Alignment

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Arwenth
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Alignment

#1 Post by Arwenth » Sat Feb 20, 2010 2:46 pm

http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/6833 ... ntstu2.jpg


Just wanted to toss out that link and see where everyone thinks the chips fall at on their characters alignments and stuff.
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Re: Alignment

#2 Post by isengoo » Sat Feb 20, 2010 2:50 pm

Lawful and good-evil.

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Re: Alignment

#3 Post by Sairina » Sat Feb 20, 2010 4:52 pm

I can't really place Sairi anywhere in that picture. Theoretically, she should be mostly neutral, of course.
Taking the alignment test there: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dnd/20001222b however placed her as chaotic good (and though she answered many questions different from me, I the player would end up there as well).

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Re: Alignment

#4 Post by lanyara » Sat Feb 20, 2010 7:08 pm

Lanyara is clearly everything here. The dark side comes out only while walking in the sleep though.

The coolest pic is lawful good though.

<3 Simon Pegg

The true neutral pic is funny, I wonder how many know who that guy is. But it clearly fits into the medieval scheme :) (though I must say... if that is true neutral, then true neutral is pretty evil!)
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Re: Alignment

#5 Post by Desiderea » Sat Feb 20, 2010 8:43 pm

In that test, Desi scored as Neutral Good. Sounds right.

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Re: Alignment

#6 Post by Skragna » Sat Feb 20, 2010 9:17 pm

I, myself, poSkragna, am Chaotic Neutral, but I lean heavily toward good. Skragna, on the other hand, is what my D&D gaming group would call "Lawful Stupid", meaning I'll always do what I'm told, when I'm told, and have no regrets or doubts.

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Re: Alignment

#7 Post by Damanta » Sat Feb 20, 2010 9:48 pm

Damanta is Lawful Good.

Gee

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Re: Alignment

#8 Post by matusalem » Sat Feb 20, 2010 9:58 pm

Matusalem, according to this, is Neutral Good.

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Re: Alignment

#9 Post by Arwenth » Sat Feb 20, 2010 10:40 pm

Just dawned on me I didn't answer my own post :oops:

Arwenth is Lawful/chaotic good although lately she's drifting towards neutral good/lawful evil...
“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”

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Re: Alignment

#10 Post by luminier » Sun Feb 21, 2010 5:03 am

Luminier is obviously lawful good.

But im hoping to make things more interesting.
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Re: Alignment

#11 Post by caelia » Sun Feb 21, 2010 8:30 am

I have some strong disagreements with the D&D approach to alignment, particularly on the law/chaos axis.

Generally, being lawful/neutral/chaotic has to do with how often one feels motivated to bring the rules, but it really doesn't deal with -why- someone would be persuaded to break rules, or why for a particular character these a certain moral dilemma would arise in the first place, and it ignores characteristics of the rules themselves.

To put it (hopefully more simply) I think the law/chaos axis tries to explain personality, culture, and ethics, but by trying to do all of these at the same time it fails to do any of them very well.

The D&D model really only expresses probability - most of Caelia's choices would fit into "lawful good", but to understand her the really interesting and relevant things to look at are the times when she deviates from the expected lawful good choice. The D&D alignment system sweeps these under these deviations mostly under the rug (except to call it "bad roleplay" when the number of deviations is too high), whereas actual people are often quite willing to break rules, but only certain ones - and which rules they break, and why they feel justified in breaking them, are very important questions.

As I see it, a more useful distinction would be among the "natural law"/positivist/utilitarian approaches to ethics (just to pick three) - meaning that only good laws must be obeyed, that law has basically nothing to do with morality and should be obeyed because it is law, or that people should do what seems most useful at the time, respectively. This seems to me to be a far more useful and consistent guide to a character's behavior, since ethics (rather than some vague commitment, impartiality, or aversion to law/society/whatever else) are really what determine how a person will deal with ethical dilemmas.


On a related topic, one of the problems with I have with neutral characters (on the law-chaos) axis is that it is only very clear to me what doesn't motivate such characters. The unifying theme of neutral good and neutral evil seems to be a sort of I-make-the-rules self-centeredness. I think that true neutral forces people into ridiculous roleplay and basically doesn't exist in actual human beings. This is my opinion on why there are so many variations on the theme of "true neutral" - because by itself, it is basically meaningless (IMHO).



I think the existence of a "lawful evil" alignment only illustrates my point about the fuzziness of law/chaos - in the D&D mindset even some evil people have some regard for law, which is only possible because some laws actually are good and other laws are written by weasels. Comparing the three evil alignments, the overriding goal is evil, and the only distinction is whether someone wants to support their evil regime with unjust laws or semi-random acts of cruelty (or some mix of the above), and don't these really end up being the same thing? In each case some evil overlord will kill you if you upset him, and "lawful evil" only means that this is spelled out in writing somewhere.

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Re: Alignment

#12 Post by Sairina » Sun Feb 21, 2010 9:08 am

I tend to disagree. I may not agree with D&D alignments in all respects, but generally I consider the system a good way of defining a fantasy character. They don't have to apply to real people, because many of the concepts of fantasy worlds don't apply to the real world.
And I must admit that your classification of ethics doesn't tell me anything at all, I wouldn't even know where _I_ fit in, much less my characters.

The distinction between the three evil alignments is the character's motivation: the neutral one is entirely egoistic (like, *I* want to rule the world and become a god myself), the lawful one does it for some "higher" purpose (like, raising the power of Sathonys), the third is just really crazy in a wicked way, which makes it hard to impossible to tell exactly why he does anything - he probably just enjoys it, but doesn't follow a goal (like, I just *like* to torture babies - so what?!).
And while I don't think that for example the lawful evil one exists at all in the real world, in the world of Geas it's a rather common type of evil.

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Re: Alignment

#13 Post by lanyara » Sun Feb 21, 2010 10:35 am

My biggest problem with the DnD system is that it tends to put people/characters into boxes, and closes the lid on that box.
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Re: Alignment

#14 Post by Sairina » Sun Feb 21, 2010 10:42 am

True for D&D. But just because we place our Geas characters in a category now, they don't have to stay there forever.

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Re: Alignment

#15 Post by caelia » Sun Feb 21, 2010 8:14 pm

Sairina wrote:And I must admit that your classification of ethics doesn't tell me anything at all, I wouldn't even know where _I_ fit in, much less my characters.
I'm thinking of a court case in Arborea concerning whether it is appropriate to kill someone to end his suffering.

Someone who believes in natural law would not do this, because life has intrinsic value and it should only be ended in the defense of one's self or of others. In this view, there is no excuse for violating certain fundamental principles.

A positivist would look to the law for guidance. Here the main principle is that societies are free to choose what works for them (and their choices would all be equally correct, because they are arbitrary anyway), and "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." There are often exceptions in practice to obeying the law, but these are often matched by exceptions in enforcing the law.

A utilitarian might argue that he would only live the rest of his life in suffering, that he wouldn't want to be a burden on society, and that it would be acceptable to end his life. In this view, there is only one fundamental principle - that the end result of the ethical action is to maximize happiness/productivity/something of the sort, and any action done with this in mind is morally correct.


Of course, the actual distinctions here are the subject of not just entire classes but entire undergraduate philosophy programs. What I tried to do here was choose three ethical schools of thought that seemed to match what I think the D&D lawful/neutral/chaotic alignments are really trying to say.

I didn't mean to suggest that my system was perfect - or that it should even be called a system - but in the end, the D&D system is a behavioral analysis of a character ("what will this character do?"), and to really understand a character I believe there is a further need for cognitive analysis ("why does the character act this way?"). Now that I've written all this, this is the point I really wanted to make. :)


Of course, anyone is free to take or leave whatever I say here. If it helps you understand your character better, I'm glad. If not, use whatever else works. :)

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Re: Alignment

#16 Post by Sairina » Mon Feb 22, 2010 11:57 am

Still, I don't see why your system would explain more than lawful/neutral/chaos, as the outcome is pretty much the same. And the fact that a character will make exceptions for certain laws or situations remains with _any_ system you could possibly use (otherwise there wouldn't be many different characters in the world).
Someone who believes in natural law would not do this, because life has intrinsic value and it should only be ended in the defense of one's self or of others. In this view, there is no excuse for violating certain fundamental principles.
I disagree. Because I don't think a "natural law" that is the same for everyone would even make sense in the world of Geas. The concept stems from monotheism (and whether or not it can be applied with, let's say, atheism, is not the point here).

What I mean to say is rather: in the world of Geas, where the existence of several gods is beyond any doubt, none of them is a "superior god" in terms of power (well, maybe in terms of followers) and who don't exactly tend to agree with each other on the topic of Ethics, it would make more sense to speak of "religious law" versus "worldly law".

About the only ones in the world of Geas who'd agree with your above stated "natural law" are the druids and some Gwennies.
A Sathonite will obsviously disagree. But he still follows a religious law over a worldly one.
An Asralite will also disagree that "Thou shalt not kill" - he follows a god of war, he's _obliged_ to kill and bring his god the heads of his enemies. And I'd say that Asral prefers slightly negative karma for a reason.
A Crusader also kills - bad guys mostly, but still, what about the "intrinsic value" of all life? What about the "intrinsic value" of an Ex-Crusaders life? He will do it (even if it's against Arborean law), because it's his religious law, and that comes first.
Even a Zhakrinite might kill to forward balance, which is his religious law.

All of these will of course consider their own set of laws the one that everyone should follow (except probably Zhakrinites, as there wouldn't be anything to balance if everyone was entirely neutral). Still, from a cosmological point of view, they are all equally valid (as each has a god to back it up).

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Re: Alignment

#17 Post by lanyara » Mon Feb 22, 2010 1:35 pm

none of them is a "superior god" in terms of power
Hmm. I am not sure that all gods in Geas are equally strong.

At least right now, I would say that Sathonys on his own is stronger than the other deities.

Because ... which other deity can keep at least 3 other deities busy (even if indirectly) and not get squished? (Taniel/Evren/Asral) :)
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Re: Alignment

#18 Post by Sairina » Mon Feb 22, 2010 3:26 pm

Well, I'm quite sure that if Sathonys was the strongest god, Forostar would look a lot different (and less alive) :shock:

He does have a lot of followers now, a while ago he had next to none. So his worldly power varies, as does that of all gods... but what I meant is: I don't think any of them rules over the others like a Zeus/Jupiter. And none of them is the sole creator, either.

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Re: Alignment

#19 Post by luminier » Mon Feb 22, 2010 6:02 pm

I'd have to agree with Lanyara. I think lore-wise Sathonys is the most powerful of all the gods.

I kind of see it like the Legend of Zelda. In that game, there is a triforce. The triforce is made up of power, wisdom and courage. Ganondorf represents power while Zelda represents wisdom and the character you play as, Link, represents courage. In the end it always takes Zelda and Link working together to bring Ganondorf down.

I think Geas can be though of similarly. Sathonys is a god of Power, Death, and Destruction. And the other gods opposing him represent Order, Life, Goodness, Love etc etc. Say what you will, but there is power in just brute destruction. Love and Order and all that crap is a definite weakness in some respects and therefore will be needed to be grouped together to get a strong foot hold over pure power.
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Re: Alignment

#20 Post by Sairina » Tue Feb 23, 2010 1:15 am

My point is still that he doesn't rule over the other gods - though I'm sure he'd like to. :mrgreen:

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