Alternative Character Interpretation/Tabletop Games: Difference between revisions

** 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...

*** It's unlikely that anyone will get a clear answer. GW uses the Emperor (as a character) very sparingly, and so very little about him is known. Suffice to say, a massive amount of 40k depends on exactly how much the Emperor knew...did he deliberately scatter the Primarchs or was he the victim of a terrible accident? Did he deliberately choose to die at Terra or was it an accident too?...

* Yawgmoth from ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]''. A [[Well-Intentioned Extremist]] [[Badass Normal]] [[Omnidisciplinary Scientist]] [[Utopia Justifies the Means|who made use of some innovative methods to grant his fellows a better life]] only to be [[Love Makes You Evil|betrayed by the woman he loved]] [[Sealed Evil in a Can|and exiled into a void plane for nine millennia]], thus making his [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]] [[Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds|more than justified]]? Or perhaps an [[Affably Evil]] [[Deadly Doctor]] with [[Munchausen Syndrome|Munchausen by proxy]], [[Machine Worship|who lost his mind]] [[Mechanical Lifeforms|worshipping machines]] and became an [[Evilutionary Biologist]] ([[Anvilicious|remember]], [[Science Is Bad]])?

* ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]]'' isn't immune either.

** 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 [[The Illuminati]], etc. In short, in Alpha Complex, everything has an alternative interpretation.

* ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]''

** The Dark Powers in the ''[[Ravenloft]]'' campaign setting are usually interpreted as being evil, since they are the [[Genius Loci|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 [[Cool and Unusual Punishment|appropriate to their crimes]].

*** The [[Cool and Unusual Punishment]] 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 [[Haunted Castle]], named for Strahd's mother.