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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6410587" data-attributes="member: 42582">You're misdescribing what I said, and also what Gygax says.As quoted by you upthread (post 882) I said that "law and chaos were presented as different means to the ends of good (or different ways of disregarding good, for evil characters)". My statement was incomplete, but the epxansion is obvious - law and chaos are also ways of disregarding good for LN, CN and True Neutral characters.And although Gygax described law and chaos as means that are independent of good and evil, he didn't describe them as values that are independent of good and evil. A person who is LG, for instance, isn't committed to two distinct value sets - Law, and Goodness. Rather, as described by Gygax, s/he believes that a certain sort of social order is both a necessary means to, and in part a constituent element of, human wellbeing.You are the one who described the motives of S&S characters as the pursuit of something that they want! If you now think that that is overly-simplistic, well I guess you can take that up with yourself!As to whther I am speaking to the Planescape or the AD&D conception of alignment, I'm talking about the conceptin of evil as set out in the AD&D rulebooks and the 3E ones - of having no regard for the welfare of others, and even being ready to kill or debase them to get what one wants.And at least as presented in the Planewalker's Handbook, Planescape seems to conform to the same usage. For instance, p 14 of PWHB refers to the Abyss et al as "the dark planes" and "the Lower Planes". The Abyss is described (on the same page) as "the seat of utimate chaos tainted by the darkest evil". Etc.That's not in disupte. My point is that they don't try to persuade everyone to label that outcome as "good". They are concerned with changing the world, not changing people's convitions about the world.If you look at REH's Conan, you will see the same thing: he sets out to be a king, to do what he thinks is good for a king to do, and on that basis to win the respect of his subjects. He doesn't set out to enact a change in moral belief. The target of his action is social reality, not inner convictions!I've always taken this to be understood. It's the rationale for the Blood War, isn't it - a reason why the infinitely large numbers of  fiends (especially the demons of the many layers of the Abyss) haven't just conquered the rest of the world.</blockquote>

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