OOTS #1274 - The Discussion Thread

[F.Harr]

It's nice to see Roy talk to someone as smart as him.

The way of lawful good is hard and has risks. True neutral is also risky, but they're diffent risks and harder to recognize.

[arimareiji]

Back in the day, DMs were supposed to keep an eye on PCs' actions, relative to their nominal alignment on that 9-box chart. If they drifted so far as to change to a different box, there were substantial penalties. So to a degree, players had to keep that in mind, and make the characters' actions consistent with their alignment.

Yes. Hence my next paragraph talking about how players tend to play characters by picking an alignment and then playing the character accordingly.

But that's the player playing the character, not the character themselves (doubly so since this is a story, not actual characters being played). Characters don't think to themselves "I'm lawful evil, so I'd better do lawful evil things". The player thinks that. The character just *is* lawful evil.

Spoiler: collapsed for space

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I was responding to a post which suggested that unless Thog was self aware of his alignment and was therefore specifically choosing to perform actions to fit with that alignment, that he couldn't be judged by his actions (or whatever), then stating that since Thog wasn't intelligent enough to make this sort of thought processs <insert conclusion here>.

Just saying that this isn't how things happen from the point of view of the character. Which is all that matters in the context of the story. We should judge Thog's alignment based on his actions, not some speculation about what he might think he's doing in relation to the alignment system in the game that a hypothetical player playing Thog might think about. A character is not the player. And in this case, there isn't a player anyway.

Point taken, but to my mind it's an unfortunate* choice of examples because... well, this is just my take, but "I 'have to' do selfish things I want to do because [reasons]" is mildly lawful evil in and of itself. It's very, very human but it's still lawful evil.

(Whereas Thog is almost some sort of avatar of Chaotic Evil because he does incredibly selfish/harmful things with not only no regard for the rules, but also so brazenly that it practically begs for society to slap him down.)

* - Editing to add for clarity: The example alignment chosen seems unfortunate because coming up with elaborate rationalizations for why one's desires obey the rules coincidentally also demonstrates Lawfulness, trending toward Evil if it's for reasons that (when boiled down) are selfish / harmful to others. Absolutely no desire to wade into whether the reasoning is "wrong" or "right".

One my longest-played characters was a Neutral Good magic user, in a party that leaned Chaotic (and, from time to time, somewhat south of Good). I tended to play my guy a bit more Lawful than Neutral, so once in a while, I went for relatively harmless Chaotic actions (AKA minor pranks and being generally weird). He created a new spell that was extremely Chaotic, which messed around with all dice rolls in a random way. These were partially to balance out that Lawful tendency, though the "Randomness" spell was a very practical tool in its own way.

Everyone's mileage will vary, but to me, meaningless actions for the sake of satisfying a rule is more Lawful than it is Chaotic. Pranks per se are mildly chaotic (though they quite often serve chaotic ends to boot), but a spell named "Randomness" that just futzes with dice rolls doesn't meaningfully show independent thought or action rooted in 'Challenging the perceived rules of society when I think it serves a greater Good' (i.e. a CG action to lean back toward NG from LG).

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Point taken, but to my mind it's an unfortunate choice of examples because... well, this is just my take, but "I 'have to' do selfish things I want to do because [reasons]" is mildly lawful evil in and of itself. It's very, very human but it's still lawful evil.

Very much this. Feeling the need to justify your actions via any kind of "reasoning", however specious, is Lawful. A Chaotic individual doesn't need to come up with an elaborate chain of "deduction" to justify their actions, they just feel like doing something, and they do it. A Neutral-trending Miko would have stopped trying to twist the rules and laws to obtain the conclusion she wanted. That to the end she was still trying to force said rules into her preferred outcome is the clearest indication that she was still Lawful, and that her conclusions were predetermined and logic found to fit them means she was trending Evil, not that she was abandoning Lawfulness.

Grey Wolf

[KorvinStarmast]

but "I 'have to' do selfish things I want to do because [reasons]" is mildly lawful evil in and of itself.

Not, it isn't, in and of itself. You have provided a fine example of how Cracker Jack Box philosophy gets people to arrive at nonsense conclusions.

It's very, very human

Yes, it is.
What you choose to frame as someone else's selfishness may be simple self interest, which it not inherently evil. Where it may wander into evil is when you begin to explore the degree, not the kind.

[arimareiji]

Not, it isn't, in and of itself. You have provided a fine example of how Cracker Jack Box philosophy gets people to arrive at nonsense conclusions. Yes, it is.

You have every right to express your own opinions, whether you care to explain the reasoning or not. But next time, if all you want to do is say "I disagree", please leave the insults out.

What you choose to frame as someone else's selfishness may be simple self interest, which it not inherently evil. Where it may wander into evil is when you begin to explore the degree, not the kind.

If you want to make your own post about what it would mean if someone is rationalizing non-selfish actions, please feel free to do so but please leave me out of it. I expressed an opinion predicated on a given set of circumstances, and I don't understand the logic behind coming along to tell me how nonsensical I am because I should have predicated it on the different set of circumstances you'd rather talk about.

[KorvinStarmast]

You have every right to express your own opinions, whether you care to explain the reasoning or not. But next time, if all you want to do is say "I disagree", please leave the insults out.

No insult was intended here. The never ending problem with transposing a game's alignment mechanics with how actual people make decisions and judgments rears its ugly head yet again. Looking out after one's own interests is not inherently evil. But it can get there depending on degree, not kind. What I find to be the aforementioned Cracker Jack Box philosophy approach is this flawed reasoning: if one does {this} one is {that alignment}.

[arimareiji]

You have provided a fine example of how Cracker Jack Box philosophy gets people to arrive at nonsense conclusions.

No insult was intended here.

No sincerity was evident here.

[dancrilis]

Point taken, but to my mind it's an unfortunate* choice of examples because... well, this is just my take, but "I 'have to' do selfish things I want to do because [reasons]" is mildly lawful evil in and of itself. It's very, very human but it's still lawful evil.

(Whereas Thog is almost some sort of avatar of Chaotic Evil because he does incredibly selfish/harmful things with not only no regard for the rules, but also so brazenly that it practically begs for society to slap him down.)

* - Editing to add for clarity: The example alignment chosen seems unfortunate because coming up with elaborate rationalizations for why one's desires obey the rules coincidentally also demonstrates Lawfulness, trending toward Evil if it's for reasons that (when boiled down) are selfish / harmful to others. Absolutely no desire to wade into whether the reasoning is "wrong" or "right".

I think you might be equating selfish with harmful and both with evil (but perhaps I am reading you wrong) - personally I would hold that an action can be selfish without being harmful and action can be harmful without being selfish and neither is necessarily evil.

Example: There are three people and ten sweets so everyone else gets 3 and I get 4.
This may be selfish (I am taking it because I want it) but I doubt it could be considered harmful and I very much doubt it is evil.

Example: I shall arrest this close friend of mine who protects his village honourable from predators and who will likely get executed for the crime of killed someone in a pub fight two decades ago because despite the fact that he is now serving the community and acting as a force of good and are a close personal friend - the laws cannot be ignored for my friends.
This is harmful (removes a village protector) but not selfish or evil.

[mjasghar]

Expressing personal views of what is good and evil is one thing - but the comic and the system have very very clear views of what is evil. Taking the extra sweet left over when you could have split it is clearly selfish and exploiting your power in the situation- a lawful evil behaviour. A mild one, yes, but still there. The sort of thing that would be the thing to make extra prayers of forgiveness for and possibly repentance for a divine caster.
Read the book of exalted deeds and vile darkness.
You’re free to disagree with the views therein because it triggers your personal justifications of behaviour but they are the definitions of the system.

[hamishspence]

BoVD says that theft is evil. "Taking the last sweet when you could have shared it" isn't necessarily theft - but taking the last sweet when it was assigned to someone else and the relevant people's backs were turned - that can qualify.

[mjasghar]

If you are assigned to share the sweets and you take the extra one then you are exploiting the system for your own benefit - lawful evil.
Would you feel it was okay if someone did that in real life or would you not regard them as being selfish or even corrupt?

[dancrilis]

Expressing personal views of what is good and evil is one thing - but the comic and the system have very very clear views of what is evil. Taking the extra sweet left over when you could have split it is clearly selfish and exploiting your power in the situation- a lawful evil behaviour. A mild one, yes, but still there. The sort of thing that would be the thing to make extra prayers of forgiveness for and possibly repentance for a divine caster.

If you think a paladin in the comic would fall for taking the last sweet (i.e you hold that they are commited a willfully evil act) you are free to believe that - I however see nothing in The Giant's writing to indicate that would be the case.
If you would have a paladin in games you DM fall for taking the last sweet (i.e you hold that they are commited a willfully evil act) you are free to enforce that - I however see nothing in the alignment rules which would require such.

Read the book of exalted deeds and vile darkness.

I have - I think you are applying them incorrectly.

The section relating to evil acts in The Book of Vile Darkness (page 7) clearly states as the opening paragraph:

Examining the actions of the malevolent not only helps define what evil is, but it also gives an insight into the schemes of a villain. What follows is more than a list that defines evil as opposed to good. Read over the following sections to get ideas for villainous plots, schemes, motivations, and personalities.

The entire section is about 'examining the actions of the malevolent' it is not seemingly about applying malevolence to ever related act - an example of this in listed under vengeance where is is explicatly spelt out that an act of vengeance does not have to be evil, another example is where it clearly states that harming souls is always evil (both of those examples on page 8).

You can take the statement on vengeance to imply that any act which does not have such a clarification is always evil, you can also take the statement on souls to indicate that acts are only certainly evil if called out as such - whatever suits you and your game, personally I tend towards the second view where unless it is called out as specifically evil there may be some leeway on whether an particular act is evil or not subject to context.

On a related note I don't think any of the actions fit into the 'distribute the sweets' scenario.

[Tzardok]

Also, Book of Exalted Deeds has pretty weird ideas about goodness. It essentially takes the Paladin's code and exaggerates it to reach what it thinks "good" is.

[Kish]

Rich explicitly said that theft isn't evil in OotS. Many years ago. But more recently than the Book of Vile Darkness came out. I suggest it be sent back to Redcloak, where it can help him create heucuevas and not offer rulings on the morality of stealing sweets.

(I do not actually know offhand if the heucueva was the skeleton from the Book of Vile Darkness, nor if I spelled that creature name correctly; I care about both in approximately equal amounts.)

[hamishspence]

Rich explicitly said that theft isn't evil in OotS. Many years ago.

Yup - but he also said V was Good around the same time:

https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...e-Stick/page11

Later he made it clear V was never Good, and that some of his early statements aren't binding on the later comics.

You can take the statement on vengeance to imply that any act which does not have such a clarification is always evil, you can also take the statement on souls to indicate that acts are only certainly evil if called out as such - whatever suits you and your game, personally I tend towards the second view where unless it is called out as specifically evil there may be some leeway on whether an particular act is evil or not subject to context.

True. The later Fiendish Codex 2 calls out a specific kind of theft as "Corrupt" - stealing from the needy.

[mjasghar]

There’s a difference between an act that causes you to Fall and one that would be regarded as a minor lapse.

[KorvinStarmast]

No sincerity was evident here.

I apologize for having given offense. I could have phrased that differently.

[hroþila]

There’s a difference between an act that causes you to Fall and one that would be regarded as a minor lapse.

Don't any Evil deeds cause a paladin to fall? If so, it would follow that minor lapses like taking that last sweet may go against the paladin code or whatever, but that they're not Evil.

(Although if you ask me, the person making the effort to distribute the sweets may well be entitled to an extra sweet after everybody has got their share. Someone is going to end up with one extra sweet after all)

[brian 333]

The role of the DM is not to plot the minutia of every act and motive of the character and ruthlessly apply alignment change. It is to distinguish behavioral trends, discuss these trends with the player, who should reflect upon the way his character acts, then decide to continue or discontinue the trend. If, after such discussions, the character continues acting in the questionable manner, the DM should judge if the magnitude of non-conformity to the selected alignment justifies a shift in Alignment.

Let's use the 'extra cookie' analogy. Is it Evil to take the extra one? (I lean to Chaotic, personally, because it breaks rules of etiquette for the divider to choose which portion he gets, but not Evil because nobody got hurt, even potentially.) But even if it is Evil, to what degree is it Evil? The magnitude is so small that it would require the theft of hundreds of cookies from starving orphans to justify an alignment shift.

Alignment is not a straight jacket to confine a player's choices, nor is it a cudgel for the DM to control players. It is a guideline. Saying, "My character is Good does not make him incapable of performing Evil, nor does it require immediate alignment shifts when a character acts contrary to his stated alignment. It is a tool best used to guide players and DMs in their choices.

[MoiMagnus]

Don't any Evil deeds cause a paladin to fall? If so, it would follow that minor lapses like taking that last sweet may go against the paladin code or whatever, but that they're not Evil.

More precisely:

A paladin who ceases to be lawful good, who willfully commits an evil act, or who grossly violates the code of conduct loses all special abilities and spells, including the service of the paladin's warhorse.

So evil acts that are not committed "willfully" do not cause a fall as long as they're not gross violation of the code of conduct and do not lead to a change of alignment.

And googling for a legal definition of "willfully" I find "The term 'willfully' means that an act is committed voluntarily and purposefully, with a clear intention to break the law.", so I'd guess that ignorance of the fact that the act is evil is enough of a defence. So as long as the paladin is not actively thinking "it's not fair for me to take the last sweet, because X deserve it more than me" and is more thinking "eh, it's not hurting anyone if I take the last sweet", I think that's fine.

[Kish]

I'd just like to say I am wholly opposed to any argument that leads logically to, "As a paladin, you should not only use Intelligence as your dump stat, but beg the DM to pretend you rolled a 3 if you did not."

[Jasdoif]

(I do not actually know offhand if the heucueva was the skeleton from the Book of Vile Darkness, nor if I spelled that creature name correctly; I care about both in approximately equal amounts.)

The huecuva appears in Fiend Folio. The title of #453, "Heck of a Fight", gets extra mileage from the rough pronunciation parallels of "huecuva" and "heck of a"; so this is (minimally) more relevant than is typically the case.

[WanderingMist]

I hope the next comic comes tomorrow, because I won't be able to check back in until April 9th due to Lent.

[MoiMagnus]

I'd just like to say I am wholly opposed to any argument that leads logically to, "As a paladin, you should not only use Intelligence as your dump stat, but beg the DM to pretend you rolled a 3 if you did not."

Even if that was the case, I don't think this kind of intelligence actually falls under the Intelligence ability score. It's not that much long-term calculation about what is an ultimate good for the society, but more some emotional Intelligence and/or "common sense" that I would put it under Wisdom.

If anything, you could argue that an high Intelligence can help you to rationalise your acts to be consistent with your morals. If you're blinded by your feelings, you'll use your intelligence to find good arguments why the way you want to act is correct, without applying any critical thinking or second though to it.

Then, I'd say that most concerns about abuses can be handled either by the "grossly violate the code" part or by the "being LG", as
(1) It's easy for Paladin's order to have a mention that lacking common sense and behaving in ways that "every reasonable being would see as evil" is a gross violation of the code (similarly to how we do it in real life, ignorance is only a defence if it's reasonable for someone to be ignorant about it).
(2) Peoples that lack a correct understanding of what is good and what is evil don't qualify as LG. They're neutral/unaligned.

[danielxcutter]

I have heard a bit about some crappy DMs finding any excuse they can to make their Paladin players Fall, but I dunno how true that actually is.

[Dasick]

Case in point, strip 58, panels 12 and 13

I know it's a throwaway gag but Belkar getting that +4 wisdom seems to have put him on a path to the straight and narrow. Doesn't seem implausible that attribute changes can drastically alter one's alignment, if we take it as canon and not just comedy.

What am I, chopped liver?

But no, whether Thog was evil or had a maturity of a child was a very controversial topic back then, that's why Rich decided to make him "obviously evil" during the gladiatorial games. Miko's mental state was also a common point of discussion with countless threads about it. Just a few straps ago people were talking about how Haley act like Elan's mother instead of his girlfriend and how creepy it feels. All of those are unbelievable to many people.

I am somewhat sad that I'm not the first one to come up with "Elan is too childlike and his relationship with Hailey is weird"
But I would not have the heart to make a serious case for that, in part because we see Elan get a lot of character development and some explanation why he acts the way he does.

I think the reason is though cause Elan is a PC, and over the decades writing this comic, Rich became a much better writer. So the initial Elan was a cardboard cutout too dumb to live kind of character, which Rich is "stuck with" so to speak and has decided that a more rounded and competent character fits the story he is telling now as opposed to when he started better.

By contrast, Thog is a part of a nonsensical "evil opposites" ploy, and since he is a minor character he doesn't get the development we see Elan get. But I think the gladiatorial games don't really sell the "obviously evil" aspect, and if anything they reinforce the reading that Thog is developmentally challenged. Which is a writing fail I guess, and a failure to understand the people bringing up this issue in the first place.

on the other hand, Karma's a real bear.
(Sorry about the topic shift to SW, but I feel that there's a bit of karmic justice going on here for the sins of messing up SW ... yadda yadda)

The karma train is slow, but inevitable. It always takes a while for large brands to have their mistakes to catch up with them, and that's all I will say on the topic

Worth mentioning that the streaming service model is nowhere near as profitable as people think it is.

And yet, it's still widely accepted by a large enough number of people that it cannot be described as "unbelievable."

Unbelievable in the sense that, it broke immersion for me. Or willing suspension of disbelief as it's called for narrative I suppose. People have different breaking points and react to different things. But that it breaks WSoD for so many, that's a thing to consider.

All of your examples are of non-sapient species. Thog is sapient.

All of your examples of Thog being clearly evil are about how sadistic he is or how much he likes violence. Which, I've demonstrated, you don't need mental capacity for sapience to be either of those.

That's... an interesting perspective on Calvin. He's like ten times more destructive than any six-year-old I ever knew. I definitely don't see how you can consider his behavior "romanticized" given the sheer amount of destruction he causes. I definitely don't think the level of cruelty you describe, the violence towards animals, etc. is just "normal," regardless of how you feel about your own anecdotes.

He's also a miniature philosopher which is not something six year olds get into.

I wonder why we have such different experiences about young kids. I think "rougher" environments might be a common explanation, but I think it's lacking something because I know kids from well off families also engage in some really WTF behaviours at times (say, hazings and extreme bullying that sometimes happens in private/boarding schools, and you only hear about it when it's taken too far - but these might be older kids? )

And you had to change the example from "a goblin or goblins slaughters an innocent family to prevent them from taking revenge for stealing their food" into the entire decades-long Sapphire Guard-driven conflict between Azure City and goblins to make this point.

Are you saying that the goblin conquest of the Azure City is morally better than a random goblin doing the ol murder and burglary on a random farm?

Cause the goblins killed a lot of innocents there, and those who were not killed were enslaved.

5, actually. Everyone forgets that the Pompey-recruitment series goes on for several strips (because it also includes them kidnapping Julia, thus setting up the whole Cliffport thing). It starts here https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0252.html and there are a few moments suggesting Thog's innately pro-violence rather than just following directions.

Spoiler: snip

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The most obvious is in 252 when Sabine tells Nale they're desperate and need to move their plan along *now* because they're out of ice cream and Thog comments "oh, little ice cream friends. thog delays boredom-driven rampage only for you". Nale looks genuinely shocked and concerned, suggesting he's both aware of what a Thog rampage entails and also that its bad enough to worry a level 10 or 11 character (which Elan is at this point, so Nale probably is as well).

He then kills Larry Gardner (but it’s under orders and no one seems to have a problem with it), but the real punchy part is in 258. Nale says he no longer wants to kill Elan, Nale wants to make him "...suffer in the most exquisitely torturous way possible." Thog, with an evil grin on his face, immediately proposes a torture so severe even Nale is forced to veto it. The point being, Thog wasn't asked to come up with a torture, he did it on his own enthusiastically, and that he instantly had a torture particularly cruel for a bard ready to go suggests he'd been thinking about it. He's perfectly fine with cruelty and pain.

I wanted to include that in the count but I felt it was too redundant.

Not much to comment except that I don't think sadism or love of violence necessarily means an understanding of right from wrong.

If the casual unconsidered beliefs of a god's followers can dictate their hair color, it seems extremely likely that the passionate, willing-to-die-and-kill-for beliefs (particularly those strong enough to have raised him in the first place) could influence TDO.

Seems like the best argument for TDO being Evil is that goblins usually are Evil - ie affecting TDO by projecting their beliefs about right and wrong on him

You're also assuming that the only thing that makes something "evil" is how it fits into the alignment system. We don't have an alignment stat in real life, yet we can still assign concepts to things like good/evil. That's based (IMO) on how actions fit into a moral/ethical construct, and are good or evil based on that. There are a ton of psychological concepts that many people who go to thereapy don't understand, yet the therapist does, and can assign those concepts to their patient, and choose a course of treatment based on them. The person who is exhibiting the behavior doesn't need to rationally understand what or why they are doing things, for the pattern to still exist, and still be measurable, and definable, by someone else who does know such things.

So, we, as third party observers, should be able to look at the pattern of behavior of Thog and say: Yeah. He's antisocial. He's randomly violent. He doesn't seem to care about causing harm to others, nor feel remorse. In our world, we'd label him as a sociopath or some other terminology. But in D&D? We'd call him Choatic Evil. Because that's where that behavior exist in the alignment spectrum.

And, as a couple of people have mentioned, Rich has stated that he's not writing a story about mentally/emotionally deficient/handicapped characters (at least as we might clinically assess them in our own world). The assumption is that even if you have a 3 int, you are intelligent enough to be able to function. The range of INT for characters is assumed to be a range of "normal functional intelligence", all capable of being played as a character in the RPG itself. A truely mentally handicapped person would fall outside that range (which of course, gets tricky when the rules also tries to pin the same INT stat to animals and whatnot, so blame the rules for this).

That same concept applies to Miko. We may assess her as emotionally damaged and/or insane and therefore excuse her actions as some sort of sickness, but again, the assumption is that all characters in this strip are actually mentally capable of making choices, and are emotionally responsible for those choices. Even if they have really low INT stats, or leap to absurd conclusions that we would not. They are responsible for their actions. Once we accept that fact, then assigning alignment to Thog, or status as "fallen paladin" to Miko should cease to be at all controversial.

This cuts to the heart of my complaint and indeed the controversy.

DnD alignment system is too far removed from real people to effectively tell a complex, real life applicable story. There's a few RPG mechanics here and there that make it awkward, but also Rich tends to ignore them when it suits to make his story more complex. If I just accept that this is how alignment and intelligence works in this story, then a lot of that complexity built up in spite of being tied to the system just goes poof.

I think it's a testament to the author's writing ability that people can look at these silly stickfigures bound by game rules for funny jokes, and see them as real people, as real archetypes and proxies of real situations. If I am to look at Thog and Miko as these dnd constructs, character sheets and a bag of dicerolls, yeah sure, no controversy. But then, what is this comic then? But I don't look at it this way and many people don't either. We see them as people. The main reason I'm reading the comic at this point is because I'm emotionally invested in the characters, I need to know how it turns out, how their conflicts resolve, because there seems to be something profound being told about them and life. I don't actually care where everyone falls on the alignment chart, but all attempts to keep them tied to it just suck the depth out of the characters. If we saw Thog or Miko in a fantazy comic that's not dnd related, but is more in line with how we perceive reality to function, no one would have an issue recognizing that these people are not fit to stand trial for the crimes they commit. Kind of how, say, Obi Wan says to Anakin - "I have failed you", we look at the story and characters as they are, we don't try to pinhole them into different boxes of what a jedi must be or what a sith must be, because ultimately, jedi and sith aren't real, but corruption and "light and dark side" are. Because morality, responsibility, cognition, is a lot more complex than a rule system that absolutely was not made for this.

Another, bigger issue - big issue with mental issues is that they are invisible. Rich sweeping the monikers under the rug because that's not a story he is telling is part of the issue. It's a microcosm of the issue, because he assumes that those kinds of people are morally deficient, and people who have a different kind of experience with that kind of thing say, hold on, there's something else going on, but the authority figure just decides to go ahead and use the rules (he constantly breaks to tell more interesting stories) to claim that no, they are just mentally deficient. That's.... not exactly ok. Kinda how the way Dead Poets Society with it's carpe brestum is not ok in hindsight. Maybe no harm was done. I'm not saying Rich is morally deficient. But there is a problem with that kind of portrayal of characters in fiction, because it perpetuates real harmful ideas about people with mental issues just having a moral deficiency.

It's nice to see Roy talk to someone as smart as him.

The way of lawful good is hard and has risks. True neutral is also risky, but they're diffent risks and harder to recognize.

No insult was intended here. The never ending problem with transposing a game's alignment mechanics with how actual people make decisions and judgments rears its ugly head yet again. Looking out after one's own interests is not inherently evil. But it can get there depending on degree, not kind. What I find to be the aforementioned Cracker Jack Box philosophy approach is this flawed reasoning: if one does {this} one is {that alignment}.

If I have to conceptualize DnD alignment, I think "effort" is one way to describe it. The lawful good square is the hardest one to stay in, and evil and chaos are different ways to make things easier.

I also think it takes (or should take) non trivial effort to stay neutral. Neutral is "you do your thing, I do mine", it implies an effort to avoid stepping on someone's toes. I think just outright selfish thing is closer to lawful evil because, you don't really care enough to make sure that your actions aren't reasonably hurting others. You're looking out for number one and if doing so causes someone harm, oh well. You don't care enough to prevent it.

I'd just like to say I am wholly opposed to any argument that leads logically to, "As a paladin, you should not only use Intelligence as your dump stat, but beg the DM to pretend you rolled a 3 if you did not."

The argument isn't that Thog isn't evil. The argument is that Thog isn't intelligent enough to have an alignment. A paladin must have a specific alignment.

On the other hand, it is optimal to make a paladin's sense motive skill really bad when playing with a group of evil characters, so it's more of a wis maybe? "Hey look, that random guy we want to rob is actually an evil villain who is ready to burn down an orphanage! *rolls* 20" "Hmm, I fail my sense motive, I guess I honestly and wholeheartedly believe that"

Either way I'd put a stop to that kind of metagaming with a very hard and emphatic NO

[KorvinStarmast]

If I have to conceptualize DnD alignment, I think "effort" is one way to describe it.

From the players point of view, aspirational. From the DM's point of view, an aggregate or a composite of demonstrated tendencies, trends, and behaviors. How well those match or overlap is where some of the grey area begins.