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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6407140" data-attributes="member: 42582">If [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] thinks the rest of this paragraph is in breach of his mod warning, he should delete it. Here is a schematic take on the standard version of real-world conformity to the law by office-bearers (and superheroes, where apposite): the people in question accept that (i) the legal system is contributing to human wellbeing, (ii) the functioning of the legal system depends upon those with allocated roles sticking to those roles, and (iii) the people in question then carry out their roles.That is, the suggestion is that the officials in question do not think that adherence to the law is good in itself. They have a view as to the role that the law confers upon various office-bearers, and takes the view that adhering to those roles will best promote human wellbeing.It's hard to develop examples like this within the framework of D&D, because very few D&D settings have sufficiently well-defined social roles or social systems, and hence D&D generally doesn't have the sophistication of social or moral resources to support such an analysis.Of course. This isn't contentious. My point is that, in a world in which both are correct - which is the world of the Great Wheel cosmology - then their disagreement is silly, or at best a disagreement of taste/style.Alternatively, if you take the view that human wellbeing is best realised on Elysium - a view of the planes that I do not think is canonical, but I can see how some disagree - then both the LG and the CG person should recognise their error, and join Moorcock in affirming that too much order, and too much chaos, are both inimical to human wellbeing.The issue I'm point too is that the Great Wheel, in its standard presentation, wants to affirm that both Law and Chaos can be good, and also affirm that the disagreement between LG and CG is well-founded. That's the bit that I regard as untenable.But the canonical D&D cosmology does dictate an answer: both the Seven Heavens and Olympus test positive to a Detect Good spell. Neither is less good than the other in virtue of affirming the wrong method of aiming at goodness, nor in virtue of affirming the wrong conception of goodness.My view is that the cosmology of the D&D alignment system is not a very satisfactory vehicle for this. I find it awkward, at best, to have to treat as open questions such things as "Is the Abyss really evil?" or "Is Mt Celestia really good?" The alignment system has already purported to answer those questions. That's its function.I don't think it's a worthwhile function. But treating the planar alignments not as moral classifications but as personality descriptors for the inhabitants of those planes is a pretty big departure from how alignment has been presented in any version of the game. For instance, it doesn't fit with the idea that "alignment is determined by action" - ie that alignment is an objective property based on the conformity of a being's behaviour to the demands of morality.If I've understood [MENTION=509]Viking Bastard[/MENTION]'s most recent post properly (and if I've got it wrong, please correct me!), he (?) is going down the pathway I just described: treating the alignment lables as personality/outlook descriptors for the planes, as they can be for individuals.That's a way of avoiding the cosmolgoical incoherence I've been talking about (I think there are other probems with law/chaos, but that's a separate issue for an alignment thread). But it makes me curious: for instance, it seems to abandon the idea of good and evil, law and chaos as objective cosmological forces. Viking Bastard, in your campaign that you're describing, did you drop objective/cosmological alignment altogether?</blockquote>

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