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What's your alignment?

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  • BlackravenBlackraven Member Posts: 3,486
    edited April 2014
    I'm waiting for the first evil fellow forumite to present himself/herself...

    Edit: @SethDavis & @the_spyder how does your lawful evilness manifest itself?
    Demonoid_Limewire
  • the_spyderthe_spyder Member Posts: 5,018
    I am a bit of a selfish prig at times. I tend to focus on what I want or need above and beyond what others want, and regardless of the consequences. I am also a huge order freak. Structure and planning are my big things. I am not 'Doctor Doom' lawful evil or anything, but yeah. I admit my shortcomings.
    BlackravenSethDavisBelgarathMTHFinaLfront
  • TressetTresset Member, Moderator Posts: 8,262
    I think @SethDavis is a living wall... So maybe that is why he is evil? Anyway, I am still a big fan of him!
    BlackravenSethDavisjackjack
  • HrafnHrafn Member Posts: 20
    edited April 2014
    True Neutral I reject the idea of good and evil, there is only nature :3 (natural behaviour).
    BlackravenEadwyn_G8keeper
  • DungeonnoobDungeonnoob Member Posts: 315
    edited April 2014
    Trying to improve myself,have broken some laws in the past but nothing really serious.
    Also become a little more egocentric with my age due to life experience though.
    Post edited by Dungeonnoob on
    Blackraven
  • davendaven Member Posts: 112
    Looks like most people seem to be CN. Ermm, i'd like to think CG but i can be way to selfish at times. I guess i change between them. And i've been fired twice in the past 4 months that cant be good....
  • winterswinters Member Posts: 252
    edited April 2014
    @Gotural, again, I agree. No butt paladins, but I want to add something.

    Good<--->Evil and Lawful<---> Chaotic are exactly this - axes (but not Axes of the Unyielding, luckily) for a reason. There's Stupid Good, Chaotic Stupid etc. at the opposite ends of them, but generally they describe a tendency. It's kind of redundant to speak about real, complete (or fictional, developed) people in such absolute terms. Chaotic people don't necessarily daydream about overthrowing the government. Some of them obviously do, but here the other axis comes into play.
    It's not just about what, but also why. Chaotic Good (tendencies) means the person doesn't agree with rules not for sheer sake of opposing them, but because they're harmful, no matter that they consolidate the society in some way. But it's not just about rules, it's about stereotypes, superstitions, prejudice and "ultimate truths". Chaotic Good people probably believe that in their perfect world everybody would use common sense and it would work. Reasonable Chaotic Good people realize that the society needs rules to work - and that it's exactly that, living according to rules and laws that make societies need them. The scale says what those people do with their beliefs - do they start an insurrection when the need arises, or do they work on developing common sense in others? Both qualify IMO.

    Chaotic Neutral works similarly, probably, but I'm pretty sure I'm not one, so I won't elaborate on that.

    TL;DR: CG people real world-wise consider law lesser evil and don't oppose it openly unless it's directly harmful. There's simply so many of us now it changes literally everything we know about how societies and civilizations work.
    BlackraveniuventasEmpyrial
  • meaglothmeagloth Member Posts: 3,806
    edited April 2014
    @Gotural‌ well, technically, and canonically, yes. But no. There are simply to many people to have "chaotic" denote a complete disregard for any law, active attempt to overthrow the government, or wild anarchism. There would be very few chaotic people, and if out of 9 choices, 90% of the population is to of them, (LG&LN) then you're doing it wrong. There's no point in making a system of classifying people if functionally everybody fits only one category. Canonically, there is a huge focus on "balance" in the alignment system, at least the way BG describes it. The alignment descriptions often mention a characters view on the need for "balance of forces" and whether or not they think that's important.
  • the_spyderthe_spyder Member Posts: 5,018
    Oh no. Not another debate about the relative(ly non existent) connection between Lawful and 'The Law'.

    Curse you Michael Moorcock for not choosing a better, less ambiguous term!!! (not really, I think he is a great writer).

    A Lawful person can and will happily violate any law that they wish that doesn't coincide with their own internal belief system. Chaotic people can and will happily abide by and even uphold any number of laws. the two are not connected or correlated in any way.

    A belief in structure is not a tacit support of the current (or any) legal form of government. Most governments in my opinion, are more chaotic than they are lawful anyway. Just ask a lawyer.

    And yes, any behavior pattern, regardless of for a character or IRL is supposed to be a continuum along the Axis of Order<----->Chaos and Good<---->Evil. People will act along all points in that continuum. they just 'tend' more towards one side or the other (mostly).
    wintersBlackravenjackjack
  • BlackravenBlackraven Member Posts: 3,486
    Well
    Hrafn said:

    True Neutral I reject the idea of good and evil, there is only nature :3 (natural behaviour).

    You're a druid :p
    Demonoid_LimewireEadwyn_G8keeper
  • winterswinters Member Posts: 252
    edited April 2014
    @Gotural, I second, third, or even fourth that :] I absolutely love this alignment vs anthropology thing you did here.
    Most of us live in stable environments. Stability on such scale (forty million people live in my country and it's considered small!) requires developed economy and umpteen other things I really don't want to discuss here. We also don't have magic. Harmonious development which allowed our civilization to grow so enormous needs time and well, let's call it massive amounts of neutral goodness. Wars happen, awful things happen, obviously, but we generally don't consider them normal anymore, like seasons.
    Post edited by winters on
    Gotural
  • BlackravenBlackraven Member Posts: 3,486
    edited April 2014
    Gotural said:

    there is a huge focus on values like Love, Family, Courage, Honesty, Friendship, etc, that you are being taught (by your family, your friends or Disney movies ...) when you are young. To keep or not these values as you're growing is your choice.

    I agree wholeheartedly with this assessment, but I think having values like these doesn't concern the L-C axis as much as the G-E axis. All Good and Neutral people, be they lawful, neutral or chaotic, will more or less succesfully (try to) observe values like the ones you mentioned.

    An example:
    Helpfulness is a value I give weight to. At this moment I have two friends I care about but almost never see asking me to lend them considerable amounts of money for what seem to be legitimate purposes. In the past I have lent fairly large amounts of money to other people without getting anything back. I know however that those people aren't the same people as the two that are currently asking me to help them, so I have no reason to be suspicious about the latter. I wouldn't get into financial trouble if I decided to lend and then not get my money back in the end, though lending would be pretty inconvenient and not getting my money back would be disappointing. Honestly, I'm hesitant, and I think that doesn't make me Chaotic as opposed to Lawful, but rather Neutral as opposed to Good, i.e. not going out of my way to help others.
    In other words a Choaotic Good person is imo more likely to adhere to the value of helpfulness than a Lawful Neutral one.

    Edit: I'll probably go ahead with it, which shows my CG tendencies (or even suggests I'm CG instead of CN), but my past experiences don't make this easy.
    GoturalwintersDemonoid_Limewire
  • meaglothmeagloth Member Posts: 3,806
    edited April 2014
    Hhmmmm... It seems like the main difference between chaotic neutral and chaotic good is how people see the alignments, not themselves. I bet a lot of you would see me as chaotic neutral, not good, though I think of myself as good. (I don't know anymore!) As for the money lending, really, it depends. It depends on how much we're talking about, who, and for what. I could see myself lending money to a friend, though I don't have much experience with real sums of money(got me first job last month) so I'm not really sure.

    As for @Gotural‌, I think you have a point. I think if most of us where put into a relatively lawless environment such as the one bg is set in, we would be mostly lawful, or we would change considerably. I think when we're talking about real life things change a bit, and the alignments are closer together. You made a very good point there, I don't imagine a chaotic good coran or Minsc staying out of jail for long around here.
  • AnduinAnduin Member Posts: 5,745
    I am Chaotic Good.

    A good example of Chaotic Good is buying your family chocolate eggs. Then secretly waking up near midnight, creeping downstairs, munching on said chocolate, posting on the forum, then creeping back upstairs with happy heart as they would have had no chocolate eggs at all without you...

    If I was Lawful, that would be classed as stealing...

    If I was neutral, I would not bother buying any chocolate eggs... If children want chocolate eggs... I'm not stopping them from getting them...

    If I was evil, I would eat the chocolate eggs in front of them and give them broccoli to chew on...

    If you have eaten a little bit of a chocolate egg that did not belong to you, whilst the owner was unaware, you are chaotic!

    ...

    Now FESS UP!
    SethDavisjackjackDungeonnoobHrafn
  • SouthpawSouthpaw Member Posts: 2,026
    edited April 2014
    That's a very nice metaphor explaining your alignment @Anduin.
    I like it.
    Now...how to explain mine...?
    You know, when you are too good, people will abuse you and call you a pushover. Be too evil and you will end up in jail and without friends. So I try to walk the fine line between those two states.
    ergo-do the good deed in the most evil way possible.


    I guess I swerve around the alignment chart, especially in the evil regions, because I am in it mostly for myself and I don't really care about people that aren't close to me.
    Also...I want to rule the world. (who doesn't?)
    jackjackAnduin
  • the_spyderthe_spyder Member Posts: 5,018
    Anduin said:


    If I was evil, I would eat the chocolate eggs in front of them and give them broccoli to chew on...

    Hey, I quite like broccoli.

    meaglothStrayedMonkey
  • jacobtanjacobtan Member Posts: 655
    Southpaw said:

    That's a very nice metaphor explaining your alignment @Anduin.
    I like it.
    Now...how to explain mine...?
    You know, when you are too good, people will abuse you and call you a pushover. Be too evil and you will end up in jail and without friends. So I try to walk the fine line between those two states.
    ergo-do the good deed in the most evil way possible.


    I guess I swerve around the alignment chart, especially in the evil regions, because I am in it mostly for myself and I don't really care about people that aren't close to me.
    Also...I want to rule the world. (who doesn't?)

    No I don't. It's a pain in the butthole :)
    Blackravenjackjack
  • BelgarathMTHBelgarathMTH Member Posts: 5,653
    edited April 2014
    My ideal is to be lawful good, and in youth I definitely qualified. As I've aged, though, I've grown a lot more cynical and self-interested, too much so to meet a D&D definition of "good". I still care very much about people, want everybody to be happy, and aspire to be good, but I'm not willing in real life to do much about things or to work very hard.

    I'm fairly unwaveringly lawful not in the sense that I follow the law (although I do most of the time), but in the sense that I strongly value order, routine, accountability, honesty, structure, and regimentation.

    One of the most popular online tests pegged me as "true neutral", probably because I admitted that I mostly just keep to myself in real life, see to my own interests, and will often break the rules if I can get away with it and judge that it is to my benefit to do so.

    Really, I think most people waver and shift along the two alignment axes over their lives and by context. Most of us are very complex, multi-layered, and inconsistent beings.
    Blackraven
  • FinneousPJFinneousPJ Member Posts: 6,455
    @jacobtan I would be ruler in name only, hiring people to do the actually work while reaping the benefits.
  • jacobtanjacobtan Member Posts: 655
    @FinneousPJ‌ If it is true that both of us are True Neutral, we are probably of different variants. I want nothing to do with this world as far as possible, not to mention rule it or reap some benefit out of it :)
  • BusticationBustication Member Posts: 49
    The trouble with applying alignment to reality is how fluid it would necessarily be. Ascribing a single alignment presupposes a base state of self, detached from the body and from temporal experience. Is alignment the sum of actions to date? The sum of the most recent or best remembered actions? The sum of actions taken while experiencing similar brain chemistry? The best predictor of future actions? The actions one would take if one had complete understanding of a situation? The actions that differentiate one person from another in otherwise identical situations (which can only exist hypothetically)? Does intent matter as much or more than outcome?

    It seems at first glance like an oversimplification of morality, but honestly, I think it's more complicated than the real thing.
    jackjackBlackravendustbubsyTJ_Hooker
  • jackjackjackjack Member Posts: 3,251
    edited April 2014
    I am always ready, willing when it suits me, and will make myself able if and when I feel like it. I am undeniably selfish. I am a textbook narcissist. I willfully manipulate others for my own personal gain. I abuse adverbs almost as much as I do adjectives. I overuse certain words. I bloviate. I am a slave to my impulses and I've made peace with that. I think I'm smarter than I actually am. I have deluded myself into thinking I have a proper writer's voice. I either commit to something 100% or disengage entirely. I will only put myself in someone else's shoes if there is a paycheck involved. Too often, I fall out of bed and wake up on the floor, because I can't even sleep peacefully. I am lazy up until the moment I'm on someone else's clock.
    I am not proud to call myself Chaotic Neutral - I begrudgingly accept that I am.
    Post edited by jackjack on
    BlackravenBusticationTJ_HookerFinaLfront
  • meaglothmeagloth Member Posts: 3,806
    edited April 2014
    I was looking through Wikipedia to see if the had any interesting info on alignments (they do) and I found this:
    "In the Complete Scoundrel sourcebook for D&D 3.5, Batman, Dick Tracy and Indiana Jones are cited as examples of Lawful Good characters.[10]"

    Wtf? Batman and Indiana jones are CG, right?
    jackjack
  • BlackravenBlackraven Member Posts: 3,486
    edited April 2014
    @meagloth Well Batman I think could pass for LG, very honorable and undeniably good. Not sure about Indy Jones, haven't seen those flicks for a while.
    I remember one scene where Indy is facing an Arab swordsman, and instead of trying to fight him, he just shoots him down. That wasn't the most paladenesque solution I suppose.
    CrevsDaak
  • meaglothmeagloth Member Posts: 3,806
    edited April 2014

    @meagloth Well Batman I think could pass for LG, very honorable and undeniably good. Not sure about Indy Jones, haven't seen those flicks for a while.
    I remember one scene where Indy is facing an Arab swordsman, and instead of trying to fight him, he just shoots him down. That wasn't the most paladenesque solution I suppose.

    @blackraven
    1. Boy, that's one of the most famous scenes in movie-watchingness.
    2. Have you seen the (latest)batman movies? Daaarrrk. Veeeeerrrryy dark.
    Blackraven
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