D&D 5E The Multiverse is back....

[I'm A Banana]

Good grief. Normally, when I hear about something from people who love it, I start to appreciate it more. I might not come to like it, but at least I start to see what people see in it.

But hearing more about Planescape from people who love it just increases my distaste. Okay, yes, I do see the drama inherent in shaping the multiverse to your belief. I can see that one could run a campaign on that basis. I just have less than zero interest in playing in such a campaign. Actually, that's an understatement. I experience a deep, utter loathing that is both intellectual and visceral for the very concept of such a campaign.

Hehe, that's a pretty extreme reaction! But I'm certainly not trying to sell you on it. Please, don't play stuff you're not going to like!

In the setup described here, there's no reason to believe in anything! Anything at all! It's just the arbitrary exercise of your will (shades of Nietzsche!). You choose something, and by your own sovereign ubermenschlichkeit force your vision on the world. What it is doesn't matter! Not in the least.

Yeah, kind of! "Excercising your will" is going to involve running around casting spells and sticking swords in things and visiting dead gods and infinite trees and having tea with demons and the like, but I don't think that's an inaccurate characterization. A PC can have any belief, and PS is set up so that such a belief has the power to change the multiverse if they apply it and act upon it and survive the challenges it will face.

It's just plain no way to run a multiverse. Even if you succeed in changing things, so what? It's all just a matter of personal preference anyway. There is a nihilism at the core of this setting that is apparently ineradicable, and I will never be reconciled to it.

Your ideas survive you, so if someone wants to change the multiverse after you've left your mark, they're going to need to be just as heroic or villainous as you were!

This one quote alone would make me refuse to touch the setting with a ten foot pole.

Evil has *nothing* to offer, despite all appearances. Evil appears glamorous, appears to offer what you want, but it in fact has nothing, it is empty at the core. The drama in the universe as I know it to be is the drama of seeking for that which is truly desirable amidst all the false desires held out to us.

That's certainly one fine way to play the game. Planescape is D&D with plenty of grey shades, though. And ACTUAL grey shades, not just "I'm dark and broody and anti-hero-ish" aesthetics! It's morals and ethics in a funhouse mirror.

Sounds like it's not for you, and that's fair.

And I don't think you should have to play a game in which it was assumed that PS was the game's default cosmology!

 

[Nivenus]

Sorry, I am a latecomer to this thread and what I have to say has probably been covered multiple times over 86 pages, but this topic is important enough to me to feel the need to respond anyway.

I think the best parts of all the different philosophies that gamers have on the planes could have been interconnected to make a majority of us happy. Some people seem to love the unique nature of the planar descriptions of their own setting and like to keep it unique. Others love the interconnected nature of Planescape (and Spelljammer). I can't see why these two major concepts couldn't be combined.

Maybe certain planets subscribe to the Great Wheel Cosmology (I'd go with FR and Greyhawk at least for these). They share gods and events in the planes like the blood war. This can help explain, for one, the seemingly infinite number of soul-origin critters in the planes like the tanar'ri. Could GH alone have provided so many souls for the Blood War alone?

But then, places like Eberron can have their own cosmology as well. I don't know that system well, but I remember reading up on their planes and it was cool as heck.

Why lose that? But here is the kicker, find some way to allow travel between cosmologies as well. If someone wants their character to head to Xyber (or whatever it is called) there should be a way to do so.

I have even used different cosmologies within the same world. As a Maztica fanatic (the Aztec setting from 2e), I have my own cosmology even though Maztica was on Toril. I HATED that Quetzalcoatl (called Qotal in Maztica) had a domain where he could stop by Bahamut's to borrow some sugar. There was just too much intermixing there for me.

Why can't you have the best of both worlds?

I agree wholeheartedly (and I believe several other people in the thread do as well)! No one should be forced to use a cosmology that you don't want to use and the rulebooks should support not only multiple cosmologies but the ability to craft your own as well. Individual campaign settings ought to be able to utilize their own individual cosmologies and DMs should be allowed to pick and choose what they want to use.

Fortunately, it seems that's largely Wizards' plan. I've already shared this quote before, but it bears reposting I think:

I think there's a tremendous value in allowing DMs and world designers the freedom to design a cosmological system that suits the exact needs of a particular campaign. But this approach has its pitfalls as well.

Probably the biggest danger is in eroding the things that everyone knows about D&D—the D&D intellectual property, to put it in legal terms. Everyone knows that demons come from the Abyss, right? Well, except they come from the Twelve Hours of Night in the Pharaonic cosmology, and in Eberron they come from a couple of different planes. The Blood War is an important element of D&D, right? Except how does it make sense in Eberron, or in the 4th edition cosmology?

Those are relatively minor issues, all things considered. And the reality is that it's not actually very hard to reconcile even vastly different cosmologies. As I've mentioned before, the Great Wheel cosmology doesn't model an objectively verifiable truth. There isn't a being in the multiverse, except maybe an Overgod figure like Ao (and he's not talking), who can look down and see the planes in their arrangement as we look at a diagram in a book. Is the plane of Celestia sandwiched between Bytopia and Arcadia? Who can say? The only way to get from one to another is through a portal anyway, so for all anyone knows, that portal could be crossing a thin planar boundary, hopping to a different branch in a cosmic tree, or traversing incredible distances across an Astral Sea.

For that matter, is there actually a place called Celestia? A lot of lawful good deities seem to have realms with quite a bit in common—steep mountain slopes, archons all over the place, an air of beneficence to the place—but are they physically connected? Maybe. Maybe not.

For the purposes of your campaign, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you talk about Celestia or about the Seven Heavens or about the distinct divine realms of Green Fields, Dwarfhome, and the House of the Triad.

So while we're probably going to present the Great Wheel as a default, to establish some common ground as a key part of D&D lore, I plan to make sure we talk about other options as well. As long as you don't stray too far from the baseline, the rest of your game doesn't need to change much if at all—demons, devils, angels, shadow walk spells, elemental summoning, and even planar travel can all work normally, even if your cosmology is creatively different.

Consider also this passage from the 5th edition Player's Handbook's description of Sigil and the Outlands:

The Outlands is circular, like a great wheel—in fact, those who envision the Outer Planes as a wheel point to the Outlands as proof, calling it a microcosm of the planes. That argument might be circular, however, for it is possible that the arrangement of the Outlands inspired the idea of the Great Wheel in the first place.

Basically, it sounds like WotC's plan is to presume all official settings are part of a shared multiverse, but that within each setting the structure of that multiverse is going to vary as per the local beliefs. Celestia might be perceived as a single plane in Sigil but a series of distinct planes on Toril. Daanvi in Eberron corresponds in some way to the Great Wheel plane of Mechanus but it's not an exact match and may represent its own reality. The true arrangement of the planes, according to WotC, lies very much in the eye of the beholder.

My own personal view is that the structure of the planes isn't something that can be easily mapped to a two-dimensional or even three-dimensional representation. Aspects of the Great Wheel, World Tree, and World Axis may all be valid. It's possible the elemental planes simultaneously exist "closer" to the Prime and "below" it. The Outer Planes may in some respects be organized as a wheel while still floating freely in the Astral Plane/Sea. The seeming contradictions this implies are actually somewhat charming in my view: they exemplify how strange and unknowable the planes ultimately are.

 

[pemerton]

I'll admit that I don't fully grasp the internal logic some have provided that LG/E or CG/E are somehow less good or evil than NG/E - the idea that Good/Evilness are somehow tempered in concentration by Law and Chaos - and its implications for the planes. What 'universal law' actively prevents the existence of a system/object/subject that's one hundred percent good and one hundred percent law? Are the Law/Chaos and Good/Evil axises independent of each other or not? If they are independent, then L(100)/G(100) should be hypothetically possible. If not, then we move to new planar quandaries.

This is a good way of expressing my point about coherence in summary form.

 

[Imaro]

I'll admit that I don't fully grasp the internal logic some have provided that LG/E or CG/E are somehow less good or evil than NG/E - the idea that Good/Evilness are somehow tempered in concentration by Law and Chaos - and its implications for the planes. What 'universal law' actively prevents the existence of a system/object/subject that's one hundred percent good and one hundred percent law? Are the Law/Chaos and Good/Evil axises independent of each other or not? If they are independent, then L(100)/G(100) should be hypothetically possible. If not, then we move to new planar quandaries.

This is a good way of expressing my point about coherence in summary form.

Ok, let's look at what alignment actually is because Law/Good/Evil and Chaos all make up the alignment of the person in question... from 3.5 SRD

A creature’s general moral and personal attitudes are represented by its alignment... seems simple enough

So moral and personal attitudes are a finite quantity (let's say 100%... since you can't have more than 100% of something) expressed broadly in terms of alignment in the game... and if they are defined as totally (100%) good (and if not how can you be absolute good)... how can they also be even partially centered around or concerned with law as well? The only person who can (theoretically) achieve absolute good is a NG person... since the finite quantity of his moral and personal attitudes are completely centered around being good... not law, not chaos just good.

Stepping away from alignment for a moment and using another example it's like claiming your focus on math for your exam is absolute while studying for both a math and english test (even if you're studying more on one than the other) s... it's impossible to be absolutely focused on two different things. English and math are separate subjects but your focus can only be 100% upon one or the other...

EDIT: This also ties into Moorcockian alignment in that extremes of chaos or law make good (and I would argue also evil) impossible. 100% law or order is totally unchanging stagnation and 100% chaos is unknowable constant change.

 

[Nivenus]

So moral and personal attitudes are a finite quantity (let's say 100%... since you can't have more than 100% of something) expressed broadly in terms of alignment in the game... and if they are defined as totally (100%) good (and if not how can you be absolute good)... how can they also be even partially centered around or concerned with law as well? The only person who can (theoretically) achieve absolute good is a NG person... since the finite quantity of his moral and personal attitudes are completely centered around being good... not law, not chaos just good.

That's exactly how I was going to explain it but you saved me the trouble .

Basically, every individual only has the capacity to care so much about a given value set. If they're 100% dedicated to good/empathy/kindness they can't be simultaneously 100% dedicated to law/order/stability or chaos/liberty/change. They only have so much ability to be dedicated to one or the other. By prioritizing both, they necessarily value each less than if they were dedicated to one. The planes are the same way: they can only be suffused with so much ideological energy, be it from good, law, chaos, or evil. It's basically similar to how you can have be level 20 fighter or level 20 wizard or a level 10 fighter / level 10 wizard, but you can't be a level 20 fighter / level 20 wizard; you're necessarily sacrificing some of your fighting expertise or arcane power to dedicate yourself to both paths.

Most people, of course, aren't 100% dedicated to anything. A given individual neutral good character might be 45% good, 20% law, 15% evil, 15% chaos, and 5% order. Or they might be some other mix. Only outsiders are "pure" good, law, evil, or chaos (and of course, an archon is actually 50% law and 50% good, rather than 100% one or the other).

Of course, you might not want to quantify they kinds of things at all if you feel that debases any of the four concepts. But then, what's the point of asking the question?

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'll admit that I don't fully grasp the internal logic some have provided that LG/E or CG/E are somehow less good or evil than NG/E - the idea that Good/Evilness are somehow tempered in concentration by Law and Chaos - and its implications for the planes. What 'universal law' actively prevents the existence of a system/object/subject that's one hundred percent good and one hundred percent law? Are the Law/Chaos and Good/Evil axises independent of each other or not? If they are independent, then L(100)/G(100) should be hypothetically possible. If not, then we move to new planar quandaries.

This is a good way of expressing my point about coherence in summary form.

Thinking in terms of percentages kind of misses the point about subjectivity that I've been making.

If it is possible to be "100%" something, its limits must be known, as 100% is defined as going to the utmost limit of that thing, and it is impossible to go beyond that limit. One must have a boundary to meet.

But the planes are physically and morally and ethically infinite. Center of All. There are no absolute limits, only limits on a particular individual's experience.

It is not possible to be any percent good or lawful, because Good and Law are infinite, because what is meant by "Good" or "Law" is determined by what infinite numbers of people believe it to be. Even Primus can't be 100% Lawful, because there's no outer limits on the concept of Law, so to someone who, for instance, believes that compassion is a prerequisite for social order will not believe that Primus is as Lawful as it is possible to be in life. And someone who believes that there is no real such thing as Law believes Primus to be exactly as Lawful as the Slaad Lord of Entropy, just more deluded about it. And those characters have a say in the fabric of reality as well.

So why does Primus sit in Mechanus and ping on Detect Law spells? Because most people in the cosmos believe that that's how it works. Those folks who believe that compassion is a prerequisite for social order or who believe that there is no such thing as Law haven't managed to convince the multiverse that they're right when a typical PS campaign opens. The arc of a typical PS campaign follows characters who believe things like that as they come up against "most people," and fight for their beliefs.

It's not much different from the arc of a typical save-the-world D&D campaign, functionally: that game will follow the PC's as they change what was once considered inevitable, that the world is going to end at the hands of the BBEG. A PS game follows the PC's as they change what was once considered inevitable, like "Primus is Lawful."

 

[pemerton]

It's coherent because "good" in D&D terms means something very specific, as has been pointed out. And that specific value set may or may not be all that matters to a character.

<snip>

From the perspective of each of these other alignments, neutral good characters place an overly high value on certain virtues that are either incomplete (lawful good and chaotic good), insignificant (lawful neutral and chaotic neutral), or callow (evil).

<snip>

The entire point of having a perpendicular axis to good and evil is that law and chaos have equal value in the eyes of many inhabitants of the multiverse!

<snip>

good has a clear definition in the rules. But that definition leaves out several principles that many characters consider valuable.

<snip>

Only if you consider good to be inherently better than law and chaos, which isn't the way the nine-alignment system is designed; lawful neutral, chaotic neutral, true neutral characters are just as valid for play as lawful good, chaotic good, and neutral good characters are.

I guess this is a basic point of disagreement.

I think Gygax makes it clear that "good" denotes "contributes to human welfare", and that law and chaos are means to that end.

LN, CN and N are valid for play. So is evil (qv assassins). But they are not morally valid. Gygax makes it clear that to be neutral with respect to good and evil is to fail to prioritise human wellbeing (life, relative freedom and the reasonable expectation of happiness). The 3E/d20 system agrees (using the language of "respect" and "dignity" in lieu of the language of rights).

Where's the proof that Good is better than Evil in D&D? I don't see it.

I think that the rulebooks take it for granted that fostering human wellbeing, and treating others in a way that respects and honours their dignity as fellow-creatures, is a better form of life than treating others simply as ends to one's own purposes.

Actual arguments to this conclusion are available - and will be no less sound in a fantasy world than the real world - but my sense is that it would be a breach of board rules to run them!

there are some value systems where freedom has a higher premium than human life or the happiness of others.

Sure. They are flawed value systems (within the framework of D&D's 9-point alignment). Someone who supports freedom as a basis for human life and happiness is CG - s/he is committed to human wellbeing, and believes that social order is a threat to it. Someone who pursues his/her own freedom without regard to the welfare of others, except perhaps in hestitating to kill or destroy those who get in his/her way, is CN. By the lights of 9-point alignment, a morally flawed person.

I think it's entirely possible for a "broad definition" of good to include concepts that both chaotic good and lawful good characters value. Indeed such a broad definition seems otherwise useless.

Of course. My main point is that a CG person therefore has no basis for strife with a LG person - it's a dispute over taste and inclination.

My other point, to which this quote was a response, was that Gygax implicitly acknowledged that L/C and G/E aren't orthogonal, because he couldn't expound Good without reference to freedom. You can see the same thing in the d20 SRD:

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

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

"Law" implies honor, trustworthiness, obedience to authority, and reliability.​

These aren't orthogonal and independent. For instance, a concern for dignity implies a degree of truth-telling and trustworthiness. After all, lies and betrayal are one of the main ways of treating others as means rather than ends, and you don't have to be a full-blown Kantian to feel the force of this point.

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

You do realize Detect Evil/Know Alignment are spells that can be removed just as easily right?

<snip>

Well "remove it" can work for any edition, see above... so what makes 4e different in this aspect?

OK, if you think it's as easy to remove alignment from the Great Wheel and still have it make sense, as it is to remove alignment from 4e, then more strength to your arm!

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

The reason that it is possible for planes to shift in Planescape is because of the perspective of the rest of the people in the multiverse, not because of any intrinsic property of the act itself.

<snip>

what is good depends on what one views as good, so they've only revealed themselves to be less than fully good in the eyes of certain people. "Good" is subjective. And those views and perspectives can change, based on the actions of those with strong convictions.

Why, then, given their vast numbers, have the fiends of the world not succeeded in having the Lower Planes relabelled "good" and the Upper Planes relabelled "evil"?

I would say that, in D&D, the Good vs. Evil divide is a matter of taste insofar as there is no correct answer between the two, except for the belief of individuals on that count.

In the setup described here, there's no reason to believe in anything! Anything at all! It's just the arbitrary exercise of your will (shades of Nietzsche!). You choose something, and by your own sovereign ubermenschlichkeit force your vision on the world. What it is doesn't matter!

"Excercising your will" is going to involve running around casting spells and sticking swords in things and visiting dead gods and infinite trees and having tea with demons and the like, but I don't think that's an inaccurate characterization.

I agree with The Shadow that this seems a Nietzschean idea.

I probably differe from The Shadow in thinking that there are interesting, even plausible, elements to the Nietzchean idea (it sees development in a range of other modern philosophers: the existentialists; Foucault; Ayer and Russell; Simon Blackburn; etc). But it needs a lot of work - if value commitments are a mere matter of taste, then killing in pursuit of them seems outrageous - it would be killing others simpy to satisfy one's own desire, which in D&D terms is practically the definition of evil. So everyone woud be, in D&D terms, evil!

I don't think that D&D has the conceptual resources to easily articulate and make sense of a more sophisticated and plausible Nietzschean approach. And also, certain D&D character classes - especially paladins, monks and samurai - make no sense in the Nietzschean framework. It's no coincidence that fantasy authors whose outlook is closer to Nietzsche (eg REH, Moorcock) don't have paladins or monks in their fiction (in REH, for instance, there are no D&D-style priests, just more-or-less cynical magicians).

Planescape is D&D with plenty of grey shades, though. And ACTUAL grey shades, not just "I'm dark and broody and anti-hero-ish" aesthetics! It's morals and ethics in a funhouse mirror.

This language of "shades of grey" is a red-herring.

For a "shades of grey" political/espionage novel, I recommend Graham Greene's The Human Factor and The Quiet American. But Greene is not a Nietzschean - he's a Catholic existentialist. Here's a link to an actual play report from my own game, which shows what GMing influenced by Graham Greene might look like. The figher/cleric in that episode found himself in a situation in which he could not realise both honour and justice, and so had to choose. (He chose honour over justice.) That's "shades of grey", but has nothing to do with "good is what you believe it is" - the reason the choice matters, and is hard, is because the character (and the player in playing the character) feels the pull of both values as real and g

I think it's actually quite hard to articulate how the PS idea is shades of grey at all - if good is nothing but what I desire, where's the grey? What's the measure by which the greyness of my desires might be judged?

This relates back to my comments about wish-fulfillment some way upthread: if good is whatever one wishes, it's a challenge to move beyond wish-fulfillment. And I'm not sure that D&D has the resources to do so.

 

[pemerton]

Lawful good and good deities in 4e are just as (if not more) clearly the forces of righteousness in 4e as good deities were the forces of righteousness in prior editions. T

<snip>

The mechanics of alignment are largely removed, that's true, but that doesn't necessarily mean it has no moral or ethical significance within 4e's cosmology.

<snip>

Bahamut and Pelor in 4e are clearly good and turning on them would be similarly, by definition, "not good and probably evil."

I think you misunderstood my point.

You can delete the alignment line from all 4e monsters and NPCs and, except for a very few marginal elements that [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] mentioned upthread, the game and the cosmology stand unchanged.

This is not true for the Great Wheel, which can't even be described without reference to alignment.

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So moral and personal attitudes are a finite quantity (let's say 100%... since you can't have more than 100% of something) expressed broadly in terms of alignment in the game... and if they are defined as totally (100%) good (and if not how can you be absolute good)... how can they also be even partially centered around or concerned with law as well?

every individual only has the capacity to care so much about a given value set.

It's interesting to see the two of you embracing what [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] presented as a type of reductio ad absurdum!

The claim that each individual ony has the capacity to care so much about a given value set is an extremely doubtful proposition of moral psychology. For instance, I have two children. A work colleague of mine has four children. I doubt very much that she loves each of her children ony half as much as I love each of mine! The idea that human emotional and affective commitment is a finite quantity is a conjecture with little evidence to support it.

A further issue, when it comes to L/C and G/E, is that (at least in AD&D) law and chaos were presented as different means to the ends of good (or different ways of disregarding good, for evil characters). And if you are committed to goal X, and believe that action A is the only means to X, then you will be committed to A - and that commitment to A doesn't dilute your commitment to X, it affirms it!

If making sense of 9-point, 2-axis alignment requires abandoning common sense in the philosophy of action and moral psychology, that for me is yet another strike against it.

 

[Hussar]

I wasn't going to add any more here, BUT since you asked a question I know the answer to, then YES, Lawful Good types do sometimes try to forcibly convert NG and CG characters in Planescape (I'm not aware of any examples of NG or CG characters doing so.) Specifically, a Faction known as the Harmonium engaged in the kidnapping of NG and CG characters and took them to "retraining camps" on the third layer of Arcadia. However, this action resulted in that layer becoming LN, shifting away from Arcadia and becoming part of the Lawful Neutral plane of Mechanus. Also, a group based on Mt. Celestia is trying to poach land (and people) from the LG (N) plane of Bytopia. Hope that helps.

But that means that there actually are answers. If that act was good, it wouldn't have had that result. Why would a majority of people believe something to be not good and be so wrong as to force a plane into a new plane of existence? And, for the next bunch coming along, they aren't going to try the same thing because now they know that this isn't promoting good.

There's a few problems with this approach:

What's the divination spell supposed to show you... the consequences? If so it's actually kind of irrelevant; D&D alignment is primarily defined by means, rather than ends.


Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?356422-The-Multiverse-is-back/page87#ixzz3GG15gvHW

This is not true in D&D though. Alignment is virtually completely defined by ends (by which I take it you mean results). Killing isn't necessarily evil. It's who you kill (the end result) that matters. I can sit around and think evil thoughts all day long, but, unless I act on those acts, i will never be an evil character.

Again, what is good depends on what one views as good, so they've only revealed themselves to be less than fully good in the eyes of certain people. "Good" is subjective. And those views and perspectives can change, based on the actions of those with strong convictions.


Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?356422-The-Multiverse-is-back/page87#ixzz3GG1VC0Rq

But, D&D certainly doesn't present alignment this way. Good is not subjective at all. This, right here, is my basic problem with using D&D for this. Alignment is not subjective at all. It is objective and presented as such. And given that good and evil are actually physical forces in the universe, I don't really see how they can be subjective.

Wait, say what... the fact that I have the power to enact my beliefs upon the cosmos... is a reason to choose not to believe in anything?? Now that sounds incoherent to me.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?356422-The-Multiverse-is-back/page87#ixzz3GG2CJccw

Because your beliefs only matter insofar as you can convince others to believe the way you do. There is nothing to actually believe in. Someone who comes along and believes differently than you do has just as much chance (objectively) of being "right" as you do. It's pure nihilism. There's no good or evil, just opinion?

Basically, every individual only has the capacity to care so much about a given value set.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?356422-The-Multiverse-is-back/page88#ixzz3GG2taHK8

Morality as a zero sum game? I dunno about "absolute" focus, but I do know that it's possible to score perfectly on both a math test and a history test at the same time. If the two axis are independent, why does focus on one axis preclude focus on another?

 

[Imaro]

Thinking in terms of percentages kind of misses the point about subjectivity that I've been making.

I don't think it does... you still have a finite makeup of moral and personal attitudes.

If it is possible to be "100%" something, its limits must be known, as 100% is defined as going to the utmost limit of that thing, and it is impossible to go beyond that limit. One must have a boundary to meet.

No we are speaking to the limits of a person or plane to internalize and act within the limits of good/evil/law/chaos... not the actual cosmological forces themselves

But the planes are physically and morally and ethically infinite. Center of All. There are no absolute limits, only limits on a particular individual's experience.

I disagree... the planes as a whole have no limits... individual planes very much have limits on the make-up of the moral traits that they epitomize...

It is not possible to be any percent good or lawful, because Good and Law are infinite, because what is meant by "Good" or "Law" is determined by what infinite numbers of people believe it to be. Even Primus can't be 100% Lawful, because there's no outer limits on the concept of Law, so to someone who, for instance, believes that compassion is a prerequisite for social order will not believe that Primus is as Lawful as it is possible to be in life. And someone who believes that there is no real such thing as Law believes Primus to be exactly as Lawful as the Slaad Lord of Entropy, just more deluded about it. And those characters have a say in the fabric of reality as well.

But there is still a definition and accepted viewpoint that applies here and now... it might change but until it does the cosmological forces are defined by the pre-dominant belief...

I think you may need to re-read what exactly I was speaking to in the post you are replying to. We are speaking to the alignment of people, places and things...not the actual cosmological forces themselves. I also think this may be getting confusing because pemerton referred to a post that was commenting on the Great Wheel not Planescape specifically...