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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8291818" data-attributes="member: 42582">And here's my take on the problem with alignment:Too much of D&amp;D, and hence too many D&amp;Ders, try to approach it in a way where all alignments are true.Which is, I think, obviously absurd. If True Neutrality (= roughly Daoism, Stoicism, etc) is true than Lawful Good (= roughly the idea that collective human effort can meaningfully increase people's access to both material and more abstract/&quot;spiritual&quot; wellbeing) is obviously false. And vice versa.So if LG is true than Concordant Opposition is a horrible place. If TN is true than the Seven Heavens are a horrible place. Checking out those two places should therefore settle the matter of which is true and which is not.But beginning perhaps with Appendix IV of the PHB, and certainly by the time of the Manual of the Plane a decade or so later, the game has attempted to present Concordant Opposition and the Seven Heavens as both being consistent with both alignments. Which reduces alignment to just a preference about whether to live in a leafy suburb, or one with fewer trees but more cafes. Which is fair enough as far as it goes, but hardly seems worth killing anyone over! (Which is what alignment was meant to be about.)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8291818, member: 42582"] And here's [I]my[/I] take on the problem with alignment: Too much of D&D, and hence too many D&Ders, try to approach it in a way where [I]all alignments are true[/I]. Which is, I think, obviously absurd. If True Neutrality (= roughly Daoism, Stoicism, etc) is true than Lawful Good (= roughly the idea that collective human effort can meaningfully increase people's access to both material and more abstract/"spiritual" wellbeing) is obviously false. And vice versa. So if LG is true than Concordant Opposition is a horrible place. If TN is true than the Seven Heavens are a horrible place. Checking out those two places should therefore settle the matter of which is true and which is not. But beginning perhaps with Appendix IV of the PHB, and certainly by the time of the Manual of the Plane a decade or so later, the game has attempted to present Concordant Opposition and the Seven Heavens as [I]both [/I]being consistent with[I] both [/I]alignments. Which reduces alignment to just a preference about whether to live in a leafy suburb, or one with fewer trees but more cafes. Which is fair enough as far as it goes, but hardly seems worth killing anyone over! (Which is what alignment was meant to be about.) [/QUOTE]

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