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General Tabletop Discussion
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
No evil gods in 4e?
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<blockquote data-quote="Valdrax" data-source="post: 4229871" data-attributes="member: 56320"><p>The problem is that the person you were replying to specifically said "a chaotic good rebel who fights to throw down their government" and "a lawful evil dictator . . . <s>omeone who's unquestionably evil but still has a strict code of conduct." Those possibilities have nothing to do with the scenarios you were presented with.</s></p><p><s></s></p><p><s>Now, if you didn't mean what I thought you meant from a straight reading of the post, then please forgive me, but the PoV I thought you were expressing was not unique to you. There's already some back and forth on various message boards about whether the "honorable villain" is really Unaligned or whether Individualism (i.e. Chaos) is compatible with Altruism (i.e. Good).</s></p><p><s></s></p><p><s>In other words, 4e has already planted the seeds for viewing LE & CG characters as neither Good nor Evil. The axis of morality has been constrained in the system -- not as strangely narrow and specific as Palladium's alignment system, but still in a way that reflects the creator's values and not a spectrum.</s></p><p><s></s></p><p><s>True, Unaligned seems to be "situational morality," but by that logic any concept period could be Unaligned and there's no need to have alignments in the first place. (A viewpoint I wouldn't disagree with, by the way, but we're stuck with them.)</s></p><p><s></s></p><p><s>The fact that we have alignments at all suggests that the alignments actually <em>mean</em> something -- that separating LG from "regular" G and CE from "ordinary" E is a meaningful value judgment, but that CG and LE are not. And that makes a statement -- one which I think is mildly offensive to people who believe in philosophies like civil disobedience or in the importance of protest and "making waves" to maintaining a just society.</s></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Valdrax, post: 4229871, member: 56320"] The problem is that the person you were replying to specifically said "a chaotic good rebel who fights to throw down their government" and "a lawful evil dictator . . . [s]omeone who's unquestionably evil but still has a strict code of conduct." Those possibilities have nothing to do with the scenarios you were presented with. Now, if you didn't mean what I thought you meant from a straight reading of the post, then please forgive me, but the PoV I thought you were expressing was not unique to you. There's already some back and forth on various message boards about whether the "honorable villain" is really Unaligned or whether Individualism (i.e. Chaos) is compatible with Altruism (i.e. Good). In other words, 4e has already planted the seeds for viewing LE & CG characters as neither Good nor Evil. The axis of morality has been constrained in the system -- not as strangely narrow and specific as Palladium's alignment system, but still in a way that reflects the creator's values and not a spectrum. True, Unaligned seems to be "situational morality," but by that logic any concept period could be Unaligned and there's no need to have alignments in the first place. (A viewpoint I wouldn't disagree with, by the way, but we're stuck with them.) The fact that we have alignments at all suggests that the alignments actually [i]mean[/i] something -- that separating LG from "regular" G and CE from "ordinary" E is a meaningful value judgment, but that CG and LE are not. And that makes a statement -- one which I think is mildly offensive to people who believe in philosophies like civil disobedience or in the importance of protest and "making waves" to maintaining a just society.[/s] [/QUOTE]
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