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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 8805127" data-attributes="member: 4937">I wouldn't put it that way.&nbsp; I think people who are philosophically close to Gygax in their real personal beliefs probably don't struggle much with the concepts that he lays out because they have the same tuition about what &quot;weal&quot;, &quot;woe', &quot;law' and &quot;chaos&quot; mean.&nbsp; Certainly lots of people believe that they understand the intent, and in the broad terms are in strong agreement with each other.The trouble with alignment is that while it doesn't document real world belief, something like alignment exists in the real world and so just as the members of D&amp;D universe don't agree with each other about which alignment is best to have, real world tuitions about the subject matter of alignment disagree and create biases and beliefs about it that are inconsistent with each other.&nbsp; And because Gygax only sketched out alignment broadly, probably because he assumed that the meaning of the words was obvious, this left people massively free to diverge in practice.As just one example, many people in the real world believe words like &quot;weal&quot; are subjective, and so those people tend to have massive problems with the very concept of alignment and are biased to reject it.&nbsp; But that's very much not the same as being unable to figure out the intent of the rules.&nbsp; That's actually a sign that they do understand the intent, and are rejecting it.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 8805127, member: 4937"] I wouldn't put it that way. I think people who are philosophically close to Gygax in their real personal beliefs probably don't struggle much with the concepts that he lays out because they have the same tuition about what "weal", "woe', "law' and "chaos" mean. Certainly lots of people believe that they understand the intent, and in the broad terms are in strong agreement with each other. The trouble with alignment is that while it doesn't document real world belief, something like alignment exists in the real world and so just as the members of D&D universe don't agree with each other about which alignment is best to have, real world tuitions about the subject matter of alignment disagree and create biases and beliefs about it that are inconsistent with each other. And because Gygax only sketched out alignment broadly, probably because he assumed that the meaning of the words was obvious, this left people massively free to diverge in practice. As just one example, many people in the real world believe words like "weal" are subjective, and so those people tend to have massive problems with the very concept of alignment and are biased to reject it. But that's very much not the same as being unable to figure out the intent of the rules. That's actually a sign that they do understand the intent, and are rejecting it. [/QUOTE]

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