Do alignments improve the gaming experience?

[pemerton]

What he knows is whether a specific action is good, evil or neither. Only he can decide what is right or wrong in the broader circumstances.

How is that to be determined, if not by some account of the connection between the act and some good? But then who gets to define the latter good? If the character, then in what sense does the "cosmological force" have a monopoly on what counts as good? If the objective force, then how come it disapproves of the character acting in pursuit of its own ends?

The fact that the rules list them as the ideals of Good seems to me to provide the game conceit that they are motivated or generated by reference to that ideal.

In that case, how does a character who takes action to further that ideal count as acting evilly? Which is what you are positing, when you posit a character who acts evilly yet can plausibly claim to be acting for the greater good.

You are the one who began the discussion of adherence to arbitrary rules.

And? I pointed out that those who adhere to the rules don't believe them to be arbitrary, typically because they have a conception of the underlying rationale for adhering to the rule, which they then give effect to in their judgements as to what counts as compliance or non-compliance.

You are positing "cosmological forces" that apply precepts without any regard for the underlying values they serve. That is rules fetishism. You also seem to think that it can simultaneously be LG and LN, but that's a contradiction I'll leave for you to resolve.

What ideals did he profess to live up to? The defined by game rules ideals of Law and Good, or did he define his own ideals, which may best be demonstrated outside actions one might define as Lawful and Good?

When I play D&D, I don't first read the rulebooks about Law and Good and Evil and whatnot. I draw upon my own knowledge of the culture and tradition and tropes and history and legend and wish-fulfilment and ludicrous romance that the game is built upon.

When I was a boy, that was Lego Castle and knights and dragons. I would like to think that today my conception of chivalric romance is more sophisticated. It can certainly be adapted in ways I had never thought of when I was young (for instance, the treatment of duty in Act 2 of the Valkyrie, which I at least find incredibly moving).

For me, the point of fantasy RPGing is to connect to these stories, and tropes and themes. To the extent that I have a conception of what LG is, its because I know its the alignment of paladins, and I know what a paladin is because I know those stories. To the extent that I have a conception of what LN is, its because I know that is the alignment of the quintessential martial artist, and I know that trope. To the extent that I have a conception of what CG is, its because I can imagine Robin Hood and his merry man, jolly outlaws who only rob from the rich and who give to the poor.

You seem to be positing something exactly backwards: that I would read the alignment system, try to get some independent handle on it (though I'm not sure how, because you don't want me to use the only methods that strike me as relevant), and then from that to work out what a paladin is, or what a monk is? I personally find that a very strange way to approach the game.

In a game featuring mechanical alignment, I need not assess whether a character is "honourable". <snip> I do not see "Honourable Kindness" represented among the alignments

From the d20 SRD:

a paladin’s code requires that she respect legitimate authority, act with honor (not lying, not cheating, not using poison, and so forth), help those in need (provided they do not use the help for evil or chaotic ends), and punish those who harm or threaten innocents.

. . .

A paladin who . . . grossly violates the code of conduct loses all paladin spells and abilities​

In other words, to adjudicate a paladin within the mechanical alignment and code framework of 3E I do need to adjudicate his/her conduct by reference to honour and also helping those in need (which = kindness, as far as I can tell).

Here is some more from the same source:

Lawful characters tell the truth, keep their word, respect authority, honor tradition, and judge those who fall short of their duties.​

Now how is "acting with honour" defined? As not lying or cheating (= telling the truth and keeping one's word). So lawful characters are defined as honourable. Indeed, the definition of the paladin's code overlaps heavily with lawfulness ("respect legitimate authority" is very close to "respect authority", given that I think it is widely accepted that LG types don't respect tyrants and other illegitimate authorities). The "helping those in need" and "punishing those who threaten or harm innocents" seems to come from the paladin's goodness, however:

"Good" implies altruism [= kindness], respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others.​

The particular form of personal sacrifice the paladin makes is the sacrifice of risk-taking in the defence of others: that is the sacrifice appropriate to an honourable warrior (= knight).

you sure claim a lot of knowledge of mechanical alignment while indicating you don't use it and have not for many years.

Put it this way: I don't think I'm claiming knowledge that I don't have.

And we're back to Brave, Brave Sir Robin - he has written it on his character sheet, and thus when he flees, wets himself, or refuses to emerge from beneath his bed, he must be doing so bravely.

Are you intending to imply by this that GM-enforced alignment is needed to keep players true to their conceptions of their characters? I can't see what other purpose this particular remark serves.

If that is what you are intending, then I see no evidence that it is true. On this point my experience is very much the same as [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s - most players, when given the freedom to do so, will play sincerely. That a player's sincere conception of what honour, or paladinhood, requires might be different from mine, or from another player's, is not a problem. It's a wonderful thing!


********************

Given that the term is defined only by reference to knighthood, I'll give you the relationship. Now, does every knight live up to these ideals, or is it the case that not all knights are Paladins? I note Sir Elton John and Sir Paul McCartney, neither of whom, I suspect, would lay claim to dexterity in arms.

<snip>

Where does a Black Knight fit into your assertion of the game's intentions?

Did I ever assert that all knights are paladins? No. Did I assert that paladins state the ideal of knighthood? Yes. I stand by that second assertion.

A black knight is a villain. A blackguard, even! In the language of the original game, an anti-paladin. (Just as an evil high priest is an anti-cleric, and a person wrongly exercising the power of the papacy is an anti-pope.)

And what knighthood as part of the contemporary British honours system has to do with D&D at all is beyond me. (Though at least I didn't anticipate the red herring. I had assumed that your irrelevant example would be the chivalric aspirations of some of the WWI fighter pilots.)

Does it also follow that there can be no Commoner Paladins? What was Joan of Arc's rank in the nobility?

<snip>

for some reason, D&D 4e absolutely dismisses the idea of any Paladin who has not been raised to noble status by being Knighted

The whole point of the story of Joan of Arc is that she is a knight, is truer to the ideals and aspirations of knighthood than those who call themselves knights. (Two classic cinematic representations of this idea is found in John Boorman's Excalibur, first when Arthur hands Excalibur to Uriens so that Uriens can knight him as a necessary condition of swearing fealty, and then when Percival is knighted so he can take up the challenge to defend Guinevere's honour. In both cases, each is inwardly a true knight than those around them, and the ceremony merely reflects that. Natural law, and providence, is a significant component of the cultural outlook from which the paladin archetype springs. And to allude to [MENTION=6701124]Cadence[/MENTION]'s example of Yamamoto Date, in The Seventh Samurai we find the similar idea expressed with respect to Toshiru Mifune's character, who even though not literally a samurai is in certain ways truer to the underlying ideals than some of the "real" samurai.)

Crusaders, perhaps?

Who do you think these were? (Hint: French, German and English knights.) Who do you think there greatest exemplars were? (Hint: the crusading orders of knighthood, such as the Templars and the Teutonic Knights.) How did they fight? Whether in the lands around Anatolia and Jerusalem, or in the lands around Prussia and Poland, they fought by putting on heavy armour, getting onto heavy horses, and charging. That was the source of their military power - the mounted charge. What is the name for a heavily-armed mounted warrior? (Hint: a knight.)

Right after dismissing your comparison as superficial.

Have you read Three Hearts and Three Lions?

In the meantime, here are some of Wikipedia's greatest hits:

[sblock]

Holger Carlsen is an Allied covert operative who assists the Danish Resistance to the Nazis. After an explosion, he finds himself carried to a parallel universe, which proves to have the Matter of France as its historical past. . . His quest finally leads him to discover that he is Ogier the Dane . . .

The Matter of France, also known as the Carolingian cycle, is a body of literature and legendary material associated with the history of France, in particular involving Charlemagne and his associates. . .

Central figures of the Matter of France include Charlemagne and his paladins, especially Roland, hero of The Song of Roland . . .

Ogier the Dane first appears as one of Charlemagne's knights, in Chanson de Roland​

[/sblock]

Gee, I wonder if any of that involves knights? That's right, ALL OF IT DOES. In other words, the book that OSRIC cites as the immediate inspiration for the D&D paladin is a modern version of mediaeval stories written for knights about knights.

 

[N'raac]

Yes, I agree there were exceptions (though I'm not sure that a samurai really counts as one!)

But I think you're losing the context.

I disagree. I think those examples clarify that the heavily armored mounted Knight is one example of a character who might, if he also hols true to specific ideals of LG, be a Paladin. The "Knight in Shining Armor" is one example of a Paladin in a certain culture. But not all Paladins are Knights, and not all Knights are Paladins. I would not expect all Samurai to qualify either, as I believe their hallmark is more Law than Good, but a Samurai could certainly be Good and be an exemplar of the ideals of both Law and Good. Such a character would face a significant challenge should his obligations as a Samurai (Law) come into conflict with his ideals of Good.

I mentioned the example of Sturm Brightblade as an example, from core D&D material - the Dragonlance Chronicles, for heavens sake! - who did good, and became a beter Knight of Solamnia, precisely because he eschewed the fetishism of rules and precepts in favour of the realisation of the underlying values.

First, Dragonlance is not universally viewed as "core D&D". For a hyperbolic discussion of same (by its author's admission), see http://grognardia.blogspot.ca/2008/04/how-dragonlance-ruined-everything.html. It tossed Halflings for Kender. It removed, at least initially, clerical spells (so a Cleric was a fighter with poorer rolls to hit, weaker weapon choices and less hp). And it removed Paladins, replacing them with Knights of Solamnia. IOW, a specific choice was made that the Knightly Order of which Sturm Brightblade was a member was not an order of Paladins.

@N'raac asserted (by way of rhetorical question) that Sturm being a better knight didn't mean he showed us a better paladin. Now obviously N'raac can play the game however he wants, but how can it be seriously asserted that Sturm is not intended as a model for knightly, chivalric, honourable, paladin-esque behaviour within the context of D&D play?

You are putting words in my mouth. What I have said is that blind adherence to fetishistic dogmatic rules is closer to LN than to LG, such that the specific character departed from the rules of his Order to become closer to a Paladin-esque character. Had there been Paladins in DL, he perhaps would have become one. But the fact that most of the Order were bound more to rules than to the ideals of Good indicated that not all those Knights were Paladins, or exemplars of Paladinlike LG behaviour.

It has been many years since I read the first DL module or two (our group was never really taken with the setting), but I recall some early discussions of how the KoS seemed a variance of Paladins, who were more Good than Lawful, to a class more Lawful than Good.

This has the same degree of plausibility as his argument upthread (reiterated just above because, in a moment of alliterative enthusiasm the 2nd ed authors mentioned only Galahad and Gawaine from the Arthurian tales) that Aragorn, Arthur and Lancelot have nothing to tell us about what a paladin might look like or how one might be played.

I do not see where, from the quote, you cited, it is any more plausible that the choice of examples was pure alliteration rather than specific Knights chosen for their specific characteristics. Even if "The Knights of the Round Table" were cited, they were specifically called out as having a "superficial resemblance". It has also been pointed out that few of the Knights of the Round Table were Paladins in the Deities & Demigods sourcebook. The Cavalier, introduced in Unearthed Arcana, seems a clear indication that, while the medieval Europe setting of D&D envisioned all Paladins as Knights (although again, Deities & Demigods, provided other examples), not all Knights were Paladins. Not even close.

In that case, how does a character who takes action to further that ideal count as acting evilly? Which is what you are positing, when you posit a character who acts evilly yet can plausibly claim to be acting for the greater good.

To me, the alignment system takes the position that the ends do not justify the means. Many heroic tales include Our Hero admonishing another, often a youthful sidekick, that, if we stoop to their methods, then we have already lost. That is a definite trope of fantasy fiction, and of heroic fiction in general. The Paladin has faith that he need not stoop to evil means to accomplish Good - providence will ensure that the Righteous shall prevail.

And? I pointed out that those who adhere to the rules don't believe them to be arbitrary, typically because they have a conception of the underlying rationale for adhering to the rule, which they then give effect to in their judgements as to what counts as compliance or non-compliance.

You are positing "cosmological forces" that apply precepts without any regard for the underlying values they serve. That is rules fetishism. You also seem to think that it can simultaneously be LG and LN, but that's a contradiction I'll leave for you to resolve.

Once again, you provide your opinions as mine. I am positing that those cosmological forces have a conception of the underlying rationale for adhering to the rule, and neither they nor their True Believers consider them to be arbitrary. It is interesting that the Lord moves in mysterious ways only when we discuss mysteries of which you are supportive.

When I play D&D, I don't first read the rulebooks about Law and Good and Evil and whatnot. I draw upon my own knowledge of the culture and tradition and tropes and history and legend and wish-fulfilment and ludicrous romance that the game is built upon.

Excellent. So do I. I then evaluate the consistency of my character's views, shaped by those traditions, tropes, history and legend in light of the manner in which alignments are set out in the rulebook, and select the alignment that I find to be the best match for that character's ideology. If I find this a close call, I discuss it with the GM, perhaps other players, to see what best fits with the parameters of this setting and game.

Only having done that do I assess mechanics such as class selection. Having determined my character believes the ends justify the means, and that he is perhaps only borderline LG, or perhaps not LG at all, I do not select the Paladin class, because my character is, quite clearly, not a devoutly LG character. That is, I do not read the rulebook first, decide to play a Paladin because I like the name, or some mechanic, then chafe because the Paladin class mechanically does not fit my character conceptually. I select mechanics second, based on concept first.

This sounds like what you are describing, until we get to some dogged determination that your character simply must be LG and/or a Paladin, rather than selecting game mechanics consistent with the concept you have developed independent of those mechanics.

To the extent that I have a conception of what LG is, its because I know its the alignment of paladins, and I know what a paladin is because I know those stories. To the extent that I have a conception of what LN is, its because I know that is the alignment of the quintessential martial artist, and I know that trope. To the extent that I have a conception of what CG is, its because I can imagine Robin Hood and his merry man, jolly outlaws who only rob from the rich and who give to the poor.

I thought you were developing your character outside the rulebook first. Why do you find the need to define your character primarily in rulebook jargon? This is the failing of many players of Thieves, back in the day, who decided the name means "I must steal from my friends", ultimately moving the name to Rogue to help these poor people who could not get past the tag attached to a certain class.

From the d20 SRD:

a paladin’s code requires that she respect legitimate authority, act with honor (not lying, not cheating, not using poison, and so forth), help those in need (provided they do not use the help for evil or chaotic ends), and punish those who harm or threaten innocents.

. . .

A paladin who . . . grossly violates the code of conduct loses all paladin spells and abilities​

In other words, to adjudicate a paladin within the mechanical alignment and code framework of 3E I do need to adjudicate his/her conduct by reference to honour and also helping those in need (which = kindness, as far as I can tell).

Here is some more from the same source:

Lawful characters tell the truth, keep their word, respect authority, honor tradition, and judge those who fall short of their duties.​

Emphasis added. Didn't you tell us all that, in the discussion of @Hussar's scenario where two characters disagreed on the appropriateness of torture to the LG alignment, to judge the other was completely inappropriate, as it demonstrates the sin of pride? Yet here, we see that the rule book directly contradicts you. That again suggests that one assess the alignment based on what the rules say. Perhaps you would describe that as Chaotic Hypocritical. YOUR CHARACTER would not judge others. Great - I fully support your right to realize your vision of your character. So pick an alignment which is non-lawful, as your character does not judge others, or which is lawful, acknowledging that he has a trait which is not consistent with Law, but also possesses many traits which are lawful - he tells the truth, keeps their word, respects authority and honors tradition. But don't then decide our character is also OK lying and cheating, chafes under authority and values change - or at least, don't do so while insisting the rest of us accept he remains lawful.​

A black knight is a villain. A blackguard, even! In the language of the original game, an anti-paladin. (Just as an evil high priest is an anti-cleric, and a person wrongly exercising the power of the papacy is an anti-pope.)

Indeed - he is both a villain and a Knight. There was no anti-paladin in the original game (outside the occasional magazine article), and clerics of both good and evil deities existed.

The whole point of the story of Joan of Arc is that she is a knight, is truer to the ideals and aspirations of knighthood than those who call themselves knights.

Then we are departing from the dictionary definitions of Knight. It's very difficult to converse rationally when we must first intuit the Pemerese meaning of familiar-sounding words. Perhaps this is why the rule books seek to define more narrowly terms that have broad interpretations in general language. To me, if the word is defined in the rule book, that definition replaces its ordinary meaning for purposes of the game. [This is similar to matters of law, where we turn to ordinary meaning, often from dictionaries, only when the term does not have a defined meaning under statute or at law.]

Who do you think these were? (Hint: French, German and English knights.) Who do you think there greatest exemplars were? (Hint: the crusading orders of knighthood, such as the Templars and the Teutonic Knights.) How did they fight? Whether in the lands around Anatolia and Jerusalem, or in the lands around Prussia and Poland, they fought by putting on heavy armour, getting onto heavy horses, and charging. That was the source of their military power - the mounted charge. What is the name for a heavily-armed mounted warrior? (Hint: a knight.)

Yet none of this makes them Paladins. Perhaps there were some within their orders (and/or legends) who might also be Paladins, but again, all Paladins are not Knights and all Knights are not Paladins. The addition of the Cavalier, referenced a few times in this thread, seems an explicit recognition that mounted Knights are hardly all Paladins. One might well have a character who is both a Knight and a Paladin. It does not mean all Knights are Paladins, nor that all Paladins are Knights, nor that each member of either group aspires to be a member of the other.

 

[N'raac]

BTW, @pemerton, if your vision of the ideals of Paladinhood (and LG behind it) come from the tropes of literature and legend, how does that reconcile with 4e's radical shift to allow Paladins of Good, Neutral and Evil deities? I can be a Paladin of the God of Murder and Carnage under 4e rules, espousing the ideals of Chaos and Evil, which hardly seems consistent with your vision. I could play such a character in any edition, but I don't believe he would be accepted as LG, and only 4e would accept him as a Paladin.

To me, that is another indication that "ordinary English meaning" must often be superseded by "specific definition within relevant rules".

 

[Cadence]

Yes, I agree there were exceptions (though I'm not sure that a samurai really counts as one!)

But I think you're losing the context.

Sorry, wasn't trying to address your previous argument directly - was just adding some stuff I thought was interesting in regards to how 1e addressed Paladins and alignment.

@N'raac asserted (by way of rhetorical question) that Sturm being a better knight didn't mean he showed us a better paladin. Now obviously N'raac can play the game however he wants, but how can it be seriously asserted that Sturm is not intended as a model for knightly, chivalric, honourable, paladin-esque behaviour within the context of D&D play?

Certainly, all else being held fixed or not slipping too far, being a better knight seems like it should make a current paladin be a better paladin. The not back sliding too far on the connection to the divine seems vital - if Joan or Lancelot turned their back on God, they'd merely be Knights.

 

[Imaro]

[MENTION=6681948]N'raac[/MENTION] : I can't XP you but good overall reply in post 1222.

 

[Nagol]

Just pointing out there were several types of knight historically:

• Holy orders like the Hospitalier, Templar, and Teutonic
• Landed knights -- promoted by nobility and controlling a fief
• Household knights -- promoted by nobility and given a position inside someone else's fief
• Knights Errant -- promoted by nobility, but not granted a fiefdom nor position in a household

It would be... odd if the latter three categories were considered divinely inspired.

 

[Hussar]

Reading through this, I'm finally having something of an epiphany about play styles. Let me see if I can get this out in a way that makes sense. Again, this is all my own opinion and I'm not trying to argue that this is the only way to see things. The reason that we're having such a difficult time reconciling these views is that the three basic play styles represented in this thread have fundamentally different criteria for what makes a good game.

1. The Gamists.

Nagol some time back asked about strongly gamist players and how you would rein them in in a game without mechanical alignment. The funny thing is, that's the wrong question. To see how gamist players react to my approach, you only have to work your way back a few pages to an exchange between myself and [MENTION=3192]howandwhy99[/MENTION]. There, he argued that alignment is a statistic and as such, needs to be tracked just like you track everything else in the game. My response was that I track virtually nothing in the game and he responded by throwing up his hands and declaring that I wasn't even playing a game anymore.

And, from his perspective, he has a very good point. The goal of gamist play is to challenge yourself against the scenarios provided by the DM. You play from the perspective that everything is a puzzle or challenge. Alignment is useful in that it defines some of the difficulty levels of the game. Without mechanical alignment, you are free to choose the solution which is the most expedient. But, that's ultimately unsatisfying. It's like playing a video game on easy mode. There's no challenge (or at least the challenge is significantly reduced).

The same goes for the idea of the players choosing their own levels or being able to choose what monsters to face. That wouldn't work in a gamist game. It would be entirely boring. It's God Mode play. Very unsatisfying.

2. The Simulationists (with a heavy dose of immersionists)
[MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION] talks about "exploring the DM's world". That's a pretty clear simulationist approach to the game. And, if alignment can mean multiple things, you can't really explore it. It's like trying to explore a quantum situation where something is and is not at the same time. It's not going to be satisfying, because you can't explore it.

With [MENTION=6681948]N'raac[/MENTION], he's approaching things heavily from a world building point of view. If a player (and thus a character because for an immersionist, there should be little to no difference) can define morality, then there isn't any morality in the world. It's like the situation with the Glabrezu wish that got brought up earlier in the thread. For N'raac, you use the alignment mechanics to increase the difficulty to gain a free wish because if it was easy, everyone in the world who could, would do it. For me, the world can go hang. I'd allow the wishes to go through because it would make an interesting story. Which brings us to the third corner of the triangle:

3. The Narativists.

The goal for Nar play is to create an interesting story through the collaboration of the entire table. This isn't simply collective story telling though since we also have the additional random element of the mechanics. N'raac brings up the idea of the two paladins, with one deciding to torture a prisoner and justifying it through the idea of the "greater good". He talks about how it would be a great game for a player, knowing that it was evil, to still choose to fall. And, yeah, that could be great.

But, the problem for me, is that's the DM's story, not the player's. The DM is telling the player, "That is an evil act, if you do that, you will violate your paladin's oath". The player can then choose to follow the DM's story or not, but, at no point can he tell his own story.

For me, the cooler story would be for the player to choose to go through with it. As a DM, you can bet that I'm going to run with that. What can be justified for the greater good? How far will this character go? What about the next time? What about the other character? What if he sees that the ends actually do justify the means and chooses to change his character. This just adds all sorts of conflicts into the party and I'm going to be in the corner giggling like a concussed monkey on peyote.

Again, no one is wrong here. Everyone is actually right, but the criteria are very different and that needs to be kept in mind when discussing this. Pemerton's approach likely won't work at Imaro's table, for example. His players and Imaro himself would likely balk at this style of play. That does not make Pemerton wrong though. It's just a different way of gaming.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I do not regard myself as a simulationist.

 

[Nagol]

Reading through this, I'm finally having something of an epiphany about play styles. Let me see if I can get this out in a way that makes sense. Again, this is all my own opinion and I'm not trying to argue that this is the only way to see things. The reason that we're having such a difficult time reconciling these views is that the three basic play styles represented in this thread have fundamentally different criteria for what makes a good game.

I'm not sure your categories work well in this regard.

What we have to determine is motivations to play versus and the consequence that fall out. Please note the use of "can" rather than "will" -- each person has a different threshold of deviance from expected norms and different internal checks and balances to modify behaviour in a group dynamic.

For most PCs, alignment acts as a sanity check/group consensus as to how each PC is acting. For a few it acts as a check on behaviour. I'm going to concentrate on the latter for the moment.

A better list of player types for this would be found in Robin Law's Good Game Mastering.

Power Gamer -- wants to success in game. Without checks on behaviour, someone engaging in power play can ignore behavioural restrictions that are meant to provide both play balance and genre expectation when they interfere with in-game success.

Tactician -- wants to work through challenging logical situations. Without checks on behaviour, someone engaging in tactical play can ignore behavioural restrictions that are meant to provide both play balance and genre expectation when they contradict an obvious logical way forward.

Butt-kicker -- wants to blow of steam and have fun. Without checks on behaviour, someone engaging in butt-kicker play can ignore behavioural restrictions that are meant to provide both play balance and genre expectation when they interfere with immediate action.

Method Actor -- wants to explore a specific role. Without checks on behaviour, someone engaging in method play can ignore behavioural restrictions that are meant to play balance and genre expectation when they conflict with how a particular personality would react or if the player view and the DM's view of the genre are out of sync.

Storyteller -- wants to build a compelling story. Without checks on behaviour someone trying to build a compelling narrative can ignore behavioural restrictions when those restrictions interfere with what is perceived a better twist/narrative turn.

Casual Gamer -- wants to hang out with friends. Without checks on behaviour someone engaging in casual play can ignore behavioural restrictions pretty much at any time.

 

[JamesonCourage]

Reading through this, I'm finally having something of an epiphany about play styles.

I think this is a pretty well-thought out, reasoned post, and I wanted to publicly acknowledge it in the thread (since XP comments aren't available, and since I can't hit Hussar with XP at this time). It's very civil, thoughtful, and hitting on some truths, in my opinion. I can see how people might disagree with bits and pieces, but I also think this post adds a lot to this discussion.