Well, to be more clear, it'd be more like the 'good-evil balance of D&D alignment'.
I'm still torn in terms of 'lawful/chaotic'. Someone who obeys the laws of their personal land, for example, might go from lawful to chaotic if they moved to another land where their laws were illegal, assuming they tried to stick by their laws instead of adapting. So is a paladin in an evil country chaotic? It's a fine line. But at the same time, you don't want to determine lawfulness by someone who's most willing to abide by the laws of the particular land where they happen to be, because hardline lawfullness shouldn't be (IMO) so wishy-washy. On the other hand, you could have someone who obeys a rational and internally consistant set of personal laws -- except, that includes storybook robbers and pirates, who live by various theives codes, including the storybook version of Robin Hood, who is universally cited as an example of chaotic good.
This whole debate, BTW, came from a game I played in for a while where the characters were encouranged to be as well-developed as people as possible, and where the GM determined our alignment and our alignment shifted quite a lot during game play. There were plenty of situations where people were extremely surprised to learn that their behavior was giving them an evil alignment, and thus it was important to be clear and logical about what sorts of behaviors would cause what sorts of alignment shifts.
The game was fun, and it was really cool to watch people who'd started out intending to tell a heroic story wind up telling a tragedy once they had it pointed out to them that their characters were, with all the best intentions, sliding steadily towards evil. One by one, they started embracing it, and by the end of the game, we were pretty much all evil, with the exception of ONE lawful neutral monk who was trying so very hard to save us and who was being steadily dragged down in the process (he'd started out lawful good).
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Re: Thoughts on you, quirks of mine
Date: 2005-12-31 05:49 am (UTC)Re: Thoughts on you, quirks of mine
Date: 2005-12-31 07:19 am (UTC)I'm still torn in terms of 'lawful/chaotic'. Someone who obeys the laws of their personal land, for example, might go from lawful to chaotic if they moved to another land where their laws were illegal, assuming they tried to stick by their laws instead of adapting. So is a paladin in an evil country chaotic? It's a fine line. But at the same time, you don't want to determine lawfulness by someone who's most willing to abide by the laws of the particular land where they happen to be, because hardline lawfullness shouldn't be (IMO) so wishy-washy. On the other hand, you could have someone who obeys a rational and internally consistant set of personal laws -- except, that includes storybook robbers and pirates, who live by various theives codes, including the storybook version of Robin Hood, who is universally cited as an example of chaotic good.
This whole debate, BTW, came from a game I played in for a while where the characters were encouranged to be as well-developed as people as possible, and where the GM determined our alignment and our alignment shifted quite a lot during game play. There were plenty of situations where people were extremely surprised to learn that their behavior was giving them an evil alignment, and thus it was important to be clear and logical about what sorts of behaviors would cause what sorts of alignment shifts.
The game was fun, and it was really cool to watch people who'd started out intending to tell a heroic story wind up telling a tragedy once they had it pointed out to them that their characters were, with all the best intentions, sliding steadily towards evil. One by one, they started embracing it, and by the end of the game, we were pretty much all evil, with the exception of ONE lawful neutral monk who was trying so very hard to save us and who was being steadily dragged down in the process (he'd started out lawful good).