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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 8691163" data-attributes="member: 4937">[USER=79428]@Hexmage-EN[/USER]: I want to engage with the topics you bring up without treading on the problematic analogies you make as much as possible.  I think it's impossible to avoid it entirely, but I don't want that to become what we are discussing.  So, yes, I think you are right that Gygax introduced into the alignment system biases based on his own beliefs and backgrounds that have skewed the system for the longest time to Lawful Good meaning 'Most Good' and 'Chaotic Evil' meaning 'Most Evil'.  And I think that is really unfortunate in a lot of ways, but I don't want to bring Mr. Gygax's backgrounds and beliefs to much into the conversation except to note that they exist.Secondly, even though Gygax is the creator of the system to a large extent, I don't think you can necessarily take everything he says about the system as if it were perfectly coherent.  I mean we don't treat his writings on other system topics like initiative, surprise, weapon speed, unarmed combat, etc. as being perfectly coherent and in some cases we know that he abandoned the rules he published and in some cases never really even used them.  So while Gygax is definitely an authority on the alignment system, I don't think being an authority necessarily means that everything he says makes sense.That said the quotes that he makes while incendiary are I think more defensible than you might think, and rather than reaching directly for religion I'm going to go half-way there by looking at Gygax's comments in the light of Tolkien-esk morality.  The Lord of the Rings is a huge influence on early D&D fantasy and I think is relevant to this discussion.What Gygax is addressing is the idea that Good and Law are stupid.  That is, he's addressing the criticism that Chaotic Evil is the best alignment because you can always decide to do what is best, where as Law and Good are weak and self-defeating because they are too naive and hidebound to recognize or respond to real threats to their safety.  A real world example of this might be Batman's supposedly good and honorable code of ethics where he refuses to kill mass murdering psychopaths.  Gygax is arguing that at some point, probably very early on, Batman should have killed The Joker for the greater good.  And I think this argument is in fact a reasonable one.  Regardless of whether you think Batman is CG or LG (an argument I don't want to yet get into), his prohibition against killing (a form of pacifism) does seem to become insane and unjustifiable after a while.  Gygax is saying that Paladins don't have to be as stupid as Silver Age Batman.The first claim that a Paladin can freely execute a prisoner that has renounced evil and repented seems shocking at first light, but let's be clear.  Present society does exactly the same thing and no one seems to bat an eye about it.  If someone brutally murders five people, we have no problem with a judge sentencing that person to death or to incarceration with no possibility of parole (the same thing but slower) even if the murderer repents and declares he'll never do it again.  So it's not that shocking that a Paladin, who is probably legally a judge and jury in his own right, endowed by society, the good cult he serves, and deity of righteousness to dispense justice is able to adhere to the same standards.  Yes, it's great you say you recognize now how awful your crime was, but that doesn't get you out of the punishment for that crime.Secondly, yes, "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" is not in and of itself contrary to lawful good.  What that axiom does is set an absolute maxim punishment that can be inflicted on someone for a crime.  I've always tried to explain this as LG says, "Never more than an eye for an eye", LN says, "Always an eye for an eye", and LE says, "Never less than an eye for an eye".  In other words, while LG allows for the possibility of offensive mercy where the evil doer is punished less than he deserves, it doesn't require it.  Mercy can be withheld by LG if in the judgment of the judge mercy is not warranted.  Likewise, LE disallows the possibility of mercy as mercy is a sign of weakness and an exploit that will be used by wrong doers and encourage disobedience.  LE believes that the punishment ought to be as harsh as possible, far exceeding the crime.  And I think that is both obvious and suggests proof that the contrary opinion is good.I am going to skip his third point for now, because I think it's the one he's most wrong about, but also because it is the most subtle point and is I think the one I want to most discuss after I get the rest out of the way.His fourth point I'm going to appeal to Tolkien over.  After the battles of both Helm's Deep and Pelennor Fields and the Scourging of the Shire, we see a marked contrast in how the good guys treat human foes and how they treat orc foes.  Human foes in all three cases are dispensed surprising mercy that often explicitly shocks both the human foes receiving the mercy and their victims.  Basically, the surviving human foes that served Sauron or Saruman are just told, "Take your stuff and go back to your homes.  Don't do this again."  They are treated with the same sort of graciousness that General Grant gives to the defeated Confederate rebel army.  But the orcs are hunted down and destroyed without mercy.  And to understand that you have to understand that in Tolkien universe, orcs aren't people.  Orcs are demons and the entomology of the word is very much similar to D&D's Orcus.  Orcs in Tolkien aren't redeemable and aren't capable of good.  And when Tolkien starts feeling uncomfortable with that, his solution is not to make them more like people and to think maybe Aragorn is wrong to hunt them down, but to think that he did too poor of a job communicating that orcs really are demons and he needs to make that portrayal of them as demonic even more clear.  Gygax is saying the same thing.  In Gygaxian D&D, it's very clear that something like Orcs or even more Gnolls are little demons which are inherently evil and don't reform.  And as such he's saying it's ridiculous to capture demons and then treat with them like they are people.  That would be Stupid.  The right thing to do is destroy them.  If they can't be reformed and if they are inherently evil then the admonishment that Aragorn or Theoden gives to their human foes to just go home and don't make war anymore would be dumb.   And I think his fifth point is mostly of the same sort, although I quibble with his characterization of NG or CG over this point.  But this gets us around back to something I was discussing earlier, which is that people bring their own biases to the table, and in a GM those biases can very profoundly influence whether it is even possible to play a good character.  It's often jokingly said that the "GM is God", but in my experience about as often that the GM is God, the "GM is the Devil".   That is to say that Evil argument against Goodness is that Good doesn't work for the world as it is exists.  One of the precepts that underlies belief in Goodness is at least the possibility of a world without decay.  And Evil argues that essentially this is a stupid belief because the real world we live in is not such a world but rather is provably a world of death and decay and meaninglessness and as such anyone that believes in Good and acts on it is self-deceived, stupid or insane.  What I find is that there are DM's out there that unconsciously or not want to show that the D&D world is such a world and that anyone that is good is stupid and punish players for playing good characters because they think the player is being stupid to do that.  So it would be morally consistent to have orcs be people because you believe that they have a capacity for good, but then if you believe that then showing mercy to orcs ought to have decent chance of convicting the heart of the orc and causing the orc to realize you aren't his enemy, you are good, and that he has been in the wrong.  Or it would be morally consistent to have orcs be little demons that valiant and good persons must destroy.  What I find though is in games where "the GM is Satan" no matter what the good player does he's wrong.  If he treats the orcs as demons, then he'll be punished for violating his moral precepts and slaying innocents.  And if he treats the orcs as people, then he'll be punished for not doing so because invariably anyone he shows mercy to will prove him wrong by acting demonically and perversely - even to the extent of working against their own best interests.  And this later approach to GMing drives me nuts, and the proper and rational response to finding your "GM is Satan" is either not play with him or if you must just don't play a good guy and so provoke them to punish you for violating their moral code.  Be ruthless the way the GM thinks you ought to be because that's what the GM believes is right and good.</blockquote>

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