well and eating citizens. It is, to coin a phrase, chaos.

King janitor-sauron rules because he's the most powerful (sort of), but really the city is just a free-for-all of evil creatures and humans competing against each other to form a government of madman-favored monsters.

The key here is that, what the players are experiencing is a highly unstable period of the city's history. I seriously doubt a "society" like this will remain in its current form for very long.

But its not inconceivable that something like this could exist, and work for a while.

Sounds great, not too off from Russia under the Soviets until the NEP was enacted to try and stablize things.

Quote from: Voros;949139What alignment were the Aztecs?

Lawful Evil! Even the babies!

Quote from: David Johansen;949246Thanks, really it's pretty half assed and off the cuff.

Lots of awesome happens that way!

Are you perpetually doing evil? Are you perpetually doing good? Perpetually doing law or chaos? Perpetually exercising free will (even in the middle of digestion, sleep, flatulence, or shitting,)?

No living sapient thing is perpetually doing one thing, from morality & aesthetics, to plain old sapience. You are taking an abstract tool of broad categorization and bringing it to the event horizon theoretical and trying to rationalize its red shift as something playable. This is the same nonsense used by the Gaming Den on system mechanics, but for setting parameters.

And now this gets into an older argument of realism v. nominalism, whether the abstracted concept is valid & useful unto itself within its sphere or whether anything can truly be known at all. So, instead of wasting time waiting for the post-modernism to appear, let's cut to the chase: no sapient mortal creature is acting in full cognizance of X conception every single moment of its brief existence -- sheer survival (base of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs) ensures that it cannot be so and still be a mortal creature. Ergo, your argument is moot from inception.

Any other questions?

Quote from: Opaopajr;949362Are you perpetually doing evil?

Yes!

I'm a white male gamer! It's all we do!

Quote from: Opaopajr;949362Any other questions?

When do we get pudding?

Quote from: Spinachcat;949364When do we get pudding?

After we conquer the world, of course! :mad:

Nah, fuck that, there's always room for pudding!

Hey, I'm like totally dating myself here, but remember when Hostess snacks would be all over comics & rpg magazines and would end up causing world peace between enemies? Like, twinkies & cupcakes would soothe the wrath of Skeletor, Cobra Commander, & Magneto!

That's where we went wrong in the world. We almost let Hostess go out of business...
Evil societies just want cream filled goodies!

Quote from: Opaopajr;949362Are you perpetually doing evil? Are you perpetually doing good? Perpetually doing law or chaos? Perpetually exercising free will (even in the middle of digestion, sleep, flatulence, or shitting,)?

The OP is clearly coming at this from having Alignment in the game, so it isn't worth arguing against Alignment.

Personally, I don't use Alignment, for the reasons that you and others have mentioned. However, I wouldn't crap all over a thread about the effects of Alignment, which is what this thread is.

Quote from: soltakss;949477The OP is clearly coming at this from having Alignment in the game, so it isn't worth arguing against Alignment.

Personally, I don't use Alignment, for the reasons that you and others have mentioned. However, I wouldn't crap all over a thread about the effects of Alignment, which is what this thread is.

I don't blame him. I cannot take alignment seriously. It makes sense in Moorcock as a pro-centrist political message, but breaks down when you try to remove the moral ambiguity. It is baked into the game, so trying to remove it is more difficult than keeping it, to the point where you could write books about removing alignment.

The purpose of an evil side is to have target to kill without worrying over guilt or morality. Those humanoids are meat robots made by evil gods, so it is totally okay to kill them. Never mind than an evil society could not maintain itself very long without not being evil all the time.

When I tried to add moral ambiguity to justify their existence alongside the metaphysical trinity of order-chaos-balance, I ended up with a bizarre aztec/gnostic hybrid that protects the universe from evil gods by causing pain and misery. It lets humanoids act evil without being caricatures.

In fact, you could take this to its logical extreme and posit that demons feed on suffering without necessarily being evil caricatures a la Mongoose's Infernum campaign setting. Are humans evil for raising and butchering farm animals in factories? Similar logic could be applied to demons.

Now you have a four-way moral conflict where the "evil" side's shtick is that they physically cannot coexist with the others or even necessarily with themselves. The humanoids need to maximize suffering to assuage the demons and the demons need to maximize suffering to survive.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;949551I don't blame him. I cannot take alignment seriously. It makes sense in Moorcock as a pro-centrist political message, but breaks down when you try to remove the moral ambiguity. It is baked into the game, so trying to remove it is more difficult than keeping it, to the point where you could write books about removing alignment.

A bit of history,

Alignment started in Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign because unlike most RPG campaigns today he was running groups of antagonist players. There were lawful players and there was chaotic players and probably a few neutrals trying to play one side off of the other. Gronan would know better than I how it was precisely setup. Remember the original Blackmoor campaign was a step from Braustein set in a fantasy world. Like Braustein it had players pursuing goals both in cooperation and against each other.

From what I understand Greyhawk was a much more cooperative campaign with the players having their hands full dealing with the dungeon. Although there are stories of PvP action. OD&D reflected that and where it grew beyond the core group of wargamers the original design reason behind having Law, Neutral, and Chaos got lost.

Afterwards it became natural to add a good-neutral-evil axis thus forming the nine alignments of AD&D 1st edition. But to me it was never a good fit and I quickly ditched in favor of specific religious tenets that clerics, druids, paladins, and rangers had to follow.

Quote from: estar;949557But to me it was never a good fit and I quickly ditched in favor of specific religious tenets that clerics, druids, paladins, and rangers had to follow.

As much as I've enjoyed the law-neutral-chaos axis, I think that this is a much better way of doing things. People tend to fall in love with simple, three-sided systems, but they rarely stand up to much scrutiny. A nuanced, exception-based approach to "alignment" better reflects a believable universe, and gives you more agendas to play with besides.

Looks like I'm in your debt, Estar.

Quote from: estar;949557But to me it was never a good fit and I quickly ditched in favor of specific religious tenets that clerics, druids, paladins, and rangers had to follow.

And that's why I stopped using Alignment years ago. I came to the same realization that Alignment mostly had no practical use for most D&D games outside of those things you mentioned or you were dealing with axiomatic beings from the outer-planes.

Quote from: tenbones;949567And that's why I stopped using Alignment years ago. I came to the same realization that Alignment mostly had no practical use for most D&D games outside of those things you mentioned or you were dealing with axiomatic beings from the outer-planes.

It does beg the question though: in a setting where axiomatic beings are active, would that be enough to make a functional evil civilization?

Take the drow.  They're presented as chaotic evil, but their society is lawful evil.  How?  Because Lolth will fuck up a drow, that's how!  Seriously though, she has demons, supernatural minions, magical mutations to bless/curse with, and ages of cultural shaping and manipulation to call upon.  The drow aren't evil in a vacuum; they were actively made that way, and given the tools to function despite their nature.  And if they break the party line, they get zapped into some half-spider abomination.  Meanwhile, Lolth actively encourages her drow to be this weird Lawful/Chaotic hybridization, because it helps -her-.

Or not.  I dunno'.  

I do however feel that any discussion of how an evil (or good) society could work -has- to consider the outside influence of massively powerful forces that transcend mortality.  Plus... to be blunt... if we're talking about D&D, we're talking about a setting with magic, gods, and undead.  Functioning, measurable, objective morality is just one more fantastic element you have to buy into.