Adventure Design Concepts: Good and Evil
Posted by: Ruel Knudson in Developer Blog, Writing AdventuresI personally don’t believe in monolithic evil. I see evil as bad intent. However, doing evil, for the sake of doing evil, is more the mark of the insane, rather than just because someone decides they want to be evil. Most people, in the course of doing evil, will attempt to justify it with good end results. Hitler comes to mind. The man obviously was evil. His intent was to harm and destroy an entire people. But his purpose was to save Germany. In some ways, he may have believed he was trying to save the world. However, his intentions were flawed, and his actions were evil in the first degree. The man was bad, but he thought for a good reason.
My current project is a play on this. Good and evil are not so much a concept of right and wrong, but more a matter of who you think is right. Good is the side you choose to ally yourself with. In both cases, neither choice is really good, or really evil.
I have two characters working with entirely different motivations that seem to share some similar attributes. Both characters are religious. They are devout followers of the dogma of the faith. Both characters want to do the right thing. However, one wants to do the right thing based on what he was taught as being the will of the gods, the other is trying to do the right thing to protect his people.
However, both characters will dance with evil to get it. They don’t even see their actions as evil. They see them as good actions for a good cause. The reason is simple, and my favorite reason. They see themselves as good, so the opposite of them must be evil. In other words, if you believe in the something else, you must be evil.
Now, this might almost seem to be inspired by current events. It isn’t. Rest assured there is no allegory in my tale. It is simply a plot device. I am simply challenging myself with the task to explore good and evil based on the perception of the players. Some players will play this adventure and not even see that there is a conflict on the perception of good and evil. They will simply see one as evil and the other as good.
Some will battle with the truth. Which side is the right one? Which side should we help? Eventually they will choose and in choosing they will justify to themselves their own intentions. They will rationalize that the evil must exists so that good work can ultimately be done.
There will be a few who will see that there is no clear cut good or evil choice. They will try to walk the line between to the two and satisfy the good intentions of one, the other, or both, without doing any evil in the process.
The truth is that there are so many choices to make in regards to this relationship of good and evil that I could not list them all. That is the best part. This particular story cannot exist without the dilemma of the choice. That is the true meat of the story. In this way, the characters will be so central to the story that they will believe the entire story was always about them.
Imagine, first playing a roll that has a path so clear, so easy to understand. Then, suddenly, the water gets murky, the glass cracks, and all that is clear is distorted by how you look through it.
This is why I chose to do this game design thing. These stories. There is a creative thunderstorm in my brain that will not be satisfied until this tale is told. This is going to be fun!
