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JusticeZero
2014-12-06, 07:05 PM
Was just trying to think of ways to simplify and clarify alignment axes, and had the thought of just applying the "light side/dark side" traits in a rigid way as the Lawful/Chaotic axis and, in most cases, calling it a day. As such, Barbarians would gravitate to Chaotic hard because, well, rage, and so on. A bunch of civilization wouldn't care either way though. Seems like it would be a decent strict definition. Thoughts?

Mastikator
2014-12-06, 07:13 PM
Sith use rage and hate to strengthen their connection to the Force, but only during combat. A Sith lord can be disciplined and meticulous outside of battle and discipline will only make them better at using the Force. I'd peg them as neutral evil, and the Jedi as lawful good.

Red Fel
2014-12-06, 07:39 PM
Being able to plan doesn't mean you're not Chaotic. It simply means you have foresight and patience.

Chaotic characters are about self-expression and individualism. This is part of what allows the Sith to thrive. In fact, this is what historically caused some Jedi to defect - the Jedi Order is stiflingly Lawful. (For crying out loud, the word "Order" is right in the name). Conformity is enforced, obedience mandated. Personalities are squashed. Perhaps most tellingly, Jedi are discouraged from having emotions. Sure, fear, hatred, and anger are bad, but love?

And that's the point. The Jedi Order is a peacekeeping group. They seek balance, which for them amounts to perfect order. Law. They don't seek things like bettering individuals, promoting love or tolerance, or even intervening to defend the oppressed. Unless explicitly ordered to intervene, the Jedi don't get involved. That's not Good. That's decidedly un-Good. Lawful, yes; Good, no.

What defines the Sith, the Dark Jedi? Selfishness. He thinks of himself first. He uses the Force the way he wants to, for the purposes towards which he wants to employ it. That's primarily Chaotic, not explicitly Evil. Yes, many Sith are depicted as Evil, but I attribute that to bad writing. The fact is that perfect freedom, when combined with power, can lead to Evil, but it doesn't have to. What's important is that the Sith are most identified, not by their particular ideology (which generally boiled down to a lust for power), but by the organization to which they are opposed - the Jedi Order. And in every interaction where they sneer and snark about the Jedi, the Sith make one factor plain - they are powerful because they do not allow themselves to be limited. Again, Chaotic, not inherently Evil.

Yeah, I've often seen the SW alignment chart as Jedi/Law vs. Sith/Chaos.

As an aside, I've always disagreed with the idea that Rage makes one Chaotic. That's confusing a temporary mental state, like anger or madness, with an outlook on the world, such as freedom or order.

JusticeZero
2014-12-06, 07:39 PM
m not specifically talking about Sith and Jedi as depicted. Jedi is a specific order in the context of that magic system (highly alignment dependent), but you can be following the basic principles of the Light side and be an evil jerk who dispassionately throws people under the bus. Also, there are a lot of good people who care about using their passion for power, and arguably the Sith is, again, a specific order following a CE philosophy with some NE leanings because of the people in it. The alignment itself wouldn't care.

Nerd-o-rama
2014-12-06, 07:53 PM
The "Light Side" (I still hate that that expression's canon) and the Dark Side don't map exactly to good and evil or law and chaos in D&D terms. Fundamentally, the former is about recognizing yourself as a part of the universe and being a servant of the greater whole of creation, while the latter is about taking the power of the universe and using it to empower yourself individually, usually to the detriment of your own sense of perspective.

The Light Side has lawful and good interpretations while the Dark Side has chaotic and evil interpretations, but they are a lot more specific and spiritual than a lot of characters' views of Law and Chaos. I mean, just to take one example, Emperor Palpatine/Darth Sidious is a character I'd have trouble pinning to either Law or Chaos despite being the epitome of the Dark Side - he uses and abuses the existing power structure to become supreme commander of a hierarchical military dictatorship, a very Lawful Evil course of action, but he seems to be motivated entirely by personal power for personal power's sake and nothing else, which I'd describe as Chaotic.

JusticeZero
2014-12-06, 08:03 PM
I've always felt that the Sith are being victimized by the fact that they don't get to write the history books. In other contexts where they weren't reacting to a huge war justified by religious persecution, their order would probably be CG activists. Indeed, there might actually be a lot of CG Sith that don't show up in canon because they're all Love and Lust and Joy powered types who don't care for war, as opposed to the people who train in Anger, Fear, and Rage that head straight to the front lines.
I am always dubious that they actually are quite as Evil as depicted, given that the people telling the story are never people who anyone would expect a balanced account from.
Anyways, I'm debating on how well the division maps to a L/C axis outside of the context of blasters and laser swords being swung by sorcerer monks in space. :)

Tengu_temp
2014-12-06, 10:56 PM
For all the fandom talk about how the dark side of the Force is not inherently evil, this really doesn't show much in Star Wars proper. Blatantly evil dark side users outnumber good ones at least ten to one, and that's only if you count all the expanded universe stuff - in first tier canon, it's pretty much "all of them" to zero.

And how well do the light side and dark side map to the lawful and chaotic alignments? Considering many Jedi are NG rather than LG or LN (and some I can see as CG, even), and that Darth Vader is the quintessential example of a LE character... not very well.

Nerd-o-rama
2014-12-06, 11:40 PM
Yeah, Anakin's another interesting example, as he starts out as a free-spirited good-at-heart Chaotic Good character, takes a nosedive into Chaotic Evil (Lawful-curious, given the war's given him an interest in Totalitarianism) in Episode III, and by the time Episode IV comes around he seems to have slotted himself solidly into the Lawful Evil power structure, presumably because that's how he gets crap done.


I've always felt that the Sith are being victimized by the fact that they don't get to write the history books. In other contexts where they weren't reacting to a huge war justified by religious persecution, their order would probably be CG activists. Indeed, there might actually be a lot of CG Sith that don't show up in canon because they're all Love and Lust and Joy powered types who don't care for war, as opposed to the people who train in Anger, Fear, and Rage that head straight to the front lines.
I am always dubious that they actually are quite as Evil as depicted, given that the people telling the story are never people who anyone would expect a balanced account from.
Anyways, I'm debating on how well the division maps to a L/C axis outside of the context of blasters and laser swords being swung by sorcerer monks in space. :)

Do you have any particular reasoning behind that? I mean, a lot of very different people have taken the name "Sith" over the course of the old EU/Legends canon, but they all tended to be inclined toward "I'm going to claw my way as high as I can within my society and then claw my society to the top of the galaxy" as a personal goal. The Dark Side is about empowering the self, and the logical conclusion of a philosophy that disregards everything in pursuit of perfecting one's own personal freedom (never anyone else's, among the canonical Sith) is almost always megalomania.

kardar233
2014-12-07, 12:11 AM
I've cast Light as Law and Dark as Chaos in previous games before, and I think it makes a fair amount of sense. A good source to draw on is Jade Empire's Open Palm/Closed Fist ethical system, though it's sadly reduced to "saint or puppy-kicker" in game.

As it's exposited to you, the Open Palm is the path of harmony: concerned with the proper place of things. If bandits are attacking villagers, the Open Palm person will go defeat them as they are disrupting the proper order, which would cast them as Good. However, if the peasants are starving and have started a rebellion, then the Open Palm person would side against them because they are disrupting the proper order, which would cast the Open Palmer as Neutral at best. Play this as a parallel with Jedi, and you might get some interesting moral decisions.

Bob of Mage
2014-12-07, 12:59 AM
I can't really see the Sith truely favouring Chaos and the Jedi turely favouring Lawful to such a degree that you could call them that. Yes many Jedi are LG, but there's a fair number of CG too, and of course NG. In the later eras of the EU, there's often conflict between the LG and CG, it's not something that would happen in a group that's mainly Lawful full stop. It gets to the point where you even have one Jedi Master killed for being too Lawful (tons of story so I'm not going to go into it) when he tries to forcefully reign in the rest of the order for "reasons".

There also the contast conflict about how the Jedi deal with normal laws. How fast do you think a Jedi would steal a random person's car to save the day without a second thought?

Regardless of if they are L or C, all Jedi that are doing what they should seem to fall under G. When they go too far they hit N, and are at risk of becoming Sith.

While the Sith might have started as something like CN ages ago, they moved far from very fast. From what I read the fight seems to have started over the core Jedi not wanting the proto-Sith to mess around with banned powers and knowlegde. You know things like raising the dead. The same sort things that are often call black magic in more magical words (FYI there are Darkside undead monster and worse made by the Sith). In D&D casting an evil spell is an evil act regardless of why you did it.

Looking at Anakin's fall can also show LE Sith are normal too. First he starts off as CG, however he rather close to CN even from the start. Now when he murders all those Sand People I'd say he goes starts towards LE big time (slaying children for the crimes of their parnets), and is barely staying a Jedi. As he fights in the Clone Wars he keeps trying to make things go his way at ever higher costs. Clearly a LE mindset, he just hasn't earned enough Dark side points to shift him fully. We all know what happens next.

Anakin's fall also shows that Jedi dislike too strong bonds to familly because it casues risks for Jedi who are Lawful, putting Law above Good as Anakin did for his familly. If the bonds to ones familly or another group/person, they risk doing Lawful things that conflict with the Jedi code. I'm not sure how we can get a better example of how Jedi are not pure Lawful, and indeed conflict with LN people.

Sith_Happens
2014-12-07, 01:10 AM
For all the fandom talk about how the dark side of the Force is not inherently evil, this really doesn't show much in Star Wars proper. Blatantly evil dark side users outnumber good ones at least ten to one, and that's only if you count all the expanded universe stuff - in first tier canon, it's pretty much "all of them" to zero.

Even ten to one is a huge stretch, the only non-evil Dark Side users I know of the entire EU are Galen Marek, Kyle Katarn (arguably), Darth Vectivus (who's basically a cameo character), and the Sith classes in SW:TOR if you play them that way.


Lawful-curious

Best. Compound word. Ever.

JusticeZero
2014-12-07, 02:16 AM
There are a lot of canonical spots where they declare things as "light" that are good even though they are blatantly defying the code, and "dark" stuff that's evil but perfectly aligns with the Jedi code and flies in the face of the Sith code. It seems like a symptom of conflating the two to avoid dissonance between LE vs CG options when playing "the heroes", since the Sith never get to tell a good story. So what we're really talking about here is going hardline psychopath on interpretations of code on either side, with a margin of course, since you have zero reason to conflate good and evil into them in a two-axis system.

hamishspence
2014-12-07, 03:59 AM
The Light Side has lawful and good interpretations while the Dark Side has chaotic and evil interpretations, but they are a lot more specific and spiritual than a lot of characters' views of Law and Chaos. I mean, just to take one example, Emperor Palpatine/Darth Sidious is a character I'd have trouble pinning to either Law or Chaos despite being the epitome of the Dark Side - he uses and abuses the existing power structure to become supreme commander of a hierarchical military dictatorship, a very Lawful Evil course of action, but he seems to be motivated entirely by personal power for personal power's sake and nothing else, which I'd describe as Chaotic.

That's probably why Easydamus pegged him as NE, to Vader's LE:

http://www.easydamus.com/neutralevil.html

http://www.easydamus.com/lawfulevil.html

Coidzor
2014-12-07, 06:47 PM
Yeah, Anakin's another interesting example, as he starts out as a free-spirited good-at-heart Chaotic Good character, takes a nosedive into Chaotic Evil (Lawful-curious, given the war's given him an interest in Totalitarianism) in Episode III, and by the time Episode IV comes around he seems to have slotted himself solidly into the Lawful Evil power structure, presumably because that's how he gets crap done.

No, Anakin starts off as a Neutral child with chaotic leanings because he's a child(unless we decide to just ignore little not-yet-orphan Annie entirely, which, I'm more than fine with), has a time skip that reveals he's in that hazy area between CN and CE as a teenager in Episode II, has some conflicting character development in the clone wars where he's still whiny but at least a bit less emo due to at least experimenting with lawfulness, and then after a bit of token appreciation for lawfulness starts frothing at the mouth and murdering children before being put down like the mad dog that he had become in episode III. Then he dies and is replaced by the bigger, badder, lawfuler, Darther Vader by the time episode IV rolls around, only returning for a brief cameo at the end of Episode VI.


Do you have any particular reasoning behind that? I mean, a lot of very different people have taken the name "Sith" over the course of the old EU/Legends canon, but they all tended to be inclined toward "I'm going to claw my way as high as I can within my society and then claw my society to the top of the galaxy" as a personal goal. The Dark Side is about empowering the self, and the logical conclusion of a philosophy that disregards everything in pursuit of perfecting one's own personal freedom (never anyone else's, among the canonical Sith) is almost always megalomania.

The only real exceptions are either muddled like Revan or Kyle Katarn or wanted to kill the Force itself after becoming disillusioned with it like Kreia, and those are all from video games, and I can't even remember what they did about the canonocity of video games when Disney took over, but my guess is that they got thrown in the bin of "this never happened unless we need it to have for purposes of the MMO and keeping it going, and then it's only for the MMO."

And one example of a guy who was like a less evil Lex Luthor, which we only get from an unreliable narrator who is trying to convince a guy to turn evil just like his grandpa despite knowing exactly how well turning evil worked out for his grandpa.

So we have lies, damned lies, and things that were just a dream/never happened. At least we don't have to deal with statistics, though.

Sith_Happens is right though, "Lawful-curious" is great.

Bob of Mage
2014-12-07, 08:18 PM
No, Anakin starts off as a Neutral child with chaotic leanings because he's a child(unless we decide to just ignore little not-yet-orphan Annie entirely, which, I'm more than fine with), has a time skip that reveals he's in that hazy area between CN and CE as a teenager in Episode II, has some conflicting character development in the clone wars where he's still whiny but at least a bit less emo due to at least experimenting with lawfulness, and then after a bit of token appreciation for lawfulness starts frothing at the mouth and murdering children before being put down like the mad dog that he had become in episode III. Then he dies and is replaced by the bigger, badder, lawfuler, Darther Vader by the time episode IV rolls around, only returning for a brief cameo at the end of Episode VI.

I was calling him CG when we first meet him (he bravely/stupidly got into a starfighter to save the day which in my books is a good act) and from what little I know about what happen between moives. In Episode II he faced with the fact that there are rather too many bad people out there that stand a really chance of hurting his loved ones. What's worse is that one group were "beaten" the good way and still keep coming. So in order to stop bad things from happen he, more so over time, felt you need to take a hard line.

This hard line thing really started with the death of his mother which he saw coming. If he did what he felt was in his power his mother would still be alive. As we see he felt they for the crime of what the Sand People did they should all dead. going so far as to kill all the kids for the parent crime is both Evil and Lawful. Evil for killing kids, and Lawful since they did have a link to a crime, as well as it being Anakin's way of imposing his sense of order on the world (which is also evil if you use too much lightsaber to do it).

It's at this point I feel he start both a Evil and a Lawful drift. From some of what he says it sound like he felt that the shift of the govorment from N (often didn't follow it own rules, and sure didn't care about most people) to LE, was a good thing as it would have stopped the Clone Wars and all the bad things from happening. Of course I'm sure he felt it was going toward LG (that's what happen if you let a creepy old man wisper in your ear for years).

Ettina
2014-12-10, 10:11 AM
To me, there seems to be a big dissonance between how Jedi and Sith are claimed to operate, and how they actually show up in the stories.

If you look at the actual Jedi characters, they're all over the Good spectrum - LG, NG and CG; while the Sith we see are all over the Evil spectrum. So that comes across as Jedi=Good and Sith=Evil.

But if you look at their doctrine, it really doesn't make sense why a Chaotic Jedi or a Lawful Sith would be a thing. Jedi are supposed the eschew emotion and go for pure logic. If they really did that, they should be all along the Lawful spectrum = LG, LN and LE. Similarly, Sith are supposed to embrace emotion and screw logic, which should make them all over the Chaotic spectrum (including Chaotic Good Sith powered by empathy for the downtrodden and righteous anger at their oppressors).

So the question is - do you want to go with how the characters are actually portrayed in the story, or with their doctrine? Because to me, the two are notably inconsistent.

Zale
2014-12-10, 12:56 PM
I wouldn't personally personify the Light/Dark side along L/C lines.

I'd probably assign them using aspects of Harmony Vs Discipline (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HarmonyVersusDiscipline)(TVTropes), which admitted does have shades of Lawful vs Chaotic.


A very basic theme when constructing the conflict between characters in a setting, or against the setting itself, is to set up two sides with opposing beliefs in how to deal with themselves and the world. The conflict will center around whether characters should seek to discipline themselves, gaining a measure of control over themselves and in so doing the world around them (let's call this side Discipline), or whether they should accept themselves and the world as it is, seeking not to control either but to coexist harmoniously with the forces in their environment (we'll call this side Harmony).

Normally, people would probably decide that Harmony is obviously the "good" side here- but think carefully about that.

Harmony means thinking the current state of affairs is perfect, and that all negative things come from attempting to change it, or tamper with the way the world is.

Discipline means thinking the current state of things could be changed for the better. There are societies that could be improved, diseases that could be cured, mountains to be climbed- etc.

The Jedi/Sith divide has aspects of both:


The Jedi and the Sith actually both embody Harmony and Discipline, but in opposite areas. The Jedi strive to master their emotions and do the will of the Force while the Sith seek to bend the Force to their will while giving in to their emotions. The Jedi belive in internal Discipline and external Harmony, while the Sith believe in external Discipline and internal Harmony (or Passion, which may not be identical; either way, a lack of control).

Of course, the Sith are usually made into automatic evil even though they have interesting bits of philosophy and the setting as a whole might be more interesting with a bit less Black and White morality.



Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.