Voss wrote:Mord, I'm unclear what value neutral has in your system. And Pragmatic & Selfish look to converge to the same point. It actually looks like it devolves to 3 options: Absolutists, Altruists and Everyone Else. With Absolutists breaking down into an infinite number of subsets.
Neutrality is fence-sitting bullshit in any system.
A Pragmatic person believes the ends justify the means. A Selfish Pragmatist will beg, borrow, steal, or even kill all for the sake of their own gain - you can think of any number of example stereotypes of such a person, from a street thug to a robber baron. One example of selfish absolutist: Javert.
An Altruistic Pragmatist may be your Robin Hood, a utilitarian social planner, Spock, Che Guevara, Han Solo (once he comes to Luke's rescue at the end of A New Hope), Colonel Graff from Ender's Game... Basically anyone who seeks the greater good and doesn't consider themself to be bound by any rules in doing so.
Batman, on the other hand, is a classic Absolutist. He'll break all kinds of laws relating to vigilantism, but he's got his "one rule" (Nolan/Bale Batman).
kzt wrote:It's also of limited utility. This seems to put in the same box someone who has an absolutist code of "do unto others as you want them to do unto you" and someone who has an absolutist code of "Hitler was right about the jews". I'm not at all sure this helps describe characters in a useful way.
"Hitler was right about the Jews" isn't a moral code. Without a specific instruction as to behavior, it's just a repugnant opinion. Now, "Kill all Jews, whenever and wherever you find them" is a moral code.
Someone who holds to that code by living it out to the best of their ability is certainly as much an Absolutist as a turn-the-other-cheeker. The distinction must come on the other axis - similarly to how a Devil and a Paladin are both creatures of Law, and can be lumped together under that descriptor.
So, is this anti-Semite Selfish or Altruistic? As I understand it, these alignments are a description of this person's motivations, not actually a description of the practical effects of actions. (It doesn't make any sense for a person's alignment to be affected by the unforeseen consequences of their actions.)
However, racism is fundamentally a selfish outlook because it depends on stereotypes, which are internal to the racist and exist to satisfy the racist's psychological needs. It is necessary to judge potential victims as individuals in order to determine whether killing them actually does anyone any good. Killing a bunch of random Jews is a fundamentally selfish act even if you sincerely believe Jews as a group to be doers of evil. Randomly murdering strangers based on your perceptions is fundamentally motivated by your own feelings of racial antipathy, not any harmful thing you factually know those strangers to have done to others. Thus, you cannot legitimately be motivated by altruistic goals if you are killing strangers on the basis of their ethnicity. (Maybe something DND Paladins should consider when wiping out Orc camps.)
schpeelah wrote:1) people who burn witches at the stake to save their souls - good or evil?
Good and evil don't exist on my scheme, exactly because of the subjective nature of "good." Instead, as in the anti-Semite example above - altruism requires evaluation of individuals and their works to determine if killing that person will help others. A witch-burner who burns only witches who uses magic to kill peasants for petty reasons and lets other witches go free is an Altruistic Pragmatist. A witch-burner who burns all witches because the Bible says so is a Selfish or at best Neutral Absolutist.
2) people construct narratives that frame their selfish actions as selfless - who decides when it's a matter of perspective?
The other people involved. If you have tricked yourself into believing that peasants love to be stabbed and act accordingly, you are still Selfish, because from the peasants' point of view, you are causing them bleeding problems for the sake of feeling good about yourself.
3) helping another person because of following some rule with no concern about that person - good or just lawful?
Selfish Absolutism.
Indeed, it's a matter of perspective most of the time. Helping people feels good and that's what motivates people to do good works a lot of the time. On the other side, there's enlightened self-interest.
Doing good things principally because it makes you feel good is selfish. Doing good things principally because you feel others deserve to have good done to them is altruistic.
Absolutist/Pragmatic is no good either. Various rule sets have different values and you can be "pragmatic" or not about getting the things you value. The choice of the rule/value set is far larger than whether you are being Paragon or Renegade about fulfilling those values, rendering it rather pointless. Indeed, the witch thing above illustrates how different values and beliefs can change hurting someone into helping and vice versa.
I'd say Abs/Prag is more cut-and-dry than Alt/Self, honestly. If you have rules you won't break no matter what you may gain by doing so, you're an Absolutist. If you'll do anything to accomplish your goals, you're a Pragmatist.
If you define everything in terms of how you feel about it, then everyone is SuperShinyDoublePlusGood. However, defining it in terms of your actions' concrete direct effects on others takes the element of self-deception out of play. Altruistic actions provide material benefits to those whose circumstances are changed by the action. Selfish actions provide material benefits to the actor.
Killing Orcs because you hate Orcs, or because the farmers have put a bounty on Orc heads? Selfish. Killing armed male Orcs to save the farmers they're raiding? Altruistic. Killing the rest of the Orc women and children because "they're all bad apples?" Selfish.
One downside to my paradigm is that it is literally impossible to have such a thing as a "Pragmatic Selfish" race or something like that. So, if you like having alignment as a way of defining your white hats and black hats, my system is a terrible idea and should be passed on. If you want alignment to actually help a player in getting into their character's head, I think my system has merit.