An interesting alignment discussion I found.

[Duke Malagigi]

I found an alignment discussion on the Dicefreaks forums that I think might interest some of you here. It explains Law, Chaos, Good, Evil and Neutrality from the original poster's point of view. While I do agree with his/her views on alignment I don't entirely agree with the exact wording of his/her post. The discussion can be found here.

[Otto-Sieve]

Interesting take, on the much debated subject.

[valadil]

I've always said that the problems with people not understanding alignment comes from poor nomenclature. Lawful and chaotic are not appropriate words for what they represent. I've seen players try to act randomly to live up to their chaotic alignment. That said I've never been able to come up with better words for those terms.

[Dairun Cates]

I've always said that the problems with people not understanding alignment comes from poor nomenclature. Lawful and chaotic are not appropriate words for what they represent. I've seen players try to act randomly to live up to their chaotic alignment. That said I've never been able to come up with better words for those terms.

Well, technically, they're meant to mean someone who respects authority and follows it and someone who believes in freedom and a non-constrictive government. So...

[Scrubbed. Real world politics is an inappropriate topic for this board.]

[Devils_Advocate]

Yeah, the terms they chose for the alignments kinda suck. The way that the words "good" and "evil" are used in real-world conversation may not always match up with what those words refer to in the alignment system. And we almost never use "law" and "chaos" to refer to D&D Law and Chaos except when we're specifically talking about D&D. This raises obvious problems: The head of the goblin tribe you're attacking likely isn't going to think of you as "doing the right thing", even if he recognizes that you're acting to protect innocents. He probably would call you "evil" if he uses the word in the real-world sense, indicating moral disapproval. But if he takes "good" and "evil" to mean what they do in the alignment section of the rules, then he'll acknowledge that you're "good" if he knows you'll ping on a detect good.

So, what do D&D characters mean when they use the terms "good" and "evil" in character? If they use them in the way we use them in the real world, then what words do they use for the things the detect spells pick up? Since they have those spells, obviously they're aware that some personal qualities are associated with celestials, positive energy, etc. and other qualities are associated with fiends, negative energy, etc. Surely they'd have words to summarize those sets of qualities. And if they use "good" and "evil" to refer to the stuff the detect spells detect, then what words do they use for the concepts we use those word to refer to in real life? "Moral" and "immoral", maybe?

Clearly, it would be far better to use words whose meanings in normal English conversation match up nicely with the descriptions of the alignments. Then you don't have to ask "Wait, do you mean "X" as it's normally used, or "X" as it's specially defined in the game rules?", because "X" means pretty much the same thing either way. My suggestions for replacement terms:

Good: "Benevolent"
Evil: "Cruel"
Lawful: "Conformist"
Chaotic: "Independent"

Why, these words are even annoyingly ambiguous in almost exactly the same way that the alignment descriptions are! ("So, wait, is Cruel just ruthless, or actually sadistic? Or is it more a matter of action than attitude and motivation?") So it's a near-perfect matchup.

... Um, so long as you toss out the honesty/dishonesty part of the Law/Chaos axis, which I would prefer to do, because that's a seperate thing from the other aspect of the axis*, and tangling up separate things defeats the point of having multiple alignment axes in the first place. Give it its own axis if you wanna. (Having a special axis for deception strikes me as weird, though. "We can have specific, rather trivial types of acts be always of a given alignment, but violence has to be situationally aligned, because this is a combat-oriented game and almost no one would wind up with the pacifistic alignment" seems really silly. "We need every alignment to be able to include people who kill things and take their stuff, so obviously the alignments need to be broad and general" makes a hell of a lot more sense.)

* For example, you could easily have a spy who is utterly loyal to his king and country, or an eccentric libertarian who never tells a lie and always keeps his word.

Edit: Oops! I didn't quite cover all of the bases there, did I? There's still a decidedly ambiguous alignment term I didn't deal with: "Neutral"! The rules use this term to mean "neither lawful nor chaotic", "neither good nor evil", and the combination of those two qualities! And that gets confusing, darn it!

So, I would suggest leaving "Neutral" to mean in between Conformist and Independent and having "Balanced" as the term for between Benevolent and Cruel. That way we have "Neutral", "Balanced", and "Neutral Balanced" where before we had... "Neutral", "Neutral", and "Neutral". Much clearer.

(I almost did those terms the other way around, but the word "neutral" has an "indifferent" feel to me. And I hardly see the typical Balanced person as being outright indifferent to the welfare of others, which is basically the issue the Benevolent/Cruel axis deals with. On the other hand, I can easily see a Neutral person going with whatever option sounds the smartest with total indifference to whether it's long-standing tradition or something that some guy thought up just yesterday.)

Edit the Second: It occurs to me that if you go with these terms, you might want to reverse the traditional order in which the alignment components are listed. Why? Because the new terms I came up with for the Law/Chaos axis work well as nouns as well as adjectives. For example, describing someone as "a Cruel Independent" sounds better to me than calling him "an Independent Cruel"; and alignments do tend to get nounified that way, since e.g. "Lawful Goods" is a rather obvious convenient shorthand for "Lawful Good beings" or "Lawful Good characters".

OK, OK, I think I'm finally done now.

[Duke Malagigi]

Devil's Advocate, I would say that Cruel would cover both ruthless and sadistic. As a little exercise, give what certain fictional characters alignments would be according to Kain Darkwind. This is for any one who wants to get involved.

[Duke Malagigi]

After reading the linked thread/ which classes do you think should keep their alignment restrictions?

[Inane-Fedaykin]

After reading the linked thread/ which classes do you think should keep their alignment restrictions?

Paladins and Blackguards out of the core stuff otherwise everything can go to hell after that.

[Stephen_E]

After reading the linked thread/ which classes do you think should keep their alignment restrictions?

Paladins should go to Good (no Law restriction) Blackguards and maybe Druids stay as they are.

To be fair I thought that before reading the linked thread.

Stephen

[puppyavenger]

Paladins should go to Good (no Law restriction) Blackguards and maybe Druids stay as they are.

To be fair I thought that before reading the linked thread.

Stephen

Quoted for truth

[Deth Muncher]

I dunno, I've always thought of Chaotic Neutral somewhere akin to "Existential." I mean,They live by their own code, they'll help others if it suits them, and they go about their day. I just can't stop thinking of Meursault from "The Stranger" when I try to define the CN alignment. As to the other alignments...well, I don't think I can say anything that hasn't already been said.

[Engineer]

I've always thought that good and evil would be better defined as Selfless and Selfish, but thats mostly because thats kind of how I invision Good and Evil. So fo instance a lawful Good person would try to enforce or make rools that help others, while a lawful evil person would bend and twist laws to further himself. And A chaotic good person would just help others no matter what the law/convention said, while a chaotic evil person would Just do what ever he wanted even if it hurt others.

Then again I've always though that you neede a third axis, that of creative-destructive, neither of which are inherently god or bad.

[Reel On, Love]

Yeah, that's not really interesting. But then, I frankly think that after so many years, there's no such THING as an interesting alignment discussion anymore.