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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sword of Spirit" data-source="post: 6619920" data-attributes="member: 6677017">I think a good case can be made for those examples being neutral in 3e terms. What I'm getting at is just that if you don't have a significantly large territory between two extremes, then it can get difficult to tell which extreme you fall into, and there is going to be a lot more disagreement.For instance, there isn't much debate about whether a person is liberal or conservative (on whatever axis), because there is always moderate to fall into. Debate might come in about whether someone is conservative or moderate, but not liberal or conservative. In my opinion, the system is working better if the good and evil question is the same way. Good and evil should be so far apart that there just isn't any ambiguity between the two. Neutral is the moderate of alignments.Many alignment decisions are still left in the groups interpretation, even in 3e. Both AD&D and 3e are pretty consistent in telling us that it isn't all about motivation. (Sorry to those on this thread who have argued otherwise, but no edition has supported "motivation only" based alignment.) Actions do matter, by the books (and it doesn't matter which books). What we aren't explicitly told to my knowledge is whether motivation also matters. I think common sense would say alignment is a combination of actions and motivations, since that's how we judge people in the real world.Given that assumption, 3e alignment comes out on top again. There are situations in any edition where characters of different alignments might perform the same action for different morally relevant reasons. Happens all the time. But those differences are usually at the G/N or the N/E divide. We aren't going to have a lot of cases where motivation can make the difference between a questionable action being good or evil.I'm not sure where I'd put the person in that example, but I agree with you that they aren't good. It probably depends on whether they'd knowingly kill someone. Many such people probably wouldn't let the beggar starve if they actually ran across them emaciated in the street. They just generally have a warped view and don't realize such things are going to happen. Now, if they saw the beggar starving right in front of them and refused to do anything to help (even if helping was just contacting someone else to do it), that's a clear case of evil. So, we have a non-good situation where motivation is the difference between neutral or evil.As far as Gygax's thoughts on most humans being lawful, I think that was a poor call on his part. AD&D did seem to skew that way, but even before 3e came along the inconsistencies with the system started causing it to break down.For example, if you look at NPCs in published sources during AD&D times, quite of lot of otherwise normal people are TN or CN. Their described personalities simply don't accord with the AD&D alignment descriptions, and actually fit better into the 3e description. And they never could really stick with druids following the TN thing. I believe it was the Complete Book of Thieves that said that many people fall into the "True Neutral" alignment simply because they don't fit anywhere else. And that's true! If you read through the 9 alignment descriptions (at least in 2e) you would have a difficult time fitting in a whole lot of normal people. That's the problem with Gygax's thoughts. If lawful is the human standard, then we have no way to say "well, my character is really lawful", but we end up with, "okay, so how non-lawful do you want to be? Are we talking you don't follow laws and order unless you feel like it, or do you intentionally break them just because you hate order?" That's absurd in my opinion. Instead of relatable characters it tends toward caricatures.The problem with the nine alignment system as envisioned by Gary Gygax is that it is unworkable. 3e salvaged and made sense of it.If AD&D had defined alignment the same way 3e did from the very beginning, most alignment debates never would have appeared. "Is this character good or evil" most definitely wouldn't have come up often, and whenever it did someone would have immediately pointed out how they definitely aren't one or the other and the only question is whether they are X or neutral--in that "you're obviously new to the game" sort of way.3e alignments actually work to define recognizable characters. Sure, there is plenty of disagreement and ambiguity--but its reasonably possible. I have some pretty strong lawful traits, and some pretty strong chaotic traits, and I've varied quite a bit in them over my life. Best call is to make me neutral in that regard. My best friend has a very spontaneous personality and tends to have problems ordering his time. I'd say he tends towards chaotic. However, he has a strong personal commitment to lawfulness in certain areas (and prefers to self-identify as lawful). I'd give him the benefit of the doubt and say that his attempts to be lawful move him into neutral. Since there really aren't people with strong good traits and evil traits as defined by 3e, you never have a situation where they can balance out to neutral. (Any such person would be insane and not representative of alignments.)Gygax's alignments defined aliens in an alien world--and that just isn't as useful for my gaming as the reasonable 3e revisions. @<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=42582" target="_blank">pemerton</a>, by the way, I'm enjoying your thoughts and the refreshers on AD&D alignment.</blockquote>

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