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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Morrow" data-source="post: 2140283" data-attributes="member: 27012">I think the alignment system serves a much more fundamental purpose which is to clearly mark the good guys and the bad guys.  That's also why D&D has the Paladin as a core class.  Alignment serves the same purpose that white hats and black hats used to serve in westerns.  As such, I think it's undermined by deconstuctionalism and moral relativism, in much the same way that they undermine the traditional western, which leads to the incoherency that you talked about.  Once you decide to start telling stories where the good guys wear black hats and the bad guys where white hats, where hats no longer indicate who is good or bad, where there are no good guys or bad guys, or where everyone wears a gray hat, the alignment system stops working as well or at all.  As for outsiders and divine magic, the same thing applies.  If you treat them in a postmodern or cynical way, then it's just not going to work very well. I think that a lot of this problem goes away if you read "Neutral" (in any context) as "Pragmatic" in many cases.  I don't think the edge alignments are meant to be all that pragmatic and I think they do work as ideologies that are not pragmatic.  A character that seeks Chaotic Evil ends but has the patience and discipline to wait and patiently plan is not necessarily Chaotic Evil, in my assessment, but something closer to Neutral Evil or even Neutral, if they can suppress their cruelty.  A character that is really Chaotic Evil, in my assessment, has a mindset that is neither patient or able to suppress it's cruelty.Yes, that gives you the Chaotic Evil Overlord that attacks impulsively and slaughters his own officers because it amuses him but I think that's exactly what the alignment system is supposed to produce.  An alignment doesn't need to be effective or efficient for someone to follow it, any more than an economic or political system in the real world needs to make sense or work for people to believe in it.</blockquote>

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