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* ''AmberDiceless'' takes the fact that characters were portrayed differently between [[UnreliableNarrator Corwin and Merlin]] in ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfAmber'' books and runs with it, presenting several different interpretations of each of the characters (prominent or not) and encouraging Game Masters to write their own interpretations if those don't work for them. Yes, every character from ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfAmber'' canon has ''multiple'' sets of stats, each at a different point level, and the GM is expected to mix-and-match to taste.
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* ''AmberDiceless'' ''[[Literature/TheChroniclesOfAmber AmberDiceless]]'' takes the fact that characters were portrayed differently between [[UnreliableNarrator Corwin and Merlin]] in ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfAmber'' books and runs with it, presenting several different interpretations of each of the characters (prominent or not) and encouraging Game Masters to write their own interpretations if those don't work for them. Yes, every character from ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfAmber'' canon has ''multiple'' sets of stats, each at a different point level, and the GM is expected to mix-and-match to taste.
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*** Alternatively, the Emperor of Mankind is us. He's humanity, with all its [[HumansAreGood pros]] [[HumansAreFlawed and]] [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters]] He's the paragon of humanity trying to save us from [[CrapsackWorld the cruel universe it lives in]] and the tyrant trying to elevate us to [[AGodAmI absolute power.]] Most of all, he is our strive to continue. [[CrapsackWorld When faced with the worst possible worlds]], we will resort to the grim necessity needed to not be destroyed. '''The Emperor Protects.'''
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*** Alternatively, the Emperor of Mankind is us. He's humanity, with all its [[HumansAreGood pros]] [[HumansAreFlawed and]] [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters]] [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters cons]]. He's the paragon of humanity trying to save us from [[CrapsackWorld the cruel universe it lives in]] and the tyrant trying to elevate us to [[AGodAmI absolute power.]] Most of all, he is our strive to continue. [[CrapsackWorld When faced with the worst possible worlds]], we will resort to the grim necessity needed to not be destroyed. '''The Emperor Protects.'''
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** Alhoons are mind flayers that have undergone a version of [[OurLichesAreDifferent lichification]], [[EvenEvilHasStandards utterly abhorred by traditional mind flayer society]]. However, some have pointed out that becoming an alhoon not only frees a mind flayer from the need to [[BrainFood eat brains]] outside of ForTheEvulz, but it also makes the mind flayer effectively immortal. Consider that elder brains devour their mind flayer servants under the pretense of making them immortal, and the abhorrent nature of the alhoon takes on a very different light: monster of monsters, or DefectorFromDecadence?
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* This happened a lot in the ''TabletopGame/OldWorldOfDarkness'':
** Nowhere did it stand out more than in ''TabletopGame/MageTheAscension''. When the games began, the mystically oriented Traditions were the good guys fighting a war of ideology against the all-powerful Technocracy, who tried to "smooth out" the bumps in reality through extermination of all supernatural creatures. As the game went through multiple revisions, however, the flaws and in-fighting of the Traditions began to come to the fore, and it became possible for the player characters to be a group of young, idealistic Technocrats trying to reform a corrupt monolith from the inside.\\
** Nowhere did it stand out more than in ''TabletopGame/MageTheAscension''. When the games began, the mystically oriented Traditions were the good guys fighting a war of ideology against the all-powerful Technocracy, who tried to "smooth out" the bumps in reality through extermination of all supernatural creatures. As the game went through multiple revisions, however, the flaws and in-fighting of the Traditions began to come to the fore, and it became possible for the player characters to be a group of young, idealistic Technocrats trying to reform a corrupt monolith from the inside.\\
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** Nowhere did it stand out more than in ''TabletopGame/MageTheAscension''. When
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* ''AmberDiceless'' takes the
* ''Android'' does this with the player characters. Are they honest detectives searching for a murderer, or corrupt investigators striving to frame the person they happen not to like? The fiction says one thing while the game mechanic says another; the incoherence is so strong that a fan mod for the rulebook was released to alter it.
* BattleTech as a whole (At least up until the Jihad) seems to have been an exercise in creating ACIs, all depending on what faction you decide to side with. Except for a few unambiguous [[KickTheDog puppy-punters]] like [[TheCaligula Romano Liao]] or [[RoyalBrat Katherine ]][[EvilPrince Steiner-Davion]], most characters can have several Interpretations.
** Hanse Davion: MagnificentBastard who [[IncrediblyLamePun outfoxed]] his hidebound or deranged opponents, or MarySue who only got by on [[CreatorsPet writer's fiat]]? His son, Victor: [[TheNapoleon Midget who can't possibly live up to
** The Clans: [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Proud Warrior Race Guys]] who deserve to lead Humanity, or LawfulStupid [[MarySue Mary Sues]] with [[TheMunchkin way too much power]]?
*** InUniverse, the application of
** Sun-Tzu Liao: MagnificentBastard who is trying to
** [=ComStar=]: They are either religious cult who seek to preserve and recover lost Star League tech, or just conniving schemers who want to rule over the Inner Sphere. Their previous plot made them no more different than the Word of Blake, except they are far less extreme and destructive.
* In the latest edition of ''DungeonsAndDragons'', Asmodeus usurped his position from [[NoNameGiven He Who Was]], his patron deity. A lot of text tries to portray He Who Was as a benevolent deity, but angels are supposed to be extensions of their patron deity's will. How did Asmodeus get so many angels on his side? Perhaps He Who Was wasn't as squeaky clean as he's made out to be. In fact, HHW might have been the god of ambition, and the reason he had so many usurpers following Asmodeus was because of their ambitious nature. (HHW is [[{{YHWH}} one letter away]] from being a VERY SignificantAnagram...)
** 3.5 Edition's ''Races of the Wild'' reveals something interesting about halflings and their religion: Yondalla wasn't always the squeaky clean paragon of Lawful Good she is today. She created the halflings by stealing the best bits from all the other races, and the gods punished her by forcing her to split into two goddesses: LawfulGood Yondalla and ChaoticNeutral Dallah Thaun. They are still the same person, sharing thoughts and memories, which is why there are so many CN halflings who can claim, even under magical compulsion, to worship a LG goddess. This is a canon example of ACI, as no other books even so much as mention it; other races are forbidden to even know about Dallah Thaun. This suggests that the halflings, generally seen as no more than harmlessly mischievous, are knowingly perpetuating a culture-wide scam that allows them to steal, cheat and take vengeance all they want, and all in the name of a lawful good deity.
*** What's really strange is that the other gods are apparently in on it. They know of Dallah's existence, but even high level non-halfling clerics who can talk to their gods directly are seemingly kept in the dark. Good gods, evil gods, lawful ones, chaotic ones, none seem to have any problem with keeping this a secret from everyone. So either there is a truly massive cover-up going on (with even gods who despise each other playing along) or ''there is no Dallah Thaun'', the book is a fabrication, and the halflings made her up as some sort of excuse for doing as they please.
*** Perhaps she was invented by Yondalla herself, as a sort of alter ego. That means that Yondalla is not Lawful Good, and the entire halfling religion is founded on a lie.
** In regards to Asmodeus and He Who Was, there's some new information out about it. He Who Was was apparently the leader of the gods in their war with the primordials, but was such a benevolent god that he had little taste for war and battle and was a poor general. Asmodeus was the most powerful and skilled general the gods had, and his angels were their most powerful army. His tactics, however, were brutal and horrifying to He Who Was, who eventually cast Asmodeus down for his actions. Perhaps the peace loving He Who Was created Asmodeus and his army as an aspect of himself, an expression of his ruthless, violent tendencies so that he didn't have to live with them himself. Which could have been why he simply cast Asmodeus down, instead of destroying him outright. He couldn't bring himself to destroy part of himself.
*** In a late 2nd Edition book (when the cosmos was significantly different), ''Guide to Hell'', it was suggested "Asmodeus" was the false face put forward by one of the primal beings of Law, an aspect of the archetypal World Serpent, the fallen ancient god [[{{Zoroastrianism}} Ahriman]]. This introduced the interpretation that he was no mere Satan figure (which he had previously embodied) and made him something more ancient and terrible, [[SealedEvilInACan imprisoned in the Hells by the very laws he helped write into the cosmos]] and plotting to shatter those laws so he might reforge them for his own ends. 3rd Edition's ''Manual of the Planes'' continued to hint at his secret nature, but never went very far with it. (In this case, Asmodeus's counterpart as the other half of the World Serpent was Jazirian, the goddess of the couatls. She's mentioned so rarely that some bits of fanon have filled in the gaps with her own Alternative Interpretation, making her the ''logos'' to Asmodeus's great Lie, and that she may even have died between 2nd and 3rd edition - another bit of fanon from that is that her discorporate essence is behind the Words Made Flesh of the illumians in ''Races of Destiny''.)
** [[http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19558798/Pelor_the_Burning_Hate Pelor The Burning Hate]] is a reinterpretation of Pelor, Neutral Good god of the Sun, Light, Strength, and Healing. It manages to remain consistent with everything attributed to Pelor, while explaining his every action and trait as actually evil in disguise.
* The Dark Powers in the DungeonsAndDragons {{Ravenloft}} campaign setting are usually interpreted as being evil, since they are the [[GeniusLoci presumed masters behind the eponymous Demiplane of Dread, a place of evil and horror]], but it is also possible that they are good, and use Ravenloft as a prison for the worst villains and monsters in the multiverse. If the cage sometimes seems a gilded one, remember that each of the major villains trapped there are also given curses [[CoolAndUnusualPunishment appropriate to their crimes]].
** The CoolAndUnusualPunishment suffered by every dark lord is designed to break them and hit them where it really hurts. For example, Strahd von Zarovich, who murdered his brother to steal his fiancée (and countless other crimes) is cursed with vampirism and forced to relive the loss of his beloved Tatiana every generation. Unless things have changed in the latest edition, the setting is called The Land of Mists or something similar by its residents; Ravenloft is from ''Ravana's Loft'', and is Strahd's absolutely trope-tastic HauntedCastle, named for Strahd's mother.
** The problem is, almost none of the villains trapped in Ravenloft are actually major (only Vecna/Kaz and Lord Soth, all long gone from Ravenloft, were bigshots before going there). Dark Powers pick people whom they can make to suffer beautifully, not those really dangerous or really heinous. Snatching a guy who murdered his brother to steal his fiancée out of love, when ''DungeonsAndDragons'' is chock-full of people whose job description amounts to killing and torturing innocents ForTheEvulz? On the other hand, core domains of Ravenloft often are relatively safe places to live, compared to what is normal to [=DnD-land=]. Commonly encountering monsters are weak enough to remain in hiding, instead of rampaging and assaulting openly, and there is a comparative shortage of insanely powerful psychopaths on the loose. To be fair, it's not like TSR and later WotC could denude their other campaign settings of all their good villains. Also, the Dark Powers may just not have the power to take all the really major villains from all over the multiverse; it's not like the Dark Powers have ever been portrayed as omnipotent, even within Ravenloft. Maybe they're just doing the best they can. Also, the fact that Ravenloft is in some ways ''safer'' for the average person than the typical campaign setting, what with the lack of lots of randomly rampaging monsters, may be further support for the idea that the Dark Powers are good.
** Still other gamemasters take the radical stance that the Dark Powers ''don't exist'': Ravenloft works the way it does simply because that's its fundamental nature as a plane, just like the Plane of Fire is inherently hot. The darklords' curses are personalized because they're unconsciously inflicting such torments on themselves, out of repressed guilt.
* It happens a lot in ''TabletopGame/{{Exalted}}''.
** Solars: Are they returning divinely empowered rulers who will lead Creation into a new golden age, or are they destined to fall into the same madness as before and make things even worse?
** Dragon-Bloods: Pitiful, tyrannical usurpers or noble "little guys" who did what had to be done and kept the world from falling to pieces?
** Sidereals: Stuck-up bureaucrats who couldn't see beyond their own noses and almost doomed Creation as a result, or secret agents who keep reality intact?
** Abyssals: Death-obsessed omnicidal maniacs, or... eh, there's not much room for an alternate interpretation here.
*** ... Or the tragically corrupted and repentant shells of people that might once have been heroes.
** Everyone ''always'' ignores the Lunars. Most of the world sees them as raving, flea-bitten beastmen who squander their lives fighting each other over territory, mates, and bragging rights, when they aren't attempting to burn and destroy civilization to usher in total chaos. This is actually a deliberate ruse to appear less of a threat, so that the Dragonblooded and Sidereals don't try seriously hunting them down like they did the Solars. While many Lunars might fit the stereotypes if you squint real hard (and some even if you don't), for the most part they're a band of misunderstood heroes honestly trying to protect the world from itself and actually fighting to prevent Chaos. There are various factions devoted to protecting the world in the way they think most important, either by preserving (and improving) ancient knowledge, defending nature (and thus the Mother Earth Goddess) from ruination, patrolling the borders of the world to keep Chaos at bay, seeking to reinstate the Solar Exalted as kings of the world (a highly controversial idea among Lunars), or experimenting with isolated human civilizations in an attempt to come up with a viable alternative to the Realm's corrupt
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The later sourcebooks (and the old stuff if you look hard enough) make it more and more easy to believe that the Technocracy, even with its flaws, really is doing the right thing by trying to save humanity from all the supernatural things that want to eat them, enslave them, or remake the world in their own image. A world ruled by the Technocracy might be bleak, but imagine a world dominated by the philosophical paradigm of, say, [[TheMagocracy The Order of Hermes]], or the [[GaiasVengeance Verbena]]...\\
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To put a point on it: Depending on who you ask, the Technocracy is a genocidal [[BigBrotherIsWatching Thought Police]] bent on creating a stagnant world they have absolute control over, a bunch of [[WellIntentionedExtremist Well-Intentioned Extremists]] for whom UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans, or [[DesignatedVillain Designated Villains]] who are absolutely justified in their belief that supernatural influence over the Human Race is a quantifiable bad thing. By the same token, the Council of Nine either represents the last best hope for creativity, nobility and the realization of personal potential, or are a bunch of selfish children who refuse to acknowledge the true implication of their abilities against the Greater Good. It's all heavily dependent on where on the SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism the World of Darkness lies. Unfortunately for the Traditions, this is the World of Darkness.
** The central idea of ''TabletopGame/DemonTheFallen'' is the alternate interpretation that Lucifer rebelled [[SatanIsGood in order to save humanity]] from being condemned to ignorance by an uncaring God. But even that interpretation is subject to a decent amount of doubt. Was it for love? Or was Lucifer simply ambitious? Or did he do it because God ''told'' him to?\\
** The central idea of ''TabletopGame/DemonTheFallen'' is the alternate interpretation that Lucifer rebelled [[SatanIsGood in order to save humanity]] from being condemned to ignorance by an uncaring God. But even that interpretation is subject to a decent amount of doubt. Was it for love? Or was Lucifer simply ambitious? Or did he do it because God ''told'' him to?\\
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** The [[OurTitansAreDifferent Primordials]]: Callous and vindictive psychopaths who treated their minions like dirt and the
** The central idea of ''TabletopGame/DemonTheFallen'' is the alternate interpretation
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And there's the ever continuing problem of getting the players to not just be AlwaysChaoticEvil since they are called demons. Some go for BloodKnight types, some go for manipulative Al-Pachino-From-Devils-Advocate types, and almost all of them miss the point of the game. The expanded power sets (Lore of Violation anyone?) doesn't really help with this.
* It happens a lot in ''TabletopGame/{{Exalted}}''.
** Solars: Are they returning divinely empowered rulers who will lead Creation into a new golden age, or are they destined to fall into the same madness as before and make things even worse?
** Dragon-Bloods: Pitiful, tyrannical usurpers or noble "little guys" who did what had to be done and kept the world from falling to pieces?
** Sidereals: Stuck-up bureaucrats who couldn't see beyond their own noses and almost doomed Creation as a result, or secret agents who keep reality intact?
** Abyssals: Death-obsessed omnicidal maniacs, or... eh, there's not much room for an alternate interpretation here.
*** ... Or the tragically corrupted and repentant shells of people that might once have been heroes.
** Everyone ''always'' ignores the Lunars. Most of the world sees them as raving, flea-bitten beastmen who squander their lives fighting each other over territory, mates, and bragging rights, when they aren't attempting to burn and destroy civilization to usher in total chaos. This is actually a deliberate ruse to appear less of a threat, so that the Dragonblooded and Sidereals don't try seriously hunting them down like they did the Solars. While many Lunars might fit the stereotypes if you squint real hard (and some even if you don't), for the most part they're a band of misunderstood heroes honestly trying to protect the world from itself and actually fighting to prevent Chaos. There are various factions devoted to protecting the world in the way they think most important, either by preserving (and improving) ancient knowledge, defending nature (and thus the Mother Earth Goddess) from ruination, patrolling the borders of the world to keep Chaos at bay, seeking to reinstate the Solar Exalted as kings of the world (a highly controversial idea among Lunars), or experimenting with isolated human civilizations in an attempt to come up with a viable alternative to the Realm's corrupt brand of civilization. In general, yes, the Lunar Exalted think the current order is corrupt and needs to go -- but they're not so stupid as to do that unless they've got something better to replace it, and they've given a lot of thought about ''how'' to do the replacing without destroying the world in the attempt.\\
\\
In the first edition Lunars book, "raving, flea-bitten beastmen who squander their lives fighting each other over territory, mates, and bragging rights, when they aren't attempting to burn and destroy civilization to usher in total chaos" was exactly correct. It wasn't until the second edition that White Wolf fixed that.\\
\\
In ''Exalted 2.0'', the whole Lunar "let's figure out a way to create a better society" thing is executed in practice by having individual Lunars go out and ''create test societies'' -- which frequently fail to produce positive results. Rather than try to fix the problems that they have caused through their social engineering (such as now-ancient grudges, entire societies on the brink of being press-ganged into demonic armies, and other such [[DoomyDoomsofDoom dooms]]), Lunars often ''abandon'' said projects, for better or worse.
** The [[OurTitansAreDifferent Primordials]]: Callous and vindictive psychopaths who treated their minions like dirt and the world and their creations like playthings they would occasionally break for fun? Or the victims of divine usurpers who painted them as far more malicious than they ever were, and now are so angry by this betrayal that they embrace this persona, and arranged it so that history repeats itself?\\
\\
* It happens a lot in ''TabletopGame/{{Exalted}}''.
** Solars: Are they returning divinely empowered rulers who will lead Creation into a new golden age, or are they destined to fall into the same madness as before and make things even worse?
** Dragon-Bloods: Pitiful, tyrannical usurpers or noble "little guys" who did what had to be done and kept the world from falling to pieces?
** Sidereals: Stuck-up bureaucrats who couldn't see beyond their own noses and almost doomed Creation as a result, or secret agents who keep reality intact?
** Abyssals: Death-obsessed omnicidal maniacs, or... eh, there's not much room for an alternate interpretation here.
*** ... Or the tragically corrupted and repentant shells of people that might once have been heroes.
** Everyone ''always'' ignores the Lunars. Most of the world sees them as raving, flea-bitten beastmen who squander their lives fighting each other over territory, mates, and bragging rights, when they aren't attempting to burn and destroy civilization to usher in total chaos. This is actually a deliberate ruse to appear less of a threat, so that the Dragonblooded and Sidereals don't try seriously hunting them down like they did the Solars. While many Lunars might fit the stereotypes if you squint real hard (and some even if you don't), for the most part they're a band of misunderstood heroes honestly trying to protect the world from itself and actually fighting to prevent Chaos. There are various factions devoted to protecting the world in the way they think most important, either by preserving (and improving) ancient knowledge, defending nature (and thus the Mother Earth Goddess) from ruination, patrolling the borders of the world to keep Chaos at bay, seeking to reinstate the Solar Exalted as kings of the world (a highly controversial idea among Lunars), or experimenting with isolated human civilizations in an attempt to come up with a viable alternative to the Realm's corrupt brand of civilization. In general, yes, the Lunar Exalted think the current order is corrupt and needs to go -- but they're not so stupid as to do that unless they've got something better to replace it, and they've given a lot of thought about ''how'' to do the replacing without destroying the world in the attempt.\\
\\
In the first edition Lunars book, "raving, flea-bitten beastmen who squander their lives fighting each other over territory, mates, and bragging rights, when they aren't attempting to burn and destroy civilization to usher in total chaos" was exactly correct. It wasn't until the second edition that White Wolf fixed that.\\
\\
In ''Exalted 2.0'', the whole Lunar "let's figure out a way to create a better society" thing is executed in practice by having individual Lunars go out and ''create test societies'' -- which frequently fail to produce positive results. Rather than try to fix the problems that they have caused through their social engineering (such as now-ancient grudges, entire societies on the brink of being press-ganged into demonic armies, and other such [[DoomyDoomsofDoom dooms]]), Lunars often ''abandon'' said projects, for better or worse.
** The [[OurTitansAreDifferent Primordials]]: Callous and vindictive psychopaths who treated their minions like dirt and the world and their creations like playthings they would occasionally break for fun? Or the victims of divine usurpers who painted them as far more malicious than they ever were, and now are so angry by this betrayal that they embrace this persona, and arranged it so that history repeats itself?\\
\\
* ''MagicTheGathering'':
** Yawgmoth: a WellIntentionedExtremist BadassNormal OmnidisciplinaryScientist [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans who made use of some innovative methods to grant his fellows a better life]] only to be [[LoveMakesYouEvil betrayed by the woman he loved]] [[SealedEvilInACan and exiled into a void plane for nine millennia]], thus making his RoaringRampageOfRevenge [[WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds more than justified]]? Or perhaps an AffablyEvil DeadlyDoctor with [[MunchausenSyndrome Munchausen by proxy]], [[MachineWorship who lost his mind]] [[MechanicalLifeforms worshipping machines]] and became an EvilutionaryBiologist ([[{{Anvilicious}} remember]], ScienceIsBad)?
*** Alternately, a leader who is banished for his success, and builds a world out of his tomb. This world is one without war or dissension, but slowly collapsing. His attempts to bring this everlasting peace back to his homeworld is foiled by Urza, an OmnicidalManiac with a legacy of war and misery ''thousands'' of years long.
** Urabrask the Hidden and Red Phyrexians in general: Indifferent to the Mirrans in their domain, secretly rebelling against their other Phyrexian brethren out of genuine compassion due to their alignment, or having a secret agenda just as (if not more) heinous as their other-spectrum brothers?
** Elesh Norn preaches about the Machine Orthodoxy, but does she truly believe in it or is simply using it as a false religion to further her own goals?
* ''TabletopGame/{{Nobilis}}'': is Lord Entropy a decent person regretfully playing the monster for the net benefit of the world, a lonely god cursed with an inability to be loved using his power to strike back at a concept that has rejected him, a perpetual test of strength forcing Nobles to be as ruthless and cunning as possible, an Excrucian agent, or simply a colossal tool on a power trip?
* One of these is raised by the main rulebook of ''TabletopGame/{{Paranoia}} XP''. Friend Computer is usually portrayed as unhinged, a little bit stupid, gullible, and ruthless. One brief section of XP suggests an alternative: Friend Computer is 100% sane and sees through all the evasions and deceptions, but has concluded that deceit, fear, ignorance, horrific inefficiency, and all the other perks of ''Paranoia'' are the very quintessence of human nature and has decided to do everything necessary to nurture these traits, using ObfuscatingStupidity.
** The rulebook also suggests that the GM should always have another layer. Okay, the [=PCs=] find out that Friend Computer is being controlled by evil mutants from Beta Complex, who are actually being controlled by a group of High Programmers back in Alpha Complex, who were set up by Friend Computer as part of a paranoid sting operation, but this plan was added into Friend Computer's memory banks by aliens from Pluto, who are actually just psychic projections of TheIlluminati, etc. In short, in Alpha Complex, everything has an alternative interpretation.
* This happened a lot in the ''TabletopGame/OldWorldOfDarkness'':
** Nowhere did it stand out more than in ''TabletopGame/MageTheAscension''. When the games began, the mystically oriented Traditions were the good guys fighting a war of ideology against the all-powerful Technocracy, who tried to "smooth out" the bumps in reality through extermination of all supernatural creatures. As the game went through multiple revisions, however, the flaws and in-fighting of the Traditions began to come to the fore, and it became possible for the player characters to be a group of young, idealistic Technocrats trying to reform a corrupt monolith from the inside.\\
\\
The later sourcebooks (and the old stuff if you look hard enough) make it more and more easy to believe that the Technocracy, even with its flaws, really is doing the right thing by trying to save humanity from all the supernatural things that want to eat them, enslave them, or remake the world in their own image. A world ruled by the Technocracy might be bleak, but imagine a world dominated by the philosophical paradigm of, say, [[TheMagocracy The Order of Hermes]], or the [[GaiasVengeance Verbena]]...\\
\\
To put a point on it: Depending on who you ask, the Technocracy is a genocidal [[BigBrotherIsWatching Thought Police]] bent on creating a stagnant world they have absolute control over, a bunch of [[WellIntentionedExtremist Well-Intentioned Extremists]] for whom UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans, or [[DesignatedVillain Designated Villains]] who are absolutely justified in their belief that supernatural influence over the Human Race is a quantifiable bad thing. By the same token, the Council of Nine either represents the last best hope for creativity, nobility and the realization of personal potential, or are a bunch of selfish children who refuse to acknowledge the true implication of their abilities against the Greater Good. It's all heavily dependent on where on the SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism the World of Darkness lies. Unfortunately for the Traditions, this is the World of Darkness.
** The central idea of ''TabletopGame/DemonTheFallen'' is the alternate interpretation that Lucifer rebelled [[SatanIsGood in order to save humanity]] from being condemned to ignorance by an uncaring God. But even that interpretation is subject to a decent amount of doubt. Was it for love? Or was Lucifer simply ambitious? Or did he do it because God ''told'' him to?\\
\\
And there's the ever continuing problem of getting the players to not just be AlwaysChaoticEvil since they are called demons. Some go for BloodKnight types, some go for manipulative Al-Pachino-From-Devils-Advocate types, and almost all of them miss the point of the game. The expanded power sets (Lore of Violation anyone?) doesn't really help with this.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' isn't immune either.
** TheEmpire: The most advanced, powerful and well-intentioned human society in the world, and the best hope for humanity's survival? Or, well, TheEmpire? Either one can apply DependingOnTheWriter.
** The Lizardmen: Ruthless, alien monsters willing to commit genocide (even on fellow creations of the Old Ones; for instance, Lizardmen caused the earthquakes that ruined the Dwarves' empire, and Lord Mazdamundi wants no Elves outside Ulthuan, even if it requires their extinction) to advance an ancient plan that already went wrong well beyond correction? Or the last honest and purposeful race in the world trying to make things right, and best hope against the forces of Chaos? Or a race of lost children, trying to enact a plan complex beyond understanding while attempting to contact parents that have long ago passed away?
** Bretonnia: Ancient, chivalric and noble nation that is a shining ray of decency in the old world? Or a corrupt, barbaric feudal nation that pretends at being civilized whilst brutally suppressing the lower classes and will eventually meet its downfall either by peasant revolution or the ramifications that the state religion is founded upon an elaborate elven lie is true?
*** A nation of unwitting Slaanesh worshippers, who are only initiated into the secret if they become Grail Knights?
*** Games Workshop: [[JerkAss Total ass-holes]] for changing Bretonnia from 100% the former to a grey area or to be commended for a nice level of [[CharacterDevelopment racial development]] on an otherwise boring, overly romantic idea of the Middle Ages?
** Nagash: Evil Necromancer who destroyed the most noble and sophisticated human nation, or tragic figure who set himself up as a benevolent dictator and was betrayed by those around him, causing him to go insane?
*** Isn't it canon that he was both, more or less?
**** Actually, if you read his book, Nagash the Sorcerer, its made pretty clear he enjoyed the pain of others and wanted power for powers sake. He entombed his own brother alive so he could take his throne and feed his brother's wife a drink made (unknown to her) from her murdered son's blood. He was a malicious, petty, monster. The closest thing to benevolence in his reign was...he reclaimed his city's glory by sacking another city and killing every living thing he could find, whether they were soldiers or civilians.
** Tomb Kings: Total dicks who want to take over the world and "kill" each other for power or lost souls doom to never again find peace, and trying to bring their once great empire to life?
** The von Carstein Vampire Counts: Megalomaniacal [[EvilOverlord tyrants]] who simply want to rule the entire world, starting with the Empire, or the only faction that cares enough about the peasantry not to send them in to do their dirty work, or possibly [really/deluded into believing that they are] the best hope to stop Chaos from conquering all?
*** Vlad leans more towards the latter, his successors, more the former.
** There's also the connection to 40k as well as the origins of Sigmar: Is the Warhammer World simply another "Feudal World" in the 40k universe, two completely unique settings that only have the chaos gods in common due to corporate laziness, or alternate dimension to the 40k universe that the Chaos Gods occasionally take interest in?[[note]]Originally the fluff indicated that the Warhammer World did exist in the 40k universe, but as time went on this was dropped and outright retconned in certain material.[[/note]] There is also the possibility that Sigmar is one of the two lost primarchs who were never named if it is indeed set in the 40k Universe.
** Yawgmoth: a WellIntentionedExtremist BadassNormal OmnidisciplinaryScientist [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans who made use of some innovative methods to grant his fellows a better life]] only to be [[LoveMakesYouEvil betrayed by the woman he loved]] [[SealedEvilInACan and exiled into a void plane for nine millennia]], thus making his RoaringRampageOfRevenge [[WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds more than justified]]? Or perhaps an AffablyEvil DeadlyDoctor with [[MunchausenSyndrome Munchausen by proxy]], [[MachineWorship who lost his mind]] [[MechanicalLifeforms worshipping machines]] and became an EvilutionaryBiologist ([[{{Anvilicious}} remember]], ScienceIsBad)?
*** Alternately, a leader who is banished for his success, and builds a world out of his tomb. This world is one without war or dissension, but slowly collapsing. His attempts to bring this everlasting peace back to his homeworld is foiled by Urza, an OmnicidalManiac with a legacy of war and misery ''thousands'' of years long.
** Urabrask the Hidden and Red Phyrexians in general: Indifferent to the Mirrans in their domain, secretly rebelling against their other Phyrexian brethren out of genuine compassion due to their alignment, or having a secret agenda just as (if not more) heinous as their other-spectrum brothers?
** Elesh Norn preaches about the Machine Orthodoxy, but does she truly believe in it or is simply using it as a false religion to further her own goals?
* ''TabletopGame/{{Nobilis}}'': is Lord Entropy a decent person regretfully playing the monster for the net benefit of the world, a lonely god cursed with an inability to be loved using his power to strike back at a concept that has rejected him, a perpetual test of strength forcing Nobles to be as ruthless and cunning as possible, an Excrucian agent, or simply a colossal tool on a power trip?
* One of these is raised by the main rulebook of ''TabletopGame/{{Paranoia}} XP''. Friend Computer is usually portrayed as unhinged, a little bit stupid, gullible, and ruthless. One brief section of XP suggests an alternative: Friend Computer is 100% sane and sees through all the evasions and deceptions, but has concluded that deceit, fear, ignorance, horrific inefficiency, and all the other perks of ''Paranoia'' are the very quintessence of human nature and has decided to do everything necessary to nurture these traits, using ObfuscatingStupidity.
** The rulebook also suggests that the GM should always have another layer. Okay, the [=PCs=] find out that Friend Computer is being controlled by evil mutants from Beta Complex, who are actually being controlled by a group of High Programmers back in Alpha Complex, who were set up by Friend Computer as part of a paranoid sting operation, but this plan was added into Friend Computer's memory banks by aliens from Pluto, who are actually just psychic projections of TheIlluminati, etc. In short, in Alpha Complex, everything has an alternative interpretation.
* This happened a lot in the ''TabletopGame/OldWorldOfDarkness'':
** Nowhere did it stand out more than in ''TabletopGame/MageTheAscension''. When the games began, the mystically oriented Traditions were the good guys fighting a war of ideology against the all-powerful Technocracy, who tried to "smooth out" the bumps in reality through extermination of all supernatural creatures. As the game went through multiple revisions, however, the flaws and in-fighting of the Traditions began to come to the fore, and it became possible for the player characters to be a group of young, idealistic Technocrats trying to reform a corrupt monolith from the inside.\\
\\
The later sourcebooks (and the old stuff if you look hard enough) make it more and more easy to believe that the Technocracy, even with its flaws, really is doing the right thing by trying to save humanity from all the supernatural things that want to eat them, enslave them, or remake the world in their own image. A world ruled by the Technocracy might be bleak, but imagine a world dominated by the philosophical paradigm of, say, [[TheMagocracy The Order of Hermes]], or the [[GaiasVengeance Verbena]]...\\
\\
To put a point on it: Depending on who you ask, the Technocracy is a genocidal [[BigBrotherIsWatching Thought Police]] bent on creating a stagnant world they have absolute control over, a bunch of [[WellIntentionedExtremist Well-Intentioned Extremists]] for whom UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans, or [[DesignatedVillain Designated Villains]] who are absolutely justified in their belief that supernatural influence over the Human Race is a quantifiable bad thing. By the same token, the Council of Nine either represents the last best hope for creativity, nobility and the realization of personal potential, or are a bunch of selfish children who refuse to acknowledge the true implication of their abilities against the Greater Good. It's all heavily dependent on where on the SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism the World of Darkness lies. Unfortunately for the Traditions, this is the World of Darkness.
** The central idea of ''TabletopGame/DemonTheFallen'' is the alternate interpretation that Lucifer rebelled [[SatanIsGood in order to save humanity]] from being condemned to ignorance by an uncaring God. But even that interpretation is subject to a decent amount of doubt. Was it for love? Or was Lucifer simply ambitious? Or did he do it because God ''told'' him to?\\
\\
And there's the ever continuing problem of getting the players to not just be AlwaysChaoticEvil since they are called demons. Some go for BloodKnight types, some go for manipulative Al-Pachino-From-Devils-Advocate types, and almost all of them miss the point of the game. The expanded power sets (Lore of Violation anyone?) doesn't really help with this.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' isn't immune either.
** TheEmpire: The most advanced, powerful and well-intentioned human society in the world, and the best hope for humanity's survival? Or, well, TheEmpire? Either one can apply DependingOnTheWriter.
** The Lizardmen: Ruthless, alien monsters willing to commit genocide (even on fellow creations of the Old Ones; for instance, Lizardmen caused the earthquakes that ruined the Dwarves' empire, and Lord Mazdamundi wants no Elves outside Ulthuan, even if it requires their extinction) to advance an ancient plan that already went wrong well beyond correction? Or the last honest and purposeful race in the world trying to make things right, and best hope against the forces of Chaos? Or a race of lost children, trying to enact a plan complex beyond understanding while attempting to contact parents that have long ago passed away?
** Bretonnia: Ancient, chivalric and noble nation that is a shining ray of decency in the old world? Or a corrupt, barbaric feudal nation that pretends at being civilized whilst brutally suppressing the lower classes and will eventually meet its downfall either by peasant revolution or the ramifications that the state religion is founded upon an elaborate elven lie is true?
*** A nation of unwitting Slaanesh worshippers, who are only initiated into the secret if they become Grail Knights?
*** Games Workshop: [[JerkAss Total ass-holes]] for changing Bretonnia from 100% the former to a grey area or to be commended for a nice level of [[CharacterDevelopment racial development]] on an otherwise boring, overly romantic idea of the Middle Ages?
** Nagash: Evil Necromancer who destroyed the most noble and sophisticated human nation, or tragic figure who set himself up as a benevolent dictator and was betrayed by those around him, causing him to go insane?
*** Isn't it canon that he was both, more or less?
**** Actually, if you read his book, Nagash the Sorcerer, its made pretty clear he enjoyed the pain of others and wanted power for powers sake. He entombed his own brother alive so he could take his throne and feed his brother's wife a drink made (unknown to her) from her murdered son's blood. He was a malicious, petty, monster. The closest thing to benevolence in his reign was...he reclaimed his city's glory by sacking another city and killing every living thing he could find, whether they were soldiers or civilians.
** Tomb Kings: Total dicks who want to take over the world and "kill" each other for power or lost souls doom to never again find peace, and trying to bring their once great empire to life?
** The von Carstein Vampire Counts: Megalomaniacal [[EvilOverlord tyrants]] who simply want to rule the entire world, starting with the Empire, or the only faction that cares enough about the peasantry not to send them in to do their dirty work, or possibly [really/deluded into believing that they are] the best hope to stop Chaos from conquering all?
*** Vlad leans more towards the latter, his successors, more the former.
** There's also the connection to 40k as well as the origins of Sigmar: Is the Warhammer World simply another "Feudal World" in the 40k universe, two completely unique settings that only have the chaos gods in common due to corporate laziness, or alternate dimension to the 40k universe that the Chaos Gods occasionally take interest in?[[note]]Originally the fluff indicated that the Warhammer World did exist in the 40k universe, but as time went on this was dropped and outright retconned in certain material.[[/note]] There is also the possibility that Sigmar is one of the two lost primarchs who were never named if it is indeed set in the 40k Universe.
Changed line(s) 76,116 (click to see context) from:
*** Alternatively, the Emperor of Mankind is us. He's humanity, with all its [[HumansAreGood pros]] [[HumansAreFlawed and]] [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters]] He's the paragon of humanity trying to save us from [[CrapsackWorld the cruel universe it lives in]] and the tyrant trying to elevate us to [[AGodAmI absolute power.]] Most of all, he is our strive to continue. [[CrapsackWorld When faced with the worst possible worlds]], we will resort to the grim necessity needed to not be destroyed. '''The Emperor Protects.'''
* ''MagicTheGathering'':
** Yawgmoth: a WellIntentionedExtremist BadassNormal OmnidisciplinaryScientist [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans who made use of some innovative methods to grant his fellows a better life]] only to be [[LoveMakesYouEvil betrayed by the woman he loved]] [[SealedEvilInACan and exiled into a void plane for nine millennia]], thus making his RoaringRampageOfRevenge [[WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds more than justified]]? Or perhaps an AffablyEvil DeadlyDoctor with [[MunchausenSyndrome Munchausen by proxy]], [[MachineWorship who lost his mind]] [[MechanicalLifeforms worshipping machines]] and became an EvilutionaryBiologist ([[{{Anvilicious}} remember]], ScienceIsBad)?
*** Alternately, a leader who is banished for his success, and builds a world out of his tomb. This world is one without war or dissension, but slowly collapsing. His attempts to bring this everlasting peace back to his homeworld is foiled by Urza, an OmnicidalManiac with a legacy of war and misery ''thousands'' of years long.
** Urabrask the Hidden and Red Phyrexians in general: Indifferent to the Mirrans in their domain, secretly rebelling against their other Phyrexian brethren out of genuine compassion due to their alignment, or having a secret agenda just as (if not more) heinous as their other-spectrum brothers?
** Elesh Norn preaches about the Machine Orthodoxy, but does she truly believe in it or is simply using it as a false religion to further her own goals?
* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' isn't immune either.
** TheEmpire: The most advanced, powerful and well-intentioned human society in the world, and the best hope for humanity's survival? Or, well, TheEmpire? Either one can apply DependingOnTheWriter.
** The Lizardmen: Ruthless, alien monsters willing to commit genocide (even on fellow creations of the Old Ones; for instance, Lizardmen caused the earthquakes that ruined the Dwarves' empire, and Lord Mazdamundi wants no Elves outside Ulthuan, even if it requires their extinction) to advance an ancient plan that already went wrong well beyond correction? Or the last honest and purposeful race in the world trying to make things right, and best hope against the forces of Chaos? Or a race of lost children, trying to enact a plan complex beyond understanding while attempting to contact parents that have long ago passed away?
** Bretonnia: Ancient, chivalric and noble nation that is a shining ray of decency in the old world? Or a corrupt, barbaric feudal nation that pretends at being civilized whilst brutally suppressing the lower classes and will eventually meet its downfall either by peasant revolution or the ramifications that the state religion is founded upon an elaborate elven lie is true?
*** A nation of unwitting Slaanesh worshippers, who are only initiated into the secret if they become Grail Knights?
*** Games Workshop: [[JerkAss Total ass-holes]] for changing Bretonnia from 100% the former to a grey area or to be commended for a nice level of [[CharacterDevelopment racial development]] on an otherwise boring, overly romantic idea of the Middle Ages?
** Nagash: Evil Necromancer who destroyed the most noble and sophisticated human nation, or tragic figure who set himself up as a benevolent dictator and was betrayed by those around him, causing him to go insane?
*** Isn't it canon that he was both, more or less?
**** Actually, if you read his book, Nagash the Sorcerer, its made pretty clear he enjoyed the pain of others and wanted power for powers sake. He entombed his own brother alive so he could take his throne and feed his brother's wife a drink made (unknown to her) from her murdered son's blood. He was a malicious, petty, monster. The closest thing to benevolence in his reign was...he reclaimed his city's glory by sacking another city and killing every living thing he could find, whether they were soldiers or civilians.
** Tomb Kings: Total dicks who want to take over the world and "kill" each other for power or lost souls doom to never again find peace, and trying to bring their once great empire to life?
** The von Carstein Vampire Counts: Megalomaniacal [[EvilOverlord tyrants]] who simply want to rule the entire world, starting with the Empire, or the only faction that cares enough about the peasantry not to send them in to do their dirty work, or possibly [really/deluded into believing that they are] the best hope to stop Chaos from conquering all?
*** Vlad leans more towards the latter, his successors, more the former.
** There's also the connection to 40k as well as the origins of Sigmar: Is the Warhammer World simply another "Feudal World" in the 40k universe, two completely unique settings that only have the chaos gods in common due to corporate laziness, or alternate dimension to the 40k universe that the Chaos Gods occasionally take interest in?[[note]]Originally the fluff indicated that the Warhammer World did exist in the 40k universe, but as time went on this was dropped and outright retconned in certain material.[[/note]] There is also the possibility that Sigmar is one of the two lost primarchs who were never named if it is indeed set in the 40k Universe.
* ''AmberDiceless'' takes the fact that characters were portrayed differently between [[UnreliableNarrator Corwin and Merlin]] in ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfAmber'' books and runs with it, presenting several different interpretations of each of the characters (prominent or not) and encouraging Game Masters to write their own interpretations if those don't work for them. Yes, every character from ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfAmber'' canon has ''multiple'' sets of stats, each at a different point level, and the GM is expected to mix-and-match to taste.
* One of these is raised by the main rulebook of ''TabletopGame/{{Paranoia}} XP''. Friend Computer is usually portrayed as unhinged, a little bit stupid, gullible, and ruthless. One brief section of XP suggests an alternative: Friend Computer is 100% sane and sees through all the evasions and deceptions, but has concluded that deceit, fear, ignorance, horrific inefficiency, and all the other perks of ''Paranoia'' are the very quintessence of human nature and has decided to do everything necessary to nurture these traits, using ObfuscatingStupidity.
** The rulebook also suggests that the GM should always have another layer. Okay, the [=PCs=] find out that Friend Computer is being controlled by evil mutants from Beta Complex, who are actually being controlled by a group of High Programmers back in Alpha Complex, who were set up by Friend Computer as part of a paranoid sting operation, but this plan was added into Friend Computer's memory banks by aliens from Pluto, who are actually just psychic projections of TheIlluminati, etc. In short, in Alpha Complex, everything has an alternative interpretation.
* In the latest edition of ''DungeonsAndDragons'', Asmodeus usurped his position from [[NoNameGiven He Who Was]], his patron deity. A lot of text tries to portray He Who Was as a benevolent deity, but angels are supposed to be extensions of their patron deity's will. How did Asmodeus get so many angels on his side? Perhaps He Who Was wasn't as squeaky clean as he's made out to be. In fact, HHW might have been the god of ambition, and the reason he had so many usurpers following Asmodeus was because of their ambitious nature. (HHW is [[{{YHWH}} one letter away]] from being a VERY SignificantAnagram...)
** 3.5 Edition's ''Races of the Wild'' reveals something interesting about halflings and their religion: Yondalla wasn't always the squeaky clean paragon of Lawful Good she is today. She created the halflings by stealing the best bits from all the other races, and the gods punished her by forcing her to split into two goddesses: LawfulGood Yondalla and ChaoticNeutral Dallah Thaun. They are still the same person, sharing thoughts and memories, which is why there are so many CN halflings who can claim, even under magical compulsion, to worship a LG goddess. This is a canon example of ACI, as no other books even so much as mention it; other races are forbidden to even know about Dallah Thaun. This suggests that the halflings, generally seen as no more than harmlessly mischievous, are knowingly perpetuating a culture-wide scam that allows them to steal, cheat and take vengeance all they want, and all in the name of a lawful good deity.
*** What's really strange is that the other gods are apparently in on it. They know of Dallah's existence, but even high level non-halfling clerics who can talk to their gods directly are seemingly kept in the dark. Good gods, evil gods, lawful ones, chaotic ones, none seem to have any problem with keeping this a secret from everyone. So either there is a truly massive cover-up going on (with even gods who despise each other playing along) or ''there is no Dallah Thaun'', the book is a fabrication, and the halflings made her up as some sort of excuse for doing as they please.
*** Perhaps she was invented by Yondalla herself, as a sort of alter ego. That means that Yondalla is not Lawful Good, and the entire halfling religion is founded on a lie.
** In regards to Asmodeus and He Who Was, there's some new information out about it. He Who Was was apparently the leader of the gods in their war with the primordials, but was such a benevolent god that he had little taste for war and battle and was a poor general. Asmodeus was the most powerful and skilled general the gods had, and his angels were their most powerful army. His tactics, however, were brutal and horrifying to He Who Was, who eventually cast Asmodeus down for his actions. Perhaps the peace loving He Who Was created Asmodeus and his army as an aspect of himself, an expression of his ruthless, violent tendencies so that he didn't have to live with them himself. Which could have been why he simply cast Asmodeus down, instead of destroying him outright. He couldn't bring himself to destroy part of himself.
*** In a late 2nd Edition book (when the cosmos was significantly different), ''Guide to Hell'', it was suggested "Asmodeus" was the false face put forward by one of the primal beings of Law, an aspect of the archetypal World Serpent, the fallen ancient god [[{{Zoroastrianism}} Ahriman]]. This introduced the interpretation that he was no mere Satan figure (which he had previously embodied) and made him something more ancient and terrible, [[SealedEvilInACan imprisoned in the Hells by the very laws he helped write into the cosmos]] and plotting to shatter those laws so he might reforge them for his own ends. 3rd Edition's ''Manual of the Planes'' continued to hint at his secret nature, but never went very far with it. (In this case, Asmodeus's counterpart as the other half of the World Serpent was Jazirian, the goddess of the couatls. She's mentioned so rarely that some bits of fanon have filled in the gaps with her own Alternative Interpretation, making her the ''logos'' to Asmodeus's great Lie, and that she may even have died between 2nd and 3rd edition - another bit of fanon from that is that her discorporate essence is behind the Words Made Flesh of the illumians in ''Races of Destiny''.)
** [[http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19558798/Pelor_the_Burning_Hate Pelor The Burning Hate]] is a reinterpretation of Pelor, Neutral Good god of the Sun, Light, Strength, and Healing. It manages to remain consistent with everything attributed to Pelor, while explaining his every action and trait as actually evil in disguise.
* The Dark Powers in the DungeonsAndDragons {{Ravenloft}} campaign setting are usually interpreted as being evil, since they are the [[GeniusLoci presumed masters behind the eponymous Demiplane of Dread, a place of evil and horror]], but it is also possible that they are good, and use Ravenloft as a prison for the worst villains and monsters in the multiverse. If the cage sometimes seems a gilded one, remember that each of the major villains trapped there are also given curses [[CoolAndUnusualPunishment appropriate to their crimes]].
** The CoolAndUnusualPunishment suffered by every dark lord is designed to break them and hit them where it really hurts. For example, Strahd von Zarovich, who murdered his brother to steal his fiancée (and countless other crimes) is cursed with vampirism and forced to relive the loss of his beloved Tatiana every generation. Unless things have changed in the latest edition, the setting is called The Land of Mists or something similar by its residents; Ravenloft is from ''Ravana's Loft'', and is Strahd's absolutely trope-tastic HauntedCastle, named for Strahd's mother.
** The problem is, almost none of the villains trapped in Ravenloft are actually major (only Vecna/Kaz and Lord Soth, all long gone from Ravenloft, were bigshots before going there). Dark Powers pick people whom they can make to suffer beautifully, not those really dangerous or really heinous. Snatching a guy who murdered his brother to steal his fiancée out of love, when ''DungeonsAndDragons'' is chock-full of people whose job description amounts to killing and torturing innocents ForTheEvulz? On the other hand, core domains of Ravenloft often are relatively safe places to live, compared to what is normal to [=DnD-land=]. Commonly encountering monsters are weak enough to remain in hiding, instead of rampaging and assaulting openly, and there is a comparative shortage of insanely powerful psychopaths on the loose. To be fair, it's not like TSR and later WotC could denude their other campaign settings of all their good villains. Also, the Dark Powers may just not have the power to take all the really major villains from all over the multiverse; it's not like the Dark Powers have ever been portrayed as omnipotent, even within Ravenloft. Maybe they're just doing the best they can. Also, the fact that Ravenloft is in some ways ''safer'' for the average person than the typical campaign setting, what with the lack of lots of randomly rampaging monsters, may be further support for the idea that the Dark Powers are good.
** Still other gamemasters take the radical stance that the Dark Powers ''don't exist'': Ravenloft works the way it does simply because that's its fundamental nature as a plane, just like the Plane of Fire is inherently hot. The darklords' curses are personalized because they're unconsciously inflicting such torments on themselves, out of repressed guilt.
* BattleTech as a whole (At least up until the Jihad) seems to have been an exercise in creating ACIs, all depending on what faction you decide to side with. Except for a few unambiguous [[KickTheDog puppy-punters]] like [[TheCaligula Romano Liao]] or [[RoyalBrat Katherine ]][[EvilPrince Steiner-Davion]], most characters can have several Interpretations.
** Hanse Davion: MagnificentBastard who [[IncrediblyLamePun outfoxed]] his hidebound or deranged opponents, or MarySue who only got by on [[CreatorsPet writer's fiat]]? His son, Victor: [[TheNapoleon Midget who can't possibly live up to his father's legacy]] or skilled warrior hobbled by politics and the above-mentioned evil sister?
** The Clans: [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Proud Warrior Race Guys]] who deserve to lead Humanity, or LawfulStupid [[MarySue Mary Sues]] with [[TheMunchkin way too much power]]?
*** InUniverse, the application of this trope towards Alexander Kerensky caused a split within the Clans between the Crusaders and the Wardens. Did he want his descendants to conquer the Inner Sphere and re-establish the Star League by force, or did he want them to watch over the Inner Sphere until they were ready to restore the Star League themselves? In truth, he probably didn't want the [=SLDF=] to return to the Inner Sphere at all.
** Sun-Tzu Liao: MagnificentBastard who is trying to restore a fallen nation or ManipulativeBastard who only got by on the same kind of fiat that decriers attributed to Hanse Davion?
** [=ComStar=]: They are either religious cult who seek to preserve and recover lost Star League tech, or just conniving schemers who want to rule over the Inner Sphere. Their previous plot made them no more different than the Word of Blake, except they are far less extreme and destructive.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Nobilis}}'': is Lord Entropy a decent person regretfully playing the monster for the net benefit of the world, a lonely god cursed with an inability to be loved using his power to strike back at a concept that has rejected him, a perpetual test of strength forcing Nobles to be as ruthless and cunning as possible, an Excrucian agent, or simply a colossal tool on a power trip?
* ''Android'' does this with the player characters. Are they honest detectives searching for a murderer, or corrupt investigators striving to frame the person they happen not to like? The fiction says one thing while the game mechanic says another; the incoherence is so strong that a fan mod for the rulebook was released to alter it.
* ''MagicTheGathering'':
** Yawgmoth: a WellIntentionedExtremist BadassNormal OmnidisciplinaryScientist [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans who made use of some innovative methods to grant his fellows a better life]] only to be [[LoveMakesYouEvil betrayed by the woman he loved]] [[SealedEvilInACan and exiled into a void plane for nine millennia]], thus making his RoaringRampageOfRevenge [[WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds more than justified]]? Or perhaps an AffablyEvil DeadlyDoctor with [[MunchausenSyndrome Munchausen by proxy]], [[MachineWorship who lost his mind]] [[MechanicalLifeforms worshipping machines]] and became an EvilutionaryBiologist ([[{{Anvilicious}} remember]], ScienceIsBad)?
*** Alternately, a leader who is banished for his success, and builds a world out of his tomb. This world is one without war or dissension, but slowly collapsing. His attempts to bring this everlasting peace back to his homeworld is foiled by Urza, an OmnicidalManiac with a legacy of war and misery ''thousands'' of years long.
** Urabrask the Hidden and Red Phyrexians in general: Indifferent to the Mirrans in their domain, secretly rebelling against their other Phyrexian brethren out of genuine compassion due to their alignment, or having a secret agenda just as (if not more) heinous as their other-spectrum brothers?
** Elesh Norn preaches about the Machine Orthodoxy, but does she truly believe in it or is simply using it as a false religion to further her own goals?
* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' isn't immune either.
** TheEmpire: The most advanced, powerful and well-intentioned human society in the world, and the best hope for humanity's survival? Or, well, TheEmpire? Either one can apply DependingOnTheWriter.
** The Lizardmen: Ruthless, alien monsters willing to commit genocide (even on fellow creations of the Old Ones; for instance, Lizardmen caused the earthquakes that ruined the Dwarves' empire, and Lord Mazdamundi wants no Elves outside Ulthuan, even if it requires their extinction) to advance an ancient plan that already went wrong well beyond correction? Or the last honest and purposeful race in the world trying to make things right, and best hope against the forces of Chaos? Or a race of lost children, trying to enact a plan complex beyond understanding while attempting to contact parents that have long ago passed away?
** Bretonnia: Ancient, chivalric and noble nation that is a shining ray of decency in the old world? Or a corrupt, barbaric feudal nation that pretends at being civilized whilst brutally suppressing the lower classes and will eventually meet its downfall either by peasant revolution or the ramifications that the state religion is founded upon an elaborate elven lie is true?
*** A nation of unwitting Slaanesh worshippers, who are only initiated into the secret if they become Grail Knights?
*** Games Workshop: [[JerkAss Total ass-holes]] for changing Bretonnia from 100% the former to a grey area or to be commended for a nice level of [[CharacterDevelopment racial development]] on an otherwise boring, overly romantic idea of the Middle Ages?
** Nagash: Evil Necromancer who destroyed the most noble and sophisticated human nation, or tragic figure who set himself up as a benevolent dictator and was betrayed by those around him, causing him to go insane?
*** Isn't it canon that he was both, more or less?
**** Actually, if you read his book, Nagash the Sorcerer, its made pretty clear he enjoyed the pain of others and wanted power for powers sake. He entombed his own brother alive so he could take his throne and feed his brother's wife a drink made (unknown to her) from her murdered son's blood. He was a malicious, petty, monster. The closest thing to benevolence in his reign was...he reclaimed his city's glory by sacking another city and killing every living thing he could find, whether they were soldiers or civilians.
** Tomb Kings: Total dicks who want to take over the world and "kill" each other for power or lost souls doom to never again find peace, and trying to bring their once great empire to life?
** The von Carstein Vampire Counts: Megalomaniacal [[EvilOverlord tyrants]] who simply want to rule the entire world, starting with the Empire, or the only faction that cares enough about the peasantry not to send them in to do their dirty work, or possibly [really/deluded into believing that they are] the best hope to stop Chaos from conquering all?
*** Vlad leans more towards the latter, his successors, more the former.
** There's also the connection to 40k as well as the origins of Sigmar: Is the Warhammer World simply another "Feudal World" in the 40k universe, two completely unique settings that only have the chaos gods in common due to corporate laziness, or alternate dimension to the 40k universe that the Chaos Gods occasionally take interest in?[[note]]Originally the fluff indicated that the Warhammer World did exist in the 40k universe, but as time went on this was dropped and outright retconned in certain material.[[/note]] There is also the possibility that Sigmar is one of the two lost primarchs who were never named if it is indeed set in the 40k Universe.
* ''AmberDiceless'' takes the fact that characters were portrayed differently between [[UnreliableNarrator Corwin and Merlin]] in ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfAmber'' books and runs with it, presenting several different interpretations of each of the characters (prominent or not) and encouraging Game Masters to write their own interpretations if those don't work for them. Yes, every character from ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfAmber'' canon has ''multiple'' sets of stats, each at a different point level, and the GM is expected to mix-and-match to taste.
* One of these is raised by the main rulebook of ''TabletopGame/{{Paranoia}} XP''. Friend Computer is usually portrayed as unhinged, a little bit stupid, gullible, and ruthless. One brief section of XP suggests an alternative: Friend Computer is 100% sane and sees through all the evasions and deceptions, but has concluded that deceit, fear, ignorance, horrific inefficiency, and all the other perks of ''Paranoia'' are the very quintessence of human nature and has decided to do everything necessary to nurture these traits, using ObfuscatingStupidity.
** The rulebook also suggests that the GM should always have another layer. Okay, the [=PCs=] find out that Friend Computer is being controlled by evil mutants from Beta Complex, who are actually being controlled by a group of High Programmers back in Alpha Complex, who were set up by Friend Computer as part of a paranoid sting operation, but this plan was added into Friend Computer's memory banks by aliens from Pluto, who are actually just psychic projections of TheIlluminati, etc. In short, in Alpha Complex, everything has an alternative interpretation.
* In the latest edition of ''DungeonsAndDragons'', Asmodeus usurped his position from [[NoNameGiven He Who Was]], his patron deity. A lot of text tries to portray He Who Was as a benevolent deity, but angels are supposed to be extensions of their patron deity's will. How did Asmodeus get so many angels on his side? Perhaps He Who Was wasn't as squeaky clean as he's made out to be. In fact, HHW might have been the god of ambition, and the reason he had so many usurpers following Asmodeus was because of their ambitious nature. (HHW is [[{{YHWH}} one letter away]] from being a VERY SignificantAnagram...)
** 3.5 Edition's ''Races of the Wild'' reveals something interesting about halflings and their religion: Yondalla wasn't always the squeaky clean paragon of Lawful Good she is today. She created the halflings by stealing the best bits from all the other races, and the gods punished her by forcing her to split into two goddesses: LawfulGood Yondalla and ChaoticNeutral Dallah Thaun. They are still the same person, sharing thoughts and memories, which is why there are so many CN halflings who can claim, even under magical compulsion, to worship a LG goddess. This is a canon example of ACI, as no other books even so much as mention it; other races are forbidden to even know about Dallah Thaun. This suggests that the halflings, generally seen as no more than harmlessly mischievous, are knowingly perpetuating a culture-wide scam that allows them to steal, cheat and take vengeance all they want, and all in the name of a lawful good deity.
*** What's really strange is that the other gods are apparently in on it. They know of Dallah's existence, but even high level non-halfling clerics who can talk to their gods directly are seemingly kept in the dark. Good gods, evil gods, lawful ones, chaotic ones, none seem to have any problem with keeping this a secret from everyone. So either there is a truly massive cover-up going on (with even gods who despise each other playing along) or ''there is no Dallah Thaun'', the book is a fabrication, and the halflings made her up as some sort of excuse for doing as they please.
*** Perhaps she was invented by Yondalla herself, as a sort of alter ego. That means that Yondalla is not Lawful Good, and the entire halfling religion is founded on a lie.
** In regards to Asmodeus and He Who Was, there's some new information out about it. He Who Was was apparently the leader of the gods in their war with the primordials, but was such a benevolent god that he had little taste for war and battle and was a poor general. Asmodeus was the most powerful and skilled general the gods had, and his angels were their most powerful army. His tactics, however, were brutal and horrifying to He Who Was, who eventually cast Asmodeus down for his actions. Perhaps the peace loving He Who Was created Asmodeus and his army as an aspect of himself, an expression of his ruthless, violent tendencies so that he didn't have to live with them himself. Which could have been why he simply cast Asmodeus down, instead of destroying him outright. He couldn't bring himself to destroy part of himself.
*** In a late 2nd Edition book (when the cosmos was significantly different), ''Guide to Hell'', it was suggested "Asmodeus" was the false face put forward by one of the primal beings of Law, an aspect of the archetypal World Serpent, the fallen ancient god [[{{Zoroastrianism}} Ahriman]]. This introduced the interpretation that he was no mere Satan figure (which he had previously embodied) and made him something more ancient and terrible, [[SealedEvilInACan imprisoned in the Hells by the very laws he helped write into the cosmos]] and plotting to shatter those laws so he might reforge them for his own ends. 3rd Edition's ''Manual of the Planes'' continued to hint at his secret nature, but never went very far with it. (In this case, Asmodeus's counterpart as the other half of the World Serpent was Jazirian, the goddess of the couatls. She's mentioned so rarely that some bits of fanon have filled in the gaps with her own Alternative Interpretation, making her the ''logos'' to Asmodeus's great Lie, and that she may even have died between 2nd and 3rd edition - another bit of fanon from that is that her discorporate essence is behind the Words Made Flesh of the illumians in ''Races of Destiny''.)
** [[http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19558798/Pelor_the_Burning_Hate Pelor The Burning Hate]] is a reinterpretation of Pelor, Neutral Good god of the Sun, Light, Strength, and Healing. It manages to remain consistent with everything attributed to Pelor, while explaining his every action and trait as actually evil in disguise.
* The Dark Powers in the DungeonsAndDragons {{Ravenloft}} campaign setting are usually interpreted as being evil, since they are the [[GeniusLoci presumed masters behind the eponymous Demiplane of Dread, a place of evil and horror]], but it is also possible that they are good, and use Ravenloft as a prison for the worst villains and monsters in the multiverse. If the cage sometimes seems a gilded one, remember that each of the major villains trapped there are also given curses [[CoolAndUnusualPunishment appropriate to their crimes]].
** The CoolAndUnusualPunishment suffered by every dark lord is designed to break them and hit them where it really hurts. For example, Strahd von Zarovich, who murdered his brother to steal his fiancée (and countless other crimes) is cursed with vampirism and forced to relive the loss of his beloved Tatiana every generation. Unless things have changed in the latest edition, the setting is called The Land of Mists or something similar by its residents; Ravenloft is from ''Ravana's Loft'', and is Strahd's absolutely trope-tastic HauntedCastle, named for Strahd's mother.
** The problem is, almost none of the villains trapped in Ravenloft are actually major (only Vecna/Kaz and Lord Soth, all long gone from Ravenloft, were bigshots before going there). Dark Powers pick people whom they can make to suffer beautifully, not those really dangerous or really heinous. Snatching a guy who murdered his brother to steal his fiancée out of love, when ''DungeonsAndDragons'' is chock-full of people whose job description amounts to killing and torturing innocents ForTheEvulz? On the other hand, core domains of Ravenloft often are relatively safe places to live, compared to what is normal to [=DnD-land=]. Commonly encountering monsters are weak enough to remain in hiding, instead of rampaging and assaulting openly, and there is a comparative shortage of insanely powerful psychopaths on the loose. To be fair, it's not like TSR and later WotC could denude their other campaign settings of all their good villains. Also, the Dark Powers may just not have the power to take all the really major villains from all over the multiverse; it's not like the Dark Powers have ever been portrayed as omnipotent, even within Ravenloft. Maybe they're just doing the best they can. Also, the fact that Ravenloft is in some ways ''safer'' for the average person than the typical campaign setting, what with the lack of lots of randomly rampaging monsters, may be further support for the idea that the Dark Powers are good.
** Still other gamemasters take the radical stance that the Dark Powers ''don't exist'': Ravenloft works the way it does simply because that's its fundamental nature as a plane, just like the Plane of Fire is inherently hot. The darklords' curses are personalized because they're unconsciously inflicting such torments on themselves, out of repressed guilt.
* BattleTech as a whole (At least up until the Jihad) seems to have been an exercise in creating ACIs, all depending on what faction you decide to side with. Except for a few unambiguous [[KickTheDog puppy-punters]] like [[TheCaligula Romano Liao]] or [[RoyalBrat Katherine ]][[EvilPrince Steiner-Davion]], most characters can have several Interpretations.
** Hanse Davion: MagnificentBastard who [[IncrediblyLamePun outfoxed]] his hidebound or deranged opponents, or MarySue who only got by on [[CreatorsPet writer's fiat]]? His son, Victor: [[TheNapoleon Midget who can't possibly live up to his father's legacy]] or skilled warrior hobbled by politics and the above-mentioned evil sister?
** The Clans: [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Proud Warrior Race Guys]] who deserve to lead Humanity, or LawfulStupid [[MarySue Mary Sues]] with [[TheMunchkin way too much power]]?
*** InUniverse, the application of this trope towards Alexander Kerensky caused a split within the Clans between the Crusaders and the Wardens. Did he want his descendants to conquer the Inner Sphere and re-establish the Star League by force, or did he want them to watch over the Inner Sphere until they were ready to restore the Star League themselves? In truth, he probably didn't want the [=SLDF=] to return to the Inner Sphere at all.
** Sun-Tzu Liao: MagnificentBastard who is trying to restore a fallen nation or ManipulativeBastard who only got by on the same kind of fiat that decriers attributed to Hanse Davion?
** [=ComStar=]: They are either religious cult who seek to preserve and recover lost Star League tech, or just conniving schemers who want to rule over the Inner Sphere. Their previous plot made them no more different than the Word of Blake, except they are far less extreme and destructive.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Nobilis}}'': is Lord Entropy a decent person regretfully playing the monster for the net benefit of the world, a lonely god cursed with an inability to be loved using his power to strike back at a concept that has rejected him, a perpetual test of strength forcing Nobles to be as ruthless and cunning as possible, an Excrucian agent, or simply a colossal tool on a power trip?
* ''Android'' does this with the player characters. Are they honest detectives searching for a murderer, or corrupt investigators striving to frame the person they happen not to like? The fiction says one thing while the game mechanic says another; the incoherence is so strong that a fan mod for the rulebook was released to alter it.
to:
*** Alternatively, the Emperor of Mankind is us. He's humanity, with all its [[HumansAreGood pros]] [[HumansAreFlawed and]] [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters]] He's the paragon of humanity trying to save us from [[CrapsackWorld the cruel universe it lives in]] and the tyrant trying to elevate us to [[AGodAmI absolute power.]] Most of all, he is our strive to continue. [[CrapsackWorld When faced with the worst possible worlds]], we will resort to the grim necessity needed to not be destroyed. '''The Emperor Protects.'''
* ''MagicTheGathering'':
** Yawgmoth: a WellIntentionedExtremist BadassNormal OmnidisciplinaryScientist [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans who made use of some innovative methods to grant his fellows a better life]] only to be [[LoveMakesYouEvil betrayed by the woman he loved]] [[SealedEvilInACan and exiled into a void plane for nine millennia]], thus making his RoaringRampageOfRevenge [[WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds more than justified]]? Or perhaps an AffablyEvil DeadlyDoctor with [[MunchausenSyndrome Munchausen by proxy]], [[MachineWorship who lost his mind]] [[MechanicalLifeforms worshipping machines]] and became an EvilutionaryBiologist ([[{{Anvilicious}} remember]], ScienceIsBad)?
*** Alternately, a leader who is banished for his success, and builds a world out of his tomb. This world is one without war or dissension, but slowly collapsing. His attempts to bring this everlasting peace back to his homeworld is foiled by Urza, an OmnicidalManiac with a legacy of war and misery ''thousands'' of years long.
** Urabrask the Hidden and Red Phyrexians in general: Indifferent to the Mirrans in their domain, secretly rebelling against their other Phyrexian brethren out of genuine compassion due to their alignment, or having a secret agenda just as (if not more) heinous as their other-spectrum brothers?
** Elesh Norn preaches about the Machine Orthodoxy, but does she truly believe in it or is simply using it as a false religion to further her own goals?
* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' isn't immune either.
** TheEmpire: The most advanced, powerful and well-intentioned human society in the world, and the best hope for humanity's survival? Or, well, TheEmpire? Either one can apply DependingOnTheWriter.
** The Lizardmen: Ruthless, alien monsters willing to commit genocide (even on fellow creations of the Old Ones; for instance, Lizardmen caused the earthquakes that ruined the Dwarves' empire, and Lord Mazdamundi wants no Elves outside Ulthuan, even if it requires their extinction) to advance an ancient plan that already went wrong well beyond correction? Or the last honest and purposeful race in the world trying to make things right, and best hope against the forces of Chaos? Or a race of lost children, trying to enact a plan complex beyond understanding while attempting to contact parents that have long ago passed away?
** Bretonnia: Ancient, chivalric and noble nation that is a shining ray of decency in the old world? Or a corrupt, barbaric feudal nation that pretends at being civilized whilst brutally suppressing the lower classes and will eventually meet its downfall either by peasant revolution or the ramifications that the state religion is founded upon an elaborate elven lie is true?
*** A nation of unwitting Slaanesh worshippers, who are only initiated into the secret if they become Grail Knights?
*** Games Workshop: [[JerkAss Total ass-holes]] for changing Bretonnia from 100% the former to a grey area or to be commended for a nice level of [[CharacterDevelopment racial development]] on an otherwise boring, overly romantic idea of the Middle Ages?
** Nagash: Evil Necromancer who destroyed the most noble and sophisticated human nation, or tragic figure who set himself up as a benevolent dictator and was betrayed by those around him, causing him to go insane?
*** Isn't it canon that he was both, more or less?
**** Actually, if you read his book, Nagash the Sorcerer, its made pretty clear he enjoyed the pain of others and wanted power for powers sake. He entombed his own brother alive so he could take his throne and feed his brother's wife a drink made (unknown to her) from her murdered son's blood. He was a malicious, petty, monster. The closest thing to benevolence in his reign was...he reclaimed his city's glory by sacking another city and killing every living thing he could find, whether they were soldiers or civilians.
** Tomb Kings: Total dicks who want to take over the world and "kill" each other for power or lost souls doom to never again find peace, and trying to bring their once great empire to life?
** The von Carstein Vampire Counts: Megalomaniacal [[EvilOverlord tyrants]] who simply want to rule the entire world, starting with the Empire, or the only faction that cares enough about the peasantry not to send them in to do their dirty work, or possibly [really/deluded into believing that they are] the best hope to stop Chaos from conquering all?
*** Vlad leans more towards the latter, his successors, more the former.
** There's also the connection to 40k as well as the origins of Sigmar: Is the Warhammer World simply another "Feudal World" in the 40k universe, two completely unique settings that only have the chaos gods in common due to corporate laziness, or alternate dimension to the 40k universe that the Chaos Gods occasionally take interest in?[[note]]Originally the fluff indicated that the Warhammer World did exist in the 40k universe, but as time went on this was dropped and outright retconned in certain material.[[/note]] There is also the possibility that Sigmar is one of the two lost primarchs who were never named if it is indeed set in the 40k Universe.
* ''AmberDiceless'' takes the fact that characters were portrayed differently between [[UnreliableNarrator Corwin and Merlin]] in ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfAmber'' books and runs with it, presenting several different interpretations of each of the characters (prominent or not) and encouraging Game Masters to write their own interpretations if those don't work for them. Yes, every character from ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfAmber'' canon has ''multiple'' sets of stats, each at a different point level, and the GM is expected to mix-and-match to taste.
* One of these is raised by the main rulebook of ''TabletopGame/{{Paranoia}} XP''. Friend Computer is usually portrayed as unhinged, a little bit stupid, gullible, and ruthless. One brief section of XP suggests an alternative: Friend Computer is 100% sane and sees through all the evasions and deceptions, but has concluded that deceit, fear, ignorance, horrific inefficiency, and all the other perks of ''Paranoia'' are the very quintessence of human nature and has decided to do everything necessary to nurture these traits, using ObfuscatingStupidity.
** The rulebook also suggests that the GM should always have another layer. Okay, the [=PCs=] find out that Friend Computer is being controlled by evil mutants from Beta Complex, who are actually being controlled by a group of High Programmers back in Alpha Complex, who were set up by Friend Computer as part of a paranoid sting operation, but this plan was added into Friend Computer's memory banks by aliens from Pluto, who are actually just psychic projections of TheIlluminati, etc. In short, in Alpha Complex, everything has an alternative interpretation.
* In the latest edition of ''DungeonsAndDragons'', Asmodeus usurped his position from [[NoNameGiven He Who Was]], his patron deity. A lot of text tries to portray He Who Was as a benevolent deity, but angels are supposed to be extensions of their patron deity's will. How did Asmodeus get so many angels on his side? Perhaps He Who Was wasn't as squeaky clean as he's made out to be. In fact, HHW might have been the god of ambition, and the reason he had so many usurpers following Asmodeus was because of their ambitious nature. (HHW is [[{{YHWH}} one letter away]] from being a VERY SignificantAnagram...)
** 3.5 Edition's ''Races of the Wild'' reveals something interesting about halflings and their religion: Yondalla wasn't always the squeaky clean paragon of Lawful Good she is today. She created the halflings by stealing the best bits from all the other races, and the gods punished her by forcing her to split into two goddesses: LawfulGood Yondalla and ChaoticNeutral Dallah Thaun. They are still the same person, sharing thoughts and memories, which is why there are so many CN halflings who can claim, even under magical compulsion, to worship a LG goddess. This is a canon example of ACI, as no other books even so much as mention it; other races are forbidden to even know about Dallah Thaun. This suggests that the halflings, generally seen as no more than harmlessly mischievous, are knowingly perpetuating a culture-wide scam that allows them to steal, cheat and take vengeance all they want, and all in the name of a lawful good deity.
*** What's really strange is that the other gods are apparently in on it. They know of Dallah's existence, but even high level non-halfling clerics who can talk to their gods directly are seemingly kept in the dark. Good gods, evil gods, lawful ones, chaotic ones, none seem to have any problem with keeping this a secret from everyone. So either there is a truly massive cover-up going on (with even gods who despise each other playing along) or ''there is no Dallah Thaun'', the book is a fabrication, and the halflings made her up as some sort of excuse for doing as they please.
*** Perhaps she was invented by Yondalla herself, as a sort of alter ego. That means that Yondalla is not Lawful Good, and the entire halfling religion is founded on a lie.
** In regards to Asmodeus and He Who Was, there's some new information out about it. He Who Was was apparently the leader of the gods in their war with the primordials, but was such a benevolent god that he had little taste for war and battle and was a poor general. Asmodeus was the most powerful and skilled general the gods had, and his angels were their most powerful army. His tactics, however, were brutal and horrifying to He Who Was, who eventually cast Asmodeus down for his actions. Perhaps the peace loving He Who Was created Asmodeus and his army as an aspect of himself, an expression of his ruthless, violent tendencies so that he didn't have to live with them himself. Which could have been why he simply cast Asmodeus down, instead of destroying him outright. He couldn't bring himself to destroy part of himself.
*** In a late 2nd Edition book (when the cosmos was significantly different), ''Guide to Hell'', it was suggested "Asmodeus" was the false face put forward by one of the primal beings of Law, an aspect of the archetypal World Serpent, the fallen ancient god [[{{Zoroastrianism}} Ahriman]]. This introduced the interpretation that he was no mere Satan figure (which he had previously embodied) and made him something more ancient and terrible, [[SealedEvilInACan imprisoned in the Hells by the very laws he helped write into the cosmos]] and plotting to shatter those laws so he might reforge them for his own ends. 3rd Edition's ''Manual of the Planes'' continued to hint at his secret nature, but never went very far with it. (In this case, Asmodeus's counterpart as the other half of the World Serpent was Jazirian, the goddess of the couatls. She's mentioned so rarely that some bits of fanon have filled in the gaps with her own Alternative Interpretation, making her the ''logos'' to Asmodeus's great Lie, and that she may even have died between 2nd and 3rd edition - another bit of fanon from that is that her discorporate essence is behind the Words Made Flesh of the illumians in ''Races of Destiny''.)
** [[http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19558798/Pelor_the_Burning_Hate Pelor The Burning Hate]] is a reinterpretation of Pelor, Neutral Good god of the Sun, Light, Strength, and Healing. It manages to remain consistent with everything attributed to Pelor, while explaining his every action and trait as actually evil in disguise.
* The Dark Powers in the DungeonsAndDragons {{Ravenloft}} campaign setting are usually interpreted as being evil, since they are the [[GeniusLoci presumed masters behind the eponymous Demiplane of Dread, a place of evil and horror]], but it is also possible that they are good, and use Ravenloft as a prison for the worst villains and monsters in the multiverse. If the cage sometimes seems a gilded one, remember that each of the major villains trapped there are also given curses [[CoolAndUnusualPunishment appropriate to their crimes]].
** The CoolAndUnusualPunishment suffered by every dark lord is designed to break them and hit them where it really hurts. For example, Strahd von Zarovich, who murdered his brother to steal his fiancée (and countless other crimes) is cursed with vampirism and forced to relive the loss of his beloved Tatiana every generation. Unless things have changed in the latest edition, the setting is called The Land of Mists or something similar by its residents; Ravenloft is from ''Ravana's Loft'', and is Strahd's absolutely trope-tastic HauntedCastle, named for Strahd's mother.
** The problem is, almost none of the villains trapped in Ravenloft are actually major (only Vecna/Kaz and Lord Soth, all long gone from Ravenloft, were bigshots before going there). Dark Powers pick people whom they can make to suffer beautifully, not those really dangerous or really heinous. Snatching a guy who murdered his brother to steal his fiancée out of love, when ''DungeonsAndDragons'' is chock-full of people whose job description amounts to killing and torturing innocents ForTheEvulz? On the other hand, core domains of Ravenloft often are relatively safe places to live, compared to what is normal to [=DnD-land=]. Commonly encountering monsters are weak enough to remain in hiding, instead of rampaging and assaulting openly, and there is a comparative shortage of insanely powerful psychopaths on the loose. To be fair, it's not like TSR and later WotC could denude their other campaign settings of all their good villains. Also, the Dark Powers may just not have the power to take all the really major villains from all over the multiverse; it's not like the Dark Powers have ever been portrayed as omnipotent, even within Ravenloft. Maybe they're just doing the best they can. Also, the fact that Ravenloft is in some ways ''safer'' for the average person than the typical campaign setting, what with the lack of lots of randomly rampaging monsters, may be further support for the idea that the Dark Powers are good.
** Still other gamemasters take the radical stance that the Dark Powers ''don't exist'': Ravenloft works the way it does simply because that's its fundamental nature as a plane, just like the Plane of Fire is inherently hot. The darklords' curses are personalized because they're unconsciously inflicting such torments on themselves, out of repressed guilt.
* BattleTech as a whole (At least up until the Jihad) seems to have been an exercise in creating ACIs, all depending on what faction you decide to side with. Except for a few unambiguous [[KickTheDog puppy-punters]] like [[TheCaligula Romano Liao]] or [[RoyalBrat Katherine ]][[EvilPrince Steiner-Davion]], most characters can have several Interpretations.
** Hanse Davion: MagnificentBastard who [[IncrediblyLamePun outfoxed]] his hidebound or deranged opponents, or MarySue who only got by on [[CreatorsPet writer's fiat]]? His son, Victor: [[TheNapoleon Midget who can't possibly live up to his father's legacy]] or skilled warrior hobbled by politics and the above-mentioned evil sister?
** The Clans: [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Proud Warrior Race Guys]] who deserve to lead Humanity, or LawfulStupid [[MarySue Mary Sues]] with [[TheMunchkin way too much power]]?
*** InUniverse, the application of this trope towards Alexander Kerensky caused a split within the Clans between the Crusaders and the Wardens. Did he want his descendants to conquer the Inner Sphere and re-establish the Star League by force, or did he want them to watch over the Inner Sphere until they were ready to restore the Star League themselves? In truth, he probably didn't want the [=SLDF=] to return to the Inner Sphere at all.
** Sun-Tzu Liao: MagnificentBastard who is trying to restore a fallen nation or ManipulativeBastard who only got by on the same kind of fiat that decriers attributed to Hanse Davion?
** [=ComStar=]: They are either religious cult who seek to preserve and recover lost Star League tech, or just conniving schemers who want to rule over the Inner Sphere. Their previous plot made them no more different than the Word of Blake, except they are far less extreme and destructive.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Nobilis}}'': is Lord Entropy a decent person regretfully playing the monster for the net benefit of the world, a lonely god cursed with an inability to be loved using his power to strike back at a concept that has rejected him, a perpetual test of strength forcing Nobles to be as ruthless and cunning as possible, an Excrucian agent, or simply a colossal tool on a power trip?
* ''Android'' does this with the player characters. Are they honest detectives searching for a murderer, or corrupt investigators striving to frame the person they happen not to like? The fiction says one thing while the game mechanic says another; the incoherence is so strong that a fan mod for the rulebook was released to alter it.'''
* ''MagicTheGathering'':
** Yawgmoth: a WellIntentionedExtremist BadassNormal OmnidisciplinaryScientist [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans who made use of some innovative methods to grant his fellows a better life]] only to be [[LoveMakesYouEvil betrayed by the woman he loved]] [[SealedEvilInACan and exiled into a void plane for nine millennia]], thus making his RoaringRampageOfRevenge [[WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds more than justified]]? Or perhaps an AffablyEvil DeadlyDoctor with [[MunchausenSyndrome Munchausen by proxy]], [[MachineWorship who lost his mind]] [[MechanicalLifeforms worshipping machines]] and became an EvilutionaryBiologist ([[{{Anvilicious}} remember]], ScienceIsBad)?
*** Alternately, a leader who is banished for his success, and builds a world out of his tomb. This world is one without war or dissension, but slowly collapsing. His attempts to bring this everlasting peace back to his homeworld is foiled by Urza, an OmnicidalManiac with a legacy of war and misery ''thousands'' of years long.
** Urabrask the Hidden and Red Phyrexians in general: Indifferent to the Mirrans in their domain, secretly rebelling against their other Phyrexian brethren out of genuine compassion due to their alignment, or having a secret agenda just as (if not more) heinous as their other-spectrum brothers?
** Elesh Norn preaches about the Machine Orthodoxy, but does she truly believe in it or is simply using it as a false religion to further her own goals?
* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' isn't immune either.
** TheEmpire: The most advanced, powerful and well-intentioned human society in the world, and the best hope for humanity's survival? Or, well, TheEmpire? Either one can apply DependingOnTheWriter.
** The Lizardmen: Ruthless, alien monsters willing to commit genocide (even on fellow creations of the Old Ones; for instance, Lizardmen caused the earthquakes that ruined the Dwarves' empire, and Lord Mazdamundi wants no Elves outside Ulthuan, even if it requires their extinction) to advance an ancient plan that already went wrong well beyond correction? Or the last honest and purposeful race in the world trying to make things right, and best hope against the forces of Chaos? Or a race of lost children, trying to enact a plan complex beyond understanding while attempting to contact parents that have long ago passed away?
** Bretonnia: Ancient, chivalric and noble nation that is a shining ray of decency in the old world? Or a corrupt, barbaric feudal nation that pretends at being civilized whilst brutally suppressing the lower classes and will eventually meet its downfall either by peasant revolution or the ramifications that the state religion is founded upon an elaborate elven lie is true?
*** A nation of unwitting Slaanesh worshippers, who are only initiated into the secret if they become Grail Knights?
*** Games Workshop: [[JerkAss Total ass-holes]] for changing Bretonnia from 100% the former to a grey area or to be commended for a nice level of [[CharacterDevelopment racial development]] on an otherwise boring, overly romantic idea of the Middle Ages?
** Nagash: Evil Necromancer who destroyed the most noble and sophisticated human nation, or tragic figure who set himself up as a benevolent dictator and was betrayed by those around him, causing him to go insane?
*** Isn't it canon that he was both, more or less?
**** Actually, if you read his book, Nagash the Sorcerer, its made pretty clear he enjoyed the pain of others and wanted power for powers sake. He entombed his own brother alive so he could take his throne and feed his brother's wife a drink made (unknown to her) from her murdered son's blood. He was a malicious, petty, monster. The closest thing to benevolence in his reign was...he reclaimed his city's glory by sacking another city and killing every living thing he could find, whether they were soldiers or civilians.
** Tomb Kings: Total dicks who want to take over the world and "kill" each other for power or lost souls doom to never again find peace, and trying to bring their once great empire to life?
** The von Carstein Vampire Counts: Megalomaniacal [[EvilOverlord tyrants]] who simply want to rule the entire world, starting with the Empire, or the only faction that cares enough about the peasantry not to send them in to do their dirty work, or possibly [really/deluded into believing that they are] the best hope to stop Chaos from conquering all?
*** Vlad leans more towards the latter, his successors, more the former.
** There's also the connection to 40k as well as the origins of Sigmar: Is the Warhammer World simply another "Feudal World" in the 40k universe, two completely unique settings that only have the chaos gods in common due to corporate laziness, or alternate dimension to the 40k universe that the Chaos Gods occasionally take interest in?[[note]]Originally the fluff indicated that the Warhammer World did exist in the 40k universe, but as time went on this was dropped and outright retconned in certain material.[[/note]] There is also the possibility that Sigmar is one of the two lost primarchs who were never named if it is indeed set in the 40k Universe.
* ''AmberDiceless'' takes the fact that characters were portrayed differently between [[UnreliableNarrator Corwin and Merlin]] in ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfAmber'' books and runs with it, presenting several different interpretations of each of the characters (prominent or not) and encouraging Game Masters to write their own interpretations if those don't work for them. Yes, every character from ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfAmber'' canon has ''multiple'' sets of stats, each at a different point level, and the GM is expected to mix-and-match to taste.
* One of these is raised by the main rulebook of ''TabletopGame/{{Paranoia}} XP''. Friend Computer is usually portrayed as unhinged, a little bit stupid, gullible, and ruthless. One brief section of XP suggests an alternative: Friend Computer is 100% sane and sees through all the evasions and deceptions, but has concluded that deceit, fear, ignorance, horrific inefficiency, and all the other perks of ''Paranoia'' are the very quintessence of human nature and has decided to do everything necessary to nurture these traits, using ObfuscatingStupidity.
** The rulebook also suggests that the GM should always have another layer. Okay, the [=PCs=] find out that Friend Computer is being controlled by evil mutants from Beta Complex, who are actually being controlled by a group of High Programmers back in Alpha Complex, who were set up by Friend Computer as part of a paranoid sting operation, but this plan was added into Friend Computer's memory banks by aliens from Pluto, who are actually just psychic projections of TheIlluminati, etc. In short, in Alpha Complex, everything has an alternative interpretation.
* In the latest edition of ''DungeonsAndDragons'', Asmodeus usurped his position from [[NoNameGiven He Who Was]], his patron deity. A lot of text tries to portray He Who Was as a benevolent deity, but angels are supposed to be extensions of their patron deity's will. How did Asmodeus get so many angels on his side? Perhaps He Who Was wasn't as squeaky clean as he's made out to be. In fact, HHW might have been the god of ambition, and the reason he had so many usurpers following Asmodeus was because of their ambitious nature. (HHW is [[{{YHWH}} one letter away]] from being a VERY SignificantAnagram...)
** 3.5 Edition's ''Races of the Wild'' reveals something interesting about halflings and their religion: Yondalla wasn't always the squeaky clean paragon of Lawful Good she is today. She created the halflings by stealing the best bits from all the other races, and the gods punished her by forcing her to split into two goddesses: LawfulGood Yondalla and ChaoticNeutral Dallah Thaun. They are still the same person, sharing thoughts and memories, which is why there are so many CN halflings who can claim, even under magical compulsion, to worship a LG goddess. This is a canon example of ACI, as no other books even so much as mention it; other races are forbidden to even know about Dallah Thaun. This suggests that the halflings, generally seen as no more than harmlessly mischievous, are knowingly perpetuating a culture-wide scam that allows them to steal, cheat and take vengeance all they want, and all in the name of a lawful good deity.
*** What's really strange is that the other gods are apparently in on it. They know of Dallah's existence, but even high level non-halfling clerics who can talk to their gods directly are seemingly kept in the dark. Good gods, evil gods, lawful ones, chaotic ones, none seem to have any problem with keeping this a secret from everyone. So either there is a truly massive cover-up going on (with even gods who despise each other playing along) or ''there is no Dallah Thaun'', the book is a fabrication, and the halflings made her up as some sort of excuse for doing as they please.
*** Perhaps she was invented by Yondalla herself, as a sort of alter ego. That means that Yondalla is not Lawful Good, and the entire halfling religion is founded on a lie.
** In regards to Asmodeus and He Who Was, there's some new information out about it. He Who Was was apparently the leader of the gods in their war with the primordials, but was such a benevolent god that he had little taste for war and battle and was a poor general. Asmodeus was the most powerful and skilled general the gods had, and his angels were their most powerful army. His tactics, however, were brutal and horrifying to He Who Was, who eventually cast Asmodeus down for his actions. Perhaps the peace loving He Who Was created Asmodeus and his army as an aspect of himself, an expression of his ruthless, violent tendencies so that he didn't have to live with them himself. Which could have been why he simply cast Asmodeus down, instead of destroying him outright. He couldn't bring himself to destroy part of himself.
*** In a late 2nd Edition book (when the cosmos was significantly different), ''Guide to Hell'', it was suggested "Asmodeus" was the false face put forward by one of the primal beings of Law, an aspect of the archetypal World Serpent, the fallen ancient god [[{{Zoroastrianism}} Ahriman]]. This introduced the interpretation that he was no mere Satan figure (which he had previously embodied) and made him something more ancient and terrible, [[SealedEvilInACan imprisoned in the Hells by the very laws he helped write into the cosmos]] and plotting to shatter those laws so he might reforge them for his own ends. 3rd Edition's ''Manual of the Planes'' continued to hint at his secret nature, but never went very far with it. (In this case, Asmodeus's counterpart as the other half of the World Serpent was Jazirian, the goddess of the couatls. She's mentioned so rarely that some bits of fanon have filled in the gaps with her own Alternative Interpretation, making her the ''logos'' to Asmodeus's great Lie, and that she may even have died between 2nd and 3rd edition - another bit of fanon from that is that her discorporate essence is behind the Words Made Flesh of the illumians in ''Races of Destiny''.)
** [[http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19558798/Pelor_the_Burning_Hate Pelor The Burning Hate]] is a reinterpretation of Pelor, Neutral Good god of the Sun, Light, Strength, and Healing. It manages to remain consistent with everything attributed to Pelor, while explaining his every action and trait as actually evil in disguise.
* The Dark Powers in the DungeonsAndDragons {{Ravenloft}} campaign setting are usually interpreted as being evil, since they are the [[GeniusLoci presumed masters behind the eponymous Demiplane of Dread, a place of evil and horror]], but it is also possible that they are good, and use Ravenloft as a prison for the worst villains and monsters in the multiverse. If the cage sometimes seems a gilded one, remember that each of the major villains trapped there are also given curses [[CoolAndUnusualPunishment appropriate to their crimes]].
** The CoolAndUnusualPunishment suffered by every dark lord is designed to break them and hit them where it really hurts. For example, Strahd von Zarovich, who murdered his brother to steal his fiancée (and countless other crimes) is cursed with vampirism and forced to relive the loss of his beloved Tatiana every generation. Unless things have changed in the latest edition, the setting is called The Land of Mists or something similar by its residents; Ravenloft is from ''Ravana's Loft'', and is Strahd's absolutely trope-tastic HauntedCastle, named for Strahd's mother.
** The problem is, almost none of the villains trapped in Ravenloft are actually major (only Vecna/Kaz and Lord Soth, all long gone from Ravenloft, were bigshots before going there). Dark Powers pick people whom they can make to suffer beautifully, not those really dangerous or really heinous. Snatching a guy who murdered his brother to steal his fiancée out of love, when ''DungeonsAndDragons'' is chock-full of people whose job description amounts to killing and torturing innocents ForTheEvulz? On the other hand, core domains of Ravenloft often are relatively safe places to live, compared to what is normal to [=DnD-land=]. Commonly encountering monsters are weak enough to remain in hiding, instead of rampaging and assaulting openly, and there is a comparative shortage of insanely powerful psychopaths on the loose. To be fair, it's not like TSR and later WotC could denude their other campaign settings of all their good villains. Also, the Dark Powers may just not have the power to take all the really major villains from all over the multiverse; it's not like the Dark Powers have ever been portrayed as omnipotent, even within Ravenloft. Maybe they're just doing the best they can. Also, the fact that Ravenloft is in some ways ''safer'' for the average person than the typical campaign setting, what with the lack of lots of randomly rampaging monsters, may be further support for the idea that the Dark Powers are good.
** Still other gamemasters take the radical stance that the Dark Powers ''don't exist'': Ravenloft works the way it does simply because that's its fundamental nature as a plane, just like the Plane of Fire is inherently hot. The darklords' curses are personalized because they're unconsciously inflicting such torments on themselves, out of repressed guilt.
* BattleTech as a whole (At least up until the Jihad) seems to have been an exercise in creating ACIs, all depending on what faction you decide to side with. Except for a few unambiguous [[KickTheDog puppy-punters]] like [[TheCaligula Romano Liao]] or [[RoyalBrat Katherine ]][[EvilPrince Steiner-Davion]], most characters can have several Interpretations.
** Hanse Davion: MagnificentBastard who [[IncrediblyLamePun outfoxed]] his hidebound or deranged opponents, or MarySue who only got by on [[CreatorsPet writer's fiat]]? His son, Victor: [[TheNapoleon Midget who can't possibly live up to his father's legacy]] or skilled warrior hobbled by politics and the above-mentioned evil sister?
** The Clans: [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Proud Warrior Race Guys]] who deserve to lead Humanity, or LawfulStupid [[MarySue Mary Sues]] with [[TheMunchkin way too much power]]?
*** InUniverse, the application of this trope towards Alexander Kerensky caused a split within the Clans between the Crusaders and the Wardens. Did he want his descendants to conquer the Inner Sphere and re-establish the Star League by force, or did he want them to watch over the Inner Sphere until they were ready to restore the Star League themselves? In truth, he probably didn't want the [=SLDF=] to return to the Inner Sphere at all.
** Sun-Tzu Liao: MagnificentBastard who is trying to restore a fallen nation or ManipulativeBastard who only got by on the same kind of fiat that decriers attributed to Hanse Davion?
** [=ComStar=]: They are either religious cult who seek to preserve and recover lost Star League tech, or just conniving schemers who want to rule over the Inner Sphere. Their previous plot made them no more different than the Word of Blake, except they are far less extreme and destructive.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Nobilis}}'': is Lord Entropy a decent person regretfully playing the monster for the net benefit of the world, a lonely god cursed with an inability to be loved using his power to strike back at a concept that has rejected him, a perpetual test of strength forcing Nobles to be as ruthless and cunning as possible, an Excrucian agent, or simply a colossal tool on a power trip?
* ''Android'' does this with the player characters. Are they honest detectives searching for a murderer, or corrupt investigators striving to frame the person they happen not to like? The fiction says one thing while the game mechanic says another; the incoherence is so strong that a fan mod for the rulebook was released to alter it.
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*** Alternatively, the Emperor of Mankind is us. He's humanity, with all its [[HumansAreGood pros]] [[HumansAreFlawed and]] [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters.]] He's the paragon of humanity trying to save us from [[CrapsackWorld the cruel universe it lives in]] and the tyrant trying to elevate us to [[AGodAmI absolute power.]] Most of all, he is our strive to continue. [[CrapsackWorld When faced with the worst possible worlds]], we will resort to the grim necessity needed to not be destroyed. '''The Emperor Protects.'''
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*** Alternatively, the Emperor of Mankind is us. He's humanity, with all its [[HumansAreGood pros]] [[HumansAreFlawed and]] [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters.]] [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters]] He's the paragon of humanity trying to save us from [[CrapsackWorld the cruel universe it lives in]] and the tyrant trying to elevate us to [[AGodAmI absolute power.]] Most of all, he is our strive to continue. [[CrapsackWorld When faced with the worst possible worlds]], we will resort to the grim necessity needed to not be destroyed. '''The Emperor Protects.'''
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Wick cleaning of Exactly What It Says On The Tin
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To put a point on it: Depending on who you ask, the Technocracy is a genocidal [[BigBrotherIsWatching Thought Police]] bent on creating a stagnant world they have absolute control over, a bunch of [[WellIntentionedExtremist Well-Intentioned Extremists]] for whom UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans, or [[DesignatedVillain Designated Villains]] who are absolutely justified in their belief that supernatural influence over the Human Race is a quantifiable bad thing. By the same token, the Council of Nine either represents the last best hope for creativity, nobility and the realization of personal potential, or are a bunch of selfish children who refuse to acknowledge the true implication of their abilities against the Greater Good. It's all heavily dependent on where on the SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism the World of Darkness lies. Unfortunately for the Traditions, this is the [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin World of Darkness.]]
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To put a point on it: Depending on who you ask, the Technocracy is a genocidal [[BigBrotherIsWatching Thought Police]] bent on creating a stagnant world they have absolute control over, a bunch of [[WellIntentionedExtremist Well-Intentioned Extremists]] for whom UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans, or [[DesignatedVillain Designated Villains]] who are absolutely justified in their belief that supernatural influence over the Human Race is a quantifiable bad thing. By the same token, the Council of Nine either represents the last best hope for creativity, nobility and the realization of personal potential, or are a bunch of selfish children who refuse to acknowledge the true implication of their abilities against the Greater Good. It's all heavily dependent on where on the SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism the World of Darkness lies. Unfortunately for the Traditions, this is the [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin World of Darkness.]]
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Right now, the answer looks like "It depends on the Primordial." Some were really that awful. Kimbery turns out not to have changed much by becoming a Yozi, and was just as much of a mood-swinging psychotic MyBelovedSmother who alternated between loving the Lintha and her other creations and showering them with her favor and hating them for real or imagined slights against her and tormenting them back when she was a Primordial. The Dragon's Shadow was a treacherous ManipulativeBastard who is strongly implied to have intentionally orchestrated the Primordial War and whose primary change upon becoming the Ebon Dragon was actually being ''better off than he was as a Primordial'' -- he now embodies the dragon he was once the mere shadow of, and is one of the most powerful and influential of the Yozis. She Who Lives In Her Name destroyed 90% of Creation [[RetGone at the conceptual level]] in what amounted to a temper tantrum upon being defeated and imprisoned, and was against the existence of free will from the start -- The Dragon's Shadow convinced the Divine Tyrant (now Malfeas) that free will was necessary, and he convinced She Who Lives In Her Name to allow its existence.
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Right now, the answer looks like "It depends on the Primordial." Some were really that awful. Kimbery turns out not to have changed much by becoming a Yozi, and was just as much of a mood-swinging psychotic MyBelovedSmother who alternated between loving the Lintha and her other creations and showering them with her favor and hating them for real or imagined slights against her and tormenting them back when she was a Primordial. The Dragon's Shadow was a treacherous ManipulativeBastard who is strongly implied to have intentionally orchestrated the Primordial War and whose primary change upon becoming the Ebon Dragon was actually being ''better off than he was as a Primordial'' -- he now embodies the dragon he was once the mere shadow of, and is one of the most powerful and influential of the Yozis. She Who Lives In Her Name destroyed 90% of Creation [[RetGone at the conceptual level]] in what amounted to a temper tantrum upon being defeated and imprisoned, and was against the existence of free will from the start -- The Dragon's Shadow convinced the Divine Tyrant Theion (now Malfeas) that free will was necessary, and he convinced She Who Lives In Her Name to allow its existence.
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*** Far more often, the latter seems to occur, the majority of the Chaos Space Marine characters who appear are utterly heartless, often outright sadistic, mass murderers that are only interested [[ItsAllAboutMe amassing power for their own benefit]] and [[ForTheEvulz causing as much death and destruction they can while they're at it]].
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** Bretonnia: Ancient, chivalric and noble nation that is a shining ray of decency in the old world? Or a corrupt, barbaric feudal nation that pretends at being civilised whilst brutally suppressing the lower classes and will eventually meet its downfall either by peasant revolution or the ramifications that the state religion is founded upon an elaborate elven lie is true?
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** Bretonnia: Ancient, chivalric and noble nation that is a shining ray of decency in the old world? Or a corrupt, barbaric feudal nation that pretends at being civilised civilized whilst brutally suppressing the lower classes and will eventually meet its downfall either by peasant revolution or the ramifications that the state religion is founded upon an elaborate elven lie is true?
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**** The fluff explains that it is because of this worship that the quality of their machines is so good. Since technological prowess is akin to a divine skill and enlightenment, any particular priest will take great care to learn every aspect of his trade, and apply equal dedication when actually fixing something. Therefore he will not skimp on the finest materials and will always keep his machine in top working order, in turn reinforcing the idea that failure and malfunctions are heresy.
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**** The fluff explains that it is because of this worship that the quality of their machines is so good. Since technological prowess is akin to a divine skill and enlightenment, any particular priest will take great care to learn every aspect of his trade, and apply equal dedication when actually fixing something. Therefore he will not skimp on the finest materials and will always keep his machine in top working order, in turn reinforcing the idea that failure and malfunctions are heresy. One theory also states that all the chanting and prayers are actually used as a way to teach them timing for certain repair works, such as waiting for data to process or a chemical reaction to form.
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*** It was (at least at one time) seriously suggested that the Dark Eldar blood-sport was more akin to the villagers from the story of St George and the Dragon. Slaanesh wants souls, and they made a bargain to keep feeding her and in exchange she doesn't come and eat them all up at once. It's a Machiavellian deal with the devil, but as the last (or so it seemed) remnant of a doomed race preserving themselves even if it won't last forever is of prime importance, because they know that eventually Slaanesh will fall. In the generations that have followed, the original reasons for killing have been forgotten, they simply know they must kill and torture to survive. And when you're civilization is built on blood shed its really really hard to hold back the tides of any other form of debauchery. Which leads us to today where in constantly foisting off the touch of Slaanesh the Dark Eldar have ended up with so many similarities to her worshipers that you can't tell the difference. When gods are real and tangible and absolutely want to eat your souls you really don't have a whole lot of choice but to play ball. It's either independent evil under the shadow of death, or death and soul rape. Urgh.
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*** It was (at least at one time) seriously suggested that the Dark Eldar blood-sport was more akin to the villagers from the story of St George and the Dragon. Slaanesh wants souls, and they made a bargain to keep feeding her and in exchange she doesn't come and eat them all up at once. It's a Machiavellian deal with the devil, but as the last (or so it seemed) remnant of a doomed race preserving themselves even if it won't last forever is of prime importance, because they know that eventually Slaanesh will fall. In the generations that have followed, the original reasons for killing have been forgotten, they simply know they must kill and torture to survive. And when you're civilization is built on blood shed its really really hard to hold back the tides of any other form of debauchery. Which leads us to today where in constantly foisting off the touch of Slaanesh the Dark Eldar have ended up with so many similarities to her worshipers that you can't tell the difference. When gods are real and tangible and absolutely want to eat your souls you really don't have a whole lot of choice but to play ball. It's either independent evil under the shadow of death, or death and soul rape. Urgh.
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*** The Chaos Gods could be every interpretation at once. They're ''chaos'' shaped from the hearts and minds of everyone. They're probably [[MadGod insane enough]] to fit each one: Nurgle [[PapaBear loves his followers]] as much as [[DespairEventHorizon despair]] and [[BodyHorror disease]], Tzeentch schemes [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans for a better]] and [[DystopiaJustifiesTheMeans worse galaxy]], [[Khrone is an honorable BloodKnight who happens [[AxCrazy to love slaughter]] and Slaanesh wants [[SenseFreak pleasure]] at [[EthicalSlut our benefit]] [[DepravedBisexual and peril.]]
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** Possibly one of the biggest ones in the whole of 40k is the Emperor. Is he... the guiding light of humanity in the darkness, a weakling corpse barely a shadow of his former self, or simply planning a comeback? Was he an idealistic crusader who wanted to establish an era of hope and strength for humanity, or a mass-murdering tyrant who ruthlessly crushed all opposition and was willing to exterminate entire non-human species in order to establish his own rule? Did he genuinely desire the destruction of religion in an effort to impose his will upon the free thoughts of man, or was it only in order to guide a newly psychic humanity to a future free of chaos? We may never know...
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** Possibly one of the biggest ones in the whole of 40k is the Emperor. Is he... the guiding light of humanity in the darkness, a weakling corpse barely a shadow of his former self, or simply planning a comeback? Was he an idealistic crusader who wanted to establish an era of hope and strength for humanity, or a mass-murdering tyrant who ruthlessly crushed all opposition and was willing to exterminate entire non-human species in order to establish his own rule? [[WellIntentionedExtremist Were his actions]] [[GoodIsNotSoft justifed]] [[KnightTemplar or not?]] Did he genuinely desire the destruction of religion in an effort to impose his will upon the free thoughts of man, or was it only in order to guide a newly psychic humanity to a future free of chaos? We may never know...
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*** Alternatively, the Emperor of Mankind is us. He's humanity, with all its [[HumansAreGood pros]] [[HumansAreFlawed and]] [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters.]] He's the paragon of humanity trying to save us from [[CrapsackWorld the cruel universe it lives in]] and the tyrant trying to elevate us to [[AGodAmI absolute power.]] Most of all, he is our strive to continue. [[CrapsackWorld When faced with the worst possible worlds]], we will resort to the grim necessity needed to not be destroyed. '''The Emperor Protects.'''
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The Lizardmen do not just target \"bad\" races, so they are actually a good example
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** The Lizardmen: Ruthless, alien monsters willing to commit genocide to advance an ancient plan that already went wrong well beyond correction? Or the last honest and purposeful race in the world trying to make things right, and best hope against the forces of Chaos? Or a race of lost children, trying to enact a plan complex beyond understanding while attempting to contact parents that have long ago passed away?
*** More column B than column A. The targets of said genocide (or plan to exterminate such as Orks, Skaven, and Beastmen) are typically pretty nasty creatures themselves, making it seem like an example of KickTheSonOfABitch. They also tend to leave fellow children of the Old Ones (Humans barring Chaos, Dwarves, Elves) alone unless they encroach on Lizard Man territory.
*** More column B than column A. The targets of said genocide (or plan to exterminate such as Orks, Skaven, and Beastmen) are typically pretty nasty creatures themselves, making it seem like an example of KickTheSonOfABitch. They also tend to leave fellow children of the Old Ones (Humans barring Chaos, Dwarves, Elves) alone unless they encroach on Lizard Man territory.
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** The Lizardmen: Ruthless, alien monsters willing to commit genocide (even on fellow creations of the Old Ones; for instance, Lizardmen caused the earthquakes that ruined the Dwarves' empire, and Lord Mazdamundi wants no Elves outside Ulthuan, even if it requires their extinction) to advance an ancient plan that already went wrong well beyond correction? Or the last honest and purposeful race in the world trying to make things right, and best hope against the forces of Chaos? Or a race of lost children, trying to enact a plan complex beyond understanding while attempting to contact parents that have long ago passed away?
*** More column B than column A. The targets of said genocide (or plan to exterminate such as Orks, Skaven, and Beastmen) are typically pretty nasty creatures themselves, making it seem like an example of KickTheSonOfABitch. They also tend to leave fellow children of the Old Ones (Humans barring Chaos, Dwarves, Elves) alone unless they encroach on Lizard Man territory.away?
*** More column B than column A. The targets of said genocide (or plan to exterminate such as Orks, Skaven, and Beastmen) are typically pretty nasty creatures themselves, making it seem like an example of KickTheSonOfABitch. They also tend to leave fellow children of the Old Ones (Humans barring Chaos, Dwarves, Elves) alone unless they encroach on Lizard Man territory.
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*** In a late 2nd Edition book (when the cosmos was significantly different), ''Guide to Hell'', it was suggested "Asmodeus" was the false face put forward by one of the primal beings of Law, an aspect of the archetypal World Serpent, the fallen ancient god [[{{Zoroastrianism}} Ahriman]]. This introduced the interpretation that he was no mere Satan figure (which he had previously embodied) and made him something more ancient and terrible, [[SealedEvilInACan imprisoned in the Hells by the very laws he helped write into the cosmos]] and plotting to shatter those laws so he might reforge them for his own ends. 3rd Edition's ''Manual of the Planes'' continued to hint at his secret nature, but never went very far with it. (In this case, Asmodeus's counterpart as the other half of the World Serpent was Jazirian, the goddess of the couatls. She's mentioned so rarely that some bits of fanon have filled in the gaps with her own Alternative Interpretation, making her the ''logos'' to Asmodeus's great Lie, and that she may even have died between 2nd and 3rd edition - another bit of fanon from that is that her discorporate essence is behind the Words Made Flesh of the illumians in ''Races of Destiny''.)
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*** Alternately, a leader who is banished for his success, and builds a world out of his tomb. This world is one without war or dissension, but slowly collapsing. His attempts to bring this everlasting peace back to his homeworld is foiled by Urza, an OmnicidalManiac with a legacy of war and misery ''thousands'' of years long.
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** [=ComStar=]: They are either religious cult who seek to preserve and recover lost Star League tech, or just conniving schemers who want to rule over the Inner Sphere. Their previous plot made them no more different than the Word of Blake, except they are far less extreme and destructive.
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* ''Android'' does this with the player characters. Are they honest detectives searching for a murderer, or corrupt investigators striving to frame the person they happen not to like? The fiction says one thing while the game mechanic says another; the incoherence is so strong that a fan mod for the rulebook was released to alter it.
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To put a point on it: depending on who you ask, the Technocracy is a genocidal [[BigBrotherIsWatching Thought Police]] bent on creating a stagnant world they have absolute control over, a bunch of [[WellIntentionedExtremist Well-Intentioned Extremists]] for whom UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans, or [[DesignatedVillain Designated Villains]] who are the absolutely justified in their belief that supernatural influence over the Human Race is a quantifiable bad thing. By that same token, the Council of Nine either represents the last best hope for creativity, nobility and the realization of personal potential, or a bunch of selfish children who refuse to acknowledge the true implication of their abilities against the Greater Good. It's all heavily dependent on where on the SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism the World of Darkness lies. Unfortunately for the Traditions, this is the [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin World of Darkness.]]
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To put a point on it: depending Depending on who you ask, the Technocracy is a genocidal [[BigBrotherIsWatching Thought Police]] bent on creating a stagnant world they have absolute control over, a bunch of [[WellIntentionedExtremist Well-Intentioned Extremists]] for whom UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans, or [[DesignatedVillain Designated Villains]] who are the absolutely justified in their belief that supernatural influence over the Human Race is a quantifiable bad thing. By that the same token, the Council of Nine either represents the last best hope for creativity, nobility and the realization of personal potential, or are a bunch of selfish children who refuse to acknowledge the true implication of their abilities against the Greater Good. It's all heavily dependent on where on the SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism the World of Darkness lies. Unfortunately for the Traditions, this is the [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin World of Darkness.]]
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* Yawgmoth from ''MagicTheGathering''. A WellIntentionedExtremist BadassNormal OmnidisciplinaryScientist [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans who made use of some innovative methods to grant his fellows a better life]] only to be [[LoveMakesYouEvil betrayed by the woman he loved]] [[SealedEvilInACan and exiled into a void plane for nine millennia]], thus making his RoaringRampageOfRevenge [[WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds more than justified]]? Or perhaps an AffablyEvil DeadlyDoctor with [[MunchausenSyndrome Munchausen by proxy]], [[MachineWorship who lost his mind]] [[MechanicalLifeforms worshipping machines]] and became an EvilutionaryBiologist ([[{{Anvilicious}} remember]], ScienceIsBad)?
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** Yawgmoth: a WellIntentionedExtremist BadassNormal OmnidisciplinaryScientist [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans who made use of some innovative methods to grant his fellows a better life]] only to be [[LoveMakesYouEvil betrayed by the woman he loved]] [[SealedEvilInACan and exiled into a void plane for nine millennia]], thus making his RoaringRampageOfRevenge [[WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds more than justified]]? Or perhaps an AffablyEvil DeadlyDoctor with [[MunchausenSyndrome Munchausen by proxy]], [[MachineWorship who lost his mind]] [[MechanicalLifeforms worshipping machines]] and became an EvilutionaryBiologist ([[{{Anvilicious}} remember]],
** Urabrask the Hidden and Red Phyrexians in general: Indifferent to the Mirrans in their domain, secretly rebelling against their other Phyrexian brethren out of genuine compassion due to their alignment, or having a secret agenda just as (if not more) heinous as their other-spectrum brothers?
** Elesh Norn preaches about the Machine Orthodoxy, but does she truly believe in it or is simply using it as a false religion to further her own goals?
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** There's also the connection to 40k as well as the origins of Sigmar: Is the Warhammer World simply another "Feudal World" in the 40k universe, two completely unique settings that only have the chaos gods in common due to corporate laziness, or alternate dimension to the 40k universe that the Chaos Gods occasionally take interest in?[[note]]Originally the fluff indicated that the Warhammer World did exist in the 40k universe, but as time went on this was dropped and outright retconned in certain material.[[/note]] There is also the possibility that Sigmar is one of the two lost primarchs who were never named if it is indeed set in the 40k Universe.
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**** For the most part, they are the former, and you'll have to make an effort to find any Chaos Space Marine that isn't a CompleteMonster, even if they didn't start as one.
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*** ... Or the tragically corrupted and repentant shells of people that might once have been heroes.
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*** InUniverse, the application of this trope towards Alexander Kerensky caused a split within the Clans between the Crusaders and the Wardens. Did he want his descendants to conquer the Inner Sphere and re-establish the Star League by force, or did he want them to watch over the Inner Sphere until they were ready to restore the Star League themselves? In truth, he probably didn't want the [=SLDF=] to return to the Inner Sphere at all.
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* ''TabletopGame/{{Nobilis}}'': is Lord Entropy a decent person regretfully playing the monster for the net benefit of the world, a lonely god cursed with an inability to be loved using his power to strike back at a concept that has rejected him, a perpetual test of strength forcing Nobles to be as ruthless and cunning as possible, an Excrucian agent, or simply a colossal tool on a power trip?
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** Still other gamemasters take the radical stance that the Dark Powers ''don't exist'': Ravenloft works the way it does simply because that's its fundamental nature as a plane, just like the Plane of Fire is inherently hot. The darklords' curses are personalized because they're unconsciously inflicting such torments on themselves, out of repressed guilt.
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*** The setting seems to go back and forth between both of these.
**** For the most part, they are the former, and you'll have to make an effort to find any Chaos Space Marine that isn't a CompleteMonster, even if they didn't start as one.
***** Both points can be well argued, since smaller scale Black Crusades that have no effect on the status quo have succeeded, but on the other hand, Abaddon is trying to break the defenses of the 2nd most heavily defended sector in the galaxy, and has deal with the fact that armies he fights against are much better organized than his.
**** Khorne, for all the supposed honor his about, tends to make people forget that in the current setting, he's utterly heartless. His honor really boils down to the fact that he's picky about how his minions fight, but wrecking mass destruction and slaughtering mass of innocent people that can't fight back, he's got no problem with that. Slaanesh being about joy the sense, is a depraved sadist that nearly exterminated an entire species because he felt good doing it.
**** Tzeentch is supposedly trying also make sure nothing ever changes because he can't scheme if any of his schemes ever work.
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** TheEmpire: The most advanced, powerful and well-intentioned human society in the world, and the best hope for humanity's survival? Or, well, TheEmpire?
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** TheEmpire: The most advanced, powerful and well-intentioned human society in the world, and the best hope for humanity's survival? Or, well, TheEmpire?TheEmpire? Either one can apply DependingOnTheWriter.
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*** More column B than collumn A. The targets of said genocide (or plan to exterminate such as Orks, Skaven, and Beastmen) are typically pretty nasty creatures themselves, making it seem like an example of KickTheSonOfABitch. They also tend to leave fellow children of the Old Ones (Humans barring Chaos, Dwarves, Elves) alone unless they encroach on Lizard Man territory.
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*** More column B than collumn column A. The targets of said genocide (or plan to exterminate such as Orks, Skaven, and Beastmen) are typically pretty nasty creatures themselves, making it seem like an example of KickTheSonOfABitch. They also tend to leave fellow children of the Old Ones (Humans barring Chaos, Dwarves, Elves) alone unless they encroach on Lizard Man territory.
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*** Vlad leans more towards the latter, his successors, more the former.
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** The Deathlords are typically portrayed as {{Complete Monster}}s who agreed to destroy Creation in exchange for the power to rule over its dying remains; the First and Forsaken Lion and Eye and Seven Despairs' saving of Creation from the Great Contagion is normally described as if it were an accident. FridgeLogic, however, suggests an alternative interpretation -- why would they want Creation to be killed by someone else? Given that they are supposed to be two of the greatest geniuses who ever lived, it makes much more sense to assume that they saved the world ''deliberately''; even if they swore to destroy it, neither really has any actual reason to want to see it die, and plenty of reasons not to. They're all still brutal dictators and conquerors, and the only First Age Solars ''not'' to repent of the horrific atrocities they committed in life.
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** The Deathlords are typically portrayed as {{Complete Monster}}s monsters who agreed to destroy Creation in exchange for the power to rule over its dying remains; the First and Forsaken Lion and Eye and Seven Despairs' saving of Creation from the Great Contagion is normally described as if it were an accident. FridgeLogic, however, suggests an alternative interpretation -- why would they want Creation to be killed by someone else? Given that they are supposed to be two of the greatest geniuses who ever lived, it makes much more sense to assume that they saved the world ''deliberately''; even if they swore to destroy it, neither really has any actual reason to want to see it die, and plenty of reasons not to. They're all still brutal dictators and conquerors, and the only First Age Solars ''not'' to repent of the horrific atrocities they committed in life.
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*** Further complicated by the Harlequins (who aren't technically Craftworld Eldar) - the ultimate fighting force of the Eldar and last/best line of defense against the forces of Chaos, an introverted and secretive sect more concerned with maintaining Eldar history/myth than with protecting the galaxy, or {{CompleteMonster}}s who take some perverse joy in liquefying their enemies and have sold their souls to the Laughing God for amazing power?
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*** Further complicated by the Harlequins (who aren't technically Craftworld Eldar) - the ultimate fighting force of the Eldar and last/best line of defense against the forces of Chaos, an introverted and secretive sect more concerned with maintaining Eldar history/myth than with protecting the galaxy, or {{CompleteMonster}}s monsters who take some perverse joy in liquefying their enemies and have sold their souls to the Laughing God for amazing power?
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* ''{{Warhammer}}'' isn't immune either.
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* ''{{Warhammer}}'' ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' isn't immune either.
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namespace
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* ''AmberDiceless'' takes the fact that characters were portrayed differently between [[UnreliableNarrator Corwin and Merlin]] in the ''ChroniclesOfAmber'' books and runs with it, presenting several different interpretations of each of the characters (prominent or not) and encouraging Game Masters to write their own interpretations if those don't work for them. Yes, every character from the ''ChroniclesOfAmber'' canon has ''multiple'' sets of stats, each at a different point level, and the GM is expected to mix-and-match to taste.
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* ''AmberDiceless'' takes the fact that characters were portrayed differently between [[UnreliableNarrator Corwin and Merlin]] in the ''ChroniclesOfAmber'' ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfAmber'' books and runs with it, presenting several different interpretations of each of the characters (prominent or not) and encouraging Game Masters to write their own interpretations if those don't work for them. Yes, every character from the ''ChroniclesOfAmber'' ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfAmber'' canon has ''multiple'' sets of stats, each at a different point level, and the GM is expected to mix-and-match to taste.
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Namespace fixing, yeah.
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* ''{{Warhammer 40000}}'' is ''made'' for this, and has room for all possible interpretations of ''every'' side, from the Imperium to Chaos.
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* ''{{Warhammer ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' is ''made'' for this, and has room for all possible interpretations of ''every'' side, from the Imperium to Chaos.
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Update because necrons have new background
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** The Necrons: Did they start as evil villains or where they a bulwark against the Old Ones? Are they seeking to turn the galaxy into a feasting ground, or simply set themselves up as gods? How villainous are they?
*** Currently, they seem to be working for one group of eldritch abominations (C'tan) to eradicate another group of eldritch abominations (the Chaos Gods) who are a byproduct of a third group (the Old Ones) which they will also eliminate in the process. That leaves 2 out of 3 eldritch abominations wiped out, and of the third, 1 of its 4 surviving members may actually be helping the human race. The other 3 view the Human Race as Doritos, but you can't have everything can you?
*** Currently, they seem to be working for one group of eldritch abominations (C'tan) to eradicate another group of eldritch abominations (the Chaos Gods) who are a byproduct of a third group (the Old Ones) which they will also eliminate in the process. That leaves 2 out of 3 eldritch abominations wiped out, and of the third, 1 of its 4 surviving members may actually be helping the human race. The other 3 view the Human Race as Doritos, but you can't have everything can you?
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** The Necrons: Did they start as evil villains or where they a bulwark against the Old Ones? Are they seeking Merciless overlords leading endless legions of undead robotic minions to turn purge the galaxy into a feasting ground, from lesser lifeforms and use them as cattle for cruel scientific experiments or simply set themselves up as gods? How villainous the tragic half-mad governors of an ancient advanced civilization who lost their souls in order to cheat death and are they?
*** Currently, they seemattempting to be working for one group of eldritch abominations (C'tan) to eradicate another group of eldritch abominations (the Chaos Gods) who are a byproduct of a third group (the Old Ones) which they will also eliminate in the process. That leaves 2 out of 3 eldritch abominations wiped out, reconquer what was rightfully theirs, while still holding honour and of the third, 1 of its 4 surviving members may actually be helping the human race. The other 3 view the Human Race as Doritos, but you can't have everything can you?loyalty high?
*** Currently, they seem
