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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 447246" data-attributes="member: 4937">Oh please can we not have this thread degenerate into yet another discussion of the meaning of law and chaos.  I _know_ that the indefinate meaning of those two are at the heart of every debate in D&D, but can we just not get at the heart of this debate for a change?We've had this discussion before, and we are neglecting one which we haven't had (or at least I haven't had), which is 'What does a Lawful Good individual do when thrust into a remote area in which the Laws and Customs of the land are markedly different than his own?'I'm not familiar with Gor.  I've never had a desire to read the books.  They've always looked a little seedy to me.  So I only know of thier contents by way of overhearing references to them.  I can't speak to the particular culture involved.I for one don't think that a Lawful Good person is going to be terribly offended by slavery _in and of itself_ unless he comes from a culture that has strongly outlawed slavery for some special cultural or historical reason.  Slavery _in and of itself_ is not IMO in opposition to a lawful code.  You can be lawful good and not see something wrong with slavery provided that the slaves are well cared for, are not looked down upon or degraded, and have some set of rights enherent to thier station, and that their station was considered an honorable one.  One can imagine situations where slaves were considered to be full members of a lords household, and treated as family members, albeit ones of lower station.  One can imagine sets of laws that protected slave households from the worst sorts of abuse that come with the custum of slavery, and strong peer to peer social pressure that discouraged the worst sorts of abuse that masters put thier slaves too.  I don't know anything about Gor, but lets assume that at some level, whatever society that the Paladin finds himself in IS NOT as described above.  What does the Paladin do?I'm inclined to think he doesn't just change his code to cope with his change in geography.  He may exercise varying degrees of wisdom when evangelizing the locals, but I would think he would feel duty bound to alter the situation because (as far as he is concerned), morality is not relative and all social codes are not created equal and all beliefs are not equally valid.I hate to even bring up Chaos in this, but I have had the experience of playing a CN with a good LG player, and we had the interesting conflict of the LG player being less offended by slavery (as an existing social institution) than my character was.  The reason was that my character, to the extent that he had a set of moral beliefs, believed very strongly in the rights of the individual (to do whatever he or she pleased), and so of all the evils in the world enslaving or imprisoning someone was (to his mind) the most evil (and maybe the only evil to his mind).  This is particularly interesting because here in the US, slavery is also reserved as being 'the most evil thing' for special historical reasons (and quite valid ones I don't hesitate to add), so in this situation was my CN more 'good' than a 'lawful good' or were one of us not fully understanding the alignment?</blockquote>

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