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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 1471592" data-attributes="member: 3146">I think Bendris's point captures the essence of my objection as well. It's all well and good to talk about compelling conformity to a cosmic contract but no characters and no gods are ever likely to be in the position of upholding a generic, contentless cosmic/social contract. Such discussions take place in the context of a particular just or unjust social contract. Characters traditionally designated lawful good are just as likely as those designated chaotic good to balk at compelling compliance with a social contract that requires the sacrifice of a million babies a day to the god-emperor. And characters traditionally designated chaotic good are just as likely as those designated lawful evil to support compelling compliance with a social contract that prohibits the arbitrary murder and subsequent sacrifice of individuals to the dark gods of slaughter and bestiality.And given the fact that societies inherently have some structure simply by virtue of being societies, it is hard to believe that the gods of law or chaos could be indifferent to the structure of any society either. Some social structures allow more individual autonomy than others and some structures support arbitrary and capricious rule. But all have structures.  Even Mr. Kurtz's band of savages in the Heart of Darkness had a social structure.Your post seems to implicitly acknowledge this point when you say that CGs may unwittingly be fighting for the wrong team because of the tendency to equate good with law in this context. (Personally I think that tendency exists because they are not entirely separate ideas). The difficulty, I think comes when evaluating the deities motives and how they go about it. It is hard to think that the ideas of good and bad social orders will not play a part in their thinking and thus take the cosmic situation back to including prominent ideas of good and evil.That's why I think the inverse of the situation you're proposing is the only way to really emphasize law vs. chaos. If the only viable choice is between compelling obedience to a bad social order and aquiescing to the destruction of all life in chaos, then there is no question of which social order is good.</blockquote>

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