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[Harry Baldman]

No... They are Totalitarian in everyway... They rule with absolute authority... with very few exceptions.

No one is allowed to veto them, they are not subject to their own rules, and their words are not only law but their will is imposed on all within their purview. The only people they are subject to are their direct allies and enemies who will often not interfere with their own affairs. If they have people under them who govern (which they almost always do) then they are completely 100% subservient to that god.

Well then again Demon Gods could be considered a anarchistic society. Since the demon while the most powerful only has the authority it can take on a day to day basis.

The exception are the gods who do nothing or actually develop another form of government... Though one COULD say Feudalism... but then again they have absolute authority within their own realm... so... Yeah it isn't helping.

The fact that they are sometimes benevolent or wise does not exclude them from being totalitarian.

Which is kind of what pisses me off about the whole "Societies by alignment" lists they gave... They are 100% politically based... Rather then a serious observation of those forms of government. Which... again... They do not follow (plenty of Lawful dictatorships in dnd...)

Totalitarian isn't "Good" or "Evil" or even could be "Neutral"... How good or evil depends on the ruler... and how Lawful or Chaotic depends on how much the ruler sticks by their own guidelines and rules.

The trouble is that none of that makes any sense in a setting, and it would be insensible to apply it as incredibly narrowly and inflexibly as you seem to be doing.

Complexity isn't going to spring unbidden from concepts that are applied with as much sheer laziness as this. And it is the application of it, make no mistake. It's where you simply couldn't be arsed to figure out how a medieval society would relate to its gods, how a leader would come to power and how they would rule, how gods and mythology actually work, informed by actual world history, the facts of which can be used and adapted to give actual verisimilitude and depth to a setting. You know, the things that make a setting interesting!

The tragic thing is that the way you describe a D&D setting, one such place could be an interesting place to explore (since that is a pretty apt description of the Thousand Gods of southern Arcem from Godbound), if it were done with the voice of horrible realization carried to its logical conclusion rather than just the voice of complaining.

Dungeons and Dragons seems to go by the idea that both good and evil are the natural order most of the time.

In a few it is evil that is the natural order. Good is the imposition.

You see, that first bit is the sign of a confused theme and multiple authors. It's a knot you would do well to resolve if you want a central conflict with meaningful alignments (if you want high fantasy, that is). Having no coherent theme is a problem - solving this entails limiting the scope of your story in an established setting to a bit where the theme is identifiable, or altering the setting to suit a theme. Like, are the great kings of the realms good? Evil? Do they represent tradition or usurpation of values and authority? Are some of them secretly orcs in disguise? Is one of them actually thirteen different people who look suspiciously similar, each of them believing they're the real one and the others are fakes, though they all take orders from a powerful enchanter responsible for their current state?

Though yes "Practice" matters... but this whole "Communism is chaotic" is just... Political grandstanding that democracy HAS to be the better form of government and must be the opposite! Rather then understanding it or its principles... OR is using its few failed attempts (which were a corrupted version of communism that Karl Marx wouldn't recognize) as its typical form in spite there still being communist countries today... OR not understanding how any form of government can become corrupt.
-It is especially hilarious because in the "Forms of governments to alignments" they seem to not understand what a monarchy is...

Communism isn't chaotic, it's the vision of a more perfect order. It gets corrupted by chaos into a dystopia of power unchecked and rampant. Similarly, is the king the True and Rightful Heir, the Hero Who Became A King In His Own Right, the Treacherous Vizier, Henry the VIII, the Actual Reincarnation of the Previous King, Fake Dmitri or something else? All of this should be taken into context when understanding the context of the government. The same applies to a democracy.

And in the end, the best part of doing a D&D game is that you get to dictate what is right and wrong, and what is lawful and chaotic. All the rest is personal interpretation. Such as this one game I recall where a plague of undead swept over Cormanthor, and the result was a massive backlash against the god Lathander, who was perceived as having failed his worshipers in having let this happen. You can do that! Invent! Characterize! Use the noodle!

[Reelya]

That reminds me of an anime OVA called Dai Mahou Touge. It's a parody of the magical girl princess from a magical kingdom concept.

In the bonus specials for the series, the MC brings her human friend to tour the "wonderful" magical kingdom, and she finds that basically everything is powered by slaves instead of magic, and the magical rulers are oppressive fascists. Of course, in regular fantasy the iron-fisted rule of the kingdom is usually presented as something the subjects actually love.

[Neonivek]

The trouble is that none of that makes any sense in a setting

Gods that rule their domain with absolute authority and even when they delegate it is on a "But I get final say" type the vast majority of the time?

It is typical Dungeons and Dragons affair that... pretty much all dungeons and dragons has been doing for years and years.

---

The ultimate issue I am having trouble tackling with dungeons and dragons more then any setting in existence...

Is that Dungeons and dragons has a secret unseen arbiter of what is right and what is wrong... that everyone in the world has access to... AND can even act instantly in specific cases... and MUST act.

The game immediately becomes better when "detect alignment" ceases to exist. Once that ceases to exist characters actually have to decide things for themselves without it simply being moral compromise.

Yet... I don't like doing setting surgery... since by all means dungeons and dragons is fine... If I felt I could get away with it. Yet everytime I think of something I feel like I am stricken down before I even do it.

That reminds me of an anime OVA called Dai Mahou Touge. It's a parody of the magical girl princess from a magical kingdom concept.

In the bonus specials for the series, the MC brings her human friend to tour the "wonderful" magical kingdom, and she finds that basically everything is powered by slaves instead of magic, and the magical rulers are oppressive fascists. Of course, in regular fantasy the iron-fisted rule of the kingdom is usually presented as something the subjects actually love.

Now of all settings Warhammer 40k is probably one of the few that... attempts to show you why this is the case... (Though in their case I honestly think they are being half-parody in that their benevolent dictators are all baby eating monsters)

It is that you need a iron fisted rule to guarantee the security and safety of all. In fact the idea of a kind benevolent ruler was more often then not considered a bad thing or something that could only be afforded by someone with the strength to ensure it.

That is EXTREMELY hard to translate to a modern audience without glossing it over.

I'll put it this way... Robin Hood would be a MUCH different story if told from the modern perspective in terms of how both the current King and King Richard are depicted. I actually think it is funny how easy King Richard gets off getting that the whole situation, to my knowledge, is entirely his own freeken fault.

--

Also on a side note... Disgaea actually makes fun of this fact.

The Prinny are slaves in both hell and heaven... but do it in different flavors. in Hell they are outright slaves, in Heaven they are "Charity workers". Though they at least justify their treatment by implying that... it might actually be part of their penance (as they are the souls of sinners barred from entering the afterlife until they work off their debt in heaven and hell)

[Harry Baldman]

The ultimate issue I am having trouble tackling with dungeons and dragons more then any setting in existence...

Is that Dungeons and dragons has a secret unseen arbiter of what is right and what is wrong... that everyone in the world has access to... AND can even act instantly in specific cases... and MUST act.

The game immediately becomes better when "detect alignment" ceases to exist. Once that ceases to exist characters actually have to decide things for themselves without it simply being moral compromise.

That arbiter is you. The power has been within you all along. Morality is, to put it simply, as complex as you care to make it. You can have demons and angels as primal, mystical forces of the war between Good and Evil, or you could have a reformed demon or a renegade angel. Or have a character of unclear morality, yet clearly severe demeanor exceeding even the power of the gods themselves create a neutral ground of admixture and ideological conflict with no clear resolution, a novel idea I'm sure you'll agree.

The problem is that you tangle yourself in the surface notions of it and refuse to engage like a seventh grader learning algebra (no offense, and I'm sorry if this sounds patronizing). Detecting alignment is a concept you can have fun with same as you could with any kind of deviation from the regular world. It's not that difficult. You just need to get into the spirit of things and roll with it.

The easiest way to avoid your totalitarian Magical Land of No Fun Allowed is to make most of what you complain about uncommon. Distance the gods (perhaps to the point of low fantasy) or remove them entirely (a la Dark Sun). Or maybe make them still real, but more like Discworld gods (as in just mostly shitty people like their real-world mythological counterparts) or like unknowable, aspected forces of nature and principle. Make alignment detection a rare power. Shit, make magic rare altogether. Put some thought into things and it'll come together. The world you're describing is "Forgotten Realms (maybe Greyhawk or Dragonlance) filtered through the lens of the shittiest possible DMing", there's just no sense of storytelling to be found. And that's my fundamental objection - treating D&D as a setting when it is a toolkit. And most of its problems are pretty easily fixable by turning them into storytelling assets, including alignment and alignment detection.

[Neonivek]

The easiest way to avoid your totalitarian Magical Land of No Fun Allowed is to make most of what you complain about uncommon

We REALLY are having communication issues... but luckily I think at least we get ENOUGH of what the other is saying to communicate something of value to eachother.

Though I actually LIKE the idea of Totalitarian Magic Land of No fun in dungeons and dragons... as the villains.

or Dragonlance

Dragon Lance is that good and evil oppose each other but both are "bad" to win and that Neutral's job is to create balance between the two by essentially being the counter balance should any side get too strong. Too much good creates a moral totalitarian state of well moral absolutes and evil creates well... it evil.

It has a oddly "Evil is necessary" attitude compared to most settings.

Since Forgotten Realm is more Evil is only necessary because true evil is endless... and evil doesn't get along.

Pathfinder's settings is... They actually don't know and everyone has their own ideas without anyone being considered right or wrong. In fact one of the major "good outsiders" don't believe it is their job to "fight evil" because evil has its place, but usually have to because well... Evil is rather destructive all things considered. Beyond that it is also unique in that it ALSO says that alignment is not the final arbiter of the universe and that there are beings beyond alignment who hold just as much sway (if not more).
-Though given that the Lovecraft mythos is part of Pathfinder... it also says something rather unfortunate... (unfortunate in a "Uhh ohh heroes... yeah all your struggles are in vain")

[Harry Baldman]

Though I actually LIKE the idea of Totalitarian Magic Land of No fun in dungeons and dragons... as the villains.

That's kind of what the Thousand Gods I mentioned previously are. They literally are over a thousand parasite gods, created through errors in divine machinery, empowered to godlike status, but locked to a very specific geographic location. They are also extreme junkies for worship, and require constant attention from their tribe-cults accompanied by regular maintenance and increasingly extravagant acts of sacrifice. Some of them grow into monstrously powerful beings, while some go mad when their cults become extinct due to impossible-to-maintain ritual practices and horrible abuse at the hands of their god, leaving them trapped in a ruin to feast on passersby.

Of course, the entirety of that campaign world is pretty amazing, with stuff like the Atheocracy of Lom (atheist fundamentalists with funny names actually serving angels in return for power), the Ulstang Skerries (vikings ruled by necromancer witches that send out ships of draugr to raid the coastline), the Bright Republic (a futuristic republic off the coast of the continent that's preserved its magical technology for now, but which is still failing, and likely to fail completely in not too long) and Nezdohva (faux-Imperial Russia if the Czar was a metallic automaton who replaced the entire nobility with other constructs). And probably D&D compatible, now that I think about it, at least 5th edition.

And yeah @communication issues. I tend to go further off-base the longer I rant, and that's pretty long by the standards of my rants. Probably doesn't help that none of the D&D I've played save for that one campaign you ran the prologue of was in the Forgotten Realms, which is the source of D&D's worst tropes.

-Though given that the Lovecraft mythos is part of Pathfinder... it also says something rather unfortunate... (unfortunate in a "Uhh ohh heroes... yeah all your struggles are in vain")

The most interesting thing about cosmicism is that it goes both ways. Yeah, ultimately you did only stave off humanity's devouring by the Elder Gods, it's going to happen anyway. On the other hand, you staved it off for a thousand years, which, while but a blink for an Elder God, is still pretty damn good for you.

[Neonivek]

Though apperantly even 5th edition dungeons and dragons thought adding Lovecraft was a genius idea

And... I agree... Mostly because they don't do nearly enough with their farplane or aberrant really.

[Harry Baldman]

It's hard to do the Far Realm justice because to show anything about it is to defeat the whole point (and also because the answer to 'oh, here's the plane where motion turns to music' for the consummate adventurer is 'so what').

It's also a problem because you can't actually transplant Lovecraftian madness to D&D because the whole world is mired in the core concept of violence and the violently unnatural, in contrast to the real world where neither violence nor unnatural things are very common.

[Neonivek]

It's hard to do the Far Realm justice because to show anything about it is to defeat the whole point (and also because the answer to 'oh, here's the plane where motion turns to music' for the consummate adventurer is 'so what').

Well more that there being alien near unknowable gods in the background kind of really works for the setting. Putting them in the Farplane also works very well.

Mostly because Evil are usually direct antagonists. Yet the Lovecraftian mythos are USUALLY indirect antagonists (minus a few stories)

It gives a boreboding encroaching feeling overall. It isn't a bad addition. Though they didn't necessarily have to do it by adding Lovecraft to admit. Heck calling them the Fargods or Weird ones could have worked as well.

[Harry Baldman]

And that's in addition to, say, the Blood War (oh, you know, someday one of the sides is going to win and bring down the heavens themselves, no big deal) and any number of other things, like Dendar the Night Serpent in the Forgotten Realms, which is another Great Old One.

It was funny how in Lords of Madness for 3.5 in the section for aboleth revered entities they had a note at the end that you could replace one with Shub-Niggurath, another with Cthulhu, a third with Nyarlahotep and the other two with something else if you felt like it and lose little in the translation.

[scriver]

The ability to detect evil on non-supernatural (natural, I mean? ) beings was removed in 5th Ed, by the way. It can now only detect the alignments of really evil stuff, like demons, or very evilly aligned items, like a dagger that has been used to sacrifice babies to the evil demon lord ztuttut, and such.

[Reelya]

Sounds like a good decision.

The Detect Evil spell of old would basically ruin any sort of murder mystery for example, or possibility of some evil person tricking the players. It would effectively be a "detect selfish" spell, forcing the DM to cast anyone the players deal with as "Good" and selfless so as to avoid the players using Detect items to avoid dealing with anyone who is Evil or Neutral.

Anyone bartering with the players, or offers you something too good to be true or wants to lead the party somewhere? Detect Evil. That player tactic would force the DM to do workarounds for the plot all the time. Anyone who tries to mislead the party would have to be a Good person under some form of coercion or pressure, to avoid casting a non-good aura.

[Max™]

I like Win 10, actually. The spying stuff is pretty underwhelming as far as I can tell. If they want to see all my weird porn or something they're welcome to it >.>

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Neonivek]

Sounds like a good decision.

The Detect Evil spell of old would basically ruin any sort of murder mystery for example, or possibility of some evil person tricking the players. It would effectively be a "detect selfish" spell, forcing the DM to cast anyone the players deal with as "Good" and selfless so as to avoid the players using Detect items to avoid dealing with anyone who is Evil or Neutral.

Anyone bartering with the players, or offers you something too good to be true or wants to lead the party somewhere? Detect Evil. That player tactic would force the DM to do workarounds for the plot all the time. Anyone who tries to mislead the party would have to be a Good person under some form of coercion or pressure, to avoid casting a non-good aura.

Well sort of... it depends if the evil person is the stupid brand evil or not.

HECK bad detective fiction tends to ALWAYS have the "Jerk character" be the red herring (though even worse has the Jerk character always be the villain)

[Neonivek]

Ok I have to ask this... Why is Bryan Fuller and his Star Trek movie series... even REMOTELY considered progressive?

Is it because of Uhura? Because her only real importance to the movie is being someone's girlfriend?
Is it because of race relations? Because it goes out of its way to add racism that was outright removed from the original... And White Washing?

Seriously where is this extra progressive movie that people keep insisting it is?

I refuse to believe this is just a case where a movie is just insisting it is progressive when all it does is lip service... because that only survives one movie.

Then again I did watch a video that justified the whole Kahn thing PURELY because the actor who played him is so good. So maybe it is that the movies are so good that they are progressive on the merit that they are good.

---

On a less political side

I was watching today's episode of Steven Universe and the part that almost made me cry was somewhat of a minor line "I guess you didn't need me"

Which kind of hits me on a personal level... though I wonder if that is the same for everyone. I mean everyone wants to FEEL useful... so I have no idea if I feel particularly strong desire to do so...

Though perhaps it is more that I feel so extremely useless and unwanted, and not that I want to feel useful and wanted particularly strongly.