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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 2144137" data-attributes="member: 7240">Although I'm talking in historical terms, the nature of our disagreement is actually more uncomfortable. I think that the alignment rules as you interpret them ential attitudes and values that don't get along with my personal politics/religion. In superhero games, it is generally assumed that one's code against killing applies to everyone but robots -- alients, mutants, etc. It seems like the way you are running alignment, you're saying to your PCs, "It's okay. They're all robots."Yep. And all I'm saying is, "what if we play in a world in which the boundaries have not yet been erected?" I would like it if the current alignment rules didn't proclude both that option.Agreed. But what if we made it modular so that it could reflect both?Whoa! Let's just agree to disagree on this assertion so we don't get the thread closed, ok?That's why I think their consensus regarding the cynocephali was important. They ultimately argued that the dog-headed men, even though they could not speak, were ensouled. That's why they made a 9' tall dog-headed man into a saint. Later they made a greyhound into a saint as well. Categories were permeable. Monsters and animals could be ensouled. If D&D alignment had greater flexibility, goblins could be both evil by nature and potentially ensouled.Even under these terms, something other than an understanding of ecology caused medievals and ancients to enact measures (admittedly usually insufficient) to protect rare animals and landscapes from annihilation even though they had no economic value. Even with non-peers who were animals, people without an understanding of ecology still saw that spark of life as having some kind of inexpressible value.I wouldn't have invoked them were it not for the fact that we were looking at how people understand the emergence of postmodernism. I know. That's my argument. I don't think that in the case of creatures who may or may not have free will that one should arrive at a classification system that wholly dehumanizes them. That's my concern here. No. I'm assuming that "humanity" boundaries that are permeable or less than 100% precise/absolute; that's all. No. My point is that creatures in many worldviews do not fit into clean binaries; they fit into binaries with liminal regions. An exceptional individual can be a dog and a saint or a dog and a man and a saint. You seem to have two settings here: 100% human and 0% human -- I like situations where there are categories in between.Yep. And what was interesting, from my point of view, was that they didn't need to dehumanize these people in order to do so. That's another feature of worlds I run. Yep. And within that system, there is still Balaam. Even so, systems like this are the exception and not the rule. I have to disagree here. These categories were permeable; read people writing about rank and you find that there are all kinds of messy circumstances where categories overlap or people fall into spaces between them. Even at the time, people acknowledged these things. As for your Cortes example, the textual evidence is massive and overwhelmingly that the Spanish understood the Aztecs to be fully human.I'm not looking for an alignment system that is historically authentic; I am looking for an alignment system that does not prohibit me from telling stories about cultures my players and I find interesting.The NPC was the leader of the dark elves who failed to escape to the underworld the last time they could and had been stranded in the world. Hell, in this world, was the domain of the chaotic evil underworld god who was the god of the dark elves. They wanted to go home. Of course, they also wanted to bring home to the material world; their kinsmen and their gods would march out of the gates, as they marched in.In 1E, these were the descriptions of these attributes. Literally.Yes. And without some amount of pragmatism, no idealistic goal can possibly be achieved.</blockquote>

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