You just said it, nobody wants to go there. No enemies, no monsters, just a badland to be tamed and lived in peacefully, if anyone with a work ethic turns up.
Actually I'd prefer neither good nor evil lands... aligned lands is a stupid idea. But don't pretend you accept the idea of aligned lands including good and evil when what you actually want is a universal death world. All you do is give the impression that your idea of good and evil comes solely from JRPGs infested with evil light beings, sometimes called angels.
Actually Evil lands are populated by their own species. The Evil Land natives. Good lands have their own natives but in your version they would have to be harmless or outright beneficial. Thus I just applied basic logic.
All you do is give the impression that your idea of good and evil comes solely from JRPGs infested with evil light beings, sometimes called angels
Actually it is a wide area I take it from. From dungeons and dragons where "Good" is simply a stance but one that easily can create a villain. To more classical ideas like Knights or Holy objects.
Even to looking into mythology and looking at what "Good" was.
Then there is just adding reality into the mix. Taking concepts and building them to the extremes.
You are actually taking a very modern approach to good lands and are sticking to it. A Good land to you is one that essentially gives to you. One that helps and aids you. In otherwords it is a very subjective place that applies dirrectly to the player rather then the world around it. It isn't hard to find the flaw in game that is trying to simulate a world (Afterall why is that place ONLY helping you?).
The part that is difficult for you to understand is that I am not trying to substitute Good with Evil and pretend that everything is the same. I am applying the concept of good and not adjusting for context because there is no context. This isn't a truely good land. It is a motif. It is Superficial. Since there is no objective Good in Dwarf Fortress there is no higher force that says "This is good and this is evil" thus a good land could never be a genuinly good place anyhow. It is following a pattern of good that can come from anywhere and be applied without sentience to any situation.
Heck even within your concept where a Good land is a land of boundless generosity. Who says it is giving to you? Who says the land couldn't overwhelmingly benefit those humans who hate you? Afterall Good can chose sides.
aligned lands is a stupid idea
Because you are adding absolute concepts to them. These arn't "Good" and "Evil" lands. These are motifs. Superficial motifs.
Heck if Toady actually goes through with his plans these lands will stop being "Good" and "Evil" and start being lands of "Murder" or "Fertility"
Also I object to your objection simply on the grounds that if at anytime someone took away the word "Good" and "Evil" from this. Your objection would melt away.
Also I like my idea of all those things I said applying and these lands being different. I object to "easy" lands being easy on the grounds of simulation.
This kind of thing is still around, but was more common 20-30 years ago
Actually it is still going strong now. In fact it is probably even more common now. I've never seen more "Jerk Angels".
Another reason for its resurgence is simply... Taking mythology and religion as it is written and applying it without editing while still retaining alignment. What we know as good and evil changed as we went along and many of the actions that were once considered the shining beacons of good are considered either odd or outright evil.
I mean for example. If Moses was a person alive today who in order to free people from enslavement hit an entire nation with plagues and murdered thousands of people? It isn't hard to take someone like Moses and make him a villain simply because of different standards. (Actually it was probably more then thousands. It was a pretty nasty final plague that is intentionally glossed over.)
It is because out knowledge of good is subjective.
Good doesn't have to be outright evil either. A lot of the time it is because they are so morally supperior that they outright can call you out constantly. I remember the Etherials in Aladin (cartoon) who outright destroyed Bagdad because they were evil until they managed to prove they weren't. They culled evil societies before they got out of control. For all we know their methods are just.
In another setting the Angels genuinly feel they are the moral supperiors, and in many ways they are, and they would love nothing but leaving us to our own devices but they simply cannot (we unfortunately have a portal that will destroy all reality). Thus a lot of the trouble with dealing with Angels in that setting is that we cannot actually hold outselves up to their standards. They don't cheat, lie, or give into temptation and thus to them we are horrible because we truely would be. It would be like if the world suddenly turned into the worst jerk you ever met. They only become a danger to us when they are forced to tip their hand, but in many ways it is for our benefit (once again, reality destroying portal) but they simply arn't omnisentient. Interestingly enough Demons also exist in that setting and they... Are not evil. In fact they hold themselves up to the same moral code angels do and generally look like ordinary angels. They just hate the Beaucracy of heaven. In fact they are also trying to save the earth too.
-Oddly enough this is probably the only setting I've seen where there is genuinly more good guys then bad guys. Where the setting is actually more antagonistic to heartless monsters then it is to saints.
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Topic: Good regions being painfully good (Read 87532 times)