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OK, so this concern has been forming in my head now for quite a while, but I haven't really had quite the right angle to present it from. This is a pet peeve of mine, and I'd just like to clarify a few, main points. While this thread is mostly specific to Bane, the same really applies to most evil deities.
Not only evil people worship Bane.
This one in particular has really got my goat over the last few weeks, and here's why. There's a lot of people in Faerun who aren't fearless adventurers who laugh in the face of a decent intimidate roll. Bane is served by many commoners, farmers, generally normal people, and why? Because they are afraid not to. The fact that someone worships Bane is not an excuse to metagame that they are evil.
Religious intolerance is an evil act.
This one, I'm going to tackle from a slightly contraversial point of view. For this example, consider Muslims. I have no problem with Islam, and I have several Muslim friends, but that doesn't alter the fact that I find a lot of the things they do to be a little strange. Covering their faces in some sects for example, is an odd practice to me because I'm not a Muslim. To them of course, it's a perfectly normal part of life.
Now, there does exist in the world, a number of extremist Islamic groups (There does for all religions in fact) who want things like world domination and to spread fear and terror. These groups are generally considered to be despicable and hated, even by others of their religion who feel that they give their own people a bad name. BUT if someone goes around murdering Muslims in their sleep because of what these religious extremists do, who would be the bad guy?
"OMFG you're a Banite" *splat* = BAD!
Killing someone on the basis of their religious observances when they have actually done nothing wrong is an EVIL act.
Bob's auntie's BFF is a Bane bower.
There are a huge number of people who worship evil deities. Some people worship multiple deities. Many people worship Myrkul purely on the basis that he will be in control of their afterlife. People worship Bane because they're afraid not to. People worship their chosen deity because they were brought up to, or because they had a rebellious streak in their teens, or many other reasons.
People have many reasons for choosing their deity. "I'm evil" is not one of these reasons.
Essentially, my point here is that there's just a little too much perfectly free desire to simply murder people.
Murdering someone is ALWAYS an evil act, no matter what kind of justification the person striking the blow THINKS they have. The only exception to this rule is when you have actually seen the person committing an evil act, or has irrefutable evidence that they have.
Someone showing up on your radar as "evil" is a very, very flimsy excuse for you to go smearing their remains all over the floor. I will be shifting alignments HEAVILY for acts like this.
On the flip side
We've seen a lot of people just recently, who play for team evil, but actually don't really seem to understand, or want the consequences of doing that.
Now we all appreciate that being kill-on-sight is a very difficult and often lonely way to play. Sometimes it can put people off a character entirely if / when it happens, but this mainly boils down to the one single problem: Most evil people don't want to be evil.
If you want your character to sit and chat around the camp fire, and be friends with everyone and have a constant supply of pleasant RP, don't roll an evil character. If you can't possibly accept that fact that it is extremely likely your character will eventually be an outcast, don't roll an evil character. The problem we're experiencing is that the "evil" areas of the server have a very low footfall, because the evils that we have around would rather sit around the fire and RP with the good guys than be social outcasts, forced to sit in the evil areas and therefore RP with the other evil guys.
This behaviour creates a vicious cycle. Because the other evil guys don't want to sit all alone, they do the same thing. Eventually, we have what we're experiencing right now - a very low motivation for team evil to go and be evil because they're so worried about being "outed" as a member of an evil organisation. If the majority of evil characters were known to be evil, they would spend more time RPing with the others of team evil, rather than chatting to the good guys over a nice cup of tea.
There is absolutely NOTHING WRONG with campfire RP and chatting and being nice, but this should not be your goal if you want to play a bad guy.
Thanks for listening.
Not only evil people worship Bane.
This one in particular has really got my goat over the last few weeks, and here's why. There's a lot of people in Faerun who aren't fearless adventurers who laugh in the face of a decent intimidate roll. Bane is served by many commoners, farmers, generally normal people, and why? Because they are afraid not to. The fact that someone worships Bane is not an excuse to metagame that they are evil.
Religious intolerance is an evil act.
This one, I'm going to tackle from a slightly contraversial point of view. For this example, consider Muslims. I have no problem with Islam, and I have several Muslim friends, but that doesn't alter the fact that I find a lot of the things they do to be a little strange. Covering their faces in some sects for example, is an odd practice to me because I'm not a Muslim. To them of course, it's a perfectly normal part of life.
Now, there does exist in the world, a number of extremist Islamic groups (There does for all religions in fact) who want things like world domination and to spread fear and terror. These groups are generally considered to be despicable and hated, even by others of their religion who feel that they give their own people a bad name. BUT if someone goes around murdering Muslims in their sleep because of what these religious extremists do, who would be the bad guy?
"OMFG you're a Banite" *splat* = BAD!
Killing someone on the basis of their religious observances when they have actually done nothing wrong is an EVIL act.
Bob's auntie's BFF is a Bane bower.
There are a huge number of people who worship evil deities. Some people worship multiple deities. Many people worship Myrkul purely on the basis that he will be in control of their afterlife. People worship Bane because they're afraid not to. People worship their chosen deity because they were brought up to, or because they had a rebellious streak in their teens, or many other reasons.
People have many reasons for choosing their deity. "I'm evil" is not one of these reasons.
Essentially, my point here is that there's just a little too much perfectly free desire to simply murder people.
Murdering someone is ALWAYS an evil act, no matter what kind of justification the person striking the blow THINKS they have. The only exception to this rule is when you have actually seen the person committing an evil act, or has irrefutable evidence that they have.
Someone showing up on your radar as "evil" is a very, very flimsy excuse for you to go smearing their remains all over the floor. I will be shifting alignments HEAVILY for acts like this.
On the flip side
We've seen a lot of people just recently, who play for team evil, but actually don't really seem to understand, or want the consequences of doing that.
Now we all appreciate that being kill-on-sight is a very difficult and often lonely way to play. Sometimes it can put people off a character entirely if / when it happens, but this mainly boils down to the one single problem: Most evil people don't want to be evil.
If you want your character to sit and chat around the camp fire, and be friends with everyone and have a constant supply of pleasant RP, don't roll an evil character. If you can't possibly accept that fact that it is extremely likely your character will eventually be an outcast, don't roll an evil character. The problem we're experiencing is that the "evil" areas of the server have a very low footfall, because the evils that we have around would rather sit around the fire and RP with the good guys than be social outcasts, forced to sit in the evil areas and therefore RP with the other evil guys.
This behaviour creates a vicious cycle. Because the other evil guys don't want to sit all alone, they do the same thing. Eventually, we have what we're experiencing right now - a very low motivation for team evil to go and be evil because they're so worried about being "outed" as a member of an evil organisation. If the majority of evil characters were known to be evil, they would spend more time RPing with the others of team evil, rather than chatting to the good guys over a nice cup of tea.
There is absolutely NOTHING WRONG with campfire RP and chatting and being nice, but this should not be your goal if you want to play a bad guy.
Thanks for listening.
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