Drawback of lifting interesting ideas from fiction, they often fail to consider the very different dynamic of shared creative storytelling.
Law and Chaos work for Elric and Amber, because the authors are only trying to tell one story and have full control of their presentation and interactions.
Same with Lord of the Rings leading, in DnD, to having Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit. Although again that was better in earlier editions (if overcomplicated) of DnD where the fighters gained power in the form of having minions.
Edit: Not that you can’t have a game with bizarre metaphysics, it just has implications that DnD never cared to think through and apply clearly and upfront. There are endless arguments about Paladins murdering anything that pings their Detect Evil (among many other psychotic things Paladin players have done), because in-setting it’s a divinely granted sense for cosmic objective badness. But since it’s so dissonant with our real life expectations of behaviour, and not reflected in the setting at all, it leads to all kinds of (often contradictory) contortions by the writers to avoid just admitting that alignment is fucked if you don’t want a setting full of murder-Paladins.
Oh, my character runs (or is loyal to) a byzantine, impenetrable bureaucracy of rules upon rules upon rules that functionally outputs random results.
Lawful/Chaotic Good/Evil/Neutral, depending on what my favorite esoteric legal/religious theory is in regards to the specific issue st play or also possibly some overriding general concept.
Chaotic Good is when you side with the settler-colonial empire committing genocide
Neutral good was always better
No alignment system at all is the best choice
It’s just another political compass that makes no sense and only serves to fuck with actual role-playing
originally back in the day it wasn’t supposed to be morality based, it was faction based.
Drawback of lifting interesting ideas from fiction, they often fail to consider the very different dynamic of shared creative storytelling.
Law and Chaos work for Elric and Amber, because the authors are only trying to tell one story and have full control of their presentation and interactions.
Same with Lord of the Rings leading, in DnD, to having Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit. Although again that was better in earlier editions (if overcomplicated) of DnD where the fighters gained power in the form of having minions.
Edit: Not that you can’t have a game with bizarre metaphysics, it just has implications that DnD never cared to think through and apply clearly and upfront. There are endless arguments about Paladins murdering anything that pings their Detect Evil (among many other psychotic things Paladin players have done), because in-setting it’s a divinely granted sense for cosmic objective badness. But since it’s so dissonant with our real life expectations of behaviour, and not reflected in the setting at all, it leads to all kinds of (often contradictory) contortions by the writers to avoid just admitting that alignment is fucked if you don’t want a setting full of murder-Paladins.
Unironically yes.
Oh, my character runs (or is loyal to) a byzantine, impenetrable bureaucracy of rules upon rules upon rules that functionally outputs random results.
Lawful/Chaotic Good/Evil/Neutral, depending on what my favorite esoteric legal/religious theory is in regards to the specific issue st play or also possibly some overriding general concept.
Agreed