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Chaotic Good Is The Most Popular Alignment!
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7783164" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>I think we said mostly the same thing, and agree on the basic point that people are complex. I don't want to get too far into a discussion of real world cosmology, theology, or normative ethics that would have to be a part of talking about applying the idea of alignment to the real world, because invariably that would get religious or political or otherwise get people triggered. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Well, those actions are far more detailed and spectacular than your original statement, which was only: "an upstanding citizen who would sacrifice himself to save the community, helps little old ladies across the road, donates money to help orphaned children". To be honest, you complain about how someone who is perfect being a caricature, but I'm not sure that Dudley Doright is less of a caricature than your upstanding heroic person who is also and at the same time a depraved serial child abuser, and who is quintessentially lawful good but also and at the same time engaged in repeated acts of depravity. I'm not convinced such a person is more realistic than someone whose worst faults are so minor, most people wouldn't even consider them flaws in their own character. </p><p></p><p>I can imagine a hero like you suggest with dark secrets, but not to the degree of depravity you suggest. Your upstanding citizen who is quintessentially lawful good cannot be quintessentially lawful good unless he knows both what honor and depravity are, and therefore cannot both be who you say he is and not know who he is. The mental stress he would be in trying to live his life when the poles of his life are so far apart would be lethal. I don't think there is any real world person who can endure the degree of division you are talking about. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I think we both agree that people are nuanced and complicated. If you'd introduced that quintessentially lawful good hero, and then suggested his dark secret was something like he had engaged in affairs in betrayal of the vows he made to his wife three times in the last five years, I'd have believed this was a realistic character with a realistic flaw. But nuanced and complicated doesn't even necessarily mean flaws as obvious as that, and indeed the very word nuanced suggests something radically different than your caricature of actually a saint but who is actually also a monster. </p><p></p><p>At some level, I don't even believe in alignment as presented in AD&D. I don't want to go into what I actually believe, because it would be more controversial than claiming alignment was real. </p><p></p><p>But to the extent that I think alignment is useful, typically what I find when someone claims a radical division of alignment is that perceived incongruity can be rectified by assuming that the person has a different alignment and different motivation than was first conceived and conjecturing as to whether the seemingly disparate behavior can be unified and explained under the new motivation. For example, your "quintessentially lawful good" characters radically disparate behavior can be explained if he isn't motivated by compassion and justice, but actually motivated by vain-glory and the real purpose he has is to receive ego inflating praise for all his deeds, which of course he believes is his rightful due. If that is the case, then his abuse of the children he has bought and paid for can be explained by the same motivation. Now, the new character we have conceived lacks any actual contrast in his character. Despite the disparate manifestations of his character, he's not nuanced and complicated at all - he is a narcissistic megalomaniac and the contrast between his very public deeds and his very private ones goes away completely. Of course, real world people do have contrasts and nuances and fail to live up to their own ideals all the time, but in the case of the sort of stark contrasts you are calling nuanced (even though nuanced is the opposite of stark) if they appeared in a character background for a PC that I was supposed to approve, I'd strongly suspect that in play I'd actually see a unifying motivation behind the supposedly complicated character and not actually four different alignments at the same time (which technically violates what an alignment is).</p><p></p><p>Maybe I'm wrong there, but in 30 years of play I've never actually seen what you claim.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7783164, member: 4937"] I think we said mostly the same thing, and agree on the basic point that people are complex. I don't want to get too far into a discussion of real world cosmology, theology, or normative ethics that would have to be a part of talking about applying the idea of alignment to the real world, because invariably that would get religious or political or otherwise get people triggered. Well, those actions are far more detailed and spectacular than your original statement, which was only: "an upstanding citizen who would sacrifice himself to save the community, helps little old ladies across the road, donates money to help orphaned children". To be honest, you complain about how someone who is perfect being a caricature, but I'm not sure that Dudley Doright is less of a caricature than your upstanding heroic person who is also and at the same time a depraved serial child abuser, and who is quintessentially lawful good but also and at the same time engaged in repeated acts of depravity. I'm not convinced such a person is more realistic than someone whose worst faults are so minor, most people wouldn't even consider them flaws in their own character. I can imagine a hero like you suggest with dark secrets, but not to the degree of depravity you suggest. Your upstanding citizen who is quintessentially lawful good cannot be quintessentially lawful good unless he knows both what honor and depravity are, and therefore cannot both be who you say he is and not know who he is. The mental stress he would be in trying to live his life when the poles of his life are so far apart would be lethal. I don't think there is any real world person who can endure the degree of division you are talking about. I think we both agree that people are nuanced and complicated. If you'd introduced that quintessentially lawful good hero, and then suggested his dark secret was something like he had engaged in affairs in betrayal of the vows he made to his wife three times in the last five years, I'd have believed this was a realistic character with a realistic flaw. But nuanced and complicated doesn't even necessarily mean flaws as obvious as that, and indeed the very word nuanced suggests something radically different than your caricature of actually a saint but who is actually also a monster. At some level, I don't even believe in alignment as presented in AD&D. I don't want to go into what I actually believe, because it would be more controversial than claiming alignment was real. But to the extent that I think alignment is useful, typically what I find when someone claims a radical division of alignment is that perceived incongruity can be rectified by assuming that the person has a different alignment and different motivation than was first conceived and conjecturing as to whether the seemingly disparate behavior can be unified and explained under the new motivation. For example, your "quintessentially lawful good" characters radically disparate behavior can be explained if he isn't motivated by compassion and justice, but actually motivated by vain-glory and the real purpose he has is to receive ego inflating praise for all his deeds, which of course he believes is his rightful due. If that is the case, then his abuse of the children he has bought and paid for can be explained by the same motivation. Now, the new character we have conceived lacks any actual contrast in his character. Despite the disparate manifestations of his character, he's not nuanced and complicated at all - he is a narcissistic megalomaniac and the contrast between his very public deeds and his very private ones goes away completely. Of course, real world people do have contrasts and nuances and fail to live up to their own ideals all the time, but in the case of the sort of stark contrasts you are calling nuanced (even though nuanced is the opposite of stark) if they appeared in a character background for a PC that I was supposed to approve, I'd strongly suspect that in play I'd actually see a unifying motivation behind the supposedly complicated character and not actually four different alignments at the same time (which technically violates what an alignment is). Maybe I'm wrong there, but in 30 years of play I've never actually seen what you claim. [/QUOTE]
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