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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7975653" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't quite agree with this.Take just one example: modes of dress. No serious scholar woud think that modes of dress, and similar customs, are dictates of the natural law. But they can be very important aspects of custom and tradition, and - everything else being equal - a lawful person affirms their value, as important components of wellbeing.NG and CG individuals also accept the natural law, in the sense that they are committed to human wellbeing and beauty and truth. What they disagree with the LG person about is the extent to which realising the values implicit in the natural law can only occur via the mediation of a particular set of customs and traditions.Without straying into forbidden territory, we can - unsurprisingly, given the history of some of these ideas in the real world - see how the LG/CG disagreement maps in a rough way onto some of the theological disputes that characterised early modern Europe.My view - building on my reply to [USER=6785785]@hawkeyefan[/USER] a page or three upthread - is that this is where alignment starts to become incoherent.As a description of belief/conviction I think it is workable if one doesn't push the moral philosophy too hard - the LG believe that value can only be achieved via community and tradition, whereas the CG are individualists. It's primarily a disagreement about means. And only one side can be correct, preciesly because it's a genuine disagreement.Whereas when alignment labels are given to kingdoms or cities, they are serving as behavioural descriptors. They aren't expressions of belief that might be true or false.Tring to use the same tool for these too completely different purposes is a recipe for disaster! (And I think the history of alignment in the game bears this out.)It is basically incoherent to use the same label both to express a conviction about what is the best way to realise the values of life, wellbeing, beauty and truth and to use it as a behavioural descriptor. Pick one (eg 4e D&D goes the descriptor route).Using alignment as a behaviour descriptor for a society that is meant to be remotly realistic seems doubly hopeless. There are very significant differences between societies that cannot be captured via alignment descriptions. For instance, no society before the 20th century was remotely as organised, formalised or bureaucratised as (say) the contemporary United States - they simply lacked the administrative capacities and technologies. Nor has any society ever been as individualistic. The idea of capturing that via D&D alignment labels is just silly.Whereas the 4e lables work quite well as (individual, not societal) descriptors in a fantasy context: there are the nice guys, the super-nice-guys who are sometimes a bit pedantic, the baddies, and the psychos. Plus everyone else. It's much close to the original Law-Chaos idea but carves the line in a couple of more places.</blockquote>

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