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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Maxperson" data-source="post: 8293193" data-attributes="member: 23751">Obeying the law is only part of what lawful can be.  I just posted this in another alignment thread and it comes from the 3e alignment section."Lawful characters tell the truth, keep their word, respect authority, honor tradition, and judge those who fall short of their duties. Chaotic characters follow their consciences, resent being told what to do, favor new ideas over tradition, and do what they promise if they feel like it. “Law” implies honor, trustworthiness, obedience to authority, and reliability. On the downside, lawfulness can include closemindedness, reactionary adherence to tradition, judgmentalness, and a lack of adaptability. Those who consciously promote lawfulness say that only lawful behavior creates a society in which people can depend on each other and make the right decisions in full confidence that others will act as they should.""A lawful neutral character acts as law, tradition, or a personal code directs her. Order and organization are paramount to her. She may believe in personal order and live by a code or standard, or she may believe in order for all and favor a strong, organized government. Ember, a monk who follows her discipline without being swayed either by the demands of those in need or by the temptations of evil, is lawful neutral."I'm going to disagree with that statement.  Laws are necessary for any large society to function.  The presence of necessary laws doesn't transform the society to lawful.  You have to look at the fundamental beliefs of the society in question, because those beliefs will run throughout the laws of that society.Take America.  We have many laws, but fundamental to those laws, and in fact in our greatest set of laws(the Constitution) is the idea that freedom and individuality are to be protected.  Freedom of expression.  Freedom of religion.  Freedom of the press.  Freedom from persecution over individuality(age, gender, etc.).  The right to choose.  The right of individuals to vote. And more.  America would be in my opinion a CG society.I'm not sure I agree with this, either.  You can accept the legitimacy of law, while chafing under the restrictiveness of those laws.  Traffic laws are like that.  Many ignore them, but we still for the most part obey the majority or don't break them by much, not because we are lawful, but because the cops will ticket us if we don't.  We also understand, even if we don't like them, the legitimacy of those laws.  A lawful person follows the laws, because he believes in the order and stability that they represent.  Society would fall apart without them, so they are necessary and good.  A chaotic person follows the laws primarily because he has to, or in some cases because they match his beliefs(freedom of expression).A lawful person can express disapproval of bad laws in his own country.  He doesn't have to follow the laws blindly.  If he feels a law is a bad one, he might go through the proper procedures to try and get it overturned.Have an internal code of conduct is generally a lawful behavior.  Lawful, as I showed above, doesn't have to mean that you follow the laws of the land.  It can be a code as well.</blockquote>

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