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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4227859" data-attributes="member: 4937">The biggest problem with the alignment system is that very few people seem to understand it.Chaotic Good is most certainly neither unaligned with good leanings, nor basically good with some mental problems.Chaotic Good is essentially Liberalism in the classical rich capital 'L' John Locke, Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson (I'd go further in the list, but it would become political with more modern figures) sense of the word before the term lost any real meaning because too many philosophies coopted it.  Chaotic Good is the belief that true goodness is only expressable through the excercise of invidual liberty, and that the most weal and benefit is obtained when basically good people are left unfettered by social constraints or burdensome laws.  There is nothing basically mentally unbalanced about it at all.  There is nothing basically ungood about it at all, and a very strong case could be made (and CG people would make it) that CG is Good, and that other alignments are less good.  Of course, people who believe in LE philosophies largely believe that what they believe is Good and right and just as well.The alignment descriptors aren't meant to solve that debate.  They are simply meant as a simplified way to describe the various philosophical camps and futher - in a very fantasy and fantastical way - to make those philosophical camps and ideals tangible things.The alignment system isn't one of D&D's flaws.  It's one of the reasons I play D&D.  Because without it, the game would tend to just be killing things and taking there stuff.  I play D&D because I like situations like the PC's going into the orc lair to kill things and take thier stuff......and rescueing a very pregnant human slave...who soon needs a midwife...who delivers a wailing half-orc child...which prompts the mother to ask the PC's to kill itNone of which requires the alignment system, but having the alignment system helps keep these questions tangible in a way that having no mechanics for alignment actions - no way to keep score - isn't.</blockquote>

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