Hooray, forum is back up
. Here is the reply I wrote about two hours ago and had to copy/paste into Notepad whilst waiting for it to come back again
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I think that's basically what the game's story is trying to say - you can't have one of the two extremes because neither is ultimately good for the long-term health of...well, pretty much anything
. So it's better to have a balance.
Personally I try these days not to describe anything as outright "evil", because it's a comparative term that only exists when you have something to, well, compare it to. So, say you would say that murder is evil, but stealing is less evil than that, while giving people free food is good, and curing them of horrible diseases is even better. Then say that the concept of murder no longer exists. So, now stealing things is the most evil thing you can do. But then say
that no longer exists as a concept. Do the less-good-than-really-good actions suddenly start being defined as evil just because they're not as good as the really good things?
Maybe that's a bit of a silly example. But people can define all sorts of different things as "evil" and have other people disagree with them...I mean, if there's a country where killing is considered evil, and someone murders someone else, then the murderer would probably themselves be called "evil" for committing an "evil" act. And suppose in this country they still have the death penalty, and the punishment for murder is execution. The executioner is killing someone too, but they're allowed and it's not considered evil by that law, because that's "execution" rather than "murder" even though someone is still forcibly having their life ended.
Also, someone who does "evil" things might also do lots of "good" things. Does that make them "evil", or "good"? It's why the Alignment system in DnD doesn't really work if you think about it too much. And probably also why no other game system has bothered with alignments
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