Quote from: Benoist;648436Unless you support the concept of Natural Law, which pretty much is predicated on the notion that there is a natural "right" and a natural "wrong," e.g. "good" and "evil".

I support that there is such a thing for human beings. That is, that we have in our human natures certain points of reference (whether you want to call them 'god-given' or a product of our evolution to sentience) that hold certain things as good, and certain things as evil; and that at the same time there are philosophical stands one can take that put one in closer harmony with natural reality, and others that lead one further away from that into delusion (what the Buddha and other spiritual teachers of that kind were trying to tell people); but these are all very different from the idea that the universe or god or whatever are going to behave by what humans consider to be "good" standards.  And even further away from the notion that the particular taboos any single human society comes up with are likely to be very representative of that natural law.

To paraphrase Lao Tzu: "when people are in tune with the Tao, there is harmony; when they are not in tune with the Tao, then government arises".

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;648915I support that there is such a thing for human beings. That is, that we have in our human natures certain points of reference (whether you want to call them 'god-given' or a product of our evolution to sentience) that hold certain things as good, and certain things as evil; and that at the same time there are philosophical stands one can take that put one in closer harmony with natural reality, and others that lead one further away from that into delusion (what the Buddha and other spiritual teachers of that kind were trying to tell people); but these are all very different from the idea that the universe or god or whatever are going to behave by what humans consider to be "good" standards.  And even further away from the notion that the particular taboos any single human society comes up with are likely to be very representative of that natural law.

To paraphrase Lao Tzu: "when people are in tune with the Tao, there is harmony; when they are not in tune with the Tao, then government arises".

RPGPundit

That's one way to look at it, and you consider it a different thing so, as far as you're concerned, that's that and I get it. There are proponents of Natural Law who very much think of the concepts you are talking about as being really close to a positive (as in, real, objectively observable) existence of "good" and "evil", and if that is the case, then, for these people, "good and evil" can just as readily be seen around us as "law and chaos".

Now that said, yes, societal values which influence the laws of men and Natural Law as a positive state of the universe all around us, within us and out there, are different things, obviously.

Quote from: Benoist;648919That's one way to look at it, and you consider it a different thing so, as far as you're concerned, that's that and I get it. There are proponents of Natural Law who very much think of the concepts you are talking about as being really close to a positive (as in, real, objectively observable) existence of "good" and "evil", and if that is the case, then, for these people, "good and evil" can just as readily be seen around us as "law and chaos".

They'd then need to explain just what those absolute laws are; "thou shall not kill" wouldn't be one of them, for example, as there are all kinds of animals that must kill to eat... right?

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;648340Law (order) and chaos are visible in nature.  "good" and "evil" are only relative to culture.

This.

When Good, Evil, Neutrality, Law, and Chaos are defined in any coherent manner that everyone at the game table agrees upon....get back to me.

Quote from: CRKrueger;648442What it really comes down to with RPGs is that who gives a fuck what you think about how our world works with regards to God or lack thereof, physics or what-have-you.

Can you imagine a universe/cosmology that works in another way?

This is what matters for me in an rpg. A lot of arguments at the table over alignmemt seem to revolve more around peoples' notions of real word morality. But in a game where the authors create a world where x is evil and y is good, i am much more willing to roll with whatever they come up with for the setting provided it makes (there will still be gray areas and behavior not covered in the book definitions). I believe morality in the real world is pretty subjective, but can but into objective morality in a fictional fantasy setting.

I don't see a problem with a fantasy world being different in many ways from the real world.
Thats kind of the point.


Alignment can still be annoying.

Most will agree that a 'Demon' can be inherently evil.

But getting people to agree about how evil a Baker is that lets someone starve through inaction is a lot trickier.



I am running  Planar dnd game where alignment has some setting relevance, and so far, the only alignment hiccup is one player confusing CG with CE.

Quote from: Bill;650960.

But getting people to agree about how evil a Baker is that lets someone starve through inaction is a lot trickier.

I think the problem there is the alignment system needs to address those kinds of cases or they need to be treated as gray areas the cosmic sources of morality dont pay as much attention to.

QuoteI am running  Planar dnd game where alignment has some setting relevance, and so far, the only alignment hiccup is one player confusing CG with CE.

I think the D&D alignment system has always had some clarity issues (partly because there are so many alignments). I could see confusing CG with NG or even CN. But if the player is confusing CE and CG, that seems a little odd. There are going to be times when CE and CG intereect because the chaotic descriptor. I dont know the specifics of the situation so it could be a genuine corner case came up (and I never played much planescape so there may be a concern I havent thought of).

In 3E, if that is what you are using, i found if the player is confused, he cant rely on the individual CG or CE entries. He should also read the Good Vs. Evil entry and the Law Vs. Chaos entry because the individual alignment entries refer back to those (for example the chaotic good entry says something like "CG characters believe in good but don't worry about laws", which is meaningless unless you read the entry on Good versus Evil). Still I wouldn't hold up the D&D alignment systems as perfect. It's also a system that has been around so long people tend to bring their own ideas into it or carry assumptions from one edition into another.  I find it is usually easier to gloss over corner cases and gray areas with it when they come up.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;650964I think the problem there is the alignment system needs to address those kinds of cases or they need to be treated as gray areas the cosmic sources of morality dont pay as much attention to.




I think the D&D alignment system has always had some clarity issues (partly because there are so many alignments). I could see confusing CG with NG or even CN. But if the player is confusing CE and CG, that seems a little odd. There are going to be times when CE and CG intereect because the chaotic descriptor. I dont know the specifics of the situation so it could be a genuine corner case came up (and I never played much planescape so there may be a concern I havent thought of).

In 3E, if that is what you are using, i found if the player is confused, he cant rely on the individual CG or CE entries. He should also read the Good Vs. Evil entry and the Law Vs. Chaos entry because the individual alignment entries refer back to those (for example the chaotic good entry says something like "CG characters believe in good but don't worry about laws", which is meaningless unless you read the entry on Good versus Evil). Still I wouldn't hold up the D&D alignment systems as perfect. It's also a system that has been around so long people tend to bring their own ideas into it or carry assumptions from one edition into another.  I find it is usually easier to gloss over corner cases and gray areas with it when they come up.

I know player sthat confuse LG with LE also.

But the particulars of this players CG CE confuson is about how he views casual murder at worst, and convenient practical murder at best.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;650964I think the problem there is the alignment system needs to address those kinds of cases or they need to be treated as gray areas the cosmic sources of morality dont pay as much attention to.

I think the problem is that there's a lot of ways to interpret alignment. Not "the individual alignments", mind you: the GM is responsible for defining those for that particular campaign. It's the concept of alignment itself. There's something like six main ways to run alignment; I call them "Scorecard", "Factions", "Taint", "Tendency", "Track", and "Compulsion". If the GM is running alignment one way and the players think of it another way, you wind up with confusion.

Also, I think running alignment in general under the Track or Compulsion interpretations is inherently full of problems. I tend to run it down near the Scorecard/Faction/Taint end, and I haven't seen alignment debates when I run it that way.

Quote from: talysman;651024I think the problem is that there's a lot of ways to interpret alignment. Not "the individual alignments", mind you: the GM is responsible for defining those for that particular campaign. It's the concept of alignment itself. There's something like six main ways to run alignment; I call them "Scorecard", "Factions", "Taint", "Tendency", "Track", and "Compulsion". If the GM is running alignment one way and the players think of it another way, you wind up with confusion.

Also, I think running alignment in general under the Track or Compulsion interpretations is inherently full of problems. I tend to run it down near the Scorecard/Faction/Taint end, and I haven't seen alignment debates when I run it that way.

I find scorecard to be a reasonable approach, but I don't really like, as a gm, to be heavy handed about alignment.

My style is to have the 'Good' PC get funny stares from npc's that know of the PC's evil actions despite claims of goodness.

Clerics and Paladins sometimes require a more direct intervention, such as...'dude...where's my spell?'