Okay, first of all, let me address why you’re reading this on a Monday. I’ll make it quick. The Megadungeon for this week needed a little extra work. There were some issues with it. And last week was far crazier than I anticipated. But, I absolutely wanted to make sure you all got your Megadungeon article for this week. I decided to flip things around. In a few days – Wednesday or Thursday – you’ll get the Megadungeon article. Meanwhile, today, you get the Feature Article. Are we cool?

Good.

Second thing, this article is one of those unplanned things that has been created by a bunch of feedback from previous articles. Specifically, it comes from the confluence of three things. And I want to get it out there now so I can lay the groundwork for something coming in mid-July. Which is also the result of feedback. This is going to be a rambly, bulls$&%y article. But I’ll make up for it next week by doing some more adventure building crap. And then I’ll pay it off with something cool. Are we cool?

Good.

On with the Long, Rambling Introduction™!

In the last couple of articles, I’ve discussed a lot of fluffy narrative bulls$&% like story structure and plot points and archetypes and things. And whenever I discuss fluffy, narrative bulls$&% – and refer to it as such – I always get a bunch of people who tell me they like the fluffy, narrative bulls$&%. They tell me “the math is easy, I don’t need math help, I dig the fluffy, narrative bulls$&%.” Which is funny because, every time I do boring, heavy crunch – and refer to it as such – I always get a bunch of people who tell me “I don’t need the fluffy crap, I can write stories, I like the boring, heavy crunch.”

Now, everyone thinks that their opinion on the FNBS or the BHC is some sort of f$&%ing revelation. Or that it is somehow significant. Guess what? It isn’t. It doesn’t tell me anything except that I’m right. You’ll notice that I try to alternate, as best I can, between FNBS and BHC. You know why? Because both of them are equally important and have to work together in a role-playing game. And because half the people in the world need help with one. And half the people in the world need help with the other.

Long story short: if your only input is “more of this; forget the math stuff” or “more of this; forget the fluff stuff,” please don’t f$&%ing bother. And stop being f$&%ing selfish. Let me talk to everyone. I’m glad you’re a f$&%ing narrative genius or mechanical prodigy – even though I don’t actually believe you’re as good at either one as you think you are, or else YOU’D have this blog, and I could do something else with my life – but you’re not my only audience.

That said, I do sometimes actually ASK for feedback in my articles. Like when I asked whether people want more crap on the Monomyth and plot points and archetypes. Lots of people said yes. Okay, fine. There’s a demand for that. I’m coming back to it. But not today.

What I’m doing today is dealing with a couple of OTHER things I DIDN’T seek feedback on, but on which I got actual USEFUL feedback nonetheless. Not just “more fluff; crunch is stupid.” See, a long time ago, I teased people by saying I’d come up with a neat, useful way of building a small pantheon for a setting that proved that five was the absolute best number of gods if you planned to use your gods to drive a story. And people remembered that and brought it up in the comments of the last post. I forgot. Sorry.

But that’s not all. The other thing that happened was that I pointed out that D&D’s ORIGINAL alignment system started as a reflection of the Overworld and Underworld dichotomy that Campbell was prattling on about in his Monomyth before it got ruined. And I may have dropped a comment about how part of what ruined it was trying to ham-handedly slap the “conflict” between Good and Evil over the top of the two worlds of the Monomyth. Which is stupid. Especially because Good vs. Evil is a terrible conflict for long-term storytelling. In fact, Good vs. Evil is actually a non-conflict. People only think it’s a conflict because people don’t understand conflict. The narrative tool.

So, I’ve decided to throw out another article on fluffy, narrative bulls$&% – which fifty percent of you will cheer and fifty percent of you will boo and I will one hundred percent not give a s$&% to hear any of it so keep it to yourself. This one is about narrative conflict. Conflict as a theme. And the reason I’m doing is that is because absolutely every last bit of mythology you create for your D&D world exists to exemplify thematic conflict. Yeah, how about that.

And, just a warning, this is an article that will talk about highly contentious issues like alignment systems and morality. And some of you won’t agree with what I have to do. And you will decide to make it about anything other than the best way to tell a story. Guess what? I don’t give a s$&% about that either. I’m watching my comment section. I will get rid of any comment that goes beyond the idea of narrative conflict as a storytelling device, or that argues the utility of alignment systems. And if y’all can’t behave, I will just f$&%ing shut off comments. Because I don’t have time to moderate you right now. I’ve got a Megadungeon that’s behind schedule and a book to finish.

Are we cool? Good. We’d better be.

Conflict: Not Just for Fighting Anymore

You cannot have a story without conflict. At least, you can’t have an interesting story without conflict. I hope you know that much by now. In the past, I’ve talked about conflict between story elements. Specifically, I’ve talked about conflict between different sides in an encounter. I actually defined an encounter as a scene that offers a dramatic question and then puts a conflict between the heroes and the resolution of the question.

“Can the heroes safely cross this bridge? Maybe. But they are going to have to deal with the monstrous goat that tries to eat anyone who crosses the bridge.”

At the time, I pointed out that conflicts were things that happened between goals, not between people and things. And if you don’t understand that as a GM, well, you’re going to suck at dealing with the unexpected. I mean, look at that goat situation. If you think the conflict is between the PCs and the goat, you can’t do anything except run a combat. But if you understand that the PCs don’t care about the bridge itself, they just need to be on the other side of the river and that the goat is just hungry and lazy and has set up shop here because it’s an easy place to ensure a steady stream of hapless food is always walking by, you can handle the unexpected. What if the PCs decide to run? Will the goat chase them? Probably not. He knows more people will come and he’s lazy. Can the PCs run? Sure, they can try to find another river crossing. That’s very different from if the PCs were sent to secure the bridge. Or if the goat was actually set there by a goat god to prevent anyone from ever crossing the river for some ridiculously convoluted reason. Or if the goat is a goat assassin who was sent to ambush the PCs and stop them from completing whatever mission they have.

The point is that conflict occurs because two incompatible ideas have suddenly run right up against each other and something has to give. At least, dramatic conflict is like that. The conflict in an encounter is like that. And you can think of the heroes and the obstacles they face as embodiments of the ideas that are in conflict. The monster goat is just a sheet that you drape over the spirit of the natural world’s impersonal cruelty. The wilderness is a dangerous place where you either kill or be killed, and it is dominated by clever predators who figure out how to survive by expending the least necessary energy. The bridge is a trapping of civilization. It represents civilizations ability to expand, to cross boundaries, and dominate nature. Of course, those trappings succumb to the wilderness if not constantly guarded. They can be taken by the wilderness.

I know, fluffy narrative bulls$&%. But it’s also true.

Now, generally, a story or a scene in a story – on, in our language, a campaign, an adventure, or an encounter – a story happens because a preexisting potential conflict suddenly becomes an actual, real conflict. The monster goat thing wasn’t a problem until the heroes needed to cross the bridge. Yes, nature is full of dangerous, chaotic creatures, red in tooth and claw, but as long as they are out there, and we are in here, that isn’t a problem. When something changes, though, when we go outside, suddenly, we have to roll initiative. Or stealth. Or whatever.

The point is, all around us, there are all sorts of incompatible ideas floating around. But they aren’t always in conflict. It isn’t until two incompatible ideas – embodied by characters or creatures or natural forces or events or objects – until two incompatible ideas are forced into a confrontation that an actual, dramatic conflict. But those ideas are always there.

And, when it comes to storytelling, nothing can come from nothing. You can’t just suddenly pull stuff out of you’re a$&. The audience gets pissed off. And, in interactive storytelling, pull s$&% out of you’re a$& is actually a bit of a screwjob.

Look at it like this: if the PCs are just walking through a perfectly normal, civilized city they’ve been in for weeks, and the monster goat jumps out from under some bridge in the city to eat them, that just doesn’t work. At the very least, after they kill the goat, they’d be asking a lot of questions about where that goat came from and why it was there and if anyone knew about it and whether it was a monster specifically sent to attack them. In short, they’d want to know “what the actual f$&%?!”

The same goat popping out from under some frontier bridge far from the nearest city? Yeah, sure, that’s fine. Roll initiative, slay the thing, and move on.

That’s because the players – the audience – understand that there is a potential conflict between the wild, untamed wilderness and the civilized world. It’s built right into the core of the game world. If you wander away from civilization, you’re going to find monsters.

And THAT is the idea behind thematic conflict.

Thematic conflict – that’s what I’m calling it – is a potential conflict between ideas that are ingrained in the setting of the story. Something that will pop up from time to time and drive an actual conflict.

The Wheel in the Sky Keeps on Turning

Okay, a thematic conflict isn’t JUST a potential conflict that can suddenly pop out and make the protagonists lives miserable. And that’s because of the idea of “themes.” A theme is a big idea that lies at the heart of a story. Some people like to describe it as the thing the story is really about. But that’s not really fair. Themes are really things the story make us think about. Now, I usually use Star Wars for this. But these days, Star Wars just f$&%ing depresses me. I never thought we’d get to the point of saying “wow, Lucas’ prequels WEREN’T the worst thing to happen to Star Wars.” But here we are.

Let’s look at the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Yeah, The Hobbit movies did their damage, but those are over, and no one’s talking about doing a Strider origin story or asking some moron to remake a movie HE ALREADY F$&%ING DESTROYED SO THOROUGHLY IT DESTROYED THE FRANCHISE. So, yeah…

There’s a big idea that keeps coming up throughout the Lord of the Rings that fate and destiny were at the heart of everything. Gandalf says, outright, that forces may have been at work to ensure Bilbo found the One Ring and that it would pass to Frodo. He also points out that Gollum’s role in the story would be important and that it was a good thing that Bilbo didn’t kill him. Right? And this keeps coming up time and again. Frodo is the only one who can carry the Ring, right? Gandalf and Galadriel both show that even the greatest, wisest, and most powerful would be corrupted by the Ring if they took it. So, does Saruman. And Boromir. Frodo was the only one who could bear the Ring. And, at the end, when Frodo’s will finally breaks, and it looks like he’s not going to destroy the Ring, Gollum suddenly attacks and ends up taking a lava bath with his favorite birthday present. Exactly as was meant to happen.

In the meanwhile, everyone – but especially Frodo – keep questioning why all this crap has to happen? Why does it have to happen to them? Why not just kill Gollum? Why not just give the Ring away? Because, Gandalf keeps basically saying, this is just how it is. But have faith, and it’ll all work out.

Fate. See?

That’s a theme. Fate is a theme.

But, there’s something else going on in the story too. And this is where thematic conflicts become important. Frodo had to choose to accept the Ring, right? That was a big thing at the Council of Elrond. He had to make the choice. He could have walked away. Even Gandalf told him that no one was going to force him to do anything. He had to make that choice. And we know that both Gandalf and Galadriel are wise and good because they refused the Ring when it was offered to them. They chose to do the right thing. And that puts them at odds with Saruman and Boromir, both of whom chose to pursue power despite the danger of corruption. And the fact that Bilbo – and then Frodo – didn’t kill Gollum when they had the chance? Well, that was a choice they made. And that defined them.

That’s because there’s another theme in the book: it’s about free will. It’s about how people are defined by the choices they make, the actions they take. And, moreover, their intentions don’t really matter. Boromir wanted the Ring for the best of reasons. Gandalf admitted he would have wanted it for the best of reasons too. But the Ring itself was corrupt. No amount of good intentions would make that evil act good. Meanwhile, Galadriel admitted her motives for wanting the ring were selfish. She didn’t want to see the power of the other Rings and the elves diminish. And she wanted love. Reverence. She had selfishness in her heart. But she made the right choice, and that made her good in spite of her selfish heart. Saruman and Sauron, of course, had corrupt hearts and made evil choices. Worst of both worlds.

Now, here’s the wacky thing: those two ideas – fate and free-will – are pretty incompatible. If everything happens according to a plan, then there is no free will. And if you can choose to defy fate, fate doesn’t exist. Because you’ll never know whether what happened was in accordance with the plan or in defiance of it. Fate and free will can be pretty incompatible ideas.

And that, kids, is a thematic conflict. A thematic conflict occurs when you have two ideas floating around in a universe that keep popping up and getting into fights. Is there fate in Middle Earth? Absolutely. Do people have free will? Most certainly. What happens when those two things are at odds? Well, that just keeps coming up time again. When Frodo offers the Ring to Galadriel, he’s defying fate. That works out pretty well. Galadriel is smart enough not to accept it. When Boromir tries to take the ring, he’s balking at fate. That kills him.

You can think of thematic conflicts as the narrative equivalent of natural or metaphysical forces. They swirl around the story. And when they collide, they create conflict. Sometimes, it’s large-scale conflict that shapes the whole story. Sometimes, it’s just little conflicts that affect only a single scene. And all of the things in the story, from characters to monsters to natural disasters, at any given moment, those things might become the agents of those forces. They are the proxies that fight out the conflicts.

All Part of the Same Show

Okay, let’s stick with themes for another minute and put thematic conflicts aside. Because themes are important. You might think this theme stuff is the sort of s$&% that only liberal arts majors care about, the sort of thing they argue about while they are putting too much foam on your f$&%ing latte as if you’re happy to pay $5 for a cup of f$&%ing AIR… sorry…

Look, this theme stuff ain’t just the stuff of useless degrees that won’t get you a real job. Themes play an important role in stories. They tie the story together. Stories can be big, complicated things, filled with scenes and major and minor plots and character arcs and all sorts of s$&%. I mean, the Lord of the Rings is like twelve f$&%ing hours of movie. And there’s a LOT going on in there. Themes tie everything together. They help the story feel like one story instead of a series of vignettes and anecdotes and random bits and pieces of nothing.

Now, most stories have a bunch of different themes. The Lord of the Rings is also about the corrupting nature of power. Duh. And it’s about mortality and the fear of death. It’s about progress and technology. And more. But most stories also don’t have that many major themes. Usually, you get a good three to five solid, recognizable themes. Depending on the length of the story, of course. And those ideas just keep popping up over and over, mixed and matched in different ways.

And so, they work sort of like a color palette. Wow, pretentious, liberal artsy bulls$&% must be rubbing off on me if that’s my analogy. Sorry about that. But it’s true. They provide a nice mix of colors that look okay together and can be used in a lot of different pictures. But there are few enough colors that you can tell that all of the pictures belong to the same comic book or whatever. The pictures look like they belong together. Get me?

Admittedly, most authors and creatives don’t go too crazy picking their themes. It really isn’t deliberate. It’s more unconscious. Certain themes pop up a few times as they are writing and because they are good at creating stories, they start to get a feel for the themes – consciously or otherwise – and start writing to them. And then, when they revise and edit, they cut off the crap that doesn’t feel like it fits and the whole thing ends up very focused on a few ideas.

But that isn’t the only way. Themes can be conscious things. Or semi-conscious things. And, in episodic works where you have to keep creating new content over and over, themes can provide all sorts of story seeds. For example: let’s say you’re creating some sort of episodic, interactive fiction experience… something, like, oh, I don’t know… a table-top role-playing game campaign. Every week or two, you have to come up with a new episode of your little game franchise thing. You constantly need new stories that are fresh and exciting, but that also feel like they belong to the same game somehow.

DO YOU SEE WHAT I’M SAYING?

Having a sense of the overarching themes of your campaign only helps you create more game. Not only that, but it also helps shape the players’ expectations. Remember when I said that players will happily accept demon goats under bridges in the wilderness as long as they know the wilderness is a wild, untamed, and chaotic place filled with predatory monsters? And themes can be even more powerful than that. If you’re running a long, complex campaign designed to last a year or two, changing themes can signal the end of one plot arc and the start of another. Or the themes can change as the characters go from local to regional to national to cosmic heroes. Themes are another thing that can change to give your campaign a sense of evolution.

NOW let’s talk about the idea of thematic conflicts. Because, if themes are useful tools, thematic conflicts are POWER TOOLS. And I don’t mean weak-a$& s$&% like cordless screwdrivers and Dremel tools. I’m talking REAL POWER TOOLS like f$&%ing impact hammers and table saws and drill presses and pneumatic nail guns. Yeah. REAL MAN TOOLS.

Themes are most useful for setting up conflicts, right? I mean, after all, every story starts with a conflict, ends with a conflict, and is all conflict in-between. Major conflicts drive campaigns. Smaller conflicts drive adventures. And all the rest create encounters. That means that writing good stories is about writing good conflicts. And because you can’t pull conflicts out of you’re a$&, or else it’s the surprise demon goat under the f$&%ing Brooklyn Bridge, it helps to have a bunch of established conflicts already floating around your world that you can pull out in all sorts of different ways and f$&% around with.

Take that free-will vs. determinism thing from The Lord of the Rings. That’s a classic conflict. On the one hand, we believe that the universe functions according to rules. They might be spiritual rules like fate, destiny, and the Will of God. Or they might be scientific rules like the laws of motion and relativity and quantum physics and s$&%. It’s all the same. Rules is rules. But if we can only function according to rules, where’s the role of free will in there? How can we believe we make our own choices? That choice matters? And how can we be held responsible for our choices if our choices are just our brains doing some very advanced chemistry that God designed a bazillion years ago or whatever?

So, those two ideas – the conflict itself – is at the heart of the story. Or the campaign. Sometimes, it seems like fate is handling everything and things will work out no matter. Sometimes, choice is everything and determines who you really are. And sometimes you have the choice to accept or defy your fate. And then you have to deal with the question of whether your defiance of your apparent fate was part of the plan after all.

Good stories don’t just have themes, they have thematic conflicts, two ideas that are forever locked in battle. Or rather, two ideas that are just fine on their own, but that can’t both work at the same time without really making you f$&%ing thing. And, if you’re writing a story and include a thematic conflict, you get three themes for the price of one. You get to play with each of the ideas in isolation AND you get to play with the conflict itself.

Thematic conflicts allow you to set the stage for the narrative equivalent of the battles between cosmic forces. It’s you setting up Heaven and Hell to spend eternity punching it out. It’s you setting up the Philosophers to argue through the ages. It’s you setting the stage for scientists to get into fist fights about relativity vs. quantum mechanics and establish cults to crazy bulls$&% like string theory. It’s you setting up the political parties, the guilds, the factions. A few thematic conflicts at the heart of your campaign give you fodder for battles, wars, arguments, philosophies, religions, guilds, everything. Just look at how much mileage Magic: the Gathering has gotten out of its stupid color wheel thing. Because that thing is about five thematic conflicts. But we’ll get to that in the follow-up. Because that comes right down to setting up a mythology.

Because, here’s the thing, in a magical world like the world of Dungeons & Dragons in which all of the various cosmic forces that shape and control the world are also personified by gods, primordials, angels, demons, and spirits, you have a great way to actually build thematic conflicts right into the f$&%ing game world. And that’s notwithstanding the fact that you have things like magic systems and alignment systems and all sorts of different races to work with. If you build your world right, you can pick a few solid thematic conflicts – a few extra isolated themes – and loop them into everything. By the time the game starts, without you actually doing anything as clumsy as expositing your themes, your players will know – on an unconscious level – exactly what major ideas your game will be about.

It’s just a shame D&D totally dropped the ball on that. 4E had some amazing themes built into the default setting, the classes, and the cosmic factions. But 5E couldn’t be a$&ed. Not only that, but the DMG also couldn’t be bothered to discuss anything actually narratively useful. All of its advice on story boils down to “you know, try to make it a good story that people like.”

Ugh.

Now, I’m coming back to this s$&%. This is just establishing the groundwork, remember. This is just me explaining the ingredients I’m going to use to tell you how to build a great mythology for your universe. And why mythology is so powerful if used properly, from a story perspective. And, honestly, from there, the skies the limit. Because if you understand the themes, you can build mechanics around them. Imagine if the dichotomy between wizards and sorcerers was the same as the dichotomy between fighters and barbarians; if it was about the age-old question of the head or the heart, reason or emotion, logic or passion. And imagine if that was also reflected in the personality system and in the mythology of the world. Not just the mechanics of classes that give sorcerers and barbarians bonuses based on personality and inspiration and give fighters and wizards some other benefit, like how much they know about their opponents.

But I’m not here to bash D&D. Except insofar as I’m always here to complain about missed opportunities in D&D and how things were so much better when.

But I want to end this all by discussing the one classic CONFLICT that pops up in stories and literature and D&D and Pathfinder that ISN’T a thematic conflict. But always gets mistaken for one. And one that actually kills interesting thematic conflicts. Let’s talk about why Good versus Evil is a s$&% conflict for f$&%wits.

Good vs. Evil

Good and evil are not themes in conflict. They are labels. Sorry. Now, I’m not going to discuss all of that moral relativism bulls$&% or the fact that good and evil are objective forces in the D&D. Last time I discussed actual morality, I got all the standard useless garbage from the usual mouthbreathers trying to explain to me how “if you live your life how you want and don’t hurt anyone else, you count as good” and how “evil people are almost always doing things for what they think are good reasons so you can’t have alignments” and how “races that are always evil are terrible and support real-world racism.” All of those ideas are garbage ideas invented by stupid brains. And I don’t want to hear them. Sorry. And that’s not what this is about anyway. What this is about is the fact that good and evil aren’t themes in conflict, they are the author of a narrative taking sides.

Let’s take the idea in the Lord of the Rings of industrialization. Industrialization is an idea. A theme. And it is also evil. It is a corrupting idea. It’s what Saruman is doing. He’s pillaging the natural world for resources. Meanwhile, the pastoral Shire that lives a simple, country existence and is directly connected to the health of the land? That’s good.

Good and evil are labels that can be applied to different themes. Humility and accepting your role in the order of the cosmos, accepting fate? That’s good. Sauron was an angel who wasn’t happy with his place. Saruman was an angel too. Death, mortality, that’s a good thing. The elves who accept that their time is over and leave Middle Earth? Those are the good ones. Arwen chooses mortality. Galadriel chooses to leave Middle Earth. They are accepting their fate. That’s good. Defying fate, fighting mortality, that’s evil.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with that. Except it’s boring. And a little dishonest. You can tell a perfectly good story about the conflict between themes as a battle between good and evil. But it isn’t a human story. It’s not deep. I mean, the deeper themes in the The Lord of the Rings, the ones that really make you think, are things like free will and fate. Because neither one is totally good or totally evil. In fact, it’s free will that enables you to BE good or evil. Your actions, not your intentions, define who you are. But there’s also a plan. And maybe being good is about seeing where you fit in the plan and choosing that. And accepting you don’t know everything. But sometimes defying the plan is part of the plan. Who can know? There’s a plan. But you don’t know it. You have to make the right choices – which are usually the hard choices – and have faith that those choices are the choices that you should have been made. I don’t know.

See, this is the thing: almost all the big ideas that makeup themes are ideas that are most dangerous when taken to their extremes. Industrialization has its good qualities. The industrial revolution drastically elevated the quality of life for pretty much everyone in the world. It drastically increased the production of everything, from food to clothing to all sorts of luxury items. In fact, many things that were luxury items because available at very low prices to absolutely everyone. After some terrible growing pains – because the early industrial revolution was pretty miserable – it also greatly expanded the amount of work available, increased salaries, and ushered in huge social changes that pretty much define the modern world today. It led to capitalism which, as it spread, decreased the amount of abject poverty in the world by an unimaginable factor. It’s what has allowed everyone in the industrial world to have a tiny computer in their pocket that lets them connect to everyone in the world and access all of the human knowledge in the world. And because it has drastically decreased the amount of time people have to spend working to keep themselves alive, it was the biggest increase in free time since advanced plows allowed peasant farmers to take one day off a week in the Middle Ages. Which means, it allows people to pursue hobbies and games.

In short, if not for industrialization, you would not have time to play role-playing games and you would not have access to the technology to read a website about to play them better.

But industrialization is also tremendously efficient when it comes to consuming natural resources and producing pollution. Unchecked industrialization really does destroy everything. It’s like a plague of robot locusts on steroids. Tolkien wasn’t wrong about that whole Ent forest thing. I’m not saying he was wrong. I’m just saying there’s two sides to everything. That’s why we have been developing regulations to keep industrialization in check and why we keep arguing about which regulations we need. That’s why we have started, in the western industrial world, declaring certain parts of the natural world “off limits” to industrialization. That’s why we have labor laws. And why we do research into things like climate change.

The point is, industrialization is neither good nor bad. It’s not wholly evil unless it’s taken to an extreme. But the opposite extreme was also pretty terrible.

And that’s why a good story plays with ideas instead of picking sides. Interesting stories are the ones that play with their themes over and over, putting them in different conflicts and exploring the results, emphasizing different aspects. In those stories, good and evil become complex and nuanced ideas. It isn’t just “industry is evil, pastoral farm life is good.” It’s “these folks represent rampant industrialization taken to an extreme, these impoverished farmers represent stagnation and a lack of progress, these folks represent the idea of industrialization as a positive social force…” and so on. And then you can have complex choices. “The impoverished farmers have the chance to start a coal mine, some are in favor of the good it will bring to the community, some are opposed to the pillaging of the natural resources, and there’s no way to tell how it’ll all work out.”

See, the thing is, conflicts between ideas occur because one idea isn’t automatically better than another. There’s no conflict – in the modern western world – between slavery versus freedom. We don’t enslave people. That’s evil. Everyone recognizes that. Anyone who chooses enslavement is a monster. And we call them out on that. That’s not an interesting conflict because it doesn’t drive lots of interesting choices. But what about freedom versus security? The idea that we want to be free to make our choices, but people can’t be free to hurt or endanger others. Or freedom versus social order. To work together – which is when humans are at their most powerful – we have to share some common goals and ideals. But we also have to be free to find our way. Or else people stagnate, and new ideas don’t happen. Because our other human super-power is intelligence and learning. And you can’t get smart if you can’t explore new ideas. So, there’s one also: progress vs. tradition.

Now, I’m not saying you can’t have good and evil. And I’m not saying your campaign shouldn’t be about an epic fight between good and evil. Honestly, that s$&% is awesome. I’m just saying that good and evil can’t define the major thematic conflicts in your game. And, if you’re smart, you won’t just assign some themes to the goodies and some themes to the baddies. That’s just not very interesting. Honestly, that’s where art becomes propaganda. Art asks hard questions and makes you think, but it rarely gives an answer. Propaganda exists to sell an answer.

Take a question like “do the ends justify the means,” for example. Which is just another way of saying “what defines you, your actions or your intentions?” You might have an answer to that question. But can you conceive of a situation that might give some evidence to the opposite answer? Of course, you can. Might your players answer differently in different situations? Sure. You can build a dozen situations around people with good or bad intentions taking good or bad actions. You can do middle of the road situations. You can do extreme situations. You can play a lot with it. And that makes for interesting role-playing.

But that question doesn’t work without some moral value judgments. You NEED good and evil in the world so that you can HAVE good ends and bad ends and good intentions and bad intentions. And you need a spectrum of good and evil, for that matter. Shoplifting isn’t as bad as eating babies, for example. So, a good intention might warrant shoplifting, but not baby eating. Of course, seeing how even a minor act of shoplifting hurts the shopkeeper might also change the way people see the situation.

The point is, just like in The Lord of the Rings, the thematic conflicts have to play both sides of the moral spectrum to be interesting. The conflicts that are limited to only one side – industrialization is evil – aren’t the ones that drive interesting choices and complex situations. It’s the conflicts that crop up again and again on both sides of the coin – is it what we believe or what we do that defines us; how do we reconcile free will with determinism – that make for interesting stories.

Good and evil have their place. But their place isn’t in the thematic conflicts. Because they aren’t ideas in conflict. They are just ways that the narrator gets to score the sides. And, in an RPG especially, the narrator is the least interesting person to listen to. Sorry, GMs. It ain’t always about you. But if YOU watch what other people with the themes you create, YOU might just learn something.