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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Morlock" data-source="post: 6615722" data-attributes="member: 6776981">Or maybe it's better to think about alignment reflecting what you are in the dark. I.e., how you behave when no one's looking. Lawful people still follow the law, custom, tradition, what have you. Neutral means a mixed bag in this context, and Chaotic people drop law/custom/tradition the second nobody's looking. Neutral would seem to be for more "ordinary" folks (though conformity is very normal), while Chaotic would seem to be more for criminals (irrespective of morality), non-conformists, etc.Personally, I like the idea of having more consequences for alignment than where a character goes when he dies, or what impact, if any, it has on how people perceive him (people in the real world are usually very good at hiding non-conformist "alignments" to the extent necessary for self interest). That is to say, while I don't like spells like "detect evil" very much, I could, e.g., cozy up to the idea of demons that obey rules whereby evil characters are fair game (and know evil by reading thoughts).This is so much better a description of evil than the usual "gets off on hurting people" thing, IMO. Which, as you go on to point out, is an extreme case of evil.On the other hand, I have more sympathy for neutrality as a middle ground for "ordinary" folks than you do.I would go further and say that in the real world, almost all of the people I would call evil, or even who are most widely considered evil, think of themselves as good. The number of people who don't attempt to justify themselves, or seem unconcerned, strikes me as vanishingly small. It's just not how humans are wired. We're too social.I was just going over in my head the problems my approach to alignment (try to make it align with what I see in the real world to the extent practical) that is presented by evil gods. I mean, if you've got evil gods that are widely worshipped as such, well, that doesn't seem to work with what I see of human nature. This is aside from evil gods that are appeased, like Tlaloc (not that the Aztecs weren't at least in the top 3 contenders for the most evil civilizations in human history, mind you).You say that like it's a good thing. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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