Myself, I had given up alignment as a bad business before I even met her. As role-playing tools go, it’s a sledgehammer in a pottery studio. It serves no real purpose beyond giving Character-A a canned excuse to kill Character-B, and can lead to all sorts of in-fighting and hard feelings as the game participants argue back and forth about how the vague abstract concepts apply themselves to concrete contextual actions.

There are plenty of reasons to role-play a character with a dark side – an anti-hero – but as soon as you apply the word “evil” to your own character, you’ve stopped trying to get inside his head and the whole thing turns into a self-conscious farce along the lines of “Dr. Evil” (Austin Powers) or “Doofenschmertz Evil Incorporated” (Phineas & Ferb). Dark & gritty? Okay. But I would never run an “evil” campaign, nor allow an “evil” character in any game more serious than “Toon”, period.

In my experience, many players choose a “good” alignment during character development, and either 1) forget about ethics and morality altogether or 2) rationalize PC behavior as “good” simply because their alignment is designated as “good”.

Think of Jayne Cobb in Firefly. He seems pretty evil and is largely motivated by cash. In “Out of Gas,” it’s revealed he joined up with the Serenity crew because it paid better and he got his own room.

Jayne’s evil appears often in the show, and, in one episode, it drives the plot. Except for that one episode, Jayne being evil doesn’t really interfere with the “adventure.” His evil actually positively drives another adventure “Jaynestown,” in which he’s a hero for an (evil) act he performed that the town thinks was done for their own good, and it explores his character in a very cool way.

In “Ariel,” the episode in which Jayne betrays the “party,” evil certainly is a problem. If these events had occured in an RPG, these events could be explained by two possible sequences of events:

1. Jayne’s player is a prick who used his evil alignment as an excuse to cause trouble and score cash. The GM decided to control this, so he had the NPC confederate turn on Jayne and another PC threatened to kill Jayne because he was irritated with the player’s antics.

2. Jayne’s player and the GM decided together that it would be cool to have a story that explored Jayne’s evil and its consequences, discussed it with the group, and everyone decided to give it a shot.

I think its #1 that makes many people ban evil PCs in a group, but #2 possibilities could make for a very fun game.

While many people living in a polytheist society worship all the gods, most great heroes (and villains) tend to be henotheists. They have one patron god, whom they worship and serve above all others. To mix settings, a cleric of, say, Ares would probably offer a brief prayer to Poseidon before going on a lengthy sea voyage, but their daily devotions would always be to Ares, and they would sacrifice at his temple first.

“Orcs … are savage, bloodthirsty marauders. They plague the civilized races of the world and also fight among themselves for scraps of food and treasure. They love close combat and plunge furiously into the thick of battle, giving no thought to retreat or surrender.”

You’ve also got races like the drow that are almost entirely turned in on themselves, to the point of murdering their twins in the womb. On the other hand, some races are outwardly focused, like githyanki and mindflayers – they don’t battle each other.

Whether or not they fight each other or only other races, they are still, on average, evil. Not evil in the “your culture is different from my culture” way, but in the “you have too much fun torturing infants” way. Mind flayers fully cooperate with each other but are still sadistic brain eaters. Githyanki seek to conquer and enslave other intelligent creatures.

As far as polytheism goes, my statement earlier that “These deities are probably all prayed to at one time or another by every decent human in the D&D world” indicates recognition that polytheistic people offer prayers to different gods at appropriate moments, not singular-fixation prayers to only one god.

First, you’re missing the whole point with ‘evil’ D&D races. Most of the time, those races listed as ‘evil’ aren’t being evil to their members. Orcs don’t rape and pillage their own villages after all. In that context, ‘evil’ races are more well called inhumane or anti-human-elf-dwarf-etc.

Second, from a lack of knowledge you are completely mischaracterizing a polytheistic religion. I don’t mind; it’s normal enough. Gods in pantheology rarely have singular devotees. In almost any case, a person will ‘worship’ whichever deity holds sway over the matters at hand. To use a familiar example, a sailor would ‘worship’ Poseidon while at sea and Ares while in battle. The idea that anyone outside of temple-keepers would worship a single deity was ludicrous back then. I mean…one deity? Whatareyou nuts?

Fang Langford

There are few in D&D world, too. The DMG in 4E suggests that the gods whose religious principles are to actively pursue Evil itself are scattered and secretive, like Tharizdun’s. As thought exercise, read the divine entries in the DMG without the word “evil” or similar tainting words. Try Bane:

“Bane is the god of war and conquest. Militaristic nations of humans and goblins serve him and conquer in his name. Fighters and paladins serve him.”

He commands his worshipers to:
- Never allow your fear to gain mastery over you, but drive it into the hearts of your foes.
- Punish insubordination and disorder.
- Hone your combat skills to perfection, whether you are a mighty general or a lone mercenary.”

He doesn’t sound explicitly evil unless you add the word “Evil” in his description. He actually sound like a perfectly decent war god who could be at home in any great empire’s pantheon, whether Roman, Aztec, etc. Asmodeus is a god for tyrants, Gruumsh an Ares-like god for barbarians, Tiamat a god for those seeking riches, etc.

Even though there is a whole set of gods that are themselves evil, their faiths largely aren’t Pro-Evil, but simply lowercase ‘e’ evil. These deities are probably all prayed to at one time or another by every decent human in the D&D world. Knights might offer prayers to Bane that their troops stay disciplined. Prison guards probably offer regular praise to Torog. Everyone with an embarrassing secret probably prays to Vecna that it remains secret.