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veteran
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Joined: Mar 2020
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I know that's a popular opinion but I always liked the reputation system of BG2. People just don't like that 2e - and Faerun especially - was a heroic setting and that evil was never intended to be a fully supported alignment. Evil was an alignment for villains and monsters.
BG2 is a game true to the Faerun setting - evil is just a dumb choice. Sure you get better Bhaal powers * but you are falling into daddy Bhaal's trap. This was Sarevok's mistake - which you can help him realize in ToB. Don't give into the evil inside . . .
* (vampric touch 2x a day is so much better than draw on holy might)
Last edited by KillerRabbit; 23/01/23 06:10 PM.
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@Blackheifer, I'm not defending here how BG 1 and 2 handled alignment and reputation. I can agree with you that those games' systems needed more work. However, I also agree with what @KillerRabbit is saying above about people (including game developers themselves) needing to realize and accept that in the FR setting "good" is the norm and "evil" is an aberration found in villains and monsters that are supposed to be defeated by the good/heroic side. That's the setting, like it or not. And when a game developer very arbitrarily and capriciously tries to change that it will naturally cause hardcore fans of that setting to get pissed off.
I will very honestly and bluntly say that THE reason I LOVE the FR setting is precisly because it is this super-heroic setting in which "good" dominates over "evil". When it comes to "good" versus "evil" in my RPGs, I don't care about nuance or balance. I want "good," labeled as such, to utterly crush "evil," also labeled as such. And I want this because I play my RPGs to escape from the real world in which, sadly, evil oftentimes wins out over good, and evil people get rewarded for their behavior at the expense of the good side, and there's nothing I can do to fix any of this in the real world. So at least in my game world, I want to have the satisfaction of being able to "fix" all that's wrong in the world.
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old hand
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old hand
Joined: Mar 2022
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However, I also agree with what @KillerRabbit is saying above about people (including game developers themselves) needing to realize and accept that in the FR setting "good" is the norm and "evil" is an aberration found in villains and monsters that are supposed to be defeated by the good/heroic side. That's the setting, like it or not. And when a game developer very arbitrarily and capriciously tries to change that it will naturally cause hardcore fans of that setting to get pissed off. I think you may substitute "forgotten realms" for "Faerun", else you would also include all the lower planes. I myself see Faerun as a neutral plane put in a sandwich between good and evil planes. Now that I think about it, are there any evil centered campains in this setting?
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veteran
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I myself see Faerun as a neutral plane put in a sandwich between good and evil planes.
Now that I think about it, are there any evil centered campains in this setting? My 2e sourcebooks are in a box somewhere so I can't get quotes or page numbers but it was said, in pretty explicit terms, that Faerun was a land of heroes. The studio that made BG repeatedly said they had no intention of supporting evil playthroughs. Like all editions since 2e had it controversies, Faerun had replaced the morally grey, Neutrally-aligned Greyhawk setting as the default setting . Faerun wasn't well received at first because it's new status coincided with the decision to remove Demons and Devils from the game. Also, TSR's decided to reach out to and hire some fundamentalist Christians and this upset fans who thought TSR should be pushing back against the satanic panic, not making concessions to the fundis (both the Dragonlance and Nethril settings were authored by fundamentalists). Fans protested and the demons and devils were brought back with different names * Greenwood pumped out supplements at a pretty quick rate and most fans warmed to Faerun. The people who preferred morally grey adventures eventually got the upper hand when TSR/WotC announced 3e. Greyhawk was, once again, the default setting and WotC started making supplements to support evil parties like the book of vile darkness. Monte Cook became an important voice in the new WotC and his blog became a place for people who disliked heroic narratives to gather. At the time you played Greyhawk if you liked to play evil or neutral, Faerun if you liked to play good. 4e happened. 5e happened, advocates of heroic adventures like Greenwood and Salvatore played an important role in telling the resurrection of Faerun story and there we are. Is it entirely clear that Faerun is still a setting where heroes vanquish villains and monsters? No. There's no crystal clear paragraph that says "Faerun is a heroic setting" It's just the history of the setting and the fact that the members of 'team evil' have either left WotC or stopped making public statements about supporting evil parties. On your question - 3e Greyhawk was neutral with evil playthroughs fully supported, The Dark Sun campaign was heroic but 'evil' magic is stronger than 'good' magic. It was setting a reminiscent of the Mad Max movies - one type of magic is good for the environment and is pretty difficult to use, the other destroys the environment and is pretty easy to use. *(during the Satanic Panic fundis believed that DnD taught kids the 'real' names of demons and how to summon them)
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Jhe'stil Kith'rak
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Jhe'stil Kith'rak
Joined: Oct 2021
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There's no crystal clear paragraph that says "Faerun is a heroic setting" It's just the history of the setting and the fact that the members of 'team evil' have either left WotC or stopped making public statements about supporting evil parties. Damn that sucks. No wonder most DnD properties seem to be overwhelmingly reductive about being evil/bad/not good. All the time it's "Evil is when selfish or murder or mustache-twirling villain."
Remember the human (This is a forum for a video game):
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veteran
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Joined: Mar 2021
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There's no crystal clear paragraph that says "Faerun is a heroic setting" It's just the history of the setting and the fact that the members of 'team evil' have either left WotC or stopped making public statements about supporting evil parties. Damn that sucks. No wonder most DnD properties seem to be overwhelmingly reductive about being evil/bad/not good. All the time it's "Evil is when selfish or murder or mustache-twirling villain." Evil is not easy to play or roleplay. It's advanced mode when it comes to D&D. People who are bad at it often descend into cartoonish evil or edgelords without purpose. Murdohobo isn't evil, its just a big "fuck you" to the idea of roleplaying anything. It's a child toppling over another child's blocks to see what happens. Fun, in a crass sort of way, but requiring no skill or knowledge. Regardless of what the setting is - we have a right to roleplay evil characters if we have the intelligence and skill to do it right. Broadcasting alignment is one of the ways that sort of thing gets undermined. For the record, an evil player should understand they need to work within their party's social dynamic. If they become anti-social to the point of needing to create drama or attention then they are not doing a good job and should be invited to leave. Larian is doing it right, the 5E system is doing it right by downplaying alignment for PC's. I celebrate the end of that Stupid Evil phase of 2e.
Blackheifer
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If you find a group that lets you play evil go for it. My friends never played evil and I would have said no if someone asked. And, as I assume you know from the way you formulated your response, most DMs say no because evil party members usually spoil the fun for others. If we look at the successful games of the genre most have had a heroic narrative. There's a reason Larian asked us to test out the evil path - because they know that very few players do so of their own choice. It's just not much fun to play - the joy of slaughtering a group of refugees so you can sleep with an evil priest is lost on me. Attempts to make game that favor evil just don't sell. Apparently lovers of evil playthroughs think that Tyranny is one of the best RPGs ever made - but the number of people interested in playing it is very very small . . . I'm told that Monte Cook is the best RPG designer ever but, strangely, people don't like to play his games . . . But, again, I'm not here to stop you. But have said that I don't want to see the setting degraded. I don't want to see is Faerun transformed into Greyhawk 2.0 or for tons of resources to be wasted on paths that very few people are going to play. Because, again, evil isn't much fun and I just don't see evil as an advanced or more intelligent playstyle, if anything it just seems like real world morality brought into a video game. [ I had lots more typed here but I decided my tone was too strong - please know that I disagree in the strongest possible terms  ] Now WOTR seems to be an exception - I'm happy with the game and, apparently, people like playing a lich who leads an army of the undead. Somehow WOTR managed to support 3 evil paths in a way that a) didn't reduce the amount of playable hours available for the good paths b) sectioned off the evil path from the others and c) didn't make the plot into a forgettable mush like "you're just a mercenary trying to make it through life" or "the only thing on your mind is surviving the day"
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veteran
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Speaking on Monte Cook, I don't know what his old work was like, but his game Numenera was the big thing that truly brought me into tabletop gaming, and the larger cypher system games that have spawned from it also seem quite popular. At least their kickstarters do well. But they also tend to lean on an assumption of the players being good guys. And regarding Tyranny, it is indeed a brilliant rpg. But I also have only played in ways that are basically heroic. I think your general arguments about people's feelings on evil playthroughts, etc are correct.
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journeyman
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journeyman
Joined: Dec 2022
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There is no alignment in 5e, one of its biggest drawbacks as a system.
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veteran
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Joined: Oct 2020
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There is no alignment in 5e, one of its biggest drawbacks as a system. I cant really help the feeling that nothing changed about Alignment in 5e ... except its no longer mentioned.  I mean, its system that was with us for too long to dismiss it completely.
I still dont understand why cant we change Race for our hirelings.  Lets us play Githyanki as racist as they trully are!
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veteran
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veteran
Joined: Mar 2020
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Speaking on Monte Cook, I don't know what his old work was like, but his game Numenera was the big thing that truly brought me into tabletop gaming, and the larger cypher system games that have spawned from it also seem quite popular. At least their kickstarters do well. But they also tend to lean on an assumption of the players being good guys. And regarding Tyranny, it is indeed a brilliant rpg. But I also have only played in ways that are basically heroic. I think your general arguments about people's feelings on evil playthroughts, etc are correct. Glad you found a game you like  I think he changed after 4e fell on its face - he left or was ousted for a while and he came back but he's very quiet nowadays. In 3e times his big issues were: 1) the ranger is OP 2) we have too many monsters than are too similar 3) evil needs to be supported and rewarded The BOVD and The Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil were his big contributions. In RToEE you have 4 evil temples, each representing an evil element. The way to win is make a deal with one temple against another temple. If you are don't do that you only have one other, less than ideal, place to sleep. Each temple has a magic longsword connected to the evil altar. The winning strategy is make a deal, betray your erstwhile ally, rinse and repeat until you have no temples or just one. If you destroy the evil altar and save the village the swords are destroyed. Good parties leave with no loot and no advantages - you have a diamond but you need to return that to the dwarves, the magic swords are gone, you don't get three wishes because you refused to free an evil god from its bonds and you didn't get any stat boosts because you didn't use the device that allows you to steal ability points from helpless enemies. The rewards were the friends you made along the way. Evil parties get all the loot, status, stat boosts and the favor of an evil god. Which was significantly more rewarding of evil than the original ToEE because the evil vs neutral dilemma in that module was: do I destroy the game breaking, god level evil artifact (and make the big bad evil easier to kill) or do I try and turn the artifact against the end boss and keep the evil powers for myself. Neutral was the ideal game play - you lied and cheated but the big bad dies in the end.
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journeyman
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journeyman
Joined: Dec 2022
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There is no alignment in 5e, one of its biggest drawbacks as a system. I cant really help the feeling that nothing changed about Alignment in 5e ... except its no longer mentioned. I mean, its system that was with us for too long to dismiss it completely. frankly, i don't find your opinions very useful, accurate, or helpful, but I am not surprised you're one of the people who never found it useful in the first place and doesn't mind that it's gone.
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Volunteer Moderator
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Volunteer Moderator
Joined: Feb 2022
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There is no alignment in 5e, one of its biggest drawbacks as a system. I cant really help the feeling that nothing changed about Alignment in 5e ... except its no longer mentioned. I mean, its system that was with us for too long to dismiss it completely. frankly, i don't find your opinions very useful, accurate, or helpful, but I am not surprised you're one of the people who never found it useful in the first place and doesn't mind that it's gone. That is unnecessarily rude, plus doesn’t even slightly reflect what Ragnarok actually said.
"You may call it 'nonsense' if you like, but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!"
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member
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member
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I am not even sure BG3 even has alignment to begin with does it?
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Volunteer Moderator
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Volunteer Moderator
Joined: Feb 2022
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I am not even sure BG3 even has alignment to begin with does it? It's not currently explicit in the game, but the question is whether it should be in some form or another.
"You may call it 'nonsense' if you like, but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!"
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veteran
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That is unnecessarily rude, plus doesn’t even slightly reflect what Ragnarok actually said. Thank you. ^_^ Cant agree more on both points. //Edit: I am not even sure BG3 even has alignment to begin with does it? Depends ... Its never shown anywhere, that much is true ... On the other hand tho, most characters (and dialogue choices) are so awfully stereotypical representants of certain alignments, so you dont really need it to be said out loud.
Last edited by RagnarokCzD; 27/01/23 11:50 AM.
I still dont understand why cant we change Race for our hirelings. Lets us play Githyanki as racist as they trully are!
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veteran
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Joined: Jun 2020
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There is no alignment in 5e, one of its biggest drawbacks as a system. Alignment
A typical creature in the game world has an alignment, which broadly describes its moral and personal attitudes. Alignment is a combination of two factors: one identifies morality (good, evil, or neutral), and the other describes attitudes toward society and order (lawful, chaotic, or neutral). Thus, nine distinct alignments define the possible combinations.
These brief summaries of the nine alignments describe the typical behavior of a creature with that alignment. Individuals might vary significantly from that typical behavior, and few people are perfectly and consistently faithful to the precepts of their alignment.
Lawful good (LG) creatures can be counted on to do the right thing as expected by society. Gold dragons and paladins are typically lawful good.
Neutral good (NG) folk do the best they can to help others according to their needs. Many celestials are neutral good.
Chaotic good (CG) creatures act as their conscience directs, with little regard for what others expect. Copper dragons and unicorns are typically chaotic good.
Lawful neutral (LN) individuals act in accordance with law, tradition, or personal codes. Modrons and many wizards and monks are lawful neutral.
Neutral (N) is the alignment of those who prefer to steer clear of moral questions and don’t take sides, doing what seems best at the time. Druids are traditionally neutral, as are typical townsfolk.
Chaotic neutral (CN) creatures follow their whims, holding their personal freedom above all else. Many rogues and bards are chaotic neutral.
Lawful evil (LE) creatures methodically take what they want, within the limits of a code of tradition, loyalty, or order. Devils and blue dragons are typically lawful evil.
Neutral evil (NE) is the alignment of those who do whatever they can get away with, without compassion or qualms. Yugoloths are typically neutral evil.
Chaotic evil (CE) creatures act with arbitrary violence, spurred by their greed, hatred, or bloodlust. Demons and red dragons are typically chaotic evil.
Alignment in the Multiverse
For many thinking creatures, alignment is a moral choice. Humans, dwarves, elves, and other people can choose whether to follow the paths of good or evil, law or chaos. According to myth, the gods who created these folk gave them free will to choose their moral paths.
Alignment is an essential part of the nature of celestials and fiends. Both types of creatures are associated with metaphysical planes of existence—specifically the Outer Planes—that embody certain alignments. For example, most devils hail from the Nine Hells, a plane of lawful evil. A devil does not choose to be lawful evil or tend toward lawful evil, but rather it is lawful evil in its essence. If it somehow ceases to be lawful evil, it changes into something new—a transformation worthy of legend.
Most creatures that lack the capacity for rational thought do not have alignments — they are unaligned. Such a creature is incapable of making a moral or ethical choice and acts according to its bestial nature. Sharks are savage predators, for example, but they are not evil; they have no alignment. Please get your facts correct before tearing off rude towards other users - in fact please don't do that at all.
Last edited by Niara; 27/01/23 12:04 PM.
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journeyman
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journeyman
Joined: Dec 2022
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Ragnarok has been passively aggressively rude on these forums for years, and has been frequently warned by viometia for it.
purposely working within a system to be as much of a troll as possible without breaking the rules is despicable.
at least i'm honest.
Last edited by pachanj; 27/01/23 07:26 PM.
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Ragnarok has been passively aggressively rude on these forums for years, and has been frequently warned by viometia for it.
purposely working within a system to be as much of a troll as possible without breaking the rules is despicable.
at least i'm honest. I don't know that he is trying to be rude. English is just not his first language. Although sometimes we all can take things a bit too seriously and maybe it would be helpful to be a little more generous with each other. That includes me. I think the answer is for everyone to get a dog and touch more grass. New rule: No dog, no access to the forums. Has to be above 30 lbs. Great Danes count as 2 dogs.
Blackheifer
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Here is an idea ... How about stick to the topic? I mean, last time i checked its not called "what do you think about Ragnarok" ? o_O English is just not his first language. Hehe ... not even second. If i would have to count ... i think it would be either 4th or 5th. And no ... usualy i dont. Unless you count being ironic or sarcastic as rude ... but that is allways (i believe, not sure tho) clearly stated.
Last edited by RagnarokCzD; 28/01/23 09:14 AM.
I still dont understand why cant we change Race for our hirelings. Lets us play Githyanki as racist as they trully are!
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