Paladin Design Goals ... WotC Blog

[pemerton]

He wrote the 1E AD&D DMG, not the 2E AD&D DMG. Are they identical?

I think we both know that they're not.

I would ask "egalitarian in what sense,"

Well obviously an egalitarianism of rights. Probably also of respect. And there's also, and obviously, a theological dimension to the egalitarianism too.

Is it "rights enjoyment" or is it "rights possession?" Possessing equal rights is not the same as enjoying equal results.

I assume by "enjoyment" you mean something like "having the interest that grounds the right be fulfilled". As opposed to "having the right recognised and respected".

While Jeremy Bentham may have indicated that the rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness mandate sacrifice, other thinkers disagreed

Bentham didn't say this - he was a rights sceptic.

My point is that Gygax's alignments are incoherent even on their own terms - purporting to advocate both utilitarianism and rights-egalitarianism at the same time - and are not at all suited to expounding a chivalric ideal, given that both utilitarianism and rights-egalitarianism are modern ideals, at odds with chivalry.

Since you don't have the AD&D DMG in front of you, I'll type in Gary Gygax's description of Lawful Good here, for reference (again, 1E DMG, page 23):

Lawful Good: Creatures of lawful good alignment view the cosmos with varying degrees of lawfulness or desire for good. They are convinced that order and law are absolutely necessary to assure good, and that good is best defined as whatever brings the most benefit to the greater number of decent, thinking creatures and the least woe to the rest.

You'll note there the statement of the Benthamite ieal.

What I was saying was that Gygax himself never mentioned "altrusism," "dignity," or "sacrifice" in his definitions.

But having stated the Benthamite ideal, he's committed to sacrifice - because maximising the welfar of decent, thinking creatures may require sacrificing the welfare of some for others. The sacrifice need not be self-sacrifice (and many of the well-known objections to utilitarianism trade on its apparent commitment to other-sacrifice) but if you're going to try and reconcile Benthamism with some form of rights-respect, self-sacrifice will presumably loom larger.

He's probably also committed to dignity, because that's the standard ground for universal human (or, in this case, creature) rights.

And the commitment to altruism is also obvious. In the PHB (p 33) he talks about LG "follow[ing] these precepts to improve the common weal". Concern for the "common weal" (ie the welfare of all) is tautologously altruistic. In the DMG (p 23) he says that NG (ie those with maximum concern for good) aims at "bringing life, happiness and prosperity to all deserving creatures." That's an altruistic goal. And LG is presented as having the same goal, namely, "assur[ing] good" with good "best defined as whatever brings the most benefit to the greater number of decent, thinking creatures and the least woe to the rest."

So when the SRD talks about altruism, dignity and sacrifice it's in my view entirely consistent with Gygax, stating both consequences and grounds of the position Gygax articulates.

 

[pemerton]

Ok let's say that egalitarianism is part of the definition of good, and thus the good folk are slowly working towards modern values.

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Regardless, we also have conservatism to consider.

<snip>

In my meandering way, what I'm getting at is that conflicting ideas can find themselves in the same alignment while threads of a single idea can be found scattered across the axis.

So then my questions become what practical use is alignment, what message is it trying to convey, and at what point does its usefulness end?

This is all interesting stuff. In my own work (I'm an academic lawyer and political philosopher) I'm interested in the place of conservatism in modernity. (Heavily influenced in this respect by Raymond Williams' "Culture and Society".)

But I think it shows that alignment is not very helpful.

By the sounds of it the tale of Lancelot and the 10 Knights sounds a tragic waste

<snip>

they're not mercilessly ravaging the countryside, they will grant mercy if someone yields

<snip>

They're all LG but CE was the winner on the day.

This is all good stuff, and I'd give you XP but my XP button seems to be disabled.

But it seems to me that all the work is being done by your substantive analysis. The alignment labels aren't helping tell us anything - they're slightly gerrymandered afterthoughts. Hence my contention - let's drop alignment and just think about what's going on using our ordinary (and rich, and as you've shown sometimes conflicted) moral vocabulary.

And also, in my view, if the players care about this stuff it can be left to them. And if they don't, it won't improved anything for the GM to get involved in a didactic or dictatorial manner.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

Thanks for the conversation - too often things get adversarial.

I'm going to start another thread about alignment because while it can fray under heavy analysis, I get the feeling we're beating up on it for what it can't do rather than what it is there for.

For the record I was never comfortable with the 1E & 2E punitive approach to PC behaviour. I couldn't see much point to it.