Baldur's Gate The Baldur's Gate Series Thread

[MajorMace]

Could you happen to be an autist, per chance ?

Why do you keep asking rhetorical questions ?

Why wouldn't I ?

 

[Gargaune]

True Neutral always seemed the alignment of the confused or the apathetic

Even apthy would actually classify as evil. Mostly agree apart from that, though druid would still be a step afar from being lawful, as "natural law" is hardly in itself a lawful concept.
I would argue that true neutral is a meme because "natural law" is a meme, as it's theorically a mix between "letting the strongest thrive" while simultaneously making sure they're not unblancing too much the rest of the biome.

I agree it's just a meme, it's why I put it in quote marks. My argument is that if you take True Neutral's description in BG, adherents "believe in the ultimate balance of forces" of which it is "their duty to see [they] remain in balanced contention" and are usually "compelled to side with the underdog in any given situation." So the philosophy itself has nothing to do with law and civilisation per se, but it's very methodical and orderly in its pursuit of "balance", something characteristic of Lawful mindsets (and certain videogame designers). I think it was actually a mistake to call that cardinal point Lawful since it tends to allude to social connotations, I'd say "Orderly" would've been a more accurate denominator for the antithetical position to Chaotic. To their credit, the designers did state that True Neutral characters are supposed to be "extremely rare", but I still can't buy into the arrangement.

I also wouldn't call apathy "Evil", that strikes me as an interventionist perspective intrinsically informed by a moral position, an "only bad people don't care about X" sort of thing, unless I'm misunderstanding your point. I think D&D's nine alignments allow for enough of a distinction between the uncaring and the actively resentful, such as the gap between harming others for dispassionate profit or doing it for personal gratification - for example, the distinction between a Lawful Neutral mercenary razing a village to the ground on orders and a Lawful Evil Blackguard striking down "the weak" as an assertion of his own "naturally ordained superiority."

 

[Desiderius]

what's normal is mightily subjective.

The snake of relativism eating it's tail right here in front of us.

Hate to see it.

"compelled to side with the underdog in any given situation." So the philosophy itself has nothing to do with law and civilisation per se

You live in a civilization you know. That civilization has a history of... doing just that. The abstraction is melting your brains.

A-pathy is on the evil side because sym-pathy (literally "suffering with") is at the heart of the Good. The fear of the pathos is what endangers the "with," the Fellowship/Fraternity/Brotherhood of the Good society. Em-pathy (imaginary suffering) is a poor substitute.

I think people recoil at traditional moral systems (including of course the Christianity that's woven into the fabric of this civilization) due to the natalism inherent to them seeming untenable in the face of environmental instability and the threat of nuclear annihilation. It's a tough nut to crack but if you just pretend those systems never existed you'll never be able to make any sense of the civilization we all rely upon.

 

[Desiderius]

a-pathos -> bathos (clownworld)

 

[NecroLord]

I also wouldn't call apathy "Evil", that strikes me as an interventionist perspective intrinsically informed by a moral position, an "only bad people don't care about X" sort of thing, unless I'm misunderstanding your point. I think D&D's nine alignments allow for enough of a distinction between the uncaring and the actively resentful, such as the gap between harming others for dispassionate profit or doing it for personal gratification - for example, the distinction between a Lawful Neutral mercenary razing a village to the ground on orders and a Lawful Evil Blackguard striking down "the weak" as an assertion of his own "naturally ordained superiority."

Apathy more often than not can give rise to selfishness and evil. I am sure you have heard of biblical Sodom and Gomorrah. It was the apathy of its people in the face of sin and depravity that lead to the rise of evil and its ultimate destruction by God.
Apathy is often thought to be the opposite of Love and it is certainly true.
Lawful Neutral can also easily turn into "Stupid Neutral". A war criminal justifying his acts as "just following orders".

 

[rusty_shackleford]

This entire discussion is why TN is a meme alignment. Nobody can even agree what it is.

 

[Gargaune]

The abstraction is melting your brains. [...] I think people recoil at traditional moral systems

We're talking about D&D's alignment mechanic, not traditional moral systems, there's literally something called Neutral in between the Good and the Evil squares. Abstraction is the point, because it lets you put numbers on it so you can build gameplay systems.

I also wouldn't call apathy "Evil", that strikes me as an interventionist perspective intrinsically informed by a moral position, an "only bad people don't care about X" sort of thing, unless I'm misunderstanding your point. I think D&D's nine alignments allow for enough of a distinction between the uncaring and the actively resentful, such as the gap between harming others for dispassionate profit or doing it for personal gratification - for example, the distinction between a Lawful Neutral mercenary razing a village to the ground on orders and a Lawful Evil Blackguard striking down "the weak" as an assertion of his own "naturally ordained superiority."

Apathy more often than not can give rise to selfishness and evil. I am sure you have heard of biblical Sodom and Gomorrah. It was the apathy of its people in the face of sin and depravity that lead to the rise of evil and its ultimate destruction by God.
Apathy is often thought to be the opposite of Love and it is certainly true.
Lawful Neutral can also easily turn into "Stupid Neutral". A war criminal justifying his acts as "just following orders".

But "can give rise to evil" means it may or it may not, it isn't evil in and of itself. And, more commonly than Apathy, Hate is thought to be the opposite of Love. As for "Stupid Neutral", in D&D it isn't a thing, it's two things - alignment being one, the Wisdom stat being the other. But without getting more philosophical than we need to, it's what I like about D&D's 3x3 alignment grid, that it gives you enough narrative space to craft a reasonably rounded character while staying tight enough to retain mechanical significance (unlike, say, PoE's hoard of pointless qualifiers).

My general approach is to refer to a character's intents and regard the Moral axis as primary and the Order one as secondary, wherein the first defines how a character relates to others (Good embodying mercy and altruism, Evil being resentment and egotism), and the second outlines how they pursue those goals (Lawful's honesty and discipline versus Chaotic's duplicity and whimsy). I find that it works well enough for play.

This entire discussion is why TN is a meme alignment. Nobody can even agree what it is.

A quick fix might be to tighten the numerical range on it and exclude it as a starting alignment - you can shift in and out of it, but you can't roll a TN. Well, unless you're playing The Nameless One, I guess.

 

[Sarathiour]

And, more commonly than Apathy, Hate is thought to be the opposite of Love.

That would be wrong, because the opposite of Love is apathy. Just take the codex as an example lot of people will move from love to hate from any given game or franchise, but something went terribly wrong when they start feeling apathic to it.
I don't know if someone will be corny enough to quote Kiera, but that's nonetheless true.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

The snake of relativism eating it's tail right here in front of us.

I know that people yelling about the evil of muh relativism are crazy, but you need to have a special blindfolds on to disregard billions of differences between times,places and cultures on what is considered normal.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

To their credit, the designers did state that True Neutral characters are supposed to be "extremely rare", but I still can't buy into the arrangement.

True Neutral in AD&D really has three separate meanings:

1. Amorality due to extremely low intelligence, as is assumed to be the case for most types of animals
2. Adherence to nature, which is considered neither good nor evil and neither lawful nor chaotic, following from the original D&D druids being neutral between lawful clerics and chaotic anticlerics
3. Actively maintaining a balance between good and evil and between law and chaos, which necessitates siding with the weaker side to redress the balance

It really should have a single meaning:

1. Someone with no strong preference for good, chaotic, evil, or lawful behavior

 

[octavius]

The concept of 3. is rather silly, at least on an individual basis. And isn't rooting for the underdog usually Chaotic Good?

 

[perfectslumbers]

The concept of 3. is rather silly, at least on an individual basis. And isn't rooting for the underdog usually Chaotic Good?

If the underdog is hitler, no

 

[Jasede]

Yeah that would be Lawful Good.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

nothing would be lost if D&D simply didn't have true neutral.
non-sapient animals and such would simply be unaligned

 

[perfectslumbers]

nothing would be lost if D&D simply didn't have true neutral.
non-sapient animals and such would simply be unaligned

That would be cool. I would say the default for mortals should be unaligned, and only those who have a stake in good or evil or law or chaos would have an alignment (such as paladins.)

 

[Sarathiour]

Average citizen is probably closer to lawful something.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

nothing would be lost if D&D simply didn't have true neutral.
non-sapient animals and such would simply be unaligned

That would be cool. I would say the default for mortals should be unaligned, and only those who have a stake in good or evil or law or chaos would have an alignment (such as paladins.)

Can't be bothered to find it right now, but Gygax was right when he said the average person leans towards some sort of lawful good.
Probably should treat the alignment system more like a compass, especially without TN. I wouldn't say the average citizen is lawful good as it's a very strict alignment, but I'd agree with something like "the average citizen is somewhere between neutral good and lawful neutral". In treating it as a compass, the "true" part could be dropped altogether. Good, chaotic, evil, lawful. N, E, S, W. Average citizen would range from "Good by lawful good" to "Lawful by lawful good"

 

[NecroLord]

Assigning alignments to people in real life is incredibly dumb. Human nature is infinitely more complex than mere alignments.

 

[Sarathiour]

I was talking about the average npc citizen in DnD, not about using the alignement chart as a psychological evaluation.

 

[perfectslumbers]

I like to see alignment as actual alignment with the inherent forces of the D&D multiverse, rather than lawful good describing the average person (who is usually kinda nice and usually likes a bit of order and reliability in their life.) The average person isn't really a force for goodness or lawfulness in the universe, they just go with the flow and behave in the ways that others expect of them.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

The concept of 3. is rather silly, at least on an individual basis. And isn't rooting for the underdog usually Chaotic Good?

Not if the underdog is evil or lawful (and the other side isn't). Agreed that the third concept for True Neutral alignment is quite silly, except perhaps for certain situations in a particular fantasy setting based around conflict between metaphysical good and evil or metaphysical law and chaos, where someone might align with one side to prevent the other side from total victory.

nothing would be lost if D&D simply didn't have true neutral.
non-sapient animals and such would simply be unaligned

Without neutral/neutral alignment, everyone would be pushed to one (or two) of the four sides of lawful, good, chaotic, and evil behavior, not leaving any place for someone lacking a substantial tendency in any direction. This would also remove a buffer between alignments, so that, for example, a lawful neutral person who begins acting less lawfully and more chaotically would suddenly flip alignment from lawful neutral to chaotic neutral, from one extreme to the other, rather than passing from lawful neutral to true neutral alignment and then only reaching chaotic neutral if their behavior actually becomes substantially chaotic.

 

[Faarbaute]

The discussion of dnd alignment always inevitably turns to shit because some people will not be judged by any standards, even fictional standards, as they feel judged by proxy.

They are not evaluating the rules of a game anymore, they are engaged in a battle to justify their own personal beliefs about themselves and about the nature of good and evil.

Usually, it's pragmatic and self interested, petty people who refuse to accept that they themselves are the textbook example (in dnd) of an evil person.

Then there's the whole question of appearances. It's all very tiresome.

 

[MajorMace]

Sometimes I wonder with what kind of group you guys play this game.

 

[BruceVC]

Im 60 hours into BG2 and as was expected Im loving it, I have just got to Chapter 3 and I had to ruminate on who I should align with Bodhi or the Shadow Thieves. It was tough decision because Bodhi offered advantages like she was less arrogant and didnt attack me immediately, possible hot Vampiress Romance ( I always ask what would Non-Edgy Gamer would do around these redemption arcs ) and a litany of magic items

But I then decided I couldnt align with the undead against humans so I decided to assist the Shadow Thieves

And then I have been on some excellent side quests like The Planar Sphere, Umar Hills and the entire Windspear Hills and the Firkraag story arc

I am also enjoying the cheesy BG2 Romance mod and the entertaining dialogue options. My Romance with Viconia is proceeding nicely and so is my Vienxay relationship

I also dropped Hexxat as a party member and included Valygar because he is more effective fighter and archer

Further updates to follow

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Enjoy while you can, because when you go rescue Imoen the game loses a lot of it's charm.