I'm thinking about running a setting where Good and Evil are perturbations in a universal field, similar to magnetism in objects (think perfect Good is all spins aligned entirely up, perfect Evil is all spins aligned entirely down). Any thoughts on further ideas for emergent mechanics/story hooks?
(Smashing an angel and a demon together at high velocities)
If evil is a measurable thing, then why don't the good people group up and Smite Evil?
Attempts of the same have happened time and time again in human history, and those guys had to MAKE UP the evidence that their victims were evil.
I was thinking, for example that once "alignment" is increased beyond a certain threshold, free will is lost and behaviour becomes deterministic. The plot starts with stories of an angel rampaging in a city, leaving a cracked, glowing scar in his wake before suddenly leaving. The city is shocked, religions are in turmoil, such a thing has never occurred before. The players eventually learn that the antagonist learned how to bring an angel below the threshold, giving it free will for the first time. The angel becomes a potential antagonist/force of nature, and will stop at nothing to keep its new free will.
>>46296393
So, good and evil are basically just forms of mind control by 2 different superior powers that are battling each other for the universe (or the inhabitants thereof)?
>>46296355
I didn't say it was easily measurable. It's hard enough to measure plenty of real-life fields. That could be a story however, if such a device was invented, imagine how many nations would come crashing down in chaos. Do we allow the spread of this device, essentially thought-policing the population?
>>46296456
Not superior powers, that's just... the way the universe is. It could be that evil Gods are created from sufficiently large perturbations (i.e mass sacrifice, or even just a large enough war atrocity), or that true Gods are myths.
>>46296508
Then what IS controlling them?
If they have no free will, then they must be under the influence of some other will, or they wouldn't do anything at all.
>>46296560
They don't have to be under the influence of another will. For example, imagine determinism was proven true. Every action you take is not of your own choice, it's just a reaction to a stimulus. Beyond a certain point their actions are prescribed, and they have no say in the matter.
Maybe angels are philosophical zombies, with no real consciousness?
>>46296682
>imagine determinism was proven true.
Oh I believe it is true. But I don't think you understand what that means.
Just because a maths problem has just one correct answer doesn't mean you don't need to calculate to reach it.
Just because by fast-forwarding time I can predict your response to something doesn't mean you don't have to go through the act of decision making to reach that response.
A cabal of wizards is making unepected success in their attempts to split the angel. They are believes o be searching for the good particle
>>46296300
Since magnets can align ferromagnetic materials' magnetic domains, it would make sense for a large enough concentration of good/bad fields would be able to slowly change a person's alignment, more drastically the stronger the field. Angels make people do good things demons make people do bad things. You can also add the mechanic that the two opposites attract each other due to their desire to destroy the other.
>>46296300
This is similar to an extension of how alignment works in DnD Planescape and settings that link to it like FR.
These can suffer from a problem where Good and Evil are detached from Right and Wrong. You'll have a kind of two-tier system where individual morals and ethics are one thing, and the objective moral field is another all together. That's entirely workable by itself, but it ends up goofy in settings where you have ways to objectively detect Good and Evil. A high level Lawful Evil cleric who casts Detect Evil is going to know that he pings Evil, but that won't necessarily make him think what he's been doing was wrong. How he and others explain away being Evil but not being Wrong can be problematic. "I do it for the cause of Evil!" is always pretty silly, while willful ignorance/delusion isn't all that compelling either.
>>46296560
That's rather like saying rivers must either have chosen to change their course over thousands of years, or someone must have intentionally diverted them. In fact we understand the geological processes quite well and know they're deterministic.
In OP's setting deities would be complex collections of elements, like a billion trillion rivers, all inlfluenced deterministically by the Good/Evil field.
>>46296982
>You can also add the mechanic that the two opposites attract each other
But only on the same plane.
If the are on different planes they are repulsed by each other.
>>46296787
No need for the hostility, I'm not sure you interpreted what I was trying to say.
>Just because a maths problem has just one correct answer doesn't mean you don't need to calculate to reach it.
Just because by fast-forwarding time I can predict your response to something doesn't mean you don't have to go through the act of decision making to reach that response.
I'll put it like this, imagine if an angel was, for millennia, incapable of deciding to kill a child. Then, all of a sudden, it becomes an option. Use the principle of charity here, think about the ways that that could be the case. For example, it could be that the angel was previously incapable of even imagining that option, but now all of a sudden they can. It could be that they could entertain it, but not act upon it. It could be that they are held prisoner in their own body.
Hell, if you've read Peter Watt's Blindsight, it could be that their conscious mind was post-hoc rationalising the actions of the sub-conscious, but now it is in control, and it can do whatever it pleases.
>>46296856
I like it, I can imagine it kind of Pratchett-esque, or pretty horrific, killing majestic angelic beings. Maybe they are actually being led by someone trying to find out how to permanently kill Angels.
>>46297047
>, it could be that their conscious mind was post-hoc rationalising the actions of the sub-conscious,
>subconscious
So now we do have a name for what was controlling him.
>>46297071
Your argument was that something has to be controlling them. You asserted that this has to be another will.
My argument is that all there needs to be is a set of physical laws. You don't need a controlling will to ultimately be behind everything. If you're arguing that any will is deterministic and entirely dependent on physical laws too then all we disagree on is how we frame our example.
>>46297164
Yeah, I deleted my post because it completely failed to address what you were saying. I read it too quickly and misunderstood.
>>46297021
There's essentially two potential systems here. The first is where behaviours influence the field (we'll call it the "The Alignment" for giggles), but The Alignment doesn't influence behaviour. The second is where The Alignment can directly influence behaviour. The first is probably easier to work into a cohesive setting, but the second has a nice, almost cosmic horror element to it, having to resist the darkness of the dungeon, or entire cities devolving into brutality and madness.
>In OP's setting deities would be complex collections of elements, like a billion trillion rivers, all inlfluenced deterministically by the Good/Evil field.
This I love, reminds me of like the Qax from Stephen Baxter's timelike infinity. The Qax are ancient conscious entities formed from vast feedback loops of ocean currents.
>>46297124
Why did you read that post and select only one of the options?
>>46296856
Angelic Fission discovered, Wizards then create Angelic Bombs made from two halves of an angel.
Heavenly Assured Destruction becomes the concern of world leaders, especially Evil Overlords, because the resulting Heavenly Fallout has a lot of excited good particles littering the landscape. Think of subatomic Paladins who only know how to smite evil and does it all the time to everyone.
>>46296300
What if the waveforms tended to influence surrounding un-aligned bits of the field?
Like a quantum-scale prion whose folding effect is thwarted only by already aligned fields of the opposite type?
>>46296355
>If evil is a measurable thing, then why don't the good people group up and Smite Evil?
Probably because, RAW in any given D&D edition, it actually takes a lot of fucking evil to show up on Detect Evil.
>>46300577
So a small section of unconstrained evil will uncontrollably reproduce until it reaches an opposite alignment? Could be interesting exploring the oceans and coming across a huge continent of unconstrained evil. As in "Holy shit the whole world has to stop this".
>>46300937
Paladins and Blackguards could be "fixed" so the could affect the Alignment but not be directly affected back. Thus a raging horde of paladins could purify an area by being there and eliminating everything evil.
