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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord Pendragon" data-source="post: 1787729" data-attributes="member: 707">It certainly sounded that way to me, but perhaps I jumped the gun a bit as well.You say this, and yet immediately afterward:I did not prove your point, I was illustrating my own viewpoint, which is different from yours.  Which is to say that I do not believe Chaos vs. Law is micro vs. macro at all.  M vs. M would only be applicable to a very particular flavor of Lawful-Neutral or Chaotic-Neutral PC, the kind which actively promotes the particular alignment type.  Certainly, a PC who believes that all the universe should be Ordered will place a greater emphasis on the Order of a world, than the Order of an individual.But a Lawful character does not have to promote lawfulness.  A lawful character can simply be lawful, through discipline, through rationality, through the free-willed choices he makes.  The fact that those free-willed choices are at odds with society's rules does not make them, or the PC, chaotic.Sure.  I don't dispute the internal nature of morals.  I simply disagree that what is internal must therefore be chaotic.I agree.  But I disagree that if one's personal preferences take precedence over society's preferences, that is Chaotic.  Law and Chaos need not (and for me, are not,) be defined by ones relationship to social rules.  They define a person's nature, in the same way that Good and Evil do.I disagree with this as well.  Though that's another can of worms altogether, and the reason why I didn't make the example individual a paladin. <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=";)" />This, I believe, is the crux of our disagreement.  To me, such a definition is problematic, because it creates for actions which are of differing alignment depending on the society in which they are performed.  As I stated in an earlier post, our definitions of Lawful and Chaotic must be objective.  And for them to be objective, they must be constant.  Good and Evil do not change depending on what people think (*in the D&D universe), neither do Law and Chaos.Whereas I would say that his very willingness to continue to follow his personal code indicate Lawful behavior.  He has a rational way of thinking, which he follows regardless of whether or not it might be more convenient to do otherwise.I disagree.  Ultimately, the law vs. chaos aspect of alignment, like the good vs. evil aspect of alignment, is a classification of the general nature of the individual.  It has nothing to do with morals (that's good vs. evil), or at least, only insomuch as it defines how one acts on one's morals.  The Lawful character is methodical.  The Chaotic character is instinctual.Concensus is no more necessary for the Law vs. Chaos axis than it is for the Good vs. Evil axis.  When you boil a person's nature down to two axes, things aren't going to be neat.  And consistency is always maintained, since it's the DM's versions of Lawful, Chaotic, Good, and Evil that a campaign runs on.I am mystified as to why you find my approach complicated.  I certainly don't, nor have any of my players.  *shrug*  As yo said, we agree to disagree.</blockquote>

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