D&D Alignment System and your ToEE PCs

Long night, nothing on TV, so:

I’ve never liked the D&D alignment system. Mentally balanced adults in the Real World â„¢ do not consider themselves to be Evil. They may be complete bastards, they may prance and prattle about their Evilness in their teens and early twenties (when Evil means “Can do things that mum would never approve of†or “Not a wussy little victim, no matter what X saysâ€), but most people think of themselves as the heroes of their own stories. Most people think of themselves as Good, especially the real monsters. It gets more complicated in D&D worlds, where there really is measurable Good and Evil, Law and Chaos, and where these things exist regardless of human opinion.

So, I was wondering, how do you think of Good, Evil, Law and Chaos in the mind of a D&D ToEE character? How do your characters see themselves in terms of alignment?

Here’s one party’s view of alignment:

Yamamoto, LN Wizard. Self discipline and honor are everything. Life is about duties, obligations, traditions, and clear-eyed agreements that both sides must obey. The greatest good is achieved when people act in a calm and rational manner.

Tenmujiin, NG Cleric. Acting in the best interest of the community, friends and self, in that order, is everything. Happiness is found in helping others, and in building a healthy family, community, and nation. Sometimes this may mean acting outside of tradition, turning your back on discipline in favor of freedom. In other cases, it may mean giving up personal freedom of action for the greater good, at least for a while. The greatest good is achieved when people balance the demands of duty against the natural desire for freedom, and attempt to act in the best interests of all involved.

Yamanobaba, CN Rogue / Fighter / Barbarian. Personal freedom is everything. People should do what they want, when they want, for whatever reasons make sense to them, and should be free to change their minds any time they’d like. Laws, rules and traditions are meaningless prattle. There may be a need to consider others, but the needs of others must be balanced against the needs of the self. If you are hungry, eat. If that means stealing bread from the baker, steal it. If you feel bad about it, find a way to pay him back later. The greatest good is achieved when everyone is free to act on their own best judgement.

Gojira, NE Wizard. Self interest is everything. If you don’t take care of yourself, no one will. Sometimes it’s best to tell the truth, sometimes it’s best to lie, sometimes you keep your word and sometimes you break it. You do whatever needs to be done to get what you want. The greatest good is achieved when everyone looks out for their own best interests.

Tsu, N Druid. Moderation and balance are everything. The needs of others must be weighed against the needs of the self, the demands of duty and tradition must be weighed against personal freedom and changing circumstances. An act that seems good may cause great harm in the long term, an act that seems evil may bring about a worthy end. The greatest good is achieved when the needs and goals of all involved are considered over the long term. Sometimes, the wisest course of action is to refrain from acting at all.

So, how do your characters view their alignments?

 

Well Gaear, since you've turned this into a human psychology discussion ....

I both agree and disagree with you. Almost every human on this planet has some degree of empathy towards other humans. It is part of human nature as a social animal. However, this empathy tends to take a kind of tribal mentality, a sort of us and them sort of thing, where us is everyone in your tribe (family, circle of friends, village, community, parish, etc.) and them is everyone outside of your tribe. The problem lies in the way that western civilization to some extent, and the culture in the US to a great extent, has erroded the sense of family and community to a point that the us is the individual and the them is everyone else. You do still see empathy emerge in the face of great disasters, but in day to day life it does seem to be missing.

Anyway, that's my take on it. I hope it makes some sort of sense.

Oh, and btw, if you ever do run across one of those rare individuals with absolutely no empathy whatsoever, run.

 

I should have added that a fair percentage of people think of humanity in general as Evil, as measured against their own personal standard of virtue.

 

I usually rely on the evolutionary biology model as put forth by Helen Fisher and others for this. Humans are generally most concerned with their own needs, followed by those of their family and tribe, Outsiders are generally seen as less important (and less real) than tribe members and treated accordingly. It's much easier to ignore the abstract pain of an anonymous outsider than that of an identified group member. Altruism comes in when we start to identify (or mis-identify) progressively more genetically distant individuals as group members, and start to place a higher value on their needs. This is often a good genetic survival strategy even as it may prove to be a poor survival strategy for the individual. An individual who sacrifices for the welfare of his or her own offspring has improved the chances that his or her genes will remain viable. When he sacrifices for the welfare of his neighbor's offspring, he has increased the chance that the group may survive, and thus protected his genetic line within that group. Caring for sick and injured group members has similar benefits, including the possibility of receiving such care in the future. Selfishness also has great survival value, leading to multiple survival strategies (selfishness and altruism) being pursued simultaneously in order to increase the chance that those all-important genes reach the next generation. Childless individuals have effectively committed genetic suicide, unless they can care for the offspring of group members that carry the same genes (the offspring of genetically close relatives).

I disagree that empathy as such is particularly rare in modern life. It follows the same family, tribe, other pattern it always has. However, I would agree that a range of factors have weakened our feeling of connection to the group, and that we are increasingly self-identifying as group members in groups that have decreasing genetic proximity. One interesting point that Fisher makes in “The Anatomy of Love†is that family patterns in industrialized nations are currently shifting more towards pre-agricultural norms (lower numbers of births per female, larger numbers of male outsiders, etc). We are moving away from the agricultural model (larger families, greater inequality between male and female societal power, stronger group membership) and back towards the hunter-gatherer model.

All of this is more a discussion of actual "Good" and "Evil" than an individual's perception of their own nature, but what the heck.

 

And is thus a good example of the POV of a NE character.

 

Now that's a great topic for my new poll.

 

i consider my self evil mostly because i make fun of hellen keller on a regular basis and think www.rofl.name/owned is hilarious

 

People are animals. They do the most disgusting and depraved things to one another with little or no regard of the consequences, at least until they are caught. Then, they are usually only sorry that they got caught. Almost no one wants to go to hell, or to jail for that matter...but they continue to do the very things which will ensure just that.

Every day.

Very few people know what real sacrifice is all about, and even fewer will actually make any real sacrifices during their short lives. I believe that most people have the capacity for doing noble things, yet fail the test when it comes....and evil prospers.


Mr. Crowley, what went on in your head...?

Sorry I didn't weigh in on this earlier, but the cable went out & there you have it...

 

Jessica Alba has got the best ass and any one who says differently is Fuckinstoopid.

Who's Alistair Crowley?

My idea of evil is;
Intentionally doing something to cause harm to others - I'll stab you in the face with a soldering iron, or more subtlety not giving a shit that what you're doing is harming others - I build a dam and people down river die of thirst but why should I care its not my problem.

anyway we've had a small description on NG, LN, CN, NE and TN now how bout LG, CG, CE, LE?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleister_Crowley

The father of modern Satanism. It's rumored that Led Zeppelin's rise to fame didn't truly begin until Jimmy Page bought up his estate lock, stock & barrel. Therein were Crowley's relics of devil worship, which were utilized in some ritual to ensure their success. More Led Zep lore includes the Swan Song record label...an angel cast out from heaven...Lucifer...and their fouth album Zoso featuring symbols of deviltry on the cover. Read on for lots more at the link above...

Now, for what everyone really wants....

 

This is more or less what I was trying to say, however Old Book said it much better than I did.

Then again, every religion or philosophy outside of the christian sphere has been labled satanism at one point or another. Actually, some christian denominations lable other christian denominations as satanic.

Good and evil are concepts invented by humans, and as such both have been defined in different ways over the ages.

A true sociopath is an individual that completely lacks empathy has no emotional connections to anything outside of themselves. They are not by definition compelled to violence. They just view other living things with no higher reguard than the inanimate objects around them. Wereas most people would feel guilt or remorse in they hit a pedestrian with there car, a true sociopath would feel no more than if they had run over a cardboard box. I have been around a few of these sort of people, and trust me, it is a very disturbing and scary experience.