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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aldarc" data-source="post: 6404025" data-attributes="member: 5142">It doesn't seem that way to me. I think that D&D tends to focus primarily on the Good vs. Evil axis. It's why there's a bigger issue for DMs with an evil party or an evil player than having a chaotic party (or chaotic player, unless CN). The assumptions of gameplay usually lean towards good vs. evil. The same is true with Planescape, the Great Wheel, and the Blood War. When I explain to other people about the Blood War, sure it's Law vs. Chaos, but for many people I talk about this with, it's clumped together as "it's all evil to me." Real world mythologies do conflate order with good and chaos with evil. Sure Moorcock does not, but that's because Balance is usually preferred, which would be the preferred neutrality of the Prime in 4E. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> What is redeeming about chaos? For many real world religions and mythologies, there is a much greater emphasis on law than on chaos, with chaos being an undesirable state indicative of the lack of civilization, law, and order. For many religions, the lines have always been blurred when it comes to law and good or evil and chaos. Think about how there are so many threads delving into how the CN character is playing like he's CE though less CN characters playing like CG. Just to be clear, I'm not a fan of 4E's alignment system, though I do prefer it's conflation of NE with LE as E and CG with NG as G, but that's mainly because my own experience typically saw those paired alignments played mostly identical in actual narrative play. My own preference is a lack of alignments entirely. What is there to debate? That's what it is in the biblical texts. Arioch, I would argue was portrayed as mostly kind of evil. Stormbringer itself was a demon of chaos, but unquestionably evil. Law was portrayed as occasionally evil as well, but that's mostly because Moorcock's system was that anything in excess was harmful. Moorcock also doesn't have an evil vs. good axis, so that's where the Great Wheel and Planescape utterly fail as well. The good vs. evil axis in D&D strips away a substantial amount of the moral ambiguity for many players, and most rational people, that could exist if it was simply law vs. chaos. The Lady of Pain is no Arioch. She's a plot device masquerading as a character, kind of like Ao is for the Realms. Which is why I said that the Factions remind me of privileged undergrads fapping to the sounds of the voices. The plot is too ideological but without the personal stakes of real people of the Prime.</blockquote>

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