What would the Kinds of Flesh ACTUALLY do?
tl;dr Good and Evil alignment in Vermis is executed in a really unique way, but hardly explained at all. What are your thoughts on its gameplay significance if Vermis were a real game?
The first mechanic that Vermis explains is the two kinds of flesh. It's always stuck out to me, in part because of how quickly it's introduced in the first book, and then by how little it seems to matter. I can't remember any references to it throughout all of Vermis I apart from the introduction and as a stat on the character pages. Then it's dropped entirely in Vermis II and III.
I love the setup of this alignment because it feels so unique. Compare it to something like Star Wars, and the Light Side vs the Dark Side. George Lucas said that the Light Side is selfless and the Dark Side is selfish. So good and evil are conceptualized in relationship to others; someone on the Light Side of the Force will be more willing to help others, and sacrifice for them, while someone on the Dark Side of the Force will be more willing to steal and hurt others for personal gain. Or compare it to a classic real-world deontological interpretation of good and evil, where good is following the laws of a higher power or structure, and evil is disobeying those rules. Once again, good and evil are determined by an interaction with a third party.
Vermis, by contrast, defines Good and Evil basically as a mindset, at least in my reading of it. A mindset of hope is Good, and a mindset of despair is Evil. I really like this, because it can kind of encompass other ethics of good and evil; a hopeful person will probably be more likely to be selfless, like a Jedi. It's a deeply personal moral orientation, and one that I find really compelling.
Because I find it so compelling, and because there is so little about its gameplay significance in the book, I find myself theorizing about its purpose if Vermis were a real game. Are certain mechanics gated behind an alignment requirement, like how The Silent Keeper of the Shade Sanctum requires a different type of coin based on your Will? Maybe darker spells require a more Evil alignment? Maybe it affects the ending, when the player finally makes it to the well. Maybe certain actions taken during the playing of the game could change the character's alignment, like choosing to give the Dying Knight the Princess' box or not. Or maybe it could be changed by equipment, like the Beloved Necklace that the Waste of Life starts with. But, at the end of the day, why would a player care about their alignment? What does it do?
I'd love to get everyone's thoughts on this, because it bounces around my head whenever I think about Vermis. What does everyone think?