Roy wrote:Acting in self interest is predictable. Acting in the interest of whatever real or imagined crap such as say... thinking you're evil, even if you aren't and stabbing you in the face... not so much.
What??
Let me turn that around for you...
"Acting in the interests of your fellow man is predictable. Acting in the interests of whatever whim suits you at the moment, such as...knifing that guy for the coins in his pocket...not so much."
Also, 'evil is harmful' =/= eating babies.
For the last time,
the eating babies thing was intended as a comic exaggeration! Sheesh!
Nor is it harmful to everyone... yes, you have a tyranny, but before that your subjects were worse than dead because you're smart and you saw an opportunity for advancement here.
Again...what?? Tyranny > any other form of government? People in a non-tyranny are worse than dead?
By definition, evil is more harmful to a greater number of people than good. Evil
doesn't fucking care about the people, except as cogs in the Big Evil Machine.
Good,
by definition, cares about the people. A good monarch may be ineffective, but he's not actively malicious.
I'd trust some disciplined tyrant before trusting some wild go lucky idiot. So there's a new category. Chaos. And it's worse than evil because it's at least as bad and completely fucking random. At worst evil is a known variable. Chaos is fucking I feel like killing you because Giant Frog. Goddamn homicidal elves who are still somehow 'Chaotic Good'. What the Fuckity Fuckstar?
So Law > Chaos. Fine; I won't argue this, but it has nothing to do with good vs. evil.
Now you may not like D&D being Red vs Blue but it is and your only options are to change it or deal with it. In the former case that only applies to your personal games obviously.
I can't really disagree with the statement that D&D's
default fluff is Red vs. Blue. Fortunately, I never use it (nor does anyone I game with) because we think it's stupid.