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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fenris-77" data-source="post: 7975315" data-attributes="member: 6993955">Oh my goodness yes. Nuance galore.I think in terms of what the alignment system provides in terms of guiding character behavior, it takes back and then some in the way DMs seem to feel the need to constrain player actions based on it. LG good is somehow the nail that sticks up far further than anything else in this regard. As far as romantic fantasy goes I think the emphasis is most often on good versus evil, and the legal issue, which seems to take a front and center role for this discussion, is generally viewed in terms of good and evil, or fair and unfair. I would agree. I also think that with Tolkein there is a harkening back to historical periods where larger legal apparatus were absent, and society instead relied on custom, tradition, and much more foreign kind of written law than what modern North Americans are familiar with. The cultural emphasis on oaths, oath keeping and oath breaking in NE history is strong. The rightness of a action, or even the truth of an account, was judged by oaths and the opinion of one's neighbors. In short, it was about right action and right speaking within a system of tradition and custom, and only lightly supported by written laws, which in their earliest forms tended to be more about assessing penalties for certain things, in a predominantly monetary way. The fact that Tolkien's characters swear oaths about important decisions is not window dressing.This is part of the reason I suggested that LG would be much more profitably examined absent any great focus on the legal system. For a Paladin, that organic society could certainly be his order and wider faith, but in order for that to be the guide it needs to be I think players would have to invest more mental energy into imagining that society and devoting more than a couple of casual brushstrokes to filling it in or bringing it to life. It sounds like a Captain Obvious sound bite, but character background is maybe more important than some people think, at least some of the time. In fairness, what I'm talking about is probably more correctly described as character context, rather than background, a distinction that will allow us to neatly sidestep the messy issue of multi-page background novellas. In order to really sink your teeth into alignment it needs to firmly located within, or in relation to that organic society.</blockquote>

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