Campaign for friends

[Seven]

Well, it's kinda of a quandary for me to look at each monster and decide if it's evil or not and chances are I'm going to fluctuate over time.

In my own experience, the only protection from evil that was being used is the paladin doing his thing because it's free. If one of my players wanted to use that I'd treat it as a Protection from Harmful Intentions and not worry about it.

Detect Evil was always pointing to the obvious and Dispel Evil is really Banish Outsider.
Imagine you get to level 3 and your level 2 spell is Detect Evil?
No DM is that cruel.

I think the gist of it was always that evil characters could not use them against evil forces, having the Protection from Good variant. Never a common scenario for me.

[Solomoriah]

The "evil" mentioned in those spells and abilities mainly refers to metaphysical Evil, with a capital E. Monsters from the lower planes, etc. But it is specifically left to the GM to decide in his or her own campaign just how this works.

[Seven]

I don't mean it as a critic. I really like the BFRPG product and it's so vast that there's bound to be parts that don't click with me as well as others.

Now, the problem with the "left to the DM" aspect is that for things that are in the players hands, like the description of their spells, they should have a good grasp of how things work without the DM having to clarify left and right.
Things like Phantasm Force, to take an easy example, can be really frustrating when the player tries something that he thinks should work and the DM think shouldn't. No real way around that one.

So then Good with a capital G refers to the metaphysical Good, monsters from the higher planes, etc. That's fine, but, I'm not sure planes are even mentioned in the BFRPG manual.

Again, nothing major.

In closing, that reminds of a DM, who was a really great DM.
His adventurers had bought their supplies at what they thought was the only store in town.
After several outings they found another store that was selling things for noticeably cheaper.
So they reloaded there. On their way back they noticed the first store had a huge "Annual Sale" sign. One of the player looked at me and said, "We can never win." and shrugged it off.

[Tazer_The_Yoot]

The "evil" mentioned in those spells and abilities mainly refers to metaphysical Evil, with a capital E. Monsters from the lower planes, etc. But it is specifically left to the GM to decide in his or her own campaign just how this works.

I did have a brain malfunction with the Alignment thing, true. It's probably because I've been in a few OD&D games lately and have Alignment on the brain. I'll try to remember where I am not not cross the proverbial streams.

Still, even in lieu of that, it's an interesting concept to RP a character who may or may not be descended from an extra-planar creature. Certain modern RPG settings have almost trivialized that type of thing but in a world built around Basic Fantasy concepts, I wonder how that'd be received.

[Solomoriah]

Now, the problem with the "left to the DM" aspect is that for things that are in the players hands, like the description of their spells, they should have a good grasp of how things work without the DM having to clarify left and right.
Things like Phantasm Force, to take an easy example, can be really frustrating when the player tries something that he thinks should work and the DM think shouldn't. No real way around that one.

This is a core element of old school games... GM Fiat is always a part of it. It's really mostly a problem for new groups; my regular players know me, and they know my rulings. Any time we have a newbie, they do as much as I do to explain these things.