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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6623283" data-attributes="member: 42582">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.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).</blockquote>

Verification