It's been like 40 fucking years and people are STILL arguing over what the bullshit means

Alignments work fine for supernatural creatures; Demons can be defined as Evil, the tentacle god of unpronounceable island might be Chaotic and so on, but using them for humans and similar seems pretty pointless.

>Evil = I'm looking out for me
Wild animals are looking out for themselves and Neutral. Evil should always mean "actively malicious", like Good means "actively benevolent".

Have you ever tried reading what Gary Gygax said about it in Dragon Magazine when, back in the eighties, people started arguing over what the three-fold alignment system meant? He provided clear-cut answers for how D&D alignment works. If you're not satisfied with those definitions, make your own, like post-AD&D versions of the game did. If a post-AD&D version of the game's definitions don't make sense to you, don't use them. It's as simple as that.

I use Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic.

Lawful is being a Cleric because you have a fate that was plotted by the gods, and see omens and shit.

Chaotic is being a demihuman (they're fairies) or a magic-user, and means being touched by magic, which is inherently wrong and from other worlds.

Neutral is being a normal person. None of those alignment embed a particular behavior, allegiance or anything else. They're here for some specific situations and spells purpose, that's it.

I'd say the distinction is that "evil" will preserve itself at the cost of all else.

It's an objective look on behavior based on a global/universal outlook.

So with cannon DnD:
Good would be altruism.
Evil would be selfishness.
Lawful would be obedience.
Chaotic would be defiance.

If you go into other fictions you'll find that GE/LC doesn't quite fit.
Or if it did, the impression would be different.

The problem with that is that gygax's definitions really don't jibe with a lot of people's morality. Particularly his very Deus Vult LG

>Has there even been a concrete way of explaining this to someone?
There's always the manual

Not only have they been defined concretely, the definitions are exhaustive. The so-called "ambiguity" of D&D's alignment systems is not due in any way to answers being hard to find, but rather from people not liking the answers. People make up convoluted ways to try and trip up the alignment system just to be contrariety (see every Good Aligned Necromancer thread ever).

Which isn't a problem since DnD is a setting with objective morality. Cosmic Good isn't supposed to be everyone's "good" (nor 21th century USA good), it's its own thing.

I personally like "Good" being capable of just as much morally horrifying stuff as "Evil".

Very old testament. It runs the risk of being edgelord crap about moral relativism, but mostly I just like the idea of the forces of "Good" and "Evil" being so completely alien to the average person that neither are relatable.

A completely "Good" Solar might annihilate an entire city out of judgement on their collective sins. To the average person that's completely alien, and it makes no difference if it's a "Good" creature or "Evil" creature doing that.

I guess you could describe it as puritanical compared to anarchy.

Chaotic Good are like the vegans and SJWs who spit in your faces. Lawful Good are the Fundamentalists. Neutral Good is like King Solomon. He will totally cut that baby in half.

Just my own personal version of the alignment system. Also the more powerful you are, the stronger the effects of your alignment become. A Lawful Good Paladin at Lvl 1 is a sweet, young man who believes in chivalry and looking after the vulnerable. At Lvl 20 he's fighting a race war to genocide "Evil Races".

I just dislike completely objectively "Good" beings with no real flaws. Boring as fuck.

How is moral relativism edgelord crap? For the main part it's just recognizing that you can have different logics to further societal advances.

>Chaotic Good are like the vegans and SJWs who spit in your faces.
>SJWs
>Chaotic Good
>vegans
>Chaotic Good

What the fuck is Good about them?

>How is moral relativism edgelord crap?
Moral relativism allows the edgelord to do "way Evil" crap and claim it's not evil to his character so you shouldn't have any problem with him eating babies alive and throwing the leftovers at your characters.
"I'm still good, it's all relative, man."

Moral relativism negates morality.
Morality does have objectively Evil and Good ends of the spectrum, but defining them is nearly impossible and the line between good and evil is relative.

Lawful isn't "The rules are there for a reason, they don't need to be broken". It's a set of inviolable codes that characters will follow to the end. While Chaos is basically whatever the fancies they wish to take.

Hence,
Lawful Good = Laws are for the greater good, but there are unjust laws that violate the greater good that I will not follow.
Chaotic Good = I don't give a shit about the rules, I would do anything to make the world better my way.
Lawful Evil = I will murder people in pursuit of my golds, but I will not cause unnecessary harm.
Chaotic Evil = The world doesn't give a fk, so I'll take everything from it.

Goals, not golds.

I think the problem with alignments is that people want to view Law as more "We the People" and less in the sense it was intended. D&D blatantly aped Moorcock's Law/Chaos axis, and it's drifted away from that over the years.

It's a good explaination, but even in this doctrine it's hard to unify good and evil. Let's say you raise kids and your alignment is good. Would it mean you should spoil them or would it mean you should deny them everything to make them hardened for hardship of life?

Lots of shit we could call evil is done to people for their own good as seen by doer.

...

...

>Would it mean you should spoil them or would it mean you should deny them everything to make them hardened for hardship of life?
IMO, if their motives are good, they are good, even if they are misguided.

>Lots of shit we could call evil is done to people for their own good as seen by doer.
On the one hand, there is Gul Dukat, who believe's he did nothing wrong, despite being a genocidal narcissist.

On the other hand, there is the story of a mother who sat her baby son down took his favorite, most beloved stuffed animal, and forced him to watch it burn in the fireplace.
She did it because the child was wild, willful, and refused to listen to her, even when she trying to keep him from climb in my into fire.
She just wanted to teach her child that fire was bad and can hurt you.

>It's time to put this shit to rest and finally come up with sensible definitions of what this all means.
The reason why people argue is not because they can't come up with sensible definitions: but because the system resists sensible explanation: it's inherently and profoundly counterintuitive and illogical. It's a system that does not actually appropriately fits any sensible moral intuitions and knowledge that we have.

It's a completely arbitrary system that can work on it's own, but not if you try to apply it to any real-world sensibilities. The moment you do that, the system will fall apart. Each person trying to somehow maintain the model will have to introduce their own interpretation and spin on it in order to better fit it to real-world intuition - and each person will do it differently. That is why you will never have an unanimous agreement on what these categories mean. There will never be a satisfying real world equivalent to any of these: each time you try to push some, somebody will be able an example where it falls apart or contradict itself.

>It's a system that does not actually appropriately fits any sensible moral intuitions and knowledge that we have.

This is 100% not the case.

>Good: Help people who need help
>Neutral: Help your friends and family
>Evil: Help only yourself.

Ta-da~!

Seriously, do none of you read comics? With great power comes great responsibility. Those with the ability to do good have a moral obligation to do good. When you have the power to do good, but you don't, and then bad things happen, that's on you.

So basically everyone is good. Very few who choose to not care about anyone can be considered evil, but that doesn't even necessary translate into doing more harm or any harm at all.

If everyone is good, nobody is, so what's the point?

Nazis wanted to help others not being eslaved by International Jewry
Communists wanted to help others get rid of old oppressive world by killing everyone
ISIS wants to help others embrace one true faith
Yankees want to help others toward freedom by bombing them to stone age and destroying their societies

What good (lol puns) does a system that puts them all on the same side is?

Define what it means to help. What actions are justifiable and under which conditions. Remember, these definitions need to be sharp. And then: even better yet, try to fit those definitions to lawful, neutral and chaotic categories.

Don't get me wrong, I'm actually not a complete moral relativist. I do, for an instance, believe in absolute evil (though I definitely DON'T believe in any form of absolution in good). But no matter what definitions will provide, you will run into a BRICKWALL of special cases, complex perspectives, arguments to be made.
This is not a model that is sufficient in real world. In a world where good and evil might be cosmological constants, divine rules - yeah. That might work - at least the good-evil axis. But the dividing line - the criteria for your cosmological differences between good and evil will be arbitrary. And you have to have an audience that embraces that. The moment somebody will come and start to compare it to pragmatic, real world sensibilities, it will fall apart again - and quick.

>Don't get me wrong, I'm actually not a complete moral relativist.
Why not? I don't say it like you should tolerate everything or something, but I think worldview that doesn't account for people defining desirable in different way is in any way adequate. If you have any trace of absolute, you won't really be able to understand why others do things.

I've already seen this entire thread, word for word, including the images and the replies.
Stop making me experience dejavu, for fuck's sake.

>Why not?
Because I believe there are patterns of behavior (and accompanying mental states) that are fundamentally anti-social and disadvantageous in every society and every condition in the world.
I believe that morality is an utilitarian tool, a normative system existing to moderate human conduct within social world. They are in a sense evolutionary - in that every society needs to regulate their behavior in some way. It is also worth realizing that there could be a multiplicity of different (but equally as viable) societal organizations. That leads to the fact that moral codes might differ from social circle to circle without it being clear which one should be preferred. Also our tools of measuring how "beneficial" a certain pattern of behavior (e.g. moral model) will be inherently limited.
But sometimes, there are actions that really cannot be deemed beneficial and desirable in ANY society. There are true social pathologies appearing from time to time.

I'm not a relativist because I'm an evolutionary utilitarian. I don't see absolute, just function and lack of there-off.

Just use 4e's alignment.

>LG: You follow the rules and are generally a good person.
>G: You value the safety and well being of others over your own but not to a point of martyrdom.
>E: You value your own safety and well being over others and you won't hesitate to use anything to your advantage.
>CE: You do whatever you feel like with no regards to anything else and you don't work well with others.
>UA: You don't have a personal stake in the grand scheme of things and are happy just doing what you want.

No overlap, no open-endedness, no fuss, no muss.

Yeah, when I said that if your motives are good, you are good, that came out too simple.
Most people think they are good, but often their motives are diluted by things like seeking approval, fear, anger, and whatever else.
If your goal, intent, and all your motives are for the good of all concerned, then you are still good, even if your actions had evil results.
Man, that's a shitty bumper sticker.

I miss the times when it was just Law and Chaos, and both would gladly fuck you over if given the chance.

No fun, either.

>Nazis wanted to help others not being eslaved by International Jewry

Except that they wanted more than that. Like to kill all Slavs, Romani, disabled people; get revenge on France despite the war being more Germany's fault than France's anyway; invaded sovereign countries that were not a threat to it like Denmark and Czechoslovakia; etc., etc. From any D&D standpoint the Nazis are clearly evil regardless of what you think of the Jews.

>Communists wanted to help others get rid of old oppressive world by killing everyone
>by killing everyone

Operative word there.

>What good (lol puns) does a system that puts them all on the same side is?

They're not all on the same side, though, and it's morally childish to assume that they are.

>What actions are justifiable and under which conditions.

I don't have to, Wizards of the Coast already did: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Exalted_Deeds

Literally the first twenty or so pages are devoted to defining what "good" means in D&D. Except for "casting good spells", for obvious reasons, none of it seems nonsensical when applied to the real world.

> you will run into a BRICKWALL of special cases, complex perspectives, arguments to be made.

There is never a brick wall, there is only an incomplete understanding, or deliberate misunderstanding, of the situation, i.e., user up there trying to say "the Nazis just wanted to help people, so obviously it's Good to help the Nazis".

>Real world sensibilities

That's just the phrase we use when we don't want to say "I want to do the right thing, but it's too hard/too expensive/I just don't feel like it."

But that's what we're really saying.

Actions dictate alignment, not the other way around

This, except in the case of Modrons, Slaadi, Celestials, and Fiends, since they are literally composed out of their respective alignments and so actually do have their alignments dictate their actions. But mortals aren't baatezu or pentadrones, so instead for us it's the other way around.

>Chaotic
Values freedom more than order

>Lawful
Values order more than freedom

>Evil
Is selfish

>Good
Is selfless

That's really all there is to it.

I like reading sensible posts like this on Veeky Forums every so often.

/thread

This. The sort of hate they have for people who don't think like they do definitely does not fall under the spectrum of "good."

>Operative word there.
Are you implying that killing someone is actually never justified? Or that killing an individual might, but a larger group is always, under all circumstances unjustified.

>I don't have to, Wizards of the Coast already did: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Exalted_Deeds
A guideline for lore that you don't have to make a part of your world (and most people don't, as they transplant the rulesets into their own homebrew settings). Yet - the rulesets still take the aligment system into account quite a lot.

>for obvious reasons, none of it seems nonsensical when applied to the real world.
Considering that we have not yet developed a moral system that would not actually hit a point where it breaks when applied to real world, I strongly doubt that. I have not read the damn things, but I doubt they figured and solved ethical dilemmas the entirety of last few thousand years of ethics failed to solve.

>There is never a brick wall, there is only an incomplete understanding, or deliberate misunderstanding, of the situation, i.e.
I'd really fucking want to hear the your damn moral theories at this point, because my fucking god that is an ambitious statement. You must be the fucking Kant of 21st century.

>That's just the phrase we use when we don't want to say "I want to do the right thing, but it's too hard/too expensive/I just don't feel like it."
Ahahahaha, see fucking above.

Not him, but I agree with him.
And considering that you can't tell the difference between "killing" and "killing everyone" and are actively defending deliberate misunderstandings makes me doubt you can be reasoned with.

Most moral and ethical questions I've seen either have clear answers to an individual or are designed to have no answer.

>Not him, but I agree with him.
You are an idiot then, especially if you agree with someone but can't put together a fucking argument to save your life.
Also, I do know the difference between "killing" and "killing everyone." Except the post HE quoted quite clearly meant "everyone who opposes the change they believe is vital for removing main source of suffering in the world". Basic reading comprehension tells you there was a word lost, not an actual claim that communism wanted to literally erradicate human kind.
But then again, what do I expect from you seriously thinks:
>Most moral and ethical questions I've seen either have clear answers to an individual or are designed to have no answer.
You have never faced or encountered an ethical problem, or you are an absolute fucking idiot, blissfully unaware of almost the entire fucking world around him.
Strange, really, that ethics are and continue to be the greatest difficulty and greatest source of disagreement and grief in the world, if everything is so simple.
God fucking damn you are a retard, that is hard to believe. What the fuck are you even doing in this debate?

>Are you implying that killing someone is actually never justified?

I'm saying that taking the life of a free-willed being is almost never Good, but it isn't necessarily Evil, either, depending on the circumstances. Alignment is innately complex, which means that blanket generalizations will necessarily fail. That does not mean, however, that Alignment itself is a failure. Alignment was never intended to handle blanket statements, but I find that when scrutiny is applied to it - you put it in a specific situation - then it always holds up.

>Considering that we have not yet developed a moral system that would not actually hit a point where it breaks when applied to real world, I strongly doubt that

Sorry, that's my bad, I was unclear. I meant "casting a Good spell being innately Good doesn't apply to the real world, for obvious reasons" (i.e., no spellcasting in the real world), and then the rest of the sentence continues.

>but I doubt they figured and solved ethical dilemmas the entirety of last few thousand years of ethics failed to solve.

Most ethical dilemmas aren't actually dilemmas to those actually possessed of ethics coupled with logic and understanding.

Take the classic train scenario. A train is running on a track and is about to run over five people. You're next to a switch and can make the train switch tracks, but if you do it'll run over one person.

The supposed "dilemma" is trying to figure out if killing one person to save five people is Good. But the truth of the matter is that it's a fundamentally flawed question because there IS no Good option here: the lesser of two evils is still, by definition, Evil. By running over one person instead of five you're still committing an Evil act, but you are at the least mitigating the overall Evil that is being done.

The Good thing to do in that situation is to find out what went wrong and fix it, while trying to make amends to the friends and family of the person who you jut got run over.

I don't know what's so hard about that. Once you've defined what the two axes are, it shouldn't be difficult to see where a character falls on it.

>Take the classic train scenario.
No. I don't mean fucking thought experiments. I mean REAL moral questions? Like judging a man in equatorial Africa when he chooses to marry his daughter as soon as possible and thus denying her education. Or living in a communist regime and deciding whenever you join the party or not. Choosing whenever you protect an endangered ecological system at the expense of contributing to the poverty of locals. Or whenever you should or should not allow for gay marriage. ACTUAL, real, complex moral dilemmas. And you can't always go and see where the root of the problem is. The root of the problem, more often than not, is beyond anyone's control. We live in harsh world.
Even with the fucking trolley, if you are standing there, and the trolley is on the move: what IS THE RIGHT DECISION. Or do you say that it does not matter what you do? And does that apply to all of the problems mentioned above?
Seriously, it's like you idiots don't have the faintest fucking clue what an actual moral dilemma is.

I recently made the rogue in my group change his alignment, so I had to explain the alignments to my players. This is how I did it.

>imagine three roommates are walking down the street.
>one good, one evil, one neutral
>they round the corner, and realize that their apartment is on fire
>the neutral character thinks "Oh shit! All my stuff is in there!"
>the good character thinks "Oh shit! There's still people inside!"
>the evil character thinks "OH SHIT. I haven't finished setting up the insurance fraud!"

From there, the chaotic-lawful axis is based off of how you accomplish things. So a lawful good character would immediately call the Proper Authorities, while a chaotic good character might rush into the house immediately to help get people out.

of course I look at alignments as more of a roleplaying tool than anything else

Did somebody say classic train scenario?

...

>Like judging a man in equatorial Africa when he chooses to marry his daughter as soon as possible and thus denying her education

Without knowing anything more about the situation, that action is Neutral. The father is most certainly motivated by concern for his daughter's well-being, within his own personal understanding of it, but at the same time is probably not taking the daughter's own wants into account.

Education is nice, but it's not Good in a moral sense.

>Or living in a communist regime and deciding whenever you join the party or not.

Again, without knowing more about the specifics of the situation, joining or not joining is Neutral.

>Choosing whenever you protect an endangered ecological system at the expense of contributing to the poverty of locals.

None of these provide enough information. This is, again, probably Neutral, but I'm actually leaning a bit Evil here. Sapient life is more important than nonsapient life. A lion who kills an elephant to eat isn't Evil despite elephants being endangered, he's just hungry. A corporation exploiting an endangered ecosystem in order to bring jobs and quality of life to an impoverished people is essentially the same thing. However it should be obvious that care should be given to maintain the ecosystem as much as possible.

>Or whenever you should or should not allow for gay marriage

Freedom is the right of all sapient beings. Allowing is Good. Denying is at most Neutral (for those who are simply following the strictures of their faith) or outright Evil (for those who simply use the strictures of their faith as a cover for their own personal distaste).

>And you can't always go and see where the root of the problem is

No, but you CAN always try. Just because the world is harsh doesn't mean we must judge it harshly.

>what IS THE RIGHT DECISION

Dude, I just explained that. There is no "right" decision, there is simply a less wrong one.

Don't pull the lever at all: it is 100% certain that 5 people die but 10 people live. If you pull the lever, then maybe only 1 person dies and 14 live, but there's an equal chance that 9 people die and only 6 people live.

But again, this only creates a scenario where there is a Least Evil option, not a Good option. The Good option is figuring out who this supervillain is that keeps setting up all these scenarios is and putting a stop to him.

In this scenario we don't know if the lever switches the track to A or B, but we certainly know that at the moment the train is going to track C, and the presence of the lever near the tracks strongly suggests that it is somehow involved in the operation of the track. Therefore, you should pull the lever.

It is always better to be asked "why didn't you stay out of it" then it is to be asked "where were you when you were needed?"

>this is a sound guide to global economic policy

No, it isn't, it's a sound guide to there being a supervillain on the loose who needs to be stopped from tying people up and leaving them near poorly labeled train tracks.

You know what, I give up. You are kinda right. I mean: none of what you had said has anything to do with morals. You clearly don't understand what those are. But you are right: it fits the categories in Dn'D. They are meaningless, have no fucking relation to real morals, but they are absurd, vapid, empty, meaningless, so you can actually apply them where ever you want.

You still don't understand understand what morals and problems relating to them actually are, but it was my mistake to assume they were the subject of this debate. I'm sorry about that, I'll leave you alone.

>You still don't understand understand what morals and problems relating to them actually are

No, the issue is that you are striving to come up with scenarios that cannot be easily labeled as Good or Evil, while forgetting that there exists the third option of Neutral. This, too, is a cause of a lot of problems in alignment debates.

You're talking about the "real world" but keep giving me hypotheticals involving no real people. How about *actual* real world scenarios?

When Osama bin-Ladin orchestrated 9/11, that was clearly Evil, since it fundamentally represented an attack on thousands of civilians who'd never even heard of him and weren't a threat to him.

When I took in my cat literally off the street (or rather, he ran inside my house and I decided to keep him), that was Good, because I am now giving food and shelter to a being that otherwise might not have had either, giving up my own time and money to supporting a being I'd never known before.

careful you don't burst a blood vessel from all that rage from having your argument so thoroughly dismantled user
P.S. Try actually bothering reading book of exalted deeds (you said in one of your first few posts you didn't) might do you some good c:

In fact, hang on, let's see if a PDF of it will fit...

>No, the issue is that you are striving to come up with scenarios that cannot be easily labeled as Good or Evil, while forgetting that there exists the third option of Neutral.
Except that is not how actual morality works. Because morality is, in the end, an act. And it all of those cases, you actually don't have a neutral option: you are forced to make one, or the another. The one that you ultimately decide needs to be taken is the one that you deem right.
As I've said, it was actually stupid of me to conflate alignments and morality. They share superficial terminology, but nothing else. I assume that I'm not the first one to make this mistake, perhaps people making the same mistake are the reason why there is so much grief on the subject.

>You're talking about the "real world" but keep giving me hypotheticals involving no real people. How about *actual* real world scenarios?
I chose options where no amount of info would ever help. That was a very deliberate choice. But again: I expected (and again, I'm not being ironic, this was my mistake) a reply of a moral judgement, not an alignment label. I actually haven't thought of the two as separate things. It actually does make (some) degree of sense when I think about it now.
I still don't have the faintest clue what alignments are good for, but that is not really a problem of anybody else.

What I did actually say was that I was wrong there. My judgement of alignments and how they work was wrong, from the start.
In my defense, you continued to the word "morals" as if in real world ethics too, so I did not figure sooner.
But ultimately I did fail to make appropriate research and wasted your time. Well, the other guy's time.

Sweet, it did! Now everyone can read the Book and no one has excuses anymore.

According to the Book of Exalted Deeds, Good is:

>Helping others - within the limits of one's personal ability to do so (a level 1 character isn't expected to fight an Elder Red Dragon. He IS expected to set about finding a way to do so, however)
>Being charitable - giving food to the hungry, clothes to the naked, lodging to the homeless, care for orphans and widows, and hope for the hopeless.
>Offering healing - curing wounds, removing disease, neutralizing poison.
>Personal sacrifice - being good all the time, not simply when it is convenient.
>Worshipping good deities - obviously a bit murkier in the real world.
>Casting good spells - again, kind of hard in the real world.
>Mercy - offer mercy and accept surrender no matter how many times you've been betrayed. Don't necessarily forgive, but don't be cruel or heartless, either. Maybe this time...
>Forgiveness - have a willingness to believe that even the vilest evildoer is capable of change. Don't necessarily "forgive and forget", but be willing to abdicate one's right to vengeance.
>Bringing hope - rekindle the light and show people the way to good. Don't just do good - inspire others to good as well.
>Redeem evil - perhaps the greatest act of good of them all.

>you are forced to make one, or the another.

Life is rarely so blatantly binary. Also speaking from personal experience I know I have done what is "necessary" without that thing being "right" in the past.

>I chose options where no amount of info would ever help

There is no such thing. Almost every action starts as innately Neutral and then becomes Good or Evil or remains Neutral as qualifiers are added to it.

>a reply of a moral judgement, not an alignment label

They're one in the same, or at least I've never seen a dichotomy. Perhaps you should post a scenario of your own and then pass your own moral judgement on it so I can see what you mean, however.

>unironically holding up the BoED as an example of what it means to have a good alignment
According to the BoED, good aligned people never have bad days, bad habits, personal drama or anything else that ever makes them a little bit out of character. The BoED also says that if you wouldn't rip your own fucking legs off to save someone you hate from the pain of stubbing their toe, you're not good aligned. Basically, by BoED rules you can't call yourself good aligned unless you act like a literal saint (which they have a template for, if you were curious).

>When Osama bin-Ladin orchestrated 9/11, that was clearly Evil, since it fundamentally represented an attack on thousands of civilians who'd never even heard of him and weren't a threat to him.
But for Osama, he was a paladin of good (Assuming he drinks his own cool-aid) fighting evil enemies of his god (Evil just for being enemies)

And there's some question on how responsible people are for leaders they elect and choose to follow.

>You are an idiot then, especially if you agree with someone but can't put together a fucking argument to save your life
Odd statement in a post full of insults and nearly devoid of argument.
I suspect my earlier assessment was correct, and you can't be reasoned with but I will attempt anyway.

>Strange, really, that ethics are and continue to be the greatest difficulty and greatest source of disagreement and grief in the world, if everything is so simple.
This spouting of hyperbolic sarcasm is the closest you get to making an argument, so I'll work with that.
First, you assume that *is* "the greatest difficulty and greatest source of disagreement and grief in the world", but let's say it is.
The question is, if everything is so simple, why don't people do it?
Because life is hard already and doing the right thing is often harder.
Because not everyone has the ability or opportunity to consider alternatives.
Because some people will always choose evil.

>But why do people still ask these questions, if it's so simple?
Some like to argue.
Some like their fixed view and lash out against any other.
Some are too weak to admit truth when it is shown to them.

Any further addressing of the topic would require specific examples.
I will see if you posted any admidst your insults to other anons.

>Life is rarely so blatantly binary.
Actually, you either send your daughter to school, or you don't. You either join the party, or you don't. You either chose to protect the ecosystem, or you don't. In fact, in all cases: there is one action that you take, and it does not matter how many others that you don't. In the end, you ALWAYS have to make a decision, and everything else is what you deemed wrong.
Morality is binary, in a sense. It's a prefered behavioral pattern. It's what you do vs. what you don't do.

>There is no such thing. Almost every action starts as innately Neutral and then becomes Good or Evil or remains Neutral as qualifiers are added to it.
OK, let me make this completely clear: you are right. As far as Dn'D alignments are concerned, you are right and I was wrong: you countered all my examples, you won.
Except those have literally nothing to do with morality. Actual morality, which people like me constantly tend to drag into this whole discussion. And I genuinely regret that I did that, it was misplaced. I was too eager to prove my superior knowledge of ethics that I forced it into a debate which really is about a formal, arbitrary model invented for a purpose of a table top RPG and that was really fucking stupid of me. And there is no irony hidden in any of that: I was stupid and presumptuous and I feel like a completely genuine idiot for most of what I had said here.

I just do hope that you too understand where I made the actual mistake. That you don't conflate the Dn'D alignment with actual morality like I did.
Because you do have answers to all my examples and arguments as far as the Dn'D model is.
I do hope you don't actually think you have answers to those problems in reality.

But that is I guess not the main subject matter of this thread.

I'm actually genuinely sorry. About that post and other things I've said.

>But for Osama, he was a paladin of good (Assuming he drinks his own cool-aid) fighting evil enemies of his god (Evil just for being enemies)

Sure, but that's because the real world doesn't have Detect Alignment spells. Those spells don't work in Ravenloft either, but there's still Good and Evil there.

The question isn't whether or not Osama bin Ladin's actions were subjectively good or evil to him, the question is whether or not D&D's own interpretation of morality will function in the real world. To my eyes, it does.

>According to the BoED, good aligned people never have bad days, bad habits, personal drama or anything else that ever makes them a little bit out of character.

Book of Exalted Deeds is specifically trying to define rules for exemplars of Good: Mister Rogers meets Optimus Prime. It's not defining EVERY good character, but rather a specific Good archetype.

As the Book itself says, not everyone who is Good is necessary Exalted. A Good person should try to match up to the ideals of the Book of Exalted Deeds, but they don't have to succeed 100% of the time and can still be considered Good even when they fail, as long as they don't make a habit of it.

>Actually, you either send your daughter to school, or you don't.

Yes, but the question isn't really whether you send your daughter to school or not, the question is whether it is moral to deny your daughter an education.

Also what *kind* of school might you be sending her to? Or, what kind of man is her husband? Are there better husbands?

Why can't she both go to school and get married, or be home-schooled or tutored while raising kids?

>The Book of Exalted Deeds is for players who aren’t satisfied by slapping a good alignment label on their character and then acting no different from the neutral characters in the party. This book is all about how to make a good alignment mean something, and how to live up to the ideals implied in that alignment.
>source: third fucking paragraph in the introduction of BoED
>hurrrrr it's only about the exemplars of good
Yeah, I'm calling bullshit.

>Yes, but the question isn't really whether you send your daughter to school or not, the question is whether it is moral to deny your daughter an education.
It isn't. Next question.

>the question is whether it is moral to deny your daughter an education.
The bloody question. You either deny it, or you don't. I don't see how that changes anything.

>Also what *kind* of school might you be sending her to?
You don't know. You probably haven't been in any in your life.
>Or, what kind of man is her husband?
The one that you can secure. If there is multiple to chose from, the richest one, or the one with best recommendations from other families.

>Why can't she both go to school and get married, or be home-schooled or tutored while raising kids?
Because nobody is going to marry a girl only to let her go to school. And where the fuck would you get money for home tutoring? If you had that kind of money, you would not be asking whenever you should marry her as soon as possible. And why would you waste money on something that is going to be useless? You don't even know what education is really for. And you can't know. It's a nebulous thing some people who hold authorities keep telling is somehow good... but what do you know?

What is the right decision?

>It isn't. Next question.

What if the only school is simply a poorly-disguised indoctrination house where they teach fiction as fact and wrong as right? Suppose that the husband you are marrying her off to, then, is the son of a close friend of yours, and all three of you know that the school only teaches bullshit, and so you have decided to marry her off because a) that will get her a husband to provide for her (as per the tenets of your culture) and b) she won't have to attend the indoctrination "school" by those same tenets and so actually has a marginally better chance at becoming her own woman if she *doesn't* go to school?

In that case, not sending her to school and instead marrying her off as early as possible is probably better.

Although best of all would probably be trying to find some way to free or flee the country.

This is why the alignment system is shit: because you're all too god damn stupid. Being selfish isn't evil.

>What if the only school is simply a poorly-disguised indoctrination house where they teach fiction as fact and wrong as right?
It isn't, I checked for that. Even if it were I'd catch on pretty quickly and pull her out before any serious damage was done.

Next question.

>In the end, you ALWAYS have to make a decision,
True.
>and everything else is what you deemed wrong.
False.
Sometimes what you choose was also wrong.
And sometimes there are more than one right answer.
Morality is a spectrum of right and wrong.

>Morality is binary, in a sense. It's a prefered behavioral pattern. It's what you do vs. what you don't do.
This is where you are wrong.
Morality is not binary.
Choices are binary.
Morality is analog as hell.

Here's a question: Is it wrong to steal a loaf of bread to feed your starving family?
The answer is yes it is wrong.
It is also wrong to let your family starve because you don't want to be wrong.
Sometimes in life there are no right choices only, like user said, less wrong choices.
Making a choice doesn't make it the good choice just the one you ended up making.

>If you had that kind of money, you would not be asking whenever you should marry her as soon as possible.

You'd be surprised at the number of women in history who have been able to educate themselves simply by reading their husband's or father's (or both's) library.

>Being selfish isn't evil
But being TOO selfish is.

Hey dipshit, try using some fucking paragraphs.

>I'm actually genuinely sorry. About that post and other things I've said.
Apology accepted.
Party on.

It is in D&D. Good and Evil basically boil down to altruism verses selfishness.

>It isn't, I checked for that. Even if it were I'd catch on pretty quickly and pull her out before any serious damage was done.

Then you're right, denying her an education in that situation would probably be Evil, based on all the information available to us at the moment.

>It is also wrong to let your family starve because you don't want to be wrong.

Pic semi-related.

I was one of those ano na and I don't because I get shit for Walls Of Text.
Once again, there are no good choices.

>I still don't have the faintest clue what alignments are good for
Optional characterization shorthand and traits for D&D planar creatures.
That is it.

>Sometimes what you choose was also wrong.
Morality is the criteria on which you decide what is the best course of action.
When you don't have access to "enough" information, you are not morally off the hook. You will have to make a choice. On the minimum to none information you'll have.

>Morality is a spectrum of right and wrong.
Then tell me which decision falls onto what part of the spectrum.

>Choices are binary.
If a morality is a criterion on which you make decision, then the decision will make that analog collapse into a single position.

>It is also wrong to let your family starve because you don't want to be wrong.

>Sometimes in life there are no right choices only, like user said, less wrong choices.
Which is why we delegate that shit. To a third person. Usually represented through law.
But the law will have to make a call. A single one. Decide, ultimately, where your own reason failed: "it was right." or "it was wrong".
And if you don't want your society to start falling apart, you better make sure the system is consistent in it's decision making.

>who have been able to educate themselves simply by reading their husband's or father's (or both's) library.
Guys who have books have all either jobs for the government and therefor don't marry 12 years old girls, or they had fled the country. The husband is probably going to be as illiterate as she will be. And even if he can read, and has books, he is not going to want her to read.

Just ditch the stupid shit already. It's unnecessary and adds nothing to the game. The heroes of the Iliad and the Odyssey didn't need it, neither did Conan, nor Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, why the fuck should you?

>If a morality is a criterion on which you make decision, then the decision will make that analog collapse into a single position.
>And if you don't want your society to start falling apart, you better make sure the system is consistent in it's decision making.

Oh my God you are Javert.

>Morality is the criteria on which you decide what is the best course of action.

You're conflating "best" with "good". The best choice is not necessarily the right choice, simply the most viable one. If forced to choose between killing 1 person or killing 5, I'll kill one. That's the "best" choice of the options available. It is not a "good" choice, however.

You don't seem to actually understand "morality". Coming at this from a Christian perspective doesn't change the situation from the D&D perspective: killing 1 person instead of 5 still means that you've broken a Commandment passed down by God and codified by Jesus and reinforced by years of going to the Church. You've still Sinned and must seek forgiveness, the choice you made was still an Evil one.

>The husband is probably going to be as illiterate as she will be. And even if he can read, and has books, he is not going to want her to read.

Okay, so now that I know about your hypothetical husband, tell me about your hypothetical school.

This is the one true alignment chart.

>Morality is the criteria on which you decide what is the best course of action.
>When you don't have access to "enough" information, you are not morally off the hook. You will have to make a choice. On the minimum to none information you'll have.
That is a fine comment, but not a refutation.

>Then tell me which decision falls onto what part of the spectrum.
Specific parameters need to be declared before that can happen, a great many of them.

>If a morality is a criterion on which you make decision, then the decision will make that analog collapse into a single position.
No, it won't.

>Which is why we delegate that shit. To a third person. Usually represented through law.
So, when life presents us with a choice with no right answer, the solution is to get someone else to answer it?
To do our thinking for us because it got too hard?
But what if they don't find the right answer either?
Do they call someone else who can tell us all how to make life fair and have all situations have a good choice?
sometimes life presents you with no good choice. The end.

>But the law will have to make a call. A single one. Decide, ultimately, where your own reason failed: "it was right." or "it was wrong".
Sometimes reason doesn't fail. Sometimes life just sucks and you have to make a bad choice.

Good: a good person. He does good things. He may do bad things, but he genrally treats people well. He wants to help people, because he enjoys it.

Neutral: someone who doesn't generally care about others. He does good things and bad things, but does not generally act maliciously towards others. He will help others if it is no great cost to him, and he has no want to hurt others.

Evil: a bad person. He generally does not like others, and is actively malicious. He wants to hurt people, because he enjoys hurting them.

Lawful: this person is idealistic. He believes in some cause or code, and holds it in the highest esteem.

Chaotic: this person is a shitty player, and should be ejected from your group.

>Oh my God you are Javert.
Not really, this is principle of morality that I think every ethical model assumes.
But let's back up a little: let me propose a definition:
A morality is a set of judgments on which you attribute priority to actions for prescriptive purpose. E.g. it's a judgment about what you should do if you find yourself in a situation with multiple conflicting options.
Would you agree on that?

>The best choice is not necessarily the right choice, simply the most viable one.
Since morality is inherently evaluative: this statement does not make any sense. You might argue that at times, there are other criteria compelling you to do something than the moral perspective, but that's kinda a different problem.

>If forced to choose between killing 1 person or killing 5, I'll kill one.
Since morality is prescribing you what you should do: I don't see there any difference. Of course it would be "best" if nobody died, but morality concerns judgments on human actions, not hypothetical what-if scenarios. I believe that morally, choosing one is the right option.

Morality does not go from great to terrible, it goes wrong right to wrong.

>Coming at this from a Christian perspective
Yeah - THIS is not a good direction to argue in. In this particular case, Christianity has no actual right or authority to decide.
But OK: you still forget that you do have multiple options: you can also not kill. Which is actually the only RIGHT decision, morally speaking.
If you can't prevent at least one person dying, but you can decide how many people die: then killing ONE is the RIGHT choice.
It still goes down to: chose ONE of the many options possible: and argue this is how it should be done - in the future, too.

>tell me about your hypothetical school.
They'll teach her to write and read. She'll be there for most of her time, which means she won't help with work. There is no telling if she'll get a better job or not in the future.

...

>Lawful: this person is idealistic. He believes in some cause or code, and holds it in the highest esteem.
>Chaotic: this person is a shitty player, and should be ejected from your group.

[Modron detected]

>That is a fine comment, but not a refutation.
Because there is nothing to refute, I'm stating axiomas.

>Specific parameters need to be declared before that can happen, a great many of them.
What parameters. I've already told you, you won't have more information available. Her parents won't, at least.

>No, it won't.
Are you arguing that if you have multiple options contradicting each other, you won't be forced to take one in the end?

>So, when life presents us with a choice with no right answer, the solution is to get someone else to answer it?
It's the most efficient one.

>But what if they don't find the right answer either?
They will chose one and decide it's the right one. It's their job and their right to do so. Their literal raison d'être. The purpose of a judge, an arbiter.

>sometimes life presents you with no good choice. The end.
Maybe not "good", but usually with "right". Again: that is why when we can't decide ourselves, we refer to a higher authority.

>Sometimes life just sucks and you have to make a bad choice.
If you come to the conclusion you have to take that action, even if you know you'll hate the outcome, as long as you have a justification that says "this is what should, must, needs to be done" it's a moral decision, ruling that option as the right one."

So on the one hand we have an illiterate husband who won't let his wife learn to read or write, and on the other hand we have a school that will teach the young woman to read and write.

Based on the information available, the school is the Good choice.

>I believe that morally, choosing one is the right option.

Calling any option that involves killing an otherwise innocent person "right" is sociopathic at best.

>A morality is a set of judgments on which you attribute priority to actions for prescriptive purpose

I take it back, you're not Javert. YOU'RE A FUCKING MODRON. Which should have been obvious by you trying to boil everything down to simple binary choices, but I held out some hope.

If you've ever been curious, your personal Alignment is Lawful Neutral.

>you still forget that you do have multiple options

When confronted with a hypothetical moral question, I do not generally try and short-circuit it for shits n' giggles but try to answer it honestly within the bounds of the question. Of COURSE the best option is not to kill at all, but the hypothetical question is obviously framed as such that I MUST kill.

Thinking outside the box is incredibly useful in real-life but just needlessly argumentative when faced with moral conundrums - not to mention just outright dodging the question.

Turns out I'm quite true neutral.

>So on the one hand we have an illiterate husband who won't let his wife learn to read or write, and on the other hand we have a school that will teach the young woman to read and write.
Yeah. Except your family will be ruined, she has little outlooks on finding a job, and nobody will want to marry her. Which means she might die of hunger, and you won't be able to secure vital support of a affinite kin, which means that you and your other five kids might die of hunger too.
Marrying off means material security for her, and improved odds for you and the rest of your family. Hopefully.
They might also screw you over and make her life miserable while not giving you a penny.

She might be able to make better, more informed decisions with education. Except there is no guarantee that she'll ever have an option to actually employing those. Also, she might just leave, taking all the money you invested into her away, leaving your whole family poorer, and two hands shorter. Meaning the other two sisters might not live long enough to get married off at all.

Or maybe not and she'll get a profitable office job like those nice mission men claim. The fuck you know?
That is the fun thing.
You still have to make a decision.

>Calling any option that involves killing an otherwise innocent person "right" is sociopathic at best.
I actually miss-read that (thought we are still at the cart-like scenario), typed one reply, then realized my mistake, typed a new reply, but failed to erase that line.
The next paragraph is the actual answer I intend to give.

>but the hypothetical question is obviously framed as such that I MUST kill.
Wait: WHAT?
You have or you don't have agency. You are not sociopathical if you DON'T HAVE AN OPTION NOT TO KILL. You are not morally responsible if you can't NOT kill. You are morally responcible if you can't prevent one kill, but allow two more you could have prevented. That is fucking obvious.

>I take it back, you're not Javert. YOU'RE A FUCKING MODRON.
Wait, I skipped that line.
The fuck? Might giving me an actual response why the most overwhelmingly accepted definition of morality, both intuitively and academically, is wrong?
THE FUCK did you actually thought morality was? Seriously, you are kinda blowing my fucking mind here: I'm absolutely STALKED to hear what the fuck you thought morality is?

>If you've ever been curious, your personal Alignment is Lawful Neutral.
Alignments are quite literally completely meaningless concepts with no relevance to reality, so that hardly interests me.