History DarkIsNotEvil / TableTopGames

** Tsukiyo is one of the major deities in the Dragon Empires. The god of the moon, jade, and spirits, Tsukiyo's domains include darkness and ''madness'', despite being LawfulGood.

** In Lords Of Madness, a book about [[EldritchAbomination Abberations]],there is a race called the Silthilar, creatures that were once elven wizards but turned into hive minded swarms that coalesce into what can only be called a {{Starfish Alien|s}} and specialize in grafting strange and bizzarre parts onto humanoids. And they are ChaoticGood.

** Another 'not evil' race from D&D, possibly from {{TabletopGame/Mystara}}, were the Diaboli, who basically look like an entire race of wingless [[BigRedDevil Big Purple Devils]] -- cloven-hooved goat-like legs, small nubby goat-like horns, forked tongues, bald or hairy or in-between, long tails with [[BewareMyStingerTail curved toxic stingers on the end]]. The twist? They're peaceful people from the Plane of Dreams who are exiles after evil beings (Nightmare Spirits) took over their dimension, and the reason they seem to be so secretive and isolationist is that they find US disturbing and demonic to behold. Even their stingers only inject sleeping venom, and their racial alignment is Usually ''ChaoticGood'' (the vast majority of those who aren't are ChaoticNeutral or NeutralGood, with ChaoticEvil being a very rare occurrence).
** Speaking of races, drow serving Eilistraee (ChaoticGood goddess) managed to implement ''both'' DarkIsNotEvil and GoodIsNotNice. They are supposed to be benevolent and welcoming, given the ideals taught by the goddess, but some groups (especially recent converts, that come from a Lolthite background) can be too paranoid, aggressive, and (in some cases) even HolierThanThou to be a good company.

** In general, Black mana is associated with selfishness, plague, darkness, and a callous disregard for morality, and its iconic creatures are zombies, vampires, and demons. However, they aren't defined as strictly evil, only pragmatic and ambitious. In practice, it's sometimes hard to see this as the cards tend to associate it with sadism, desecration and murder, and Black creature still tend to be consistently portrayed as dangerous and very untrustworthy. Many major villains have been primarily Black-aligned - but importantly, just as many haven't. Some specific black-aligned groups that fall under this trope:

** The same book to introduce the shadowcaster also features the binder. Binders are {{Willing Channeler}}s that take their power from "vestiges", spirits that, for one reason or another, have found themselves outside of reality. The class is heavily inspired by the Literature/ArsGoetia, the listed vestiges include a lich, multiple demons and devils, and several murderers, and binder powers include shadow manipulation, assassination, making friends fight one another, calling upon {{Eldritch Abomination}}s, poison blood, generating sadness, and scaring people to death, and making a poor pact can result in a binder with [[BigRedDevil horns, goat legs]], [[EvilSoundsRaspy a rasping voice]], [[RedEyesTakeWarning glowing red eyes]], [[RedRightHand six-fingered hands]], or a face growing somewhere on their body. Despite this, the class has no alignment requirement, and nor do any vestiges; it's outright stated that vestiges, in the form they exist in now, [[BlueAndOrangeMorality are past the point of being ascribed any moral judgment]], with their creepiness being little more than aesthetics. Lawful Good binders are rare, but they can certainly exist, and one binder PrestigeClass is essentially a KnightInShiningArmor and includes a specific ruling regarding the idea of a binder ''[[ThePaladin paladin]]''. The book does acknowlege less likeable binders, and even dedicates two other prestige classes that specifically cannot be Good, but one has their fluff and theming be based around ''torturing'' their vestiges, and the other is essentially a cultist of a dead god of shadow and undead--it's noted that other binders have a StopBeingStereotypical reaction to them.

*** Presumably due to the flavor text mentioning the caster [[http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/deathwatch.htm "using the foul sight granted by the powers of unlife"]], but that's merely that... flavor text. And not that ''neutrals'' were utterly prohibited to have anything in common with undead. It's only a "detect hit points" spell, for God's sake. Giving it an evil descriptor is ridiculous. Especially since the 3.5 edition Spell Compendium contains a spell that basically does the same thing: It allows player character clerics to closely monitor the hit points of their allies during combat, how wounded they are, etc., so the cleric will instantly know when and where to dispense healing.
*** The "crunch" that is backing that flavor text IS the fact that it has the Evil descriptor, thus signifying that casting the spell is an inherently evil and alignment-altering event even in the absence of any other visible moral aspects.
*** What's really odd, is that Deathwatch is on the spell list of the Miniatures Handbook Healer, which is ''required to be Good'', and Book of Exalted Deeds Slayer of Domial, that loses all powers if it commits an evil act. Hmm.
*** Clerics are much much much more affected by alignment descriptors than Wizards; indeed, only with something like the Spell Focus (Evil) feat do alignment descriptors have any game effect on arcane spellcasters. Clerics, however, can't cast spells opposed by their alignment. The goddess Sharess from the Forgotten Realms might be partially an instance of this - not a dark goddess, but she certainly brushed with Evil is Sexy when confronted by Shar before ultimately ending up good. Someone check my references though...

*** Though since their appearance back in the early editions of the games, tieflings have been described as being 'mostly evil.' {{TabletopGame/Planescape}} stated about 90% of tieflings are, in fact, evilly aligned. Which leads to a curious disparity; apparently being demon-blooded makes you less likely to be evil than just being [[AlwaysChaoticEvil born into certain completely natural, mortal races.]]

*** The Golari Swarm are a cult of elf and human necromancers who use zombies as labor... but they're also an indispensable part of Ravnica's society, providing food and waste disposal services. A lot of them are indeed black-hearted knaves who sacrifice unwilling people to raise them as undead, but one of the heroes of the tie-in novels is the leader of the Golgari, who's working to reform them after the death of his evil sister.
*** The vampire planeswalker Sorin Markov is scheming, vicious and paranoid... but at the same time, he managed to work together with two other planeswalkers to seal the Eldrazi in their [[SealedEvilInACan can]]. In fact, given that he [[spoiler:creation a virtuous god-figure]] purely to defend the humans of his home plane, Sorin is capable of remarkable compassion and foresight (although in this set, he is part-White).