Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Patryn of Elvenshae" data-source="post: 1911756" data-attributes="member: 23094">Fus, you're still asking the wrong question.But I'll answer it anyway:No.  No one can.You want to know why?  Because I'm not their player, and I'm certainly not their DM.The problem you have is that philosophers, for the entirety of human history, have tried to define Good vs. Evil.They couldn't (and can't) do it, and yet you expect a roleplaying game to achieve a similar if not more difficult philosophical feat.You're just continuing the "Ooh, my characters are so complex, they can't be so simply categorized as to be one of nine categories" whining-type viewpoint.Moreover, D&D will never, ever get to the level you want.  You want to know why?  Because it's stupid and a waste of time.  Currently, the axes of Good vs. Evil and Law vs. Chaos are defined well-enough for a competent DM to use them, and no further.Should D&D ever decide to come out with "The Complete Law" and "The Complete Chaos" sourcebooks, you'll only change your argument.  Instead of "Law and Chaos are incomprehensible," you (and others like you) will argue, "But on page 32 of CL, it says Lawful people do X; I disagree, therefore Law and Chaos don't make sense."The only difference?  Today, you can only argue with and about generalities.So here's the final point.  Alignment in D&D is absolute.  I know this next bit is a hard concept for the relativistically besotted world we live in to grasp, but I'll try anyway.  Alignment is absolute.  Therefore, you can be wrong.  You can say, "But I think X and Y are examples of Lawful behaviour, not Chaotic."  And when you say that, you're wrong; you can try and argue, but it doesn't matter, because you're still wrong.Now, D&D is nice in that, unlike most objectivist philosophies, it doesn't actually try and present the reader with a complete moral code.  It leaves itself vague so that individual DMs and gaming groups can decide amongst themselves exactly where the lines between black, white, and grey are drawn.I don't see this as a problem.  Apparently, you do, because you can't perform your own brand of ethical calculus to determine whether or not Thomas Paine or George Washington or Mary, Queen of Scots, wer Chaotic Neutral or Lawful Stupid.Again, just because your own moral math doesn't mesh with the D&D system of alignment doesn't mean the D&D system is incoherent.  Rather, it probably means you're just bad at math.</blockquote>

Verification