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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pacdidj" data-source="post: 5216467" data-attributes="member: 86793">Actually, at least one of them is not a matter of opinion. 'Ethics,' just like all systems of value are necessarily subjective. Objects don't have values. Subjects do. Ethics specifically is an inter-subjective process of evaluation, because good or evil both get done by someone to someone. It takes one subject to commit the good or evil deed, often to or on behalf of someone else (though also occasionally to oneself). Then both the doer and the person to or for whom the deed is done will evaluate where they feel the deed falls on a spectrum of received values that they have been taught and/or learned through experience. A chair cannot evaluate whether or not it thinks it has been the victim of evil. Thus 'ethics' are subjective, because they don't exist without subjects. This is part of why alignment poorly reflects the real world. In D&D as written, both good and evil are palpable, tangible forces that can inhere in objects, as well as in the actions committed by people, making them distinctly more objective forces than the abstractions we call good and evil in the real world. Though, whether these forces inherent in objects would continue to exist in the game world in the absence of D&D subjects (PCs, NPCs, and Divine beings), when no one is around to see or handle them, or when the god who blessed or cursed them is overthrown is an interesting and open question. I imagine this would vary greatly from DM to DM, and thus you're correct in terming the relative objectivity of good and evil a matter of opinion within the canonical fantasy world of Dungeons and Dragons.</blockquote>

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