Gamers Are Lame

I recently discovered that gamers who aren't game designers are exceedingly lame. And I realized that the reason I'm not a gamer is simply because I'm not that lame, and because all the games ever made, all the games anyone could make, will always be lame.

There are damned few games where you get to alter the game world. The only ones I know are Minecraft, Second Life and the old MOOs (I consider Second Life a 3D MOO). And of course, the Reality MMORPG (that one's manual is really inadequate by the way).

In World of Warcraft, you don't get to change the outcome of anything at all. Things move around randomly, events happen, and you don't have any say in them. Only an unreachable deity (the Content Programmer) has any say in it at all.

In Dragon Age, Neverwinter Nights and other computer role-playing games, you get a choice of a tiny number (usually 3 or less) "endings" which are barely distinguishable. You win and become evil, you win and become good, you lose and die, so on. There isn't any possible way to get off these plot rails you're stuck on.

And aren't you happy with 3 or 4 destinations? Like I said, I'm not that lame. And although in Minecraft and possibly Dungeon Keeper, you get to craft worlds, you only get to do so on a very superficial level. Like a freaking engineer! I look down on engineers, I don't want to emulate them!

So anyways, how did I learn all this? Well, I read a couple of self-insert fics about computer games. It took me a while to figure out their authors were uncreative hacks who were novelizing the games. Cause yeah, I don't play computer games, I just read about them. And then I started wondering what the fuck was wrong with these people.

And I realized! They're cattle and insects. They don't think of anything beyond their own self-aggrandizement. The "sandbox" in Elder Scrolls where you get to acquire power, prestige (social status), and fortune (wealth) is all they could ever want.

None of them ever want to REMAKE the world, putting down railways and signal towers to keep the Tamriel Empire together. None of them want to build aqueducts, public baths and radically improve coal mining to heat the baths in Athkatla.

I suppose Civilization and Railroad Tycoon let you do that to a small degree. But they were crap, because you got bogged down in repetitive micro-management pretty damned quick. And they were over-simplistic. What you could build was exceedingly limited. The plot rails may have been conceptual but they were still there.

My favourite genre of fiction has always been crossovers with reality. And the first question that always comes to mind is what the trade opportunities would be. I think this rant kinda shows that. Healing potions for steam engines, hmm. Steam engines are nearly always possible so long as something resembling human life lives.

Good Heroes Are Impossible

The whole notion of a "hero" is someone who sacrifices themselves for the herd. Someone who due to courage (suicidally low self-esteem and mindless idiocy) volunteers when the herd needs someone to die. So the whole notion of a hero is utterly despicable! And as Good people do not go along with despicable acts, we have a problem with the whole notion of a Good Hero.

No good person can ever be a hero. Because to be good means to conceive of Good and that's not something that is done easily or lightly. So, no good person can possibly be an idiot. Yet it is a fact that you, all of you, aren't worth the life of a single Good person. Not at one thousand to one, not at one million to one, and not at a billion to one.

Genuinely Good people are precious and their lives are valuable on a par with the continued existence of humanity. So you see, you're just not fucking worth it. And the FACT that you demand people sacrifice themselves for you all. The fact you use admiration and other despicable psychologically manipulative tools to control mindless herd members into suiciding for you ... only makes you less worth saving.

And as we established, a Good person will understand this because they're not an idiot. So we see that the notion of a Hero being a Good person (or vice versa) is utterly ludicrous. Batman is a Hero, therefore he cannot possibly be Good. And he happens to be Evil. Meanwhile, Hal Jordan ceased to be a hero precisely because he was Good.

Character Alignment

In AD&D there is a central concept known as character alignment which is astonishingly and staggeringly fruitful when applied to real life. It's a 2 dimensional scale. Lawful vs Chaotic and Good vs Evil.

The tools who created AD&D were Lawful Neutral retards who didn't have the slightest grasp of what Chaotic Good meant. Proof: they wrote that chaotic good characters respect good authorities. Give me a break! Could they be more ridiculous?!

Well, those retards may not have had any clue what Lawful vs Chaos meant. And they had even LESS of a clue what Good vs Evil meant since they (and everyone else) constantly tries to redefine Good as Lawful. As obedience to the herd.

But the truth is that Good means having an INDEPENDENT conception of Goodness. It does not mean that you define morality == ultimate good. How could it since morality (the well-being of the group matters) is something only the herd conceives of as good.

Neither does being of Good alignment mean you define empathy == ultimate good. And I speak authoritatively as someone who DOES define empathy == ultimate good. It is sufficient that a person define empathy as an ordinary good.

What does it mean then to have a conception of good? Well there are technical requirements and the definition is itself highly technical. And it's because of that highly technical nature that you the NPCs are ill-equipped to understand Goodness. So why bother talking about it?

With these preliminaries out of the way, it's possible to create an accurate grid of character alignment.

	Lawful	Neutral	Chaotic
Good	angels	angels	angels
Neutral	tools	cattle	activists
Evil	monsters	narcissists	psychopaths

monsters = mercenaries, dictators, batman, ruthless and without conscience

tools = academics and bureaucrats

ANGELS

Now, I'm sure you all, being NPCs (cattle or tools or activists), are greatly puzzled by the mention of Angels. Isn't Lawful Good where stereotypical Heroes and Paladins are slotted? Well, BULLSHIT!

Heroes by definition don't have any independent conception of Good as they're willing to sacrifice their lives for something as worthless as "society" which I call cattle. I seriously doubt that Paladins are any better. No, it makes far more sense to understand Heroes and Paladins as staggeringly corrupt and hypocritical compared to genuine Angels. In other words, they are Lawful Neutrals with Lawful Good tendencies.

What are Angels then? They're beings of pure goodness, who can never deliberately commit the slightest unnecessary evil act without being haunted by their actions forever. But don't imagine for a single moment that they define Good and Evil the way YOU scum define it. After all, there is a reason the Archangel Michael is depicted as carrying a big fucking sword, and it isn't because he's afraid of meeting demons everywhere he goes.

Now, I use the word "Angel" because it means, by definition, beings who are made out of pure goodness. And not because I want to pander to the psychotic religious freaks in the world. Angels exist, Gods do not! Or if they do, only evil gods exist. Being an Angel means being Good and being Good means being an Angel. It does NOT mean being obedient to nor worshipful of a god. AD&D got Angels totally wrong. But then, it also got gods totally wrong as every Angel possesses a Portfolio, something only gods possess in AD&D. Exhalted got Angels totally wrong too. Angels are not physically perfect beings (wings optional), they are psychologically perfect beings.

Furthermore, don't imagine that Angels in real life are the obedient emotionally castrated eunuchs of much of the psychotic hallucinations (religious "revelations" and "visions") of cattle. Angels are fully capable of hatred, fury and WRATH. Angels are not your friends. Angels are scary beings whom you, the NPCs, can rightly view as much scarier than monsters. And prostrating yourself or kowtowing isn't going to help. It is NEVER going to help but will only serve to draw attention to you. You know what might just help you? Running.

Batman Is Evil

Batman is evil. He isn't a rogue, he isn't a vigilante, he isn't a loose cannon. Far, far from it. He is Lawful Evil.

How many people have expressed contempt that superheroes with staggering mental, technological or supernatural powers waste their time "fighting crime" instead of helping humanity?

That isn't a coincidence. They fight crime because it's inoffensive. They fight crime because it's what the herd wants them to do. They fight crime because it's Lawful.

In other words, all those "superheroes" in comics are of Lawful alignment. But strict obedience to higher authority says NOTHING about whether a person is good or evil.

Once the two dimensions of character alignment are sharply and violently separated, it's possible to arrive at certain conclusions which would appear strange at first sight.

The typical scientist or bureaucrat is Lawful Neutral. The typical two-legged cattle is True Neutral. The typical protestor is Chaotic Neutral, caring absolutely nothing for good or evil. So far nothing terribly surprising, just insulting.

Then we have Hal Jordan in Emerald Twilight who tried to eradicate the Green Lantern Corps. Why?

Well, before his motivations were retconned, he had come to the realization that there WASN'T any justice in the universe and that the Corps may have stood for Order (Lawful) but it didn't stand for Justice (Good) therefore it had to be removed.

Hal Jordan was a Neutral Good character who joined up with a Lawful organization when it seemed Good and ruthlessly crushed them when he determined they had lied to him and that they were not so good. That they were despicably Lawful Neutral.

It's important to note that Hal Jordan's motivation was to resurrect his city because an evil had been done to IT. Not because an evil had been done to HIM. And that's the key fact we need to be able to judge Batman.

Batman is evil because his only motivation is HIMSELF. He fights crime because Gotham is a Chaotic Neutral City and because the criminals he fights are Chaotic Evil. Gotham's criminals are as antithetical to Batman as Neutral Evil is to Neutral Good.

The important point is that Batman's crime-fighting adventures have fuck-all to do with whether he is Good or Evil. Because they ONLY have any weight on whether Batman is Lawful (he is) or Chaotic (he hates that).

Now, Batman COULD HAVE BEEN Lawful Good or Lawful Neutral, but he isn't. He's a billionaire and you don't see him doing any good with his money. You see him being a playboy and selfish.

Batman's motivation for crime fighting was that his parents were murdered. Because an evil thing was done TO HIM. Not to others, but to himself. Selfish selfish!

And Christopher Nolan knows that Batman is evil because in the movie Batman Begins, Batman saves his sweetheart at the cost of millions in property damage.

Now, if Batman is the ultimate Lawful character, if his biggest motivation is Law, then how could he possibly commit millions of dollars of property damage for PERSONAL GAIN? Only if personal gain was as big a motivation could that make sense. But what that means is oh yeah, Batman Is Evil!!

And the only superhero to have ever been Neutral Good was swiftly balderized and his actions reinterpreted as a "fall".