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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3680117" data-attributes="member: 4937">Like Kahuna, I disagree with the equivalence.  I think that there is a difference between the unconsidered casual stance of self-interest, and the philosophical considered stance of self-interest.  It's the difference between relying on instinct and emotion in a pinch, and rationalizing anti-social, self-centered, ambitious behavior.  The former stance is passive and produces an individual that normally takes no great risks and formulates no particular plans to advance himself.  That person doesn't do alot of anything based on pre-consideration.  The latter is likely to actively pursue his own interests to the expense of all else.  The difference in a pinch may not be all that much, but the difference in day to day affairs would probably be striking.But where I really disagree is over the notion that you can qualify "allegiances that are meaningful to the game."  I certainly never know beforehand what individual details or reasoning are going to turn out to be crucial to role-playing inspired problems.  I can never tell ahead of time what problems a DM is going to through my way, how I will work out what the character will do, or what thinks a player is going to decide are important.   People are complex, which is why I've always found trying to list out all the things that might influence thier behavior far less satisfying than an abstract description.  Alignment is nice in that it isn't highly proscriptive or descriptive.  (Of course, that's also why we argue about what it means, so its strength is its weakness.)  I'd have a very hard time listing out all my real world allegiances, and some of seemingly trivial allegiances are going to provoke some of the most intriguing behavior on my part.  Alot of times I've found trivial allegiances to end up leading to larger allegiance conflicts.  A description like, "My character is for God, country, and the NY Mets." is evocative, but not fully descriptive.   We can project alot on to a character like that, but it isn't really descriptive.  It's attempt to be descriptive in my opinion actually gets in the way.Consider the fact that it is the trivial allegiances that are most likely to lead to the sort of bonus to social interaction that D20 Modern grants for shared allegiance.  I'm far more likely to interact well with someone who has a shared narrow allegiance to say the Green Bay Packers, Paranioa the RPG, or the US Marine Corp - regardless of whether that allegiance is trivial or sacred - than I am if I have a more common, broader allegiance to God, country, good, or whatever.  And what about an allegiance to family?  Lots of people have it, but generally if I have an allegiance to family I mean an allegiance to my family, and your allegiance to your family doesn't necessarily give you anything in common with me.  This seems to me to be a flaw in the system, in that lots of people have allegiances to things which they are penalized for under the system (in the sense that the benefit is withheld).   Allegiances rewards allegiances we'd describe as lawful more than it does chaotic and personal ones.   If I have an allegiance to my own self, it doesn't mean I get along better with other people who have a primary allegiance to thier own self and in fact we'd expect something of the reverse in many cases.  Some people may make the claim that I'm confusing allegiances with personal traits.  They may argue that I don't have an allegiance to 'the green bay packers', 'Alabama', 'merlot', 'heavy metal', or whatever, in that these things aren't things which I'm willing to sacrifice for.  But I think that this just doesn't bear up underscrutiny.  People do sacrifice for these things.  In my experience, they give up more to have these things more often than they do for the supposedly sacred allegiances.  And also in my experience, they are just as likely to get involved in actual violent conflicts with one another over a disagreement about these trivial allegiances than they are over the supposed large and important ones.  There are probably more bar room brawls over 'da Bears' vs. 'the Packers', or over ill-thought words said of someone's spouse or mother, than there are over Lutheranism vs. Presbyterianism, or whether it is better to arrange a nation over libertarian or socialist lines, or whether or not cannibalism and polygamy are mere social taboos or actually morally depraved.Out in the real world its not at all easy to tell what allegiances meaningfully alter a person's behavior.</blockquote>

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