[i]This[/i] is my problem with alignment

[Voadam]

Hah! Eat my dust, Voadam ! *see previous post*

Draw!

Bang!

Voadam looks down at the bullet hole in his vest.

Damn he's quick.

Shilsen wins.

 

[barsoomcore]

So one chaotic person might not believe or care all that much for politics at all, and be very chaotic in his personal habits... while another might not be chaotic in their personal habits but be very politically motivated.

Fair enough, but now it seems like you've so diluted the descriptor I wonder why even bother to have it? If you can have two Lawful Good characters who don't share ANY personality traits, is the term Lawful Good really very useful?

To those who are comparing alignment descriptors to the Charisma attribute:

A) I think Charisma is a problematic attribute, so yeah, you're right, the same problems apply.

B) I also think that personal persuasiveness and personal attractiveness have far more co-relation than political agenda and personality do. More beautiful people are more likely to get their way. Ugly people can have a very high Charisma, of course, but when you look at the list of Charisma skills (Bluff, Diplomacy, Disguise, Gather Information, Handle Animal, Intimidate, Perform, Use Magic Device), it's not crazy talk to say that personal attractiveness affects a reasonable number (certainly half, at any rate). At least you can definitively say that all characters with a high Charisma share certain qualities -- they're all persuasive and they're all more-or-less able to impose their personality on others. This doesn't seem to be the case with alignment descriptors, where two characters with the same descriptor might not share ANY traits whatsoever.

 

[drnuncheon]

So why then would we use the same variable to contain them. Dexterity, Strength and Constitution are all components of a concept called "physical fitness" but this doesn't mean that it would be wise or helpful to aggregate the three scores into a single attribute.

And yet, we aggregate hand-eye coordination together with both manual dexterity and gross physical dexterity, all three of which could be represented by different stats for maximum realism. (Now that I review other posts, I see that people have made the same point with Charisma.)

What it boils down to is that it's merely a decision on where to draw the line of 'this is the point where we abstract things out for convenience's sake'.

EGG decided, as far as I can tell, to use Good vs Evil and Law vs Chaos because they were the fundamental conflicts in the fantasy literature that inspired the game - things like Lord of the Rings for the former, and Moorcock's various Eternal Champion works for the latter. By using Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos he brings those things to mind, sets up associations in his players minds that would be very different if he used alignments such as (say) the ones in the Palladium books, with their 'good/selfish/evil' groupings.

 

[swrushing]

.[/QUOTE]

The problem with this approach is that you end up with a lot of the exemplars of the various alignments actually being Neutral.
.

We are of course, moving ever further into very subjective grounds.

And if the supposedly paradigmatic cases of the alignments are really neutral because they mix qualities that, in other examples are strongly associated with the other side of the spectrum, that is a good indication that there isn't really any kind of spectrum or continuum and that the category is misconceived to begin with.
.

Again, a character can BE X if he has some trasits of X and some traits of not-x. Its going to be rare that anyone has all-x or even all not-x but it really comes down to the weights of them.

For instance:
Barbarians in their noble savage incarnation are often seen as a paradigmatic case for chaotic good or chaotic neutral.
.

I do not think barbarians are chaotic IF you put them in a tribal situation witj lotsa tribal laws and traditions they strictly adhere to. What you are describing there are neutral or even lawful barbarians... which BTW i allow in my campaign since i felt the overly narrow characterization was notgood.

if you wanted to have a chaotic community of barbarians, then you would be dropping the import and adherence to the laws and traditions as a important part of the culture... that is for an EXEMPLAR of chaotic behavior... a characterization i would NOT place on barbarians.

Summary... if you CHOOSE to use examplars which are mixed, then you will come to the inevitable conclusion that the exemplars are mixed and thus not good exemplars.

Another example:
Superman is often

superman is often not in my DnD games.

and, yes, the noble savage can be neutral. he can even be lawful.

 

[swrushing]

[/QUOTE]

Fair enough, but now it seems like you've so diluted the descriptor I wonder why even bother to have it? If you can have two Lawful Good characters who don't share ANY personality traits, is the term Lawful Good really very useful?

First off, from the SRD, ". Each alignment represents a broad range of personality types or personal philosophies, so two characters of the same alignment can still be quite different from each other. In addition, few people are completely consistent."

How close "quite different from each other" and "share no personality traits" come is a matter of opinion. So i don't think its "me" who is saying you don't have to follow all the traits of a given alignment.

As for a debate on HOW USEFUL IS ALIGNMENT, thats a whole 'nuther kettle of fish.

As i have described it, i find it moderately useful, but as i have already said, i use it as a DERIVED trait not a driving one. people wont do bad things because they are evil... but are evil because they did bad things.

other than its use for shorthand quick and dirty "personality" issues, it plays not that big a role, hence i tend to have fewer problems with it.

I think its as deep a mess as a Gm wants to make it. if he wants to focus on alignment and try and make it a precision thing, he will end up with frustrations, as its not intended or designed to be a precision thing.

IMO and AFAIK of course.

 

[fusangite]

Now that we have all essentially agreed that D&D categories, be they skills, attributes or whatever are essentially aggregate categories of more specific information, the real question then becomes: does this particular category about which I am speaking work?

Now, you'll recall back in the gold ol' days of those boxed sets of the early 80s, alignment had only one axis. It used to be that there were only three alignments instead of nine. For whatever reason, we moved to a two-axis system because the previous system of categorizing didn't serve us.

Dr. Nuncheon, I'm not arguing that alignment be abolished; I'm simply stating that the current system of categorization does not serve us either so we should decide whether the law-chaos axis represents conduct or political ideology. I don't even care which one. The problem is that when it purports to represent both, it effectively represents neither.

This is not a problem when it comes to Dexterity as an attribute. Dexterity does not sometimes mean its own opposite. This is because it is a functional aggregate measure whereas the law-chaos axis of alignment is a dysfunctional aggregate measure. Note: I'm not attacking the good-evil axis; I don't especially like but it is actually descriptive and functional.

And, as a previous poster very eloquently pointed out, the way that it describes political ideologies again serves to drum meaning out of the category. If believing in having a guaranteed bill of individual rights is lawful and opposed by chaotics and believing in having individual rights is chaotic and opposed by the lawful, our categories are not serving us.

By all means, let's have law and chaos but let's actually have them mean something instead of the current system where they mean so many contradictory things that they cease to be a useful tool for anything other than calculating damage from lawful and chaotic weapons and spells.

Finally, I want to reiterate the complaint I made when I posted this: if alignment is behaviour and being chaotic evil prevents you from acting rationally in your own interest, in pursuit of your own goals, why doesn't this balance-obsessed game find a way to compensate you for that?

 

[fusangite]

Thanks, trickstergod, for your examples. If I may respond...

Then, on the other hand, there's Thomas Paine, a decent example of chaotic good. A career rebel, he pamphleteered and more for the Americans and French alike in support of their revolutions (and more places beside, I do believe), and, such as with the French, was unwilling to lend support to the new government when the revolutionaries took a turn most bloody. He seemed deeply unsatisfied with the political situation in most places and constantly criticized them in the hopes of creating something better. Like More, he was willing to stand his ground even under threat of death; he escaped Robespierre and the guillotine supposedly more by chance than anything else.

What was Paine fighting for? He was fighting for an end to personal governance in favour of the rule of law. He was fighting for a bill of rights that would be applied inflexibly and unswervingly to all persons. He was willing to sacrifice his own liberty so that others might live under the rule of law. Some of the lawful values listed in the rules that Paine represented:
- honour
- trustworthiness
- reliability
- "she tells the truth, keeps her word and speaks out against injustice"
- "she may believe in order for all"

 

[AuraSeer]

Fair enough, but now it seems like you've so diluted the descriptor I wonder why even bother to have it? If you can have two Lawful Good characters who don't share ANY personality traits, is the term Lawful Good really very useful?

Of course it's useful, because alignment has game effects. A LG character is not affected by holy word or dictum, while characters of any other alignment are affected by one or both.

 

[fusangite]

Should I go on?

Not really. Because you don't seem to understand my point.

But I'm persistent so I'll give you some new questions to answer:
(a) Which species would have a bill of individual rights?
(b) Which species would have an independent judiciary?
(c) Which species would be more likely to have a democratic government?
(d) Which species would be more likely to have a monarchy?
(e) If elves were under attack and the best way to defend themselves against tyranny was to form a single cohesive centralized fighting force, would they?

Having anarchist or libertarian goals and pursuing them rationally and efficiently is not something the current alignment system facilitates.

 

[barsoomcore]

Of course it's useful, because alignment has game effects.

Well, I understand that. Sorry I wasn't clear. What I meant was is it a useful means of categorizing people? It seems not to be. It obviously has game impact and thus choosing one alignment or the other for your character can be useful (or harmful, as the case may be).