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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6404919" data-attributes="member: 42582">I haven't responded to this upthread, but thought I might comment now.I generally agree - LG = reliable stand-up person, CG = knockabout, good-hearted rascally person, LE = sneering manipulative person, CE = wild and brutal person. But as you say, those are personality types. They're not a framework for moral evaluation. Assuming a conventional moral framework, we can order them in terms of how virtuous those persons are, from LG the most to CE the least, with CG and LE sitting in the middle. Much as 4e does it. (It's no surprise that 4e takes a conventional outlook.)I didn't say otherwise.My point is that Moorcock does not think that the extent to which something is lawful or chaotic has no bearing on its degree of goodness or evil. Whereas the D&D alignment system is committed to the (absurd) notion that the two so-called axes are independent of one another.These claims have no canonical basis in the D&D texts I'm familiar with (eg Gygax's AD&D and the character alignment graph; the d20 SRD definitions of alignment).On the alignment graph, for instance, nothing prevents a character being in the upper left-hand corner, and therefore both maximally lawful and maximally good.Detect evil measures the strength of evil. Nothing suggests that a vrock can't register as much evil as mezzodaemon.Furthermore, if you read the texts of the game (eg Monster Manuals, paladin alignment descriptions, etc) there is nothing to suggest that Demogorgon or Orcus is less evil than Anthraxus. A paladin who aligns with a demon or a devil is not somehow doing a less evil thing than one who aligns with a nycadaemon.I don't think one would have to go this way: for instance, if you wanted to run a game that emphasised the ethos of Homeric heroism, you might want to frame the CE character as at least capable of self-assertion, whereas the the LE character might be somewhat weak and insipid.But what I do agree with in your post is that any coherent moral framework has to take some sort of stand on this. It makes no sense to say that the difference in outlook between the demon and the devil is evaluatively significant, and yet makes no contribution to the degree of goodness/evilness. (That's not to deny the possibility of non-moral dimensions of evaluation, but no one is arguing that L/C is, say , an aesthetic axis, and that paladins' hostiity to chaos is an aesthetic judgement.)</blockquote>

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