Thinking about it it is true. I mean in ttrpg games as a DM/GM I’ve never written any narrative or suggested to my players that their characters are special or the champions. As a matter of fact the current campaign they were selected because of their sense of purpose to not seeing the world burn and “if you don’t save them who will?” Kinda thing.
But of course a ttrpg is different to because of your character says no I don’t want to do this …well then you aren’t playing and ill recruit another player. Lol
i used the Deathwing summon toy that actually deals damage to yourself. i pointed it into the evacuation quest and i guess the fires became dragon flames that were too hot to put out. if it was still the normal fire Sylvanas used there would have been at most a few buildings burned but the tree would have been fine.
Who I all roleplay as evil. I think my only “good characters are my dwarf warrior and wildhammer shaman lol. But I could always say they are alcoholics who like to kick random critters they encounter
I subscribe to the belief that many of those we think of as “evil” don’t see themselves that way at all. Rather, they see their actions as (at best) acting for the good of all or at worst just self-serving.
To many people (in fiction, fantasy and even IRL) the world can often seem confusing, dangerous, and chaotic. At the same time, people want to understand what’s happening and are driven to explain things that happen. Doing so helps them build up a consistent, stable, and clear understanding of how the world works.
A lot of these folks are often on the lower end of social status due to income, ethnic or educational challenges.
So when they act in ways that are contrary to what you see as the best interests of the majority are they truly “malevolent” or are they just ignorant and misguided - and (in some cases) acting out of prejudice against “enemy” groups they perceive as powerful (and that may well be you).
Look at Boromir in the meme you offer. Boromir’s downfall wasn’t that he was evil or that he didn’t want to save the world. He was a victim of pride. He was proud of the power both in himself and in Gondor, and the Ring played on that resulting in Boromir attempting to take it by force because he thought he knew best.
Now consider people in our world today who may be speaking and acting in ways contrary to your own personal beliefs.
Are they evil or malicious? Or just taking steps that they - from their own frame of reference - consider to be good and wise.
The excitement I had when they were talking about Midnight and the Void coming for Quel’thalas was palpable, and them they said we would be fighting alongside the Light, then it was disappointment that was palpable.
I believe it was AD&D 1st edition, or maybe 2nd edition, but they had a module called reverse dungeon where we play the monsters in the dungeon and the dungeon master plays the players.
Just found it…
Might be fun if Blizzard did something like this for a quest chain or scenario. Not sure if it would play itself out well as an entire expansion, but a few fun scenarios with things reversed, might be fun.
I’m tracking with the nuance and subjectivity of individual evil/good. I’m merely being fun with a meme - my cerebral functions aren’t properly warmed up to meet you at your level of discourse - if they ever run that well with my smoothbrain. However, I will naively offer that actions of individuals can be interpreted separately. One can be “good” at one point, one can be “evil” in another. I think we all have the capacity for good and evil from various standpoints. We can all exhibit a heart of darkness at times.
Certainly this category of people do exist. In my experience working in criminal justice, though, it needs to be appreciated that a significant percentage of the population has no morality at all. They don’t give good or evil or really consequences of any sort a second thought. It’s just not in their matrix. They’re living in the moment, and unfortunately for many people that’s a dangerous place to be. They might steal, they might do violence, they are destructive to themselves and others. It’s not merely acting in self-interest, because for most of these folks their actions aren’t really in their self-interest either. This is the banality of evil. Most of the naughty stuff that goes down happens because people aren’t thoughtful, they aren’t deep, they don’t possess empathy, they don’t care. They are defaulting to their base nature which at the end of the day is little more than a terrified animal. Societies differ in what to do with this problem. Most of them endeavor to simply control the populace to such a degree that it mostly negates this behavior, but then that has a tendency towards tyranny and oppression for those who are thoughtful and empathic. You’ve got to do something to control the chaos, but too much control stifles life itself.
I was not expecting to get some deep, thoughtfully-worded posts on these forums. But you’ve got some compelling thoughts here. Thank you for sharing this perspective written as you have. (Same with Nymph)
The Horde isn’t evil, no matter how hard it tries to be. Alliance v. Horde isn’t good v. evil and never has been. The Horde might best be described as Chaotic and the Alliance as Order, and depending on your alignment you might misunderstand that as good v. evil, but it’s just not the same thing. It reminds me of playing Warhammer: Age of Reckoning back in the day; now that game had a pretty stark demarcation between the factions as good and evil. Warcraft has flirted with that line across factions in terms of their leaders doing bad things, but it’s never really committed the factions one way or the other.
