Topic: What is "evil" in Rolemaster?

[intothatdarkness]

So maybe Detect Evil should detect how far away from your gods "good" the target is?


MDC

I would say that's one possibility UNLESS you have a game like mine where Evil spell lists are linked directly to an Evil god.

[Marc R]

Any setting can have variant rules, but when you start re-defining detectable evil from the Objective E-vil to subjective e-vil you're getting into setting or house rules.

As it is, before getting into any of that, the GM or the Setting sourcebook needs to lay down "This is objective Evil" be that the unlife, cthulhu and the great old ones, or the devil, whatever it is.

But then you can get into more subjective detail on that also, like "Channelers of Thor will detect all Giants, Jotun, and channelers of Loki as Evil. Any worshipper of Loki will show up as being tainted and of darkness." While at the same time "Channelers of Loki will detect all Asgardians, humans of Asgardian decent, and channelers of Thor as Evil. Any worshipper of Thor will show up as being tainted and of darkness."

With Channeling especially, since Religion defines cultural basis for little e evil, that becomes a possibility.

OTOH a stripped down minimalist model will only have the objective sources of evil showing up to detect evil spells.

[GrumpyOldFart]

That's why I called the distinction of E-vil and e-vil "theological" evil vs. "behavioral" evil. "Theological" evil is defined by the precepts of the religion that is the source of the spells, and may or may not have any connection at all to what most people think of as "evil", depending on the religion. Most religions would count death cults as evil.... but could you imagine the suffering that would take place if nothing died? From that point of view, having members of the death cult consider their enemies "evil" makes perfect sense.

As far as Detect Evil and suchlike spells are concerned, I'd think the easy solution would be to say that the spell detects theological evil normally, and behavioral evil (having nothing to do with religion, just doing sociopathic things) at a penalty on the spell roll and/or Perception roll.

Even so, that still opens a can of worms. Depending on the society, you could be considered a "sociopath" because you refused to offer up your firstborn as a sacrifice, in accordance with "proper religious doctrine." A stranger to that culture, acting in accordance with his own sense of what is proper, with no religious convictions at all, can suddenly find himself as not only evil but Evil, just by virtue of the religious standards of the culture he's visiting.

[Marc R]

Actually I disagree there.

Objective evil is like science. The Unlife is evil because it seeks to destroy all life in our universe, it's axiomatically and objectively evil.

Behavioral evil, like selfishness, murder, etc are all subjectively defined by a culture's social norms. i.e. it's collective opinion, not fact.

Theological evil, if your god is aloof and objective, might actually correspond 1:1 with Objective evil above, but if your gods are involved and subjective, then what you're dealing with is just your deities opinion, not objective facts. Thor sees Loki as evil because Thor and Loki are enemies, and it has nothing to do with objective Evil or not.

You thinking your neighbor is evil because he killed your dog is the same thing as Thor hating Loki, it's just on a far larger scale.

So it's a GM call, if your gods are aloof and Omniciently Objective, all Channeling detections will only ping objective evil. If your gods are entrenched quarreling factions like the Greeks, then they might ping Evil on each other also.

[intothatdarkness]

That's why I think Detect Evil is something of a relic that works best in games with declared alignments, at least when it comes to people. In my world, as I mentioned, Detect Evil would pick up things associated with Evil spell lists and artifacts that are expressly Evil (and that's included in the item description or something like PP multiplier for an Evil spell list/profession).

[Marc R]

The reason this conversation is so hard to nail down is the setting elements. Once you pick a setting it's easier to clarify.

Like, On Shadow World, generally the Unlife, the gods of Charon, the pales and the void are all "Evil".

(s'cuse me if I screw up any SW specific here)

All undead, all demons of the pales and void, all Channelers of the Charonic gods, all casters of evil lists will radiate Evil, so will any object or place imbedded with the power of any of those objective Evil power sources.

Murderers and thieves will not turn up as Evil, channelers from other faiths will not show as evil.

The only complication there is the channelers associated with the Unlife and the Charonic gods. . .Their detect evil would IMO actually be "Detect Good" and you'd need to re-define a new list of what specifically those are.

[OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol]

The problem is that Evil can only be defined if Good is defined, and in regards to it... which is pretty much a pure judeo-christian consideration of the world. In a polytheistic fantasy setting, neither has much meaning if any. The origin of the "Detect Evil" and "Detect Good" spells comes from the D&D settings, that are but judeo-christian values plastered on an European medieval setting (meaning, one shaped from judeo-christian values) and with a few polytheistic elements artificially added in order to spice the whole thing.

Most religions would count death cults as evil....

Which actual ones do? In most religions of the past, life and death were considered to go hand on hand, death being a natural continuation of life. People would pray and give offerings to gods of death (and the afterlife) to insure a peaceful trip and afterlife to themselves and their dead beloved, to be able (on occasions) to talk with the spirits of the dead, etc. Hardly were they considered as being evil.

(Before anyone asks, no, I don't have a judeo-christian upbringing and, yes, this question of Evil and Good always struck me as weird at best and most often unintelligible, even after having studied many religions of old in order to create my own game worlds).

[Marc R]

It's not inherently Judeo christian, there's no long term accommodation possible with Cthulhu, The Unlife, or Hell, so they suitably fit the bill for objective Evil. The christians have the devil/hell as theirs, but many cultures had an "opposition" evil force in play. Ahriman of Zoroastrianism is one example, and there are "demons" in almost every human culture.

If your Vampires are Unlife, they are evil, and nobody not part of the Unlife will dispute that.

If your Vampires are Twilight types, then perhaps they're ambiguous moral entities like humans and judged on the merits of their actions like anyone else.

The pre-determining factor for having Evil work in a game, is to have some form of Objective evil. . .if your gameworld doesn't have one, then there's no need to be detecting it anyway.

[RandalThor]

So maybe Detect Evil should detect how far away from your gods "good" the target is?

Or, how close they are to the "official" Big Bad(s) of the setting.

[RandalThor]

MarcR and GOF, your two responses are one reason why I tend to dislike the Detect Evil spell at all. I much prefer to go with spells like: Detect Undead, Detect Elves, Humans, Orcs, Dragons, etc... Just what I prefer. And, yes, it can mean you have a plethora of detect spells - or you just make that the changeable aspect of the single detect spell.

[Marc R]

Understood, but many settings due include a default objective Evil, and so "Detect Evil" is a generic brand that applies to all the specific instances where that is the case. Putting a spell into the core of "Detect Cthulhu Influence" would work for lovecraftian games but fail to apply in all other instances.

"Evil" in the spells is a generic placeholder, the setting (or the GM in homebrew) define what Evil means specifically.

[VladD]

For me it works as follows:
 As long as you are dealing in behavioral evil, your mind will be more open to more of the same, working like a behavioral reinforcement. At a certain point the behavioral evil behavior becomes habitual, and after even more behavioral evil acts, THEN you cross over in to the theological evil (or E-vil).
Evil priests, mages and mentalists, demons, most undead and unlife agents will have undergone the aforementioned process of evilization and register as evil.

Then there is the MEASURE of evil: those deathcamp guards will register as very minor evil, whereas Hitler and his henchmen might register as minor evil, but Undead, unlife agents and evil spell casters will be more corrupted (since using evil magic and worshipping evil gods is more profound than slaughtering innocent humans with normal means). Demons, liches and evil gods will most likely register as totally evil. The amount of corruption of their souls will be beyond massive.

I have always looked at evil this way in all my games and it has never been a problem for the players to grasp the concept (which isn't really clear to them), but they are using it like they do.
I think I got this concept distilled from the C&T (C&M) book on demons, where the souls of evil humans and elves are not accepted in the afterlife and are forced in to demonhood. As demons they can nurture their corruption and built on it.

Its a slow, incremental process, drawing you in more and more, relying on it more and more until the point of no return.

2 cents and such...

[Marc R]

I prefer Objective to "Theological". . .since if your gods are earthly enough, it's hard to distinguish their personal prejudices from the same kind of "I hate you so you're evil" subjectivity as mortals use. . .so theological evil could be subjective, fickle and changable. . . .like as Sif has a fight with Thor, their priesthoods call each other evil and attack each other, then they resolve kiss and make up and suddenly their priesthoods are friendly again. . .when it's possible for divinities to act subjectively, I think it's a bad idea to get into the mindset of thinking theological = objective.

[OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol]

The christians have the devil/hell as theirs, but many cultures had an "opposition" evil force in play. Ahriman of Zoroastrianism is one example, and there are "demons" in almost every human culture.

But they're evil not Evil. Whilst the concept of evil may have a meaning in most cultures, the concept of Evil rarily does.

Understood, but many settings due include a default objective Evil, and so "Detect Evil" is a generic brand that applies to all the specific instances where that is the case. Putting a spell into the core of "Detect Cthulhu Influence" would work for lovecraftian games but fail to apply in all other instances.

"Evil" in the spells is a generic placeholder, the setting (or the GM in homebrew) define what Evil means specifically.

I think that's the best way to deal with it myself, especially as the spells work on items so "behavioral" evil is even harder to define. I mean, even if an item is highly destructive, one could say that destruction != evil in itself.
Of course, the main problem is when "Evil" itself (with a capital "E") has no meaning.

[Marc R]

"evil within us" vs "Evil as an external force" is not a purely Judeo-christian concept. The early J-C actually took the concept from Zoroastrianism, and while I'll agree Evil doesn't exist in Buddhism or Hinduism, it does exist in Shinto. . .The joten as a hostile race living in a hostile other dimension who are actively scheming to bring about Ragnarok qualify as an external inhuman locus of Evil. . .it's not that hard to find E-vil in other cultures, but what we're dealing with here is fiction.

In many fictional worlds, the Evil is strongly drawn from the J-C vein, like Middle Earth, or Narnia.

On the other hand, Cthulhu and the Unlife offer two perfect fictional concepts of Evil, neither of which require anything at all of judeo christian trappings to make them function as game concepts of E vil.

SW has no Judeo-Christians on it and yet has Evil as an external objective non abstract force, which would seem to offer an exact example of how Evil doesn't require a christian or christian-like context for it to work. It's a fractured polytheistic pagan like world that also has very big E Evil in the form of the Unlife.

It'd be easy to list off a library of fictional sources with Evil of the judeo christian variety, and just as easy to list of a library of fictional worlds with "External locus of Evil" E-vil that has nothing to do with and isn't sourced in Judeo-Christian mythology or concepts.

[Cory Magel]

Just to toss in a comment...

I believe the intent of the original question is what is evil as in: Blood Rituals, Eating Babies and leaving the last 1/2 of milk in the carton.

But in a related topic there is what is an "enemy" and how it relates to what, let's say, a Vampire would consider 'evil' (i.e. a Priest or something).  In this we rule spell lists used that have an increased impact on something 'evil' but is being used by what you would normally consider evil, then it is the good target that is then the 'evil' one so far as the spell effect is concerned.

Hopefully that made sense.

[jdale]

Even so, that still opens a can of worms. Depending on the society, you could be considered a "sociopath" because you refused to offer up your firstborn as a sacrifice, in accordance with "proper religious doctrine." A stranger to that culture, acting in accordance with his own sense of what is proper, with no religious convictions at all, can suddenly find himself as not only evil but Evil, just by virtue of the religious standards of the culture he's visiting.

I think this is extreme enough that I feel the need to argue against moral relativism. In the real world, there are basic principles that are fundamental and which are shared between different cultures. The classic example being some formulation of the golden rule (do unto others as you would have them do unto you, or conversely don't do unto others as you would not have them do unto you), and respect for life is also pretty universal (though respect isn't necessarily the same as protecting). There are also moral rules which are defined due to the application of those principles to specific. Rules vary culturally, for example the obligations of a host to their guest vary between different cultures. They are a combination of specific implementations of principles to specific conditions, precedent, and expectation.

Violating moral rules makes you socially unacceptable, not evil.

Violating moral principles makes you evil.

Worshipping or serving a being who requires you to violate moral principles makes you Evil.

Some people argue that there are no principles. Once you say that no morality is universal, all morality is culturally defined, morality and ethics become meaningless for any non-homogeneous group. Not just a culture, but even subgroups within a culture may have different opinions. It becomes impossible to talk about acting ethically towards members of other groups. You can invent hypothetical societies (e.g. the one that sacrifices everybody's firstborn) but that's fantasy, it doesn't prove anything about the nature of people.


Now that said, I don't think it is useful to have a spell that detects evil (as opposed to theological Evil). First because it opens the door to endless debate about what exactly qualifies. And second, more importantly, because having that kind of easy-to-acquire insight about people's personal nature would ruin both adventures and societies.

[yammahoper]

What jdale said.

This is a game.  One of the great positives of the game is the ability to define Evil with clarity.  In fact, I propose the well defined boundries of good and evil in ADnD was one of its strongest points.  Experienced GM's will ignore any rule they choose, but the game should offer definitions that the rest can work with right out the box. 

[Marc R]

And that's the rub, when it's a rule, you need a definition. . .and the easiest way to stay out of trouble is to stick with Evil, an objective standard of stand alone, outside of man Evil.

Because it's so game world tied I can't just give you a straight, official answer like "Demons and Undead". . .but objective Evil is something like that, some objective malevolent force, not social opinions.

[VladD]

Objective evil doesn't really cover all the bases for me, that's why I'm using theological evil, because the gods can become more evil than mortals and usually precede them down the path by a large spans in time and space. Objective evil sounds more like a "force of nature" but I don't like a world view where lions are branded evil or Evil because they slaughter cute, innocent, herbivores for a living...

I like the fine razor thin line people can walk to be considered neutral while doing evil acts, instead of some referee handing out black cards that stick for life for killing one little innocent, or setting fire to an orphanage. The HUGE grey area between exemplary Good and Iconic Evil (I like this descriptor MUCH better than objective Evil) should exist, because it is real! There are no referees in the real world that say: "sorry but you crossed the Evil limit so now you have a detect evil bull's eye painted on your back for paladins to pick on."

The only time I'd use objective evil is when dealing with sociopathic, pathological serial rapist/ murderers that somehow got stuck with a faulty brain subroutine simply exploiting weak targets in any way they can. That is objective and still not iconic evil since they are not REALLY getting what they want (serial killers generally admit that after the first few kills, the feeling of satisfaction disappears more quickly, not returning after every predation)

Iconic Evil is the total bad ass evil portrayed in fiction: such as Sauron and his ilk. They are obsessed by obtaining more power, more influence, more stuff, continually. Greed incarnated; they stand for anything that is bad. They stop at nothing to gain ultimate power and control and the lack of scruples and their indiscriminate use of violence, intimidation, magic power, and lies and betrayal is the culmination of behavioral evil inflicted upon the general populace. Notice how the general populace gets mauled, but that is how evil works. More for less and thus less for more. This doesn't imply any culture or race, since evil isn't concerned with that ( unless it is using your culture or race to keep you occupied with something else instead of dealing with the real issue). Evil is concerned only with itself.

The quantification of evil; for use in a system in a fantasy environment, is fairly easy, or so I think. It is of course up to the individual GM to draw the line somewhere, but in the grey area he has to step in and say X amount of corruption points, or Y years of behavioral evil, or belonging to Z religion, or being classified as a demon, undead, evil magician/ mentalist is when a detect Evil spell will register you as faint, minor, lesser, major, greater, total evil. Easy peasy! Nothing more, nothing less.