Goodman Games

I think I have come to agree with raven crowking - it really is just me being more comfortable and confident in my wiggling of law vs. chaos, and not actually law or chaos being objectively better defined than good or evil.

For example, I have no problem stating with confidence that I feel a Lawful character would avoid shoplifting to feed his family (finding any established lawful way, such as begging to work for food or seeking out a charitable organization), a Chaotic character wouldn't need a starving family to motivate them to shoplift (pocketing anything they wanted any time they thought they could get away with it), and that the act of shoplifting but only to feed your hungry family would be a decidedly Neutral action (as I view neutral as putting ones own desires above the idea of Law, but only when truly necessary so as to prevent a slide into Chaos).

The same action on the good vs. evil spectrum... I am not comfortable saying "necessary evil," because no evil should truly be considered "necessary," but I am also not comfortable saying that someone stealing simply to survive is the same as someone stealing because it is fun for them.

As for the other discussion - that alignment is meant as an "us vs. them" system - I've never seen it that way except in a very wide scale - the forces of capital 'L' law against the forces of capital 'C' chaos. Were acting chaotic, even being chaos aligned, was different than actively working towards tipping the power scales in the favor of Chaos.

If anything the "us vs. them" of the Law, Neutral, Chaos alignment system is Balance vs. one of the other two winning out - since both Law and Chaos would lead the world to ruin if allowed supremacy.

I love alignment debates also, though I think their more a philosophical debate than a religious one! The Chaos/Law Good/Evil Axis makes it extra interesting for talking about ourselves and thinking about moral codes psychologically: for ex, it doesn't say much to me if my friend tells me he thinks I'm a Lawful guy, but if he says he thinks I'm Lawful Neutral I might go, "Hell no, I'm Neutral Good!"

But I dig the Tri-Alignment system for some Dungeon Crawling for exactly the reasons jrients said:

In short, Lawful and Chaotic are a decision (conscious or not) made by a character as to what side they are on in the grand cosmic throwdown between the barbarian gods and the outer gods. Good and Evil usually indicate a temporary state of mind. And no one is bound to any particular code of conduct, unless they take such a code upon themselves.

I think its nice to think of it in a feudal sense, like in Quag Keep where you are "Sworn to Law" or "Sworn to Chaos" and the meaning of that is a little fuzzy except that you can viscerally FEEL when you encounter a powerful servant of Chaos.

This is why the "Unaligned" option made sense to me in Type IV, only its not as cool a word a Neutral...

Oh, and whatever RK says is Law- HUZZAH!!!!