Alignment Sucks

[User3]

1125145054[/unixtime]]
Where the heck does that "a serial killer who also gives to charity is still evil" argument come from? How the heck can you say that some sort of point system can not work because of something that does not work in either system?
Of course some hypothetical guy who kills someone every week and then makes the world a tiny bit better is going to be evil - no matter how you choose to keep track of it.
It is like me stating that addition does not work because 2+2 is not -7. Of course it isn't, but that is not relevant to the discussion at all.

So, no, murdering someone (say, 1000 bad points) and giving to charity (say, 5 good points) don't balance out at all and so this person is evil. But, hey, murdering someone and then being nice and giving to charity once a week for 4 years (for a total of 1000oddsome points) just might qualify as neutral, no?

I don't know. Did he repent for the murder? Did he murder for personal gain? Does he donate to charity out of real desire to do good? Do people that die go to heaven? Does *he* think that people who die go to heaven? Do *I* think that people who die go to heaven? Is charity really something good, or does it undermine the core functions of a capitalist society? Does that even matter, assuming that this murderer *thought* it was good?

Morality is entirely, entirely subjective. I might think that robbing the rich to give to the poor is a perfectly justifiable action, but you might not. I might think that *murder* is a justifiable action. And who's to say I'm wrong?

The answer, of course, is everybody else in the world I live in. But *not the world itself*. Having people who torture and kill in D&D be evil and people who donate to charity be good is dumb, because, simply, they might not be.

No ethical system can be proven "true" or "correct" internally, because each comes back to a set of unprovable postulates.

In short, the only consequences of being "good" or "evil" or "lawful" or "chaotic" in a D&D game world–whatever those may be–should be the positive or negative reactions of the other peoples and things that populate that game world.

A person whose actions are socially thought to be "evil" will be imprisoned. Those who manage to get away with it may have a reckoning to do with some angry god who believes that such individuals have, in fact, acted in an evil manner at the end of their life, but they shouldn't be held accountable by the force of Good itself–because who's to say what's really "good" outside of one's own mind?

[User3]

To expand on my previous post slightly, I advocate having no alignment system at all outside of in-game moral convention.

[Username17]

No ethical system can be proven "true" or "correct" internally, because each comes back to a set of unprovable postulates.

Absolutely. But while an ethical system can't be proven true, it can be proven to be false. A morality system is just an argument, and there are an infinite number of them based on an infinite number of potential postulates.

But... just like any argument, if it contains a contradiction or the postulates are insufficient to prove the conclusions, the system is invalid.

---

D&D postulates, for instance, that Good and Evil are objective and equal. That means that any set-up in which it is any more difficult to "convert" to Good than it is to Evil is inconsistent. So if becoming Evil from Good requires you to start thinking bad thoughts and put your life in an Evil direction, then an Evil character had better be able to start thinking happy thoughts and commit themselves to doing Good and turn Good in the same way. OTOH, if a Good character can do bad things until she outwieghs the Good she's done in her life, then an Evil character is going to have to right all the wrongs she has ever committed.

The only thing that an ethical system must have is consistency. Once you've committed yourself to the concept that Good and Evil are equal and opposite, they'd fvcking well better be equal and opposite or your ethical system can't hold on to debt.

-Username17

[MrWaeseL]

SuperThread, you might want to register some time. You know, so I can send you pm's and stuff

[Desdan_Mervolam]

Well, there can certainly be an objective, universal morality, but whatcha gotta realize is that it really doesn't change anything said here. People still argue about wether wolves or crusaders are evil, and some people insist that it's perfectly acceptable to torture orcs for information and collapse goblin warrens onto their women and children. Hell, there can still even be gods who embody philisophical concepts as long as they don't embody Good, or Chaos or Law (Instead focusing on things like Valor and revenge and soforth). Everyone can disagree all they want, the universe just does't have to care, nor does it have to justify itself to anyone. After that, all it really needs is for whatever system of tracking morality to be internally consistant and you're fine.

-Desdan

[Neutrinoist]

1125303865[/unixtime]]SuperThread, you might want to register some time. You know, so I can send you pm's and stuff

SuperThread was taken, so I thought I'd just use quick replies, but you make a good argument (by which, of course, I mean "meh").

I therefore have a new account, Neutrinoist.

Sorry for interrupting this topic, everyone.

[RandomCasualty]

1125289210[/unixtime]]
D&D postulates, for instance, that Good and Evil are objective and equal.

Does it actually say this anywhere? From my reading of the BoED and most of the alignment based stuff, it always talks about how good is harder to attain and maintain than evil.

[User3]

All the views, opinions and even the far fetched attempts to govern a morality system based on a single Utilitarian theory are quite interesting, however….

Trying to govern ethics and morale, and lets agree that its two very different definitions, with a single theory that has limited foresight is just plain silly. An action in the moment may produce the highest yield of utility, but the day after 1000 people die from it, creating a negative deficit in utility.

Its about as silly as saying there is ONE single economic theory that can be directly applied form theory to praxis. Even with the simple “supply and demand” theory fails, as it does not include the ex-ante, ex-post and barrier costs. Even when including these, you still only take market factors into consideration, we here add limited resources and the “problem of a common”. Now we start seeing a theoretic market that remotely reassembles the real one… Oups, we forgot the market status, ok then, defining the monopoly, oligopoly, duopoly, free-market (doesn’t exist in pure form, yet another problem) etc etc, brings us one step closer.

Now, I can see a market in economic senses – yet I falls short of the legislative works, free will, and a ton of other economic theories that needs to be implemented.

I guess what I am trying to say is that you CANT apply theories (economic or philosophy) to dynamics out of your control – the teachings may give you and opinion, but not the answer.

Trying to analyze the morality of alignments using scopes of theory beyond the intended use, oh I forgot that one as well in economic dynamics, is just silly. By intended use I mean the utility based view on a single given situation, since the utility measure would not be the same for each alignment, utility is not a fixed value in philosophy, as it is in economic theories.

There is no single clear definition of an alignment – most RP’ers vary on certain actions, but the majority agree on the extremes.

For the example of Iuz, or whats his face, why in the Lordy Lord’s name would a Lawfull Good person go exploring in an evil empire of death and destruction, nevertheless actually WANT to go there, if not for the crusade against evil.

As “K” said it an earlier post – most alignment conflicts in D&D, comes when cheese-builders, try to circumvent the intended use of the rules, just because it isn’t written as “strictly prohibited”

And Slavery is fully in compliance with Utilitarian view’s – Your limited to the tools at hand, wether you have invented the wheel, or have access to donkeys driving your mill shaft is irrelevant in the single scenario. If you can produce a higher utility outcome using slavery, than any other means available to you, it’s the most beneficial outcome, and should therefore be chosen.

Its pretty given, even the silly alignment descriptions, what is the intended meaning of the various alignments, only real reason for the debate, is a valid excuse to ignore alignment requirements to obtain access to more powerful builds, or so it would seem.

Anyhow, just my 2cp

[Username17]

First off, there's no way that I'm going to agree that "ethics" and "morality" are somehow different. To quote the dictionary:

eth·ic Audio pronunciation of "ethics" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (thk)
n.

1.
1. A set of principles of right conduct.
2. A theory or a system of moral values: “An ethic of service is at war with a craving for gain” (Gregg Easterbrook).
2. ethics (used with a sing. verb) The study of the general nature of morals and of the specific moral choices to be made by a person; moral philosophy.
3. ethics (used with a sing. or pl. verb) The rules or standards governing the conduct of a person or the members of a profession: medical ethics.

morals

n : motivation based on ideas of right and wrong [syn: ethical motive, ethics, morality]

OK, morals and ethics are the same thing. Exactly.

-Username17

[User3]

Dictionary or no dictionary...

Ethics, defined in the organisation philosphy, is the governing body of various morality.

Ethics define the upper layer of guidelines, under which the variation in morality functions, allowing an exchange of viewpoints.

You instead read it as the same thing - even though the definition states differently.

System of moral values (plural, there are effectively more than one set of moral values, ergo they differ, the ethics is the system in where they function)

The study of the general nature of morals - Plural again... underlines the point

Even number 3 underlines it - the rules governing the conduct of a person. Here we will highlight RULES and GOVERNING, not choices (personal) nor opinions (personal) (aka morals).

The dictionary stating moral as ethic motive, is plausible within the theory, but you wont be winning any awards with it. Stating it directly as ethics will in the situation of a theoretical discussion, say an exam in philosophy, leave people pondering if one even bothered reading the subject.

That ethics and morale can have similiarities is only because a subject decides to let ethics BE his morale, adopting thoose as his personal opinion, and governing his choices - which is far fetched, since im pretty sure everyone here has crossed a red light or similar, acting on your own morale, not the ethics....

So, even though you dont agree that they are different, the scholars of Philosophical ethics and morale, will beg to differ.

Just to take a practical example.

Society X contains the groups Y,Z,V,W

Ethics = X, morality = Y,Z,V,W.

Y,Z,V and W all have different views upon life and their meaning - Yet they all function under the same guidelines of society, defined by the Ethics of State X.

We can go into alot of detail on all this as well - but hardly any reason to confuse other readers.

[Murtak]

An action in the moment may produce the highest yield of utility, but the day after 1000 people die from it, creating a negative deficit in utility.

How does that at all relate to whether or not the action itself is good? Either you judge actions on a case by case basis (if so, comparing different cases is not possible at all) or you you judge them based on their expected outcome (in that cases your possible bad scenario is already figured in).

Its about as silly as saying there is ONE single economic theory that can be directly applied form theory to praxis. Even with the simple “supply and demand” theory fails, as it does not include the ex-ante, ex-post and barrier costs. Even when including these, you still only take market factors into consideration, we here add limited resources and the “problem of a common”. Now we start seeing a theoretic market that remotely reassembles the real one… Oups, we forgot the market status, ok then, defining the monopoly, oligopoly, duopoly, free-market (doesn’t exist in pure form, yet another problem) etc etc, brings us one step closer. (snip)

So markets can not be governed by simple rules. Now you only need to show that a) simple rules do not work for ethics and b) someone actually claimed calculating the consequences of your actions was easy.

For the example of Iuz, or whats his face, why in the Lordy Lord’s name would a Lawfull Good person go exploring in an evil empire of death and destruction, nevertheless actually WANT to go there, if not for the crusade against evil.

To save a helpless child? To follow the commands of the leader of his order, no matter what those commands are? To find out whether the so-called evil empire is actually evil? I could go on all day and justify next to any action based on the DnD alignment system.

As “K” said it an earlier post – most alignment conflicts in D&D, comes when cheese-builders, try to circumvent the intended use of the rules, just because it isn’t written as “strictly prohibited”

Bullshit. All i want to know is what alignment my character is. And the system does not tell me. You can play the same character every day, not once waver in your beliefs and actions and yet two DMs will assign you completely different alignments and both will be able to support their stance with rules.

Imagine a brooding asshole antihero who grumbles and steals and cheats but who does happen to save to world because it is the right thing to do or perhaps to save his friends. Is he good? Evil? Neutral? I can make a case for either. I can make a case for a by-the-book paladin cavalier being evil. I can make a case for a ruthless dictator being good. And then you toss in law and chaos and it gets all confused.

I had tons of alignment discussions before and it was never about exploiting the rules. It was always about knowing what happens to be evil in a particular DM's game.

And Slavery is fully in compliance with Utilitarian view’s – Your limited to the tools at hand, wether you have invented the wheel, or have access to donkeys driving your mill shaft is irrelevant in the single scenario. If you can produce a higher utility outcome using slavery, than any other means available to you, it’s the most beneficial outcome, and should therefore be chosen.

The fact is that the Utilitarian argument against slavery is way better than the argument for could ever hope to be. It goes like this:

- Rome didn't implement Water Mills or even have their windlesses moved by donkeys.

- Greece built steam engines, but never once used them to do work.

- The Aztecs never implemented wheels.

Slavery inhibits the implementation of labor-saving devices and divides the populace against itself. The consequences of implementing slavery are bad, regardless of what peoples intentions are.

Its pretty given, even the silly alignment descriptions, what is the intended meaning of the various alignments, only real reason for the debate, is a valid excuse to ignore alignment requirements to obtain access to more powerful builds, or so it would seem.

So tell me, are lawful good characters allowed to knowingly ally with evil to defeat a greater evil? Tell me, if you follow the code of your order (which is against the law of the land) to the letter are you lawful or chaotic? Is killing orcs evil or good? What about orc children?

[Sir Neil]

So tell me, are lawful good characters allowed to knowingly ally with evil to defeat a greater evil? Tell me, if you follow the code of your order (which is against the law of the land) to the letter are you lawful or chaotic? Is killing orcs evil or good? What about orc children?

Maybe, lawful, depends, evil.

[Neeek]

Regarding the power-build thing, the only alignment-related power level discussion I can recall reading was one that tried to answer the question of "So...who wins?" It was part of one of the teleport ambush arguments IIRC.

I believe the answer was "the druids", but I could be wrong

[User3]

The utilitarian view is with limited foresight, precisely my argument why it cannot judge wether an action is good or bad.

That simple rules doesnt work for ethics, well this thread itself is a good example.

The Iuz scenario - No doubt a paladin would venture into an evil land to save the innocent child, abducted and abused etc etc. Follow the order of his leader (if a lawfull order, not alignment but military code), ofcourse !!. You mention that there are endless scenarios, and i agree - The scenario mentioned is the Paladin venturing into the lands for the sake of himself... not an order, event or the likes.


Ok, the last two...

Im glad that your alignment discussion never touches the subject of people creating monk/druid combo's changing the allignment in the process to NG due to some fictive event they make up. Only to grab some psycho maniac feats/spell/prestige/whatever that require NG.

One of the key factors, is the characters motivation for saving the world. Yourself mention saving friends, what is the risk for the character? His own life, nothing in particular? What is in it for him? (protection in the future from the warrior, heals from the cleric etc etc).

As Morale varies from person to person, so does the idea of what is evil and what is good. The only way to make definition of what is evil and what is good in a game is to have a common basis of ethics, under which the various morales/alignments function. The group, in which im playing have a rather clear definition of what alignments are, we use the base description and actually spice it with the various expansions describing the gods, their alignment, and their actions in the lore.

Are the good allowed to ally with evil to defeat an even greater evil. Now that is a good question, lets take real life again to show the complexity of this question. Major powers in the world today has time after time supported regimes that the rest of the world has deemed evil, with the argument that it was to prevent an even greater evil from growing (ex. US "fight" on communism, and vice versa).

Ill again mention the group i play in, we have un-written rules of what is what, we have created ethics for the world we play in, the morales springs from this. Ofcourse various realms has various ethics (Good doesnt allow stealing property, while evil in a sense blames you for not being able to defend it).

Your morales allow you for making a ruthless GOOD dictator, if we are talking goverment style and day to day actions, where he removes people of a different opinion, you live in a twisted world.
If you mean the destruction of an evil temple, driving its clerics from the land since they are commiting evil crimes (in the sense of Lawful good ethics) then you are right.

Only thing ill agree on is that it is extremely complex - But ill stick to my original statement that the descriptions in the PHB gives a good base from where you can define the ethics and morales based on ROLEPLAY, not the individuals real life morality.

Anyhow, cutting this short as i could write alot more, but contracts dont write themselves while im here

[Oberoni]

Im glad that your alignment discussion never touches the subject of people creating monk/druid combo's changing the allignment in the process to NG due to some fictive event they make up. Only to grab some psycho maniac feats/spell/prestige/whatever that require NG.

I'll field this one.

Nobody has touched that subject because a lot of us don't care.

There are dozens (if not hundreds) of ways to gain REAL ULTIMATE POWER in 3.5. Some of them are more questionable than others.

Quite frankly, if the worst thing some min/maxxer does is have his character switch alignment, that's no problem. It's a lot easier for me to swallow than the polymorphing, level draining, and all the other fun quirks in 3.5 people can use for power grabs.

[Username17]

The utilitarian view is with limited foresight, precisely my argument why it cannot judge wether an action is good or bad.

I'll field this one.

There are mutltiple utilitarian views, not one. As to the question of foresight, there are basically two ideas:

Outcome Utilitarianism: The actual result of an action is good or bad based on what actually comes from it, so actions are judged only after they have been perpetrated.

Expected Outcome Utilitarianism: The rightness of an action is determined by what would be expected to happen as a result.

--

In practice, these two theories suggest the identical sets of actions, and are not meaningfully different therefore. You are supposed to do whatever you think is going to produce the best results in the end, and if you receive new information you are supposed to revise your activities in accordance with it.

But regardless of whether you believe that rightness is inferable before an action is committed, there is never a problem in judging actions right or wrong in the end.

-Username17

[Crissa]

It's always annoying to gauge an action based upon the actual result rather than the intended result.

You may have meant to shoot the badguy, but he used a hostage as a shield... Well, actually, hitting the hostage was a forseeable consequence, so that would count. But saving some guy's life and having him later kill the hostage - is saving him an evil act?

No. In D&D good and evil are polar and absolute - saving a person's life is always good, and letting them die is always evil. Causing suffering - even if it's by striking up an ill-tuned band - is evil, but slicing through those who are doing evil actions - or support those who do evil actions - is a good act.

It has no relevence to modern forms of ethics or equivalence.

In D&D, you expect that the Paladin who took an oath of protecting the nation will always protect the nation - it would not occur to a non-PC that he would break his word, or that any of his actions would have an untoward goal.

A paladin would not think to need checks, balances, and search warrants. These are alien concepts to a purely good but not to a purely lawful state.

Being lawful doesn't mean just following laws in D&D - it means following the greater set of order in the universe. Order is an absolute concept. The more anal and persnickity, the more lawful.

Yes, this doesn't make sense to us, but we don't live in the world postulated.

-Crissa

...And no, the Vile book and the whatever book are just trash. They're inconsistent with the core game and with themselves. Some supplements are to be read, then ignored, given only slightly more time than the editors spent on them. Which is to say none.

[User3]

It's impossible to declare yourself as good and then do universally evil things, or even occasionally evil things.

However, it is possible to declare yourself evil and then do nothing but good things. The trick is to say that you're setting things up to make it much easier for your great-grandchildren to conquer the world.

Since being evil generally gives you access to cooler things than being good, what's to stop the aspiring young adventurer from just saying that they're evil and never having to justify their alignment by doing morally ambiguous things--for example, they save orphans because it's easier for them to earn their gratitude for their grandchild's evil empire than having to pay through the nose for torturers and slavers to forcefully change opinions.

They kill dragons and redistribute their wealth to the poor because they want humanity to become economically stronger in preparation for their evil multiverse empire that comes to fruition a hundred years from now.

So on.

While this game does have mechanical effects for being evil, it doesn't do anything as regards to intent. So if I want to qualify for Ur-Priest but I find raising the dead, enslaving peasants, and killing faeries (or any other typically 'evil' activities) distasteful to my character concept what's to stop me from declaring myself 'evil' and then behaving like any other adventurer?

[Username17]

Absolutely nothing. In fact, when I played through The Red Hand of Doom, I did so as an Evil character. Most of the rest of the party was also Evil. We still fought for the human team because we got more money that way, and we even took mercy on defeated enemies whenever possible on the grounds that as soon as we won we were going to be running the show and therefore more living goblins was more peasants under us at the end.

The mechanical effects of being Evil, thus, were that we were allowed to use zombies, poison, and evil hobgoblin henchmen in addition to using curative magic and Giant owls. Being Evil allows you to be "big tent" and actually much more culturally tolerant and merciful than being "Good" does.

In the ways I care about - doing the most good for the most people - you can be a better person with the word "Evil" written on your charcater sheet than you can with the word "Good" written on your character sheet.

Evil is just a political party. A political party whose core value is selfishness and which is actually unconcerned by the actions of others. Whatever people at the Chicago School of Economics tell you, that's not actually good for the economy and the world - but it is better for the world than Good (a political party whose core value is helping people who share your core values and killing people who don't), Chaos (a political party whose core value is doing things other people don't want you to do), or Law (a political party whose core value is telling other people what they should be doing). Evil is just capitalist libertarianism - a defensible but ungeneralizable modern ethical and economic system.

Good is essentially indistinguishable from radical Islam, that's not an improvement.

Having Evil neighbors kicks ass over having Chaotic or Good neighbors.

-Username17

[User3]

Being Evil allows you to be "big tent" and actually much more culturally tolerant and merciful than being "Good" does.

This seems to be rooting for a Utilitarian system of ethics, which I support, but it doesn't seem to hold mainly because there are a lot of creatures in the D&D world that exist to do nothing but cause suffering and destroy--and showing them mercy means that you're playing with the lives of other people who have to deal with these bastards.

They're not like orcs, whose blind hatred of elves and dwarves are culturally caused and it is actually a good act in the long run to use them in your army--because then you can prevent them from killing these two races once you conquer the world. I'm talking about things like pit fiends and destrachans, whose write-ups basically make it impossible for them to be anything but pure engines of destruction.

While there are ways in this game to make even horrendously evil people like Lloth and Orcus have a change of heart, it's just out of the means of most player characters. And in the end, it's just better to cut down the hordes of mind flayers rather than risk entire civilizations.

[User3]

The point of view where you do good acts for evil purposes... well, thats Neutral.

Neutralality has two sides. The first side is the "I have no opinion about this" or "its not my problem." This side of neutrality is for people who don't try to change the world. They don't want to do anything to anyone. They'll walk past a slave caravan where a good person might want try to help(if possible), and they will walk away from an easy opportunity to get away with a crime. This side of neutrality involves the person walking into a room and finding someone's wallet and they neither take the money in the wallet(evil) or try to find the original owner to return the wallet(good). They leave the wallet and don't worry about it.

The second side of Neutrality is the "deeply ambivelant" moral option. Neutral people will do evil acts for good reasons, knowing that the greater good outweighs the overall evil of any act they commit. Once you get into the argument of "is this a good or evil act, since I can kind of see it both ways?", then its probably both, and thus a Neutral act.

But don't forget that as a moral option, Neutrality is a choice into itself seperate and distinct from Good and Evil. It can seduce a paladin into losing his powers and force a dark priest into losing the favor of the Lord of Murder. The Paladin that ignores the slave caravan to pursue the dark priest is in as much trouble as the dark priest who refuses to commit evil acts in order to better uphold a disguise.

Based on this definition of Neutral, any act can be firmly placed under Good, Evil, or Neutral.

[dbb]

The only real reason it doesn't work is the same reason many other things in D&D don't work: the GM doesn't let you.

Most GMs don't actually care whether what you do is antisocial or kleptomaniac or psychotically violent, and, as an "adventurer", most of what you do probably is. But for some reason a lot of people get their underwear knotted if you want to call yourself "Evil", regardless of how you actually behave.

The alignment system in D&D is so screwed up that it actually doesn't make much difference to how you behave, whether you're good, neutral, or evil. All it really means is what you can do mechanically and what effects you mechanically. For anything beyond that you have to wave your arms and cover your ears and not try to connect anything that happens in the game with real-world ethics and morals in any way whatsoever.

--d.

[Username17]

They're not like orcs, whose blind hatred of elves and dwarves are culturally caused and it is actually a good act in the long run to use them in your army--because then you can prevent them from killing these two races once you conquer the world. I'm talking about things like pit fiends and destrachans, whose write-ups basically make it impossible for them to be anything but pure engines of destruction.

Right, but as a purely selfish and spiteful individual, you are more tthan welcome to lash out at those guys. Any creature which has nothing to contribute to the economy of your empire has to be either chained up as a guard monster or killed outright. So while you are willing to use Mind Flayers so long as you see some positive result for yourself, ultimately you'll have to kill them all. The ilithid are hard on property values and eat your productive commoners - so they have to die.

Evil doesn't have to let everyone in to the party just because they are Evil, it just doesn't have to kick people out of the party for being Evil.

Utilitarianism is, in D&D parlance, Neutral, or possibly Evil. We all know that Good and Evil aren't reciprocal. If you build 10 bridges you're Johnny the Bridgebuilder, but if you force one little girl to accept your man parts you're Johnny the Child Rapist. Doing pretty much anything Evil gets you labeled as Evil. And working with Evil individuals is an Evil act.

You don't get the Good tag just because you killed a Marilith that was rampaging through your city. You do get the Evil tag just because you drafted the corpses of your fallen enemies to go work the tanning vats that are unpleasant and unhealthy for living creatures to work in. So doing one thing for the greater good doesn't shift your alignment at all, and doing another thing for the greater good causes your alignment to shift towards Evil.

The only way to be Good is to never do any of the actions which are arbitrarily defined as Evil. And that means no drafting orcs, no phasing the living out of dangerous wor environments, and no inclusive economic plans. If you modernize the economy or social system in any effective fashion, you're going to do a lot of actions that make you count as more Evil, and a lot of actions that... don't make you count as more Evil.

So any pragmatist is eventually going to be Evil. There really isn't anything you can do that makes you count as more Good. All you can do is fall towards Evil more slowly. It's like being a martial artist: the belt on your Gi starts white, and by the time you've done enough training to be a badass, your belt is black. Only instead, that's your D&D soul.

Only the foolish, narrow minded, or small-time can be "Good" in D&D. Positive change can only come from Neutrality or Evil. Good is, at best, a holding pattern. At worst it is an intolerant conservatism that actively thwarts progress.

And people ask why I hate D&D alignment.

-Username17

[Count Arioch the 28th]

It's going to be really hard to be "good" in a game that, at heart, is about murdering sentient beings in their homes and taking all their stuff.

I think alignment will continue to make no sense, and WotC will reason themselves into gordian knots trying to say it does.

[Hey_I_Can_Chan]

The conversation after gaming a few weeks ago ran like this:

DUDE: I'm seriously considering going blackguard.
ME: Why?
DUDE: Because I can't handle this being-good-all-the-time stuff.
ME: But then you'd have to be evil all the time.
DUDE: Really?
ME: Yeah. That means every time your blackguard orders a pizza he's going to have to think about what everyone else in the party absolutley hates on their pizza and get that. Or else it's not really evil.
DUDE: Like anchovies?
ME: No, dude, like poop. 'Cause you're evil. And feces is, like, evil and junk.

It bogged down from there. In short, though, what you're doing when you declare your character as evil is saying that I'm going to do bad things. Period. Remember, Gygax was a Kant adherent, which means there are moral absolutes. You let orphans burn because that's evil, dammit. You feed your friends poop pizza because that's evil, dammit. You do bad things because it's your nature to do bad things. You aren't accidentially pleasant because you want to conquer the world--you are ruthless and kill the person who threatens to disrupt your scheme, even if that's accidental.

The difference between LE, NE, and CE is that you keep your word, never keep your word (and revel in breaking it), and never keep your word (even when doing so would've been advantageous).

Evil is bad and should make people hate you. If it doesn't, you're playing evil wrong.