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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 6160962" data-attributes="member: 17106">And more weird real life parallels.Wizards can do this, yes, but they don't know their entire spell list, so cherry-picking spells is not as easy.As far as how clerics work, they don't have a ton of spells, but they tend to take some niche spells because, unlike arcane casters, magic is not the only useful thing they can do. The increased rarity of these spells  overall is appealing, however.To me, alignments are cumulative, which makes LG a small niche. That is, to be Lawful Good, one has to be Good enough to be Neutral Good and Lawful enough to be Lawful Neutral. I can diagram my conceptualization of this in a way that makes it clearer, but can't really post that (ENW telestrator?). Of course, that's just my interpretation.That is difficult. The moral absolutism that is to some extent explicit in the rules does not work if you think too much about it. And those of us that play games of imagination do tend to think a lot. That's why I prefer an approach like d20 Modern's allegiances where each individual defines what he or she stands for.I sometimes do the latter. Good vs Evil is more classic and is repeated in many cultures throughout history, while Order vs Chaos feels more modern to me. Some of my players sometimes take law vs chaos pretty seriously.That's a perfectly good and probably very common philosophy of gaming: escapism. It's not mine though.When I'm running games in modern settings, I typically engage real life issues. For example, my last two CoC games were set in the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina. Even my D&D games take on some real world issues; for example drug use and the fantasy version of the drug war has played a part in several of my games. I'm quite enamored with fiction that engages us on real world issues without reducing them to the level of polemic or allegory (as was Tolkien, among many others).  I find it rewarding, if draining and sometimes difficult.</blockquote>

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