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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hexmage-EN" data-source="post: 8691063" data-attributes="member: 79428">I've dabbled in alignment debates before and arguments over how they should be defined, but at this point I think I'm more curious about what the original inspirations and intent for alignment were.We have several quotations from a 2005 thread on Dragonsfoot where Gary Gygax made certain declarations about alignment (much of which have since become infamous):Note how in the last quote regarding noncombatants in a humanoid group that, while NG and CG characters (in the Gygaxian view of alignment) might let presumably evil noncombatants go free, LG characters (again, in Gygax's take on alignment) will either kill them or take them as prisoners.Gygax's idea of Lawful Good is, I believe, inspired by certain historically popular moral traditions that even mass violence is Good when used against "Evil" societies and Evil when used against "Good" societies. While Gygaxian Neutral Good and Chaotic Good characters might take a chance and let Evil beings go, Gygaxian Lawful Good characters make certain that Evil beings will pose no future threat by utterly destroying them. Gygaxian Lawful Good and those moral traditions that inspired it say that destroying Evil is necessary to prevent the further spread of Evil's influence.Why is this unique to Gygaxian Lawful Good, though, and not just Gygaxian Good in general? It could be because it is based on moral traditions that were very concerned with Law, both in terms of how society should behave and how the cosmos functions, where good was manifest in the order of the community and the cosmos and evil was manifest in the disorder of the community and cosmos. For example, one story from one of those traditions describes the stars as sentient beings that can either choose to follow the path through the heavens allotted to them by an intelligent designer or to rebel and be punished with imprisonment in a realm of chaos outside of the ordered cosmos. Similarly, those who would disrupt the order of the community (both within and from without) were declared as evil threats to the stability and wellbeing of the community and often punished with death. Though Gygax describes Neutral Good and Chaotic Good, I personally would hazard a guess that Lawful Good was Gygax's own personal opinion of the "ideal" form of Good, though he did not define it simply as Good because of a desire to have Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic alignments.  For evidence of this, refer back to the quotes I provided where he characterized characters who let Evil creatures go free as "Stupid" instead of "Good" and where he states that pacificism is as absurd as atheism within a typical fantasy setting.This post shouldn't be interpreted as a defense of Gygaxian Lawful Good. I personally am glad that we live in a society where such an intepretation of what it means to be Good is no longer popular. This was merely an attempt on my part of trying to guess what Lawful Good was originally intended to mean, which might prove useful in trying to define a more palatable, alternative take on Lawful Good.</blockquote>

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