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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6115489" data-attributes="member: 42582">I can see the logic of this in B/X (with its Law, Neutrality, Chaos spectrum) and in 4e (which is pretty similar to B/X except it enriches the spectrum a bit and anchors it more tightly to a cosmology: LG - G - U - E - CE).I even do a bit of what you describe in my 4e game - ie use the ingame cosmological elements as devices to ground the morality debates in the fiction rather than real life, so as to avoid too much real-life confilct (for instance, in the fiction no one cares about the political economy of the Nerathi empire, and so issues of serfdom, economic justice etc just don't figure into the moral conflicts/decisions to which teh game gives rise).But I think AD&D's 9-point alignment breaks out of the box you describe without anyone needing to push it very hard - look at Gygax's description of "Good", which expressly ties it to certain modern political conceptions related to liberal democracy and human rights. And this is compounded by building, around it, a cosmological structure (the "Great Wheel") which rather than being specific like 4e's, or implicitly specific like B/X's Morcockian framework, claims to be able to incorporate any set of mythical or moral perspectives, finding them a home somewhere or other in the Outer Planes.I've been thinking a bit today about Margaret Thatcher. In B/X, or 4e, it doesn't make sense to ask what Thatcher's alignment was. The political controversies that defined her career have no foothold in the implied B/X cosmology, or the explict 4e cosmology. But the 9-alignment system, as cosmologically expressed via the Great Wheel, presents itself as having a home for every outlook, including Thatcher's. Which I think is absurd, but which I also think means that the alignment system can't do the "keeping things in a box" job that you describe.Which is part of why I really really dislike AD&D alignment, and see both the B/X and the 4e systems as not just minor tweaks, but very different and better systems. (Though as I've made clear, I'm just as happy without alignments and getting by on cosmology and mythic history plus character personalities and backstories.)</blockquote>

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