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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6632898" data-attributes="member: 42582">I certainly agree with this.The idea of a LG society has the same problem as the idea of a LG plane: it attempts to use the alignment label to describe a social/institutional state of affairs, rather than to describe a moral/evaluative orientation.When alignment is used to describe a moral/evaluative orientation - which is what I talk about in my OP - then the existence of conflict is, in the context of a FRPG, a good thing. It provides a focus for play (and I suggest that, when it comes to 9-point alignment, that focus is whether social order or individualism is the proper path to wellbeing).But when alignment is used to describe societies, or planes, then we get the idea that this place can be truly LG while this other place is truly CG. And then there's no conflict! In the LG place, social order leads to wellbeing. In the CG place, individualism leads to wellbeing. So there's nothing to argue or fight about! The social set-up already commits us to the feasibility and moral acceptability of both law and chaos. And it gets even worse if we point to the orcs and label their society LE - because we now seem to be saying that wellbeing, for orcs, consists in rejecting wellbeing - which verges on the incoherent!I can only make sense of alignment as a scheme for labelling evaluative/moral dispositions.In the picture I was painting in my OP, the LE person cares about social order because s/he sees it as the means for imposing his/her will on others and hence achieving his/her self-serving goals.In this way (and contrary to some traditional depictions of alignment) the LE person agrees with the CG person about the nature and consequences of social rules and hierarchy. As I put it in the OP, "the CG point to the LN as showing that law is an impediment to good, and to the LE as displaying the true face of order and hierarchy: a source of domination which prevents those who are dominated from realising wellbeing."  It's just that the CG person, being good, recognises and acts upon the resultant other-regarding reason to reject social order; whereas the LE person disregards that other-regarding reason, and instead seeks the benefits of exercising domination over others.I don't think this is incoherent. I think that it sets up the possibility of an interesting conflict between CG and LG, because LG run the same argument - but with "individualism" in place of "order/hierarchy" - against the CG, pointing to the CE as the true face of individualism and the pursuit of self-realisation.I agree with this, but in the scheme I'm putting forward no one has a reason to be interested in rules in any absolute sense. The LG person doesn't believe in rules in an absolute sense either - like the LE person, s/he sees them as means to ends.The LN person, on my reading, does believe in rules in an absolute sense but has no reason to do so. Rather, LN is a type of wrongful (but not evil) fetishism.You can see from the foregoing that I don't accept the idea the LN is somehow "intermediate" between LG and LN. I think this idea of neutrality as a type of intermediate point on a spectrum isn't very coherent, and the schema in my OP rejects it: I read LN, CN and TN each as being its own distinct thing, and I read NG and NE as not very interesting because not speaking to the conflict between law and chaos as means to wellbeing.I think that, if this was true - or, at least, accepted as true within the context of the game - then my "narrativist" scheme for alignment wouldn't get off the ground.My scheme depends upon taking seriously that the conflict between LG and CG is a serious contender for being explored and worked out through play. So it depends upon taking seriously that it is an open question whether or not  law (in the sense of social order and hierarchy) is inherently opposed to the pursuit of self-interest and the domination of others.In order to make this viable, the point that I made about CG (and that you have picked up on) has to be seen as a very limited one: that the sort of sociality that CG requires (ie duties to others as a constraint on individual will) is distinct from the full-blooded social order and hierarchy that LG believes is a necessary condition of wellbeing. That is, it has to be at least prima facie viable for the CG to say that honouring duties owed to others is categorically different to erecting elaborate systems of social order. If you think that such a distinction is illusory from the get go - and I can see why you might - then you'll think that my narrativist scheme is doomed from the outset!In that case, 4e alignment would be the way to go, and the focus shifts from the law vs chaos I described in my OP to divine order vs primordial creation. Which is similar but by no means identical, and roughly describes my current 4e campaign!I like this a lot. I think it's a fair description of Gygaxian alignment as a suitable backdrop for "Keep on the Borderlands" (pulpy/western-style) play.But I still like my OP too!, as an attempt to make alignment a focus of play rather than a backdrop.</blockquote>

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