You make a very good point there CynthiaLee, in the real world things are rarely so simple as to be strictly good or evil. In high fantasy we tend to think of the goblin/orc/undead hoards laying waste to a village as purely evil--yet rarely frame it as such when the party stumbles across a Goblin outpost and reduces it to the last warm body before looting everything of value...*Chuckle*...
Which of course supports the idea of having a backdrop that is unique to the group playing the game.
Another advantage of going generic is that you can scavenge ideas from many sources... HQ version of Gygax's ToEE anyone?
maj!