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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sunseeker" data-source="post: 6125175">Really?  Even the best philosophers wrote massive books on the subject.  Even the longest D&D book is maybe 400 pages, and half of that is pictures!  A quarter of it is probably empty space, and then there's probably another 1/8th or so that's indexes and credits and ads.  So, at best we've got maybe 75 pages of solid material.  And you're suggesting that somehow Wizards has codified a solid moral system within that?  Oh wow...I mean, I have to laugh.  I'm sorry but that's absolutely hilariously impossible.Aside from the fact that Wizards has done no such thing, even the morality that is has codified is vague and unspecific at best.  Even where it is specific, it's little more than "be good" or "follow the law", if you think that constituted moral and ethical absolutes...well...I can't say much more without violating half a dozen rules here.While WE the player may be able to deduce the functioning on the universe in D&D.  Our character cannot.  Because from our character's perspective the D&D universe looks just like the real world universe from our own perspective.  If we play our character and adjudicate their morality from a metagame perspective, morality becomes pointless.  There's no point in having it if we can't moralize and rationalize from our character's perspective like they are a real person struggling with finding a balance of morals, ethics and beliefs in a universe where they do no have complete information(which as the player, we do).  So even if Wizards did create a complete moral system so perfect the philosophers of old would be run off crying; which they didn't; it wouldn't matter.  It would be completely meaningless to play a character who is attempting to balance these things by being a player who makes no effort to RP that.  If we treat morality from a metagame perspective as simply a set of numbers, it loses all meaning and having alignment restrictions in order to force players to RP out the "moral challenges" and make Paladins(or other classes) "moral challenge classes" has no purpose, no value and no meaning because if we treat D&D morality from a metagame perspective where "good" and "evil" are facts and numbers, not opinions and believes, then there is NO "moral challenge" to the class.</blockquote>

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