Alignment System

[Beleriphon]

Sooo.. I've been thinking about the alignment system a bit and came to the conclusion that it really didn't make sense to me.

The problem being that "lawful" and "chaotic" seem to mean almost nothing, lacking a baseline of "law" that can be adhered to...
So if a citizen of one country, who adheres to the rules of his society were to swap places with a citizen of another country, with different laws, would he suddenly stop being lawful and become chaotic instead?

I always liked to think that the "good"-"evil" axis was the baseline of "how nice you were" to other people in general, and the "chaos"-"law" axis represented how and often much you strayed from your actions on average.

In this model the "chaos" would be an indicator for statistic deviation from your alignment, like a good character using "evil" methods for good means would mean he is chaotic as his actions are not majorly good.

A chaotic neutral char would do equal evil and good actions, aka be "bat**** insane".

Thoughts?

Chaos and Law are more confusing concepts that Good or Evil, but they're reasonably well explained in the rules. The problem is combining that things and you end up with relatively poor explanations.

At any rate, Law is the tendency to follow set paths, rules or traditions because they work. New methods are frowned upon unless they are shown to be functional in place of a previous method.

Example, dwarves are generally lawful because they have set traditions. They have laws, traditions and processes that they always use, because they've always used them. They try their best to adapt an existing law to deal with a new concept. In many ways this is similar to how modern courts deal with new legal concepts. For example there are clear rules about what constitutes a "person" in the legal sense, it doesn't include iron golems, but the dwarves happen upon a sapient iron golem that has named itself Hank. What do the dwarves do if there is an argument about the golem being granted citizenship? Well they turn to tradition, previous decision and go through the process of following what their ancestors did to make decisions.

A group of Chaotic halflings have traditions, and very loose concepts of law. If a previous tradition doesn't work, well that's too bad, but they'll figure out something new. In the previous example of Hank the sapient iron golem the halflings don't necessarily following happened before. They'll make a decision based on what they think is right, regardless of previous decisions (within reason).

On a slightly less absurd note I'll suggest a case of theft. The Lawful kingdom has a court, they have processes, they have a method of determining guilt. New decisions made now are followed in the future, and decisions from the past are followed now. Punishment if found guilty is getting a finger removed. It doesn't matter why you did it, or your age, or anything else. If guilty lose a finger.

The Chaotic kingdom the local lord makes decisions of guilt and punishments. There is no formal legal code as such. In the same theft the lord could decide the person is guilty, but because they are a starving child they have to repay the victim through labour.

Add Good or Evil to mix is probably going to determine the end result, and how fair any given process/tradition is to any given party. Good tends towards just and fair results, while Evil is going to benefit one group or even just one person, or just not care how horrible the end result will be.

I suppose my point is that Lawful types respect that codes/rules/laws exist even if they don't agree with a specific set of them. Chaotic types don't by default respect that codes/rules/laws exist, they prefer to take each new experience on its own merits.