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sorry, your character is lawful neutral at best.
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Nov 5, 2019 02:14
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trucutru posted:Is double lawful good++ an alignment? Don't use floating point values for your alignment. That's just asking for trouble.
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Nov 5, 2019 02:17
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ikanreed posted:As long as we're in the alignment 9 hells, here's my awful take. i like this and will think on it more.
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Nov 5, 2019 02:55
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SlothfulCobra posted:I think it's weird to think of yourself as blackwater in a fantasy setting, since what's notable about blackwater isn't that they're an amoral band of people who kill for money and have a tendency to make whatever they're involved with worse. It's that they're all that in an era where that is no longer considered acceptable in the mainstream. People hated mercenaries back then too. The word "mercenary" even means "amoral and self-interested" when used as an adjective. Throughout history most cultures have treated mercenaries as no better than bandits, because that's what they were. You're right that "that's how it was" but that doesn't mean it was "acceptable." It was just another sucky thing that they had to deal with. Blackwater's big innovation was simply to stop calling themselves "mercenaries." Clarste fucked around with this message at 03:16 on Nov 5, 2019 |
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Nov 5, 2019 03:07
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Clarste posted:People hated mercenaries back then too. The word "mercenary" even means "amoral and self-interested" when used as an adjective. This actually isn't historically accurate. Mercenaries played a very important role in Medieval Italian politics and weren't bandits.
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Nov 5, 2019 03:17
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Gee, I sure hope Rich is Lawful Good. 
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Nov 5, 2019 04:37
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PMush Perfect posted:Gee, I sure hope Rich is Lawful Good. Going byGygax, wouldn't that mean he's not okay?
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Nov 5, 2019 04:40
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AnoHito posted:Going byGygax, wouldn't that mean he's not okay? Going by Gygax apparently nobody is okay.
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Nov 5, 2019 04:41
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Raenir Salazar posted:This actually isn't historically accurate. Mercenaries played a very important role in Medieval Italian politics and weren't bandits. that was one segment of one period of one region, with histories written primarily by very specific classes of people
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Nov 5, 2019 05:08
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ikanreed posted:As long as we're in the alignment 9 hells, here's my awful take. e: though saying that, someone can be very structured and organised but not think a whole lot of their boss. Paul.Power fucked around with this message at 07:13 on Nov 5, 2019 |
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Nov 5, 2019 07:10
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In 5e law Vs. chaos is pretty much "laws help maintain the status quo" Vs "the status quo is unimportant"
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Nov 5, 2019 08:53
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Apparently Gygax thought that neutral good was a higher tier of good than lawful good.
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Nov 5, 2019 09:29
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MonsterEnvy posted:Apparently Gygax thought that neutral good was a higher tier of good than lawful good. Yeah, that's how those forums posts seem to come across to me at least, especially with him clarifying that a Neutral/Chaotic Good character wouldn't go full Judge Dredd on anyone they think might be evil.
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Nov 5, 2019 10:19
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I generally go with lawful <--> collectivist and chaotic <--> individualist.
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Nov 5, 2019 12:11
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Cat Mattress posted:I generally go with lawful <--> collectivist and chaotic <--> individualist. What was Bakunin's alignment?
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Nov 5, 2019 14:16
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trucutru posted:What was Bakunin's alignment? Chaotic Good
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Nov 5, 2019 15:26
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Nov 5, 2019 15:34
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Mister Olympus posted:that was one segment of one period of one region, with histories written primarily by very specific classes of people And the original post was being overly general to the point of inaccuracy.
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Nov 5, 2019 15:44
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trucutru posted:What was Bakunin's alignment? I'd put Mikhail Bakunin's alignment, in a D&D world I DM, as Lawful. Collectivist anarchism would be Lawful, while despotic autocracy would be chaotic. Some quick an dirty links collectivism, individualism, I didn't actually read those specific articles further than the bullet point lists but they seem to illustrate the concept well enough.
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Nov 5, 2019 16:03
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Cat Mattress posted:I'd put Mikhail Bakunin's alignment, in a D&D world I DM, as Lawful. If people who want to abolish all laws are "lawful" and people who put law and order above everything else are "chaotic," I don't think your system works very well...
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Nov 5, 2019 16:06
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AnoHito posted:If people who want to abolish all laws are "lawful" and people who put law and order above everything else are "chaotic," I don't think your system works very well... because I consider that treating metaphysical Law a being "follow laws, whatever they are" to be kinda stupid and needed something that made more sense as a a civilization-shaping dichotomy. Having the side of Law be the one that emphasizes cooperation, cohabitation and harmony (the kind of things that laws are made to facilitate and organize), and the side of Chaos be the one that emphasizes freedom, individuality and independence, made sense to me. If that doesn't make sense to you, that's fine.
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Nov 5, 2019 16:30
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A despotic autocrat makes their own laws and usually breaks existing laws freely. Anarcho-collectivists do everything by a prolonged process of meetings and tenuous social agreements. Makes sense to me!
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Nov 5, 2019 16:52
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I find myself wondering what character is going to have great chemistry with grayview. Probably Belkar, right?
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Nov 5, 2019 17:13
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Raenir Salazar posted:And the original post was being overly general to the point of inaccuracy. Not really. Being an important part of politics and being scum that tends to steal from normal civilians aren't mutually exclusive. Especially if the way that you're an important part of politics is in killin' and stealin', or at least threatening to do so. That's what I was getting at with more contextually acceptable. People put up with mercenaries when they're a necessity despite being awful. It's a lot like how the police serve a fairly important purpose in how the world works, so some people will make any excuse for their behavior and praise them to no end despite, you know, all the killing. Or maybe more comparably, it's how gangs wind up being respected or even idolized by the communities they're part of despite their violence and extortion. They end up keeping the order. In an ideal world you'd want to have things not falling into chaos without a bunch of violent jerks with no accountability to anyone, but we're pretty far from that right now.
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Nov 5, 2019 17:52
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AnoHito posted:Yeah, that's how those forums posts seem to come across to me at least, especially with him clarifying that a Neutral/Chaotic Good character wouldn't go full Judge Dredd on anyone they think might be evil. Makes sense. Neutral Good considers Good more important than any other considerations. Neutral Good is All Good.
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Nov 5, 2019 20:35
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Cat Mattress posted:Collectivist anarchism would be Lawful, while despotic autocracy would be chaotic. Sounds like you're describing the good-evil axis, tbh. Individualism is selfishness; collectivism is altruism. Which is why I've always advocated for one-axis alignment. Any serious attempted to make a sensible formulation of this nebulous, ill-conceived law-chaos idea ends up recapitulating the good-evil axis, one way or the other. Do you have examples of characters/historical figures/archetypes that would be chaotic good and lawful evil?
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Nov 5, 2019 21:17
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alignment discussions are awful but John Brown chaotic good seems pretty solid
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Nov 5, 2019 21:31
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DontMockMySmock posted:Sounds like you're describing the good-evil axis, tbh. Individualism is selfishness; collectivism is altruism. Gygax's original vision was also a single axis, actually, but it was Lawful-Neutral-Chaotic; from what I hear he didn't want the Good-Evil axis at all, and it was added in Basic despite alignment being there from the beginning (and then later removed before getting added again). Though, in the one-axis system Chaotic was pretty evil, to the point that the book outright said, "chaotic behavior is usually the same as behavior that could be called 'evil'", and was all about the individual over the group, seeing no value in honor or honesty, and so on, in addition to the usual lack of respect for authority and emphasis on freedom. Meanwhile, Lawful seemed to be the closest equivalent to "good", buuut it was also the sort of Lawful described previously, which most people would also call evil. It still got the most positive presentation though, with self-interest being a major Neutral motivation while Lawful people were the ones who actually cared about the collective. The axis was basically Lawful "Good" - Neutral - Chaotic Evil, just without the explicit good and evil labels. (In the names; as above, the descriptions were more willing to make that judgment.) From what I hear from others, supposedly Gygax personally wasn't entirely consistent on whether Lawful or Neutral was "best", but given how even here people have been trying to say that the stuff I linked earlier actually just means that Neutral Good is the most Good (ignoring that Gygax was still including genocide under any form of "Good") I have a feeling that people saying pretty much the same thing about the old one-axis system were doing so for similar reasons. All the old content I've read personally seems to favor Law pretty clearly. Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Nov 5, 2019 |
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Nov 5, 2019 22:00
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The original Lawful-Neutral-Chaotic axis was supposed to be more of civilization-nature-raiders, like you see in, say, Warhammer and a lot of other older western fantasy. Law is pro-society, progress, and when possible, peace. Neutral is made up of isolationists or primitivists who reject civilization but aren't aggressive invaders. Chaos are raiders and destroyers who steal rather than produce.
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Nov 5, 2019 22:42
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god drat you can't ignore mods? how else can I escape alignment chat?
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Nov 5, 2019 22:59
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You can ignore anyone if you do it the old-fashioned way!
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Nov 5, 2019 23:00
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tokenbrownguy posted:god drat you can't ignore mods? how else can I escape alignment chat? you just hope, beyond hope, that Rich is okay
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Nov 5, 2019 23:02
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tokenbrownguy posted:god drat you can't ignore mods? how else can I escape alignment chat? You're just gonna mute the whole thread if you tried. Your only choices are A. Give in. Explain to us why neutral evil is meaningless under a Kantian worldview B. Complain. C. Goblins. D. Raise literally any other subject you find interesting and be ignored.
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Nov 5, 2019 23:04
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ikanreed posted:D. Raise literally any other subject you find interesting and be ignored. Could a vorpal sword be so vorpal that it cuts itself in half
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Nov 5, 2019 23:09
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Wolfsheim posted:Could a vorpal sword be so vorpal that it cuts itself in half Only if you're your own opponent. The description of the sunder action mentions no other requirements to take the action(that aren't covered by the weapon being a sword)
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Nov 5, 2019 23:16
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ikanreed posted:Only if you're your own opponent. Listen, pal, nobody, but nobody, hates me as much as I do.
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Nov 5, 2019 23:24
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You just need to send "Is no surprise to me I am my own worst enemy" Cause every now and then I break the living poo poo outta thee You can forget about the magic sword you lent me drunk I didn't mean to sunder that
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Nov 5, 2019 23:33
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DontMockMySmock posted:Sounds like you're describing the good-evil axis, tbh. Individualism is selfishness; collectivism is altruism. Not necessarily. Collectivist societies have their own problems, caused by the repression of individualism. Basic example: arranged marriages. Roland Jones posted:(ignoring that Gygax was still including genocide under any form of "Good") You can make a dilemma out of baby orcs because we have progressively humanized the orcs (they started as inherently evil corrupted creatures, to the point that they had to be "reinvented" with a different name, e.g. the "darkspawn" from Dragon Age), but what about, say, baby face huggers? Would genociding all xenomorphs be acceptable for a Good character? The way how the various monstrous races in D&D have been made less monstrous through the iterations of the games, ending with orcs and goblins (and kobolds and gnolls and so on) becoming acceptable choices for player characters or for NPCs in civilized areas (Eberron has goblins in all major cities, generally as an underclass but tolerated) reflects evolving sensibilities, and is kind of behind the arc for the goblins in OOTS: born as a cannon fodder race, but wanting to no longer be treated as such.
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Nov 5, 2019 23:58
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ikanreed posted:You're just gonna mute the whole thread if you tried. 
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Nov 6, 2019 00:13
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Cat Mattress posted:Not necessarily. Collectivist societies have their own problems, caused by the repression of individualism. Basic example: arranged marriages. Arranged marriages aren't limited to or a defining feature of collectivist societies, though? They were a thing all over history, particularly among nobility. That's a terrible example. quote:It's important to remember that D&D grew out of tabletop wargames, so combat was always a central part of the game, and having conveniently "always evil" races of monsters to fight against is therefore practical to remove moral issues and motivate the players' characters. Gygax quoted an actual genocidal person from history and referenced an actual genocide to support his point. He used real historical examples to justify the notion of killing children for their race being a Good, rational thing to do. "Nits make lice." I don't think that fantasy RPGs require the PCs to be able to kill babies without feeling guilty for it to work, and I'm pretty sure that wasn't a feature of wargames either.
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Nov 6, 2019 03:50
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