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[scrdest]

Aside from energy metaphysics, Evil isn't just Selfish. That's Neutral (when it's not MUH UNIVERSAL BALANCE or MUH TREEHUGZ). Ethically, Evil is Selfish + Fuck-Anyway-Who-Stands-In-My-Way-To-Achieve-It-ish.

So, aside from the cosmicism, the moral axes top-left to bottom-right are 'Help Others If Possible-And The Rules and Oaths Allow', 'Randian Ubermensch-Bends The Rules Sometimes' and 'Fuck Anything That Stands In The Way Of My Goals-Fuck Rules And Promises'.

So, full on CE is primarily ruthless, not LELEVIL, LE is a Jerkass Genie-style villain who will fuck you over within the confines of that contract you just signed with your blood or a 'I would kill you, but I promised not to', and NE is a corrupt-style villain, a'la 80's villain CEO.

[Neonivek]

It is often best to consider the alignments of Good vs Evil and Lawful vs Chaotic... On their own.

So Chaotic Evil is just... Chaotic + Evil. You don't believe in rules or law except possibly might makes right... and your evil.

Dungeons and Dragons did a HORRIBLE stupidity when they wrote up the alignments because for the most part all the alignments followed the general rules... Except Evil... where Lawful Evil was written as "Not THAT evil" in spite the pattern being more that Lawful Evil has a code of ethics but not nessisarily moral boundaries...

Megabyte is Lawful Evil and he would eat a baby...

Hexadecimal can be considered Chaotic Evil and she wouldn't eat a baby

[Evilsx]

So I watched the new 'Mad Max' movie...

Best way to put it for me is while the visuals are great and stuff... I left half-way though the movie because I was just bored from it all and the world tried so hard to do the worst to me about it (Rain started when I when out, train was a hour late,ect)

[Yoink]

Megabyte is Lawful Evil and he would eat a baby...

Duuuuuuude! Is that a reference to what I think it is?!

* Yoink goes into a nostalgia fit.

I was gonna post something to do with the whole silly alignment debate, but that just blew it from my mind.

[miauw62]

man, another D&D alignment debate?

[Neonivek]

man, another D&D alignment debate?

For a debate someone needs to disagree xD

So far we are all on the same page xD

[Sergarr]

I don't like many things about alignment system, but currently one of them stands out the most:

The lawful alignment. It doesn't mean what you'd think it means. Why is it tied in with not telling other people lies and keeping your word? Why are those two not a part of a Good alignment?

[scriver]

I don't like many things about alignment system, but currently one of them stands out the most:

The lawful alignment. It doesn't mean what you'd think it means. Why is it tied in with not telling other people lies and keeping your word? Why are those two not a part of a Good alignment?

I think it doesn't mean what you think it means

[Grim Portent]

I don't like many things about alignment system, but currently one of them stands out the most:

The lawful alignment. It doesn't mean what you'd think it means. Why is it tied in with not telling other people lies and keeping your word? Why are those two not a part of a Good alignment?

Because honesty and loyalty are not Good, many knights would sooner give up their lands or life than give up their honour or break their word but would still murder, rape and torture to fulfill their promises.

I'm not even going to get into how many loyal and truthful people have committed unspeakable acts in the past few hundred years.

[BlackFlyme]

Part of being lawful is respecting laws and contracts.

While they can lie all they want, giving their word could be seen as a verbal contract. Not that they can't break their word for the right reasons.

[GiglameshDespair]

Because keeping your word is not an inherently good act.
Perhaps your team of heroes is forced to work with a rather sinister group to take out a third. You can only do this by promising to let the allied evil group to leave once you're done.
You successfully defeat the big bad.

If you let the allied evil group go, they will do more evil in the future. So you could argue that breaking your word to capture or kill them now would be the most "good" option, but in breaking your word it swings more towards a chaotic alignment.

In contrast, keeping your word is the most honourable and lawful thing to do. Is it "good", however, to let bad guys escape because they worked with you for a moment?

Lawful isn't always nice.

[Sergarr]

Because keeping your word is not an inherently good act.

If you go that way, then you must also say that "Good" alignment is not actually inherently good:

"Good" implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others.

See how "respect for life" can cause you to let the evil group go (because you respect their lives hurr durr)?

Part of being lawful is respecting laws and contracts.

While they can lie all they want, giving their word could be seen as a verbal contract. Not that they can't break their word for the right reasons.

No. This is not actually a part of lawful alignment, this is:

"Law" implies honor, trustworthiness, obedience to authority, and reliability. On the downside, lawfulness can include close-mindedness, reactionary adherence to tradition, judgmentalness, and a lack of adaptability. Those who consciously promote lawfulness say that only lawful behavior creates a society in which people can depend on each other and make the right decisions in full confidence that others will act as they should.



See, this is why I've said that Lawful alignment doesn't mean what you'd think it means.

[Rolan7]

There's nothing altruistic about being honest and keeping your word.  It's virtuous, and tends to earn peoples' respect, but it can be cruel just as often as it's kind.

A neutral good person typically wouldn't mind lying to spare someone's feelings, or withholding painful information.  Though normal people do have compunctions about lying... 

A chaotic good person might not have those compunctions, and would help as much as they could get away with.  Probably enjoying the deception for its own sake, unless/until harm unintentionally results.

Meanwhile a lawful good person would gently inform the person of the bad news, and comfort them with earnestness.  There are benefits to having a code of honesty and honor, in that people believe the things you are able to say.

These are just examples of course.  Not every chaotic character loves dishonesty and lawful characters can certainly lie.  Because characters are more than just manifestations of their alignments.  Outsiders on the other hand...  Well the source material is inconsistent, but in our group an angel who falls literally becomes a devil.  They're the same race, after all.

In my opinion good-neutral-evil is selfless-selfish-sadistic.  Chaotic characters value freedom and change for their own sake, and lawful characters seek to uphold tradition and stable power structures for their own sake.  Most commoners are neutral, meaning they work primarily for themselves and cooperate with society in a normal way.  Taking a strong alignment stance would make it harder to get by in normal society, and probably result in the person becoming an outlaw, soldier, priest, or hermit eventually.

True neutral is very different from commoner-neutral.  True neutral is a bit alien from a human perspective, because it's the morality of nature.  Excesses of any of the four alignments are against nature, which is why druids in general go on about "the balance" and in some cases cases work to subvert places that are "too good" or "too evil".  Too far away from natural, neutral behavior.  It's pretty weird, particularly considering that druids are allowed one alignment themselves.  I think a lot of people just make them luddites who resist civilization.  When actually, civilizations are neutral by default...  Druids are resisting the planar forces which pull humanity in the four directions.  Get lost, angels!  Not interested, devils!  Stop messing with us, fae!  The material plane is for neutral nature, which is also fundamentally human nature.  Compassion but not asceticism, community but not slavery.

Whereas regular neutral is more "Man, I don't even have an opinion.  I just want to get paid, and eventually settle down with 2.5 kids.  Which I guess means saving the world first, SIGH."

[Sergarr]

What I was getting at is that the biggest fail of an alignment system is that it gets interpreted by everyone in a different way, thus making it unusable as a system because it keeps producing all sorts of stupid arguments due to the bad choice of words.

Better to just deal away with the loaded words like "Good", "Evil", "Lawful" and "Chaotic" and just make them "White", "Black", "Blue", and "Red". And True Neutral as "Green".

[Dutchling]

blue op