What are your thoughts on D&D alignment and objective morality in games?

>good
>evil
>right
>wrong

>Alignment: I contain multitudes

>Having no basis of morality
Like living like an animal, eh?

...

Objective morality is pointless and shit.

I like the D:tD way though, where you have a god/religion and a degree to which you align with those ideals.

Stirner was basically the 19th century philosopher equivalent of an edgy tryhard, so kinda. His views are laughably stupid and contradictory even by the standards of the era.

alignment was made for the players, not players for alignment
its a rough guide for how your character generally acts, but should never be an iron cage that restricts your character

Law and chaos are also spooks.

I hereby prupose a new alignment.
Memer-Normie aligned to the Veeky Forums-reddit and neutral becomes shitpost.

For example, straya would be memer-shitposter.

Daily reminder that you are all my property.
I am the indivisible ego.
You are all figments of my psyche, mere spooks that I allow to exist.

>19th century
>philosopher
>edgy tryhard
>views
>stupid
>contradictory
>standards
>era
Pretty damn spooked right now

>Thinking your ego is greater than anyone else's
you spook

>anyone else's
>ego
Other minds beyond mine own are spooks.
I allow them to exist partially seperate from my singular godhead for the sake of amusement.
I am the indivisible Ego.

>Selfishness
>Evil
STOP. This dumb bioware morality needs to die. Selfishness is not evil. Murder is evil. Rape is evil. Theft is evil. Selfishness is neither good nor evil so it's neutral.

>Selfishness
>not evil
Caring solely about yourself pretty much makes you a failure of a human being, which is about as evil as I can consider someone to be.

Stirner basically believed that any form of government or selfless ideology shackles the individual spirit. He was the inspiration for a lot of ideologies after him that refuse to admit that they were inspired by him as they all try and establish their own sense of morality to justify their actions.

A more positive idea of Stirner is "your life is the most important thing there is, so live it how you wish, even if your wishes go against society". The more negative side is "your ideals and beliefs are useless when I can just shoot you and take your shit".

I like it alot once I realized to not take it autistically.

It works well when you use it as a base line. If I'm chaotic good, it doesn't mean I don't follow law and I'm a saint. but its a decent guilde line.

The problem is people take it too seriously, which is why we end up with Lawful stupid paladins, Chaotic neutral being the retarded alignment and Neutral Evil and Chaotic Evil being edgelord central. They allow the alignment to completely define their character and that makes the concept of alignments god awful when they aren't.

I was GMing a game last week and one of my players refused to do something because it wasn't something a "Good" character would do, its idiotic. Just because you do one bad thing doesn't mean you're literally satan.

Why do you think murder and rape arise, because people put their needs above others. Saying "B-but you can be selfish in moderation" doesn't do away with the fact that all 'evil' acts stem from selfishness.

I played a Chaotic Evil character one time. He wasn't an edgelord asshole; he was just a thief who enjoyed what he did, and did it for his own enjoyment.

But all humans at their core are designed to care about themselves above all else. Our societies, religions, and economic systems are all based around putting people in situations where their selfishness benefits others. The free market, where by people's selfishness allocates work effectively. Religion, where people's selfishness gets them to do good deeds to redeem their soul or otherwise acquire supernatural benefit. Society who's laws are all based around making the cost of unthinking selfishness too high to bear by a rational self interested being. Selfishness is no failure, it is to be true to the core of every living being.

I think that objective morality is stupid. However, objective entropy as a cosmic concept isn't nearly as absurd. In the earliest of editions, good and evil were subjective, but law and chaos were indeed cosmically objective aspects. Admittedly, to the average mortal who's not familiar with the metaphysical makeup of the cosmos, most law aligned entities seem "good" and most chaos aligned entities seem "evil" but when something goes too far down EITHER path starts seeming a truly alien eldritch entity.

From a narrative standpoint, I just like it better, as well as from a player agency standpoint: allowing players to make their own qualitative judgement about morality is a good thing.

Haha, no, absolutely not. Humans are unique among animals in that our sense of altruism and selflessness is VERY well developed.
People will help each other because it is the right thing to do, and not because they expect a reward.
Their only reward is feeling good, which you could spin as "selfishness" in a biological sense, but it's a very weak argument.

>the free market
Don't even start memeing about that cancerous, disgusting abomination of human society. Almost as bad as communism in its depravity and degeneration of the human spirit.

>Religion
Not all religions hold the promise of eternal utopia over their follower's heads like a carrot, and people from all walks of life, from all creeds, can and do engage in extreme self-sacrifice for the good of others, even going so far as their own death.
It's also fair to say that in those religions, you go to the good after life for being a good person. You don't become a good person by doing good works, you do good works because you are a good person.

>Society who's laws are all based around making the cost of unthinking selfishness too high to bear by a rational self interested being.
Yes, because selfishness is a failure in human nature, and unfortunately one that is very, VERY successful when left unchecked.

>rational self-interested being
People aren't rational, nor are they perfectly self-interested. A non-broken person is altruistic to his fellow man in general.

>Selfishness is no failure, it is to be true to the core of every living being.
You would reduce man to mere selfish animals, thinking of nothing more than the next day and survival? We are better than that.

Selfishness and self-interest are powerful biological motivators, and can be used for good, but they are not good in of themselves.

>authoritarian
>lawful
nope, law is principaled, and nobody can deny that at least right libertarians are principled to the point of autism.

law and choas are difficult becuase they seem to talk about two unrelated things at once: rule-orientation and conformism. it would be better if alignment were treated as apolitical and asicial, and we just looked at law vs choas are principled vs arbitrary.

That's NE though. CE is more conflict seeking.

That's horseshit though, all altruism and "selflessness" stems from selfish desires. Truly selfless people would be an aberration of nature. Humans are a part of nature, and as such are subject to the same rules that govern other living beings. To pretend that we have some completely unnatural sense of selflessness and altruism is patently absurd. It's like saying that ant's are compassionate and altruistic simply because they have evolved a strategy that makes use of the individual machinations of the wants of the individual.
The way society is set up, people who are "selfless" or "altruistic" are often rewarded, sometimes in tangible ways, sometimes in less obvious ones. You say that people do not expect reward, and yet they clearly will. I don't know about you, but I very much doubt there are many people who would expect to be punished or harmed by a so called "Good deed", in fact one can nearly always expect it to do them good. People will obviously consider this and other social norms and rules whenever they decide to act. And that's just one way of looking at it, there are also various other refutations of the claim that human's are uniquely and somehow supernaturally selfless, for one there's that mathematics model that suggest that "altruistic acts" would ultimately benefit those that do them and their offspring (ignoring the fact of course that that is exactly what society is designed around in the first place).

cont...

>Their only reward is feeling good,
As I have already said, it is not the "only reward", but let's assume it is. This is by no means a 'weak arguement', being selfish is acting on one's wants. It is not selfless to act on one's want, even if it may be losely termed "self destructive". For instance, suicide is nearly always a selfish act justified by the common logical fallacies, or even by the simple want of an end of pain. A suicide bomber is not selfless for sacrificing their lives for their beliefs in a better world. If we call any act that is done because one wishes it, to be selfless then that completely negates the meaning of the word. Further it's ridiculous to try to pretend that there is a nonbiological sense of selfishness. Function follows form. The material function of an object leads to it's other properties. A want is a want is a want, no mater if you classify it biologically or psychologically.

>Don't even start memeing about that cancerous, disgusting abomination of human society. Almost as bad as communism in its depravity and degeneration of the human spirit.
I don't see a single legitimate logical refutation in there. Please try again.

>Not all religions hold the promise of eternal utopia over their follower's heads like a carrot, and people from all walks of life,
Nearly all the religions that arose from groups that had begun to transition to more complex forms of society do provide various forms of punishment/reward for those who act too selfishly. That is a prime function of more complex forms of region versus the animism and shamanism that dominates less complex societies where simple social norms and rules often hold people's behavior in check.

>can and do engage in extreme self-sacrifice for the good of others, even going so far as their own death.
See paragraph 2.

cont...

>You don't become a good person by doing good works, you do good works because you are a good person.
That's only really in a subset of thought primarily expressed in Abraham religions, it's not even that popular a theological interpretation these days.

>Yes, because selfishness is a failure in human nature,
It is the basis of human nature, of all living things nature. Selfishness is the root cause, and end game of evolution. Every living thing, thinking or no, wants to live and preserve it's own well being. The only failure in human nature is to think we are more than we are as you are demonstrating right now.

>People aren't rational, nor are they perfectly self-interested.
People are rational to a point, and they are always driven by self inerest. Just because being altruistic on occasion is in one's self interest doesn't negate selfishness as the core of being.

>You would reduce man to mere selfish animals, thinking of nothing more than the next day and survival?
>We are better than that.
We aren't and we will never be. You keep going on about man's flaw of selfishness, but you neglect to mention man's hubris. Always believing himself to be special, above it all. Above everything else in nature, even above nature herself, all but his own race. That is your own form of selfishness, believing you are superior and specially worthy of consideration.

>Selfishness and self-interest are powerful biological motivators, and can be used for good, but they are not good in of themselves.
Good is a moral judgement, I never stated it's goodness, I only refuted your belief in it's evilness as something that makes people "failures of human beings".

Here is the most accurate alignment chart.
I made this for a shitpost that I expected to get sage'd into oblivion, but the thread stayed in the catalogue for a day and a half

...

I don't quite understand your wording, but I'm interested.

D&D alignments are shit, Palladium alignments are way more sensical (at least if you take them as rough guidelines).

Stirner was a faggot that fucked cleaning girls and got them killed giving birth to his bastards. Fuck Stirner and fuck all the edgetards he spawned since then.

>A suicide bomber is not selfless for sacrificing their lives for their beliefs in a better world
He's literally giving all he has for a better world, idiot.

Yeah, people argue because the whole thing isn't entirely orthogonal. Most violations of the rule "don't murder people" mean you are a prick. Also obeying "report jews for extermination" means you are a prick.
>inb4 /pol/

Palladium's alignments are much more sensical because they operate on weighing self-interest versus principles:

>Principled - lawful good guys
>Scrupulous - Charles Bronson/Clint Eastwoord-types, do whatever it takes for the good guys to win
>Unprincipled - reluctant hero, Han Solo-style. wants to be selfish but good tends to win him over
>Anarchist - selfish guy, doesn't care about goodness but refrains from evil
>Aberrant - will do evil acts if necessary but can work in a team. honor among thieves
>Miscreant - evil for the sake of self-gain
>Diabolic - evil for the sake of evil

So basically your entire argument boils down to "selfless and altruistic acts can't be truly selfless, because they often benefit the agent in some way". Bullshit, what makes an action selfless and altruistic is the fact that no compensation is guaranteed, and that people help for the sake of helping.
You also assume that there is some sort of universal law or teleos that "governs living beings", which is absolutely absurd. There is no governing force to cause life to evolve to be absolutely selfish. Humans are selfless, and have demonstrated as such.

>I don't know ... good.
It's not that they don't expect to be punished, it's that they don't expect to be rewarded in any way besides that little burst of dopamines saying "good on you, you did a good thing".

>For instance, ... better world
But that's an utterly inane argument; in the former, the suicider is commiting suicide for selfish reasons, an end to their pain, choosing their own desires over the harm that will befall their family and friends because of it.
In the latter, assuming the suicide bomber is not motivated by some larger number of celestial virgins, it is indeed a selfless act because they are putting the wants of others over their own.

> If we ... word.
What fucking bullshit is this? Everything is selfish because everything needs to have a conscious will behind it to be done? That's absolutely sophomoric; giving up your food to a hungry homeless man that you will never see again is obviously a selfless act, even if you "wanted" to do it.

>I don't .... Please try again.
Fuck off Stefan.

>do ... selfishly.
Yes, because selfishness is often bad. Punishing selfishness doesn't absolutely reward selflessness, and selflessness is selflessness regardless of how it is achieved.

(cont)

>Selfishness is the root cause, and end game of evolution.
>evolution has a teleos
Stopped reading there.

>We aren't and we will never be.
We are and always have been, since the first days of primitive man.

>but y... own race.
But humanity IS greater than other animals, than nature! To deny that obvious truth is willful blindness!

>That ... of consideration.
Ah, so now we're moving onto collective selfishness, aye? The very fact that we are discussing this proves that man is special. Acknowledging reality doesn't make anything selfish.

>D&D alignments
Okay concept, but overused and perceived too strictly by people.
>objective morality
*sounds of hysterical anger and teeth breaking wood*

>Most DMs/players aren't contemplative or thoughtful enough to tackle morality that isn't rule-based.

>law and chaos are spooks

fucking how

how can they BOTH be spooks

The term "Cynic" itself derives from the Greek word kυνιkός, kynikos, "dog-like" and that from kύων, kyôn, "dog" (genitive: kynos).

You sound pretty spooked, user.

the average dog is smarter than the average politician

I would also trust a dog with moral quandaries over a human.

>enslaving your ego to concepts of behavior
Spooky

It comes down exactly to that...

This thread is both educational and entertaining

that's nonsense you faggot

>rules are a construct of humanity
>ignoring the rules is also a construct of humanity
>somehow
>my entire philosophy basically boils down to 'I say things don't exist and that means I win'

>giving up your food to a hungry homeless man...
I'm a wagecuck who works at target and just the other week I had a mom and her kid buy a bunch of shit for a homeless person. The mom was incredibly excited to take a picture of her kid in front of all the things they bought for the man and undoubtedly put it on facebook to brag to everyone about just how good of a person she is.
Personally I find this scummy as fuck but I also have a core belief of doing good things for a bad reason is still doing a good thing so I feel pretty meh about it. But ultimately I don't think what she did was selfless because she was way more concerned with making herself look/feel good than the person she was helping

They suck.

You're falling for the Stirner trolling, dude. Take a breath and step back, then embrace this new age of philosophical shitposting.

In that case, I would agree that the mother was being selfish. Feeling good about yourself is a lot different than getting peer-cred.
That being said, I have bought food for homeless people many times, nothing more or less than a quick ten dollar thing, and I have never seen them ever again. They gave me nothing, and I never told anyone about it (except here, but we're all anonymous so it doesn't matter).
I don't think I'm a particularly special or exceptional person, so I would think that there are plenty other people who are selfless for the sake of being selfless, because they are good people.

>nonsense
>construct of
>humanity
Spook'd

>You know, I just don't care anymore.

is a bullet flying towards your skull a spook?

It's a construct of humanity, after all.

>caring
>not carring
How spooky

...

All that is, is mine ego.
The bullet is for I will it to be.
You are all my property.

Well you can be smug about it in hell.

>Bullshit, what makes an action selfless and altruistic is the fact that no compensation is guaranteed, and that people help for the sake of helping.
A. Selfish people dont need guarantees. If the potential reward is high enough (from a subjective POV), the investment risk might be worth it.
B. Selfless acts still carry the reward of either being seen by others in a positive way or regarding yourself as better than the selfish people out there.

Why did Stirner trolling become a thing anyway. 10 years ago I knew who he was, but he wasn't ever brought up in philosophy classes or on the chans and I can't even remember how I ended up reading about him in the first place.

>shitposting
>irony

In ancient Greece, cynic meant something pretty different than what it means today.

A. If you're going to be modeling it like that, then sure, why not, all selfless people are selfish. The difference between them and selfish people, is that they have some mental reward called "doing the right thing" that has some arbitrarily large value.

B. 1) If it's not a planned reward, then I say it didn't enter into the consideration of the agent.
2) So only emotionless stoics can be selfless?

...

>states
>nation
>culture
>not the biggest spooks of them all

>shovels

Does Stirner remind anyone else of Ayn Rand? They both have utterly nonsensical excuses for a philosophy that embrace selfishness and they both attract retards.

property is the biggest human construct of them all.

>Ayn Rand
She's pretty spooky, in bed

No, it is my construct, spook. I will it to be, being the Ego, and so it is.

I don't really want to make a thread about this so I'll ask here:

I made a Warlock, and due to the nature of his backstory and where he gets his power I felt it inaccurate to call him Good or Evil, so I went with Chaotic Neutral. How do I best roleplay this? Dismiss the rule of law as arbitrary and play by his own rules in terms of morality?

>does a shitty retarded person with a nonsense philosophy remind you of another shitty retarded person with a nonsense philosophy

yes

depends entirely on which edition of D&D you are playing

property is a spook because thieves exist.

>yes

So if Ayn Rand and Max Stirner met, perhaps by the contrivance of some sort of time warp, do you think they would get along? Would they hate each other and fight (perhaps with philosophy-based sorcery), or would they fuck?

I need to know for fanfiction purposes.

Thieves do not exist because everything is my property. Even if the spooks "take" it, it is still mine.

hatefuck

Then Stirner would say that lust is a construct of the ego

and Rand would call him a faggot commie.

If humans are selfish such that they act selflessly, then we're lost in semantics.

let me give you back your board with a nail in it, then.

The nail is my property too.
It's pretty spooky how you think property can steal property; if my property has my property in their possession, then by inheritance it is still my property.

It's a useful and important tool to have at your disposal, but one that's been badly misused over the years.

Alignment mechanics are good because they're a convenient shorthand for adjudicating a certain set of classic fantasy tropes. Lots of stories have things like holy weapons that can only be used by the pure of heart, or divine judgments that selectively smite the wicked while sparing the righteous. These are the sort of things alignment is great for -- it makes you aware that these sorts of matters of cosmic standing are important in the setting, and so prompts you to think it over in advance so when it comes up you already know where people stand.

The problem is, this sort of thing isn't necessary or appropriate for all campaigns, particularly with the D&D system of using both good/evil and law/chaos axes. Few stories will meaningfully engage more than one such moral axis, and many won't really care about either.

Alignment should only be used when you want to run a campaign in a world where how your beliefs and conduct align with grand cosmis forces/principles matter, and that's not for everyone. Furthermore, the cosmic principles that are relevant will vary from campaign to campaign. So having a specific alignment system that's inextricably woven into the rules is a bad idea for any system that's not specifically for one single particular setting.

I like the way Fantasy Craft handles it much better. There, "alignment" is just a generic term for whatever faiths or cosmic forces are relevant in your setting -- you decide what exactly that is when you make the setting, if you want to use it at all. If you want to use the two axes of D&D, you can -- but you could also use a more morally ambiguous system of various competing gods, or even key your alignments to things unrelated to religion or morality, like classical elements or astrological signs. Or simply not use alignment at all, which would exclude divine casters but not impact much else.

Are you a fifty years old housewife, user? Shouldn't you have kids at home to care about?

Damn Vern, this here homosexual shur do talk funny.

Not fer long though

Try me, spook

3.5

And to get further into his specific backstory, he was a bookish priest whose abbey was raided by an evil order who were looking for an artifact, and he was left for dead. He called out for help and what answered wasn't his god, but an unidentified entity which healed him and granted him the powers of a warlock.

I felt it too cliche for him to be Chaotic Good because he does realize that whatever saved him he is indebted to, regardless of whether it is Good or Evil, and will fulfill his debt to it if it ever contacts him.

So what Stirner's D&D alignment would be anyway? CN?

Ah, Veeky Forums, how I missed ye and your shitposting.

It's not a big a deal as people on the Internet make it out to be. Anyone who hides behind "I'm just playing my alignment" is as shitlord who would say something equally insipid if alignment didn't exist. The alignment restriction behind paladins and monks has never impacted my playgroup.

Then again, I didn't start playing pen and paper RPGs until college so maybe I've never been traumatized by trying to play DnD with piece of shit teenagers

>chaotic
>neutral
Both spooks.

>ye and your
>implying anything exists beyond me and mineself

>Your idea of shpook ish, at its esshence, a new manisfeshtation of *sniff* oppreshun

Fantasy Craft does something similar by making alignments external forces with which you are aligned, rather than innate morality. They're also user-created, though, so it would be perfectly possible for a group to recreate the DnD 9x9 alignments, and, with insufficient consideration, all of the problems that go with them.