The above quote got me thinking about the nature of evil in most fantasy RPGs. No, this isn't an alignment rant; rather, I was wondering about evil gods, uber-demons, and others that empower villains.virgileso wrote:...The setting also assumes there's an actual evil force that can be called upon, with its own dangers for doing so; yet groups of people are willing to call upon them as cults, and can potentially summon these forces.
It's accepted as a given in most D&D-esque worlds that you've got your good deities and your evil deities, and that these two factions empower their mortal servants to carry out their will. The good guys get the bald green winged chicks and paladins and shiny fuzzy animals; the evil guys get the big red horned guys and blackguards and dark, red-eyed, scary animals.
When a good guy dies (assuming he's been a decent chap) he goes on to Happyland. When a bad guy dies, he gets dragged screaming into the pit of eternal torment and - wait; what? Why does he work for these people again?
There seem to be two possibilities re: evil people being empowered by evil deities. Either the evil deities are gigantic bastards who torment their most faithful servants when they die, or they reward their moral servants appropriately with wealth, status, power, wenches, whatever.
Neither of these possibilities appeals to me very much - the one makes evil = crazy, and the other means that no one would ever repent because what's the point? As D&D is written, the only costs for being evil are social - which equals "none" in the mechanical sense, not even in the afterlife. Why would a blackguard ever repent and redeem himself except due to GM handwavery when he knows Acrozzag, Lord of the Red-Eyed Darkness, will reward him if he remains faithful? But if the rewards of evil are an eternity of torment at the hands of your erstwhile lords, who but the most insane or desperate would willingly choose that path?
What I would like to see is a system which allows for sane, rational, people who can be empowered by supernatural evil, but with a definite cost in some form or another.
Thoughts?