Lawful Good:Why all the flack?
ShapiroKeatsDarkMage
Member Posts: 2,428
Why so many gamers are mean spirited and mocks lawful good characters?
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It can be alot of fun to play a lawful good character, just avoid the standard "I will now tell our enemy about our plans so they have a fair chance!!!!" idiocy
I like to play evil characters but when I get sick and tired of evil I go for lawful good (or neutral good).
I think in general, there is a perception that players and developers expect Lawful Stupid rather than Lawful good. But I don't think that many people knock or bash actual well played 'Goodly' characters. Unless you are seeing something different?
Lawful goods can make mistakes. Players are supposed to play alignment as a range. Admittedly, depending on your class, that range might be smaller in some cases.
But back to the OP's question, yeah. so many people bash Lawful Stupid behavior. that may be what they are seeing. But then there are those that want to play Chaotic Jerks as well. Makes me think that far too many players watched far too much Dudley Do-Right figure that you either have to play him or or Snydely Whiplash.
Also, in most games your very strongly your alignment. You make big choices and such, everything is exaggerated, (as it should be. Real life is boring 90% of the time) so "good" is "yes ma'm, what do you wish of me?", and "evil" is (to some people) stabbing them. In real life people aren't usually excessively polite, and almost never stab people, especially for no reason.
Also, in a game, (lawful) good is usually pretty dumb. Just the way it is. You are obliged to choose the most obvious "good and noble" path without question, even when it's a trap. So I think a lot of people say that their evil, but don't really act that way. I consider myself chaotic good, and according to some polls I've seen, so do most people. The 2e alignment system varies greatly from person to person, and is under constant debate. Especially the neutrals, it seems.
So i wouldnt be suprised if thats atleast partly the reason many players shy away from lawful good playstyle.
Baldurs gate 2 already does it much better in that regard that playing lawful good doesnt feel like playing mentally handicapped person.
I think of Good as 'willing to sacrifice personal interest for the sake of others', or true altruism, and Evil as 'Takes enjoyment from inflicting pain and suffering on others'. So somebody behaving rationally is Neutral.
Within this context I really like Lawful Good people, because I think of a lawful system as a 'good' in itself just through its prevention of Chaos. And I like Good people cos... well wouldn't you wish the real world was less selfish and populated by more 'nice' people.
Same with all alignments other than Chaotic Evils, since they are close to impossible to manipulate to my own selfish desires.
I play my beholder paladin as lawful stupid, but as a choice, not a burden. This is mostly a rp parody, but nonetheless there goes a lot thought into the alignments and choices. A beholder mind is made up from two rivaling entities, and I have a lawful good/stupid side and a chaotic evil/stupid side.
The good side is played as Hiro Nakamura from Heroes, who is arguably the most interesting interpretation of lawful good. He is no way rigid or actually stupid, just very naive. At the same time, he operates under a strict code of honor and is willing to put the good of others over his own wishes. That is frankly more interesting and challenging to play than my stupid evil side; Sylar. Those actions need no further justification than "you are unworthy of (powers, loot, both) - attacks and steals power/loot".
As for real life alignments, nope, "most people" are not lawful good. They are neutral. They follow laws because it would be inconvenient to deal with the consequences of breaking them. (And as I said elsewhere, just following laws doesn't make you lawful. Following laws because you believe in their neccessity and correctness makes you lawful.) If it isn't too inconvenient, "most" people do break laws on a small scale, be it downloading music or not buying a parking ticket. Both is against the law, but the chance to get caught is low enough to justify the gain. It's rare that people are looked down upon for downloading an album or not paying the ticket; it's socially acceptable because a majority of people has done it, too.
"Most" people don't go out of their way to "do good" either. By "going out of their way", I mean actively doing something to help others even if it is an inconvenience for them and/or takes a major investment. You are not "good" if you donate 20 bucks to charity, just like you are not "evil" for not paying the parking ticket.
The only rl groups I would put into the "lawful good" category are the people who chose a career that involves personal risk to help/save others. That would be police, fire fighters, people who volunteer in unsafe areas/warzones (i.e. combat medics, doctors without borders) and such. They accept the risk to their health and possibly life to help others and do follow a particular code or law (be it the oath civilian doctors take or the literal law cops enforce).
::Hangs head and walks away::
You don't need to be an unquestioning automaton nor do you need to obey every petty, stupid law of the place you're in to qualify.
This is the way I see it. Lawful Good is the epitome of goodness. Thus, is extremely rare. If we are going to use the paladin as an example, you must remember that they are champions of their diety. They are inherently zealots. They have to abide by every petty law.
The example with Llolth doesn't make sense, since a paladin wouldn't be beholden by Llolth.
Take the Paladin that feels his order is corrupt. Why does he outsource help in investigating the order? He can't take direct action against his laws. If he did so, he would become Neutral Good, hence becoming a fallen paladin, with no access to his powers. Paladins are in a word, prisoners of their alignment.
My outlook on this makes Lawful Good seem almost insane. No normal person would be so strict with laws. Which is why I feel this alignment choice should be extremely rare, almost exclusive to Paladins. On further note, it would make since to view Lawful Good as a form of insanity, being the polar opposite of Chaotic Evil. They are two extremes that require a degree of insanity I feel.
I see things most often from a True Neutral, or a Neutral Good, point of view. In both cases the LN would create the greater friction.
It implies that one will allow his or her morality to be constrained by whatever current legal context he or she is allowed in.
This means that, for example, if a lawful good character were in a country where it wasn't illegal to rape children, he or she would not interfere in a child being raped in front of his or her eyes. An extreme example, but I think it conveys the point. Laws are imperfect creations of imperfect societies; they are the product of morality, and should NEVER be interpreted as the origin, or center, or a moral system.
Essentially, lawful good means EVIL, because it means refusing to act on ones morality if doing so is counter to the law. Burke's "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing" applies perfectly to the lawful good archetype.
And if the Nuremburg Trials taught us anything, it's that all men are beholden to a higher law than law.
I think there are quite a few people in power who are lawful evil - they manipulate the law to keep or obtain power, and use laws to keep the "lesser" folk under control.
"Good" people are rarer - you are now talking about people who go out of their way to help others, particularly people they don't know and won't get any benefit from helping. Someone who helps others because they get some kind of reward are really closer to neutral. I think most people today who ARE good are neutral good, they stay within the law when it makes sense, break the law when it doesn't. Lawful good is challenging in a society with so many nonsensical laws that punish people who are not doing anything particularly bad.
Chaotic alignments of any type would struggle to fit into modern society, IMO.
FinaLfront, you're mistaken. Lawful alignments are not necessarily about following the law at all.
Things get messy if it turns out I'm wrong and I'm the one who's misled, but whatever, absolute morality is kind of silly anyways. In that universe it's easy to sort out because if it turns out I screwed up my alignment will reflect that and/or a solar will kick my ass.
He has to obey the commands and rules of his god, but a Paladin is under no obligation to obey the laws of mortals unless they coincide with the tenants of his faith or if one of his deity's rules is "Obey all mortal laws everywhere." He wouldn't be beholden to the mortal laws of Menzoberranzan either, one of which is "Worship no deity but Llolth." He'd also try to free those enslaved by the drow because it's the right thing to do, even though slavery is legal among the drow. A Paladin views his own faith's rules to be far above anything created by mortals. Paladins, being nice guys, generally avoid making trouble or violating petty laws their faith is silent on, but they won't hesitate to fight against tyrants.
A Paladin that feels his order has become corrupt and no longer obeys the commands and/or beliefs of their deity would gladly fight to restore the order to it's original purpose while remaining "Lawful" since he's fighting in defense of the principles the order is supposed to be guided by. Allegiance to a set of principles is what Lawful means, not allegiance to mortal institutions. Defending those principles from being twisted is about the most lawful thing a character can do. The name is non-indicative. It DOES NOT means a dedication to mortal laws. The D&D version of "Lawful" actually means dedication to a defined set of principles, not laws themselves. That's just wrong. Almost no Lawful Good character would refuse to interfere in such a case.
This is my view based on descriptions right out of the book:
Neutral Good
These characters believe that a balance of forces is important, but that the concerns of law and chaos do not moderate the need for good. Since the universe is vast and contains many creatures striving for different goals, a determined pursuit of good will not upset the balance; it may even maintain it. If fostering good means supporting organized society, then that is what must be done. If good can only come about through the overthrow of existing social order, so be it. Social structure itself has no innate value to them. A baron who violates the orders of his king to destroy something he sees as evil is an example of a Neutral Good character.
http://www.planetbaldursgate.com/bg2/character/alignments/
For some reason they felt the need to differentiate NG from LG with that example
Even Lawful-Evil would likely object to laws that actually undermine social order (like legalized rape).
That's more "mad emperor" sort of stuff. Probably NE/CE are the only ones who would play along, and only then if they thought it benefited them! The mad emperor himself might be the only who likes such a law!
Since Lawful Good Paladins tend to see value in order and social structures, they'd be unlikely to outright destroy their now-corrupt order. Rather, they'd reforming it to it's original purpose rather than blindingly following bad orders. They'd try to change things peacefully and by-the-book, but if it came down to a choice of obeying the commands of their god and obeying the commands of their mortal superiors, they'd gladly side with their god, even if it meant violence. They're still following defined principles, but divine ones that supersede any mortal law or rules.
If their god became corrupted though, then the Paladins are in a serious conundrum...