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

[fusangite]

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."

Thanks for this. Better than anything I have said on this thread, this makes my case perfectly. Why would a system decide to store philosophy and personality in the same variable?

 

[shilsen]

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?

Firstly, alignment is sometimes behaviour, but not always. And being chaotic evil does not necessarily prevent you from acting rationally in your own interest. So no compensation is necessary.

See - all better

 

[painandgreed]

As I use it, alignment is descriptive, not proscriptive. Characters chooose their alignment just as they choose their actions. If I feel at a later date that their actions may cause their alignment to change, they get a warning that is their conscience telling them this. If they choose to heed it or not is up to them. I would never deny a player his choice of actions due to his characters alignment but I might make said character deal with the results.

I could get interested in alignment again if something interesting were done with it. A game that minimized the conflict between good and evil and played up law vs. chaos, for instance, would be interesting, if nothing else, because it'd be different.

I'm trying to do this with the demi-humans (elves and dwarves) IMC in order to make them different from humans. Humans tend to side along the good/evil axis and a chaotic good and lawful good human may see nothing wrong with teaming up to defeat a common evil. Elves and dwarves tend to side along the law/chaos axis and you'll find lawful evil and lawful good elves seeing nothing wrong with teaming up to defeat a common chaos. Between the two, there are differences as to what law/chaos mean that causes strained relations between the races. With the elves, it is the culture, traditions, and rules of law that must be preserved. There are few creatures more deadly in their own environment than an elvish lawyer in an elvish court of law with the force of his entire race behind him. Dwarves on the other hand are creatures of honor. "Say what you mean, and mean what you say. Let no friend go unaided, and no enemy go unchallenged." Both want order and stability to prevail but they have differing views as to what that means and how it should be accomplished. I'm hoping that this will lead to some interesting culture clash with the typical good versus evil human mindset of the PCs.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

As I use it, alignment is descriptive, not proscriptive. Characters chooose their alignment just as they choose their actions. If I feel at a later date that their actions may cause their alignment to change, they get a warning that is their conscience telling them this. If they choose to heed it or not is up to them. I would never deny a player his choice of actions due to his characters alignment but I might make said character deal with the results.

All well and good but you have to get down to the question of what it describes sooner or later. And if it's actually incoherent or, to use Fusangite's words, a poor aggregate, then it doesn't consistently describe anything at all.

I'm trying to do this with the demi-humans (elves and dwarves) IMC in order to make them different from humans. Humans tend to side along the good/evil axis and a chaotic good and lawful good human may see nothing wrong with teaming up to defeat a common evil. Elves and dwarves tend to side along the law/chaos axis and you'll find lawful evil and lawful good elves seeing nothing wrong with teaming up to defeat a common chaos. Between the two, there are differences as to what law/chaos mean that causes strained relations between the races. With the elves, it is the culture, traditions, and rules of law that must be preserved. There are few creatures more deadly in their own environment than an elvish lawyer in an elvish court of law with the force of his entire race behind him. Dwarves on the other hand are creatures of honor. "Say what you mean, and mean what you say. Let no friend go unaided, and no enemy go unchallenged." Both want order and stability to prevail but they have differing views as to what that means and how it should be accomplished. I'm hoping that this will lead to some interesting culture clash with the typical good versus evil human mindset of the PCs.

Again, all well and good, but what are you going to say when someone asks, "well, what's so bad about chaos?" What is this "law?" that is so restrictive? Is our legal guarantee of free speech lawful or chaotic? Going from your description, I don't really see any reason to consider the elves chaotic and the dwarves lawful. Preservation of culture, traditions, and rule of law vs. "say what you mean and mean what you say, let no friend go unaided and no enemy unchallenged" honor doesn't really sound too compelling as a grand philosophical divide since, they are really rather similar.

 

[fusangite]

Firstly, alignment is sometimes behaviour, but not always. And being chaotic evil does not necessarily prevent you from acting rationally in your own interest. So no compensation is necessary

Yes I feel much better knowing that this attribute isn't unfair because its meaning and function are variable and shift during play.

How did the renaissance exam go?

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

.

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.[/quote]

True, but X cannot include not-x. If individualism is a chaotic trait, then the rule of law--a prerequisite for any individualistic culture--cannot be a non-chaotic trait.

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.

Well, that's the point. They do sound an awful lot like lawful barbarians. On the other hand, if I describe the raiding sprees that these lawful barbarians go on, I can make them sound rather chaotic too. And, it's canon in D&D that barbarians tend toward chaos. It would certainly be possible to make the law/chaos axis a bit more coherent by eliminating some of the data that doesn't seem to fit.

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.

Except that this amounts to saying that there are no chaotic barbarian cultures. Realistic functioning cultures have governing norms that are expressed either through informal traditions and conceptions of honor or through positive law. Often, they are enforced through both. The non-functional culture of the Ik as described by Collin Turnbull in the Mountain People could be described as a culture without any import for adherence to laws or traditions. However, the vikings placed a lot of importance upon laws and traditions. Most tribal cultures are governed by traditions rather than positive law. Modern western societies have done away with a lot of the authority of traditions and replaced them with positive law--something that necessarily coincided with the increasing emphasis on personal freedom and individual identity. In any event, no matter how barbaric the actions of successful peoples has seemed to those outside their groups (and often accurately too), all of them have had laws and traditions which were important enough that transgressing them could get you killed.

Superman is not often in my D&D games

But, whether or not he appears in D&D games, is he a paragon of lawfulness or not?

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.

Right. So, pick a few other exemplars of law and chaos that aren't so psychologically alien as to be irrelevant to the discussion of what it means for a human, elf, dwarf, halfling, gnome, etc to be lawful or chaotic. (In other words, slaadi, Modrons, Formians, etc don't count). As long as they follow some kind of recognizably human social and psychological patterns, they'll have the exact same problems as Superman and the barbarians: Law and Chaos attempt to stuff a number of concepts together which are actually unrelated or even opposed.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

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

No, I do understand your point. I don't think it has any relevance, however, because I don't think you understand the questions you're asking.

Bold claim, but I'll back it up.

First, you are making the most common error when discussing alignment. You look at an effect, and try to determine whether or not that effect is Evil, or Chaotic, or whatever.

That's the wrong question.

The question, instead, is "Why would a Chaotic individual desire or support such an idea?," as distinct from "Why would a Lawful individual desire or support such an idea?"

For instance ...

(a) Which species would have a bill of individual rights?

Both, of course. Because, again, it's the wrong question. A Chaotic individual might desire such a thing because it limits what other people can enforce on his "free will."

A Lawful individual might desire such a thing because it sets down an objective standard of codified behaviour - that which is allowed, as well as that which is disallowed.

A Neutral individual might see the benefit of restricting certain forms of self-expression in order to have the freedoms he or she desires.

(b) Which species would have an independent judiciary?

Both, again. A Chaotic individual might believe in a *truly* independent judiciary (perhaps even so far as a single and inviolate judge, jury, and executioner) because an individual can be reasoned with, can be reached on emotion, and can empathize more effectively with the accused / accusees. Thus, the ability for any given "court" to step outside the bounds of constraints laid down by others, far away and removed from the situation, is desirable.

A Lawful individual might see the need for a group to be set aside so that, amongst themselves, they might eliminate the caprice of emotional response that can so often cloud the rational mind. This select group would have the responsibility to oversee the way in which society is governed, to ensure that it followed the rational course, that the knee-jerk, emotional responses of others were not allowed to disrupt the machinery of state.

Etc.

 

[Trickstergod]

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

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"

I'm not sure if this was supposed to be a rebuttal on your part, but, if it is, I will say that even in light of all of those reasons, I still find him one of the better examples of chaotic good that can be found.

Part of the reason I brought him up was because, at times, a certain eloquence fails me. Suffice to say that, as far as I'm concerned, Thomas Paine's efforts for honor, trustworthiness, reliability, speaking out against injustice and believing in order represent a particularly chaotic good. If he had just settled on, say, doing a satisfactory effort for America and leaving at that, I'd attribute him as neutral good, but, as he seemed quite intent on bringing about change for the best wherever he could - and often in the face of popular opinion, at that - he stands as a good example of an essentially chaotic good individual and shows quite aptly that such an individual can believe in order, addressing injustice, and so on.

Sometimes I think words fail to best convey someones point and I'll just settle for a good example, instead, when it will likely show my take on things more clearly.

Hmm, and as it pops into mind, but while having every possibility of being contradicted by me at a later date, but is fairly short and to the point...

Law, to a degree, is about empowering and trusting to authority.

Chaos, conversely, is distrusting of authority and believes in restricting or eliminating its power (but, note, doesn't necessarily trust the individual, either; it just believes authority and government can do more harm)

 

[coyote6]

D20 Modern has Allegiances, which are sort of like what you are talking about. Unfortunately, because they don't have any hard and fast rules associated with them, Allegiances are normally unused in D20 Modern games. Allegiances don't really do anything per se, aside from potential DM use in the campaign.

If you were to take these Allegiances and perhaps add a few prereqs and some associated Feats, etc., I think people could get behind such a notion.

Well, for D&D, you could just say that anything that affected "Good", "Evil", etc., before, now affects creatures with an Allegiance to Good, Evil, or whatever.

You get the same game mechanic effect as having alignments, but with none of the problems about whether someone's personality, behavior, politics, etc. match their alignment.

Thus, you can have clerics with allegiances to Law and Good, but have them be total bastards. Or, you can have kindly old men with allegiances to evil.

(And if you want to keep some alignment flavor, rule that extremes of behavior can lead to an unwitting, or even unwilling, allegianec. Thus, mass murderers can end up allied to Evil through their actions, even if they never say, "Gosh, I sure love Evil!")

Hmm . . . I'm wondering if I should suggest this to my group . . .

 

[swrushing]

[/QUOTE]

True, but X cannot include not-x. If individualism is a chaotic trait, then the rule of law--a prerequisite for any individualistic culture--cannot be a non-chaotic trait.

True, chaos cannot in its definition contain the same traits that lawful would. However, i am talking about the character here. A character can contain both chaotic and lawful trait and the weight he give each will place him at either chaotic, ;awful or neutral. Regardless, he can still Do any of the actions, but the overall total of those will set his alignment.

Well, that's the point. They do sound an awful lot like lawful barbarians. On the other hand, if I describe the raiding sprees that these lawful barbarians go on, I can make them sound rather chaotic too. And, it's canon in D&D that barbarians tend toward chaos. It would certainly be possible to make the law/chaos axis a bit more coherent by eliminating some of the data that doesn't seem to fit.

or you could just not give you barbarian "chaotic" tribes as heavy a sense of honor, tradition and law.

DnD "chaotic barbarians" would not have that HTL to a serious degree that it overwhelms their chaotic nature and makes them non-barbarians. Characters who had gone that way would be simply ex-barbarians or fighters or other CLASSES. A barbarian culture/society might have the HTL strong enough to be a neutral community or a lawful one, but those berserking whackos that can fly into frenzy etc, would not be the lawful ones. (assumes rigid adherence to the DND class limit.)

What you seem to be mixing and matching are the characters of the barbarian CLASS and a more broad term of a barbarian culture/society.

Viking society had its berserkers but those were not the norm.

Except that this amounts to saying that there are no chaotic barbarian cultures. Realistic functioning cultures have governing norms that are expressed either through informal traditions and conceptions of honor or through positive law.

IF you want to talk about a culture with stroing enough traditions and laws that you now no longer consider it chaotic, then the culture is no loner chaotic... by definition. Even within such "barbarian" cultures, there would be those of the barbarian CLASS, who were "more chaotic" than the others, enough to be chaotic.

There is a huge difference between a culture/society described as barbaric and an individual of the barbarian CLASS.

what you seem to be trying to paint is "since i call this society barbarian, then that means they must be of the barbarian class, and since i defined my barbarian society as lawful, thats illegal."

Whereas i would say that such a lawdul society could have most of its people not as BARBARIAN CLASS but a few wingnuts certainly could be.

But, whether or not he appears in D&D games, is he a paragon of lawfulness or not?

nope. he is not. he is not an alignment type of character. superheroes have gone thru multiple eras of development and none of them have remained IMO at such a static state as to be considered alignment exemplars.

Right. So, pick a few other exemplars

The exemplar for LG i would choose is the paladin. A character for whom the ENDS and the means must satisfy his precepts. dishonorable acts get him in dutch and even a single evil act gets him fired.

Again, no single paladin has to embody every aspect of law and every aspect of good.