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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 1170012" data-attributes="member: 172">The "looser moral standards of our world?" You'll pardon me if I say that term is meaningless. People have all kinds of moral standards and ethical philophies that they operate under. The only difference is that they have selected a realist moral philosophy in D&D and set it up as the "true and correct one".You are right though that D&D's morality is something distinct from reality. But that's the problem with most people's denigration of alignment. Just because they can't personally grasp a verifiable realist ethical philosophy, they decide that one shouldn't exist in the game. Which is bizarre to me, because it is a game.There is nothing at all contradictory about thos statements. There are only 9 alignments in the alignment model, they cover all reasoning beings. Certainly, there is room in any one of the nine for large degrees of variation.Having a definition does not make an ethical theory "absolute." It is only absolute if a single principle in undefeasible. This is not the case in the D&D alignment system.You are wrong here on two points:1) Absolute != not open to interperetation.2) Alignments are not open to anyone's interperetation but the DM's. That still does not make it a straighjacket; I think you fail to understand what the phrase "alignment is not a straightjacket" means. It means that alignment is evaluative. It does not compel your character to do anything. You decide what your character is like and then decide what alignment applies.Oh? I don't see any way in which it is "trying to have it both ways." You are conflating two orthogonal principles.See my prior post on the validity of that argument.And you say that despite the fact that many people seem to have no problem with it whatsoever. The problem comes when people misunderstand it (which you seem to) or cannot shake their relativist mindset when it comes to the game.Once again, having definitions does not make a moral theory an absolute. It can be sensitive to circumstances.Again, the only person that his such a license is the DM; nobody within the mileu.Which again shows that problems with alignment stem from misunderstanding it, since alignment detecting spells and effects do not work this way. They act upon alignment not "current thoughts or actions" and alignment does not vary according to what a character is doing or thinking at the moment.</blockquote>

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