[alec42]

I came across this purely by chance and though it was relatively pertinent.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/sg/20050325a

[The Darklord]

You came across it purely by chance?  I dont think so!!  No you seem like the type to spend thier evenings trolling though filth like this to get your sick kicks - god you pervert!!  D & D is sick and wrong. 

[alec42]

Oh Gary, just because heterodoxy is your othodoxy doesn't mean the great cultural monolith is bad. Sometimes, very occasionally, if only rarely, thousands of people are right.

Actually, scrap that. People are stupid and I like it dirty. This would explain why I enjoy visiting the McDonalds in Paris so much...

[The Darklord]

Oh Gary, just because heterodoxy is your othodoxy doesn't mean the great cultural monolith is bad. Sometimes, very occasionally, if only rarely, thousands of people are right.

Actually, scrap that. People are stupid and I like it dirty. This would explain why I enjoy visiting the McDonalds in Paris so much...

Your right of course, thousands of people can be right, nokia phones are probable the best, toyota corrollas are about the most reliable car you can buy.  Of course thousands of people can be wrong - AD&D for example, or eastenders.  But then its all subjetive.  Please don't think I'm simply being a cumudgeon by going against the flow merely because it is the flow. I like to go with the flow when its something that suits me - then I surf the wave for all its worth.  But congrats on your verbosity, I really liked it, nice to know an expensive education isnt compleatly wasted on you.  Oh yeah and you owe me a pint.

[Artemisia]

Someone scribed the call summoning a yorkshire woman - mention of a towering glass, glistening with droplets of condensation, full of dark, bitter liquid with a foaming crown spilling over the edge - ohhh.
Sorry, got a bit carried away.
Alex I'm sure that you owe me a pint too- (worth a try) - over which you can explain how D & D is sick and wrong, but pleasure! Then Gary, you could buy me pint and explain again.

[Artemisia]

okay, have just read the article - now need several pints to discuss this over, plus a bottle of fine malt. I'll probably regret asking this, but what about 'evil' lawful characters? Would they be wanting to preserve the status quo regardless of the benefits to individuals within society? An example being religious fundamentalists?
Does a character have to be one or the other, or can a character move from lawful to chaotic, or vice versa?

[The Darklord]

Ok, If alex gets me a pint I will buy artimesa one but then we can just get our own from there? 

Actually I would be up for getting out for a drink and a meal while we discuss this or anything else that springs to mind if anyone can be bothered.

[alec42]

As would I. I'm relatively hamstrung by work and uni commitments and I imagine you both have similar woes. When does Christmas start for you all?

[alec42]

Also,

"what about 'evil' lawful characters? Would they be wanting to preserve the status quo regardless of the benefits to individuals within society?"

Benefit to others is not particularly problematic for an evil character, as long as it isn't at their expense.

D&D has a particularly restrictive approach to alignment which sometimes gets a bit creaky when you ask too many questions.  Take the example of a lawfully evil society, such as the Dark Elves in Warhammer. The Dark Elves are mostly law abiding, but so all sorts of horrible things so they are 'Lawful/Evil' right? Of course 'all sorts of horrible things' is a judgement based on current Mid-Atlantic moral values. Sure, bathing in the blood of your sacrificial victims is 'bad' by current moral standards, but I hardly imagine that the Dark Elves see themselves as 'evil' - if anything it's everyone else who fails to make the proper sacrificial observations who are being morrally deviant.

Law and Chaos work fairly well on Illyria because they have fairly clear cut agendas. One seeks the undoing of creation and the establishment of eternal craziness, the other seeks the establishment of eternal tedium and the cessation of all unordered change.

Good and Evil are trickier - sure if your're a worshipper of Val Kranon you have an evil self identity, but you can also be a True Faith priest who does bad bad things in the name of religion.

What am I trying to say? That it's complicated. What a cop out eh?

[Artemisia]

Thinking...meal good...beer good...challenging discussion on the notion of lawful/chaotic societies?...good.
Keep in touch Alex, but be warned , lots of explaining will be needed - currently working with 10 year olds who
defined a fair test as... a test which is fair sigh. Mind you we did tackle why there is a colon in the poem Flanders Fields.

[Scaryfatmaniffer]

I think it was probably blown from the lower abdomen of one of the soldiers by a german mortar shell.

[The Darklord]

I think it was probably blown from the lower abdomen of one of the soldiers by a german mortar shell.

It took a lot of guts to come out with that one.

Off topic somwhat but is it disrespectful to veterans and the war dead if your cat shreds your rememberance day poppy shortly after you get it?

[The Darklord]

Law and Chaos work fairly well on Illyria because they have fairly clear cut agendas. One seeks the undoing of creation and the establishment of eternal craziness, the other seeks the establishment of eternal tedium and the cessation of all unordered change.

Good and Evil are trickier - sure if your're a worshipper of Val Kranon you have an evil self identity, but you can also be a True Faith priest who does bad bad things in the name of religion.

What am I trying to say? That it's complicated. What a cop out eh?

Law and chaos may well work that way on Illyria and it does make a bit of sense that way - but presumably the servants of either will not always be so extreme.  Just as anarchists don't automatically want anarchy for its own sake but because they think they can profit from it.   When they become the establishment they often want order and stability.  Does there come a time in every chaos champions life where all he wants is comfy slippers and soft toilet paper?  Would lords of law get board and start to muck about?  Of course there will always be extremists and hard liners.

[alec42]

Off topic somwhat but is it disrespectful to veterans and the war dead if your cat shreds your rememberance day poppy shortly after you get it?

The only place I could find a poppy to buy was the pub. The chances of me making it out of the pub with the poppy remembered or intact were slim. As expected, I lost the poppy between pub and bed. The next day I woke up and thought "Where can I get a poppy... oh yeah, the pub". Do again from top.

Those chaps at the British Legion, they weren't born yesterday. 

[alec42]

Returning to law and chaos, I don't know whether I'd subcribe to a gentle alignment mellowing over the years. If anything it seems that one's ideas become more entrenched with age. Although I can quite imagine a tearwaway chaotic young man growing up into a grumpy old lawful  type.