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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6195766" data-attributes="member: 42582">As a coda to my post above - before you used that alignment model in your game, you would want to ask - why is it important, in my game, to track characters on these two axes, of duty to others and cultivatin of self? And what does it say about the game, and the game fiction, to treat the two axes as indpendent.4e, for instance, posits the traditional notion that those who do good will also become self-cultivators, and conversely that letting yourself go is the first step on a path towards evil and affiliation with the primordials. I think Benjamin Franklin would have agreed with that. In Blazing Saddles, the Waco Kid, in doing right by others, also begins to do right by himself; and the same pattern is seen in many Dirty Harry-style plot arcs. Even in Tai Chi Master, at the end of the movie we see Jet Li leading a monsastery of Tai Chi monks - in the end he has become Lawful again, but has just realised new dimensions to the possiblities of self-cultivation.Conversely, if you wanted to play a Byronic or (certain flavour of) Nietzschean game then it would make sense to go the other way - self-cultivation leads to evil (think Madam Bovary), and only unfettered personalities like Byron or (a romantic view of) Napoleon are capable of really brining good to the world and giving others what they really need.So letting the two axes operate independently strikes me as making a pretty distinctive moral and aesthetic conjecture. Or maybe you could do it as an experiment, to find out via play whether the two axes really are independent.But simply stipulating from the outset that they are independent &quot;in this campaign world&quot; and that's that strikes me as somewhat unmotivated.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6195766, member: 42582"] As a coda to my post above - before you used that alignment model in your game, you would want to ask - why is it important, in my game, to track characters on these two axes, of duty to others and cultivatin of self? And what does it say about the game, and the game fiction, to treat the two axes as indpendent. 4e, for instance, posits the traditional notion that those who do good will also become self-cultivators, and conversely that letting yourself go is the first step on a path towards evil and affiliation with the primordials. I think Benjamin Franklin would have agreed with that. In Blazing Saddles, the Waco Kid, in doing right by others, also begins to do right by himself; and the same pattern is seen in many Dirty Harry-style plot arcs. Even in Tai Chi Master, at the end of the movie we see Jet Li leading a monsastery of Tai Chi monks - in the end he has become Lawful again, but has just realised new dimensions to the possiblities of self-cultivation. Conversely, if you wanted to play a Byronic or (certain flavour of) Nietzschean game then it would make sense to go the other way - self-cultivation leads to evil (think Madam Bovary), and only unfettered personalities like Byron or (a romantic view of) Napoleon are capable of really brining good to the world and giving others what they really need. So letting the two axes operate independently strikes me as making a pretty distinctive moral and aesthetic conjecture. Or maybe you could do it as an experiment, to find out via play whether the two axes really are independent. But simply stipulating from the outset that they are independent "in this campaign world" and that's that strikes me as somewhat unmotivated. [/QUOTE]

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