Any time the words good or evil are brought up in Lusternia, whoever uses them is instantly shot down, set upon, and deemed a fraud. Good and evil are argued by most to simply be opionated and based solely on your point of view, thus unfit to be used in any serious discussion. They are not quite as abstract terms as many of you think, I daresay, and will try and find some common meaning to associate with them.

Good; anything that is positive, giving, not taking. If you hand someone 100 gold, save them from being killed, forge them a longsword, or refill their vial, you are doing someone good.

Evil; anything negative, taking away. If you rob someone, kill them needlessly, blatantly overcharge your services, ect. you are doing bad, evil.

Good can be seen as adding to beings other themselves in any way, evil as taking away.

However, this runs us into a problem; what if Lord Undead Hell Guy jumps in from nowhere, slays Captain Holy, robs him of his gold, but then distributes the gold to needy and starving members of his city in order to strengthen it as a whole? He killed someone without provocation, but only to lessen the suffering of multiple others. Has he added more than he has taken away? In this case I would say so, and say Lord Undead Hell Guy has done good, from an unbiased point of view. But what if Captain Holy was bringing that gold to purchase the last ingredient for his potion of 'Saving The Entire World!'? Now Undead Hell Guy has certainly done evil, taking the needs of the few over the needs of the... well, the world.

So it is fairly easy to judge this definition of good and evil with only a couple of people, but once you factor in large groups and community's it gets more complex. More and more variables are added.

We could try and clear things up a bit by placing a value on things that influence good and evil.

Most Valuable
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Life/Health
Opinion
Possessions
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Least Valuable

Saving someone's life would be good, even if you ruined their reputation doing it. Spreading nasty rumours would be evil, but not so much as killing someone, although moreso than stealing their land. But the last two, opinion and possessions, bring us back to the point that good and evil are highly opinion-based; surely there are those out there who value their gold over what others think of them. But that just reinforces the point that I am trying to be quite general here; the exceptions prove the rule.

Ho-hum, enough thinking for now, there are Rockeaters than need... attending... to. Any questions, comments, concerns, feel free to reply!

I thought Lusternia was stepping AWAY from the Good/Evil situation? It's now Forest/Taint/Water-Light.

But I agree with your definitons, anyway

The thing is, who defines what good and evil are. You said what you think they are, but that doesn't mean they are.

I may be mistaken, but there are no gods attributed to good, and none to evil. The gods are gods, and do thinsg as they view fit. Thus, there is no godly deffinition of good and evil.

So the terms become relative. Aquamancers flooding Magnagora to slay loads of people, known to foul the waters, in their demesne would seem good to teh Aquamancers; those who seek to srpead dirt and filt everywhere though, woudl see this as evil, for the Aquamancers are preventing them from doing as they see teh world to be.

Think of canables and the rest of the world. The rest of us might all see slaying another human for food as evil, but to the cannible, it's fully rigth and good to do.

Serenwilde can say Celest is evil, for it's a city, while Celest say's it's good, for it is in the light. Both "truths" are merely what one groups views.

Unless teh gods themselves law out This to be evil, and That to be good, the terms are meaningless and should not be used.

You can't define good and evil. You can't define right and wrong. Anything we believe to be right or wrong, good or evil is due to society. Sociology tells us that all of our actions are because we learned them, nothing is natural from birth, love, hate, all of that is given to us depending on our society and who we choose to associate with, as well as our culture.

With that said, I think it's pointless to attempt to define any of the above, in a game setting especially. Good to you is not good to me. Paladins call it retribution, assassins call it revenge, Eldrich calls it wrong. Paladins think it's right, Assassins think it's good.

It's all relative, and pendant on who you are and what you've learned. Demons don't kill because it's evil of them to do, demons kill because they think it's right. Paladins don't kill thieves because they think it's bad, they do it because they think it's good.

I respect your right to your opinion of course, however I think that this is the biggest farse, and rubbish.

What exactly is the point of this topic? It seems to be saying that you can't say that one action is evil without knowing the context it's in. Well, uh, sorry if I've missed the point but isn't that both blatantly obvious and irrelevant to... anything?

Pretty irrelevant, yeah. I just felt like putting down my thoughts, I suppose.

If you investigate Tainted creatures for more than a short period, it's quite difficult to deny that they are evil by most reasonable standards. Go talk to Rowena or pretty much any mob in Magnagora to see what I mean... and especially the demon lords of Nil!

I'm always confounded by those whose RP is to claim that they are 'evil'. RP-wise, only sociopaths go around claiming that they are 'evil'. If I were a player, I'd always view myself as the "good guys" and the opposition as the "evil guys" no matter what affiliation I was in.

Where'd you come up with the number of posts anyways? Put a hand on your eyes and just hit some random numbers?

The problem that I have from an RP perspective with Good and Evil is that it is so restraining and broad all at once....Evil means you are only supposed to be the bad guy really but what if I want to do something good? And then again....evil Can be the guy who goes about killing everything, or the one that steals from his guild so who is to say really?

The way I see it is this...Magnagora is Tainted and the Taint is a means of reaching a higher echelon. Through the Taint, my mind, body and spirit are enhanced to a point that I am more than what I was without it. I -utterly- despise the actions of the Taint during the time that Kethuru controlled it, seeing it as greedy and flat out horrible. As such...people who deem me any enemy strictly by knowing what I am are my enemies and, as Estarra put it, "evil" or the bad guys...But I wouldn't even call them evil or wrong, just the opposition.

I think its clear from the point of view of the player that the Taint is Evil, Light is good, and forestals are whatever the hell they want to be. But from a RP perspective, "I" am never evil. I might be manipulative, into pain, torture, selfish, greedy, hate truth and all other things.. but those make you stronger and are therefore good for you. However, in the world of Lusternia, being that there is no Bible for people to look at, its easy for people to not know the definition.

On the other hand, the word good comes from the word god, taking the christian perspective of that anything that is godly must be good.

But if you look at the Jewish view of good and evil, everything is good, because something that looks evil now, may later become something that is good. Yet at the same time, there are very STRICT laws about what is acceptable behavior. The reason for this is that in Judaism, and Kabbalah G-d is an infinite being, that is constantly invovled with the creation and running of the physcial and spiritual realities. (note, G-d does not exist as a spiritual being for G-d created the spiritual, and even time but thats another discussion) that can not be defined, all we know is what we witness and are told in the Torah. Therefore, all things that happen must be happening from one source, and to say that Evil is not from that source would imply the existance of another god. Yet we know G-D is Good, because the only reason for our existance would be so that G-d can give us reward and pleasure. The greatest pleasure being that which you work for, hence needing free choice and the existance of evil to know that we are getting good.

The point of all this being, The reason why you can't define good or evil is because its very nature is context. I'd say a great story about the idea of something evil now being good later.. but the day is short and the forum is long.

I kinda hoped that people in Lusternia didn't turn Good and Evil into some orthodox system and just kinda did what was in their best interests without trying to exalt these concepts into the entities that they've become in Achaea (for example).

I was hoping that people wouldn't form dogma and such... But I guess that's just what tends to happen regardless... It's like a chemical reaction. *shrug* Whatever. I'm neutral either way so I guess ultimately I just don't care.

The things is that Good and Evil imply dogmatic principles.

Good will have you being rewarded by your diety, while Evil will have you punished(or vise versa, depending on the god and their golas; ie an evil god would reward evil and punish good actions).

Now, there is a way to be good and bad. Good is benificial, while bad hampers or ruins.

But that's even still relative. It's all viewable on the individual level, until there is something over you defining what good or evil is.

diety? ALl Hail Jenny Craig

Rexali is a Viscanti Magnagoran Nihilist. He does not do good, nor evil. He does what is in his best interest in achieving his aims.

Magnagora does good, by saving its citizens, by stopping Celest from spreading its vile ways, by converting the denizens of the world to the Power of the Taint.

Celest does good, by saving its citizens, by stopping Magnagora from spreading the Taint, by converting the denizens of the world against the vile Taint.

Also, i'd like to add that the good and evil I meant here are not to describe people, merely their actions. Someone 'good' and do something 'evil', and vice versa, of course.

I'd also like to say that I mean this all in a rather OOC way; that is, looking at it from an unbiased, out-of-game perspective.

As I've said. there are no gods in teh game to define for us what good and evil are. We lack any way at all, for any character to proclaim their ways good and anotehr's evil, and be fully correct.

That was the huge promblem with Aetolia, the gods there did not define darkness/light (Which was the theme for Aetolia).

At least we have Celestia and Nil to define Light and Dark for us.

Won't be much of Celestia anymore.... muhaha.