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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4950949" data-attributes="member: 4937">awesomeocalypse: Well, you seem to have conceeded everything that I thought might be contriversial or might cause you offense.  I don't really feel like arguing ethics or theology with you, and this isn't the place, so I'm not going to be able to really respond to 90% of your post.  Besides, with all my points being conceded to me, I'm not sure that there is a whole lot left to say.You spend much of your time, indeed almost you entire response, not discussing alignment at all, but instead attempting to prove to me that morality is subjective and relative and hense that the game universe ought to match the real one as you percieve it.  You say it yourself better than I could:That you held such belief and that such belief would tend to cause you to reject an alignment system was most of what I was trying to achieve.  You really can't argue with that sort of position, so I won't try, but I would note how curious it is for you to be arguing for the non-existance of the alignment system when a character with your beliefs would fit so neatly inside it.I would note that a nuetral character or perhaps a chaotic neutral character would look at the classic D&D cosmology and say the exact same thing, "Morality is subjective as far as we know.", and no one with in the classic D&D universe would be able to prove otherwise.  All they would be able to do is prove is something like, "You can be smote with lawful energy", but this wouldn't prove that law was objectively better.  The question of the way the universe works or should work doesn't disappear, it just changes how the question is phrased.  Errr... because it didn't.  I have personal experience of it not leading to metagame arguments over what constitutes good and evil.  This is not something I can prove - perhaps I'm delusional or have false memories or am lying - but my own experential knowledge is not something you are going to disuade me from with logic so don't bother trying.  I don't have to explain to you how it is possible or understand how it is possible to experience it.However, in this case, I do rather think I understand it.  The only times I've seen these sorts of metagame arguments was when the DM sprang some interpretation on the player without warning, "Because you did that new alignment is X, lose a level.", or some equivalent.  And, the player's contrary arguments in such disputes were all proxy arguments of, "Well, if I'd known that was the consequence, I wouldn't have done it, can I have a take back?"I suppose the irony of that claim is lost on you. I've played at tables with hidden character sheets.I'm afraid my answer to this is, "So?"  I don't have alot of objection to accepting an external absolute standard for what is good and evil.  If it happens that the in game one is different than one I believe in, that's not abhorent - that's interesting.  I might in such a universe proudly wave a different banner under a conviction that 'Good' in that universe wasn't really good, and that the truth was held by the lawfuls or the chaotics of that universe.  Even if I grant that, so what?  If I play in a game world where the fundamental philosophical dynamic of the world is different than the one I believe the world I live in has, that's not abhorent to me either - that's interesting. Again, so what?  At worst, you would find yourself in the cosmic equivalent of being a dissident to the laws of a nation who found those laws immoral, but in this case it would be the very nature of the universe which you found immoral.  If it is 'Good' that you find immoral, may I introduce you to one explanation for the attractiveness of 'Neutral Evil'.You don't strike me as someone who easily bows to authority. Actually, I've been talking about a world that I think mimics life.  It's your world of purely subjective truth that would not mimic life as I know it, and while I find it interesting I find it less interesting than a world that does not know whether truth is subjective or objective and is fighting to determine the outcome of these questions.</blockquote>

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