Here’s a concept for you: a
hypothetically flawed character. This character, on the surface, is not a perfect
person because of their flaws, but in practice it remains to be seen how truly
flawed they actually are. I am talking, of course, of “practice” in the context
of roleplay, here, but you could make a similar argument for fictional
narratives as a whole.
In my head, this how I’m thinking about it. If a character’s
‘goodness’ is the sum of their good traits (Strengths) minus their bad traits
(Flaws), you get a character who lands somewhere in the realm of “Good” (More
Strengths than Flaws), “Neutral” (Strengths and Flaws roughly equal), or “Bad”
(Flaws outweigh the Strengths). Some people might refer to “Bad” as “Evil” if
you want to use the DnD scale, but you see where I’m going with this. So let me
mess with that formula a little bit.
