We Are All Neutral Survivalists: Alignment in a Complex World

[Primitive Screwhead]

Very interesting discussion and historical conversations here..


My one-line explanations of the alignments goes thusly:

Good: Other-centric, pursuing others advantage at personal cost
Evil: Self-centric, pursuing your advantage at the cost of others
Nuetral: Cost-centric, pursuing the path of least cost to the best advantage

Lawful: Following a code or set of external rules
Chaotic: Following a code or set of internal rules
Nuetral: Situational morals, doing what feels right at the time without regard to a code, rules, or previous choices.


The caveats to this are that alignments are based on the society of the character and the knowledge that the character has. A LG Paladin who's leadership sets a code that says 'all Orcs are evil and must die' will, beleiving his/her actions are good, commit genocide on the Orcs. Others, the Orcs specifically, would see these actions as evil.

But ... I don't really use alignments in my game and haven't since 1e timeframe. And I echo from upthread... for alignments to work you need to define 'Evil'

 

[Emirikol]

Alignment is such a peculiar thing from back in the painful days of the past. It's like string theory and aethers of the body..it doesn't exist. It's a name.

 

[Beginning of the End]

There is no such thing as "neutral survivalist"! Or, if there is, everyone is that. Everyone thinks what they are doing in fact does maximize their survival.

It's an interesting theory.

Rebuttal.