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<blockquote data-quote="Cadence" data-source="post: 9362883" data-attributes="member: 6701124">And hence, different editions of the books tried to give alignment specific meaning with examples and defined outsiders that went with them. Kind of like how the bad guys in Elric, for example, were metaphysically chaos or some such..&nbsp; It feels like incarnations of good and evil or law and chaos come up in a variety of fiction, and so apparently a lot of people don't have trouble imagining them in a particular fictional context -- even if they might differ from one movie or book cosmology to another or with the viewer/readers particular beliefs.&nbsp; There are even chapters in the philosophy of D&amp;D books by professional thinkers musing on such things.Did 1e suck at it compared to 5e? Probably. It sucked at a lot of things.&nbsp; But I'm not sure&nbsp; what any argument focusing on the flaws in the 1e implementation of alignment necessarily have to do with how it is portrayed in later versions any more than an argument about the 1e implementation would matter for discussing whether&nbsp; anything else in different edition of the game (species, classes, AC, healing) were any good.&nbsp; And similarly, I'm again not sure what Gygax's words on alignment nineteen years after he had anything to do with the games, and nine years before the current edition, have anything to do with the way it is currently implemented.(None of which means I would put alignment in a heartbreaker I was making - but there are lots ofnD&amp;D things that probably wouldn't make the cut).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Cadence, post: 9362883, member: 6701124"] And hence, different editions of the books tried to give alignment specific meaning with examples and defined outsiders that went with them. Kind of like how the bad guys in Elric, for example, were metaphysically chaos or some such.. It feels like incarnations of good and evil or law and chaos come up in a variety of fiction, and so apparently a lot of people don't have trouble imagining them in a particular fictional context -- even if they might differ from one movie or book cosmology to another or with the viewer/readers particular beliefs. There are even chapters in the philosophy of D&D books by professional thinkers musing on such things. Did 1e suck at it compared to 5e? Probably. It sucked at a lot of things. But I'm not sure what any argument focusing on the flaws in the 1e implementation of alignment necessarily have to do with how it is portrayed in later versions any more than an argument about the 1e implementation would matter for discussing whether anything else in different edition of the game (species, classes, AC, healing) were any good. And similarly, I'm again not sure what Gygax's words on alignment nineteen years after he had anything to do with the games, and nine years before the current edition, have anything to do with the way it is currently implemented. (None of which means I would put alignment in a heartbreaker I was making - but there are lots ofnD&D things that probably wouldn't make the cut). [/QUOTE]

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