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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7746294" data-attributes="member: 42582">In Gygax's  AD&D rulebooks, alignment is defined with some degree of clarity. (There are also contradictory bits.)Good = honouring rights, promoting both individual and collective welfare, respecting and promoting truth and beauty. Nothing is said about how to handle clashes between these values, should they come up - so when it comes to a paladin confronting a runaway trolley and a fat man on a bridge, the rules have nothing to say.Evil = indifference to, or active contempt towards, those values. "Purpose is the determinant" ie the ends justify the means, whatever the means and no matter how self-regarding the end.Law = a belief in the power of social order, Chaos = a belief in the power of self-realising individuals.So LG = the values of good are best realised collectively through social order. CG = the values of good are best realised through self-realisation.On the other hand, LE believe that the best way to pursue their goals, without being restrained/constrained by those who think that values like rights, wellbeing, truth and beauty, is by collective, organised action. Whereas CE think that self-realisation is the only way to get what you want, and organisation is just a hindrance.The disagreements aren't purely aesthetic, and obviously not all these people can be correct: if CG are right, then social organisation is a threat precisely because it enables LE. If LG are right, then criticisms of and attacks on social organisation pave the way for CE villains to dominate the world.LN is something like a fallen version of LG - so concerned about establishing and maintaining order that they puruse it even when it burdens rather than fosters wellbeing, truth, beauty, etc. CN is, similarly, a "fallen" version of CG - so concerned about the primacy of self-realisation that they don't acknowledge the need to orient it towards those same values.NG is something like CG-lite; and NE is something like CE-lite. I don't think they add much to the AD&D set-up.I think that the PHB Appendix IV, and then more obviously Planescape , 3E and 5e depart from the above in various ways that reduce the coherence of the basic set-up. In particular, the idea is put forward that the various alignments can all be correct - or to put it differently, that they are about valuing and promoting different things; rather than that LG and CG ultimately value the same thing but disagree about what will conduce to them.</blockquote>

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