Author: Deadguy81 (---.comcast.net)
Date: 08-10-2002 20:32
This article fails to make it's mark on almost every front, for one the author jumps around off topic to often, and tends to trail off on tangents that have no relevance to what he is trying to say, that he thinks all characters are "Chaotic evil".
Now taking apart the article and finally gleaming his reasoning it seems that this author is a firm supporter of Cultural Realtivism i.e. the belief that you cannot effectively judge one's other cultures and social mores and call it evil, for they simply developed their laws and customs diffrent from yours. Sadly though, the majority of Ethical Theorists have discredited this idea for the last, about 200 yrs now. In the end what you call GOOD and EVIL is simply Moral and Not Moral. Morality is Logical, in it's simplest form it's Do unto others, the old Golden Rule. Now taking the author's example of a Kingdom of Paladins and a world where everyone rapes and kills each other regularly in the other kingdoms, we can look at the average person and ask them "Would you like to be Raped and/or Killed?" they would probably awnser you No, because logically no one wants that to happen to them. So logically this person shouldn't do it to anyone else, otherwise they are creating a DoubleStandard which cannot apply. So Technically the Paladins are the ONLY GOOD people in this world and everyone else is EVIL, or MORAL and not moral.
However, I disgress, when it comes down to it, it's a FREAKIN GAME MAN! Alignments and the like are not meant to be rigidly defined structures for which one is not allowed any deviancy, they are simply a roadmap for your characters morals. I know that I don't allow evil characters in any of the games I run, for I don't understand why some people get off on playing the badguys and none of my players have ever expressed interest in playing one.This article should have been about Gaming and was instead a chance for someone to get up on a soapbox and express their own idea's and opinions on Morality or "Good and Evil".
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