Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 111 - Why Is Evil Allowed to Persist

Episode Date: February 6, 2022

Today's episode comes to us from listener Brett.  Thank you for the topic suggestion! If there is Good and Evil in your world, why does Good allow Evil to remain?  Why wouldn't the forces of Good do whatever they had to in order to crush the forces of Evil?  Also, if Evil exists in the world, where would it be? If you have an idea for a topic, send it to me at [e-mail].

This week on the Taking 20 podcast. Evil isn't represented by a small group of entities like a nation, a clutch, an ancestry, a dynasty, or other delineated collection of people or creatures. Evil could be an invisible force that influences everyone that interacts with it or each other. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to episode 111-111-11-D-1. Why is evil allowed to persist in your world? Well, evil uses phrases like 11-D-1. This week's sponsor, croissants.

If you can get one to play D&D with you, you're guaranteed a good role player. Just a reminder that this podcast survives thanks to donations by you, my beloved listeners. If you're interested in supporting the podcast, please head over to ko-fi.com slash taking20podcast and consider donating. I'll thank you on the air, even if your name is Wet Fart McGillicuddy. Today's fantastic topic was submitted by a listener named Brett, who emailed me at feedback at taking20podcast.com with this suggestion. Something I've noticed recently is that my fantasy world can seem a bit too civilized at times. I want to integrate more overt evil.

Orc armies, devil worshippers, aberrations, and necromancers. But I want it to make at least a little sense and not be so jarring. And then he continues, where can we put our evil groups and dangerous monsters, and why would they be allowed to persist? These are great, great questions, and it really got my brain working over time. I've run games where the balance of power between good and evil was weighted on either side, or even perfectly balanced. But I'd never really sat down and codified the reasons why each would be allowed to exist in a world where they were unbalanced. Now, let's talk about terminology. I will refer

to evil nations, evil groups, evil collections of people as just the word evil. This could refer to ancestries as well, but as we've talked about in previous episodes, a lot of game systems are doing away with the innate goodness and evilness of one ancestry or another. Classic examples of ancestries and races that were generally considered evil include orcs, goblins, undead, lizardfolk, kuotoa, demons, devils, and so forth. Similarly, I will use the word good to refer to whatever group of peoples represent the forces of good in your world. It could be elves, humans, centaurs, eladrin, or even gelatinous cube. It's your world, baby. Evil and good can be whatever you want them to be. So to make sure we're on the same page, evil represents whatever groups in your world traditionally represent immoral,

wicked groups of people, and good represents the opposite. This episode presumes good and evil exists in some form in your world. Also, it should go without saying that the real world is a hell of a lot more complex than good and evil, but I want to set that aside. There are acts from Earth's history that we believe are quote-unquote good and quote-unquote evil, but it's all a matter of perspective. In the United States, for example, some viewed the outcome of the U.S. Civil War, the freeing of the slaves, and reuniting of a nation to be a good thing. But I live in the South, and I still run across people more than 150 years after the surrender at Appomattox Courthouse

who still refer to the evil Yankees and the War of Northern Aggression. The debate about the merits and causes of Southern secession is definitely not the purpose of this podcast. We are not getting into that shit. Jesus, it's unbelievably complicated, and I only have 20 minutes. Plus, no matter what stance I take, I'd piss someone off, so let's just leave all that mess behind. Believe it or not, the Civil War was the second and lesser controversial example that I thought of that I wanted to bring up. The first I thought of was the dropping of the bombs to end World War II.

And why am I telling you all of this? Have my listeners become my therapists? Well then, alright. Well, it all started because my dad was really not an affectionate man. You see, come to find out I'm my harshest critic and I can't forgive myself easily for failures.

Fucking COVID, man. I'm just, I'm a ball of stress all the time. So I internalize my problems and I end up overeating quite a lot. Sometimes I just want someone to hold me and tell me it's gonna be okay. Wow, that 30 minutes really flew by. I probably need to edit that down or probably out of the podcast altogether.

Sorry about all that talk about my libido confession and my dream where I'm standing on a raft made of old surfboards being stared at by crowds of beautiful women standing on the shore staring at me like I'm a god. What? Maybe I do need to see a therapist. Does anybody know if there's a stripper therapist also has an in-session buffet? Okay, back to RPG stuff, Jeremy. This whole episode presumes that there are groups that are evil, whatever that looks

like in your world, and similarly groups that are good. So let's assume that is true. I want to take the questions Brett provided in reverse order, because the second part is the much harder question. Why is evil allowed to exist in your game world? So let me start off by saying eradicating anything, much less entire evil groups, nations, tribes, empires, or superpowers, is exceptionally difficult. Even the Roman Empire, who I think we can agree were pretty damn good at conquering tribes and peoples, had problems obliterating them and wiping their existence from the face

of the earth. So I want to start with the idea that good may not be able to remove an evil group from the world, even if they wanted to. First reason, evil could just be too strong. Sometimes evil is equal in strength to good or even stronger than good. Even if good united behind a common purpose of eradicating evil, they wouldn't be strong enough to overcome the evil forces at play. So evil and good's forces could be approximately symmetric. Both are approximately equal in size and or military strength or their strengths specifically capitalize on the other's weaknesses. In this case, one attacking the other will likely result in mutual destruction. But it could be an asymmetric

group like an evil empire and a good rebel alliance. Think the Star Wars series where the good guys were the plucky resistance and the evil empire appeared overwhelmingly strong. The good rebels had to fight evil at the edges of the empire, through freedom fighters, terrorist acts, sabotage, and theft. If they tried to take on the empire directly, they would have been crushed. But even if good could somehow rally and destroy the forces of evil, the cost would simply be too great. Why should they sacrifice, I don't know, three-fourths of their army and hundreds of thousands of civilians

when doing so would be extremely unpopular and possibly leave the good nation open to rebellion, invasion, or crime from within. Second reason why evil exists, evil is just too pervasive. Evil isn't represented by a small group of entities like a nation, a clutch, an ancestry, a dynasty, or other delineated collection of people or creatures. Evil could be an invisible force that influences everyone that interacts with it or each other. It's the gentle tug in the backs of our minds to be selfish, to do wrong, to look out for yourself and yourself alone, and look away when something bad happens to others. For example, the plane of Avernus has a pervasive evil

that gradually whispers to characters to do awful things like murder, steal, show greed, and eventually starts pulling character alignment towards the plane's alignment of lawful evil. Evil could be this invisible force that is pervasive throughout the land. It makes pockets of evil pop up here and there throughout the world. Sometimes evil pockets of evil pop up here and there throughout the world.

Sometimes evil just exists in all nations, all peoples, and everyone has the capacity to do pure and righteous things or perform actions that are dastardly, monstrous, and evil. It may be impossible to root out evil because it's the product of the choices that people, both PCs and NPCs, make every single day. Third reason why evil may continue to exist in your world. Perhaps evil and good in your world are backed by extraplanar forces that ensure both continue to exist. Good and evil gods exert influence on the plane where your campaign takes place. They pull individuals and groups to their alignment and way of thinking and attempt to stamp out the other side's forces. It's almost

like a proxy war between the two. The good and evil gods don't want to attack each other directly, so mortals fight their war for them on the prime material plane. And it may not be gods, it could be the forces innate from the good and evil planes of existence in whatever your cosmology happens to be. But whether it's gods, planes of existence, or other powerful beings, something is keeping both good and evil in the world. Fourth reason why evil could exist in your gaming world. It could be that the obliteration of the evil groups will cause political, social, or economical turmoil in the world. Like the old saying goes, sometimes the juice just isn't worth the squeeze. Maybe the good nation of Holyrola could trounce Sothio with a good hard week of fighting and it would all be over. But if they

did, there'd be an economic crisis as the Sothian nation collapsed. There'd be a political blowback from the former allies of Sothia who condemn Holyrola's imperialistic expansion and genocide of the Sothian army. Holyrola may be brought before your campaign's version of the United Nations to answer for their aggression. Plus, suppose Sothia was a military-backed monarchy. The sudden power vacuum may cause riots, death, and unnecessary suffering, which good generally tries to avoid. Finally, evil could be more of a concept than a people. The good empire destroys a group of goblins causing problems, and another group springs up from the ashes of the old. It could

be more goblins, or it could be people who object to the way the good empire destroyed their opposition. So back to the first part of the question, where can you put evil groups in your world? Sometimes the location of evil provides the reason for why it exists. Not to be flippant, but you as a DM could literally put them anywhere you'd like. So perhaps the evil in your world is too distant from the good in your world. The distance could be a literal distance or figuratively far away due to the area it's in, like the environment or the inhabitants are inhospitable to the good forces, if you will. Like Gaul and Germania were for the Roman Empire, it could be a logistical nightmare to try to bring sufficient resources to bear on a quote-unquote evil group. Now, please note,

I am in no way saying that the people who lived in Gaul and Germania were evil. I'm just pointing out that it was a distant group from the Roman Empire. Evil groups could also be nomadic, constantly on the move, keeping their distance from good forces. Evil could live in an area hostile to good. Think of the Underdark in 5e or the Darklands on Galarian. The creatures that live there are hostile to those that live on the surface. The trip from the overworld to areas of the Darklands isn't a long hike, but the area is so hostile that it makes the effective distance greater than the miles on the map,

because the forces of good will suffer losses gradually over time as they have to fight the orcs of the Underdark and the giants of the Underdark and goodness knows what else lives down there. Another place you can put evil in your world is hidden in the shadows. Perhaps the exact nature of evil or even the very existence of the evil group is secret. It's a secret cabal, a hidden group operating from secret areas inside good territory. It could be masquerading as a business, for example, like a front for illegal activities

in the back. It could be hiding as a religion, like a temple that hides money and foments rebellion from within. Or it even could be a government agency that is rife with corruption. Good may be shining a bright light all over most of the world, but there are always dark corners where evil is allowed to grow and fester. The brighter the light, the deeper the shadow. Even in the most controlling of governments and most restrictive of freedoms, it's impossible for the government to be everywhere all the time. So find some shadowy places for evil to exist inside of otherwise good areas. One phrase that really stuck out to me in Brett's original question was sometimes that the world feels too civilized. I think if that's true, then your world needs a bad land or an edges of civilization beyond where civilization has currently expanded.

To continue using the bad Roman Empire example that I started earlier, was the Roman nation civilized? Let's suppose it was compared to others at the time. In many of the Roman provinces close to the heart of the empire, life was extremely civilized, really. It was regimented, orderly, boring. You're a Roman citizen. You wake up, work on the aqueduct expansion for eight to ten hours, buy some wine, cheese, grain, and fruit at the marketplace, go to your modest home, and spend time with your family. Lather, rinse, repeat until you died. Civilized, genteel, dull. And before I leave the subject of Rome, they had things called vomitoriums, but you know

people didn't actually throw up in them, right? The vomitorium was the name for an entrance to a theater or gladiator arena. It comes from the similar root word as vomit because that's when the theater was over or the gladiator fights ended, people would spew forth from the entrances back into the street. And while we're at it, Romans didn't have orgies left, right, and center either, like they tend to be depicted in our modern culture. Sure, the Caesars and I'm sure some of the senators had their fair share of them, but there wasn't a giant sign up outside the temple saying,

Orgy today, first serve, first come. Regardless of the disappointing lack of puking and orgies, Roman life in lots of the empire was relatively safe most of the time. Yes, after dark you could still find muggers, just like big cities today, and tourists were prime targets to get scammed. Overall though, close to Rome, the Senate and Caesars cracked down hard on crime. Well, okay, crime they didn't profit from, but that's a separate issue. However, let's go to some of the remote locations in modern-day Spain, for example. There were constant clashes with the Iberian tribes, the Gallic tribes in modern France, the Germanic tribes in modern-day, well, Germany.

And they say history's hard. In those areas, danger for Roman citizens was only a few dozen miles away. You never knew when these non-Roman groups would organize and attempt to retake their land or attack the Roman citizens, settlements, and armies. And to reinforce an earlier point about evil being subjective, from the Roman standpoint, they were doing good things in Germania, trying to bring civilization to the wildlands. From the Germanic point of view, they were doing good things in Germania, trying to bring civilization to the wildlands. From the Germanic point of view, they were ruthless invaders attempting to wipe out their history and culture.

Eh, you say tomato, I say genocide. If the world feels too civilized, then you need to create some areas beyond the borders that don't have the trappings of whatever the dominant civilizations are. Suppose the good in your world is represented by a large dwarven civilization and the evil is a group of demon-worshipping drow. Note, I'm not saying all drow are demon-worshippers, but this group is. If your dwarves are diggers and tunnelers, then I'd assume that they would make halls of stone, to quote Lord of the Rings. There will still be areas underground, though, beyond which the dwarvenven Tunnels reach. What lives there? Is there a giant serpent folk kingdom?

Is there a group of drow settlements that are banding together to reclaim their lost temple? Are there shadow giants trying to reclaim a lost longsword named Darkfang? What are they doing? How organized are they? Are they similar to the Dwarven Kingdom or very, very different? Are they similar to the Dwarven Kingdom or very, very different? What wild areas there are in the world are where you can actually bring danger to bear on the PCs. Identify those wild areas and what those areas are like. What terrain is there? What creatures hold sway and dominance?

Why hasn't civilization expanded to there yet? Is it because it's too distant from the Empire? Are there no valuable resources to take? Is it too wild and untamed? Is the juice just not worth the squeeze? You as the DM or GM can pick that reason. Now, way too late in the episode, let me get to the payoff pitch as to why evil should exist. Lack of evil in your world means conflict is at best harder to define. There wouldn't be a handy antagonist that the PCs could feel good about thwarting. Many times, players want their characters to be the big damn heroes. They want to be the shining lights of good.

And what better to be the shining light of good than going after the big damn evil villains? The presence of evil in your world gives the DM a ready source of baddies whose beliefs and goals are diametrically opposed to the vast majority of adventuring parties, since most parties at least lean somewhat more good than evil. Could you do the same with law versus chaos instead of good versus evil? Absolutely. The problem is that, especially for new players, the conflict between law and chaos is harder to understand than good and evil. Absolutely. The problem is that, especially for new players, the conflict between law and

chaos is harder to understand than good and evil. Sure, Robin Hood was chaotic. The Sheriff of Nottingham was lawful. But we remember the conflict easier because the Sheriff was also evil, while Robin Hood was largely good. Finally, having evil places and evil people in your world allows for evil campaigns. The presence of evil allows for a reason to have an evil campaign. I know evil campaigns are relatively rare, and most PCs are goody-goody two-shoes. Oh, let's save the orphans and kiss the babies and whatever else. Sure, beating up the bandit king for answers is fine, but smash one elf king's ankle with a hammer and suddenly you've gone too far.

With some force of evil out there, though, it can be an easy reason for the PCs to unite against the forces of good. To root out purity and holiness wherever it can be found. To take what's most sacred in your world and rub their ass cracks on it. So why does evil exist in an RPG world? It could be strong, far off, pervasive, hidden, or maybe even kept alive by extraplanar forces. Brett, I hope this answered your question. If not, please reach out to me and let me know.

Also, if you have a topic idea for a future episode, please send it to me at feedback at taking20podcast.com. I've gotten some great ideas, and you're going to see those episodes line up and fall down over the next few months. Next week, we'll wrap up the class series with those wacky, wacky arcane casters, the sorcerer and the wizard. Thank you so much for listening. But before we go, I want to thank our sponsor, Croissants. Never plan something far ahead with a croissant. They're so flaky and buttery and delicious. And fuck, I want a croissant right now.

I'm going to go make some. This has been episode 111, Why is Evil Allowed to Persist? My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game. Oh God, the croissants turned out amazing. The Taking 20 Podcast

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