Alignments

[Corwin]

Okay. I would like to request everyone to make a post where they detail how they see the alignment system work in this game, and then a separate definition for each of the states (evil, neutral, good; lawful, neutral, chaotic). I can agree to disagree with people on how we view alignments, but I have to know what I'm disagreeing with, first.

Once we all have our thoughts on the alignments posted, we could then debate each other's views, I suppose, but I only want to know how others see things. I do wish that the definitions actually have meaning, and can be somewhat general so they don't require human input on a per case basis, and that they somehow account for established D&D alignments, or an explanation for discrepancies is provided (yep, Tai, that's from our talk).

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[Ebiris]

I don't really get why you want to argue this with us, but it's all there in the player's handbook...

Moral Alignment

Good

"Good" implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others.

Neutral

People who are neutral with respect to good and evil have compunctions against killing the innocent but lack the commitment to make sacrifices to protect or help others. Neutral people are committed to others by personal relationships.

Evil

"Evil" implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master.

Ethical Alignment

Law

"Law" implies honor, trustworthiness, obedience to authority, and reliability. On the downside, lawfulness can include close-mindedness, reactionary adherence to tradition, judgmentalness, and a lack of adaptability.

Neutral

Someone who is neutral with respect to law and chaos has a normal respect for authority and feels neither a compulsion to obey nor a compulsion to rebel. She is honest but can be tempted into lying or deceiving others.

Chaos

"Chaos" implies freedom, adaptability, and flexibility. On the downside, chaos can include recklessness, resentment toward legitimate authority, arbitrary actions, and irresponsibility.

[Anastasia]

Eb's SRD quote is reasonably accurate. This is a good skeleton for the basis of discussion, so lemme ask you something back, Cor. Since you're the one asking, what are good and evil to you?

[Corwin]

I clearly intended to post myself, so here it is. And I think you misunderstood my original post, Eb. I don't want to argue over alignments, but I did want to know what everyone thought. It mostly came from a chat with Tai where we didn't seem to see eye to eye on them, and a bit of unrelated discussion with Dune.

The SRD works as a basis for me, though I see alignment as entirely separate from selfishness/selflessness. I disagree they should ever come into play when debating morals and alignments in D&D. Neutral with the SRD approach is really Good-lite, but I don't mind that much, either. The law/chaos axis is pretty crazy and might as well work as described, I really only cared about the moral alignment but figured I'd see the entire thing for completeness's sake, in case someone brought in morals from that side.

The really relevant part of my question hadn't gotten commented on yet, sadly, so I'll be the first to start.

Going by the SRD definition of Evil, of creatures that kill at a whim, and often have such whims, why would any Good character or organization let them live? Because of the rare exception that goes against the rule? If alignment is more than flavor and an actual stat like all other stats that characters have, how would you like to handle it in the game?

[Corwin]

Addendum! How is the person's alignment decided? Accumulation of their behavior throughout life? A few focal acts? What's within, in other words the intent? The results of their actions? Both?

[Ebiris]

Of course alignment is more than flavour - it's why we have spells like Holy Smite and Chaos Hammer and so on. It's a real and tangible part of the D&D world. It's also in the rules, so it's not a case of saying "I see it as seperate from issue so and so..." because the game doesn't work that way. It flat out says what the alignments are, and you pick the closest one that fits for the character. This is a game, not a philosophy class.

As to your question about why the creatures of good shouldn't embark upon a genocidal war across the entire planet and murder all of the 'evil' races, well...

First of all, a lot of 'evil' creatures aren't actually a big deal. If there's a tribe of goblins running around in the forest being mean and nasty to each other, what difference does it make to the world at large? Killing them all might put a stop to their 'evil', but what's worse: the existence of a belligerent species, or the utter extinction of one? Further, there's no guarantee you'll get them all - right now they're isolated and of no real concern to the rest of the world, but after you raze their village and slaughter their children, the few survivors might band together, forge alliances with other groups that feel hard done by, and take their bloody vengeance upon the 'good' races that wronged them so.

Second of all, not all members of the race would have been evil, so persecuting those members of the race would make you no different than the evil members of said race that also persecute their fellows. Honestly, if you can't get this simple concept, I really don't know what to say. Do you read about gang shootings in the newspaper and think it'd be best to send the army in to kill every last individual in the ghetto? In the absence of seperate species as we have in D&D, this is the best real world analogy I can make.

To your addendum, I'd say alignment is a mixture of intent and action, with action having far more weight. Focal acts tend to have more weight than routine ones, since it's under stress that people show their true colours.

[Corwin]

I think you're ignoring how D&D works and draw incorrect real world analogies, to be honest.

Alignments are pretty absolute for the vast majority of the population, or they are meaningless. If any second Evil person could actually be just belligerent and not really 'evil' I feel the alignment loses meaning. So would a Good society accept the Evil humans within it to positions of power? There's no need for genocide, but if alignments are an integral part of the system representing a character's stat, and we have reliable (in the vast majoirty of cases, barring moderate to high magic) holy means of finding out who is Evil, would a Good society vet its key positions for presence of Evil, at least?

[Dracos]

*eyes a bit*  Isn't the generic D&D society one where most characters are not character classes and don't have such abilities?  That they are 0-3rd level NPC classes.  Equally in the generic D&D society, alignment is not a crime by itself.  You can be a paladin who knows a tyrant is evil, but him being evil is not a crime and killing him outright could result in the entire city turning on you.

*can't resist one toss in, though its not his business*