Do alignments improve the gaming experience?

[Desdichado]

I've certainly seen the occasional player who views the GM as an adversary, and any negative consequences, in game or out, applied to his actions, any adjudication which does not go his way and any possible failure in the game to be "a stick" used by the GM to "bludgeon the players". I'm uncertain why such players keep playing at all - it seems like that would be a very negative experience - but I have no desire to have them in my game. But that goes far beyond alignment rules.

I'm not so vain as to think that this is directed towards me in any way. Nor am I so OCD that I feel the omission of a number of details from this scenario is a problem. But since I literally used those exact words earlier in this thread, I'll offer up this probably completely unnecessary and superfluous preemptive aside anyway.

First, it is entirely possible for a GM to abuse that role and actually bludgeon his players without that being an issue on the side of the players. Just saying. I know you didn't say otherwise, but I think there's the risk of that being implied. The "totatitarian temptation", to use Jonah Goldberg's phrase, is seductive to most people in our society, and GM's, who feel a sense of ownership, big picture vision, and "I know what this game needs better than the players" rather easily are hardly immune from it. When this happens, this clearly isn't a player issue. Although I do agree with your later sentiment expressed above; I don't know why a player would wish to game in such an environment. And I say this as a gamer who primarily identifies with the GM's side of the screen, although naturally I play on both sides frequently.

Secondly, even players and GMs that don't normally have any kind of adversarial or antagonistic relationship often find, in my experience, the catalyst needed to develop traits of one in alignment, which is a flaw with the concept of alignment, and not with the character traits of either the player or the GM. This is, indeed, my fundamental bone to pick with alignment and it's twofold: 1) it crosses the line between what is GM territory and what is player territory in rather overt terms. Not to make light of obviously much more serious situations, but in a gaming group dynamic, it's like Germany invading the Sudetenland or Russian invading the Crimea (good heavens, I Godwined myself. But I trust that that won't actual derail the discussion.) It's the GM using the system to enforce, or at least penalize, player behavior. And not in in-game ways (like if your character insults the duke, his guards throw you out of the duchy, or put you in the stocks, or whatever) it's in a much more cosmological, metagamish manner. The entire concept grates the wrong way against me, and it hardly requires an antagonistic player who wants all adjudications to go his way to get that vibe out of alignment. Especially when applied to a class in which alignment restrictions are part and parcel of the mechanics.

And 2) it's so poorly defined, poorly expressed, poorly understood, and subject to so many wildly differing interpretations that barring the extremely unlikely coincidence of all players and the GM being on exactly the same page as to what alignment actually means, it is a constant source of conflict. Sure, by "conflict" I might mean that the player accepts what the GM says without complaint and moves on, but even in that case, the potential of the game, and the satisfaction in the game is not insignificantly diminished for the player.

 

[jsaving]

The last seems to presuppose a conflict between Law and Chaos that goes beyond simple sniping. If Chaos is actively seeing to undermine Law, and vice versa, in an epic fantasy manner, them simply getting along seems unlikely.

There seem to be a couple of thoughts permeating the various posts on this. One is that Law and Chaos are about as relevant to one's overall moral philosophy/outlook as one's taste for peanut butter versus chocolate, and it would therefore be deeply unreasonably to expect much conflict between them except perhaps when splitting a candy bar. Another is that Law and Chaos are deeply important, but only in an abstract sense because everyone understands the key struggle is whether Good-aligned characters can defend their "points of light" against Evil. And in campaigns that see Law and Chaos this way, it *is* hard to see why they'd provoke much infighting amongst Team Good or Team Evil.

But Law and Chaos may have much greater practical relevance in campaigns that treat them differently. Historically (and by "historically" I am referring primarily to the Moorcock novels from which Gygax got the idea), Law wanted to freeze the universe in amber whereas Chaos wanted to bring it down around everyone's ears, with individual allegiances shifting between these two primal universal forces depending on whether their momentary interests were best served by preserving the status quo or disrupting it. Later on came the idea of chaotics defending their right to "be left alone" versus the modron-type central planner slotting everybody into (what he deems to be) their most efficient role to produce a harmonious and effective society. These kinds of concerns echo much more deeply into the real-world concerns people face and might be a lot more likely to fracture people who genuinely want to help people but disagree on proper means.

Take the LE ruler who rids the land of its formerly pervasive bandits and sets about single-mindedly putting people where they can best boost societal productivity with a partial end-goal of enriching himself. As the creator and maintainer of a "point of light," albeit one with a somewhat sinister tinge, a significant chunk of his Good-aligned citizenry might be inclined to support him over a CG alternative who would scrap government so that each individual could rise to their maximum potential unshackled by outside interference. The CGs may be more than a little disturbed as their ranks swell with CEs (who don't care about anyone's potential but just want to be able to get away with as much as they can), whereas the LEs might chuckle to see LGs signing on in droves (who hate the heavy-handedness of the regime but see the abolition of government as a surrender to the marauding hordes who forever lurk on the fringes of the city).

These kinds of tradeoffs don't really exist in 4e, because LG and G are explicitly defined as "getting along just fine" despite some minor disagreements -- much like the peanut butter and chocolate analogy some have been using in this thread. But then again, unlike past editions, 4e didn't view Law and Chaos as impersonal forces battling for all eternity and constantly seeking new adherents for their cosmic war. For those who do see Law and Chaos in this way, it's no surprise they find themselves baffled by the PB/chocolate analogy. But this isn't because of a "misunderstanding" in the conventional sense, but rather because the editions (4th especially) just have a radically different notion of what Law/Chaos mean, that carries through to expectations about how important they can or should be in everyday gameplay.

 

[JamesonCourage]

@JamesonCourage, you seemed mildly curious about the general tone and dynamics of the thread.

Here is a recent post in which I am told that I don't have enough evidence to know whether or not using mechanical alignment would be detrimental to my play experience (together with my reply, a very modest contribution to epistemology and the philosophy of science):

Yeah, he's wrong.

I also specifically asked about accusations of "bad RP" or "poor GMing" from major players in this thread, if you have any of those.

 

[pemerton]

Historically (and by "historically" I am referring primarily to the Moorcock novels from which Gygax got the idea), Law wanted to freeze the universe in amber whereas Chaos wanted to bring it down around everyone's ears

OK, but I dont' see what this has to do with my stereotypical LN monk or my stereotypical CN bard. The monk wants to meditate. The bard wants to play practical jokes and have a good time. Unless someone actually forces the two to live in the same very small house for weeks at a time with no escape, I don't see that they are going to come to blows. The bard can find someone else with whom to go to the pub; and if the monk is too disturbed by the ensuing noise, s/he can go and medidate in a field on the outskirts of town.

In other words, AD&D and 3E don't share the Moorcockian conception of Law and Chaos. It figures more prominently in B/X, and also in 4e (although in my game at least the conflict between heavenly order and primordial chaos is not about the fate of society but the fate of the mortal world).

Take the LE ruler who rids the land of its formerly pervasive bandits and sets about single-mindedly putting people where they can best boost societal productivity with a partial end-goal of enriching himself.

I don't really see in what way this person is evil, at least at this level of description. What is evil about ending banditry and boosting production? Or about self-enrichment, for that matter, which is a goal that nearly all contemporary people have.

As the creator and maintainer of a "point of light," albeit one with a somewhat sinister tinge, a significant chunk of his Good-aligned citizenry might be inclined to support him over a CG alternative who would scrap government so that each individual could rise to their maximum potential unshackled by outside interference.

As you have described it I'm not seeing the sinister tinge. Unless your reference to "putting people where they can best boost societal productivity" is a reference to enslavement or something similar. But in that case why would good people support this ruler?

For me, your example drives home my broader difficulties with Law and Chaos as expressions of personal social theory: AD&D and 3E build in an assumption that someone's view about freedom and regulation can be divorced from the view of human welfare. Whereas in fact every serious thinker, from Milton Friedman to Karl Marx, has favoured a view about freedom and regulation because of it's connection to human welfare. When John Rawls, for instance, describes libertarian "government" as not only unjust but not even decent, he is not leaving it an open question whether or not it is good. He thinks that it is an evil. But D&D forces Rawls to imagine that someone can be a committed libertarian who is nevertheless good, because it insists that Rawls accept that CG is a feasible moral outlook.

For me, that is not really coherent.

 

[N'raac]

I can't tell if you're agreeing with me or not - you post all this stuff which looks like it's intended as rebuttal, then say that L/C plays out mostly as I describe. So in what way am I wrong?

In the typical game world, my experience is that Good and Evil are in a state of open warfare, while Law and Chaos are existing in fairly peaceful co-existence. I recall one published scenario which structured a mixed G/N/E band of Lawfuls against a force of Chaotics, but I don’t ever recall seeing a second.


The original rules had Law, Neutral and Chaos, but “Law” rapidly became “Good” and “Chaos” became “Evil”. An old White Dwarf article proposed the 2 axis grid (using Dr. Who and the Daleks to suport CG and LE), which went into Basic, and AD&D, and then came out of BECMI. The original Moorcock source never really made it into the game materials.

In 4e, the Primordials want to undo the world and remake it. The Gods want to preserve the world within the Lattice of Heaven. The explanation for their conflict is not that one is disciplined and the other unruly - in 4e Thor would side with the gods just as much as Heimdall or Tyr would.

As I read your earlier posts, the Primordial vs Gods conflict seemed like Law vs Chaos. That may have been a misread on my part. What does the Lawful Monk and Chaotic Bard have to do with the Primordials vs the Gods (some of the latter being chaotic – not sure whether any of the former are Lawful)?

What do you think this means for play? It's like saying the player defines his/her PC's eye colour - it's not a statement about mechanics or adjudication, because there is no mechanical alignment.

Eye colour seems more objectively measured to me. I would suggest the player defines his character’s attitudes and outlooks. The observer defines them, subjectively with no objective alignment rules, as “Good” or “Evil”, “Lawful” or “Chaotic”. Maybe some people think that Bard’s more Neutral, or even Lawful, based on his overall behaviour. Maybe some in his order view that Monk as a Chaotic influence, out adventuring with musicians, of all things, instead of meditating on a proper schedule.

The PC, like the NPC, has the capacity to persuade others. The player, unlike the GM, has a mechanical resource available.

These are quite different things.

Why have mechanics for persuasion at all? Why not just let the player tell you whether his character is persuasive or not? He gets to decide his character is stubborn and impossible to persuade, why not how persuasive he is as well?

The tradition of different resolution mechanics for PCs vs NPCs in respect of social conflicts also goes back a long way: in AD&D, for instance, NPCs but not PCs roll reaction on a random table, make morale checks to see if they are afraid or not, and make loyalty checks to see if they keep their word or not.

I can’t argue that this is not a longstanding tradition of D&D rules. It’s been around as long as, say, fighters and wizards – as long as hardy Dwarves and agile Elves. Why, it’s been around as long as mechanical alignment! J

Also, why are you supposing that it is the character who authors the wish list? That is something the player does.

The Paladin decides what he will take as treasure and what he will leave as he does not value it. The player is just helping you out by telling you what his character considers trash, and what is treasure.

My quote from the DMG 2, p 101, does not refer to consequences of faiure. It refers to a -5 penalty consequent upon success.

It only applies to characters who help the guards recapture escaped slaves. How is that not a specific allegiance?

They can recapture the slaves for any reason, and any PC could do so. Which other PC’s could have had a character resource removed by Vecna for their interference? I view that bonus/penalty structure as a social interaction result of their activity. They did not lose a character resource – no one has a lesser or greater diplomacy or intimidate skill. The circumstantial bonus or penalty applied to specific applications of the skills have changed due to a change in the circumstances.

I don't understand how you arrive at the conclusion in the second sentence without using real-world reasoning.

“Once these [Law, Chaos, Evil and Good] are tangible forces, many of the questions go away”? I don’t need any real world history and philosophy of ethics to reach those conclusions. Do you know of a lot of objectively tested real world moral theories? I don’t think we have tangible, verifiable forces of these concepts in the real world, but maybe I have missed them.

I'm not so vain as to think that this is directed towards me in any way. Nor am I so OCD that I feel the omission of a number of details from this scenario is a problem. But since I literally used those exact words earlier in this thread, I'll offer up this probably completely unnecessary and superfluous preemptive aside anyway.

FWIW, I was not directing anything towards you. But your comments are good ones, and welcome.

First, it is entirely possible for a GM to abuse that role and actually bludgeon his players without that being an issue on the side of the players. Just saying. I know you didn't say otherwise, but I think there's the risk of that being implied. The "totatitarian temptation", to use Jonah Goldberg's phrase, is seductive to most people in our society, and GM's, who feel a sense of ownership, big picture vision, and "I know what this game needs better than the players" rather easily are hardly immune from it. When this happens, this clearly isn't a player issue. Although I do agree with your later sentiment expressed above; I don't know why a player would wish to game in such an environment. And I say this as a gamer who primarily identifies with the GM's side of the screen, although naturally I play on both sides frequently.

Either side, or both, can definitely be at fault. My focus was on the “problem player”, and your comments add some balance to that – thanks!

Secondly, even players and GMs that don't normally have any kind of adversarial or antagonistic relationship often find, in my experience, the catalyst needed to develop traits of one in alignment, which is a flaw with the concept of alignment, and not with the character traits of either the player or the GM. This is, indeed, my fundamental bone to pick with alignment and it's twofold: 1) it crosses the line between what is GM territory and what is player territory in rather overt terms. Not to make light of obviously much more serious situations, but in a gaming group dynamic, it's like Germany invading the Sudetenland or Russian invading the Crimea (good heavens, I Godwined myself. But I trust that that won't actual derail the discussion.) It's the GM using the system to enforce, or at least penalize, player behavior. And not in in-game ways (like if your character insults the duke, his guards throw you out of the duchy, or put you in the stocks, or whatever) it's in a much more cosmological, metagamish manner. The entire concept grates the wrong way against me, and it hardly requires an antagonistic player who wants all adjudications to go his way to get that vibe out of alignment. Especially when applied to a class in which alignment restrictions are part and parcel of the mechanics.

The problem player I envision would be no more accepting of the Duke punishing their rudeness. To me, however, alignment pushes the Cosmological Force into a role not too dissimilar from that of the Duke – a powerful NPC who may take offense and/or action based on the actions of the PC’s.

And 2) it's so poorly defined, poorly expressed, poorly understood, and subject to so many wildly differing interpretations that barring the extremely unlikely coincidence of all players and the GM being on exactly the same page as to what alignment actually means, it is a constant source of conflict. Sure, by "conflict" I might mean that the player accepts what the GM says without complaint and moves on, but even in that case, the potential of the game, and the satisfaction in the game is not insignificantly diminished for the player.

While I can’t dispute that issues can arise when the rules are less than clear, I don’t think that’s less of an issue for many other rules. [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] and I had some lengthy discussion on whether Planar Binding equals unlimited wishes from Glabrezu, as one small example.

I don't really see in what way this person is evil, at least at this level of description. What is evil about ending banditry and boosting production? Or about self-enrichment, for that matter, which is a goal that nearly all contemporary people have.

At the risk of setting off a firestorm, are we to accept that a goal shared by much of contemporary society is necessarily Good? I think Mother Theresa is widely considered Good, and she would have been under a vow of perpetual poverty, I think. I don’t recall Ghandi or Mandela doing a lot of product endorsements.

Too far into real world already, so I’ll just delete your latest jaunt into philosophy of ethics. Maybe someone else will want to discuss that with you.

 

[jsaving]

OK, but I dont' see what this has to do with my stereotypical LN monk or my stereotypical CN bard. The monk wants to meditate. The bard wants to play practical jokes and have a good time. Unless someone actually forces the two to live in the same very small house for weeks at a time with no escape, I don't see that they are going to come to blows.

You are right that the personality-quirk aspects of Law and Chaos, like meditation and carousing, wouldn't prompt much in the way of fundamental disagreement. It's the other aspects of Law and Chaos that cause problems -- "wanting to have a good time" is one minor manifestation of the bard's desire to be free from external structure/judgment, while "wanting to meditate" is one minor manifestation of the monk's desire to have everyone understand and accept their proper placement in the greater whole. And *those* aspects of the stereotypical LN monk and CN bard are much more problematic from a "can't we all just get along" point of view.

For me, your example drives home my broader difficulties with Law and Chaos as expressions of personal social theory: AD&D and 3E build in an assumption that someone's view about freedom and regulation can be divorced from the view of human welfare. Whereas in fact every serious thinker, from Milton Friedman to Karl Marx, has favoured a view about freedom and regulation because of it's connection to human welfare. When John Rawls, for instance, describes libertarian "government" as not only unjust but not even decent, he is not leaving it an open question whether or not it is good. He thinks that it is an evil. But D&D forces Rawls to imagine that someone can be a committed libertarian who is nevertheless good, because it insists that Rawls accept that CG is a feasible moral outlook. For me, that is not really coherent.

I agree with much of what you wrote here. Friedman picks CG rather than LG for his alignment in part because he sees freedom and altruism as inextricably bound together, whereas Rawls makes the opposite judgment and opts for LG rather than CG. But the fact that Friedman sees no legitimate way for a genuinely altruistic person to favor social democracy doesn't make him correct, nor does Rawls' view of libertarianism as a stalking horse for selfishness make him correct. All it does is say that they feel very strongly that their alignments are the right way to go, which is after all what alignment is supposed to signify in-game.

I *do* expect that there'd be deep disagreements over the number of people they'd expect to occupy each square of the alignment grid if we could see what alignments people in society truly have. Rawls would be deeply convinced that those who claim to combine selflessness with a love of freedom (CG) secretly want that freedom so they can prey on the innocent, and he would therefore expect to see the CE square chock-full while the CG square would be essentially empty. On the other hand, the Chicago economists would "know" social democracy is just a stalking horse for the road to serfdom and would expect everyone who espouses LG sentiments to secretly be LE and show up as such when tested.

But I don't see either of these perspectives as invalidating the 9-square alignment model or "forcing" anybody to acknowledge the legitimacy of each square. If anything, these perspectives actually reinforce (at least to me) the importance of the Law/Chaos dimension and demonstrate how and why it can fracture Team Good, with CGs and LGs each deeming the other's point of view to be illegitimate...

 

[Hussar]

To be fair though, the Lawful/Chaotic axis has been largely ignored throughout much of DnD. Most conflicts have been presented in terms if good and evil.

And to me this fits with genre. Fantasy is usually about morality stories. Good vs evil. Good vs good. Evil vs evil. Fantasy is rarely grounded in ethics which is where lawful and chaotic are derived.

To me SF does ethics much better.

 

[pemerton]

the fact that Friedman sees no legitimate way for a genuinely altruistic person to favor social democracy doesn't make him correct, nor does Rawls' view of libertarianism as a stalking horse for selfishness make him correct. All it does is say that they feel very strongly that their alignments are the right way to go, which is after all what alignment is supposed to signify in-game.

I *do* expect that there'd be deep disagreements over the number of people they'd expect to occupy each square of the alignment grid if we could see what alignments people in society truly have.

<snip>.

But I don't see either of these perspectives as invalidating the 9-square alignment model or "forcing" anybody to acknowledge the legitimacy of each square. If anything, these perspectives actually reinforce (at least to me) the importance of the Law/Chaos dimension and demonstrate how and why it can fracture Team Good, with CGs and LGs each deeming the other's point of view to be illegitimate...

Your first paragraph I can agree with (though there may be issues of simple ignorance or confusion, rather than actual malice, diagnosed by both sides). It is in the second paragraph, and then bridging that to the last paragraph I've quoted that I find alignment breaks down.

In D&D, Rawls (or Friedman or whomever) can cast Know Alignment (or Detect X in 3E) and learn that someone is good. And when Rawls casts Detect Good, he gets told that a CG person is good and that a LG person is good. The spell doesn't tell him that one is more good than the other (eg it doesn't make the LG people register as really good, and the CG people register as "well-intentioned but confused about social and economic causation"). Likwise, in reverse, for Friedman.

That is why I think D&D does force those within the gameworld to acknowledge the legitimacy of each square, and therefore leads to incoherence. Because a LG person is obliged to acknowledge the full goodness of a CG person, and vice versa. (Evil might have a parallel issue, but I'm not even sure that overt commitment to evil makes sense, so the notion of a CE person forming the view that a LE person is not really evil enough isn't as clear to me. That's why I choose LG and CG as my examples.)

A single spectrum model, like early classic D&D and 4e, doesn't have the same problem. I'm not in love with those systems either, but I don't find them literally incoherent.

 

[pemerton]

As I read your earlier posts, the Primordial vs Gods conflict seemed like Law vs Chaos. That may have been a misread on my part. What does the Lawful Monk and Chaotic Bard have to do with the Primordials vs the Gods (some of the latter being chaotic – not sure whether any of the former are Lawful)?

In my game there is a conflict between (most of) the Gods, and (most of) the Primordials. Heavenly order - reaching its ultimate expression in the Lattice of Heaven - and elemental chaos. (There is a subsidiary conflict between the Gods and the Demon Lords, who want dissolution without recreation. Though for the chaos drow, this is not subsidiary, because it establishes the Primordials as the middle-way between two extremes, whereas the more mainstream perspective sees a dichotomy rather than two extremes with a middle.)

My point about the monk and bard is that Law and Chaos as expressed in AD&D and 3E (i) don't have much bearing on the cosmological question in my game, which is much more about design and creation rather than discipline and irresolution (which is how Law and Chaos tend to be framed), and (ii) to explain why I find the L-C part of mechanical alignment even less helpful than the G-E part. In particular, nothing in AD&D or 3E tells me which of Law or Chaos is more desirable - in fact the mechanics of the game require me to treat either as a completely rational object of desire, whereas the rules make it quite clear that evil is undesirable (see "X Evil is the worst because . . .), whereas for the players in my game choosing whether to opt for heavenly order or elemental chaos is something they have to do. And in respect of which they might benefit from guidance. Which alignment mechanics, in my view, do not provide.

I would suggest the player defines his character’s attitudes and outlooks.

I still don't know what you mean by this. A player plays his/her character. Through that play, and how the player characterises the PC both in and out of character, we get a sense of how the player views the PC. Just as we learn whether the player thinks his/her PC is clever, or subtle, or ruthless, so we learn whether the player thinks his/her PC is honourable, or wretched, or whatever.

It is not part of the PC building process, nor the action resolution/adjudication process, to determine whether the player's conceptions of his/her PC are correct. That's what it means to play without mechanical alignment.

Why have mechanics for persuasion at all? Why not just let the player tell you whether his character is persuasive or not? He gets to decide his character is stubborn and impossible to persuade, why not how persuasive he is as well?

Because we are demarcating what parts of the gameworld the player is in control of, what parts the GM is in control of, and what parts are determined via action resolution. The sort of symmetry you are arguing for - as if it was a matter of justice between players and . . . (whom?) . . . - doesn't really resonate with me.

Do you think the game you're describing would be much fun to play? I'd need to see the details, but to me it doesn't sound that promising without more. (Eg if once per session the "persuasive" player can spend a token to declare that one NPC has changed his/her mind on one topic, maybe that could work.)

I know that the approach I'm using does make for a sastifactory and satisfying game.

The Paladin decides what he will take as treasure and what he will leave as he does not value it. The player is just helping you out by telling you what his character considers trash, and what is treasure.

Yes. That's my point. It is the player who authors the wishlist, including by playing the paladin. The paladin doesn't know that treasure is a rationed resource like hit points or skills or any other aspect of PC build. That player does, though, and in all those matters makes choices and advises the GM accordingly.

Do you know of a lot of objectively tested real world moral theories? I don’t think we have tangible, verifiable forces of these concepts in the real world, but maybe I have missed them.

I think you are expressing opinions here that violate board rules. So I won't pursue them further.

At the risk of setting off a firestorm, are we to accept that a goal shared by much of contemporary society is necessarily Good? I think Mother Theresa is widely considered Good, and she would have been under a vow of perpetual poverty, I think. I don’t recall Ghandi or Mandela doing a lot of product endorsements.

I don't see any particular connection between product endorsements and earning money via effort. (I don't think Benjamin Franklin would see any particular connection there either.)

Most contemporary Catholics would, I think, regard the vow of poverty taken by nuns and others as superogatory - a good that is exemplary, but not obligatory for everyone to achieve. They would accept that one can be good without being poor.

D&D has certainly never taken the view that being a good PC requires being poor, or that aspiring to material well-being constitutes an evil action.

 

[N'raac]

Yes. That's my point. It is the player who authors the wishlist, including by playing the paladin. The paladin doesn't know that treasure is a rationed resource like hit points or skills or any other aspect of PC build. That player does, though, and in all those matters makes choices and advises the GM accordingly.

And, by building his character to accept only specific items as "treasure", it follows that you must respond by delivering those treasures, to keep his treasure packets on par with his level. Not really different from letting him design/select/assign his own treasure within a wealth guideline. But if he chooses to use poisons, and chooses to classify that as honourable, then clearly whatever power he serves does not disagree to the extent of removing his powers, his state of grace remains, and it seems his use of poison must be honourable.

I think you are expressing opinions here that violate board rules. So I won't pursue them further.

I am quite happy to have no further discussions of real world ethical and moral philosophy.

I don't see any particular connection between product endorsements and earning money via effort. (I don't think Benjamin Franklin would see any particular connection there either.)

Most contemporary Catholics would, I think, regard the vow of poverty taken by nuns and others as superogatory - a good that is exemplary, but not obligatory for everyone to achieve. They would accept that one can be good without being poor.

D&D has certainly never taken the view that being a good PC requires being poor, or that aspiring to material well-being constitutes an evil action.

Funny...my question was whether we are to take anything accepted by much of contemporary society is necessarily Good. I then provided a few examples of people I believe contemporary society consider Good who clearly did not share the goal you suggested was in no way tinged with evil. Your response is to attack the examples, rather than to answer the question.

The question remains "are we to accept that a goal shared by much of contemporary society is necessarily Good?" I will refrain from cluttering the question with any further examples to avoid distracting from it.