Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="squibbles" data-source="post: 9530274" data-attributes="member: 6937590">Misc. thoughts and responses after 18 pages <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f644.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":rolleyes:" title="Roll eyes    :rolleyes:"  data-smilie="11"data-shortname=":rolleyes:" />I now think "metaphysically valid" was not good phrasing.Really, I meant "reasonable"; not foolish or misguided on its face. Also not explicitly correct, but a position that you could see a thoughtful, intelligent, decent person taking as an alternative to Good.My answer above is a species of this, I think. Muscular neutrals wanting something that would be lost by Good winning is probably the direction with the most interesting ideas to mine. Incidentally, I really appreciate the thoughtfulness of your whole comment there. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f44d.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt="(y)" title="Thumbs up    (y)"  data-smilie="22"data-shortname="(y)" />Fitness doesn't really serve any purpose, in itself. But, seeing as we're conceiving a fantasy world, maybe there's an out of context threat (far realm, Azathoth, whatever) which the group needs to be strong enough to overcome (which could make sense locally OR cosmically). This would then cast the muscular neutrals as ends-justify-the means consequentialists--but it would make more sense for them to take that tack since they don't have to meet the criteria of Good.Hans Morgenthau was waaaaaaay back. Realist scholars read Kenneth Waltz now or, god forbid, John Mearsheimer--who likes to breathlessly assert that the US and Russia should forget about Ukraine and team up on China....not to dump on your comment, realpolitik can make for good characters and settings.I love this. It's so odd and quintessentially D&D, "[Mortal actors] oppose evil and chaos due to their ideological convictions, but recognize that the total victory of good over evil or law over chaos would make the world more vulnerable on the perpendicular axis." Gold. You did not disappoint.However, I'm not sure it works on the Evil/Good axis. If Evil is categorically defeated, and the Good alignments become vulnerable to dominance by chaos, doesn't that just get us to chaotic good? That's maybe better than endless cosmic struggle from the perspective of rational thinking creatures. Or does perfect chaotic goodness turn creation into chaos soup?"Law and good are by nature more restrictive than evil and chaos, so it’s much easier for evil to exploit a lawful good society’s rules to its own ends" Yikes... that's uncomfortably timely.</blockquote>

Verification