Five Alignments?

[Dannyalcatraz]

I am taking issue with your statement

The 4Ed take doesn't seem to recognize that good can arise from chaos, or that evil can be spawned from law

OK, with that understanding, we can proceed!

You can read the 4E system as saying that Lawful Good is a better, purer type of good than Good.

Which I stated I don't.

You can also read it as saying that Lawful Good is a worse, more compromised type of good than Good.

Which I don't. Its different, not better or worse.

You can also read it as saying that Good people are chaotic by default, so there is no reason to give it a longer label; while Lawful Good is a special type of Good that is neither better nor worse, just different.

1) ...meaning that you have several ways of interpreting the ethical landscape of the 5 point system of 4Ed, which isn't nearly as useful as an undistinguished 3 point or a more delineated 9 point system.

2) I don't believe that people are fundamentally chaotic- especially the good ones.

Which brings up

3) If indeed people are fundamentally chaotic, then the 4Ed system should be LG-G-U-E-LE.

Furthermore, you can represent just as many practical viewpoints within the 4E system as before.

and

You will not be able to represent characters who are supposed to be exemplars of a cosmological type of chaos (or law),

And that, IMHO, is a serious flaw, which is also at odds with your sentence immediately precedent (in the seperate quote).

With things in 3E like chaotic spells and weapons, which have actual effects based on alignment, having them trigger off someone's personality simply trivialised the C/L axis.

To you, perhaps. To me, it meant that alignment mattered a lot.

Better to cut down that axis, while at the same time acknowledging that some types of C/L characters -- (old-style) paladins, angels and demons -- are qualitatively different to most other Good or Evil characters, AND present in large enough numbers that they deserve special treatment.

IME, LG and CE are no less numerous or qualitatively different than beings on other axes of the alignment tree- LE and CE characters show up in games and fiction in numbers and characterizational contrast as much as the 4Ed alingments still enshrined.

If you want to talk rarity, the neutral or unaligned person is probably rarest of all.

Quote:

3) I'm not making any judgement as to whether LG is the best kind of good or not, just that if you're going to break out special nomenclature for one kind of good (and likewise for evil), then other reference points need to be identified as well.

Why?

1) To do otherwise is utterly arbitrary in a way that no game with an alignment system should be...as I pointed out in my food pyramid example.

2) It linguistically diminishes the importance of other viewpoints within the system, and that inherently affects player perspectives. Words have meaning, and meanings matter.

Proverbs 18:31 teaches: “Mavet v’hayyim b’yad halashon – Death and life are in the power of the tongue.”

Meaning that if you label someone (or in 4Ed, something) one way, it becomes worth preserving, another way, it is easily discarded. Whether one is discussing racism or psychopathy, that is one of the fundamental points of the psychology of killing humans.

Both the psychopath and the racist use epithets that diminish the humanity of "the other." It is one of the reasons why you are often advised to humanize yourself by using your name or family photos, etc. when dealing with the criminally insane- by doing this, you maintain existential parity with your would-be assailant by keeping yourself raised above the level of an object he seeks to destroy.

Here, the 4Ed system- intentionally or not- linguistically erases certain viewpoints from the game, and by doing so, minimizes the odds that those unnamed viewpoints will be represented. Its not people getting killed, its ethical perspectives.

 

[Hussar]

This.

Is "Good" Chaotic Good, Neutral Good or both under one umbrella. I expect the official answer is "both". One of the staffers posed the question whether anyone could tell a difference between CG and NG. Um... at least as much as between LG and NG. Sure, CG may have to shy away from pure, unadulterated freedom to avoid unintended harm from people who would only use their freedom for ill, but LG would have as much restriction on enforcing order, lest people become dull-witted and unthinking. Sure, it's a ludicrously extreme argument, but no more so than the one that could be applied to CG.

As I've said before, I kinda dig that they went with CE being the elemental sort of chaos and the destruction of everything. So far, though, the information about splitting Good makes absolutely no sense. Why do those seeking Good through Order deserve a breakout while those seeking Good through Freedom or Good through Balance don't? What's so bloody special about them?

In typing this, though, I have thought of one way in which this could all work out. We essentially have two types of evil that differ by virtue of one kind (Evil) recognizing that the multiverse is where they keep their stuff, so it might be inconvenient to end it. If we define the difference between the two kinds of good based on what kind of evil they find most threatening, it makes some sense. Both recognize that any evil is bad (gosh, that sounds dumb), but LG looks at Evil and says, "Well, at least the universe will continue to exist if they win. It'd suck, but we could recover, eventually." Meanwhile, Good says, "CE has such a huge task, they're unlikely to ever actually win, or we'll get notice. Let's concentrate on making the universe a better place. We might actually make some headway, there."

So, a functional definition of the alignments that I actually like:

CE: The universe sucks and violates our sensibilities. It needs to be destroyed. We'll figure out what happens later, later.

Evil: I kinda like being here. In fact, I like it so much, I want to own it all.

LG: There are some beings crazy enough to nuke us all. Why don't we do something about it? Yeah, yeah. Freedom, liberty, prosperity, happiness. Those are nice and we support them, but they really don't mean squat if you ain't here to enjoy them.

Good: We have to ensure that what we're fighting to protect remains something worth protecting. Let us know when you find that cache of weapons of mass destruction. Until then, we're going to work on the economy and civil rights.

Unaligned: You say there's a trans-planar, philosophic war for our survival and free will, huh? Have fun with that. Myself, I think I'm going to go out and loot some dead guys (or loot some orcs I make dead). But, while you're up, I think Bob the smith cheated me on the horse shoes he sold me. Could you look into that, oh moral compass?

If that is the new alignment system in a nutshell, sign me up. I likee. If they just couldn't tell the difference between NG and CG or LE and NE, so they axed 'em, well... I'm unimpressed (and not saying anything else, since I couldn't say anything nice -- or even not mean).

I endorse the above opinion wholeheartedly. Well said sir. I hope that this is the way that they went.

 

[Afton Radav]

Paradox

Law is good...by whose definition?

http://www.galactanet.com/comic/view.php?strip=204

 

[DandD]

Nobody said that in D&D Law is good. Lawful Good is Lawful Good, not Lawful, or Good, or Lawful Neutral, or anything else. Lawful Good is Lawful and Good. It's not better than simply being Good. There is no alignment for simply being Lawful for D&D 4th edition, after all.

 

[Saben]

Personally I won't be running with the 5 alignment system. As alignment has been more or less reduced to a roleplaying thing I'll use my own system of scales similar to the original 9 but with more flexibility. In my campaign a player picks a position on 2 scales:

Destructive-Balanced-Restorative
Lawful-Neutral-Chaotic

I like the destructive-restorative scale better than the good-evil one. Good and evil are quite subjective. I do like the idea of a character being just plain "good" and indifferent about laws (as distinct from NG) so my players will be able to cherry pick the terms they want to use.

You can be indifferent, destructive, neutral destructive, chaotic balanced, balanced, neutral, chaotic restorative or any combination of the above.

Destructive in the sense I use the words isn't just about killing but also embracing human development at the expense of the natural world. Lawful destructive embraces social order, lawful restorative embraces natural order.

I like being able to look at parts of alignment in isolation. But alignment really is just another facet of personality. Devoutness/Apathetic is a part of an alignment spectrum. Scepticism/Open-mindedness.

Actually come to think of it the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator might be a good way of sorting out "alignment"...

 

[lutecius]

Nobody said that in D&D Law is good. Lawful Good is Lawful Good, not Lawful, or Good, or Lawful Neutral, or anything else. Lawful Good is Lawful and Good. It's not better than simply being Good. There is no alignment for simply being Lawful for D&D 4th edition, after all.

That's the whole problem. It has been said over and over in this thread, but I'll try again.
The L in LG has to mean something. So having both LG and G side by side suggests that:

Either the L part is somehow related to G. So Lawful, not just LG is some kind of good, or something beyond G on the same axis, à la warhammer.

Or L means something unrelated to G, but then it should work with E too.

 

[hong]

That's the whole problem. It has been said over and over in this thread, but I'll try again.
The L in LG has to mean something.

Yes. It means "a different kind of G to Good".

 

[lutecius]

I like being able to look at parts of alignment in isolation. But alignment really is just another facet of personality. Devoutness/Apathetic is a part of an alignment spectrum. Scepticism/Open-mindedness.

Actually come to think of it the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator might be a good way of sorting out "alignment"...

Apparently alignment in 4e has nothing to do with personality (not necessarily a bad thing IMO). It is more of a cosmic thing. For example the new archons are described as single-minded and disciplined, but they're Chaotic Evil because they serve the Primordials.

But I'm not sure this has been sorted out completely because it doesn't with fit the scoop describing alignments pretty much as what we're familiar with and the

Spoiler

Scion of Orcus

in KotSF is Evil, not CE.