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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9755011" data-attributes="member: 42582">In Gygax's PHB and DMG, alignment is set out as a type of disagreement about means: lawful good people think that the best way to ensure "the good" (life, truth, beauty, wellbeing) is by way of relatively strict or at least clear social order/hierarchy; whereas chaotic good people think that the best way to ensure "the good" (again, life, truth, beauty, wellbeing) is by way of self-realisation in a relatively loose social organisation.Chaotic evil people agree with the LG about the relationship between law and good but don't want the good - they want their own power and self-aggrandisement - and so reject social order. Lawful people agree with the CG about the relationship between chaos and good but don't want the good - again, they want to exercise their own power (as Gygax colourfully puts it, they want to impose their yoke upon the world) - and so reject individuality and self-realisation in favour of strict hierarchy.This way of setting things up makes sense of the law/chaos opposition - there is something they are fighting over, namely, the proper means to a shared end. Whereas presentations of alignment that treat both Law and Chaos as effective ways of achieving the good don't make any sense to me - if both means are effective, why would people fight over them? (I think Planescape has this problem.)I take your point about political disagreement. The most obvious way to avoid that is to not use alignment. An alternative is to have the GM remain neutral about alignment conflict, and let it play out as it plays out.And a third possibility is to be much more simple about alignment (I think this was an approach back in the relatively early days of 9-point alignment, and I think it might also be one way of reading 5e D&D alignment): that Law and Chaos are just personality traits. So LG means "is good and also sociable" (and so applies to King Arthur and other chivalric knights, Aragorn, humble and generous temple priests, etc) while CG means "is a bit ornery and anti-social, but will help those who are well-meaning (and so applies to Beorn and other werebears, the ranger who lives in a cottage deep in the woods, the bushranger with a heart of gold, etc). This framing avoids political conflict; it also means that Law and Chaos aren't really in opposition: as long as the knights don't try and interfere with the loners, there will be no conflict between them because there's no idea or ideal that they disagree about.</blockquote>

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