NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 7670898" data-attributes="member: 2067">I don't know that the language analogy is helping - your understanding of the moral value of "la chaise" in this context is just as empty as your understanding of the word for "helping an old woman cross the road." The stranger's language could very well put a moral value on "la chaise" (only the Oppressors use those!) and no moral value on "helping an old woman cross the road" (everyone does this, even the Oppressors!). As far as what helping an old lady cross the road looks like to different people in PS - there is a social context to determine the "default" in the setting that the characters are aware of (based on it being D&D and also it being presented as the current state of affairs in the books). Your characters know that social context, they can see it in the geography. They can accept the moral aspect of that definition or reject it as they see fit, and of course this means that the social context will judge them as well and define what they are (unless they can change it). They also know that this social context is just that - the opinion of others, made manifest by the way this reality works. Change the opinion, and reality will work differently. Part of the issue is that it is not the case that items (i)-(iii) of your definition necessarily warrant admiration. In example, any economist would balk at anything happening without reciprocation - they'd say that of course you got reciprocation, you just didn't realize or call it that, and so why would that be any more worthy of admiration than that same boyscout charging the old lady money? At least then it would be a measurable gain that you could put to use and not some squishy social capital that might go to waste at a retirement home! That might be similar to how an LE creature would view the act, as well (with perhaps a little more emphasis on making sure ladies who can't afford it stay on the right side of the street!). A NE person might reasonably conclude that anyone who fulfilled conditions i-iii is being a fool to get nothing out of it. A CE person might claim that same process results in nothing more than fewer useless old bints getting turned into traffic hazards. I think [MENTION=6787650]emdw45[/MENTION] has been using the term "axiological values" to refer to a the same idea - admiration depends on those being shared. You and the stranger do not necessarily share those. The demon likely does not share those. The characters in a PS game exist in a setting where social consensus has defined alignments and what they mean - all societies have been cosmically aggregated, each individual's ever-changing data-point tallied on some grand database, and this presented as the context. That determines the "axiological values" of the multiverse in general. Characters are free to dispute that consensus, and it is assumed that they will, at least in some form or another - that's the "things that need changing" in the 3-act structure of a PS campaign. Even LG characters find that their values will differ from the values of the multiverse at large.</blockquote>

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