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<blockquote data-quote="Andor" data-source="post: 6196901" data-attributes="member: 1879">That is an interesting article but both it and the original post miss a fundamental point.In D&amp;D there are a plethora of spells and other magical effects that interact with what can only be an objective alignment system. Which make sense along only one axis.The Law/Chaos axis has nothing to to with society vs the individual, it decends to us directly from Morcocks Eternal Champion books where the primary axis of conflict was law vs chaos as cosmological forces. One seeking to crystalize reality into eternal unmoving perfection, the other to reduce it to eternal formlessness. While there are gods and heros that are incarnations or avatars of these forces they seem to be impersonal and thus objective cosmic forces.With AD&amp;D the Good/Evil axis was added in with Good typified by the usual Knightly Romance concepts like Paladins, Saints and Angels and evil as the foe of such, Demons and Devils.Of course the Elephant in the room is that Objective good can only be defined as &quot;accordance with the will of God&quot; and Objective evil as defiance of such.Which makes bugger-all sense in a polytheistic cosmology. Which is why in D&amp;D it usually boils down to team white hat and team black hat. Why is a goblin killing a human to protect his young evil but a human killing goblins to protect his young good? Because goblins wear black hats, duh. And periodically people actually start to think about this and then the eye-tics starts and then you try to define these in more relativistic real-world philisophical terms but those ignore the objective nature of D&amp;D Good/Evil and Law/Chaos and the whole thing falls apart.Personally I like the D20 Modern allegience system a lot better.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Andor, post: 6196901, member: 1879"] That is an interesting article but both it and the original post miss a fundamental point. In D&D there are a plethora of spells and other magical effects that interact with what can only be an objective alignment system. Which make sense along only one axis. The Law/Chaos axis has nothing to to with society vs the individual, it decends to us directly from Morcocks Eternal Champion books where the primary axis of conflict was law vs chaos as cosmological forces. One seeking to crystalize reality into eternal unmoving perfection, the other to reduce it to eternal formlessness. While there are gods and heros that are incarnations or avatars of these forces they seem to be impersonal and thus objective cosmic forces. With AD&D the Good/Evil axis was added in with Good typified by the usual Knightly Romance concepts like Paladins, Saints and Angels and evil as the foe of such, Demons and Devils. Of course the Elephant in the room is that Objective good can only be defined as "accordance with the will of God" and Objective evil as defiance of such. Which makes bugger-all sense in a polytheistic cosmology. Which is why in D&D it usually boils down to team white hat and team black hat. Why is a goblin killing a human to protect his young evil but a human killing goblins to protect his young good? Because goblins wear black hats, duh. And periodically people actually start to think about this and then the eye-tics starts and then you try to define these in more relativistic real-world philisophical terms but those ignore the objective nature of D&D Good/Evil and Law/Chaos and the whole thing falls apart. Personally I like the D20 Modern allegience system a lot better. [/QUOTE]

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