LG, sex and Star Trek

[LuYangShih]

I disagree with the postulation that a Lawful Good character would follow societal mores as long as they did not harm anyone. That strikes me as more of a Lawful Neutral character than a Lawful Good character. Lawful Good characters are primarily concerned with the furthering of Good through Lawful means, and if a Law exists that does not further Good, I do not see why Lawful Good characters would feel compelled to follow it.

I think Lawful Good characters would try to build a long term relationship based on love, and wait until a strong bond was formed outside the purely physical realm before engaging in sexual intercourse with their partners.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I disagree with the postulation that a Lawful Good character would follow societal mores as long as they did not harm anyone. That strikes me as more of a Lawful Neutral character than a Lawful Good character. Lawful Good characters are primarily concerned with the furthering of Good through Lawful means, and if a Law exists that does not further Good, I do not see why Lawful Good characters would feel compelled to follow it.

They wouldn't feel compelled to break it, either.

Again, from the definition of "Lawful" from the d20 SRD:

"'Law' implies honor, trustworthiness, obedience to authority, and reliability.'

Not adhering to the laws would make him unhonorable and untrustworthy to others in his society. And "the authorities" usually make those laws. And being reliable usually means doing what others expect of you - which can mean the rest of society.

All in all, if laws and customs don't hurt anyone, I don't see why Lawful Good characters should feel compelled to break them. They might still do it, but only for very good reasons.

I think Lawful Good characters would try to build a long term relationship based on love, and wait until a strong bond was formed outside the purely physical realm before engaging in sexual intercourse with their partners.

Probably. Of course, marriage doesn't have to enter this at all...

 

[LuYangShih]

I never mentioned marriage, so I do not know why you bring it up. Yes, the LG character would not feel compelled to break those laws, as they offer no real influence on his actions or beliefs.

 

[Elf Witch]

I disagree that just because you are lawful good you would only have sex in a long term commited relentionship. I think it would depend on what society you lived in. For example if sex was taboo outside of marriage then they would wait but if it was not why would the LG person have to abstain? As long as they did not do anything dishonorable to get sex like lie or mislead the person then how is it not a good or lawful act.

If your setting does not have a christian/judeo slant why assume that all religions follow their practices on sex and marriage.

 

[LuYangShih]

I do not base my view of alignments in any way on societal values, because that is subjective, not objective. Since the D&D alignments are meant to be objective, that would be the wrong approach to take, and lead to the eventual abandoment of the system due to conflicts and disagreements.

I think Lawful Good characters would seek a long term relationship, based on love. The long term relationship comes from the Lawful side of the axis. Lawful characters are ones who look at the big picture, make long term plans, and have an ordered approach towards life. Moving this personality type towards the areas of romance, I would expect them to take, once again, a long term approach, and seek a lasting relationship, for reasons based on the other axis of the alignment.

Sex is in and of itself a Neutral act, and so you would have to look at how the act could be turned to Good or Evil, since it is not inherently tied to morality. I would say Good would rule over the aspects of sexuality and romance that pertain to Love. A Good character would view sexual union as an expression of Love, not simply physical pleasure. Therefore, I would expect a Lawful Good character to seek a long term, lasting relationship, based on mutual Love between themselves and their partner.


The BoEF interpetation, on the other hand, seems to be a rationalization of a Lawful Good character acting like a N or CN character in regards to sexual conduct.

 

[Elf Witch]

I think Lawful Good characters would seek a long term relationship, based on love. The long term relationship comes from the Lawful side of the axis. Lawful characters are ones who look at the big picture, make long term plans, and have an ordered approach towards life. Moving this personality type towards the areas of romance, I would expect them to take, once again, a long term approach, and seek a lasting relationship, for reasons based on the other axis of the alignment.
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See this where I have a problem with assigning an alignment to sex. Your statement implies chatoics are into it for onlya good time. What about elves who are mainly chaotic but often form long lasting espically by human standards relentionships.

And just because a person is lawful neutral does not mean tht they can't form a long lasting bond.

Alignments and sex are about how you treat the person not how often or why you have sex.

 

[D+1]

It's very difficult drawing analogies between RPG alignment and related behavior and The Real World (TRW). TRW doesn't FUNCTION according to the rules and guides of RPG alignments. Alignment is basically the extreme ends of two scales with NN in the middle as having no particular extremes. Remember that alignment is NOT a replacement for a thorough, complex, comprehensive declaration of religious belief, philosophical ideals, or social norms. That's WHY we have alignment for characters - to give us an idea of where a character stands without having to write small novels explaining what, how, and why a character believes certain things and acts in certain ways - but it still can't tell you all the details of the characters religious and philosphical beliefs or the nature of the society he lives in and how he interacts with that society.

If you want to start by drawing a correlation between Christianity and LG then the idea of sex outside of marriage being within the bounds of LG is ludicrous. Sex outside of marriage is a sin. It depends somewhat on which denomination of Christianity you subscribe to as to how severely that sin is viewed - but it's still decidedly a sin and thus is NOT LG.

Now when you move into a game world we are no longer limited by the morals and ethics of the real world. RPG worlds can be a grey or as black/white as the DM can make it and the players can stand it. The same rules simply don't apply. Even in a historical fantasy setting a LG Christian character could do a lot of killing (probably even be EXPECTED to do a lot of killing) that a Real World Christian would know to be a mortal sin.

When you postulate other religions or certain philosophical beliefs as being equivalent to LG that's different.

The Federation of Star Trek, when you get right down to it, is a socialist, humanist utopia that only works by first assuming some really wacky things about the basic nature of man. When you postulate the Federation, and more specifically the Federation as seen on one starship, as being your LG baseline then guilt-free, rampant, recreational sex is a given. It's a society that has no religions, only spirituality. It doesn't have even a governmental approval over marriage and a basic family unit much less religious ideology regarding it. Marriage seems to be a strictly personal commitment with no legal or sociological fallout when it fails. Hey, this is a world where only the most rare, the newest and most savage diseases ever occur - and most of those are cured by the end of the show. Venereal diseases? Herpes? HA! Unintended pregnancy? Contraception? What old-fashioned low-tech worries those are! In the world of Trek sex has virtually no moral or ethical limitations or stigma so asking if LG people can sleep around in Trek, well the answer is just too obvious for words.

 

[Merlion]

If you ask me, the real problem here is DnD Law and Chaos. As has been said, the Good and Evil parts are easy..but the law/chaos part is harder...because DnD law and chaos isnt really "alignment"...its personality traits, and to a lesser extent politics. And those can be very hard to define. Many different personality traits and political stances could be seen as "lawful", and the same for "chaos".

 

[S'mon]

The only Lawful Good character I have ever seen in a Star Trek series is Spock, and perhaps Tuvok. The rest all seem either Neutral or Chaotic. So I would not use Star Trek as an example, either. I have not watched a Star Trek series since DS9, though, since I was really dissapointed with Voyager and Enterprise.

Picard (for instance) always seemed very Lawful to me. I guess Janeway too, in a different way. I mentioned TNG as its overall cast seemed the most Lawful, with little that could be described as chaotic behaviour (maybe Worf, the Klingon honour system seems pretty chaotic to me, and highly individualist). There's a TNG episode where they let a planet die rather than breach the Prime Directive - and this is presented as the 'right' (good) thing to do.

 

[S'mon]

I disagree that just because you are lawful good you would only have sex in a long term commited relentionship. I think it would depend on what society you lived in. For example if sex was taboo outside of marriage then they would wait but if it was not why would the LG person have to abstain? As long as they did not do anything dishonorable to get sex like lie or mislead the person then how is it not a good or lawful act.

If your setting does not have a christian/judeo slant why assume that all religions follow their practices on sex and marriage.

Well can you give an example of this, as per my original question? a society real or fictional where sex-with-no-commitments is characterisable as LG behaviour.