Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8039172" data-attributes="member: 6801228">So, it is an arbitrary detail. Great. So, again, alignment doesn't seem to be offering me anything except arbitrary guidelines that I get to determine as the DM. So, why do I need them in the book if I am already supposed to decide how lawful "LAwful" is and how chaotic "Chaos" is?Not required to be individualistic. Nomadic Tribes only require being nomadic. They could very easily have a strong sense of community within their tribe, with every individual finding their role as dictated by a clan elder. In fact, tribes tend to have stronger communities, because they only have each other to rely on. The very idea of "tribalism" comes from the group mentality of nomadic people.So, again, a matter of degrees. It seems what I am seeing is that people are defining "Lawful" as involving formalized documents and books of law, which is not required in the slightest.Asked and Answered. You wanted to know why I was having this discussion, I told you. You then asked me why I was having this discussion. I can keep justifying myself to you, but that seems to be a waste of energy. You don't want to talk about alignment, you don't have to. Personally? I'd rather discuss alignment than my motivations for talking about a ruleset for a fantasy game.Well, you want to keep making this about me, so I guess I will have to go back to the why of this conversation.Page 1, post 1, sentence 1So, the game designers are talking about changing alignment. A little while ago, people said they didn't want that, because alignment gives them so much useful information about a monster or NPC as a DM. I challenged that, putting forth that alignment doesn't actually do that. There is a lot of other information you have, as a DM, that is far more useful and helps you far more than alignment. In fact, alignment tends to be contradictory and we have to go and look at other lore to see what the real situation is. Ok, now that I have yet again put forth why we are talking about alignment, let's actually discuss some things. For example. this part you postedDo you remember the question I asked after you explained that a despot is chaotic because the results of their actions were chaotic? Probably not since you never answered it. I asked if a person who saves the life of an individual, with no prior knowledge of this individual, is Evil if that individual turns out to be a demon or other serial killer.In other words, if the Despot is Chaotic because the results of their actions create more chaos, is the rescuer Evil because the results of their actions create more evil? In general, I would say people would agree that this is not the case. You are not made evil for sparing the life of a person who goes on to do evil. It is your intent that matters, not the result. So why does this not apply to the Despot? If the Despot is using brutal force and laws to try and enforce order, why do we say they are Chaotic just because the results are chaotic? If we are going to look at how alignment plays out, shouldn't the standards be applied equally?It seems to me that the people insisting that alignment works very well for them seem to be talking about the alignment system in their heads, not the one in the books, which might explain why they don't seem to understand how it could not work for me. I mean, we've had almost half a dozen examples telling me that tribal people or nomadic people are naturally more chaotic than people who live in houses with law books. But, that is nonsensical. A law is not less of a law if it is passed down via oral tradition instead of printed our from a xerox machine. Laws are not made lesser if the people who follow them travel the world instead of settling down in a single location. People seem to be trying apply standards that are not part of the system, and then defending the system based on those standards. And, I'm sorry, but whatever system you've developed over the years of playing the game is not what we are talking about. We are talking about what is in the books.</blockquote>

Verification