On evil characters.

[huitzilopochtli]

Cantr is a simulation of a community. As I see it, the ultimate goal of the game as whole is to create and maintain a communitiy of characters with all the properties of real communities. From the perspective of the player, the ultimate goal is simply to have fun (through the perspective of characters inside that community).

It seems to me that those two goals can be conflicting. While the integral and unavoidable part of real communities are, call them 'evil' persons, the existance of such in the game isn't really fun. Just imagine how would you feel if your favourite character that you've played for many months gets murdered and robed by some thief. That, and more happenes in real communities.

So, my question is: is it okay to have one or more characters that: are geedy, power-hungry, will do anything to acomplish their goal incuding murder, fraud and all other thigs bad and evil.

Without such characters you'd have a sort of utiopia I guess, which gets quite dull after a while. On the other hand, having half of your possesions (which you aquired through a lot of hard work) stolen by such a character is not very fun.

[Cookie]

There can't be good without evil. Thats a fact.

I have an 'evil' chary who's done most of those things. Murderer/Thief/pain in the neck. He's my favourite chary.

[Agar]

Strolens Citadel

From a discussion about evil on another board, you'll see it mentioned that there is no such thing as evil. Even the bad guy from LOTR wasn't evil, he just wanted to rule in a way not of the people's choosing.

Evil is a point of veiw, and those considered evil rarely think so of themselves.

"I'm not stealing, I'm taking these items to put them to use. You weren't useing them, you're too lazy to deserve haing them."

"He's hurt our comunity by taking things he did not labor for. He must die."

Both evil in some degree, both valid in some degree, I doubt any good roleplayer would make a character that thinks of themselves as evil, although a powerful one may come to believe so...

[Cookie]

I don't think his post was prompting anything on the definition of evil mate, he's just using that word to describe what he means.

[ratm]

I've always thought that "evil" characters are actually doing a service to Cantr society. Overall Cantr society faces very few life-threatening problems. Successfull evil chars create strife and chaos, thereby either forcing a governemnt to come together to stop it from happening again or breaking down the government. Survival of the fittest governments.

[rklenseth]

What is evil is determined by the individual. The person can seem evil to others but believes he is not evil.

Or the person knows he does evil deeds but believes it is for a greater good.

Did Sester Gartaf or Alexi Romanov believe themselves evil? No. Sester believed he was fighting evil and Alexi believed he doing some evil deeds for a greater good. But many characters (and players who can't get their heads out of their own asses) believe them to be the ultimate evil in Cantr or at least use to be.

[SekoETC]

I've seen evil and it's the people of Xiria forest north, not the lonely fool that tried to massacre them. Or not even massacre, just scare them away from him. But it did the exact opposite.

[wichita]

Quality evil charatcers are necessary and encouraged. Note I said quality!!! Notethieves are not evil they are daft!

I have mixed emotions at the killing of Baron F. He in my opinion was one of the greatest things to happen to the Blaman / Sjoftich area. The game has been enormously blessed by his existence...even though he did have a hand in killing one of my favorite characters.

And just another reason to throw out my approval of Mary Williams!

[huitzilopochtli]

While we all have intuitive knowledge of what 'evil' is, problems arise when it comes down to defining the term.

Terms 'good' and 'evil' are closely related to moral. Moral is a set of rules and guidelines that differentiate good from evil. Source of the problem is that there are two kinds of moral. Society moral and personal moral. For most persons personal and soicety morals are the same, but there is always a small number of people who disagree with given rules.

In that sense, evil and good are relative terms and are different from person to person. In my original post, I've been referring to evil from the viewpoint of socitey morals.

As for Sester and Alexy, I guess their actions were completely justified in their eyes, but for the rest of the society they were criminals. Hence, for the purpuse of this discussion, they are evil.

[ephiroll]

While the integral and unavoidable part of real communities are, call them 'evil' persons, the existance of such in the game isn't really fun.

It'd be fun if you had one

[Racetyme]

I have several evil characters, it is just much more fun to play. I would count at least half of my characters evil if you were the side that they are not on. However, only one or two is clearly evil.

[MrPenguin589]

i have had many "evil" charries in the past, but they die too quickly
now I only have one, but he owns two ships and has two crewman (who he hasn't told that he's a pirate yet, but he may do it soon)

[rklenseth]

As for Sester and Alexy, I guess their actions were completely justified in their eyes, but for the rest of the society they were criminals. Hence, for the purpuse of this discussion, they are evil.

Evil to who? Their enemies? That is quite natural for it to be that way. I wouldn't go as far as saying they were evil when they were defending their society, culture, and the course of civilization seen through their eyese and their followers.

[nitefyre]

As for Sester and Alexy, I guess their actions were completely justified in their eyes, but for the rest of the society they were criminals. Hence, for the purpuse of this discussion, they are evil.

Me thinks the lad here doesn't know where he's coming from to be talkin' about them like that.

[El_Skwidd]

Look around Cantr. The structure and workings of every town is essentially the same: you have a core of good-natured citizens working to stay alive by farming and building things that they want to build. The laws are don't steal, don't kill, state your name, don't hunt the animals below blah.

This is what is defined as 'good' in Cantr. For the remainder of the post, if you see 'good', refer back to paragraph 1.

Let's take the recent incident with TBR, and also an incident with one of my own characters. The second Nick restricted the free digging of hematite, he had K-isle in his hair trying to knock him off. The second Yuri Evgenine's laws for Mirovash hit the ground, Busty LaRue was off telling the Stone Knights how terrible restriction of limestone was. What is so evil about wanting to make your town better than the next town? If anything, it shows a great political leader, wanting to have his citizens subject to a richer, more prosperous kingdom than those that surround him. It seems that in Cantr, any form of attempted gain by the government aside from sending out resource gatherers is frowned upon and considered evil. If you disagree with the 'good' Cantr stereotype, that makes you evil.

*pant pant pant*

'Evil' characters are absolutely, absolutely necessary. It's been said in this thread earlier that they present a real, life-threatening challenge to the 'good guys'. They make Cantr more than a collection of 'good' towns and lovely happiness.