That's the thing. Once you are okay with not respecting or following one law, lawful cannot equate to laws. It can part of the alignment for some, but a dedication to a higher order is also lawful and does not dilute the alignment at all.
Ya alignment is just not binary like what I think you might be suggesting. Real moral and ethics require more nuanced thinking than that, often juggling very complex dilemmas. Handwaving away those considerations to suit an adventure idea ("wouldn't it be cool for a gold dragon to be behind an unlawful heist") is not a good primary reason in and of itself. I just don't agree with you that it is self-evident that gold dragons would easily ignore non-evil mortal laws. I think there needs to be more robust rationale for me to like it/find it plausible.
I like that too - it seems to cover all the common heist trope locations, which will make it easy to plug and play if a campaign includes such a scenario...
Then... don't? It's not mandatory to play the chapters exactly as written, after all. The gaming police aren't going to drag the DM away if they replace the Golden Vault with another organization - or have no organization at all, and it's just the adventuring group planning the heist...
Yeah... I'm sure there's no way that Allosaurus will come to life and attack the party, right?
I'm doing the same thing because of the Special Edition cover too. I ended up with two DL books (I'm not saying the bundle cover wasn't nice, but the SE was really nice), as I was planning on getting my group to create characters before the general release (which they did using the early online release). But I have no reason to get two books here. I'll do the early ordering if it's something I really want, which right now would likely next be Planescape.
I'm actually suggesting the opposite. If it was binary, LG would mean one thing like you suggest. You would either be that specific LG or not LG at all. Alignment is more open than that. A lawful person might follow the laws religiously, or maybe just be a really structured and orderly person, or have a very strong personal code that he follows.
Nothing is being handwaved by me. Breaking a mortal law that doesn't apply to the dragon anyway is not unlawful if in pursuit of the higher order and good.
It's a scale.... Not a switch. I can be mostly lawful. That doesn't make me completely lawful. I'm not sure why this is controversial.
Hmm not sure what you mean. I think the gold dragon would strongly prefer to approach a problem by respecting non-evil mortal laws as much as possible, out of both respect and long-term/holistic goals. If that is improbable, however, I can see how the dragon would evaluate the pros and cons of breaking laws.
