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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kinematics" data-source="post: 8691230" data-attributes="member: 6932123">So, it seems most people disagree with the basic premise I wrote up.  I've been having hard time organizing my thoughts on it, which is why I haven't posted any replies til now.This, for example, lays out the idea that I'm just relabeling the alignments, but that that doesn't change the underlying system. It is largely based on the principal that alignment is necessarily cosmological.  Some in the thread have advocated for that, while others point out the issues with using it as a personality descriptor.And it's the personality descriptor part that I think I have the most issue with.  The cosmological side of alignment has faded from relevance with each successive edition, to the point where many question the value of having alignment in the game at all.Many arguments over alignment revolve around the problem that it is internally inconsistent when you try to get too deep into the weeds.  There are a dozen different ways to define "lawful"; which of those definitions do you use when trying to apply that label to someone?  There are tons of Trolley Problem-like examples of confusion over what is good vs what is evil.  Even just the word "good" has taken on at least 4 different definitions in just this thread, not even counting the Gary Gygax quotes a few posts up.So I guess what I'm really working on is the aspect of using alignment as a personality marker, rather than alignment as a cosmological side taken.  I even noted that I wasn't dealing with the cosmological side of things at the end of the OP, as I have different ideas of how to approach alignment at the cosmological level.Instead I'm looking at how various societies which are given standard alignment labels see the world. Not even just how they see themselves, but what principals they use to evaluate the world and other societies.  A Drow society with a Strong-Weak perspective might be analogous to Good-Evil, but it's not actually the same thing. Strong doesn't mean 'good' in the same sense as the Good alignment corresponds to either good behavior or the GOOD cosmological entities, like angels.  Rather, it is "the good" as understood by ancient ethics systems (Aristotle, in this case), which is a quality/virtue, not a moral judgement.Or the model for orcs: Bravery/Cowardice and Loyalty/Infidelity.  Bravery and Loyalty are terms that we'd describe as 'good', yet orcs are considered evil. The question is not about the virtues themselves, but about what that bravery is put into service to, and who they are loyal to. If they serve an evil god, then that loyalty is to those who represent that god, and bravery is put into service accomplishing the goals of that evil god.  They side with Evil in the cosmological sense, but that doesn't really describe how they view the world. ~~So I guess what I'm getting at is that, while the cosmological alignment system can remain as it's currently described, it's not very useful for understanding the world as seen by these various societies that are labeled according to which cosmological side they sit on. I'm not saying there isn't an objective good and evil, only that that's not a very useful descriptor for behavior.At the same time, because I want a clearer separation of cosmological vs personality, I'm less likely to agree with the basic descriptors that people use for what law/chaos/good/evil mean.  They are generally derived from human moral systems, which means they don't feel like they're appropriate when describing cosmological scale separation.So, I guess the model is less about alignment itself, and more about how to describe a society's virtue compass.On the other hand, [USER=4937]@Celebrim[/USER] and [USER=79428]@Hexmage-EN[/USER]  do an excellent job bringing out the raw components of what makes alignment work in a cosmological sense — that it's more closely analogous to the opposite alignments being at war with each other.  They're more team names than moralities.</blockquote>

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