Yes, I did. At what point in that do you see me saying anything that disagrees with your point?
And my point was the you can give species different temperament without giving them predisposition towards "good" or "evil."
Sure.
Now?? Now?? I haven't changed my position at all.
Yes, we can imagine dispositions which might make the creatures ream more "evil" in some sense, but we also don't need to assign creatures such.
I never said we need to. I only said that we can and further that if we do - that is if we have somethings that can freely choose between good and evil and do so, and other things that though they can freely choose by temperament and beliefs always choose evil or always choose good than we now have more paints in the palette. We have more things with which to compare and contrast.
We are not talking about anything objective and measurable, we are talking about a social construct. And the purpose of this construct is to communicate morals of the fictional setting. That people who play these games cannot agree what it means is a clear indication that this tool is not fit for the purpose.
I don't think any of that follows.
No, I am not. I am claiming that objective morals tends to produce boring fiction.
And here is where I want to put my main focus. Because while I quibble with a lot of what you are saying and think it's highly illogical, it's here where I think we can most productively disagree.
The overwhelming majority of human produced fiction comes from a place of and advances objective morality. This includes the works of Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, JRR Tolkien, Raymond Chandler, Dante Alighieri, Orson Scott Card, CS Lewis, Rumer Goden, John Steinbeck, Jane Austin, Ursula K. LeGuin and on and on. Even authors that you might not think about advancing an objective morality are really only advancing alternative objective moralities - the author's take on how we ought to behave (but frequently do not). This includes works like Mark Twain, Earnest Hemingway, and Homer's 'Iliad & Odessey'. This is true across both western and easter literary traditions, all the differs is exactly what objective morality is being advanced by the author. Even many stories where you have a protagonist that's morally ambiguous and compromised and sometimes downright unlikeable, such as in the works of Gene Wolfe are still coming from a place of the author's objective morality. Obviously of course, you could claim that since all of these objective moralities contradict, that none of them are definitively objective, but that would be a very different claim than claiming that objective morals "tend to produce boring fiction". Even something like Beowulf is coming from a place of objective morality. You're talking about the bulk of stories that have captured the imagination of mankind through the centuries.
And this hasn't changed. If you go and read the Hugo winners or Nebula winners you'll find that while the particular features of the advanced objective morality have evolved or changed from what was most typical a few years back, your still dealing with stories where the author clearly believes there is a definitive right and wrong.
Now, a slightly smaller set of works but still quite common come from a place of amorality. That is to say the protagonist actions are presented without the author passing judgement explicitly on the character, such as perhaps in the "James Bond" works of Ian Fleming.
But the rarest sort of stories, one that almost never appears in the canon of literature is a story about subjective morality. I'm struggling to think of one that qualifies. Perhaps Camus's "The Stranger" is the strongest example I can think of where the author attempts to advance that morality is wholly subjective, and even then though I'm not sure he succeeds at that and being convincing about it. Nor am I prepared to claim it was a more exiciting and less boring story than the usual ones that do assume that good and evil are objective concepts back by certain characteristics and actions.
If being destructive without being able to make moral choices about it is evil, how are natural disasters not evil?
I mean are natural disasters evil? I think that's a very interesting question. I might not agree, or I might agree, but I think it would be very interesting to play with such a setting. I remember one short story about a wizard that learns "desert magic" that basically suggests desertification is inherently evil. Good times.
Perhaps. I am not saing that we cannot try to define morals, or discuss them. We certainly can. But in fiction exploring morals is interesting, and objective morals get in the way of it.
I mean I'm looking at my bookshelf and they just don't.
I don't want there to be Gygax given correct answers to moral questions..
This is such a fundamental misunderstanding of play under the alignment system that I'm at a loss how to have a conversation with you because I feel like we speak entirely different languages. Gygax doesn't give answers. The Gygaxian great wheel puts the entire space of human thought out there in a simplistic framework and makes them equal. The devils could be just as right as the archons or the slaad or the modrons and you take side in that conversation.
I want the players to be freely able to make up their own mind what good and evil means to them.
Again, strongly pushing Chaotic Neutral here, but nothing about the alignment system precludes you doing that. If players want to play characters that believe they can freely make up their own mind what good and evil means to them, then they can play Chaotic Neutral characters and explore that. But they could also say, "Wait a minute, this time I want to play a character that doesn't believe he has the right to decide for himself what constitutes good and evil, that maybe good and evil are imposed externally by some other higher thing whether it's a deity or logic or society or whatever he sees as that source of higher truth." And that player can explore that, and maybe explore it in contrast to the character that believes that everyone ought to be bound only by the dictates of their own conscious.
But the thing is, it always feels to me like an excuse for telling an amoral story where that really isn't explored to say that the story gets more interesting if there isn't any way to categorize or any framework around this discussion.
Look, I have played CN characters. I can make elaborate arguments that CN is the best and most right moral philosophy and defend it as an intellectual exercise. I'm just not about to force that one way is the only way "ism" on my game world. Heck, I can because I'm called on as the GM to RP Neutral Evil characters make elaborate arguments to justify that NE is the right and moral and correct approach to finding yourself in the world. But again, just because I can entertain those thoughts within the game world doesn't mean I believe them. It's just that I recognize that questions like, "Is morality subject or objective?" aren't simple clear cut things that have obvious answers, and even if I did believe that they did I'd never be particularly interested - as you appear to be - in playing out such a simplistic clear-cut setting where those important questions have already been decided.
Having in-character ethical debate produces far more engaging fiction than casting "detect evil" ever does.
The two are not mutually exclusive. Detect evil, even if you pass your scrying check in my game (because divinations in my game work off a skill check) gets players in so much trouble because the think it's some sort of win button. Like just because the mine owner is a hard-nosed evil SOB, doesn't mean he's the murderer or that you can just go and attack him without any evidence of his wrong doing or that the good aligned citizens of the town are going to approve of your vigilante justice or even that your vigilante justice isn't itself immoral. This is like the claim that objective morality produces boring fiction. It feels just a wee bit... overstated? I'm trying to think of a word here that isn't harsh, but well... have you really stepped back and looked what you are saying in the larger context?
