About why the FR settings are not the problem - I think I went about this the wrong way. After carefully considering it, I don't think the nature of the settings as kanisatha explained them at least is a problem here, especially if we consider what he said about bg2 and throne of Bhaal. @kanisatha correct me if I'm wrong here but what you're saying is that there is some sort of good balance that ultimately can't be shifted. I have two questions about it:
1) how big a change has to be to be considered evil win? You mentioned somewhere Baldur's Gate being destroyed. A grove destroyed is too small I take it?
2) if we establish that a grove being destroyed is too small to be considered evil ending, does it make this ending to be natural ending, good ending, or something else?
Yes the FR setting (taken as a whole) strongly favors good over evil. Even among the gods, Ao the overgod is supposed to be neutral but pretty much always takes the side of the good gods. And it is always the evil gods that get punished and/or imprisoned for doing something wrong by some alliance of good gods (which sometimes even includes lawful evil gods). Corellon constantly puts Lolth in her place when he feels she has gone too far with one of her plots. However, the setting does have pockets of evil, for example the Underdark, Thay, Zhentil Keep, etc.
As to "how big," anything that potentially can rise to the level of changing canon in the setting is not likely to happen. For example, a video game is not going to destroy or change into a bastion of evil some major FR city unless WotC has decided that is going to be part of canon for the setting for some reason. But something (a character or a place) that is not referenced anywhere in any FR book, yeah that can change no problem. In the case of the druid grove being destroyed, if that is the extent of what you and others are talking about as the "evil path" or even an "evil ending," I don't see a problem there. So then perhaps it is just a case of us talking past each other in terms of what we each consider to be an evil path/ending. The scope of what you all are envisioning as an evil path/ending seems to be much smaller than what I was imagining as an evil path/ending.
For me:
A good path in a game is when something fundamentally bad/evil is changed by my PC into something good.
An evil path in a game, then, is when something fundamentally good is changed by my PC into something bad/evil.
Alright, thanks for clarifying - I see the player as the entity fundamentally turned to evil or good. The hero had a choice, and they chose evil. Evil ending. But I understand your criterion now, and interesting learning some more god lore.
Interesting. Yeah, the PC being either a hero or an antihero was so not what I was perceiving as a good or evil ending. So again, clearly we were misperceiving what the other was saying. Glad we all have some clarity now, even if not necessarily agreement.
