"Narrativist" 9-point alignment

[Manbearcat]

Over 30 years of campaigning with multiple groups, I don't think I could say that I've seen a marked preference among players for Good aligned characters, nor have I seen a marked preference among players for advocating for the bucket 'Good' either in character or out of character. This would be really strange if it were the case that Good was obviously right and correct. What I have seen is a marked preference for Chaotic alignments over Lawful alignments, to the extent that I would be really surprised if a table could maintain an interesting discussion of the merits of Law and Chaos. My suspicion, completely unprovable, is that the strong preference for Chaotic alignments over Lawful ones is a bias resulting from American culture with its preference for radical Individualism.

When I read the first bolded bit, the second bolded bit immediately jumped into my head. My guess is that our experiences are probably not too far out of the mainstream (if not representative of it).

Your take (third bolded bit) is an interesting one and it wouldn't surprise me if this is some component of the "alignment bloodstream" that lends the overall "player-base body" toward a Chaotic bent.

However, I would definitely say there is another component that is pretty pervasive and it is related to "alignment as stick/binder." Historically, from what I've seen of new players coming to my table, there was almost universally a sort of (PTS?) aversion to Lawful alignments from experiences with games past. The perception was honed that playing Chaotic alignments allowed for more/complete agency by the player over their thematic portfolio of their character (so long as it didn't hew too closely to the Lawful ethos).

Finally, on this: "...to the extent that I would be really surprised if a table could maintain an interesting discussion of the merits of Law and Chaos."

I think system (including proper GMing in said system) has a fair amount to say about the (dis)functionality of Law vs Chaos questions in game. Case in point, my current Dungeon World home game features a Lawful Dwarf with this alignment statement:

Uphold the letter of the law over the spirit

It also features an Elf with this alignment statement:

Break an unjust law to benefit another

They are allies, and very trustworthy of one another. They have two bonds with each other, one of which is dedicated to said trust. The second is related to the oft "butting of heads" that occurs between the two of them specifically related to the Law vs Chaos question.

A fair bit of my efforts involves finding ways to make this Law vs Chaos question central, putting the two PCs at odds with each other. In more than one social conflict, we've had these two PCs using the Interfere move against each other to bring about strife, to remove potential leverage for a Parley move. This has led to a lot of interesting play. We've also had them simultaneously having the alignment statements of (L) Bring someone to justice and (C) Reveal corruption (dwarf/elf respectively) which led the dwarf away from the prior alignment statement of (L) Uphold the letter of the law over the spirit.

The (1) lack of complexity, thus crystallizing of issues, in the DW alignment system, (2) the lack of alignment interfacing with all kinds of other system stuff, (3) and alignment serving as a carrot, xp for fulfilling when the End of Session move is made, rather than a stick is very helpful to these ends.

 

[Celebrim]

Your take (third bolded bit) is an interesting one and it wouldn't surprise me if this is some component of the "alignment bloodstream" that lends the overall "player-base body" toward a Chaotic bent.

However, I would definitely say there is another component that is pretty pervasive and it is related to "alignment as stick/binder." Historically, from what I've seen of new players coming to my table, there was almost universally a sort of (PTS?) aversion to Lawful alignments from experiences with games past. The perception was honed that playing Chaotic alignments allowed for more/complete agency by the player over their thematic portfolio of their character (so long as it didn't hew too closely to the Lawful ethos).

I would suggest that this preference for having complete agency is an example of cultural values so deeply embedded that they aren't even normally questioned. Of course having more agency is better, right?

I'm curious to see how differently an RPG might play, particularly in terms of the philosophical themes that the players wanted to embody or explore, if it was a group of say pious Mormons, Swiss nationalists, or Korean conservatives. For example, I remember the culture shock of talking with one of the employees I was supervising - a Master's Student working as a research assistant in a biology lab - who told me how she wanted to go back to Korea so that her parents could pick her out a boy to marry and discussing hers reasons. This is the sort of perspective on 'agency' that I think is very alien to the average American player.

Case in point, my current Dungeon World home game features a Lawful Dwarf with this alignment statement:

Uphold the letter of the law over the spirit

It also features an Elf with this alignment statement:

Break an unjust law to benefit another

For me, the difficulty would be consistently finding the sort of player who could take the alignment statement "Uphold the letter of the law over the spirit" seriously. And the second question for me would be, "Is upholding the letter of the law over the spirit, really and truly an aspect of lawfulness or its mindset or it is just a stereotype applied unfairly to lawfulness by someone who isn't very sympathetic to it?"

But I generally agree that to play a morally aligned character seriously, you have spend some thought thinking about what being that alignment means in concrete ways and not merely slap a label on the character. Anything that the system or the GM can do to encourage that is probably a good thing.

I don't however think you have to divorce alignment out of the system to get those thought provoking results. The only real advantage of divorcing alignment out of the system is if the alignment of the players is so heavily Gamist Pragmatists that all their RP decisions regarding alignment are made based solely based on the mechanical advantage they perceive resulting from that, which I do admit a bad implementation of the system could help enforce (1 AD&D with it's 'loose a level if you stray', or Mass Effect with its 'only receive a mechanical benefit if you are completely 100% consistent with the game maker's perceptions/biases in your choices').

We've also had them simultaneously having the alignment statements of (L) Bring someone to justice and (C) Reveal corruption (dwarf/elf respectively) which led the dwarf away from the prior alignment statement of (L) Uphold the letter of the law over the spirit.

And, to be frank, I'm not really surprised by that. I would be surprised if the player of the Elf moved his alignment toward the statement, "Uphold the letter of the law over the spirit", having learned the wisdom of that statement in play. I'd be in fact surprised if anyone even seriously considered why upholding the letter of the law over the spirit was a good idea.

 

[pemerton]

Okay, I didn't quite get that the premise was to accept good and evil as absolute value judgments, which does seem to invalidate the evil approach. I'm not sure that was EGG's intention, but his system does seem to encourage players to choose good alignments for their characters rather than evil.

I likewise don't know what Gygax intended. I can only read his description - and "good" encompasses basically all post-enlightenment accounts of human wellbeing as a moral constraint (Benthamite welfarism, human rights, dignity), whereas "evil" is characterised in terms of a complete absence of other-regard ("purpose is the determinant", with CE and NE as variant forms of individualism and LE as the organisational variant).

Of course labelling something as good isn't an argument that it is good, and likewise labelling total self-regard evil doesn't prove anything either. But as I said, if I wanted to run a game in which those sorts of questions were up for grabs, I wouldn't choose labels that already presuppose the matter has been settled.

By choosing such labels, and by applying them in a manner that doesn't produce any surprises (is anyone surprised that good encompasses having regard for the wellbeing of others, and that evil means failing to have regard to that wellbeing as a limit to one's own will?), Gygax seems to treat the basic question of morality as settled. But the account of Law and Chaos, and the ideas of LG and CG, leave the question of means open, and in a potentially interesting way.

In light of this, are you planning to limit choice of alignment in your campaign to only good options?

I'm not really planning a campaign in this thread. I already have a 4e campaign close to its conclusion, and a Burning Wheel campaign in its early stages. BW doesn't use any sort of alignment system, so this discussion has no bearing on it.

4e, played in its defaut cosmology (which my group does) has a very strong law vs chaos theme, but not quite the same as that found in Gygax's alignment system (at least as I read it).

In 4e law vs chaos is (i) divine order and the intellect of creation vs (ii) change, materiality and the passion of creation. So it doesn't have quite the same political/social dimensions of Gygaxian law and chaos. Fallen empires do play a prominent role in the cosmology, but at least as they have figured in my game they're more proxies for, or symbols of, conformity to the divine scheme, than objects of political study in their own right.

In my 4e campaign one PC is Good (the fighter/cleric of Moradin). There is no real reason why he couldn't be LG (I just think the player has an aversion to having LG on his PC sheet). In AD&D the character would be either LG or NG; in archetypical terms he is a paladin.

The other four PCs are Unaligned. The undead- and demon-hunting ranger-cleric, who also serves the Raven Queen, in AD&D would probably be NG or CG. The drow chaos sorcerer, who serves Corellon and also Chan, the Queen of Good Air Elementals, would probably be CG. These two get on pretty well with the dwarf, but the drow in particular is more concerned that the divine plans for the world would completely exclude the possibility of change and hence of mortal's living their own lives in which they freely shape themselves.

The invoker/wizard who serves the Raven Queen, Erathis and Ioun, and in more complicated ways Bane and Vecna, would in AD&D probably be LG or LN. The paladin of the Raven Queen would in AD&D probably be LN. Both these characters show a very high degree of commitment to their gods, who often aren't all that nice (especially the Raven Queen), and tend to prioritise that divine allegiance over human wellbeing. They clash quite frequently with one another, and with the other PCs.

If I were to run a game using alignment along the lines I sketched in my OP, I wouldn't see any need to confine alignments to Good. If players wanted to run characters who are selfish, or who sacrifice human wellbeing to law and chaos mistakenly held to be higher values, that would be their prerogative. If characters who started out LG tended to drift towards LN, or even LE - just to note one range of possibilities - that would be very interesting from the point of view of addressing the question "Which of Law and Chaos is the true path to universal human wellbeing?"

What I wouldn't want in the game would be alignment-detection magic, nor a PS-style cosmology where each of the Upper Planes is treated as fully good (thereby negating the question, by affirming that both Law and Chaos can be viable pathways to universal human wellbeing). And alignment change for PCs would have to be via consensus. The main issue here would be Good vs Evil. As I said, changes from (say) LG to LE in this game would be very interesting, but you would need to get the player of the PC to agree that his/her PC has become evil (ie ceased to accept the wellbeing of others as a genuine limit on his/her will).

 

[Manbearcat]

I would suggest that this preference for having complete agency is an example of cultural values so deeply embedded that they aren't even normally questioned. Of course having more agency is better, right?

<snip>

For example, I remember the culture shock of talking with one of the employees I was supervising - a Master's Student working as a research assistant in a biology lab - who told me how she wanted to go back to Korea so that her parents could pick her out a boy to marry and discussing hers reasons. This is the sort of perspective on 'agency' that I think is very alien to the average American player.

For me, the difficulty would be consistently finding the sort of player who could take the alignment statement "Uphold the letter of the law over the spirit" seriously. And the second question for me would be, "Is upholding the letter of the law over the spirit, really and truly an aspect of lawfulness or its mindset or it is just a stereotype applied unfairly to lawfulness by someone who isn't very sympathetic to it?"

But I generally agree that to play a morally aligned character seriously, you have spend some thought thinking about what being that alignment means in concrete ways and not merely slap a label on the character. Anything that the system or the GM can do to encourage that is probably a good thing.

<snip>

And, to be frank, I'm not really surprised by that. I would be surprised if the player of the Elf moved his alignment toward the statement, "Uphold the letter of the law over the spirit", having learned the wisdom of that statement in play. I'd be in fact surprised if anyone even seriously considered why upholding the letter of the law over the spirit was a good idea.

Regarding your 1st and 2nd paragraphs, I agree that such overt perspective is generally alien to your average American player. However, my guess is those same American players covertly (to their conscious mind) live many aspects of their life with primary (if not total) concern for the letter of the law and just trust in the machinery that said law is married to/stems from.

I think your anecdote is a fair instance of "upholding the letter of the law over the spirit." The girl's concern regarding nuptials is disconnected from the American interests and nuance of spontaneous romance and courtship and the fanciful notion of destiny's hand yet to be played. She can however, connect with the American (and worldly) sense that rites of passage (regarding nuptials) are important. She can connect to to the kindred spirit inherent to fulfilling tradition and the security that lasting, strong culture and families have been enabled (to one degree or another) by functional marriages. It is probably fairly natural for her to logically couple the inputs of these traditional practices with the outputs of lasting culture and strong families. It is probably fairly natural for her to trust in the cultural protocol and the judgement/directives of her parental unit. It might be quite unnatural for her to consider the 2nd and 3rd order effects that manifest due to her cultural protocol or to consider those effects' implications on liberty...and to then prioritize the 1st order as still having value primacy. That doesn't necessarily mean she is intellectually shallow or totally unconcerned with liberty. It probably means that to whatever degree her evaluative judgements have been rendered on the machinery of her culture, they've perceived that "it works"...meaning it has a history of spitting out functional families and a tested value system which she can believe in and pass down to her children.

That is Dungeon World's Lawful alignment statement that you can choose (or not...this isn't D&D where you have to follow each statement...you pick one and attempt to fulfill/test it in play...the inspiration was BW's beliefs); Uphold the letter of the law over the spirit. It isn't intended to mean that the two, letter and spirit, are going to inevitably be mutually exclusive (possibly with some tension in application...thus maybe requiring prioritization...like everything else in the world) or that you're wholly disinterested in the spirit. It just means that you're trustful in the cultural protocol, in the power structure of chain of command, and in the judgements/directives of those tasked with managing the machinery (whatever that machinery might be). I don't think that is uncommon at all. In fact, I would say that you see that in every walk of life from family units, to social circles, to work, to governance, to faith. Is there an American tendency towards skepticism of power? Well, obviously. But that doesn't stop everyday people, every single day, from subordinating their own free will and ceding their authority, very willfully, to unit-moving infrastructure or other people (even peers!) for one reason or another (even for something as simple as personal insecurity).

I believe that we've had a conversation about this in the past (when we were discussing Dogs) and you've outlined a similar position. From memory, your dislike for such is due to your sense that it comes from a position of bigotry against people of faith. I can certainly understand that position and there is definitely bigotry embedded in some peoples' usage of it. However, the two players in particular here are both people of deep faith and both are intellectually vigorous people.

 

[Umbran]

This also brings out that the CG are slightly more lawful than the CN: they at least acknowledge duties owed by one individual to another, which is a type of minimal sociality/order. And the LG can point to this in arguing against the CG. (I think there is a lack of grid symmetry here - whereas CG is more lawful than CN, which implies that CN is more chaotic than CG, and CE yet more chaotic than CN, there is nothing like this on the other side of the grid. LG, LN and LE are all equally lawful, in that all are about social organisation. They just favour different approaches to organisation.)

I am not entirely sure this is accurate, in that I think you have inadvertently cherry-picked one instance, and come to a false conclusion from that. There's another way of looking at it...

A person who is on the "corners" of the grid has two basic goals: "Law and Good" or "Chaos and Evil". A person on the "side" of the grid has only one real goal "Good" or "Chaos" - neutrality is not, in and of itself, a goal.

Now, as with most folks who have goals, sometimes, they come into conflict. Sometimes you can't have full individual liberty and great welfare, and you must compromise. But this holds for the other side as well, as sometimes you cannot have solid, rigid organization and welfare, and you must compromise. The traditional paladin sometimes must choose between that which is most good, and that which is most organized, and cannot always have it both ways. Mortal creatures sometimes must deal with practical situations that don't fit the theory, and that includes the lawful ones. For example, a traditional paladin is a stickler for the letter of the law. If you are accused, you are arrested and go through the system - the innocent person has nothing to fear. But, when put in a position where it is not clear that the innocent person will have a good outcome, the LG may have to choose to evade the normal social order to seek justice. Thus, sometimes the LG must be less than perfectly lawful to have the good. And vice-versa - darn it, you *will* pay your parking tickets, even if your budget is tight this month!

This in contrast with Inspector Javert, from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, who has no such issue - he is, as you call it, a law fetishist. He never has conflicting goals, and so never has to compromise. Lack of compromise is his single most obvious characteristic! But, even he *thinks* he is LG, and does not even recognize the difference between Law and Good. It is only when the difference is demonstrated so as to get through his thick skull does he get the point, which causes him so much cognitive dissonance that he commits suicide over it.

Going back to how the different axes are characterized, one form I have seen that is sometimes useful is that the Good-Evil axis is about the ends (general welfare vs self-aggrandizement), or what we'd typically call "morals". The Chaos-Law axis is about the means (freedom vs. social organization), or what we'd usually call "ethics".

Note above that I place self-aggrandizement in the Evil camp, not the chaotic one as you did upthread. A hermit in the woods may be eschewing the norms and rules of society, and may be deemed chaotic, but is not aggrandizing himself - he may instead be deeply humble and asetic.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, I know this is ancient, but since you brought it up today...

I think Lawful Evil and Chaotic Good are incoherent. Consider the position of the Lawful Evil guy. He's expected to adhere to some sort of social hierarchy, but his ethos is "screw everyone else" (as you so aptly described it in the opening post). So why would he care about social order? Sure, he may think social order is something he can exploit, but that doesn't make HIM lawful evil, it makes him at best neutral evil. He's perfectly happy to make those other suckers obey rules that are good for him, and he may unwillingly obey rules enforced on him from above, but he's got no interest in rules per-se in any absolute sense. If he did, he wouldn't be evil, he'd be something else, because self-interest isn't driving him, he accepts some higher authority in more than just name.

Likewise, you already pointed out the problem with Chaotic Good, the good REQUIRES considerations of others, and that demands that there be limits imposed on your behaviour, and that implies the existence of external judges of what is and is not correct behaviour (or else you'd just be some CN guy phoning it all in).

So, CG and LE simply cannot exist. In an 'LE' society nobody is actually lawful, they're all just operating in fear of everyone higher up the food chain than them. In a 'CG' society everyone is actually acknowledging a higher moral authority who's rules they are willing to follow. So how are they different from LN, or even LG? They aren't really.

At best LE and CG are 'preferences', you would rather have the most or the least rules that are feasible.

This is why 4e simply got rid of LE and CG and collapsed them into a spectrum. CG is really just "I'm good, but I might not always put other people's welfare ahead of mine" so you're "Good Lite", and likewise LE is "Evil Lite", you really value law a whole bunch and you think it promotes some sort of benefit which clearly shows you must have some sort of interest in the benefit of at least society as a whole, so you're not really entirely evil. To emphasize this they then call "really evil" Chaotic Evil, these are the true bad guys, they care about NOTHING except wrecking havoc. Likewise the "really good" are LG, they're willing to accept ANY restriction or rule, as long as it promotes welfare (in whatever way they see that).

So, in terms of what actually works, is the 4e alignment system really different? I don't think so. As before there's no real contest between good and evil, as evil is still just the abnegation of good. Chaos is now simply seen in its true form, the ultimate expression of evil ways, and likewise law is seen in its true form, as the ultimate expression of good.

You can of course still have 'law gone wrong' and 'good but doesn't like rules', but they're now simply called 'evil' and 'good', in recognition of the fact that they're not really polarized strongly on the law/chaos axis.

Of course in a simple sense, this system is more cut out for telling stories of bad guys vs good guys than conflicts of order vs disorder. The later will in some sense always come out in terms of virtue conflicted against immorality.

 

[Umbran]

I think Lawful Evil and Chaotic Good are incoherent. Consider the position of the Lawful Evil guy. He's expected to adhere to some sort of social hierarchy, but his ethos is "screw everyone else" (as you so aptly described it in the opening post). So why would he care about social order?

You seem to be begging the question (meaning "assuming the conclusion"). You've effectively said, "He is evil, and thus why should he care about social order?", implicitly deciding that being evil is actually his top priority, and that always overrides all other priorities, before determining why he has priorities - thus deciding the question as you ask it. But, you could just as easily say, "He's lawful, so why does he care about screwing people?"

In reality, humans (and, by extension, all the fantasy races) can hold multiple priorities in high priority, even when they conflict. I isn't, "he's evil, so everything else goes out the window". It is, he's evil, *and* he's lawful. And sometimes, those will conflict - adhering to the social order will get in the way of him screwing others for his own benefit on occasion, and vice versa.

The same thing holds for the Lawful Good Character - sometimes, the social order does not provide the most Good. You're a Paladin - you deal with it. It gives you reasons for angst and pathos, which build character... kind of literally

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The main mechanics that D&D has tended to lack, or be a bit wobbly on, that would be needed, are social mechanics. Though if you were doing this in 1st ed AD&D you could use the reaction and loyalty system, which is surprisingly detailed, but has the oddity that chances of player success are divorced from PC level (unlike combat and at least those parts of the exporation system that hang of spells and thieves' skills).

This may be a bit OT, but its worth noting since 9-way alignment is really a very 1e thing.

In 1e the 'social pillar' of the game is indeed level agnostic in terms of its mechanics, there's no modifier to loyalty for being higher level. However, the STAKES of social interactions are VERY level scaled. You can only ever hire NPCs of less than your level, you only get followers at a certain level, and most certainly while level might not factor into the toss of the dice for a morale or reaction role the orcs are MOST CERTAINLY much more likely to do what the 9th level fighter says than what the first level fighter says! The game assumes a very level-based social hierarchy, kings are high level guys, army grunts are low level guys. You want to be a king, you better be high level. Its not hard-coded into the rules, but then again its not hard-coded into the rules that a level 1 PC can't find a +5 sword or kill a red dragon, its just not likely.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You seem to be begging the question (meaning "assuming the conclusion"). You've effectively said, "He is evil, and thus why should he care about social order?", implicitly deciding that being evil is actually his top priority, and that always overrides all other priorities, before determining why he has priorities - thus deciding the question as you ask it. But, you could just as easily say, "He's lawful, so why does he care about screwing people?"

In which case he's not evil, he's just lawful, so perhaps LN. Of course people are not anything like consistent, and its quite possible for an individual to harbor lawful characteristics and evil characteristics both at the same time, but they will in some fashion be in tension with each other. Law and Good can pull the same cart in the same direction. Lawfulness and active willful evil, not so much.

In reality, humans (and, by extension, all the fantasy races) can hold multiple priorities in high priority, even when they conflict. I isn't, "he's evil, so everything else goes out the window". It is, he's evil, *and* he's lawful. And sometimes, those will conflict - adhering to the social order will get in the way of him screwing others for his own benefit on occasion, and vice versa.

Exactly. Now, being lawful good can have the same effect, at times, but not ALWAYS. I maintain that evil and law are inherently opposed and conflicting. This is because law is outward directed and evil is inward directed.

The same thing holds for the Lawful Good Character - sometimes, the social order does not provide the most Good. You're a Paladin - you deal with it. It gives you reasons for angst and pathos, which build character... kind of literally

Yes, it is POSSIBLE that the law may conflict with the good, but they don't ALWAYS. Law ALWAYS gets in the way of me exercising my will at the expense of others, and overt active evil ALWAYS subverts some law.

Just as Pemerton saw an issue with chaotic good in his OP, so the conflict always exists with LE as well. The more evil you are the less inherently lawful you must perforce be, just as being more good (in the way Gygax defines it) will inevitably require you to assume a more lawful stance towards at least some other people.

 

[Celebrim]

I think Lawful Evil and Chaotic Good are incoherent. Consider the position of the Lawful Evil guy. He's expected to adhere to some sort of social hierarchy, but his ethos is "screw everyone else" (as you so aptly described it in the opening post).

I think the incoherence comes from making the mistake of thinking selfishness is the defining trait of evil. That in turn I think comes from assuming that lawful good is the most good sort of good. This misperception has even been repeated in the discussion of several published texts (especially in 3e), so its very widespread.

A better way to think of the position of LE is, "Screw everyone outside of the community I belong to." A simplistic example might be a member of a racist group (I'll avoid real world examples) who shows compassion and kindness and acts respectfully toward members of his own perceived community, but who believes that life is ultimately about survival of the fittest and so is completely justified in subjugating and even exterminating everyone who doesn't look like him.

More to the point, the way you distinguish a lawful evil philosophy from a chaotic evil philosophy is that the lawful evil philosophy holds up self-sacrifice (for the good of the community) as a virtue of a high order, both for the commander/master and the servant. The less hypocritical it is about this stance, the more lawful it is. But simply holding up sacrifice for the good of the community clearly wouldn't make the community good, even if it wasn't being hypocritical, as the community could of course stand for and use a wide variety of means and methods we'd clearly associate with evil.

Since we know from this example that self-sacrifice not only can be an attribute of an evil community, but can even increase the perversion and depravity and horror of the community, we know that self-sacrifice is an attribute of lawfulness - not goodness. People get confused on this by holding up Lawful Good as the highest good, noting self-sacrifice as a notable feature of Lawful Goodness, and so assume its a feature of goodness generally. Not only can we demonstrate LE as a counter-example, but we can bring up an obvious counter-example of self-empowered goodness that people are familiar with - The Gold Rule "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." It's worth noting that from some philosophers the Golden Rule comes under attack precisely because of the central role it places on the self. "Who are you to judge what is right for someone else based on your own judgment and feelings? If you would like to be slapped, does that give you the right to slap others?" This draws into sharp focus what I think is the real central conflict between chaos and law - who is in charge, the individual or the established external Authority or Ideal?

(Brief aside here, I'm not claiming that any real world religion that advocates the Golden Rule can be narrowly defined as 'Chaotic Good', as even if we assumed the label had real meaning outside of a game, real religions often approach the topic of 'what must you do to be good' from multiple perspectives, some of which may be seemingly contradictory.)

If he did, he wouldn't be evil, he'd be something else, because self-interest isn't driving him, he accepts some higher authority in more than just name.

Again, is self-interest the core of being evil? What if the higher authority is itself evil? Isn't selflessly serving evil also evil?

Likewise, you already pointed out the problem with Chaotic Good, the good REQUIRES considerations of others, and that demands that there be limits imposed on your behaviour, and that implies the existence of external judges of what is and is not correct behaviour (or else you'd just be some CN guy phoning it all in).

Yes, but does chaos demand complete inconsideration of others? The Golden Rule as I noted in and of itself does not demand the existence of an external judge of what is and is not correct behavior, but leaves each individuals as the sovereign and primary judge. In and of itself, it renders everyone the high priest of his own religion. Likewise, even the Silver Rule - "Do not do unto to others what you wouldn't have them do unto you" - which doesn't demand positive compassion or generosity or anything normally associated with the idea of 'good, still places primacy on self-consideration and self-empowerment, but doesn't demand complete inconsideration of others. "Harm no one; do what you will", is notably self-interested and self-centered, but is also clearly different from a Lawful philosophy of submitting yourself to the desires of an external ruler and judge, and likewise even clearly different in implications from the Golden Rule.

So how are they different from LN, or even LG? They aren't really.

I find that statement baffling. Does it not matter what rules and authorities that they submit to? Do not the goals of the society whose loyalty they pledge to actually matter? If a society wishes to feed and clothe the world, no distinction can be found between that that wants to exterminate and enslave it?