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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4237245" data-attributes="member: 4937">Ok, I'll back down.So just a few points to try and sum up my view:Did I use that word?  If I did, I apologize.  I certainly don't think you are being disingenuous.  If anyone is being disingenuous here, it's me - because ultimately I don't believe 'law' and 'chaos' have real concrete and definitive meanings.  I think that while you could line up most concepts on the axis as either 'lawful', 'chaotic', and 'nuetral' that most real world people, systems, or societies are so complex and filled with so many contridictions that even that wouldn't tell you much.  It's just much more interesting to hold that lawful evil and chaotic good (or for that matter lawful good and chaotic evil) have a definite distinguishable character.  However, that admission is not nearly the same as saying that I think the new system more interesting (or less problimatic) than the old division into nine groups.  I do think that 'law' and 'chaos' have enough of a definate character to make them useful story prompts or at least backdrops for those stories. Well, it is precisely within those great fantastic cosmological conciets that we are operating.  Moreover, if we use - as I have - the terms 'law' and 'chaos' as stand in for issues like collectivism vs. the rights of the individual, or natural law vs. positivism, or any other number of opposing belief systems which each seem to describe something real and relevant and which do seem to illumine human politics and social organization at least in part, then I do think we can use the Law/Chaos axis profitably to bring interesting questions into our game without upsetting the fantastic tropes and being unduly anachronistic.And I also do not go so far as you in rejecting the modern relevance of the old cosmlogical conciets of mother cosmos and father chaos, and that great mythic consummation when infinite cold (stasis) met infinite heat (change) and birthed the universe in cataclysm.   Interesting, because I would claim that courage has no virtue of itself.  The only thing that makes courage a virtue is to be courageous in a good cause.  To be courageous in a bad cause only compounds the error.  Far better to shirk cowardly away from doing evil than to do it boldly and think that by your boldness you are somehow being good.Bad DMing is just bad DMing.  In practice most players should play a neutral character.  Playing an aligned character is difficult, and deserves some leeway.  After all, mortals aren't perfect.  The biggest source of friction - the fact that changing alignments would cost you a level - is done away with, so what's the problem?From a certain point of view, yes.  If questions and difficulties are to be avoided, then yes not having questions or answers is certainly an improvement.  Over the years I've taken a great deal of pleasure in thinking very deeply about what my characters believe to be true and then playing as if I had conviction - even if I myself didn't believe any of it.  This is a fantasy, so picking something up out of a box labeled 'Chaotic Neutral' or 'Lawful Good' is alot more interesting than picking something up labeled 'phenomenalism' (well, may not to a professor of philosophy I grant you).  The new system just seems really dumbed down.And the refuge of playing a character that isn't aligned has always been there if you wanted it.  Likewise, its easy to slap the label 'nuetral good' on your character and do little about it save jump through hero hoops.</blockquote>

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