Is Chaotic evil more evil than Lawful evil?

[Drifter Bob]

Well contemplating the severe risk that you'll be killed or maimed does tend to inculcate mixed feelings... but from everything I've read, including veterans' accounts, I'd say there was quite a remarkable degree of agreement among American service personnel that the enemy was evil and the war worth fighting. I'm sure not everyone agreed, certainly there was a good deal of pro-German sentiment among German-Americans in the USA, but it seems like most people did to an extent rarely seen before or since. Of course the Germans also saw WW2 as a patriotic fight against evil (the USSR), and the Russians saw it as a patriotic fight against evil (the Third Reich).

I've read a lot of first hand accounts of WW II, and the first part of your statement is the key. People today just don't have a realistic grasp of what war on that scale meant. According to WARTIME, by Paul Fussell, the average US infantry division in Europe replaced 150% of it's combat troops, and over 250% of it's junior officers from June of 1944 through January of 1945. That does not include divisions which were 'combat reduced' i.e. destroyed as a unit, as quite a few were, for example a dozen or so at the battle of the bulge. In other words, a typical unit of 10,000 or so troops, would have gone through 15,000 replacements in that time period. Think about it.

Since no country in WW II could afford to have the kind of rotation policies developed in later wars, once put into the line, you were there until the end. The chances of surviving were very slim. Your only way out was if the war ended, you died, you were maimed (anything less than a cripping injury would get you put back into the line) or you were captured.

Troops on all sides knew that front line duty was a death sentance. Most of the Germans were aware they had lost the war from the time of Stalingrad in WW II until the bitter end in 1945. The Soviets.... well, the Soviets lost 20 million people during the war.... the UK lost so many people so early on that by the time the U.S. came into it, they couldn't afford to fight with the aggressive tactics demanded by U.S. doctrine, leading to conflicts between top Allied generals. For the U.S., the biggest problems were inexperience especially of leadership, and the horrible replacement system.

I saw a U.S. WWII veteran on the History Channel the other day describing how his unit recieved replacements one day for a destroyed tank company (about 20 tanks). The replacements turned out to have been trained as infantry and as rear area personell (cooks, clerks etc.). So they divided them into groups of five, assigned each a tank, gave them a few hours to learn to drive the thing, showed them how to use the radio, allowed them each to fire three rounds, and sent them down the road to face the panzers. As they followed down the same road that evening, he saw 17 knocked out sherman tanks.

In U.S. infantry units, it was common for the veteran soldiers to refuse to even talk to replacements, who they resented because they died so quickly.

I reccomend reading Paul Fussels Wartime, or watchin the recent film "When Trumpets Fade" which is about the battle for the Hurtgen Forest.

DB

 

[Atom Again]

IA person is walking through a neighborhood on a fairly hot day. Nobody is outside almost anywhere. He walks past a house with a swimming pool in the back yard. A young kid has fallen into the pool and obviously cannot swim. The yard has a fence around it saying "No Tresspassing".

If the person is:
LE- He will stand by the fence and watch as the kid drowns and be amused by it. "Ignored the sign, the little moron, serves him right". Even had there been no fence, he would never have saved the kid (unless it was his own).
NE- He will look around, and make sure that nobody is looking. If the coast is clear, he may chuck a rock to two to make sure of the desired outcome.
CE- They will jump the fence and go help the kid shuffle off the mortal coil. They may be a bit careful to make sure nobody is watching.

Utter nonsense. To suggest that a character of evil alignment in D&D will *always* let an innocent die is to reduce evil characters to caricatures.

Tony Soprano = Lawful Evil. What would he do? He'd utter some curse in Italian then go get the kid out of the pool.

 

[Drifter Bob]

By saying the US army is better than the SS or Stalinist Red Army?
I suppose if I were a veteran of the Waffen SS I might be offended... on balance though his statements seem unremarkable.

Maybe it was my derogatory remarks about klansmen? We are in a rather far-right political climate here in the US right now....


DB

 

[buzzard]

By saying the US army is better than the SS or Stalinist Red Army?
I suppose if I were a veteran of the Waffen SS I might be offended... on balance though his statements seem unremarkable.

Or you didn't read them all very carefully

Drifter wrote:
"You are half right. Lawful evil is a fairly common alignment in RL. Your basic redneck "kick their ass and take their gas" ultra conservative US citizen, "

This might have slipped by you. It didn't slip by me. He didn't persist in it, so I don't much care, but it is slamming an end of the political spectrum over a bumper sticker which I find amusing, though of course unrealistic.

buzzard

 

[Drifter Bob]

Or you didn't read them all very carefully

Drifter wrote:
"You are half right. Lawful evil is a fairly common alignment in RL. Your basic redneck "kick their ass and take their gas" ultra conservative US citizen, "

This might have slipped by you. It didn't slip by me. He didn't persist in it, so I don't much care, but it is slamming an end of the political spectrum over a bumper sticker which I find amusing, though of course unrealistic.

buzzard

If you are trying to tell me "kick their ass and take their gas" is both a legitimate political philosophy and a benign, non-evil statement, then you are going to find me quite unsympathetic to your argument.

I never said you aren't entitled to it, but that is an extreme point of view, and frankly, evil almost by definition.

And I don't think reffering to "ultra conservative" rednecks is particularly much different from the klan or ultra leftwing stalinists. If you happen to be a stalinist or a nazi yourself, you can love it or lump it for all I care.


DB

 

[buzzard]

Utter nonsense. To suggest that a character of evil alignment in D&D will *always* let an innocent die is to reduce evil characters to caricatures.

Tony Soprano = Lawful Evil. What would he do? He'd utter some curse in Italian then go get the kid out of the pool.

Utter nonsense? That's a quite a bit too harsh. It is an illustrative example which contrasts the different approaches to evil acts. If you can't see it for such, you are not trying. Nowhere do I say the character of a given alignment will act in such a way on a consistent basis.

Your counter argument isn't about evil, it about evil people ocaissionaly doing good things. Saving the kid is a good act. That's clear to anyone. Saying Tony Soprano would save the kid adds nothing to a discussion of his alignment. Sure maybe he would. Maybe he'd just walk on by and ignore it. However we're talking here about evil acts. what about if it were a kid which he didn't like and had made his life difficult? Think he's save the kid in that circumstance?

Though I did think of a flaw. The LE, as per the example, would probably find a means of trying to prevent others from rescuing the kid. For example playing a stereo loud to prevent cries for help being heard.

buzzard

 

[Drifter Bob]

Utter nonsense? That's a quite a bit too harsh. It is an illustrative example which contrasts the different approaches to evil acts. If you can't see it for such, you are not trying. Nowhere do I say the character of a given alignment will act in such a way on a consistent basis.

Your counter argument isn't about evil, it about evil people ocaissionaly doing good things. Saving the kid is a good act. That's clear to anyone. Saying Tony Soprano would save the kid adds nothing to a discussion of his alignment. Sure maybe he would. Maybe he'd just walk on by and ignore it. However we're talking here about evil acts. what about if it were a kid which he didn't like and had made his life difficult? Think he's save the kid in that circumstance?

buzzard

I agree, it is childish to assume that an evil person always commits evil acts or behaves in a consistently evil manner 100% of the time, just as it is to assume that someone who is evil invariably identifies themselves as such. Most evil people in RL would tend to think of themselves as essentially good people, or at least, pragmatic in a world of dupes (i.e. neutral). In DnD, it largely depends on how you view alignment detection spells, and of course with monsters it would be different, but it would be a pretty silly campaign if every single person who is evil consciously identifies that way 100% of the time like say, skeletor from he-man.

Tony Soprano doesn't think of himself as a bad guy, he thinks of himself as a pragmatic individual who 'does what he has to.' He would very likely rescue a child, but he would also shoot the childs father later on if the guy reneged on a debt, for example.

It's not that you do evil all the time, it's that you will routinely commit evil acts that identifies you as evil. Are there gray areas? Of course, and that is what is missing from the current alignment system. Other games will rate you as say, 80% chaotic, 20% evil, 10% good, or something like that. Lacking this level of detail, we have to just view this with common sense.


DB

 

[buzzard]

If you are trying to tell me "kick their ass and take their gas" is both a legitimate political philosophy and a benign, non-evil statement, then you are going to find me quite unsympathetic to your argument.

I never said you aren't entitled to it, but that is an extreme point of view, and frankly, evil almost by definition.

And I don't think reffering to "ultra conservative" rednecks is particularly much different from the klan or ultra leftwing stalinists. If you happen to be a stalinist or a nazi yourself, you can love it or lump it for all I care.


DB

Obviously the humor value of said bumper sticker blows right past you. Attributing evil motives in the face of obviously tongue in cheeck bumper stickers is asinine.

Sure, there are undoubtedly evil rednecks out there somewhere. In your further elaboration now you've tagged conservatives with the KKK, nazis and any other bogeyman of the moment. While it appears that being diplomatic, isn't a major concern of yours, why don't you try avoiding the conservative label as something associated with evil, if only to not provoke people. I suspect this will fall on deaf ears however.

buzzard

 

[Drifter Bob]

Obviously the humor value of said bumper sticker blows right past you. Attributing evil motives in the face of obviously tongue in cheeck bumper stickers is asinine.

Obviously, if is meant tongue in cheek, or even as a mean spirited joke, it isn't necessarily an evil motive. It is still an evil joke, but evil jokes can be funny, are in fact often funnier than 'nice' jokes. If it is however meant seriously as a heartfelt point of view, which is how I was referring to it in my post, then it is an evil motive. Are you honestly saying that none of the people who repeat or display slogans like that actually mean it for real? I can promise you I know plenty of people who do.

Sure, there are undoubtedly evil rednecks out there somewhere. In your further elaboration now you've tagged conservatives with the KKK, nazis (snip) why don't you try avoiding the conservative label as something associated with evil, if only to not provoke people. I suspect this will fall on deaf ears however.
buzzard

I didn't say conservatives were evil or that they were equivalent to the KKK or nazis. I said KKK and nazis were ultra conservatives. They happen to be on that end of the political spectrum pal, like it or not. Just as Stalinists are ultra leftists , on the far end of the other side of the political spectrum. You may have some other more poltically correct newspeak for such extremist abberations, but that is what they are.

As for your interpretation, I refer you back to my earlier post about peoples own alignments affecting their interpretation of alignment in general, i.e. lawful people think chaotic alignmens are more evil. Similarly, people with an evil 'motive' who rationalize it in some way as being benign will tend to resent said motive being described as evil. That doesn't change the fact that it is, again, by definition.

And as for being diplomatic, with all due respect, for somebody who thinks "kick their ass and take their gas" is real funny, you sure have a thin skin. I call a spade a spade, if you can't handle that, move somewhere with no free speech.


DB

 

[Umbran]

Just as Stalinists are ultra leftists , on the far end of the other side of the political spectrum.

Actually, Stalinists were not really on the left side of the spectrum. They said they were leftists. The philosophy they claimed to follow, the doctrine they espoused, were left. Communism theory is left - but in theory, communism has no government at all. Communism practice, as seen so far, has been right - totalitarian government with all power in the hands of a few individuals. Stalinists weren't terribly different from fascists.