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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6619269" data-attributes="member: 42582">I can't comment on what Gygax had in mind, or how he personally implemented the alignment system - and, as you say, it changes over time and therefore across books.But just focusing on the text, I have two reasons for favouring the approach I put forward in the OP.First, Gygax doesn't say that good is about rights. For instance, the DMG definition of LG uses a Benthamite notion of wellbeing, not a rights-based one ("the most benefit to the greater number of decent, thinking creatures and the least woe to the rest"). Also, both beauty and truth (which I left out of my OP, by error not design) are values that are part of the good, although not connected to rights.Second, the text for LG and CG fairly strongly emphasises law and chaos as competing means to the realisation of the good. From the DMG again, LG people "are convinced that order and law are absolutely necessary to assure good", while the CG see "freedom as the only means by which each creature con achieve true satisfaction and happiness."Similarly, the PHB says that the LG "follow these precepts [of law and order] to improve the common weal"; on CG it is a bit less clear.The evil similarly have different views about means: the LE think that social hierarchies are their best ways of getting what they want, while the CE prefer rampant individualism. They see law and chaos as means, but differ on their utility (stereotypically, the LE are weaker, snivelling and toadying; while the CE are stronger, brash and violent: think goblins or kobolds vs bugbears or ogres).These two textual reasons then lead to a third reason, which was what inspired the thread: I think the approach I'm putting forward, which places LG and CG at odds on the relationship between means and ends, raises an interesting and viable question for game play! Who is right? The LG or the CG?Whereas I think there is a tendency, in some more "taxonomic" approaches to alignment (PS would be one, 3E another), to treat the difference between LG and CG as one of temperament: the LG prefer order for themselves, the CG prefer freedom for themselves. (It's true that there are hints of this in Gygax, too - the LGness of dwarves and the CGness of elves looks like a difference of temperament rather than of socio-political conviction.) On this account, why would LG and CG come into deep conflict? - the LG can go of and build their cities and governments, while the CG can go and swan around in the woods and fields. Of course the cities and government might try and colonise the woods and fields, but that then becomes an issue of good vs evil (the cities and governments are not respecting the rights and happiness of the wood-dwellers) rather than law vs chaos.Anyway, that's a bit more about the reasoning behind my presentation of 9-point alignment.</blockquote>

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