Mistmaster wrote: ↑Sun Nov 06, 2022 8:23 am
Of course. I simply find the idea of born evil disgusting on a personal level and too simplicistic on a narrative one. Born evil characters are just machines programmed to do evil; no depth, no evolution, no interesting backstory no flavours at all. Think about Frankestein by Mary Shelley; the Creature is not born evil. What the creatures does later is evil, in a sense. But there is a reason he became that way. That is my gothic model: choises matter, evil is not born .
Yet it can be, somewhere, sometimes...
Think Michael Myers, or any other pseudo boogeyman. Pure, unrelenting, forward-thinking (doing) evil, existing on, in, or just outside the fringes of scientific, philosophical, and psychological boundaries of (tidy; easily-labelled/understood) mortal comprehension.
You cannot reason with it because it is, in part, illogical (to those sitting inside the fence of accepted understanding). You cannot put motive to it because you cannot empathise with the purity of singular emotion given physical form.
Etc, etc.
Of course, the superstition, or, in-universe acceptance of born evil can be a good bit of fun at the table if used even a bit more often as an actual born evil creature. Birth defects, ill omened births, and other such "rural" ignorance that oftentimes leads to brutal persecution; that's just good world-building. Here the PCs get the chance to isolate/ostracise themselves from the good intentioned but still miserable bastard masses (be heroes in Ravenloft) by being in a unique position of seeing past such limited mindsets...by having much more modern or "frontier" way of thinking. That certain point of view that differs from the "norm" (ie outsiders). Etc.
Nobody ever said good and decent was an easy road to walk...
"A very piteous thing it was to see such a quantity of dead bodies, and such an outpouring of blood - that is, if they had not been enemies of the Christian faith."
- Jean Pierre Sarrasin, "The Memoirs of the Lord of Joinville"