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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 1869785" data-attributes="member: 7240">What do you mean here? Are you saying that evil has different connotations to self-identifying evil people? I suppose it does. They still believe themselves to be evil.So, let us suppose that the inevitable Star Trek situation arises and once again the protagonist much choose between letting some people die and saving the majority and gambling everyone's life on a long-shot plan that will save everyone. Now, when Captain Kirk or Jean-Luc Picard do this, the long shot plan always works. But let's suppose that ordinary probabilities apply and 9 times out of 10 these gambles fail and everyone dies. Do these resulting avoidable deaths make trying to save everyone an evil act?So, do you mean that causing suffering is okay provided it is unavoidable? Let's suppose you decide to adventure in a long-abandoned dungeon, fully aware that there are evil spirits imprisoned within its depths. Contrary to your intentions, one of the spirits then escapes its prison and begins killing civilians in a nearby town. You know -- like the treasure-hunter in Beowulf. Clearly, this was avoidable -- if you didn't insist on going on adventures into unknown places, people would not be put needlessly at risk.So, in your campaign, when a character's alignment changes, do you tell him? Is alignment something you track or do you just change your characters' alignment when really egregious things happen?Most (not all -- don't freak out right-wingers) of these people, I would argue, fit into one of three ethical positions:(a) They know what they are doing is wrong but believe themselves to be in such desperate straits that they have to do these things. E.g. a crack addict pimping out his girlfriend. Such people often experience a strong sense of self-hatred that they are driven deeper into their addictions. These people don't see themselves as evil and want, as soon as they have enough money or feel good enough, promise themselves that they will make it up to everyone.(b) They have a sharp in/out or us/them distinction whereby they view their friends and associates to be people who deserve to be treated well but view the individuals whom they exploit as less worthy or wholly unworthy. Sometimes this manifests as racism; sometimes it is a classist view; most commonly it is comes from the view that the people whom they are exploiting are already drugged-out bums whose lives are already ruined (and who should be thankful that their pimp/boss/dealer is as nice as they are). (c) Often these people situate themselves in a hierarchy of relative exploitiveness -- just as people, some of whom society today admires, were "the most generous industrialists of the 19th century" (only a 70 hour week -- and a minimum hiring age of 13!), people can be the fairest drug dealer, the gentlest pimp, etc. Someone might advance the view that as people are going to be buying crystal meth anyway, they are providing a public service by making sure that the stuff they sell is relatively pure and safe.(d) Often people engaged in criminal or exploitive enterprises (remember employing child labour in the 3rd world is a legal practice) are only doing so to achieve some greater good -- like getting enough money for the down payment on their house, funding an important political movement, launching an independent bid for president to clean up US politics, making sure their kids can get out of "the business" by ensuring that they go to the best schools and colleges, etc.Do you get this from the rules? The rules seem to be all about people's internal state of mind, as opposed to their actions. Is this what D&D says or is this the adaptation you have made of D&D in order to make sense of a very peculiar mechanic?So, what you're saying is that a person with anarchist or libertarian goals who pursues them in an organized, efficient, disciplined way cannot, himself, be chaotic. Have I misinterpreted you?It seems to me, based on the way you have set this up, only people on the neutral part of the Law-Chaos axis can act rationally in their own interest. Chaos is transformed from an ethical position to a pathology -- being chaotic is suddenly about screwing-up your own plans because you lack the self-control or discipline to carry them out efficiently. How does this square with the other parts of your post?</blockquote>

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