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The 'Wonderland'-Inspired Faces of the RAGE OF DEMONS
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7671093" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I can see the argument, and I think that would be an interesting thing to explore in a game. (Think of a game where we try to find out whether Kafka or Orwell was right about totalitarian bureaucracy.)</p><p></p><p>But I don't think the analysis you put forward is <em>inevitable</em>. (If it was, then there would be no game to play, because we'd already know that Orwell was right.)</p><p></p><p><em>Evil</em> (as defined by Gygax) is about pursing self-interest with disregard for the well-being of others.</p><p></p><p>But in your scenario, the chief bureaucrat need not be pursuing self-interest. If s/he is a genuine order fetishist, then s/he is pursuing something external to him/her, which s/he accepts as a limit to his/her will, and hence is not evil. It's just that the thing s/he's pursuing is not wellbeing - it's social organisation per se. So s/he's making people miserable, but not because s/he's evil.</p><p></p><p>(For an example, in literature, of someone who makes people miserable but at least arguably isn't evil in Gygax's sense, consider Pyle in <em>The Quiet American</em>.)</p><p></p><p>I'm not 100% sure what you mean by "universal truths".</p><p></p><p>I think that the table has to accept that LG describes a person who thinks that order promotes wellbeing; that CG describes a person who thinks that freedom promotes wellbeing; that LE people create exploitative hierarchies through which they can exercise power; that CE people are immoral self-aggrandizers; etc.</p><p></p><p>But I don't think the table has to accept that LG and CG people are all true in their beliefs. That is what leads to incoherence, because to be LG means to deny that CG beliefs are true (and vice versa), which means that if the gameworld begins from the premise that both LG and CG beliefs are true, it has a contradiction built in on the ground floor.</p><p></p><p>As long as you don't build that contradiction into your game, I think alignment is, while not perfect (because Law and Chaos are not very well-defined and the notion of Good covers a range of potentially conflicting theories of wellbeing), serviceable enough.</p><p></p><p>To give another example (this time hypothetical rather than from actual play): dwarves are LG, meaning that they pursue wellbeing through social order; elves are CG, meaning that they pursue wellbeing through self-realisation. It would be interesting to play a game in which these rival political and social conceptions are put to the test - whose social structure <em>really</em> conduces to wellbeing?</p><p></p><p>But if the game stipulates from the outset that both social orders do so - that dwarves flourish under orderly conditions, and elves flourish under conditions of flighty freedom - then there is no alignment disagreement. The difference between the social structures would have no more significance than the fact that schools in Australia make the children wear hats when the play outside, but schools in Scotland (I imagine) do not.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7671093, member: 42582"] I can see the argument, and I think that would be an interesting thing to explore in a game. (Think of a game where we try to find out whether Kafka or Orwell was right about totalitarian bureaucracy.) But I don't think the analysis you put forward is [I]inevitable[/I]. (If it was, then there would be no game to play, because we'd already know that Orwell was right.) [I]Evil[/I] (as defined by Gygax) is about pursing self-interest with disregard for the well-being of others. But in your scenario, the chief bureaucrat need not be pursuing self-interest. If s/he is a genuine order fetishist, then s/he is pursuing something external to him/her, which s/he accepts as a limit to his/her will, and hence is not evil. It's just that the thing s/he's pursuing is not wellbeing - it's social organisation per se. So s/he's making people miserable, but not because s/he's evil. (For an example, in literature, of someone who makes people miserable but at least arguably isn't evil in Gygax's sense, consider Pyle in [I]The Quiet American[/I].) I'm not 100% sure what you mean by "universal truths". I think that the table has to accept that LG describes a person who thinks that order promotes wellbeing; that CG describes a person who thinks that freedom promotes wellbeing; that LE people create exploitative hierarchies through which they can exercise power; that CE people are immoral self-aggrandizers; etc. But I don't think the table has to accept that LG and CG people are all true in their beliefs. That is what leads to incoherence, because to be LG means to deny that CG beliefs are true (and vice versa), which means that if the gameworld begins from the premise that both LG and CG beliefs are true, it has a contradiction built in on the ground floor. As long as you don't build that contradiction into your game, I think alignment is, while not perfect (because Law and Chaos are not very well-defined and the notion of Good covers a range of potentially conflicting theories of wellbeing), serviceable enough. To give another example (this time hypothetical rather than from actual play): dwarves are LG, meaning that they pursue wellbeing through social order; elves are CG, meaning that they pursue wellbeing through self-realisation. It would be interesting to play a game in which these rival political and social conceptions are put to the test - whose social structure [I]really[/I] conduces to wellbeing? But if the game stipulates from the outset that both social orders do so - that dwarves flourish under orderly conditions, and elves flourish under conditions of flighty freedom - then there is no alignment disagreement. The difference between the social structures would have no more significance than the fact that schools in Australia make the children wear hats when the play outside, but schools in Scotland (I imagine) do not. [/QUOTE]
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