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One thing about the Alignment 'system'as a game mechanic is that opinions concerning it are as varied as the players themselves.
Good point on the Klingons,I'll grant you that. But if you have studied much about Arthur and the Knights, Lancelot really was a loose cannon...my interpretation of 'chaotic' does not preclude 'loyalty', but 'allegiance' is a much more restrictive thing...and the two are mutually exclusive yet often paraphrased.
In the Game setting, you do 'Choose' an alignment for your character, and 'play' by the guidelines associated by that alignment. The degree of moral and personal parameters you 'role-play' is up to you.True 'Role-Playing' is acting as a being other than yourself,and if your character has distinct biases, then that becomes part of the character.Reaction to circumstances is part of the character, hence, the character's personality determines how they react to a given situation. And if personality 'determines alignment',as you said, then then you are either role-playing yourself, or not role-playing at all.
Thanks for the comment!

Very true Aubri, but I'd like to respond to Scorpio some more.

"And if personality 'determines alignment',as you said, then then you are either role-playing yourself, or not role-playing at all."

I think you misunderstood me. It is the PC's personality that determines his alignment, not the player's.
For example, in a Dark Sun campaign I once played a thri-kreen (mantis-like humanoid) cleric, whose hivemind-mentality made him usually obey whatever the partyleader wanted. As a conformist and follower, I made him lawful neutral. His personality determined his alignment.
I myself am not of the hivemind mentality. I wasn't roleplaying myself, but I was most certainly roleplaying.

Belphanior
"This is a cool sig."

PS: Ever noticed how you can debate about alignments endlessly and never reach a solution? ^_^

Ok, let me catch up...
Aubri-Very true, and there lies another importance of alignment as a 'Game Mechanic'.My use of 'real life' was intended to give examples that players might think about other than the typical stereotypes.
Belphanior-Exactly my point. You *chose* the character you wanted to play, and 'made him' Lawful Neutral.As I said,
"To sum this up, alignment is all about choosing and playing by certain guidelines."
Pete-You're right, I guess I was addressing the masses.

I usually do feel silly!
I think, subconciously or not, that we tend to pick the Personality/Alignment at the same time...I think they are one and the same.
I quote you,"I think alignment merely *describes* personality, not dictates it."...but I think it does both...
I wrote,
"Basically, alignment is the moral and ethical fabric in which your character is cloaked. It's the foundation and framework to support and house religion, codes of behavior, and rules of one character's engagement within its world. Essentially, alignment is your character and vice versa."
Character=Personality=Alignment?

Maybe the games (AD&D,etc) have reached a point where the whole 'Alignment' thing is not neccessary anymore. That appears to be the trend.
Thanks for the comment!

That is a valid point-as a 'game mechanic' the concept of Alignment has created elements of the game which are dependent on it...if one was to discard Alignment,or even water it down to a PC 'trait', they would have to re-evaluate certain spells, artifacts, classes, and for the most part, the commonly used Religious Pantheons...
Food for thought....

I can't say I'm buying into all of the examples listed here.

Batman, definitely NOT a lawful character. He is and always has acted outside of the law. I'll grant in the past he was more accepted by the police of Gotham, but he is not a Lawful Good personality. He is much more NG or even CG.

Hitler. Well, that's a whole kettle or worms. As a fascist, he was Lawful. The rest of his actions tipped him onto the Evil plane.

Most of the rest are ok. I'd maybe bump Napoleon up to LN, but that's only because of his work in restructuring the legal system. Napoleonic Code anyone?

To classify the Klingons as evil is to classify any tribal/social group with a warrior's ethos as evil. Klingons are meant to embody the concept of the proud warrior. Think Wulfgar's people from Salvatore's books.

I think the article is good, we do need to see more articles written on the subject of the alignment system. We just need to make sure the articles don't start reading like a dissertation for a Philosophy class.

aeon: Okay, so it's a chicken and egg problem. Either way, ridding ourselves of alignment means killing those spells/abilities, so the problem is unchanged.

Wooz:
Hitler def. not Lawful. I'm reading through Churchill's memoirs of WW2 (which start at the end of WWI), and probably 90% of all the crap Hitler pulled was not in any way indicative of a Lawful nature. While he "sort of" came to power lawfully (in that he was actually appointed by the actual Chancellor at the time), he only was appointed because his own paramilitary forces -- the SA, or brownshirts -- were severely dangerous to the actual government (and in case you were wondering, raising a personal army to challenge the government forces is NOT a lawful act). Hitler's rise to power and Germany's rearmament is one long saga of illegal, chaotic, unlawful acts. I would put Hitler squarely in NE (he did have some respect for history/traditions, namely the German martial tradition, so he can't be completely chaotic).

Scorpio: Think of any other way to tell a story. Neither drama, nor movies, nor literature reference any sort of arbitrary alignment system (even D&D based books!). At most they reference never-delineated "good" and "evil". Know Alignment is rather a stupid spell from the role-playing (as opposed to game mechanic) side anyway, and Detect Good/Evil and their counterparts could just be left open to DM interpretation of whether something is "evil" enough to be detected. You can create any character in the books without reference to alignment at all. As an example, take the paladin. Right now the paladin *must* be LG, which makes little sense to me. To me, a paladin can be described as a religious warrior whose deity has rewarded his dedication by granting him certain gifts.
With that in mind, we don't need the Lawful bit, because we can just observe that a paladin is going to adhere very, very closely to his deity's code of conduct (whether explicit or not). The Good part not only isn't necessary, it's counterintuitive -- why shouldn't Neutral and Evil deities be capable of creating their own holy warriors? (The Good requirement only makes sense if you consider that it's meant to discourage characters from playing evil chars, but since they're supposed to be discouraged anyway, why bother?)

Similarly, what need has a ranger of alignment? A rogue? A fighter?

The thing to remember about the D&D alignment system was that it is the bastard love-child of J. R. R. Tolkien and Micheal Moorcock. In Tolkien's universe, there were some absolutes, i.e.; elves were universally good, orcs were universally bad. Humans had free will to choose either side, though with some tendencies; Numemorians are generally disposed to good, Easterlings to evil.

In Moorcock's multiverse, there were pantheons of Law and Chaos. A plane could suffer from having too much of either.

For both, it was often important for the heroes to know which side they were on, because when the big apocalyptic battle came, they needed to know where their loyalties lay.

Gygax combined the two systems. D&D was all about archetypes. The alignment system was a tool to keep characters in their pidgeon holes. A ranger needed an alignment because they are modeled on Tolkien's Dunedain of the north, and they are unversally good. Paladins are universally lawful and good, because the Paladins were originally the elite guards of Charlemagne, and their purpose was to uphold his laws and keep local warlords in check. I'm not sure why druids were supposed to be true neutral.

I don't think it worked well.

Okay, Scorpio, it would be more accurate to say it didn't work for me. I abandoned D&D as soon as skill based systems appeared.

I don't know that there is any one right answer. The answer I prefer is 'good role-playing'. I feel a player should flesh out, at least in thier own mind, how their character thinks, what her limits are, how far will he go, what are her politics, religion, morals, how does his family act, and is he supportive or rebellious, and once that frame work is established, be consistent within it, or if shifting, understand what pressures are causing the change, and where these changes are leading.

But that's very complicated. If the players just want to dungeon crawl and collect loot, it's probably unnecessary. If they want to tell complex, nuanced stories, full of shades of grey, and all the foibles mortal (or immortal, or dead) flesh is heir to, then it's probably necessary.

Our group solved the alignment dilema by taking a survey.
the survey included the following areas:
Alignment (current system)
...What you want to be
...What would you do if pressed
---
Nature & Demeanor
Personality traits List of 50, Pick 10 - 15 - No contradiction unles DMs allows
---
20 situation questions on how you character would react.
They range from helping friends in a bar fight, to saving people, to party dbetrails and they find out etc...
---
Heirarchy of personal motivation
1 - 10 (from a list)
---
Character ultimate goal in life
How they (in a nutshell) plan to attain that goal
---

Once the survey is done. The DM reads, makes any notes needed.
Generates an edited version of this removing all of the private (not known by the players info) and then passes out a copy to the group to read.

This takes about 3 days to do well.

As long as the players stays within the boundaries of what they wrote up, there is no problem with their alignment.
If a fellow player notices a variation in action - The DM notes it
If the Dm notices a variation in action - The DM notes it

If 12 notes are aquired, the DM & Player discuss their alignment. Changes are made (if/as needed) and then a new alignment is handed out to the players.

Penalties for changing alignments: DM asks the players first.
weighs the ideas, and then privately discusses the penalties.
Previous penalties (MINOR: No xp for the encounter which pushed them past the 12 notes mark. SEVERE: Loss of a Level, Special Item, or When healed by Divine means, Use d6 instead of d8)

My method:
Only the DM knows the character's alignment. (MWAHAHAHAH!)
Good: Generally tries to help people. Evil: Doesn't try to help people. Ever. Unless there's something in it for them. Doesn't have compuctions about harming people if there's something in it for them. Neutral: Helps people if it's convenient, doesn't go out of their way to harm them.

Lawful: Obeys the law, likes things orderly. Chaotic: Sometimes breaks the law just for the heck of it, likes things messy and unpredictable. Neutral: Obeys fair laws, mostly because it's easier to, only disobeys them if they are wrong. The other axis helps to determine this.

Most of the time it's not an issue, because the game mechanics things can be handled by the GM. When a player starts acting like an alignment that doesn't fit a class (or any) requirement, the GM tells them "You had a dream last night, about (said event that didn't fit w/ vow) and your god (or nature force, or whatnot) reprimanded you for not acting in keeping with his/her/its teachings. You behaved in the manner of a disciple of (name of force associated with offending action(s)). If you wish to remain under my protection (or whatever), you must take this action in the future: . . ..)

That's just how I do it. Not saying there's anything right or wrong with above method. It doesn't normally come up in my games because I do sci-fi, non magic campaign.

Chaotic nuetral is the best alignment to have, because you can, pretty much get away with anything!

I'd hardly say it was abberant, Mystic Assassin. I'd say that humans, being creatures of whims and unpredictability, will generally NOT act in a way which is in D&D terms 'lawful', and generally do not class themselves as being either good or evil. We all have aspects of us which are evil, just as we all have aspects which are good. Therefore we could be classified as nuetral. Since we are generally not 'lawful' in our thinking, and we are prone to changing our minds, we are chaotic. Chaotic nuetral. I rest my case, no further questions, your honour...

Ah...you called me 'your honour' I see you've learned your place.

Aberrant (evil) is MY favorite alignment...from the RIFTS realm...ya dig?

My character's not an anarchist, he's more of an anti-hero. A free spirit, if you will. He started off as chaotic good, but I found that too obnoxious and 'rebel-like' for my liking. If you're chaotic nuetral, you're neither a rebel or an anarchist, because, being nuetral, you have nothing to rebel or promote anarchy against. My character could be described as being a bit like Wolverine (but less hairy, and non-smoking), or Aragorn in his Strider incarnation (Before he went all goody-goody as Aragorn and later, Ellessar). He's capable of caring, even having beliefs, and he intentionally stays out of the way of the agents of order, but ultimately he makes his own rules.

Also, by my reckoning, I think that lawful evil, is more of a 'cunning planner' kind of character. Sort of like Hamlet, in the respect that, although he plots and dreams of committing all these dreadful crimes, and doing all these dreadful things, he's ultimately all thought and no action. Likewise, chaotic evil is all action and no thought.

One reason I prefer the anti-hero over the run-of-the-mill goodie-good-good PC is this...

After burning the village of unfortunate innocents, raping the women and stealing the children for human-sacrifice, the Evil Overlord will find himself run-through by the PCs blade: pushed off the cliff inside the volcano unto a fire-breathing ocean of death, after being beaten and disarmed at the end of a five minute sword fight where he fell victim to every cheap shot and cowardly trick that he HIMSELF would normally use against a more GOOD-natured opponent.

EXACTLY! Mystic Assassin (May I call you Mystic Ass, for short) gets it! Right on the button!

Yer Honours,

I see that I have wandered albeit by chance into a debate between men of wit and erudition. I am moved to participate.

The D&D Alignment system is simple, flexible, and reasonably comprehensive. Certainly adequate to all but those who love complexity for the sake of it.

However, there are some campaigns, as has already been noted, that are very strongly aligned. To stay true to the campaign, you need to play it in the spirit in which it was designed.

For example, Moorcock's stories are heavily aligned in terms of Law and Chaos. But Good and Evil are almost absent. In general, Law seems to be less evil than chaos, but there is not a lot of difference. In general, both sets of followers seem to act in their own interest. In other words Evil seems to be dominant.

Another example is Andre Nortons Witch World, which is heavily aligned in terms of Dark and Light. Dark is really really bad, and Light is heroic goodness. Law and chaos may be there implicitly, but they pale into insignificance as motivating factors when placed against the backdrop of the cosmic battle of Dark/Light.

Mystic assassin has made an interesting point above. He says he prefers the anti hero because he can pay the evildoer back in his own coin. Indeed this is more and more a feature of modern heroes. Look at most heroes in films today, and they are only moderately less bad than the villains who's ass they kick. This can make for a very powerful and realistic character.

But my own choice is very different. I play the good guy because my favorite heroes have always been good guys. In a world full of ambiguity and downright evil, I give my respect to those who refuse to compromise their convictions for mere expediency. That doesn't mean you can't stick it to the bad guy. It just means you have to act with justice, compassion, and even mercy if it might do some good.

And yeah. Aragorn was as lawful good as they come. My kind of guy.

Not a problem, I don't play it either. The source books are great for ideas, though. The expansion book, "Rifts: Mystic Russia" happens to be my favorite. Not because it has the word 'MYSTIC' in it.

My group was into HEROES for a while, and we started using the RIFTS books for source material...good stuff. The system is a little too complicated, though...but still good stuff.

But, at the beginning, living by his wits, smoking in dark corners, behaving in a mysterious manner and saying things like "Are you frightened? Not nearly frightened enough!" leads me towards the chaotic nuetral alignment.

My two pence, with fifty pence left over.

Or, for the Europeans reading this: 5000 Euros.

I imagine that you could be confused for thinking him as 'Good', in that he opposes evil, but he's quite clearly nuetral. He does not take up the cup of being king, instead, if I may quote the lines of the late, great Mr. Bean;

"Living in the shadows, scared of who you are. What you are. You are afraid!"

In Fellowship Of The Ring, he goes about, dressed in black, calling himself Strider, and generally being scary and intimidating. As Mr. Butterbur says;

"One o' them rangers of the North. Dangerous folk, they are. Nobody's quite sure of his real name, but 'round 'ere, he's known as Strider'

Also, as a ranger, Aragorn, then going by the sobriquet of Strider, would have to live in the inhospitable wilds, hunting for food, defending himself against wild beasts etc. and therefore would not act in as far as good and evil is concerned, merely survival instinct. Nuetrality. And, since nature is not, by it's erm... nature, orderly, he would have to behave in a 'chaotic' way. See where I'm going with this?

Notice also that at Amon Hen, he does not accompany Frodo on his journey, leaving yon hobbit to go it alone, with big, fat, stupid Sam on his tail, as well as Gollum making silly remarks and plotting to murder them. Had Aragorn been there, Gollum would have had this vocal chords relocated outside of his body at the first opportunity, and he would have lead them there himself.

So, I believe, nuetral. If not a chaotic nuetral, at that.
(Arrogant smile, cocksure swagger)

Hey watch who you callin fat!

Oh you meant Samwise Gamgee, sorry folks.

Carry on now, chop chop!

You've hit the nail on the head, Shark (about alignment).
As for the historical examples, Alexander the Great would have started as neutral evil, and slowly become more chaotic as he became more paranoid. He was a monster, not the glorified legend he is seen as today.

I have a problem with rules that have a requisite alignment for specific magic weapon usage. I understand the concept when the situation in question contains alignment extremes, such as Lawful Good items harming Chaotic Evil creatures attempting to use said items. But what about less defined alignment jumps such as from Chaotic Good, to True Neutral? Or what about the Chaotic Deity, whose Lawful Paladin has requested a divine weapon? You end up with a sword of Lord (insert bad god here) trying to be used by Sir/Lady (insert scary name here), and it doesn't seem correct. Also, should Chaotic deities have paladins? As for non-magical campaigns, should alignments have any ramifications beyond character motive and background?

Yo Sam, you would fit right in at our gaming table! I'd rather lose class levels than to ruin a character’s natural emotional progression. We know that's a part of learning that's as important as any other is. In recognition of that, we award XP for sacrificial role-playing decisions (this is a big help in swallowing the tremendous penalties incurred while 'going it truthfully'). We know when our fellow gamers are biting the bullet to do it right!

Oh, and Cocytus, or whatever you're calling yourself, you are WRONG!

1. I WOULD call Batman nuetral, because, though he is not evil by any stretch of the imagination, a lot of his methods are not exactly 'good' are they? Kicking a bloke into a vat of acid so that his face becomes scarred into a hideous, permanent grin? Not very nice, really is it? I don't care if he did shoot your parents, you can't just scar a bloke for life... It's just not cricket.

2. In the wilderness, there is no right or wrong, they're only survival. So, therefore, in game terms, nuetrality.

Now shut yer cakehole, Mr. Cocytus, or I'll pop round your house and give your wife something to hang her towels on. Woof!

"Oh, and Cocytus, or whatever you're calling yourself, you are WRONG!"

You go on tellin' yourself that, mister.

"1. I WOULD call Batman nuetral"

You're the first person I've met try to make that argument. Batman's career shows a legitimate concern for others, which is one of the defining characteristics of "good" in the D&D alignment system.

"...because, though he is not evil by any stretch of the imagination, a lot of his methods are not exactly 'good' are they? Kicking a bloke into a vat of acid so that his face becomes scarred into a hideous, permanent grin? Not very nice, really is it?"

You seem to need a refresher on your Batman lore. In nearly every version of that story, the joker's falling into the vat was purely accidental.

While it's true that some later portrayals of Batman make him seem more of a vigilante than a costumed hero, it's important to remember that those portrayals don't comprise the entire canon of Batman comics and film. Batman changed a hell of a lot from decade to decade, especially before the '80s, and each generation made him its own in its own way.

And once again, you've listed one example - which is inaccurate anyway - in support of your claim that Batman uses methods that are not 'good'. I'd say you're confused about the difference between Good and Evil on one axis and Law and Chaos on another. Batman surely doesn't work within the LAW all the time (which speaks to me of a chaotic nature), but he uses non-lethal methods to achieve his goals. He's not above intimidating people to gain a psychological edge, but he DOES NOT kill, and he certainly does not engage in torture. If he were neutral, he wouldn't necessarily have a compunction about killing wrongdoers - check the rules if you don't believe me.

"In the wilderness, there is no right or wrong, they're only survival. So, therefore, in game terms, nuetrality."

The wilderness itself is neutral. The game system is with you there. But how does that make anyone surviving in the wilderness neutral? It doesn't. If wilderness-survival-types - ie, RANGERS - all had to be neutral, the rules would say so. But they've never said so. In 1st ed, rangers had to be good, not neutral. Know why? Because the ranger class was based on Aragorn! Now, in 3d Ed and 3.5, rangers can be of any alignment.

And Ashagua's remarks on this subject are dead on the money.

"Now shut yer cakehole, Mr. Cocytus, or I'll pop round your house and give your wife something to hang her towels on. Woof!"

*Raises brim of cowboy hat in order to spit tobacco juice out of one side of mouth*

You just come on down here, mister. Any time you feel like tryin' to rope my filly, I got two shotgun barrels sayin' that your ass was on the losin' side of the Revolutionary War. YEEHAW! ;)

Careful whom yer calling "Anglais" there, mister.

"RE: Batman, actually he is quite different from author to author."

After Frank Miller's _Dark Knight Returns_, I've found a lot of sameness in the portrayals of Batman, relative to the huge differences from generation to generation prior to the eighties.

"One thing is for sure he is very close to neutrality except for that sissy portrayal in the 70's by Adam West (not his fault, the producers')."

Adam West played Batman in the '60s. And if you think *that* Batman was a sissy, check out the one from the '40s. Weird!

But I don't see where you're getting the "neutral" thing. Any moral ambiguities in Batman's character were added after Frank Miller, whose interpretation is hardly definitive.

"Fighting evil and for the common good doesn't necessarily make you good. Check Wolverine, Captain Nemo, Anakin Skywalker, Lestat."

Fighting evil doesn't necessarily make you good, but fighting for the common good does. And your examples...would be nice if any of them resembled Batman morally. They don't. (According to the majority of authors) Batman doesn't kill, Sam! That introduces a vast moral gulf between him and the likes of Wolverine.

And you mentioned Lestat, which means I get to make fun of you forevermore. Let me know when you're tired of being Quebecois and are ready to join the other Lestat wannabes in New Orleans. :D

Scorpio thought alignment was a determinant.

Belphanior has claimed it as more of a result of pre-game chracter development.

Maybe alignments shouldn't be static.

In one of the newer Star Wars games, every action your character takes affects his force alignment. Maybe alignment changing throughout the game and effecting how certain magic/artifacts/techniques work would be iteresting. Of course, this would mean alot of math and devising a new system, which seems like far too much trouble to me.

Here's a better idea: blow the whole alignment thing to hell and have each character have a reputation based on his/her/its behavior.

And as for the whole batman thing: c'mon y'all, this is just plain weird.

Chatiocally Neutrally Goodly yours,
Theophenes

"And your whole Capt. Nemo thing is ludicrous, Nemo is quite clearly one of the good guys, whether it's in Jules Verne's work or in LXG..."

What's ludicrous, mate, is to pretend that LXG's portrayal of Nemo had any relation to the Verne. Don't get me wrong; I liked the movie, and I liked the movie's Nemo a great deal. But he's nothing like the cold-blooded Captain from the book.

"...was I the only one that thought, in the movie, Dorian Gray's weapon changed like the weather? Look at him once, what's he fighting with? A walking cane? Look at him again, what's he fighting with? A rapier?"

I thought he had a sword cane.

"If he doesn't age, then he doesn't grow, therefore his eyebrows do not grow..."

Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.

"...therefore, I have spotted a vital mistake in the movie, if not Mr. Townsend's stage business..."

There are loads of 'mistakes' in the movie: for example, if Mina is a vampire, what the hell is she doing sunning herself in broad daylight on the conning tower of the Nautilus? It's silly. But this is the kind of movie you turn your brain off to watch - like the Matrix. If you sit around trying to analyze it, you're just going to ruin the fun it offers.

"...and thus, I feel I am to be somehow ingratiated..."

Your sort always do. Very well: all praise be to you, O great Olly. You are truly an alliaphagic quakebuttock. Or something.

"...but I do not know who the director was, and so, I direct my Eastenders Cockney fury towards Mr. Allan Moore, instead. All right?"

*spits tobacco juice* Just for your edification, pardner, the director was Stephen Norrington of _Blade_ fame. Now you know in which direction to toss all yer rotten tomaters, I reckon.

"P.P.S. He was good in that film, though, wasn't he, Mr. Stuart Townsend... He stole the show as far as I'm concerned."

I thought so, too. But I'm still glad he pitched a fit and quit the set of Lord of the Rings. In my opinion, Viggo makes a much better Aragorn.

uhh...

I thought Nemo had a gimp fin and an overwhealming sense of adventure...

"And Cocytus: Here in Quebec all anglophones are Anglais, whether they be from Canada, the US, the UK, Down Under or whatever."

Oh, I know it. Something similar is true for many of the Brits, Aussies, and New Zealanders I've known: to them, all Americans are "yanks". I once had to intervene in a conversation between an Australian friend of mine and a local Texas fellow who had taken great offense at being called a "Yankee." It's all the same to me, though - I was just pretending offense at being lumped in the same category with Olly.

"Batman doesn't kill so he isn't evil that's for sure. But he only fights evil, he doesn't actually do good."

I disagree, but since I've beaten the topic to death I'll let it go.

"What's wrong with liking some of Ann Rice's work?"

Nothing at all. I was just baiting you.

Mohammed: interesting points about the rangers. I had wanted to call Aragorn N/G or C/G, but you're making me reconsider.

As for your point about Nemo, I can accept a judgment of neutrality. He's hard to pin down, which reinforces my belief that the D&D alignment system really isn't very useful.

"...but I've never heard of a sword cane before (From what I saw in the film, they are indeed groovy, and I would love to know if anybody has created D&D rules for one, yet...)"

Not to my knowledge, but there were rules for them in the old TOP SECRET spy role-playing game published by TSR (what kind of spy wouldn't love a sword cane?).

Sword canes are curiously common here in the US, or they used to be. That's not "common" as in "something you see everyday," but "common" as in "more common than they have a right to be." My grandfather, a native of Virginia until his death, owned several. They were for show, one hopes, but I always thought they were damned spiffy when I was a lad.

"But what's all this about Stuart Townsend having a fit on set of Lord Of The Rings? An actual fit?"

From what I heard, Townsend was initially cast as Aragorn. I seem to recall reading somewhere that He left the production over "creative differences" with Peter Jackson - serendipitously for the better, I think.

"...thou oleaginous lobscouse..."

Why, ye thrawn, ill-feckit gaberlunzie...wait, that's just anger talking. ;) Is there such a thing as non-oleaginous lobscouse, I wonder?

Oh no, they're onto me! It's true, I was outraged at being considered 'too young' by that fat, old, bearded kiwi. I would have made a spiffing Aragorn. Ah well, but at least I got to shag Arwen Evenstar whilst I was there, eh?

[Sings] I've been shagging Arwen Evenstar, all the live-long day...

Sharky

Thats why I go for the older kind of hero, more noble, grounded in decency and fair play, violent only if absolutely necessary.

I reject modern ideas of morality. THEY ARE VIRTUALLY indistinguishable from evil. Thats what comes of believing the lies of politicians. As Tolkien says in his preface of 'Lord of the Rings', and I para phrase:

'This book is not an allegory on the second world war. If it was then the allies would have used the ring as soon as they got it, Saruman would have developed his own ring, and both sides would have despised the hobbits. They would not have survived long, even as slaves.'

In the real world, good and evil, like unicorns, trolls, elves and dwarves, do not exist. Nobody is truly good and nobody is truly evil.

A mass-murderer might be considered 'evil' by the media, or labelled it by the newspapers, but nine times out of ten, if you read his lifestory, it's a pretty tragic one. He's likely to be from a poor background, likely with abusive parents, and, often never had a girlfriend/boyfriend.

Society creates that which could be called 'evil', unintentionally, when it isolates people. Nobody is born evil, and if you believe the Catholics, nobody is born good either.

Thank you, Mo, for your interest in my post. However, I wish to add something to it.

Demons are ALWAYS evil in my campaign, because they are creatures created to fulfill the duties of darkness. They are incapable of doing good, behaving in a merciful manner or creating beautiful things for noble purposes. They can, however, be redeemed, though most of them simply refuse to...

Celestials (or angels, as they are known in my campaign) are ALWAYS good, created to perform the duties of light. They are kind, benevolent and loving, never acting malevolently or in a cruel manner, and incapable of creating things of evil and ugliness. However, they can fall to evil, though, and some of the Nine Hells most powerful agents once served under the benevolent gods. However, most angels shun this vocation, and are fierce in their opposition of their fallen brethren...

If the Bible teaches us anything, it is that good and evil, innocence and guilt, law and chaos are simply different sides of the same coin. I like this idea, and tried to incorporate it into my campaign setting.

WEEE! I'M BACK!!

I believe that the Celestials and Demons are only presumed to be evil or good based entirely on their origin, when they should REALLY be classified as good or evil based on their ACTIONS...

Ahh, I see your point...

I suppose also, the actions of said entities could reflect negativly on their behalf, yet serve a greater good in the end...or evil, depending on which entity.

A demon could possess a man and use his body for its own selfish motivations (kill a king, priestess, etc.) or a more subtle demon could persuade the same man with promises of riches or power. Or to a greater extent, make the man believe this heinous task is actually the NOBLE thing to do. In the demon's defense, its target may be a threat to mankind itself, and the demon's wish is to maintain peace, or eliminate assimilation of global powers, or whatever...and...

*looks up at the long-ass paragraph*

DAMN! Where the hell'd I come up with all THAT? I've had too much turkey today...

Olly said:

"Oh, and Cocytus, thou art clearly a prurient, rancorous jobbernowl."

Thank you, you glabrous, sesquipedalian gomeral.

Theo said:

"...but morality is a ridiculous word these days..."

I disagree. People have been decrying the "lapse in modern morality" since the decline of the Roman Empire, when (coincidentally?) "mystery cults" like Christianity had begun to supplant the dignified old state religion...since an obscure tribe of bedouins wandered around Sinai bemoaning the popularity of the neighbors' god Baal...since the Epic of Gilgamesh, for all love. Saying that modern folk have no sense of morality is nothing new; as far as I can tell, it's a sentiment nearly as old as language itself.

Just because one doesn't share morals carved in stone by divine agencies or ancient tribesmen doesn't mean that one doesn't have morals. If one says that some morals are relative to certain situations, that doesn't necessarily mean that one has no sense of moral boundaries whatsoever. Some religious and politically-motivated commentators might have an interest in making their enemies appear that way, but it's usually just a combination of ignorance and willful prevarication.

Religious folk do NOT have any sort of monopoly on morality. In my admittedly limited experience, the average atheist is as often as not as moral as the average churchgoer, and sometimes moreso.

My problem with alignment is not that I don't believe in good and evil; my problem is that I've never met a person who was wholly one or the other. To stereotype someone as good or evil just makes no sense to me.

I do agree with Ashagua that where outsiders are concerned, blanket alignment stereotypes make sense. In the game worlds many of us use, I see Celestials and Demons as the embodiments of moral (or immoral) principle. They aren't given choices as mortals are; they are made to personify a certain moral point of view.

Olly said:

"And, as for 'faults in my logic', Mo, I shall ask you politely, to shove them up your ass."

*spits tobacco*

Pardner, there're so many faults in yer logic that I doubt Mo's rectum could contain 'em all. I doubt even yers could, while we're talkin' about it. But I brought this here box of lawn and leaf bags, and we'll see if we can't fit 'em in these. It *is* heavy trash day 'round here.

Thanks for the bags, Cocytus, you infecund Mohock, I'll put them to good use. It'll be more civilised, this way, if not more fun...

And I believe that young Ashaqua speaks the truth when he talks about individuals being neither good or evil. Perhaps he was once, at some point, a philosophy student?

Brutal.

Looks around carefully.

Ok that wack job, Milow isn't around...

Well morality is something personnal and, I believe, relative.

Only the most anally retentive person can stick to ALL his or her principles ALL the time.

Do you know why our principles need to be somewhat relative? Because of the limitations of language. What?

Yep, language. Language is what one builds his or her thoughts with. Since no language is all encompassing, words sometimes fail to express the exact nature of one's belief system.

For example, I can say that stealing is usually wrong. But for me stealing actually means unjustly taking something that doesn't belong to you.
And what is unjust? I have a dozen or so examples in my head, but there are probably some situations I haven't considered yet. So I'll need to redefine what I mean by that as I come accross new situations.

But, I could be lazy and either:

a) be a self righteous holier than thou kind of prick.

b) be a unconsequential idiot who doesn't believe in morality at all.

So I'll take c) use relative morality.

Now does gaming need to be so complex?

Maybe, but not always (if you ask me).

starts huming before clicking "submit".
... inside Marina...

ah crap! Damn you Olly!

Ah, Ashaqua, but therein lies the rub.

Its all well and good to say that you are going to use a moral system defined by an all knowing and all powerful god. But how are you going to know what it is?

Trying to figure out what that moral system says puts you right back where you were in the beginning. Christianity, to use it as an example, tries to find that moral system from the bible. But, if you look at how the bible has been used through out the centuries, you'll pretty quickly come to the conclusion that the bible is relative.

And you're back where you began.

The easiest example is slavery. Was acceptable in the old testament, and the bible was used to justify slavery until around the 1800s. Different parts of the world stopped doing that at different times, but that was basically when it all went down.

A less emotionally charged example would be working on sunday. Just a couple of decades ago it was taboo. Now its common place. Our economy wouldn't function so well if we didn't at least have gas stations and grocery stores and police working on sunday.

Again, its all well and good to say that the bible is not relative, and that people just got it wrong. But what makes you think that YOU are ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN to have it right, when ALL THOSE PEOPLE had it wrong? To put it another way, they were absolutely certain they were right. You are absolutely certain you are right. It'd be crazy for you not to concede that there's really no way for you to tell what god's true point of view on working on sunday is. But, you still have an opinion. Hence, that opinion is relative to your point of view.

Oy. Huge can of worms here.

Ashaqua, claiming refuge in the divinely-inspired Word does not make one's moral standpoint absolute. Since several other religions are doing the same thing with wildly different conclusions, it merely makes one's standpoint relative to one's own religion.

Cadfan's made some good points about this Book, this moral absolute of yours, and there are more to be made. Suffice to say: if the Book itself were absolute, there'd never have been any schism in the church. But the redeemed can't seem to agree on how to interpret it: once again, each sect claims a monopoly on absolutes that are in fact merely relative to that particular sect.

I could go on and on with you about religion in specific and Christianity in particular. They are favorite subjects of mine. But Cadfan's right - we're gonna have to let it go, or else continue the discussion via private e-mail.

In an attempt to steer the topic back on track, how absolutely should a DM enforce alignment? How much margin of error is there before the 'general alignment tendency' necessitates a shift in a character's alignment?

How does alignment describe the gods?

Personally, I've banned alignment. Totally. I encourage the players to work out personal values and beliefs for their characters, but after I saw how much stupidity and abuse grows from the paladin's "detect evil" ability, and how difficult it is to run a campaign where the bad guys are hidden and treacherous, I just plain threw it out.

Originally, I threw it out only for sentient humanoids, but it eventually had to go for everything.

It encouraged role playing stereotypes, and it gave the party a magical "bad guy radar." Neither was good for the game.

Ashaqua,
My current game is not using D&D, so it is no longer an issue, but back in the day, I just changed detect evil to be less annoying. Cast on a person (or any sentient being with free will), it does nothing since the person is not inherently evil, but possesses free will and can be either good or evil at any given moment. If the person is currently engaged in an act of stunning evil, then something might register.

Detect evil, in my old games, would let you sniff out a vampire disquised as a farmer, but not pick out the farmer harboring evil thoughts from among his neighbors. Detect evil would still work on non-sentients, evil creatures without free will - those truly evil by nature, or items, or magic auras and whatnot, just not on people.

That's my 2 cents on detect evil.

Cocytus,
In terms of strict alignment enforcement in D&D, if you are a cleric or paladin, you need to stay pretty much in scope. If you are a non-religious character then you really have to go out of your way for me to punish you. My thinking is that as a regular guy, as long as you pay your tithe, your church (and the god it serves) is unlikely to ostracise or punish you for minor violations of creed.
If it turns out that a character develops in a manner that the player did not originally predict, and an alignment change seems in order, I would approach the player, and make it part of the story - wrenching moral choices and a rethinking of deeply held world views and all that. Though i have to admit, that last part is just theory, I never had it happen when I was GMing.

As a player, my CG fighter is exploring a dungeon during an interplanar cataclysm, when he unexpectedly encountered a slightly disoriented blue dragon, and since I had the drop on him I jumped in and unloaded with both barrels (figuratively speaking). Unbeknownst to me the cataclysm had disoriented the dragon in such a way as to change his alignment to good- so my DM penalized me for attacking a good creature - alignment change, level loss, the whole bit. I thought it was a bit extreme, but he was a by-the-book DM, plus it gave me the chance to go on a quest to redeem myself, and return to CG (though I did not get the levels back as a result of the quest, I earned them back the hard way).

Different GM styles is all.

Finally, and a little off topic, I wanted to thank you both, and Cadfan, for having the good taste to not engage in a religious flame war on this site. It was very considerate of you all.

John

I've never had a real problem with alignments, the only reservation I can think of is when the GM tries to hold your alignment against you...

"...You wouldn't do that..."

Or when somthing occurs in game and the GM thinks that it your alignment should CHANGE as a result of it.

"Its my (imaginary) life and I'll do what I want"

I hate the detect evil spell, also. Therefore, in my campaign, it only works on outsiders, who are usually obviously evil or obviously good, anyway, and it does not your average man on the street, who is neither good nor evil.

Mr. X doesn't have TIME to do that. He's too busy being riddled with bullets and...uh...well...dead.

But he was a great man.

Yes...they also both had physical disabilities...

Professor X was paralyzed from the waist down, and Mr. X was...well...he suffered from a condition...that's known as...dead.

Is DMX a member of the X clan?

I just remembered he sang 'X Gon' Give It 2 Ya', didn't he, perhaps that's a clue.

Don't forget their skanky little sister, X-tina...

Perhaps you like detection spells because you are enlightened and farsighted. Perhaps, however, you do not run a campaign in which solving mysteries is a large portion of the plot.

When your party has been sent out to a remote village with a population of 500, to solve a series of murders and to find the suspected serial killer, an individual who is likely to have been dabbling in the dark arts, the ability to round up all the townspeople, and detect evil, kind of kills the entire plot.

"Yep, that's him. Go thwack him with your sword."
"There ya go!"
"Another job well done!"

I have an upcoming rant on this subject, but I just can't resist...

Detect Evil should not replace moral choice (for more on this, see Memehunter's comments on the 'How Typical is Stereotypical' thread). It should not be an 'evilometer' that allows allegedly 'good' characters to execute people on sight simply because they yield an evil 'ping'. Assuming one allows Detect Evil to work, which I generally do, the mere presence of evil does NOT entitle a Lawful Good person (who must abide by the law, remember) to execute someone on that basis alone. If the character cannot prove that the evil person has committed a capital crime, killing the person would be unlawful. If the character does not have legal enforcement powers (and why should he or she, in many instances?), then killing the person is equally likely to be unlawful. Paladins must observe the law as well as fight for good; if they don't, they're risking their class status.

Moreover, characters who use Detect Evil as an excuse to go on a Dogma-style execution spree may face the displeasure of the local authorities, and may end up facing criminal charges themselves.

In Cadfan's example above, I would offer three solutions:

1) Several individuals in the village detect for evil, but only one has committed the crime. Since one or more of these evil individuals has a position of status in the village, they cannot be arrested or otherwise accused without any evidence.

2) The guilty party as an amulet of Undectable Alignment or similar magic item - which just so happens to be more powerful than the party's means of detection.

3) Not only are there evil folk in the village, but there are traces of an ancient shrine where torture, human sacrifice, and soul-eating once took place on a regular basis. Much of the environs of the village detects evil so strongly that any character using a Detect Evil spell or power will be overwhelmed by it, and will be rendered physically incapacitated for a period of time. When the radar-happy character suffers penalties for several hours after each use of the spell or power, s/he won't be so quick to go pinging everything in sight just to see if it detects evil.

Sorry about that, Mo. I must have misinterpreted you. I didn't mean to cause offence.

Like I say, in my campaign, detect evil and other such spells do not exist. Smite Evil, however, does, because it is a spell granted by the gods, who are by definition, totally good or evil. However, Smite Evil works slightly differently in my campaign, according to the patron god of the cleric casting it...

So, for example, if the cleric follows Scahrossa, half-sister of Ollidammara, goddess of sadism and punishment, then Smite Evil affects rogues and clerics of Ollidammara. If the cleric follows Pelor, god of the sun, Smite Evil works against nocturnal creatures, and cave-dwellers who shun the light of the sun.

It's a little more work, but it makes better sense, I find, after all, all gods have their own agendas, so it would make sense that they would see evil in something others perhaps do not.

Cadfan -

Yeah, you're right that those kinds of things can have limitations.

As far as items of undetectable alignment go, I figure it stands to reason that institutions such as Thieves' Guilds - and *especially* spies - make a habit of keeping them. In a world where detection magic is commonplace, I have to think that anti-detection magic is equally commonplace. Consider: in our world, we have lie detector tests, drug tests, and radar detectors. That people are able to fool the first is common knowledge, and there are entire industries focused on fooling the other two. I'm not saying that such things should be common (at least, not more common than the spells they guard against), but I am saying that your party shouldn't be shocked to find such things on the bodies of the bad guys after the dust has settled. Bear in mind: for every spell that can detect, there's another that can occlude. There are amulets of undectable thoughts as well as undetectable alignment. If you want to keep secrets, you've got to use these things! They're part of the fantasy setting implicit in D&D.

One key element of what you're saying is that you can't spring these things on your players mid-campaign. I agree. But all is still not lost; there are ways to work in hostile casters, divine interference, and a host of other agencies that are part and parcel of the standard D&D setting. You're not, from my view, mindlessly depriving the players of their powers; you're creating real, in-system challenges that they should expect and be able to work around.

Player character powers should work; again, we agree there. But if the powers are ruining your scenarios, then the tail is wagging the dog. I don't think it's unreasonable to give yourself a little insurance every other bad guy or so to prevent your characters from sailing through the scenario too easily.

Erm...When I wrote "radar detectors" I meant "police radar". Obviously, the former are the product meant to fool the latter. But I hope you can see what I mean.

Cadfan,

I was the guy who made a plea to allow detect evil spells etc. And I stand by it.

I take your points that various devices to make use of such spells uncertain have their limitations. and that in the adventure you described there was only one evil person. But on the whole, I find your reasoning on this matter unconvincing.

First take Cocytus' argument that just because a guy shows up evil on your spell, its not a licence to kill him. He could still be completely innocent of the alleged crime. Your players should still have a mystery to solve, they just have a starting point at which to begin. And it could be a false lead.

Second, remember the well used convention that only strong evil will show up. Thus a petty murderer may not even qualify despite the heinousness of the crime.

Thirdly, remember that evil is often a matter of perspective. In many circumstances, both parties in a conflict engage in terrible actions which they truly feel are completely justified. Are they evil or good. In such circumstances, I feel that you would be justified as a DM in giving a confused reading to a spell. This might actually be the most normal state of affairs.

Fourthly, there are any number of ways in which a clever individual might confuse a spell. To give just one example, an evil character breaks off a bit of a holy shrine that radiates goodness. Because this guy is TRULY evil, he avoids directly contact with the shrine, but keeps the piece in a small box on his person. This might confuse a reading. I am sure I can come up with half a dozen other tricks with little effort.

Fifthly, People generally don't like spellcasters wandering round town, pointing at them and chanting 'I call upon the holy power of Sanctimonious to reveal the unclean intentions of the evildoers!' It ain't good manners and the party will get the door slammed in their face by all sorts of innocent but pissed off parties.

Sixthly. I think that many DMs like to be mysterious for the sake of it. It gives them a sense of secret power over their players, and whenever I detect such behaviour I let the DM know what I think. Some mystery is fine, but unreasonable levels of it just to satisfy a DMs sense of control is a real turn off.

Let me end on something I truly believe ' I HAVE NEVER FOUND THE SPELLS DETECT EVIL/ALIGNMENT/TRUTH ETC TO DESTABILIZE A CAMPAIGN AS LONG AS THE DM ALLOWED THEIR USE ONLY IN A REASONABLE WAY'

Yours

MAQ

For all of these, the party is a wizard, a paladin, a cleric, a ranger, and a rogue/fighter heading for duelist. They are between levels 5 and 7, different for each mission. The party lives in a kingdom that is very far flung. There is a central government, but there are also a lot of provinces on the outskirts where control isn't so tight. The kingdom does its best to protect them nevertheless, and so the state church and the government have created an organization which handles this. It is largely made up of paladins, good clerics, and others with similar convictions. The party is one of these groups.

Scenario one.

Pretty much the one I've used above. The party is sent out to solve a series of murders and disappearances. The village they are sent to is isolated. The murders are occurring because one of the townspersons wanted to kill his neighbor, and bought some magical supplies from a recurring bad guy of whom the players were not yet aware. The supplies summoned a creature which did kill the man's neighbor, but then went feral and hid in the woods, where it had been preying upon the townspeople. The PCs are unaware of all of this. In interviewing various townspeople, they become aware that this particular man is up to no good. So what happens now?

Well, fortunately for me, this was very early in our use of 3rd edition, and no one realized until after the mission was over that they could have used detection spells. If they had, it would have been a snap to uncover the guilty party, since summoning evil outsiders to kill your neighbors over a dispute involving someone's wife is, in my opinion, enough to register you as evil. Detect magic would have also worked, as the man had 2 items, one to summon, and one to control the creature and protect himself. He was hanging onto the second one.

My goal was for the party to finish this mission by eliminating the creature, (which involved some problem solving, as it was too big for them to fight head on) figure out that this man was probably guilty of something, and be unable to conclusively do anything about it until later when the recurring bad guy was hinted at/revealed. Detection spells would have meant that it was all revealed immediately, denying the party the mystery of tracking the creature, identifying it, and based on its physical description working out a plan by which they could attack and kill it. They could have just asked some guy for all the answers. It would have been like a cheat sheet. The battle in which the parties drafted the townspeople to scare the creature out of its lair with fire and sound and into an ambush would not have been so cool if the PCs had not figured out all of these tactics by careful scouting.

Same pcs and everything. Neighboring kingdom is still evil, and still wants to conquer the PCs kingdom. PCs are still trying to stop them. The neighboring kingdom is using the winter as a time for special operations to terrorize and destabilize the PCs kingdom, so that it will not be able to effectively defend itself. At this point, they are trying to assassinate nobles who publically commit to defending the kingdom's lands, in hopes of making it difficult to organize an effective defendign army. There were 3 assassins the PCs were trying to locate. This was the first. This assassin had murdered 2 nobles in their beds so far. The pcs are racing between towns trying to stay ahead of him, and to protect and warn the barons in danger.

Anyways, the PCs know the assassin intends to kill this particular lord at a particular hour. They know this assassin is something impressive, because he's killed men under full guard before. They figure he's either got good magical items, or is a spell caster, or has something of that nature to help him out. They're correct- he's a wererat, which lets him slip in places and through holes in walls that a human could never fit though. This makes the "slide into the baron's bedroom and kill him in his sleep even though there's a guard in the room with him" thing possible.

The pcs aren't dumb. They have 2 paladins. The paladins sit on the ground, and concentrate on detect evil. They "meditate" like this for some time. They actually failed to save the first baron they needed to protect, because they didn't know about the wererat thing, and the assassin slipped in undetected from a direction they were not monitoring. (they were pointed at windows and doors, not what they believed to be impassable walls) With the next baron, they got smart. They detected evil at the walls, and monitored the doors with the other PCs eyes. The assassin had thought up some new tricks, too, (he entered the room through the ceiling, transformed into a human, doused the baron and the baron's bed in burning oil, and fled) but the PCs chased him and got him. That was all well and good.

But the thing was, the problem solving in this mission boiled down to, "how can we most effectively use detect evil." The problem solving in all the missions before either was, or could have easily been, "lets use detect evil and detect magic and zone of truth more effectively."

Not every problem should be solved by that, and I shouldn't have to resort to "cause the DM said so" as a means of limiting these abilities. I find it a much simpler and more elegant solution to limit/ban these abilities than to conjure reasons for how each bad person can't be magically detected by first and zero level spells. I also don't have to work up silly explanations for how some evil traitor cleric managed to work his way into the church hierarchy, when even the level 1 clerics have spells that would detect his evil. I don't have to explain away why no one ever questioned why brother john always wore an amulet around his neck, even when he was asleep. No one can detect these things, and a mystery based plotline is preserved.

Were I mostly dungeon crawling, it wouldn't be so much of a problem. But I don't like dungeons. I like plot.

*shrug*

Wanted to add:

If you want to run a mystery-based, investigative campaign, you've probably got two choices:

1) Customize the d20 D&D ruleset to favor your campaign. Weaken or abolish divination spells and detection powers. The disadvantage to this approach is that it requires some reworking of the system, and should be laid out for the players *before* they create their characters.

2) Design your scenarios with the existing system in mind. Expect your characters to trot out Detect Evil, etc, and plan for it. In some situations, they should be able to use it to good effect. In others, they should meet well prepared, devious malefactors who aren't going to be stopped by the machinations of Acolytes or a few meddling kids...

On December 5, 2003 06:34 PM, Cocytus said:
Weaken or abolish divination spells and detection powers. [snip] and should be laid out for the players *before* they create their characters.

That is what I did. Mid Campaign it is a little unfair to change the rules, but you can always discuss it with the players, maybe they will be OK with it.

As to the paladins being Wankers, I don't know about that, they chose paladins for a reason. Now I've already said that I scale down detect evil, so it would not pick up a normal human assassin, but a meditative paladin would definitely detect a demonic assassin, and maybe a wererat as well, I'd have to look up the wererat alignment, but assuming it is evil, I'd let the paladin evil detector work.

I seem to recall 2 paladins in a dungeon crawl, standing 30 feet apart and detecting evil to triangulate on the big baddie in the dungeon. It seemed a little weaselly at the time, but what the heck, once your in a dungeon, the gamist comes out in everyone, and even my adjusted detect evil was up to that task.

Anyway, Cadfan, I suggest talking to the party, if they are OK with a change - problem solved. If not, you lay down the law up front next campaign.

John

^^^^

EXCELLENT point, Ashaqua.

Ashaqua, I have to agree with your point. In my campaign world, there's no good or evil (except where demons and angels are concerned, but that's another story). So, there are very few 'evil' characters. They're quite a few slimy, back-stabbing, lying, cheating, murderous bastards, but they don't consider themselves evil. Likewise, as in our world, there's quite a few deranged, psychotic lunatics, who appear to be evil, just because they're given a position of power. They're not evil in and of themselves, they're just mad.

Actually, I believe Hitler's alignment would be more of a psychotic-evil. He was a total wacko-vegetarian-painter who lost his mind when he realized that he couldn't paint trees properly.

*quoting Eddie Izzard's stand-up comedy*

Hitler: "I can't...get the...stupid...trees...DAMMIT!! I VILL KILL EVERYONE IN ZE WURLD!!!

Also we should always remember the setting. After all how common is magic in the campaign? If magic is an accepted part of life in this world than society would have adapted to it. If good and evil cults have been at odds for centuries than both sides should have workable countermeasures for magical detection. Otherwise the Inquisition of the week [whatever name it goes by] would just wander into town, round up everyone detecting the "wrong" alignment and be done with it. Magical detection powers might naturally gravitate to positions of authority; ie. a clerical order that administers justice for the town[or for just its members] and the evil cult providing masking magic to foil the goody-two-shoes[probably for a price]. Also governments and organizations would provide such mystical detection for its Law enforcement arm and counters for its diplomats and assassins. Ditto for the Armies and the Trade Guilds too. In short the law of supply and demand should apply: if magic is very common and available than the counters will be equally common and available. If magic is rare and mysterious than the counters will be fewer and far between.

Just my thoughts,
glitz

Sorry about that. Dang the double click!!

As one of the very few french speaking people on this site Olly, if you meant: Look! the cat is near the chair!"

That would be "Regarde", regard means look in the sense of "a look".

Good call about Hitler.

Did you know some leading Theoligians have taken the Bable Fish as final and clinching proof of the non-existance of God...

The arguement goes something like this:

God: I refuse to prove that I exist. for proof denies faith and without faith I am nothing.

Man: But the Bable Fish is a dead givaway isn't it? It proves you exist and therefor you don't. QED.

God: Oh dear. I hadn't thought of that.
And promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

Man then goes
on to prove that Black is White and that White is Black and gets killed at the next Zebra Crossing. (What does QED mean anyway?)

QED = Quod Erat Demonstrandum
"which was to be proved"; meaning something along the lines of "I have presented my evidence which is to solid it is unrefutable, and what I set out to prove is thus proved, end of argument."

I think Nelson's wife is Hitler re-incarnate. Simply put...

she's a mean bitch.

its all about perspective...

Well .... it all depends on what you mean by the word 'EVIL'. Now when we talk of EVIL people we are into the realms of motivation.

Olly has said that evil people are in some way victims or nuts. I'm not sure that I agree in many cases. For example, I think that it is not an unnatural motivation to try to dominate others. It is in fact a basic human drive related to evolutionary success. Theres nothing twisted or crazy about it. Its even beneficial in moderation.

But Its also a basic human drive to co-operate. This also has benefits in evolutionary and survival terms. In many ways the word EVIL has meaning only in terms of the tension between these two basic motivations.

I believe that what we can legitimately call Evil, is where the human drive to dominate and succeed, takes control over an individuals actions to such an extent that it seriously endangers the general good.

Using this criteria, My list of EVIL guys would include many (NOT ALL) of the movers and shakers of this world, because many of them promote their own interests in such a way that the life, wealth, and liberties of large groups of people are endangered.

Hey is this getting too heavy or what ?

General answers

1) Any answer that claims to be based on "common sense" but is really based on making Rule Zero edits to the function of detection spells or of the alignment system, is not an answer at all unless you can show me why making YOUR rule zero edit to the game is better than making MY rule zero edit to the game, whic is just plain discouraging and/or eliminating radar style detection spells.

2) Any answer that relies upon some sort of rare counter device is also no answer. I hate when someone brings up a problem in the rules and instantly everyone says, "Ah, but that won't work in an anti magic field!" Look, I don't play a game where I can rely upon conveniently placed anti magic fields. Just how common are those supposed to be? The same applies to detection foils. I can't give them to everybody. The players would be annoyed, and rightly so, if every enemy worth worrying about was conveniently loaded with alignment detection foiling items and undetectable magic aura spells. I just don't play a game where all major enemies can have "stock magic gear." If you do, great. I don't. In addition, I hate when encounters turn into chess games of spell and counter spell, or worse, item and counter item. I just don't think that's fun, and I think it marginalizes character abilities.

3) Any accusation that I am trying to unfairly limit my players knowledge is open to the response that, well, there's nothing sacrosanct about the existance of radar detection spells. Many rule systems don't have them at all. Removing them does not nerf any character class, and allows creative, non magical play. A lot of the function of magic in the game is to fiat certain results. For example, instead of the PCs having to find and steal the key to a particular chamber from a guard, they just cast knock. This is not inherently bad, (in that particular example, it would be just fine) but each means by which regular, long, thought out, and engaging solutions to problems are bypassed with the announcement of a particular spell being cast eliminates a scenario that could be played out. In a fantasy game, a lot of this is expected, some of it is good, some of it is neutral, and some of it is just silly. I suspect we all have our limits on the extent to which magic's intervention in the world is acceptable before it becomes silly. Common complaints I've seen around this forum generally center on raise dead, alignment issues, and castles in a world of flying, disintegration lobbing wizards. I draw my line at giving all the paladins a mystical sixth sense for detecting bad guys. I draw this line because in my campaign type, that's not convenient for game play. If I were playing a different campaign type, perhaps this would not be a problem.

This theoretical objection to the high power of magic is a lot of the reason behind why many people enjoy low magic campaigns. Its because they think of cool scenarios- and then realize that these scenarios can be entirely bypassed by the use of a cheap potion or spell. Like, infiltrating a castle. In low magic games you might play an extensive game of hide and seek with the guards as you work your way inside the castle, stealing keys and unlocking doors, then returning them to the guards room so that no one even knows that an intruder is present. In a high magic game you might cast invisibility and fly, and go in through the top window directly to your target. In that game, instead of dodging guards now you're dodging the enemy's wizards, and their detection magic and magical traps. Its no less a game, but its a different game. Depending on which one you like, you may have to curtail the effect of magic somewhat. Its entirely your call. I happen to like the first type.

4) Any solution that relies upon the players volunarily limiting their own abilities is also no solution. From the players perspective, if a spell will work, why not use it? The player is roleplaying from the perspective of his character, and his character is quite logically going to take the route with the greatest chance of success.

argh. "unfair," not "unfairl."

Also, I thought of #3: the etiquette protocol of spellcasting. On the "Moral Compass" thread, both Nephandus and Ashagua pointed out that most people don't have spellcraft. People going around casting spells without warning or explanation are likely to be attacked; it seems to me that this should put a damper on clerics trying to sniff out the traitorous baron from your scenario #2.

Cadfan, I don't mean to pick a fight, really. I just want to understand the strange creature that you are (having given up on Olly a few weeks ago).

How is the smart use of stone shape (wall of stone would have also done it) any different than the use of detect evil? I mean it's using magic as a clean, simple solution to a big problem. Although the monsters might always dig themselves out, but that's another story.

Also how is the spell vs counter spell any different than skill vs counter skill?

I mean, the rogues and rangers with their +15 move silently and hide vs the guards' +X in spot and listen sound exactly like spell vs counterspell to me.

Also, while invisibility and fly are quite nice to get in alone. It makes a coordinated assault somewhat difficult, since you can't see one another and communicate by sign.

I once had an ambush foiled by my own supposed cleverness. We were all invisible and I cast silence. The GM being a quick witted guy picked at random which character would start the attack (since we had no way of talking to each other) he then randomly (using a scatter dice and a d4) moved us away from our planned spots and said.

"Ok your all getting into position, but suddenly (rolls dice) James character appears out of thin air and attacks his target, while you're (rolls dice) here, (rolls dice) here and (rolls dice) here. Initiatives guys."

That was all within the rules, there was no manabable involved and no fudging.

Your alignment thing works just the same. In any city or country rulers will make deals with evil people and choose the lesser evil of dealing with the devil they know. If a paladin starts hacking at every evil person in town (who might be lawfull to the crown) then new bad guys could emerge, aliances broken, etc. That is also all within the rules and explains why such things usually don't happen.

I mean otherwise all one evil group would have to do is hire a neutral or unwitting good guy, give him some info on some rival group and let the good guys hack away at the bad guys while they took awayt their piece of the action.

Once the good guys have spent their resources fighting their rivals, the bad guys get rid of them and it passes for retribution from the former rivals.

Magical stigma would still work in high magic campaigns. How to you feel when someone walks up to you while cleaning his gun? Drawing his gun? Loading his gun? Cocking his gun? Pointing his gun?
All these make me nervous (well maybe not the cleaning part), but guns are more common in Canada than magic users are is in the Forgotten Realms.

The local cleric has cast spells to heal, help the crops, etc. But he's also smoten ennemies, cursed criminals, called spiritual weapons, etc. A wandering cleric (usually what adventurers are, would make them a bit nervous, especially if it's a cleric of a god of war, retribution, etc.)

Finaly
While I completely agree with you that strategy vs counter strategy is the most stimulating kind of challenge, removing and downgrading the abilities of certain character classes kind of destroys balance in the game. I mean a paladin isn't that great a fighter or a caster system. Smite and detect evil and divine grace are what make paladins appealing as PC's (from a game mechanics point of view).
If spell casters and paladins are down graded, well maybe rogues, fighters, assassins, orks, dragons, etc, should all be down graded as well to reflect that and keep it in balance.

On Anti magic:

While dead zones are rare, many forms of dispell magics and wards (globes, screens, spell turning, spell resistance, etc) exist and are more or less common. Maybe not a permanently magic proof castle (which would prevent magic healing inside the walls). But having the main keep guarded with glyphs of dispellment, etc. Isn't so high magic, certainly lesser magic than stoneshaping a whole cave complex fast enough to entomb a horde of mosters.

But as you say, your game world, not mine.

"How is the smart use of stone shape (wall of stone would have also done it) any different than the use of detect evil?"

Because that happened once, and involved creativity and intelligence. I don't think that "lets use detect evil to find the bad guy... again!" involves creativity or intelligence. Maybe the first time, for new players, but not the fifth or sixth.

"Also how is the spell vs counter spell any different than skill vs counter skill?"

The skills involve planning. I don't let a pc just declare, "I'm hiding now," and then do a hide versus spot check. If the pc is in an empty corridor with nothing to hide behind, no amount of skill will let them succeed. This means other tactics, like staying out of sight, etc, come into play. It means you get to role play the whole encounter. The main difference is how much player involvement there is- if its resolved by a quick dice roll, and whoever rolls better wins, that's silly. That's giving the dice too much power over the game. There are three powers in the game- the players, the DM, and the dice. They all have to be balanced. Too much to the players, and the DM can't create a meaningful, fun plot. Too much to the DM, and the players can't create their own story. Too much to the dice, and you'd might as well just shoot craps.

"Magical stigma would still work in high magic campaigns. How to you feel when someone walks up to you while cleaning his gun? Drawing his gun? Loading his gun? Cocking his gun? Pointing his gun?"

Magic, especially in high magic campaigns, has a lot more function to it than the function of a gun. A gun is only for shooting someone. Just because we play heroes all the time, maybe we forget that magic would be also used for a wide array of purposes other than killing people in a high magic world. Healing them, for one. For luck. For farming. In a blacksmith's forge. I think the game tends to drop the ball a little bit on explaining how non combat magic works, but if you're in a game where the list prices for magical items apply, you're in a world where a street musician who saves enough money can buy himself a potion of cure light wounds. You have to expect that people would be familiar with non-killing-things magic.

"While I completely agree with you that strategy vs counter strategy is the most stimulating kind of challenge, removing and downgrading the abilities of certain character classes kind of destroys balance in the game."

The only thing I downgraded was detect evil. Smite, spells, etc, are all still there. I really, really don't think unlimited detect evil was meant to be one of the prime functions of a paladin within the game. Do you honestly feel that removing detect evil from the paladin makes them so much worse that people would choose not to play them?

"Isn't so high magic, certainly lesser magic than stoneshaping a whole cave complex fast enough to entomb a horde of mosters."

Actually it was just the cave entrance, and the monster was asleep, gorged on cattle.

I've always felt that alignment was something of a tool for the PC to use, but more of a way to describe how something (like an organization) is in general.
For example: If you take the idea of a church where the head priest is corrupt. The church may be lawful good, but that doesn't mean that you have to BE lawful good to be a member or a leader, you just have to ACT lawful good in order to win the church's trust (I don't mean the physical building, of course).
That being said, I feel that a character who is chaotic evil is more effectivly played if they act all nice and happy, but are plotting nasty things, and lieing about who they are. It is very difficult to keep a party together when one player has a character who has a completely different alignment than the other characters. Unless they have to work together why would they?
First opportunity they get they would part ways.
Alignment really should be up to the player. If they feel that they want to play strictly the way that the alignment dictates then so be it, but otherwise, any lawful good person can commit murder. Does that mean that they were never lawful good to begin with? No, I don't think so.
Evil characters can feel loyalty as well. It doesn't mean that they have to kill everything and ruin everyone's day. They can go about things with a selfish, evil intent.
They say that in the 80's they did a study of a cross section of business executives and found that a lot of them fit the profile of a psychopath. All that that means is that they have no sense of feeling or compasion for anyone other than themselves (if that). But that doesn't mean that they don't act civil.
Anyways, that's all I have to say, except that I disagree... I think Batman is Neutral Good. He is a vigilante and that is illigal, as well he will do whatever it takes to get the job done, even if it mean murder.
Having said that, I really haven't read all that many Batman comics.

CADFAN SAID:
'They won't destabilize a campaign if the campaign plot doesn't involve hidden, evil elements. The fact that my campaigns tend to have so much to detect makes the spells not so great for game balance.'

MO REPLIES:
You have made this argument several times, despite being shown again and again the limlitations of Detect Evil spells. I put it to you that your campaigns are really not so much different from iother peoples. We all have hidden Evil elements. Reading between the lines I sense that your real objection is because you have a certain view of the way that Players should solve a problem, and you don't like to see them shortcutting your process.

CADFAN SAID:
'This theoretical objection to the high power of magic is a lot of the reason behind why many people enjoy low magic campaigns. Its because they think of cool scenarios- and then realize that these scenarios can be entirely bypassed by the use of a cheap potion or spell. Like, infiltrating a castle. In low magic games you might play an extensive game of hide and seek with the guards as you work your way inside the castle, stealing keys and unlocking doors, then returning them to the guards room so that no one even knows that an intruder is present. In a high magic game you might cast invisibility and fly, and go in through the top window directly to your target. In that game, instead of dodging guards now you're dodging the enemy's wizards, and their detection magic and magical traps. Its no less a game, but its a different game. Depending on which one you like, you may have to curtail the effect of magic somewhat. Its entirely your call. I happen to like the first type.'

MO REPLIES:
Cadfan, this bit of your post clearly demonstrates what I said above. In your own words, you enjoy a certain way for characters to solve a problem. But the game is not about enforcing your likes or dislikes (Except on the general Campaign level). Its much more about you setting general goals and obstacles ans leaving it up to the players to determine how they want to solve the problem.

To give you a real example which almost exactly parallels the example you have given above. The best DM I ever played for had a deserted building and tower that he had designed and set up, with various situations and encounters to get there. The main treasure room was at the top of the tower. Now he had a drawing of the tower and I noticed that at every floor there was a ledge and that the roof was tiled with slaes. My thief climbed 50 feet to the top with relative ease using the convenient ledges and the slates were easily removed. The party climbed up using ropes and entered the main treasure room directly, killing the monsters there and getting the treasure for very little effort. Rather than try to stop us or penalize us, the DM actally rewarded us with MORE xps for circumventing his obstacles in a clever way.

Now in the same situation, I am sure that you would have found some way of foiling our emminently reasonable approach and forcing us to go through the hoops of your design.

Please note, that there was no magick involved on our part. We used ordinary thief skills and climbing gear in a clever way. The magick argument is really a red herring. The fact is that intelligent players will always find ways around your plans, and as a DM you should REWARD them for this rather than try to STOP them.

Challenge accepted:

James T. Kirk: Neurtral Good
Mr. Spock: Lawful Neutral (enh, maybe good)
Dr. Bones: Neutral Good
Uhura: Neurtral Good
Sulu: True Neutral
Sarek: Lawful Neutral

And now a true Trekkie will yell at me for being wrong.

...

Hee hee

I'd actually join the discussion at hand, but I pretty much agree with Mo.

I would also add that magic generally needs some kind of tactics to work as well as anyone would want. Even with the standard Fireball and Lightning Bolt, you still have to aim so you won't hit your friends. Detect Evil doesn't even tell you where things are located until about 18 seconds after you've started. That's 18 seconds of concentrating. Lots of things can happen in 18 seconds. Especially if one of those things happens to break the character's concentration. How many paladins do you know that take that skill?

This discussion is a lot like any discussion about the skills in Diablo II. Most people use the best skills they can so that they're character can be the best on the Realms. That is, until Blizzard changes the way the skills work so that a new set of skills is "best".

The lesson that we can learn from this is that players tend to use their best option. Once abuse has been identified, it's very hard to correct by making everything balanced again. Unfortunately, you can't change the way people think. Twinkers will be twinkers, and it is very hard for anyone to get them to stop being twinkers. I know that there has been a thread on this issue before.

If a certain group of adventurers continually use a certain strategy (cheap or not), word will eventually gets out. Even if said adventurers leave no survivors, rumor will always spread. Its a fundamental law of the multiverse. Therefore, people who might at sometime be involved against these adventurers will take measures to stop this strategy. The likelihood of this happening increases with the adventurers fame and reputation. A certain cabal might concievably seek out an antimagic field for the express purpose of foiling scrying.

Eventually everything does balance out. Somehow.

Are you referring to Checkov, Playwright? Writer of the excellent play The Cherry Orchard? In which I played Lophakin? God, I was good in that role...

Sorry, actor's ego playing up.

And Kirk, well, he was more interested in getting his end away than following procedure, most of the time.

Kirk: Don't interfere with alien civilisation? All right.

(Alien woman walks past)

Kirk: Hey baby, nice legs! Yeah, all four of them.

Unlike Picard, who was more of this school of thought...

Picard: Not interfere with alien culture? All right.

(First encounter with an alien race)

Picard: YOU'RE BIBLE IS A LIE!

CADFAN,

I congratulate you on not getting upset by my criticism. Some guys would have got abusive under such sustained criticism. Your last post was interesting and I want to address the points you made there:

(1) CADFAN said
'The first half of that- Mo, if I recall, you yourself rule zero detect evil. You just forgive yourself for it because you say your rule zero is a commonly accepted means of doing it.'

MO replies:
I'm not sure what you mean by rule zero, what I use is the convention that detect evil only shows up strong evil. I don't scrap the spell altogether. And I do this because I believe that true evil is very rare, not because I want to limit the information to players. In any case, I am not against scrapping or modifying spells. I am against this particular change because I truly don't see the spell as destabilising. The arguments have been well rehearsed above.

(2)
CADFAN SAID:
'3.5. Now these spells get used a lot less. But, other spells are used more. By RESTRICTING an ability, namely buff spells, the game designers INCREASED choice. Previously, there were *technically* more choices, but since one choice was clearly superior according to so many, the choice was a false one.'

(2)
CADFAN SAID:
'3.5. Now these spells get used a lot less. But, other spells are used more. By RESTRICTING an ability, namely buff spells, the game designers INCREASED choice. Previously, there were *technically* more choices, but since one choice was clearly superior according to so many, the choice was a false one.

MO replies:
I can't really talk about buff spells or nerfing because I'm still on 2.0
In any case, the kind of choice that you're talking about is not the kind of choice that I am talking about. What I want to give players, is the real plot choices the can if necessary completely redirect the course of the campaign. I'm also not saying that Detect Evil is so important in itself, I'm saying that the tendency to restrict player information is often the sign of a controlling DM.

(3)
CADFAN SAID:
'Take another example. Suppose we made wish a first level spell,'

MO replies:
I agree with this example, but it is an extreme example to make a point. In any case I have already replied that I am not against removing or modifying destabilising spells.

(4)
CADFAN SAID:
'In your scenario about the tower, I would very much appreciate your solution. I wouldn't try to "get around it" in any way.'

MO replies:
I'm glad to hear it. Perhaps I have been misrepresenting your view. Its just that from your comments, it has seemed to me that you want to guide the story closely. Sorry if I was wrong.

(5)
CADFAN said:
'That's bad, and there's two possible solutions. Solution one is "getting around" the players decisions. Oddly enough, that's the thing you're against, but its also the thing that most of your answers to me have argued in favor of. Getting around the players solution is when suddenly anti magic fields and anti scrying devices become ubiquitous amongst major bad guys, even though that's not really realistic considering the frequency with which those are supposed to exist in the game. Solution 2 is the solution you don't like, but I do- if your game is showing you that scrying and dimension door are broken and poorly balanced, then get rid of them.'

MO replies:
Now here, I disagree with you strongly. My solution would probably be nothing like you suggest. I would not prolifferate anti-devices that just couln't exist in those numbers. I would come out with a plausible response in which the campaign organically responds to the players. This is very easy to do with just a bit of imagination. Let me give you my immediate thoughts on this problem:

First: where are all these castles or lairs that the players are attacking ? They are part of a kingdom or alliance of some sort. They are owned by powerful and energetic men with many resources and allies. Sure you might knock off one or two. But this would begin to ring alarm bells in the minds of other lords. They would bend their power and resources to finding out who was taking them out so easily, and the players would eventually be called to account by a higher authority.

Please note, it may appear that I am limiting the actions of the players here, after telling you that this is a bad thing. But its not me. I have no desire in any way to direct the players actions. It is the logic of the campaign that is intervening. What is happenning is what I think the logical response of the campaign npc's would be under those circumstances.

Anyway, what I'm suggesting to you is that there is a better way to limit players actions. Let your campaign do it in a natural response rather than by banning certain choices. Off- course I still agree with you that you should still remove or ban truly destabilising spells or items.

ZOMBIE GIANT CRABS! Egads, Ass! You've just inspired me for an adventure...

Frenzy Of Tongs: Part II
Hang Man Chang Returns (...From the dead)

NO...

It was just an experimental system of necromancy implemented into a world that previously had NO necromancy. After this incident, we tweaked it a little, and it worked great. But by that time, Mr. Grumpy-gills had quit the game, so we just put the necro-notes aside.

Methinks this has the makings of a counterpoint article. I'm sick, so I was only able to skim the article in question, but here's a response that is probaby far too long and definitely not finished. ;)

I must confess, I really like the D&D alignment system. One reason is because it has the best and most elegant definition of evil that I've ever seen. I got most of this from 2nd edition, where they remove the silly references to "the most dangerous" or "the best" alignments and give it to your straight. Also, the Book of Vile Darkness does a great job of outlining a lot of what constitutes evil without being silly about it.

There are three main components here: intent, result, and for lack of a better phrase, what I call "due diligence."

Intent consists of what the individual knows about the situation, and what they think will result from their actions. If you shoot the merchant with the intent of robbing him, that's evil.

The result is what actually happens. If you shoot the merchant, but as it turns out, he was operating a child slavery ring, then the act probably falls into the neutral category in terms of overarching effect. However, if a Good or Lawful character were to perform this act without this knowledge, it would still be evil, because they had no reason to suspect that he was operating such a ring.

"Due diligence" is what I call the burden of exploring other, less destructive / pain causing courses of action before embarking on one that you believe will cause pain / destruction. So, to borrow an example from the Book of Vile Darkness, if you see believe that the entire town is evil, and you poison the water supply, that's evil; unless you have some way to verify that everyone in the town is evil, you run the risk of killing lots and lots of potentially innocent people. There are also likely to be other avenues of approach in order to address this problem. (As the stakes go up, though, the line between what is acceptable and what is not to starts to blur and break...)

Good people have equal, if not greater consideration for others' pleasures, wants, and needs in combination with their own. Someone who is good must have beneficent intent and must have done a reasonable job of making sure that their actions will not cause pain or destruction. The result factors in if the intent was good but the result was bad; remorse or some feeling of the necessity for reparation are characteristic of good people (but perhaps not of neutral characters, for instance).

Evil is defined as placing your own pleasures, wants, and needs above those of others. With evil, the result of your actions aren't as important as the intent, as remaining evil does not have same the burden as remaining good does. Thus, "due diligence" is sort of irrelevant here, for there is no burden of evil (unless you've got a really weird evil thing going on, in which case you just flip the rules for that case), and often, it's either irrelevant or essential that harm is caused.

By this logic, painful or destructive acts are not _innately_ evil as long as they are committed with altruistic intent. If it looks like they'll cause a great deal of pain or destruction, then before you proceed, you must have attempted to discover other alternatives ("due diligence").

So, to apply this notion of determining good/evil to one of the examples discussed... Why is this Lawful Good character torturing this evil thing? To find out information? What is at stake? A village, national security, a spoiled friend of the king, or money? Are there other, less violent alternatives, such as divination spells? How much effort is he putting into finding any alternatives? The theme here is that in general, causing pain is not a Good Thing, and good characters should consider any pain inflicted to be _regrettable_, if nothing else.

As for "radar" characters, I don't think that you should be able to walk into the town square, cast Detect Evil, and point out who is evil and who isn't. Only the strictest interpretation of the rules, without any consideration for the details of how general D&D metaphysics operate, allows for this method.

For example, I think there is a rather significant difference between the evil merchant who cheats his customers, and an evil priest who sacrifices babies.

The overarching principle here is that it is a burden to be good, as you have obligations to fulfill in trying not to cause harm. Evil characters are less likely to have such an obligation, as good implies some manner of self-sacrifice, and evil implies self-servitude, and it's easier to serve yourself than it is to serve others.

As your ability to pursue "due diligence" increases (that is, as you become more powerful or more competent), the obligation of a good character to do so increases because he is able to more thoroughly research the consequences of his actions. Furthermore, as he is more powerful and resourceful, he is likely to take advantage of his power and resources, which means that his actions are likely to have far greater consequences.

Those who have fewer resources, fewer avenues to consider, and less power are less likely to affect people and events in any significant way. So, while the merchant is causing pain of some sort or another, it's a rather ordinary, localized, and superficial kind of pain.
There isn't really any metaphysical or supernatural "oomph" behind the merchant's deeds (this is where my Planescape feelings come in). In my estimation, he is still evil, but he's not Evil.

The evil priest, on the other hand, has dedicated his life to being evil, has taken pains to persist in his evil, and reaps the benefits of his evil. He is also evil on another level, a magical level, as he has powerful magical tools at his disposal, and has pledged his alleigance to a magical evil. His actions are much more likely to have farther reaching painful/destructive results that are intentional, than a single cheating merchant; indeed, he is much more likely to be able to find ways to cause _more_ pain and destruction with the aid of his god, spells, and other resources.

Another component is that experience and levels are often categorized as a metaphysical general sort of vibrancy of life (hence, undead level drain and that sort of thing). Those that are more vibrant and more powerful (i.e., higher level, and not commoners) have the potential to cause greater harm. Someone of higher level is also far more likely to be cognizant of the consequences and more capable of "due diligence."

Thus, a 20th level character who is neutral evil would definitely be show up as Evil, as you don't see a 20th level character every day and her actions are far more likely to have great consequence. Conversely, a 3rd level character (or a commoner) might not show up as evil simply because it means less for him to be evil. As you go up in levels and become more resourceful and powerful, the burden of "due diligence" and examining your motives becomes greater. Likewise, NPC classes don't really allow a whole lot of room for Evil, because they are essentially simpler and less powerful, although high levels of NPC classes could most certainly lead to Evil characters with sufficient levels or intent.

(Of course, a number of factors such as right place, right time could change this; a 1st level commoner who opts to destroy a good diety for personal gain would probably show up as Evil simply because that is an event of cosmic result.)

The in-game result is that detection spells will reveal all of the obvious culprits (creatures that are evil by nature), and evil creatures of some cosmic significance (i.e., high level characters or characters that have devoted a significant portion of their lives to a given good/evil and/or lawful/chaotic principle). A high level would most certainly show up, a mid-level character would most likely show up, and a low level one would not.

You can make this as uncomplicated or as complicated as you like, of course. Maybe someone who is mid-level but has been evil their whole life has more of an aura of evil than someone who high level, but has only just begun the downward spiral. Maybe low level characters _do_ show up as evil, but only very faintly, such that it's difficult to pinpoint whether it's background noise or a specific person. (That could lead to some interesting dynamics, with the hairs on a Paladin's neck prickling while at court, little knowing that it's not the king's adviser that is evil, but his daughter.)

In case you hadn't noticed, the idea here is to make these matters a little more analog than digital, and base it more on how the character is played than anything else. The model of intent, result, and "due diligence" are fairly simple to apply to any situation, and so I've found it to be very useful.

With regards to Law(ful)/Order(ed), it's a question of scope. In general, Lawful people in your average fantasy world are those who follow the laws of the land. Some exceptions might be people that follow their own set of Laws, indepedent of some legislative body, but I'd still call that behavior Lawful (it's just a bit more subjective). When you start playing with higher concepts and more powerful forces is when it starts to become clear that Order is a more appropriate term than Lawful. It's simpler to saw "Lawful" than "Ordered," and unless you're delving deep into metaphysics, that distinction isn't likely to come up.

And of course, Lawful is tradition. :)

Wow. Okay, yeah, that was absurdly long. :) I guess that is good, though, because it is mostly substance.

But yeah, I will do some refinement as soon as I am not sick. :) I've been itching to write an article ever since I read the anti-Halfling one. (Halflings in Dark Sun are awesome! Just run them similarly in another setting! Too bad I couldn't make an article of it.)