Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 1186730" data-attributes="member: 7240">Tsyr says, Now that is good advice. All kinds of things will shape your character's conduct and consciousness far more than alignment will. I would suggest that, in D&D, alignment is neither descriptive nor prosciptive. It is simply a mechanic needed to make certain kinds of spells work. Dragonblade is right on the money there about it varying from campaign to campaign and being an inherently problematic and contradictory system.The fact is that, in our world, evil almost never sees itself as evil. In D&D, in order to function, evil must be conscious of its own evilness. This is only one of a host of problems in using the alignment system to describe anything. My recommendation for playing one's alignment well is to figure out which god your character worships, adopt that god's alignment and then follow the teachings of the god. If one is fortunate enough to play a Druid, Cleric, Wizard or Paladin, chances are that you will also be a member of some other organization, in addition to your religion, that will also have various dictates about how to conduct yourself and how to perceive your own and others' conduct. Sure, alignment can occasionally be of utility in deciding how rigorously to stick to an agreement or set of laws or the importance your character places on protecting or helping strangers but, if you're playing your character properly, all sorts of things will precede alignment in determining how to act. Dictates of one's religion, dictates of one's guild, the opinions of one's character's friends and lessons learned from past experience are all more important than alignment in determining how to act.In response to Tsyr's comments about being lawful, I would contend that, in fact, we live in a lawful society. It's just that the "laws" people follow are always going to be the unwritten laws of social convention, not the laws on the lawbooks. People speed in a 30 zone because society doesn't disapprove; on the other hand, people don't pick their noses in public, despite the absence of any laws on the books.</blockquote>

Verification