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[Celebrim]

Originally Posted by Cadfan

A fun challenge:

Provide the obvious, unambiguous, clearly correct application of the 3e alignment rules to the trolley problems.

I personally feel that the trolley problem in its generic form doesn't really intersect each alignment's interests particularly strongly. And I think pretty much every alignment is going to view the trolley problem as one with no 'right' answers (or no 'wrong' answers, depending on how they view right and wrong). Even an alignment like neutral evil - for which IMO this is as clear as any alignment - is going to be bothered by the fact that they can't kill both parties. And an alignment like lawful good, for which this might seem to be a clear cut problem, in addition to being deeply troubled that they can't save everyone, is going to make exceptions for the general 'Flip the switch' default answer, for example, if the single person on the tracks is the King or some other figure very valuable to society. Conversely, the chaotic alignments probably make exceptions based on whether one group or the other contains someone who is valuable to them personally. For example, chaotics are likely to be very much more sympathetic to to 'don't flip the switch' if the one person on the track is their child or spouse. We can also imagine situations where the lawful society forgives 'don't flip the switch' if the one person the track is a parent or similar authority figure (as a lesser version of 'I can't kill the King', even to save a larger group because it's outside my authority) where they wouldn't forgive 'It's was my child!"

I think we learn much more about the alignments by trying to figure out what additional circumstances in the trolley problem that they would feel is relevant to the solution.

Remember, your answer doesn't just need to be convincing to you! It must be so convincing to you that you are willing to claim that the 3e alignment system objectively and unambiguously morally condemns the responses of people who come up with different answers than yours.

Why do I need to do that?

I believe that all you need to do is come up with and communicate a relatively clear and unambigious system that your players can understand. I don't think that alignment needs to operate the same way at every table.