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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Morrow" data-source="post: 2217619" data-attributes="member: 27012">But that's not a Lawful or necessarily even Good argument in D&D terms.  I think it's essentially a Chaotic argument.  Whether you are I personally agree with it, the D&D alignment demands that characters in the setting be able to view Order and Liberty (essentially Law and Chaos) independently of Good and Evil (which have to do with the preservation or destruction of innocent life or the dignity of innocent life).  Your value on free will is a secondary concern, which is what the corner alignments (LG, CG, LE, and CE) are all about.  They serve two masters.  The Lawful Good character will tell you that Order is the best way to protect the innocent and be Good.  The Chaotic Good character will tell you that Liberty is the best way to protect innocent life and be Good.  The Neutral Good character will embrace or reject either Order or Liberty on pragmatic grounds as needed to protect the innocent.I think that's a Chaotic argument.  A Chaotic Good character could make such an argument but it's from the Chaotic part of their alignment, not the Good part, in my opinion.  And given that D&D alignment system defines Good in such a way that it can be identified even in the absence of Evil (not only via the RAW definition but via auras accessible via Detect spells), I don't think the argument that Choice or Free Will are necessarily really fits here.  I'm not saying that you or your character can't make that argument, and I can amagine many CG characters would, but I don't think it's required by the D&D alignment system in the RAW or even supported by other alignment perspectives (e.g., LG).I suppose you could make this argument on the basis of "concern for the dignity of sentient beings" but I think a Lawful Good character might have a very different perspective on how to show such concern than a Chaotic Good character. As an analogy with with modern politics (and I don't want to debate the specifics of any particular political spectrum), I personally think that there are people of good character who really do want what's best for others with many different political perspectives.  You can get fairly substantial differences in the means that people support toward the same ends, simply by changing some assumptions about how the world works.  Similarly, the D&D alignment system allows Good people to exist across the Lawful to Chaotic spectrum, simply by changing some assumptions about how that world works.  If you think there is only one right political perspective, one right philosophical perspective, or one best alignment, it can be very difficult to embrace that range which may include perspectives that you don't personally agree with under the Good umbrella.  And the easiest way to do that is to view "Good" in the narrow sense that it's used in the RAW, without the other baggage better left to the Law and Chaos axis.At which point, why would Good Outsiders be supporting the plan if its so obviously Not Good?  If the Material Plane is a necessary "testing ground" to allow Good to exist, then wouldn't Good Outsiders understand that?I would argue that most Neutral characters (on the Good to Evil axis) are "innocent" in the sense used in the RAW unless they have done substantial wrongs to others (e.g., murder, torture, etc.).  That, combined with the "concern for the pdignity of sentient beings" does raise important questions about just how far Good can manipulate Neutral sentients before stepping over the line into oppresion, which is defined as an Evil trait.That's not a universal perspective in the real world and that's not necessarily a universal perspective in the D&D world unless you want to annoint one single and comprehensive definition of Good as the only legitimate one.  And, to me, that's very much like writing a role-playing game and saying only Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Socialists, or whatever are Good and everyone else is wrong.  If you want your D&D alignments to have variety just like real world political views do, you need to allow different perspectives to be Good.  If I wanted to point to a real world issue that could be used in D&D, it's that people are often quicker to see their political disagreements with others as a sign of moral failure than as a difference in perspective, worldview, and secondary values.  And that's why I suggested making the disagreement one between Lawful Good and Chaotic Good, where the Lawful Good people see Order as a means to insure Good and Liberty as an opportunity for Evil to slip past while the Chaotic Good people see Liberty as a means to insure Good and Order as a tool that Evil can use to take control.  Are either Lawful Good or Chaotic Good really Evil?  No.  But they might look that way to each other, using a morally relative perspective.  And that's exactly how they should look because CG is as far removed from LG as LE is and LG is as far removed from CG as CE is.  And the LG character fears CE most of all while the CG character fears LE most of all.Fair enough.  So long as it is applied equally to all edges, I agree.</blockquote>

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