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Message: <blockquote data-quote="herald" data-source="post: 404758" data-attributes="member: 1112">Philosophy has always been a difficult idea to explain. And the current alignment system always has me pondering how it might relate to modern day ethics and politics.I will for the most part try and remain polically neutral for this discussion. If my opinions seemed biased. I'm sorry. Take them for what they are worth.Law always struck me as communal based. Power comes from concentration of numbers of people and it's ability to work together.Chaos always struck me as Independance Based. Power comes from the ability and freedom to do anything you wanted. Societies have always had to struggle to balance Commuity against Independance. There has to be some give and take or there is no peace.My personal problem is that the words to describe what I think about these two concepts don't accurately define what I'm talking about. As a matter of fact, I can't find any one word that means freedom in a neutral concept, it's ether very good or very bad.So I will just stick with what I have. So in a fantasy world where alignment is not just a philosophy, but philosophy brought to life, with creatures that are the emobodyment of those concepts, just what makes something lawful or chaotic?Well this is where some imagination comes in. As far as I can tell, the game books and suplements don't really spell that out for you. So information about there behavior might conflict with stated alignment. But alignment is not an absolute for behavior. Situations arise every day that test alignment, and one or many activities might not be truely indicative of the Law/Chaos axis. This isn't true really in Good/Evil. There the line is more black and white, but a person has to make many, many decisions every day in their best intrest to ensure health, well being and prosperity.Sometimes it is easier to go along with the community if a majority thinks something should be done. There times people have to stand up and resist that change to prevent a loss of thier rights, or even remove themselves from that group.It might be nessessary for you to decide if you need to explore what makes dwarves Lawful or Lawful good. Maybe its because, even in thier clanish nature that have a codex of laws that ensure rights and protections that are for the whole of thier community. Or maybe it's built into their religion and tenets of faith. Have flexability in your choice so that exceptions to the rule exist, and allow for mortal faillings in ethics without immediate alignment changes. In my game, when I feel that players are going to step over that alignment line. I often say, "there is something in the pit of your stomach that makes you feel that what your doing might not be the right thing." Often my players then have the time to think about their ethics, and either justify thier actions (just like the way we all do internally everyday), or rethink there situation. If the continue down the path without reasonable justifications for thier actions, alignment change happens (there is a discussion with the player one on one and this is worke out mutually)</blockquote>

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