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Worlds of Design: Chaotic Neutral is the Worst
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7815049" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Briefly, the writers have a hard time imagining anything as alien, and so tend to ascribe human traits and motivations and social structures to things which - if we are to believe the backstory - are not remotely human in character. They also have a really hard time distinguishing between immortal and mortal beings, and ascribe to immortal societies traits that would only exist in mortal ones.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>After having been on largely the same page, where did this come from? At no point did you differentiate things by 'means' and 'ends', and if you are going to start trying to do that then we actually will have something to debate.</p><p></p><p>In particular, you just told me that the distinguishing factor between the two is that lawfuls accepted authority and chaotics rejected it. Demons and devils are incarnated ideas, and as such we expect them to embody those ideas in the extremes. Unlike mortal beings, their societies ought to be pure and free from internal hypocrisy. They literally are the thing that they are, and are not merely trying to be that thing. A devil cannot be but utterly lawful and evil, because that's the only things that make up their being.</p><p></p><p>So what we expect to see in their society is a society were everyone on every rung of the society accepted the notion that they ought to be subject to the law. No one ought to be a hypocrite about it. The all agree to follow rules and they all agree on the utility of rules, and to a large extent we would expect a society that is in a sort of dark harmony where everything works but everything runs on pain, suffering, degradation, and so forth. And instead what we are presented with is essentially a pastiche of a decadent mortal wicked kingdom where the characteristics of the beings within the hierarchy are the stereotypical of how we'd expect free willed mortals to act in the same situation. Thus, despite this being a lawful society, there is a lot of backstabbing, intrigue, disunity, change, disloyalty, betrayal, and in short a bunch of attributes we properly associate with chaotic evil, rather than lawful evil. Chaotic have no loyalty, where as we would expect loyalty to be one of the few 'virtues' that lawfuls - even evil ones - would display. Most of all the leaders in the society are all hypocrites. They don't seem to believe the very philosophy that they embody. Rather they behave as we'd expect humans to behave in the same circumstances, as beings who ultimately see society organized for their own benefit and not as beings who just see themselves as important cogs in a a machine that they serve as much as anything else in the society. In other words, they don't think like lawful evil beings despite being lawful evil archetypes.</p><p></p><p>Meanwhile on the other end of the spectrum we have beings like Graz'zt who have feudal courts and behavior little distinguished from their diabolical counterparts.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I disagree. Every portrayal we've seen of the Drow from Gygax to Salvatore describes a highly regimented, organized society which shares a universal set of laws and regulations across the whole of society, which has caste systems, large functioning cities, and a series of tests and trials which everyone in the society will be familiar with and expect to undergo, and social mores which pretty much everyone obeys.</p><p></p><p>And I submit to you that this is a lawful society by your own definition.</p><p></p><p>There are chaotic alternatives.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>This is the strangest part of it. Because in mortal society, if someone is chaotic evil, then you could expect them to hypocritically organize society around lawful principles and adherence to the state and obedience to lawful authorities, not because they believed in any of these things, but because this ultimately caused the whole of society to be organized around them. And, for a mortal society drawing on mortal powers, this makes perfect sense.</p><p></p><p>But it makes absolutely no sense for an immortal ruler on several grounds. First, being an immortal being the very idea of a lawful society, even one secretly organized to serve them, is distasteful to them to the point of distress. They cannot hypocrites in the same fashion that mortals are unless they are some sort of incarnated hypocrisy, and in which case hypocrisy we'd expect to be the dominate mode of society (so everyone would pretend to be good to maximize that). Instead, chaotic evil rulers should prefer a chaotic evil society, even if it that means that the society is not loyal to them. Further, being a deity, Lloths ultimate goal is to acquire petitioners. But she organizes the society as a lawful evil society, then ultimately most of her followers will be lawful evil, and as such will not ultimately end up as her petitioners. She has to have society be chaotic before she can claim the spirits of that society as her own. Creating a lawful evil rigid authoritarian society to serve her is in the long term contrary to her interests. So she's not going to create structure for her society, or overtly try to rule over it, or issue laws, because that is her way. Her followers will be largely left to their own devices to pursue their own interests without overt interference by her, because that will encourage best the chaotic mindset she prefers and tries to cultivate. Instead we see her largely acting like a lawful overlord trying to keep a semi-rebellious (but not very rebellious) people in line.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Yep. I tend to ignore most of the cannon on the Slaad and run them in a very different way.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7815049, member: 4937"] Briefly, the writers have a hard time imagining anything as alien, and so tend to ascribe human traits and motivations and social structures to things which - if we are to believe the backstory - are not remotely human in character. They also have a really hard time distinguishing between immortal and mortal beings, and ascribe to immortal societies traits that would only exist in mortal ones. After having been on largely the same page, where did this come from? At no point did you differentiate things by 'means' and 'ends', and if you are going to start trying to do that then we actually will have something to debate. In particular, you just told me that the distinguishing factor between the two is that lawfuls accepted authority and chaotics rejected it. Demons and devils are incarnated ideas, and as such we expect them to embody those ideas in the extremes. Unlike mortal beings, their societies ought to be pure and free from internal hypocrisy. They literally are the thing that they are, and are not merely trying to be that thing. A devil cannot be but utterly lawful and evil, because that's the only things that make up their being. So what we expect to see in their society is a society were everyone on every rung of the society accepted the notion that they ought to be subject to the law. No one ought to be a hypocrite about it. The all agree to follow rules and they all agree on the utility of rules, and to a large extent we would expect a society that is in a sort of dark harmony where everything works but everything runs on pain, suffering, degradation, and so forth. And instead what we are presented with is essentially a pastiche of a decadent mortal wicked kingdom where the characteristics of the beings within the hierarchy are the stereotypical of how we'd expect free willed mortals to act in the same situation. Thus, despite this being a lawful society, there is a lot of backstabbing, intrigue, disunity, change, disloyalty, betrayal, and in short a bunch of attributes we properly associate with chaotic evil, rather than lawful evil. Chaotic have no loyalty, where as we would expect loyalty to be one of the few 'virtues' that lawfuls - even evil ones - would display. Most of all the leaders in the society are all hypocrites. They don't seem to believe the very philosophy that they embody. Rather they behave as we'd expect humans to behave in the same circumstances, as beings who ultimately see society organized for their own benefit and not as beings who just see themselves as important cogs in a a machine that they serve as much as anything else in the society. In other words, they don't think like lawful evil beings despite being lawful evil archetypes. Meanwhile on the other end of the spectrum we have beings like Graz'zt who have feudal courts and behavior little distinguished from their diabolical counterparts. I disagree. Every portrayal we've seen of the Drow from Gygax to Salvatore describes a highly regimented, organized society which shares a universal set of laws and regulations across the whole of society, which has caste systems, large functioning cities, and a series of tests and trials which everyone in the society will be familiar with and expect to undergo, and social mores which pretty much everyone obeys. And I submit to you that this is a lawful society by your own definition. There are chaotic alternatives. This is the strangest part of it. Because in mortal society, if someone is chaotic evil, then you could expect them to hypocritically organize society around lawful principles and adherence to the state and obedience to lawful authorities, not because they believed in any of these things, but because this ultimately caused the whole of society to be organized around them. And, for a mortal society drawing on mortal powers, this makes perfect sense. But it makes absolutely no sense for an immortal ruler on several grounds. First, being an immortal being the very idea of a lawful society, even one secretly organized to serve them, is distasteful to them to the point of distress. They cannot hypocrites in the same fashion that mortals are unless they are some sort of incarnated hypocrisy, and in which case hypocrisy we'd expect to be the dominate mode of society (so everyone would pretend to be good to maximize that). Instead, chaotic evil rulers should prefer a chaotic evil society, even if it that means that the society is not loyal to them. Further, being a deity, Lloths ultimate goal is to acquire petitioners. But she organizes the society as a lawful evil society, then ultimately most of her followers will be lawful evil, and as such will not ultimately end up as her petitioners. She has to have society be chaotic before she can claim the spirits of that society as her own. Creating a lawful evil rigid authoritarian society to serve her is in the long term contrary to her interests. So she's not going to create structure for her society, or overtly try to rule over it, or issue laws, because that is her way. Her followers will be largely left to their own devices to pursue their own interests without overt interference by her, because that will encourage best the chaotic mindset she prefers and tries to cultivate. Instead we see her largely acting like a lawful overlord trying to keep a semi-rebellious (but not very rebellious) people in line. Yep. I tend to ignore most of the cannon on the Slaad and run them in a very different way. [/QUOTE]
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