Complete Scoundrel gives alignments for Batman, James Bond, Riddick, and more...

[delericho]

Makes me wonder what alignment you think Donald Trump is...*heehee*

Always dangerous talking about the alignments of real-world figures... so I won't. However, the point I was trying to get at is that the lords in the Robin Hood example were basically using their authority to force the peasants to pay excessive taxes. By contrast, Gates and Trump, despite some questionable business practices, don't go that far. You never actually have to buy the latest Windows... you can choose to try to manage without.

So a Paladin in Baator would be beholden to its laws? Captain America (assuming you agree he's Lawful Good) in Nazi Germany would be beholden to its laws?

No. That was the bit I said about not being beholden to the specific laws in place. Where the laws are clearly unjust or unworkable, the Lawful character is, of course, free to step outside them. However, where the laws are merely inconvenient the Lawful character should follow them as best he can. (An example here is speed limits. These clearly aren't particularly unjust, although in some cases the limit applied has been set incorrectly for the road. And, in most cases, a few extra MPH won't hurt anyone. And yet, the Lawful character should generally accept the inconvenience of the set limit, because he will acknowledge that there needs to be some limit, and allowing everyone to just pick and choose their own limits can lead to real dangers.)

The Lawful Neutral description in the PHB clearly states: "[The character] may believe in personal order and live by a code or standard..." It's reasonable to think that "personal order" and "codes and standards" will differ from town to town, nation to nation, world to world...and that the laws themselves clash.

Yes, that was addressed by Shilsen, above. I've softened my position somewhat.

 

[delericho]

Truest statement in this thread. If the moral structures and behavioral tendencies of interesting, complicated characters can not be satisfyingly expressed through the system, it's probably a bad system to use as any kind of roleplaying guide.

Actually, it's doing pretty well. There are a handful of difficult examples that keep being argued over: James Bond, Gaius Baltar, Batman, Jack Bauer, Sawyer, Londo Mollari, etc.

In many of these cases, the character in question shifts alignment (Londo) over the course of his story, which means that the arguement is clouded by the question of when each party is talking about. Other examples are complicated by the fact that different versions exist (Batman), and so the argument is similarly clouded. The Adam West Batman is completely different from the Christian Bale Batman, so determining an alignment to reconcile these two is rather pointless.

Alignment arguments are further clouded by a couple of fallacies: "He's fighting against <someone worse>, so he must be Good", "I like him, so he can't be Evil", and my own particular failing "I understand alignment better than anyone else". There's also a tendency to think in terms of a Law/Chaos and Good/Evil binary decision, omitting Neutral.

Oh, and then there's the caricatures of Lawful Good, Chaotic Neutral and Chaotic Evil, which are largely holdovers from previous editions, and which really don't help.

But, if you cut through that, you tend to find that most examples are pegged reasonably consistently by most people, which suggests that the tool does its job. It's not a perfect tool, but what is?

(Of course, that speil is off-topic for this thread - the "Alignment Myths" thread presents a lot more debate on this issue.)

 

[dragonlordofpoondari]

It's not a perfect tool but what is?

To answer the above question, I offer a system that isn't perfect, but I like it a little better. It is interesting how alignment is used to classify a charcter's moral or ethical system. As useful as it is for RPGs, I think it is still a little crude and charcter's can't always be pigeonholed so neatly. The system proposed by psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg is an interesting one through which to examine morality. It classifies ethics based on cognitive sophistication. Although admittedly flawed, I think it is a much more useful paradigm for examining the motivations of fictional and real-life characters. Here's how it works. There are six levels of ethical reasoning.

1. What says the authority? Will I be punished?
2. What do I get out of it? How will this help me?
3. Will it please the ones I care about? Will mommy give me approval?
4. Is this in line with law or duty?
5. Is this for the greater good? Will this help others or support social mutuality?
6. Is this in accord with a principled conscience?

Here are some SPOILERific examples ...

A. Laura Roslin wants to beat Gaius Baltar in Presidential election at all costs. She knows Baltar is bad news, so it would clearly be for the greater good. She is operating at level 5, a very pragmatic point of view given humanity's situation with the Cylons. BUT, Adama catches her. Too bad for Laura that Adama lives at level 6. He reminds her that she should also be a person of principle. She defers to his superior system of ethics. Of course they suffered for it later, but they made the decision according to ethical sophistication instead of silly things like the greater good. Nice work, nimrods. Now you broke Kara.

B. Star Trek's Prime Directive is all about the level 5/6 dilemma (as are the themes in many of my favorite shows). Check it out ... while down on an alien planet, Wesley Crusher is playing space basketball with the local alien kids. In a stunning show of coordination, poor Wesley accidentally smashes the super-sacred religious triangle situated 5 feet from the space basketball court. Now the aliens say, according to their alien lawbooks, Wesley must die (yay!). This puts Picard in a pickle! On one hand, he loves this little brat and feels duty to Beverly and her dead husband. On the other, the prime directive and greater good (of the audience?) dictate that Wesley die like a pig. Picard LOVES to operate at level 6, by jiminy, so what does he do? He tricks those primitive screw-heads into thinking they killed Wesley with a little Transporter-sleight of hand. Wesley lives, the primitives are happy, and Picard ingratiates himself even deeper into Beverly's bountiful old-lady bosom. Everybody wins ... except the maybe audience.

To draw some crude relationships ...

Level 1-2 ... aspects of chaos, neutrality, or evil
Level 3 ... aspects of neutral or good
Level 4 ... aspects of law
Level 5 ... aspects of good
Level 6 ... aspects of good, but mostly true neutral

 

[delericho]

It is interesting how alignment is used to classify a charcter's moral or ethical system. As useful as it is for RPGs, I think it is still a little crude and charcter's can't always be pigeonholed so neatly. The system proposed by psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg is an interesting one through which to examine morailty. It classifies ethics based on cognitive sophistication.

It's an interesting system, and one I shall think on some more. But it strikes me as a little too philosophical for use in D&D (perhaps in Mage, though...). Mostly, I think players want to kill things and take their stuff, and not worry overly about their 'cognitive sophistication'.

To draw some crude relationships ...

Level 1-2 ... aspects of chaos, neutrality, or evil
Level 3 ... aspects of neutral or good
Level 4 ... aspects of law
Level 5 ... aspects of good
Level 6 ... aspects of good, but mostly true neutral

I disagree with your relationships, mostly because I peg Roslin, Adama, and Picard as all being Lawful Good. In the specific example of the Roslin/Adama election issue (since it's fresher in my memory), the decision to let the election slip was most definately the Lawful one, and probably the Good one.

There was no evidence that Baltar was actually a Cylon collaborator (and, in fact, he was not at the time he was seen by Roslin - he was duped, and only became a collaborator later). There was no way of knowing that setting on New Caprica would lead to a disaster.

And, the will of the people was clear. Roslin and Adama didn't like it, were sure it was a mistake (and, in point of fact, were correct), but the point remained that if they had stolen the election they would have done irrepairable damage to their society, turning it from a democracy into an unelected dictatorship backed by military power. (Not to mention that Zarek knew the election was rigged, and could and would have brought the whole affair down. Three people can keep a secret only if two of them are dead... and there were way more than three people in on it.)

All in all, although it turned out badly, the decision was the right one, and made for entirely the right reasons.

 

[delericho]

Speaking of, there's an interesting question: what is Tom Zarek's alignment, and does it change any over the course of the series?

To be honest, I find it really hard to peg him properly, probably because we don't really see enough of him.

My best guess is that he's probably Chaotic, since he seems always to be at odds with whatever authority he faces, be it the government of the colonies, the Roslin administration, Adama (when he's helping Roslin's rebellion, no less), the Cylons... And yet, he seems very methodical in a lot of his actions and planning, siding with Baltar when he realises he can't win the election, planning to remove Apollo to ingratiate himself as Roslin's right-hand man, and so on.

Likewise, he's probably Evil, based on his total lack of qualms about killing Apollo (he backs out, but only because the situation makes that plan unworkable), his black market dealings, and so on.

Which would make him Chaotic Evil... but that really doesn't feel right.

Any takers?

 

[dragonlordofpoondari]

It is easy to conflate law, duty, and good with principle. These are difficult concepts, and Kohlberg himself later retracted level 6 altogether. He found that no one consistently operated at level 6, instead they vascilated between 5 and 6. Plus, it was slippery to define.

Yeah, I wasn't even going to try to draw the relationship between the two systems. They are both separate and flawed systems. Please feel free to ignore my comparisons. I only wanted to provoke discussion.

EDIT: RE: Battlestar example ... Laura knows Baltar vascillates between levels 1 and 2. He's great for this reason. But Laura's reluctant decision to break the law by rigging the election came out of reasoning more sophisticated than the blind following of law. The decision was made was for the greater good, at level 5. Adama, however, pointed out a more sophisticated ethical position: Laura is a good person of principle and also the President. She knowingly choose to operate within the boundaries of law not only because she realizes that she shouldn't manipulate the system to get her own way; she is a person of high principle. She believes in the system and what it stands for (and what her position as President means) and prefers not to abide corruption. She would risk abandoning her principles and all the work she'd done to live a principled life up to that moment. It is a sort of selling out that would compromise her integrity as a highly principled character. What's more, she would have to live with that choice, and she would likely be changed by it forever. So in the end, even through her actions superficially appear lawful and maybe even good, it is because of higher cognition and ethical reasoning that brought her to that decision as opposed to blindly following laws or trying to manufacture good. She knows the consequences. Level 6 is sort of selfish and self-indulgent in this way. She chose not to sully her own advanced system of ethics than save the humans from Baltar. As you can probably tell, I'm too much of a pragmatist. The ends always justify my means according to my conceptions of good. Hence, I live at level 5. But sometimes I get this far off look in my eye, and I wish I could be more like Adama or Picard.

EDIT: Zarek ... his character certainly undergoes an arc, but as you pointed out, there is a relativism at work here too. Most recently, it seems that living under cylon rule has attenuated his thirst for power. The enemy of my enemy is my bid for the Vice-Presidency. But the alignment system is over-simple for pidgeonholing because of moral relativism. Laws and conceptions of good/evil change from society to society, from person to person, and from situation to situation.

 

[RigaMortus2]

It would have been interesting to see a comparison between Supes and Batman. If Batman is LG then what is Superman?

Exhalted Lawful Good

 

[RigaMortus2]

Always did like the Palladium FRPG Alignment system better.

I agree. They even go so far as to give specific examples of how characters of such an alignment would act.

 

[dragonlordofpoondari]

It's an interesting system, and one I shall think on some more. But it strikes me as a little too philosophical for use in D&D (perhaps in Mage, though...). Mostly, I think players want to kill things and take their stuff, and not worry overly about their 'cognitive sophistication'.

I hear what you're saying. But at the same time, I think D&D is a very sophisticated rules set designed to be adaptable for lots of styles of play. At its best, it can strikingly resemble good literature and be a far cry from a hack and slash lootin-tootin dungeon crawl. Depending on the communal authors sitting at the gaming table, playing with ethical dilemmas and consequences can be great fun. I would argue that D&D is absolutely equipped to run this sort of game.

BTW, for this style game, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Dynasties and Demagogues.

 

[delericho]

I hear what you're saying. But at the same time, I think D&D is a very sophisticated rules set designed to be adaptable for lots of styles of play.

Agreed.

I have found, though, that a lot of players seem to have a little 'mental switch' that triggers when they're playing D&D (and often, any d20 game) and pushes them into a certain style. This seems to be a bit less true with other games... of course, it could just be the people I game with.

This is similar, but I don't think related to, the switches that control their behaviour when the character sheet has "Paladin", "Lawful Good", "Chaotic Neutral" or "Evil" on it. Sometimes, I wish I'd done a Psychology degree, so I could apply for funding to do a Doctorate in a study of character alignment as it affects players.