Alignments and Morals

[hawklen]

Reading on another server's wiki about alignments and morals, law and chaos.

Please dont go on about "This is layo, our ways are superior" or any other bunk. This is just very interesting reading, and I think a fun topic to discuss.

Alignment - Avlis Wiki

[lonnarin]

Nice link.  I especilly like the part in the CG section where it mentions that these same people view laws and governments as an outgrowth of evil.  What it doesn't touch upon though is how the alignments view themselves.  It is very seldom that an evil person would ever consider themselves evil, or that a chaotic person ever views their crimes as anything but "true justice".  In our minds we paint ourselves to be a mirror of our own ideals reather than the physical reality of what we are, and in the same manner we distort and demonize that which we oppose.  See for example the us vs them mentality of modern politics and you'll find that to a republican thir own party can do no wrong when their hand is caught in the cookie jar, and the same goes for democrats and their own.  Rather than both parties trying to lead by example and fix the problems of their own hierarchies, they merely point fingers at the other side and denounce one another in this great football game of groupthink.  Much the same happens no doubt to the forces of good and evil.  We self justify every sordid act we do and project our guilt into rage at the ubiquotous "other side" as the source of all our internal turmoils and wrongs in the world.  

Magneto for example, views himself as a victim of the holocaust, a prime example of human intolerance, so his mistrust and anger focuses on humanity as a whole.  Since he's a mutant, he can somewhat detach himself from the sygma of humanity in his own mind, but that doesn't prevent him from commiting murder, treachery and even genocide in order to take over the world; the ends justify the means.  In his mind, he's not some petty tyrant trying to conquer out of greed or lust for power, but a great savior bringing the much-needed order that the world will die without.  

Even more unsavory criminals like mafia members who dont hold such lofty ideals of themselves aren't without their megalomanic constructs.  In many of their minds, they view the FBI and governmental agencies to be just as dirty as they are, and therefore see themselves as more honest about how they do business.  Truly, our lives are more directly negatively impacted by porkbarrel projects, mismanagement and wars waged via political distortions than some bootlegger, counterfeiter or smuggler, though or legal system is devised so that the lawgivers have entirely different laws for themselves.  This is my personal opinion, of course.  Being a chaotic person, I view all government as evil... and the government, relying heavily on its blanket assumptions of popular consent despite its heavily encoded legalese demon-tongue, views folks such as I as being born from an unforgivable evil above all others; disobedience.

These alignments are nothing natural, but each and every one simply a 1st-person-point-of-view observation of opposition.  While good and evil sit opposed, neither of them truly see where they sit on the big graphing paper of persistancy; one X is another man's Y.  Each individual's moral compass faces North, just every man's North could be found in any of the four scattering winds.  In short, there is no fundamental reason why there could not be a murderous Paladin, a reckless lawman or a meticulously structured rebel... these moral constructs cannot even begin to describe the personal development of the individual, nor can they offer any clues to their world goals and personalities.  We are *all* Lawful Good; all those who oppose us are the bastions of Chaos and Evil.  Those who refuse to see this; that law, ethics and morals are entirely subjective are most often the greatest "evil" of all... for when one's own reality is unassailably good and righteous without equal, what is everything else but "evil"?  And since everybody who disagrees is evil, it is therefore acceptable to bring the evils of violence and oppression upon them all.  Is that not the truest evil in itself, to twist everything good about your morality in order to serve evil?

[Dorax Windsmith]

Nicely put!

[hawklen]

True lonny, but for an alignment write up I think its really good, and gives more information on the alignments, making it easier to play for newcomers. LORE is a bit.. on the short side, and widely open to interpertation to both extremes, and can be used for more abuse. Thats just my opinion.

And I love your examples. Very well put. But I view myself as CN. *winks*

[Gulnyr]

What it doesn't touch upon though is how the alignments view themselves.  It is very seldom that an evil person would ever consider themselves evil, or that a chaotic person ever views their crimes as anything but "true justice".  

The second sentence of the quote explains the first.  No alignment guide needs to explain how characters view themselves for two reasons.  

First, as you said, every character has the notion that he is good and proper and doing the right thing the right way, so it would be silly to say that again at the end of every alignment description.  

Second, alignment isn't a description of what the character thinks IC, but an OOC mechanic used to indicate the general background motives and inclinations of the character.  Alignment doesn't determine what you do, but why you do it.

In your first example, I'm sure Magneto would think he is doing the right thing, but it doesn't matter that IC he believes he is a good guy because the alignment rules aren't about what characters believe IC.  By the D&D alignment rules, he still qualifies for Evil because he doesn't believe in the sanctity of life.  Killing first, without consideration for the other person, is one of the cornerstones of what it means to be Evil in D&D.  

To branch off the second example, Al Capone may seem to have a Good alignment when his soup kitchens are considered, but the motive behind them wasn't Good.  The soup kitchens were a PR stunt to improve his image; he didn't do it because he cared about the people but because he cared about himself.  This is just like an Evil Cleric healing other party members.  She isn't doing it because she has the injured characters' best interests at heart, but because the other characters are a "necessary evil" (heh) that furthers her goal of staying alive long enough to use their skills to take the goodies farther into the cave for herself.

[hawklen]

Awesome discussion so far! Keep it up!

[jrizz]

I just want to add my two cents about the whole good and evil thing. We have had many threads on this subject and still it bugs me. I really could not put my finger on why for the longest time but I think I have it now. You see if a good PC does something evil they get dinged (or should) so if a evil PC does something good they too should get dinged. Please dont come back with the old intent argument because it does not hold water. If you are evil just because you have secret evil thoughts well guess what... everyone has secret evil thoughts! it is actions that define us. If you go around doing good things all the time with groups of good PCs, guess what? You are good! The intent thing really gets me, say my good PC kills the helpless old man because he had a sickness that would have infected everyone else. His intent was to save all the others. But his act was evil, there was other way to save the people. So if the evil PC saves the little girl from the ogres and returns her to her family and says he did it just to get the reward, where is the evil? there are other ways to get the reward. He could kill the whole family and take all there stuff. He could save the little girl and then infect her with a sickness that would kill everyone she goes near after a month. Then come back and loot all the dead bodies. Now that would be evil. But just saying "I am only doing this for the reward and I would not care otherwise" but still doing the good deed is not evil. So come on folks if you are going to be evil step up and be evil. Save the little girl and then hold her hostage for more reward. Make a deal with the ogres that after you return the girl you will help them raid the town for a split in everything. Do something evil. Thus endith my rant

[lonnarin]

Ah, if you ever manage to rent the two samurai epics, Yojimbo and Lone Wolf & Cub, both protagonists do a pretty good job portraying evil heroes.  Yojimbo is a ronin mercenary who hires himself out to the highest bidder to act as a bloody-handed bodyguard to various feudal houses during turmoil, not really caring who he works for as long as he gets paid.  Often times he will flip flop back and forth between the houses after he intimidates the losing house into forking over the ryo, and he rarely does *anything* generous.  He then curses the farmers and peasants for being weak, and when circumstances result in him "accidentally" saving them by killing a rival who's tormenting them, he'll often be disgusted by their gratitude and threaten to kill them if they won't stop their shameless grovelling.  In the end, he usually kills every single bandit and renegade ronin in the city, and leaves the town in relative peace... just to stir hostilities up somewhere else so he can profit from them.  The fact that he winds up killing vast legions of evil bandits and corrupt politicians in his way is only tertiary to his goals, and yet the net result of his actions are that the world is a better place.

Lone Wolf & Cub is about a father and son samurai team who wage a bloody path of vengeance in order to avenge their mother/wife's death.  Unfortunately for the childs, he's about 1 and a half or two years old when this path begins.  The father Lone Wolf almost even slays his son to spare him the pain of the path, but decides instead to train him into a killing machine on their "Path of Evil". (which Lone Wolf refers to blatantly verbatum)  He pushes the baby in the cart along towards the shogun, stopping from town after town beseiged by bandits and corrupt rulers... and never really goes out his way to stop any injustices.  In one of the episodes he even blank-faced watched an innocent woman murdered in front of him,. but just walks by since the bandit leaves him alone.  When the Yagyu Ninja Clan and the bandits start getting on ghis case trying to take his head for bounty, then it becomes the bloodiest saga of it's time.  He cuts apart everybody and everything that stands between him and the Shogun, even well-meaning samurai and law enforcement.  Many times when his own son is held captive, he goads the villains to go ahead and kill him, saying that the child and he accept death along their journey, for they are already dead.  (great parenting, huh?)  By about that time, the little samurai toddler shoves a blade in his captor's neck, alreadya  cold blooded killer and not even 3 feet tall.

Still, for both sets of protagonists in these films, you still root for the decidedly evil adventurers.  They fight a greater evil and have their own code you can respect about them.  (well, maybe not Yojimbo, he's pretty socially vile)

Check those films out if you liked Kill Bill and can stand seeing decapitated body parts flying all over the place.  They really put morality in a whole new perspective.

[jrizz]

seen them both many many times (own them both) and I disagree with them being evil. Yes Yojimbo is gruff, rude, greedy, wily, and a bit vile (not unlike some dwarfs I know LOL) but he is not evil. In the end his plan ends up with all the bad guys being mopped up.

Ogami Itto was LG in his service to his lord and when he was betrayed he became more CG as he had to put service to his lord behind his quest for vengeance. He called it "The Road to Hell", because it was against all that he had stood for honor and loyalty to his lord. Because he had to leave the rules and laws of the samurai behind he saw himself as being on "The Road to Hell", . But he was not evil he was fighting evil and sometimes to destroy the monster you must become like a monster.

Lone Wolf and Cub - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Varka]

I have to agree with jrizz first post. The old; I am evil in secret so the others dont know, that I know, that I am evil. Well guess what.

The good guys goes this way then.
I know that you dont know that I know that you are evil and therefore I will have you help me save that little girl.

But the evil guy goes.
I know that you know that I am evil. And knowing is a lot of guess knowing actually and non knowns exactly that knowing for a fact not knowing that you know if I know or not not know right now that knowing


eehh I just look at the post and just found out I cant do what I wanted to do, but I post it anyway. it is the essence that counts!

[darkstorme]

I'm going to play Devil's Advocate here for a moment.

What everyone here seems to be missing is "bang for your buck" evil.  Evil characters could reasonably do "good" and not get dinged for it, if the good was a small part of a fantastically evil plan.  

Stage One:  Rescue little girl from rampaging ogres.  Ostensibly, good.  Bad guy is rewarded, smiles and flowers all around.  

Stage Two:  Defend a town from a marauding band of trolls, as part of a larger adventuring party.  The group is lauded, and celebrated by the mayor.  A few surreptitious bribes to a bard here and there and our character's part in the tale gets exaggerated with each telling.

Stage Three: Our (by now) hero saves the capital city of the kingdom from, say, a dam burst, with the use of some magical item/powerful spell.  (He may, in fact, cause the dam burst, in order to make the save.)  He is lauded, and taken to the palace for the King to congratulate him personally.

Stage Four..., here, finally, his plans can come to fruition.  Really, he could take his pick when he was building his reputation so long ago, but there are now options:

• (Straightforward) Safely unguarded in proximity to the King and the Heir-Apparent to the throne, he kills them both and vanishes into the shadows/teleport/dimension door.  The kingdom is thrown into civil war, particularly since he'd been working quietly to increase friction between the two most powerful dukes in the kingdom.  Not only do thousands, even tens of thousands die in the resulting chaos and starvation, but our character becomes rich from the war profiteering.
• (Ambitious) Having won the acclaim of his ruler, our character asks for a private audience with the king, to discuss some ideas he has to improve the kingdom's justice system and standing army.  With a sufficient Persuade check, he and the King retire to a drawing room, where they spend hours in conversation.  When our character emerges, accompanied by the dominated King/doppelganger in the King's form/Himself, disguised by illusion, while the apparent "character" is in fact another illusion, the King announces that he shall take the man on as an adviser... and the Kingdom is now a puppet government.
• (Really ambitious)Our character takes a post as the King's adviser after nothing more sinister than some careful persuasion, aiming to bring the hammer down on a meeting between kingdoms in the next month or so.

This, I feel, is what Private Development Journals could be used for quite adequately.  Since datestamps can't be doctored by players, simply lay out your evil plan (in draft form) when you start on the path.  If you later alter it slightly, that can be detailed in your character's "secret journal" as well.  If, later, you abandon the idea altogether, or push it impossibly far into the future... then you can be dinged for the good you did, because suddenly, it was good for no *ahem* good reason.

If, along the way, you can get away with poisoning/infecting/raiding a village or three, all the better.  But there can be method behind the madness of an evil character famed for his good, generous acts.

Aside from that, I'd agree with Gulnyr - it doesn't matter how a character perceives themselves - in D&D, Good and Evil are not relative values, nor are Lawfulness and Chaos.  These are how their characters are objectively measured against the world - not morals, not personal viewpoints.. just absolutes.

Oh, and I'd disagree about slapping "Evil" on Magneto.  While he's not amiss to holding people hostage, or killing them if they're determined to stand in his way, when he's not totally insane, he tends to try and avoid needless casualties; not because he doesn't want the trouble - he's too confident for that - but because he values life.  He simply values human life a lot less than he values mutant life. :)  I'd call him Neutral, on the Good/Evil axis.

[Varka]

To darkstorme: So all PC evil characters can be played by this? Funny thing is that you see npc's in all aspects but not by players. I merely see it as an excuse and people being scared about confrontation and intensive RP, but that is just me.

I guess I could draw a parallel to the topic about charisma and if the stat has anything to do with your character being beautiful or not and why do I mention it?

It all comes down to the player behind the screen and his background story, which will of course take all the advantages instead of seeing the great opportunities there can be in having disadvantages as well and the interesting RP you can have.
Last thing is meant to be understood in general and not only about alignments.

PS: The question is of course rhetorical, no offense dude.

[OneST8]

Darkstorme... that was an excellent summation of what I'd thought of after reading the original post. I was literally going to elaborate something almost identical but I won't because you've said it so perfectly.

Well done!

And yes, I'd have to agree with you, Magneto is True Neutral.

[lonnarin]

Magneto is true neutral?  I'd say more like Neutral Evil with some hefty Chaotic Evil outbursts.  Evidence?

X-Men Issue Four: Thwarted by the X-Men, he attempts to destroy an entire nation of innocents with a nuclear warhead out of spite.  His own servants Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch wind up revolting and dismantle the bomb themselves before the X-Men even reach it.

X-Men Issue Seven: Convinces the Blob to work for him, but winds up launching missiles directly at him while fighting the X-Men trying to destroy everybody on the battlefield

X-Men Issue Eighteen: Jetisons the X-men into space to die a cold, slow suffocating death.  He also strands Toad on an alien planet instead of rearding his loyalty by bringing him with him.

By around this part of the original series, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch disband from the Brotherhood of *Evil* Mutants, disgusted with how vile he is.  Further in the series he starts showing some good tendancies here and there, but they're mostly offset by his attempts to do things like set off every nuclear missile in the world to destroy it for no appaant reason, Create viruses designed to genocide all of non-mutant humanity, attempts to use Cerebro to genocide all humans, tortures Wolverine by ripping out every bit of adamantium from his bones out his skin, doublecrosses literally everyone, especially those loyal to him and in the rare cases he teams up with the X-Men against a common foe, after they win they come to blows because Magneto wants to kill everybody he beats.

True Neutral is more like Namor sitting at the bottom of the Ocen in Atlantis; not really rising to do anything unless some silly government decides to stick nuclear subs in his waters, or The Watcher, that big powerful alien guy who just sits there studying everything and refusing to get involved.  Magneto on the other hand ALWAYS gets involved, usually starts everything and tries to murder people on a daily basis.  He doesn't even have enough honor/personal code to avoid overtly trying to murder his own loyal followers.  If that's not evil, I don't know what is.  Circumstances or no circumstances of being formerly oppressed, such behavior is most decidedly self-serving and vile at heart.  I would speculate that even if he were to be totally successful in his mission and kill all the humans, he wouldn't be content unless he was the unopposed ruler and bane of all mutant kind as well.  His perverted world-dream equates to little more than absolute dictatorship under his thumb, despite whatever justifications he spouts as he's murdering the world.  The only real thing that seperates him from Apocalypse is that he actually has a plan and some form of self-justification cheme going on in his head full of lofty misguided ideals.  Apocalypse however, is simply a Chaotic Evil, short-thinking tyrant who wholley and unapolegetically *knows* that he's evil and seems to be proud of it, like some twisted sociopath serial killer like Richard Ramirez.  His only goal is "only the strong survive", a strange form of Darwinism in which he is justified in killing as many people as he can simply to reward the survivors with continued existence.  He's most assuredly mad, however.

Note however, that I'm going by the original X-Men series from '63-2003 and not the revamped Ultimates version or the new animations.  They most decidedly made him more morally ambiguous by then, and were far more sympathetic to his terrorism.

[Laldiien]

The X-Men was a comic book too?  What a rip off!  It was a great movie and they had to go ruin it with a comic book.




*puts stick away, snickers quietly*

[lonnarin]

lol, yeah.  The Movie ticked me off, eyecandy though it was.  Having Iceman and Angel as little kids when Wolverine's already a full-fledged member is just sacrilidge!  All the true dorks of 1963 *know* that the original X-Men were Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Iceman, Beast and Angel!

Of course, Hollywood also gave us black Kingpin, tattoed Bulls-eye, Ghost Rider who can feel a stab wound after transforming back human but not a single bullet wound, the Green Goblin mech suit, pretty-faced Doom... not to mention Bennifer Daredevil... blech!

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

The only reason that you don't see the PCs of "the whole spectrum" as often as NPCs is that the NPCs' true colours are revealed for story purposes, while the PCs keep themselves well-hidden under the guise of, say, a Toranite Paladin or an Aragenite priest.

All of the players who have been approved to play evil have been rightly approved - it is VERY difficult to properly play most types of Evil, and frankly, not many people can pull it off. I would have a fair bit of trouble trying to play anything other than the LE mastermind type, myself.

--

Edit: Lonn, you're my comic-book hero.

[ycleption]

My opinion in (kinda) brief:

Good vs. evil makes sense. I understand it as it applies to D&D, although I think that three differentiations alone is a bit narrow. The article in the link does a nice job of describing them.

Law vs. Chaos makes no sense to me, because it's trying to capture too much inside of the terms. The article gives a rather vague description... who really views everything as ordered or disordered? It's not realistic.. Further, it makes the assumption that those who see the world in a certain way try to promote that side of things, which is just silly.
Where does a druid fall on the axis, who sees deep and structured natural order, but openly subverts human law? What about a Bhuddist monk, who seeks to cultivate order and discipline in the self, but sees all existence as fundamentally "empty" and transitory? A weak law officer, who upholds societal order with diligence, but personally has little order or discipline. A mobster, who falls lock and step with the internal structure of the mafia, while thumbing a nose at the governmental law? What about the philosophical anarchist, who ardently believes that if and only if individuals can control themselves, society is unnecessary, and in fact evil?
What about myself, who personally has some anti-authoritarian tendencies, but who believes in abstract that the ideal society is a highly ordered one?
There are too many different type of law and order, and too many different types of chaos and disorder.
Perhaps if you separated it into natural dis/order, human imposed or societal dis/order, and self dis/order it might make a bit more sense, but even then, it's a very complex idea, and there will be characters that have difficulty with it.

[jrizz]

Darkstorme, what you wrote was very close to what I am saying. All of these evil PCs do the good parts of what you posted but where are the evil parts? Well it cant really be done because it takes DM interaction for a evil PC to be evil. And it takes a ongoing story-line to support such a plan. furthermore if you are a evil PC that some how shows it (black robes, evil visual, holy symbols of your evil deity, and such) well you should expect to not be trusted. So if the paladin that is also in the group sees you getting all buddy buddy with the king well he might just step in and say something. And that is not metagameing.
Of course a evil PC that worships Corath should take those opportunities that come up in quests, like "accidentally" triggering a trap that will kill half the party as long as they can do it without harming themselves.

I have really been toying with submitting a NE PC. I prefer playing the hero type. BUt I think it would be fun to play a evil PC and gather together other evil PCs and do evil things.

[lonnarin]

There are always infinite degrees of law/chaos/good/evil, and like a graph chart, the total distance between two personalities is often more significant than the side of the axis they're on.  Many times a slightly evil person can tolerate a slightly good ally vs a vastly evil foe.  I have a prime example of this from a quest I was on the server I used to play on before Layo,

Lands of Acheron was a server with both an evil town and a good one on opposite sides of the server.  All the evil characters started in Mhordiem and all the good ones in Thanador; Neutrals got to choose on creation and all alignments were open.  One of my characters Fenthon Quill, was decidedly the most purely evil character I ever played.  His history was that originally he was a butler for a Red Wizard who opposed my buddy Skabot (who was originally an evil Red Wizard evoker in the olden days, not the neutral sorcerer he is today).  In order to thwart the wizard, Skabot and one of his Red Wizard allies kidnapped Fenthon and had his body possessed by the demon Quill.  Since this was Quill's ticket out of the Abyss, he revelled in bringing the maximum amount of pain and mindless suffering on the world of Acheron, purely for its own sadistic merit.  The newly bound demon/butler then proceeded to slay all of the wizard's family while he slept, and feed them to him for breakfast the next morning, poisoned.  Afterwards he ventured to Mhordiem to wreak hell and bloody havok as only a demon could.  He was a servant of Demogorgon the two-headed aberrational arch-demon from the Brine Flats, whose ultimate goal was to unleash his dread lord on Earth to devour all in sight, and shared much of the multiple personality schizophrenia of his master.  Further, he was an avowed cannibal, and if that wasn't bad enough, he delighted in tricking others to eat human flesh as well, especially clerics and paladins.

Anyhow, one fine day when Synpox was GMing, he came across a woman and child survivor of a bandit raid who begged him for help.  He hopped on the opportunity and kidnapped the baby from her by force, and told her that if she did not go to Thanador to warn the good heroes, particularly the paladin Wiscoin, that if they did not meet in the desert town at a certain time, he'd sacrifice the child to Demogorgon.  The only chance the child would have is if Wiscoin himself came to the place and offered himself as sacrifice in the baby's stead.  Fenthon then rallied the whole town of Mhordiem to his side, except for Murat who was a Neutral who fled to Thanador to join the heroes and stop Quill.  

Chief among Fenthon's allies were Xander the blackguard of Hextor (Sir Gunky), Shalwraith the priestess of Nerull (I think) and a handful of other assorted evil characters to boot.  It was literally the Sinister Six all over again.  Anyhow, as the evil group made its way to the desert, Fenthon and Xander kept corrupting the child through evil rituals, feeding it Xander's blood in a baby bottle, chanting over it, etc...  and along the way Fenthon would cut off a toe here or there and leave them on the trail for the adventurers to find.  Yes... this character was not above baby-torture... now thats bloody evil.

It turned out however that he went a little too vile for the party's tastes, and despite their communal hatred for the Thanadorians, many of the evil group began to plot against Fenthon.  Even Xander was starting to turn, trying to plead with Fenthon to spare the baby so he could raise it as a blackguard of his own.  By the time the goodly adventurers got there, they saw Fenthon holding a blade to the baby's throat screaming "back! back I say!"  while the evil-folk were trying to talk him down.  (many of them were female characters, and their maternal instincts overrode their dark souls by that point)  Then, of course, some goodly character tried to tackle Fenthon from behind... and he made his reflex save...

Immediately he slit the baby's throat, then used the little tyke as a club against his would-be attacker, bludgeoning her to death.  Half the goodly folk who didn't even know what was happening yet attacked the evil party, who hated them as well, so about half of the the evil party started fighting back.  In the ensuing chaos, the *other* half of the good and evil parties BOTH started chasing Fenthon around, and only Shalwrath and Xander were vile/loyal enough to stay by his side and fight back.  In the end, the whole quest wound up being one big mindless tragedy... only Wiscoin and a handful of the "evil" team survived, though they were the ones who were trying to protect the child.  In the end Wiscoin dropped to his knees and screamed to the heavens at his god, going "Why?!  I would have gladly given mine life!"  Meanwhile, Fenthon was in Sigil (where we went to wait after death) to mock the heroes and villains alike.  After that quest, Fenthon was pretty much hated in *both* cities, almost to the extent that the pirate/brigand Mick Patson was.  It brought joy to wretched little Fenthon's heart.

So the moral of the story is thusly; Never be more evil/good/lawful/chaotic than your underlings can stand, or they will likely revolt and thwart your efforts.  Even though Fenthon was the epitome of what evil and chaos could be, he was so far down that path that even the whole litany of evil couldn't stand him... it was totally like Apocalypse vs. Magneto w/ the X-Men.  The Mhordiemites were evil, most assuredly; but they were still human.  Fenthon on the other hand was an evil so alien and encompassing that most career criminals and mass murderers would think of themselves as saints in comparison.

Admittedly, it's pretty fun to play evil, and we really never had much OOC animosity on that server, as Lessay Fair as our rules system was.  Gunky used to always say that the greatest joy he had in playing his character Xander was that whenever he logged in, immediately he'd get those little server messages... "Wiscoin now Dislikes you!  Bram now Dislikes you!  Nellie now Dislikes you!" until the whole of Thanador set him to PVP.