Detecting Evil: Holy Smite & Holy Word

[Isabella]

In consideration of why monsters don't incur DPCs, I seem to recall that the last step on a terror track is becoming a monster. An illithid isn't going to become more monstrous no matter how many brains it eats.

(On a side note, illithids are kind of tricky to start with, since they are specifically written to require sentient brains to survive. Most illithids go above and beyond this by keeping slaves and delighting in evil, but an illithid that feels bad about having to pry open your skull still isn't very sympathetic.)

[steveflam]

In consideration of why monsters don't incur DPCs, I seem to recall that the last step on a terror track is becoming a monster. An illithid isn't going to become more monstrous no matter how many brains it eats.

(On a side note, illithids are kind of tricky to start with, since they are specifically written to require sentient brains to survive. Most illithids go above and beyond this by keeping slaves and delighting in evil, but an illithid that feels bad about having to pry open your skull still isn't very sympathetic.)

If I ever meet a sympathetic Illithid I'll let ya know

[The Nightmare Man]

An illithid isn't going to become more monstrous no matter how many brains it eats.

The various illithid types described in The Illithiad could suggest otherwise.

As I see it, the standard illithid is only one of many illithid types that mortals can encounter when dealing with them. As such, I would consider the other more perverse types to be somewhat more monstrous than the standard illithid -- and, perhaps, accustomed to dealing in matters more evil than even the standard illithid would engage in.

[Spiteful Crow]

In consideration of why monsters don't incur DPCs, I seem to recall that the last step on a terror track is becoming a monster. An illithid isn't going to become more monstrous no matter how many brains it eats.

It isn't always a monster. The sample terror tracks in the RLPHB just turned the perpetrators into caricatures of their major faults.

[Sylaire]

On the subject of illithids...borrowing a bit from the Bluetspur-as-Cthulhu-Mythos discussion from last month, one thing that I got out of that was that regardless of their evil, the mind flayers are an alien evil, speaking of it from a sociocultural perspective. That is, they come from a place and perspective on the universe where they're not even capable of seeing "evil" and "good" as humans and demihumans see them. There are differences and gradations between different illithids, as there are differences between Deep Ones and Byakhee and Hastur and Nyarlathotep, but those small differences between themselves only serve to remind us of the vast gulfs of difference between them and "us."

(I suspect this very concept was one reason that drove the Book of Sacrifices rewrite of the God-Brain. A "pure monster" God-Brain simply has no place in Ravenloft. The Dark Domains mean nothing to it in the way they do to Strahd or even Azalin.)

I'm going to quote the Black Box here (p.88, for the curious), 'cause it says it so much better than I can:

"The lords of Ravenloft are tortured souls. Despite their decidedly dark nature, most still have a tiny kernel of goodness. Some small part of them evokes our sympathy or pity. Yes, they are evil, and they must at least be stopped if not destroyed. But basically, they are human--human enough that a priest might think, 'There for the grace of the gods go I.'"

(That same page later says, "Characters who appear as 'death incarnate' at first glance usually make less interesting encounters," which nicely sums up my opinion on Necropolis, but I digress.)

This dichotomy is what, essentially, separates "monsters" from "people" in a roleplaying sense. A monster is something that by its very nature is unable to perceive good and evil, right and wrong in the sense that a person is. It is driven by inherent considerations that make its very existence intolerable alongside "human" society.

In early D&D, almost everything other than PC races were considered "monsters" (or a more convenient label for players, "targets"). The entire concept that orcs could be people, too, escaped entirely, drawing on roleplaying's Tolkienesque roots. Slowly, things began to change (hm, anyone there see a bit of a microcosm of the history of real-life racial injustice there?) until one could legitimately get a quote like the one in the GURPS 3rd edition rulebook where traditional dungeon crawls are referred to as "breaking into people's homes, killing them, and taking their possessions." (paraphrased) Somewhere along the line, humanoids stopped being "monsters" and started being "people" that happened to have physical and cultural differences than "us." Gilthanas struggles with this very dichotomy during his romance with Silvara in Dragonlance--being a teenager while those books were coming out, this of course went sailing over my head, so my reaction was something along the line of "she's hot, she wants you, she has ubercool magic, what's not to go for?" which is simultaneously piggish and innocently pure.

Which brings me around to the topic of powers checks...

Clearly, the Dark Powers impose a certain abstract definition of morality. As Bluebomber points out, this is an objective definition. Heck, the old Forbidden Lore box-set conveniently breaks it down into a matrix providing a percentage chance of failure based on the nature of the crime committed and the innocence of the victim you're doing it to. Oh, yeah, except for casting necromantic magic, which is per se evil no matter what you're doing with it--which is, again, another objective, externally applied definition of morality. Note that this does not have cultural defaults applied. The Dark Powers make the rules and they apply them flatly, regardless if anyone has any reason to suspect that the rules even exist.

But the monsters don't have to make powers checks. The rules don't exist for them. They commit heinous acts that would have the Dark Powers descending on a player like a hammer.

Part of that, of course, is that the Dark Powers exist to abuse and torment human beings, particularly the human beings that chose to play AD&D characters that adventure in Ravenloft. But it essentially boils down to this: there is a line in the sand between good and evil. People have the choice to step over that line or not. The Dark Powers absolutely love to manipulate people into choosing wrongly--or better yet, entering into a hopeless situation where there is no right choice because they took a wrong moral turn back when it wasn't obvious what the consequences would be. But the monsters don't even get a choice, because they are monsters. They have to act in exactly the way they do, because of what they are.

This, of course, is entirely in line with the essence of Gothic horror. Evil is a real, elemental force in Gothic literature. Indeed, the drawing-line between traditional Gothic horror and "modern" horror isn't the window-dressing of setting or of violence, but the realization that evil can be a subjective force instead of an objective one. The choice to do evil inevitably leads to disaster, for the evildoer's victims and for the evildoer him/herself. This is the lesson of the powers check in Ravenloft and the curses of the domain lords. Every darklord has landed themselves in their position by their own actions and choices. A creature that cannot have called itself "human" (in the general, not racial sense) cannot be a Gothic villain; it is merely a target for bold adventurers to destroy. It may be the focus of a scary and atmospheric adventure (*ahem* or a piece of Ravenloft fiction *cough*) in the Gothic mode, but it is not the focus of true Gothic horror and for this reason should never be a domain lord.

[Bluebomber4evr]

Thanks, Sylaire, that's exactly the point I was trying to get across!

Well I've pulled out my old books, and they did indeed incur xp penalties back then--1st edition actually docked a whole level (!), while in 2nd edition your PC had to earn double xp to gain the next level. However, both the 1st and 2nd edition DMGs insist that a PC's behavior should dictate their alignment, not the other way around

[Sylaire]

Thanks, Sylaire, that's exactly the point I was trying to get across!

Well I've pulled out my old books, and they did indeed incur xp penalties back then--1st edition actually docked a whole level (!), while in 2nd edition your PC had to earn double xp to gain the next level. However, both the 1st and 2nd edition DMGs insist that a PC's behavior should dictate their alignment, not the other way around

You're welcome.

I suppose that with the combination of rhetoric and rules from the books, it does come down more to semantics. The player has the freedom to choose whether or not to follow the character's alignment, but it's a coercive "freedom" in that there were punishments for acting "wrongly." In a way, it's not all that unlike how the Dark Powers work.

(wait...that was how we got onto alignment a couple of pages back in this thread, wasn't it?)

[HuManBing]

Sylaire may have reopened a can of worms, though - posting saying "there's a bright line in the sand between good and evil".

This is the same issue that I took up with BlueBomber4ever's post that there are no "shades of grey".

I agree there is a clear difference between the two poles of good and evil at the extremes. Even in general, objectively speaking, you can point a finger at Drakov and say with a fair degree of confidence that he's evil. You can also point a finger at Gondegal and say with a fair degree of confidence that he's good.

But I don't agree that there's a "bright line in the sand" near the middle. That's making things far too easy for people. If there's a line in the sand and if you cross it, then you're going to get punished for it ~ that's too simplistic a view of the world for my campaigns.

I suppose that's one of the reasons why I hate the official write-up for Drakov. Sylaire makes excellent, excellent points in quoting from the Realm of Terror book (still IMHO one of the best sourcebooks possible for the Demiplane - I keep a copy of it next to my bedroom computer, along with the 3rd edition RL core books) - that each darklord must have some spark of humanity left in them, that a PC might think "There but for the grace of the gods, go I". But Drakov, like the God-Brain and a few other unfortunately-written darklords, lacks that spark.

Even on a lower scale, PCs are generally the type who want to do good. In a few adventures, I've allowed selfish and amoral characters to be played too. But drawing closer to the murky middle-ground between good and evil; that's a situation that makes for interesting gaming.

In situations of high stress and extreme behavior, like war and rapine, the difference between what's good and what's evil starts to blur. Put to desperate times, desperate men will do desperate things... so how does a clear-cut, sparkling moral yardstick measure those?

I don't mean to say every Ravenloft campaign has to be a Crow-esque tortured balancing act between the sin of humanity and the salvation of redemption. Ravenloft is versatile enough to allow for clear black-and-white, good-vs-evil gaming if that's what you want. But like I said to BB4E, denying that there's any further level of complexity is only going to limit your choices.

Even if there was once "a bright line in the sand" right in the middle between Good and Evil, in my campaign it's blurred beyond recognition... beneath shades of grey.


For what it's worth, my PCs are going into Falkovnia as part of a refugee rescue mission in my current campaign. On the way in, I plan to have them meet and challenge some border guards - fresh-faced young Falkovnian teenagers who are hefting their first blades. They're free to kill them if they wish... but that will lead to consequences later on, as the next wave of refugees are the dead soldiers' aging parents and supportless family.

The campaign arc will allow them to blackmail one Falkfuhrer, and use him to lure another Falkfuhrer out of hiding so rebels can strike at him. But the object lesson is that no matter what the PCs do, whether they send the captive to Darkon to face trial, or help him find redemption and repentance in a mission, or allow his enemies to kill him in vengeance - somebody somewhere in Falkovnia waits to step into his shoes and continue the process.

Everybody has the spark of good in them, just like everybody has the taint of evil. Drawing a line in the sand and saying "On this side lies me and my family and friends ... on that side lies Saddam, Drakov, and Vader" - that may be very comforting to the players and convenient for the DM. But it doesn't make for the type of complex, shifting moral choices that people in uncomfortable situations and demanding choices have to decide every day.

[Bluebomber4evr]

Like I said, I phrased it wrong. There are characters in all sorts of those shades of gray and there are situations that are that way too...but the setting is defined by a black & white worldview. Ravenloft is not Eberron, where alignment is relative and changing alignment on the fly carries no consequence...to be sure, there are characters who can act that way, but such characters are judged against the DP's objective beliefs on morality. In other words, that "line in the sand" is drawn by the Dark Powers. Of course everyone has the capacity for both good and evil--I never argued otherwise--but the choices made are judged by the DPs. This part of what Sylaire said summarizes exactly what I've been trying to say the whole time:

Clearly, the Dark Powers impose a certain abstract definition of morality. As Bluebomber points out, this is an objective definition. Heck, the old Forbidden Lore box-set conveniently breaks it down into a matrix providing a percentage chance of failure based on the nature of the crime committed and the innocence of the victim you're doing it to. Oh, yeah, except for casting necromantic magic, which is per se evil no matter what you're doing with it--which is, again, another objective, externally applied definition of morality. Note that this does not have cultural defaults applied. The Dark Powers make the rules and they apply them flatly, regardless if anyone has any reason to suspect that the rules even exist.

(bolded for emphasis)

People can exist in "shades of gray", but the DPs don't see things that way. If they did, they wouldn't bother imprisoning all these evil beings in the first place. No, in their view, you're good or you're evil...and if you don't make the choice right away they'll keep arranging for events to happen that'll make you choose. So what I should have said was "According to the Dark Powers, there are no shades of gray"

[HuManBing]

As for the Dark Powers, there I agree we have a lot more leeway to say for ourselves what they are and do.

Some see them as taunting powers of evil, luring souls into corruption and then punishing them by denying them what they want most.

Some see them as serving a divine gaoler purpose, keeping the Multiverse's worst creatures in a prison so they can't affect others.

I can see the DPs operating with some degree of rhyme or reason. At the very least, they operate with a finely honed sense of poetic justice. I also would like to hold that they operate with a fairly methodical modus operandi.

Sadly, the range of NPCs who are cursed by the Dark Powers for what they do is so variegated that it suggests otherwise. This may simply be down to the discontinuities of authors writing for the setting and their creations becoming canon. But the general patchwork nature of their work (just look at Ravenloft Monstrous Compendium II for 2nd ed. for an example of the various cursed humans and their burdens) suggests the DPs either are truly whimsical, or they have a higher logic that mortals cannot comprehend.

Personally, I've always been a fan of the DPs as generally unknowable, but yet possessing a perverse sense of logic that is revealed from time to time. I remember when I was detailing complicated ideas and rationalizations for why Azalin wants the Holy Symbol (and Icon) of Ravenloft to start the Grand Conjunction - a lot of posters responded by saying "couldn't the DPs just thwart Azalin by willing him to fail? Why wouldn't they do that?"

To me, that's pretty much the same as railroading your PCs... except that you're doing it to an NPC. (And a very powerful one at that.) The DPs may be unknowable but they shouldn't be purely arbitrary. That's what the Nightmare Lands are for.

* ~ * ~ *

Either way, we've already talked about morally ambiguous situations that are hellish for PCs (and DMs) to adjudicate according to mortal morality. Examples include hard choices between two necessary evils, such as killing a (largely innocent) border guard so your refugees can escape, or lying to a person so that they will not know of a horrifying truth, or even something as staple as stealing from the rich to give to the poor.

Humans can't work out whether these are punishable acts or not. In certain circumstances, when the harm of the action clearly outweighs the help, it's negative. In other circumstances, when the help outweighs the harm, it's positive. But if there's a blurry side to it - what happens then?

In your campaigns, would the DPs (read as: DM) jump in and mandate a DP check? How would they react to this?

[Bluebomber4evr]

Either way, we've already talked about morally ambiguous situations that are hellish for PCs (and DMs) to adjudicate according to mortal morality. Examples include hard choices between two necessary evils, such as killing a (largely innocent) border guard so your refugees can escape, or lying to a person so that they will not know of a horrifying truth, or even something as staple as stealing from the rich to give to the poor.

Humans can't work out whether these are punishable acts or not. In certain circumstances, when the harm of the action clearly outweighs the help, it's negative. In other circumstances, when the help outweighs the harm, it's positive. But if there's a blurry side to it - what happens then?

In your campaigns, would the DPs (read as: DM) jump in and mandate a DP check? How would they react to this?

I would say those three instances are too mild to attract the DPs' attention, though killing the guard might incur a small (say 1-2%) check if it was not out of self-defense.

One could then say that the DPs are then seeing things through shades of gray, but that's not the case. Whatever and whoever the Dark Powers are, they're not omnisicient--otherwise one wouldn't need to roll a check to see if you've garnered their attention. So horrible acts of evil are more likely to grab their attention than minor ones. Once someone fails a check and has their attention, however, they're treated the same. In the view of the DPs, that person is evil and is treated as such, regardless of how bad the action may have been. A person who fails a 1% chance check is treated just the same as one who has commited an act of ultimate darkness, with the only exception being the that the AoUD cannot be redeemed.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

One point to consider: Even if the Dark Powers are imposing a certain moral/ethical code on mortals, judging them by a strict, non-subjective standard which is illustrated by their selection of Powers-check-worthy offenses, there is absolutely no evidence that the DPs adhere to the same standard themselves. In fact, there's considerable circumstantial evidence to the contrary; if the Dark Powers consider necromancy to be as reprehensible as the Powers check rules imply, for example, then they are clearly violating the same No-Necromancy-Allowed standard they punish mortal spellcasters for breeching, every time they distort the result of a necromantic spell to make it more powerful.

This, in itself, is a major hitch in the "morality is objective" interpretation of Ravenloft's Gothic framework: the Dark Powers don't heed their own rules. No matter what they do to other people, in the course of engineering a darklord's suffering, they aren't punished in turn. IMO, any "grand finale" scenario for the Ravenloft setting (like most people assume the ToUD is/was meant to be) would have to resolve that issue -- to make the Dark Powers, themselves, pay for all the undeserved sorrows their home-made realm has inflicted upon innocent bystanders -- in order for Ravenloft's Gothic "objective morality" to truly bear out.

In your campaigns, would the DPs (read as: DM) jump in and mandate a DP check? How would they react to this?

If you're asking about the specific situation you've lined up (i.e. with the two holy items plus a Powers check), I'd say you're focusing on the wrong transcendent entity's opinion. IMO, if such a situation cropped up, Andral would withdraw his blessing from the LG character -- who, after all, has just done something horrible and may no longer be worthy to hold the items -- rather than let the likes of Azalin invade a world under his protection.

If you're asking whether the Dark Powers would allow themselves to be played for suckers, I'd say that that's one outcome guaranteed to spoil the aura of mystery and omnipotence which they need to be taken seriously in the game. Unless, of course, they're simply playing Azalin for a sucker yet again, which is entirely playable and won't ruin their reputation ... provided the players get to see the lich-king with egg on his face, in the end.

And if you're asking about whether a Powers check is appropriate in a case of moral ambiguity, I'd say it all comes down to whether or not anybody got hurt. Lying to someone to spare their feelings isn't "innately evil" -- chaotic, yes, but not evil -- just as making money isn't "innately evil" if it's done to feed your family instead of gouge your customers to get rich. (Ditto for the 'rob the rich, give to the poor' scenario, especially if the rich in question got that way by taking from the poor.) Telling a lie or stealing pennies because you're helping others isn't a 'slippery slope' situation ... but killing the border guard certainly would be, as it's not a harmless outcome and the guard's death is not warranted on the basis of his own wrongdoing. Note that the Powers check rules already take this into account, by rating offenses differently depending upon whom they're committed against.

[HuManBing]

If you're asking whether the Dark Powers would allow themselves to be played for suckers, I'd say that that's one outcome guaranteed to spoil the aura of mystery and omnipotence which they need to be taken seriously in the game.

I've locked horns with you on this issue before, and I'm honored to do so again - the same way anybody would be honored to cross swords with John Mangrum!

Same response as before. Why do you think this is an episode of "playing the DPs for suckers"? Look at the outcome in Roots of Evil. The Dark Powers are vastly benefitted by Azalin's actions. Their dominion expands to touch on every Prime Material plane in existence, even Prime Material Barovia, in whichever forgotten corner of the AD&D multiverse it lies. Now everybody in existence has to deal with fear, horror, and madness checks. Undead everywhere get a bonus to resist turning attempts. And so on, and so forth.

If Azalin's suckered them into anything, it seems they profit handsomely from it. And in any case I scratch my head over your proposal that he's doing something they've not intended or somehow crept up on them.

I think of this less as a case of Azalin trying to outwit the DPs, and more as the DPs allowing their best and brightest pupil to exploit an intentional "Easter Egg" they put into the Demiplane. If any of you have played video games, you'll know there are neat little things that the designers put into them for the inquisitive player to find. This could be something that the DPs knew would be lying around waiting for somebody to discover it, and they have a reward for the one who does.

(The fact that it also elevates them when he does find it only adds to the repercussions.)

As for the other examples I offered, they were probably a little too close on the "good" side of the balance to really offer you much of a meaningful exercise in ethics. I'll need to think up better ones.

Here's a list of suggested viewing to give you a similar idea of moral ambiguity:

Traffik - BBC 6-part series examining the heroin trade from Pakistan to Britain. Absolutely everybody involved has recognizable - even sympathizable - motives. Some are more evil than others, but everybody has something to count as a success, and everybody has something to count as a failure. Even the most high-minded of them all, a Scottish PM played by Bill Patterson, is brought down by the fact that his ideals and aspirations are largely unworkable in the scrum of Pakistani humanity.

Traffic - Hollywood's adaptation to the BBC series. I haven't seen it but I hear it's very good. This time the drug trade is cocaine, and it takes place across the US/Mexican border.

Syriana - American CEOs want Middle Eastern oil, badly enough that they'll lie, cheat, and steal to get it. Chinese companies want oil, and the easiest way to make sure they don't get it is to accuse them of being terrorists, communists, and warmongers. A Middle Eastern prince has liberal ideas of introducing democracy, giving women the vote, and bringing out a pluralistic society - but these plans will irrevocably change the country's reliance on American aid. The Committee for the Liberation of Iran, despite its rhetoric on exactly this sort of progressive change, recognizes the upheaval inherent in the prince's plan. One lone US agent sells two boobytrapped rockets to a terrorist group, then has a change of conscience when one goes missing. Later, the rocket is used in an attack on US oil facilities, by a Pakistani immigrant boy whose family was beaten in social unrest traceable back to American intervention.

Everything is connected, and the moment you start thinking you're on "the right side" is the moment you've truly lost your moral balance.

Blood Diamond - War is hell, and so is former Rhodesia. In a land blessed with resources and unimaginable natural wealth, the lack of a strong rule of law is lethal. Various factions vie for control, with the worst being led by a brutal colonel who indoctrinates youths to kill their former villages. For them, he is a symbol of strength and a man who will give them respect, training, and firearms. For the fisherman who loses his village and son to the colonel, he's the devil incarnate.

Yet watch for a surprisingly off-guard moment, when the colonel has his slave labor digging up a riverside in search for a treasured uncut diamond. The colonel takes off his everpresent sunglasses, revealing for a moment his puckered eye, blinded in the fighting and the chaos.

"You think I'm a devil," he says. "But I'm just trying my best to fly out of hell. Just like you."

Munich - The massacre at the Munich Winter Olympics drew a sophisticated and meticulous counter plan by Israeli officials. The plan: to decapitate the leadership of the terrorist group who ordered the killing. The intended result: the world would know that Israel could not be crossed without serious repercussions.

Somewhere, the plan went awry. As the individuals in the counter team progress through their work, they learn two lessons: First, like the heads of the Lernaean hydra, leaders of organizations based on terror will replace themselves as quickly as they are cut off. Second, for the work of a contract killer, no matter how lofty or justified the initial goal, once you get too good at it, little remains to differentiate you from the people you hunt.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - A novel by John le Carre, himself a former spy for the British. Also an excellent 6-part BBC series. Somewhere in the highest ranks of British intelligence is a mole, planted by the Soviets and slowly but surely unravelling the entire structure from within. Although this series is best when considered in the light of how to run (or not to run) a spy operation, it brings up a thorny moral question at the end, when the mole is finally unmasked and questioned.

When you're the head of an intelligence bureau for a small country trapped between two polar superpowers, it no longer really matters which one you work for. Although they may stand for very different values and ideals, the rigors of the game are such that they use very similar methods to achieve their goals.


Either way, it's looking increasingly likely that I may have a weird and unusual take on Ravenloft, judging from the posts I've engendered. If that's not to your liking, then that's perfectly fine - play the game your way and tell us about the good (and evil) times!

But hopefully even if I am proven entirely in the minority, I hope that these suggestions will lead to further possibilities for intrigue and politicking in the Core.

Some of the domains that have never featured in any official adventures - Richemulot, Dementlieu, Borca - are centered on this sort of political parry-and-thrust. Where you remove the brooding omnipresence of the Dark Powers, you're left only with human struggles... and those are the ones that have the greatest freedom from abstract morality.

[Sylaire]

HuManBing:

Well, allow me to be the first to say that yes, you have a weird and unusual take on Ravenloft, and more power to you! After all, the ultimate purpose of any roleplaying game product is to help the real-world people playing the game to have fun, right? Who among us hasn't added "house rules" to our games, modified published adventures to suit our campaigns, and clipped various ideas from different products and other sources to use?

I would simply assert that the kind of adventures you describe--and the kinds of conflicts that take place in them--do not center around themes found in the kind of Gothic literature cited in the game materials as being the roots of the Ravenloft setting, but are instead more commonly seen in 20th and 21st-century literature (your list of citations in the previous post illustrates these nicely). In that respect, there will likely be some conflicts between the rules as they are written and the way you want to conduct your campaign--accordingly, you will wish to consider this, and alter the rules to suit the game accordingly.

(Repeating for emphasis, I would like to state again that there's certainly nothing wrong with using the rich and interesting materials of the Ravenloft setting to move beyond classic Gothic horror. Indeed, that possibility is almost inherent in the development of the setting; once Mordent starts becoming a living, breathing place with a population existing living their day-to-day lives, with economic, political, and cultural interests, it flings the door wide open for players to do different things besides chasing ghosts across the moors.)

Rotipher:

I think that the point you make helps to illustrate some of the tension that HuManBing is expressing in this thread. In classic Gothic fiction, the objective standard of right and wrong is imposed, essentially, by God, by an omniscient and omnipotent being of ultimate Good.

However, we the players of Ravenloft games are products of the 20th and 21st centuries, regardless of our level of interest in historical fiction and/or settings. Thus, the game provides for our sensibilities artificial sources of this harsh and objective morality. Moreover, those sources are by no means seen as evil, being the apparently malevolent "Dark" Powers or (in Gothic Earth) the explicitly evil Red Death. The entire rationale of good versus evil has flipped from a benevolent parent-figure pointing out the "right" way but providing discipline when we fail, to a harsh and malevolent entity lurking in the shadows, waiting greedily to pounce when we blunder out of the light.

[Bluebomber4evr]

If you're asking whether the Dark Powers would allow themselves to be played for suckers, I'd say that that's one outcome guaranteed to spoil the aura of mystery and omnipotence which they need to be taken seriously in the game.

I've locked horns with you on this issue before, and I'm honored to do so again - the same way anybody would be honored to cross swords with John Mangrum!

Same response as before. Why do you think this is an episode of "playing the DPs for suckers"? Look at the outcome in Roots of Evil. The Dark Powers are vastly benefitted by Azalin's actions. Their dominion expands to touch on every Prime Material plane in existence, even Prime Material Barovia, in whichever forgotten corner of the AD&D multiverse it lies. Now everybody in existence has to deal with fear, horror, and madness checks. Undead everywhere get a bonus to resist turning attempts. And so on, and so forth.

If Azalin's suckered them into anything, it seems they profit handsomely from it. And in any case I scratch my head over your proposal that he's doing something they've not intended or somehow crept up on them.

I think of this less as a case of Azalin trying to outwit the DPs, and more as the DPs allowing their best and brightest pupil to exploit an intentional "Easter Egg" they put into the Demiplane. If any of you have played video games, you'll know there are neat little things that the designers put into them for the inquisitive player to find. This could be something that the DPs knew would be lying around waiting for somebody to discover it, and they have a reward for the one who does.

(The fact that it also elevates them when he does find it only adds to the repercussions.)

I think you're making a lot of assumptions as to what the DPs' motivations are--which is only natural given that their motives are deliberately left to individual DMs to define--but it makes little sense to me that the Grand Conjunction would benefit them that greatly. After all, they could already snatch beings from the Prime Plane(s) whenever they wanted with relative ease. One could easily argue that by making the demiplane of dread coterminus with the Prime it only made things harder for the DPs to micromanage. Tallying up the population of each domain listed in the 3e Campaign Setting you get barely a million people (less than that, if I recall correctly), and the DPs can't even watch those people 100% of the time (hence, powers checks to see if they're paying attention). The Prime plane has billions upon billions of beings in it.

Some of the domains that have never featured in any official adventures - Richemulot, Dementlieu, Borca - are centered on this sort of political parry-and-thrust. Where you remove the brooding omnipresence of the Dark Powers, you're left only with human struggles... and those are the ones that have the greatest freedom from abstract morality.

Well if you remove the omnipresence of the Dark Powers, it's not really Ravenloft anymore.