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<blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 8561867" data-attributes="member: 7023840">I think that this, with some caveats, is the best articulation of the difference.Lawful is belief that rules that bind a group are a good in and of themselves- that people should follow the rules, even when the application of them might not always be the best in a particular situation.Chaotic, on the other hand, is the belief that those rules that bind groups are only useful to the extent that they are beneficial in that particular situation.The distinction for lawful people is two-fold; the first is that it has to be a set of social rules. Minigiant states this is being a code that the person doesn't create themselves, which is another useful way of thinking about it, but ... this is why &quot;lawful&quot; can apply both to judges that enforce a set of laws and to organized crime that have an internal and rigid code that applies to them. In both cases, there is a set of rules that apply to a group, and that the group is expected to follow, and the lawful person within that group will uphold the rules.For the most part, this doesn't apply to idiosyncratic personal codes of conduct, even if rigidly adhered to. Anton Chigurh (No Country for Old Men) is most certainly not lawful, even though he has a code of conduct. If no one else in the world has the same set of rules, then it's not lawful, because the purpose of &quot;lawful&quot; is ... well, for groups.The second distinction, and what I think is the main determinant of what is &quot;lawful,&quot; is that the lawful character will strive to uphold the rules even if the application in a particular situation might not be beneficial; there is a belief that the rules themselves are important. Personally, I find that these types of characters (regardless of whether or not you are using alignment) provides for rich fodder for roleplaying.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Snarf Zagyg, post: 8561867, member: 7023840"] I think that this, with some caveats, is the best articulation of the difference. Lawful is belief that rules that bind a group are a good in and of themselves- that people should follow the rules, [I]even when the application of them might not always be the best in a particular situation[/I]. Chaotic, on the other hand, is the belief that those rules that bind groups are only useful to the extent that they are beneficial in that particular situation. The distinction for lawful people is two-fold; the first is that it has to be a set of social rules. Minigiant states this is being a code that the person doesn't create themselves, which is another useful way of thinking about it, but ... this is why "lawful" can apply both to judges that enforce a set of laws and to organized crime that have an internal and rigid code that applies to them. In both cases, there is a set of rules that apply to a group, and that the group is expected to follow, and the lawful person within that group will uphold the rules. For the most part, this doesn't apply to idiosyncratic personal codes of conduct, even if rigidly adhered to. Anton Chigurh (No Country for Old Men) is most certainly not lawful, even though he has a code of conduct. If no one else in the world has the same set of rules, then it's not lawful, because the purpose of "lawful" is ... well, for groups. The second distinction, and what I think is the main determinant of what is "lawful," is that the lawful character will strive to uphold the rules even if the application in a particular situation might not be beneficial; there is a belief that the rules themselves are important. Personally, I find that these types of characters (regardless of whether or not you are using alignment) provides for rich fodder for roleplaying. [/QUOTE]

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