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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 9322930" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, this leads indirectly to another significant point, transparency. 'Lawful Good' is such an entirely artificial and abstract construct that it cannot reliably be mapped to any particular in-game behavior. I'm pretty sure the thread [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] linked to above makes this point, though I didn't go reread it. Thus play isn't PRINCIPLED at all in practice, it is in fact 'Mother May I' because all the players can do is test their actions against the GM's conception of what LG is. They aren't playing to find out the ramifications of their own character's essential nature, they are playing to find out what logic and idiosyncratic definitions the GM is going to use to define them! Systems like alignment are poison to real character-defining play. Instead you find things like DW's bonds, or BW's beliefs, which are concrete enough for the GM/game to TEST. So DW lets me assert &quot;I will protect the halfling, no matter what.&quot; and then it asks the GM to put that to the test with &quot;OK, the unstoppable 10,000 lb iron golem is about run over the halfling, what do you do?&quot;</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 9322930, member: 82106"] Well, this leads indirectly to another significant point, transparency. 'Lawful Good' is such an entirely artificial and abstract construct that it cannot reliably be mapped to any particular in-game behavior. I'm pretty sure the thread [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] linked to above makes this point, though I didn't go reread it. Thus play isn't PRINCIPLED at all in practice, it is in fact 'Mother May I' because all the players can do is test their actions against the GM's conception of what LG is. They aren't playing to find out the ramifications of their own character's essential nature, they are playing to find out what logic and idiosyncratic definitions the GM is going to use to define them! Systems like alignment are poison to real character-defining play. Instead you find things like DW's bonds, or BW's beliefs, which are concrete enough for the GM/game to TEST. So DW lets me assert "I will protect the halfling, no matter what." and then it asks the GM to put that to the test with "OK, the unstoppable 10,000 lb iron golem is about run over the halfling, what do you do?" [/QUOTE]

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