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Message: <blockquote data-quote="N'raac" data-source="post: 6789153" data-attributes="member: 6681948">Reasonable people can disagree reasonably.  That’s the only real basis for a good discussion.  I’m going to cut up and rearrange your post, with the hope I don’t lose its meaning in the process.Here, I do not believe we are getting into the question of Law vs Chaos, but a question of Good vs Evil (indeed, you use the latter word yourself).  A Lawful, but Good, person might well find the two concepts come into conflict.  Lawfully, this is private property, and he should respect the No Trespassing sign.  However, the tenets of Good  might not permit him to respect the sign – perhaps he has to cross this land to assist someone in need.  He might even consider the tenets of Good to overcome the tenets of Law   Let’s say some fellow possesses an ancient artifact, which is rightfully his property, but which is also needed to exorcise an evil Demon which has possessed an innocent child.  The fellow is unwilling to part with this valuable artifact.  What’s more important, respecting the Law or carrying out the Good of protecting that innocent child, and the potential victims of the Demon?  A NG character won’t think twice – the child takes priority.  A LN character will respect the law of the land (perhaps he will bring a case before the courts to be granted lawful use of the relic, even though that will delay matters, during which time the innocent will suffer).  An LG character – well, he has to compromise one of the two.Here we have a different law overriding private property interests, not a lack of respect for that property.  The Chaotic or Neutral fellow will pursue the suspect onto his private property.  The LN character (thinking only of the law) will seek that warrant before he will enter the property, where entering the property without a warrant would be unlawful.  He follows the rules.Absolutely.  A CN may  not care if he’s doing some harm (“your grass will grow back, old man”), and a CE might well be trespassing to rob or kill the owner, or to light a fire because he likes lighting fires – what he wants is all that matters.Emphasis added.  Real people are not 100% Lawful, or 100% Chaotic.  That LN character might still find a motivation to unlawfully trespass, and that Chaotic might actually respect the private property and suffer the inconvenience of walking around.Indeed, I would expect any Lawful person to respect the Law and Custom.  This highlights the fact that Law cannot exist in a vacuum – for the Lawful person to respect laws, there must be laws for him to respect.  Before I can accept that the Lawful person respects private property only because it is a “matter of law and custom”, I would need to be sold on the concept that private property is inherently non-Lawful.  I see no special case for this assertion.  Thieves are typically viewed as Chaotic, not Lawful, and it is thieves who violate rights of private property.  Robin Hood is the stereotype of non-Lawful Good – he robs from the rich to give to the poor because he cares for the welfare of the poor, and not for the property rights of the wealthy, who would clearly give of their surplus freely if they were remotely Good.  Whether he is CG or NG is a matter of much greater interpretation.  He is, in many stories, loyal to King Richard, which may show a Lawful, or at least not entirely Chaotic, bent.  However, it may simply show that he’s OK with a Lawful ruler provided that Lawful ruler adheres to his vision of what is Good.  Once the King departs from his vision of Good, he is quite willing to ignore his Lawful duties to the King.Here again, I’m not seeing a lot of Chaos in this reasoning.  In particular, “Do Unto Others As You Would Have Others Do Unto You” seems much more in keeping with Good than with Chaos.  I don’t think that CE Demon wants to be treated in the same manner he treats his victims, although he may expect such treatment from others, consistent with what he would do, were the positions reversed, and might refrain from indulging his own desires out of fear of the consequences.Certainly an important issue in any question of alignment.  The Lawful person stops at the stop light because that is the rule.  The Chaotic person stops at the stop light because of concern for his safety and that of others.  At 3 AM, when a clear line of sight shows that no one else is going to pass through the intersection, the Chaotic person is much more likely to run the light than the Lawful person.</blockquote>

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