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Old 09-23-2018, 10:24 AM   #1
b-dog
 
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Default Yin and yang and good and evil

I was trying to mix yin and yang into the good and evil of DF. I was thinking that yin and yang could both be evil forces while the balance would be good. Therefore the balance could drive away demons and undead just like holy powers can while pure yin or yang would be hostile holy clerics. Any thoughts?
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Old 09-27-2018, 12:55 AM   #2
Tom H.
 
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Default Re: Yin and yang and good and evil

There's a lot there to think about. I think a reply could end up as a dissertation, so I was avoiding it.

In a nutshell, it is very tradition defying and conceptually challenging to remove the polarity from good and evil.

I'm not sure how you define the poles of yin and yang, but if we were to replace them with traditional good and evil or dark and light it would present a challenge.

For example, to have positive feelings and altruism for your fellow man may tend to deviate from strict balance and therefore goodness in this model. That's a bit alien to me.

At the same time, always furthering an extreme (pole) with no balance ends up in a monolithic singularity.

Balance vs. good is sort of an enigma.

As a digression, I never really understood what was meant in Star Wars by Anakin bringing balance to the force. Did he? In what way? Maybe someone is more learned in that than me.

The other thing to consider about balance is whether you want to always be in the neutral state or if balance means equally countering one deviation with its opposite.
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Old 09-27-2018, 06:36 AM   #3
Dalin
 
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Default Re: Yin and yang and good and evil

As Tom H. points out, this could get complicated fast. What kind of binary might be understandable and form an interesting basis for a campaign? The idea of balance being good rules out Good and Evil, but I'm not sure that Light and Darkness don't work. Too much light is bad (light might also be associated with heat), and too much darkness/cold is similarly bad.

One interesting idea to make the two axes tempting and useful would be that mystical power in the mundane world necessarily comes from either axis. So a wizard's fireball is powered by the light. An ice dagger is powered by the darkness. Maybe you can only use one or the other, like a pact. Each spell or college could be mapped to a side of the duality and have to take light or dark aspected magery.

Or maybe you can access either extreme, but they cause taint or imbalance or something (in your soul, in the surrounding region a la Dark Sun, in nearby sentient beings...). Alternating back and forth might help balance things out somehow.

Other possible dualities that might work:
  • life and death — in this one "life" isn't altogether good... think life out of control, like a cancer
  • order and chaos — a classic from the early days of RPGs... too much of either one sounds bad
  • solid vs. liquid

Last edited by Dalin; 09-27-2018 at 07:42 AM. Reason: typos
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Old 09-27-2018, 07:49 AM   #4
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Default Re: Yin and yang and good and evil

I've been mulling over the solid/liquid idea. It leads to some fun fluff for a campaign world. The bodies of animals are obviously in harmony with bones and blood. Trees might be seen as holy with wood being of stone and leaves and sap being of liquid. Ice becomes a thing of mystery, solid and liquid. In terms of divvying up magic, earth spells are obviously solid. Air and Fire are liquid. Water is liquid... but what about ice? Perhaps that college is divided in two? Or maybe ice spells are from balance and thus don't cause any taint.
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Old 09-29-2018, 10:00 AM   #5
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Default Re: Yin and yang and good and evil

I've played with this idea a bit, but in the framework of Order vs Chaos. I never liked the idea that Order = Good, that is presented in some stories and games.

Order represents structure and that can be good, but it also means the absents or resistance to any change. And that can be VERY bad. Life is, after all change.

Chaos on the other hand is change (good), but too much and you loose any sort of sense of the proper way to interact with others (lost of social norms, and thus of society).

Absolute order can only be accomplished by removing any form of change (which might be interpreted as needing to end all life, or at lease prevent new life). And absolute Chaos, would break any form of established norm end society. So, clearly the balance between Order and Chaos, Yin and Yang, Positive and Negative, is the desired state. But (as represented in the Yin Yang), both forces are in motion. It's hard to ever find balance, but is still a worthy goal to seek.

So, I wouldn't characterize Yin and Yang as "evil" on their own, but as in need of each other to balance out. Imbalance is the real "evil".
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Old 09-29-2018, 07:37 PM   #6
Tom H.
 
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Default Re: Yin and yang and good and evil

This is a great discussion with some good contributions.

I wanted to further address my perspective on balance with regard to good and evil.

Even as I had planned this response, JMason contributed a related and insightful point about the significance of change.

Like many, I've had difficulty with the question of why there can be so much pointless suffering and evil in the world.

I haven't found much consolation in the adage that without the bad you couldn't recognize or appreciate the good.

My perspective on the frustration of the desire for good is that it's a casualty of the necessity of change and progress.

Balance seems to be a consequence of the fact that processes and states must be reversible in order to maintain change or flux.

A crazy example that I like is the necessity of soap to clean stuff like dishes that become dirty or greasy. Without a substance to reverse the trend of things to accumulate grease, there would be no stopping the eventual deterioration of everything into that state.

So it seems that the world is full of processes and substances that can reverse others.

This can be applied to more abstract things such as good and evil. Emotional and psychological states are subject to change which means that there is the ability to reverse them. While a positive or good state is desirable, left unchecked it could lead to a non-beneficial inebriation of perpetual high. I like to refer to the result of a state that can't be reversed as a type of singularity. Everything ends as an unbounded accumulation of a solitary quality.

At the same time evil may be a consequence of the reversible aspects of good becoming stuck too long in a perverse negative state.

So now my only denial of the very distasteful aspects of this world is that they are a casualty of the necessity of dynamics and flux in nature.

I still have some difficulty with the concept of pure neutrality being the desired human state over marginal good.

Whether or not that sheds any perspective on giving meaning to the discussion of balance in an RPG is to be determined. It's just one way that I wrestle with some of the contradictions.
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