Let's talk about alignment, specifically the 3x3 alignment system used by DnD and many other popular systems.
Being a human person, I know a lot of other human persons. I like playing a little game with myself and my TTRPG savvy friends in which we assign the most fitting alignment to people we know. Most of them are Good. Some are Neutral. Only a very few (whom I actively avoid) are Evil. I've also found that people tend to lean towards the Lawful end of the Lawful-Neutral-Chaotic axis. And I don't think I've ever met anyone who was Chaotic Good, though I'm sure they exist.
I've come the the conclusion that being "evil" is a matter of having an aberrant psychological disposition.
Psychopaths are Lawful Evil.
Sociopaths are Chaotic Evil.
I was wondering if anyone knows if there's a psychological condition that could be used to describe someone who is Neutral Evil.
Of course, this is also a general alignment discussion thread. Let the shitposting commence!
This thread is aligned Lawful Suck.
I usually describe it to new players as Good/Evil = Selfless/Selfish and Law/Chaos = Honorable/Dishonorable. It seems to get the idea across pretty clearly.
Good and evil are the ends, law and chaos are the means by which you achieve those ends.
>>43918392
Alignments are fucking retarded. You can't boil all the complexities of human behavior down into a nice 3x3 grid and expect it to actually work in any kind of way that isn't going to reveal how poorly designed and autismal your system is.
4/10 because I'm pretty sure this was bait to begin with.
>>43918392
>>43918445
That's a given, since OP is a faggot.
>>43918392
Dnd alignement test told I was chaotic good. Glad to meet you.
>>43918737
>Alignments are fucking retarded.
That's not retarded. This is
>>43910753
>>43918392
>I was wondering if anyone knows if there's a psychological condition that could be used to describe someone who is Neutral Evil.
Pathological Narcissism.Alignments are fucking retarded in concept and toxic in practice. It would be better if everyone forgot about them entirely.
>>43918392
You know, there's no real difference between a psychopath and a sociopath. At least, there's no universal of definition of the two that makes a distinction. Certainly nothing in the DSM.
>>43918392
>Psychopaths are Lawful Evil.
>Sociopaths are Chaotic Evil.
>>43918392
Would the alien really be evil? I have never seen it have any motivation other than survive. It's a non-sapient animal and those are unable to have any alignment other than true neutral.
>>43918392
tfw I used to think santa claus was chaotic good because
>FREE SHIT FOR EVERYONE IN THE WORLD
>>43918737
While I understand the sentiment, if you want a setting in which the Cosmos itself distinguishes between Good and Evil in a way that strongly influences magic, summoning, and the like, then you need some mechanical rules by which to define those terms.
Those rules will understandably break down morality into quantized chunks, because that's really the only way you can do it in pen & paper. It's like complaining that hit points or wound levels or vitality or whatever system you're using to track injury is a poor representation of how the human body handles trauma in real life. Of course it is; there's no way to do it realistically without making it so complex that it takes 4 hours to calculate the effects of one gunshot. Simplifying abstractions are a necessary part of any P&P system.
>>43919080
This.
>>43918392
OP, what is the point of an alignment system? What purpose does it serve in a given session? I ask because I want to create a system that is less absolutist but doesn't take away any fun.
>>43923652
Not OP, but for D&D it was always important for magic. Detect Good, Protection from Evil, that kind of thing. Also most interactions with gods, including class limitations. It's ingrained in the system (AD&D 2e and 3.X, at least), but not terribly difficult to cut out if you want to.
Personally, I say that unless you're dealing with such things, you don't get an alignment at all. A Lawful Good deity's worshippers are neutral/unaligned (but striving to be Lawful Good), a career criminal is neutral/unaligned (but acting like Lawful Evil), but neither will ping on a detect spell.
So forces that represent the four extremes and as such are subject to objective morality take notice of someone and some of their influence rubs off, that's what an alignment is, and that's what the magic interacts with.
>>43918392
>>43919274
Yeah, psychopaths are the very definition of chaotic evil, whereas sociopaths tend to value loyalty and form groups.
>>43919179
Psychologists will tell you that there is no official definition of sociopath; it's a word used by people who mean psychopath, but don't know any better. However, Robert Hare would define a sociopath as a damaged normal person; his favorite example is from the movie Resevoir Dogs: Mr. Blonde is a psychopath whereas Mr. Orange is a sociopath. He was willing to shoot cops and rob banks, but he's still human and has honor/morals (though less than a normal person).
My own interpretation (from casually studying psychopathy on my own), is that a sociopath is a person who has been psychologically damaged by the actions of psychopaths or an otherwise fucked up upbringing, but is not an actual psychopath. Psychopaths are born, not made.
Anyway, you never see CG people because it's almost impossible to be one in our society. They either get killed, go to jail, or corrupt into NG or CN.
>>43924854
Psychologists would rather use Anti social personality disorder, which may or may not encompass a different set of people.
In my experience, people are trying to communicate one of two ideas when they say psychopath/sociopath:
1: Someone who is delusional/crazy and violent. (Like Norman Bates from Psycho)
2. Someone who lacks empathy and or morals on a biological level, and would have no inhibition to committing crime if they wanted to. (They're "cold blooded.")
While some people try to assign one word each to each group, it usually gets all mixed up.
Hare's description of sociopath seems like a 3rd category, just showing how jumbled up the situation really is in common parlance. I guess Hare would call the second group psychopaths, which would be fine, but the root psycho- makes it easily confused with the first group.
>>43918392
The joker was neutral good and was more of an asset to Gotham than batman.
>>43918392
>Let's talk about alignment, specifically the 3x3 alignment system used by DnD and many other popular systems.
>>43923652
>what is the point of an alignment system
>What purpose does it serve in a given session?
Well, there are two reasons for an alignment system:
One is mechanical, nicely summed up by this anon >>43922236
>if you want a setting in which the Cosmos itself distinguishes between Good and Evil in a way that strongly influences magic, summoning, and the like, then you need some mechanical rules by which to define those terms.
My corollary would be that if you don’t actively want that in your setting, then you don’t need mechanical rules for alignment and they should be left out.
The second reason for an alignment system, the one I use, is as characterization shorthand.
A character can be more than a few words jotted down on a sheet and they can have a history, background, and real motivations.
But summing that up can be difficult.
Whereas if I say there is a Neutral Good Elf Ranger and a Lawful Evil Dwarf Sorcerer, then you immediately have an idea of what they are and what to expect from them.
Alignments as character guideposts work well and don’t involve mechanics or enforcement.
I also use alignments when developing encounters.
For each encounter, I plan for 8 crude solutions.
I try to think of what a PC of each alignment would do in response and get a vague idea in place to enable me to deal with that scenario should it happen. (True Neutral being avoiding the encounter/quest altogether)
The Players, being human beings, tend to have more muddled and unexpected responses, but my planned ideas are there to aid my response.
As for aberrant psychological disposition and evil alignment, see my next post.
>>43918392
>I've come the the conclusion that being "evil" is a matter of having an aberrant psychological disposition.
Your conclusion is false and likely derived from false data.
Let’s break it down:
> Being a human person, I know a lot of other human persons.
Correction, you know a lot of other human persons in or around the same environs as yourself.
>Most of them are Good. Some are Neutral. Only a very few (whom I actively avoid) are Evil.
Most real life people end up being staunchly True Neutral.
People are not perfect and, as such, are not perfectly Good, Evil, Lawful, or Chaotic.
They tend to act just as aligned as they have to be to be comfortable.
If your environs and society have largely Good leanings, so will you.
If your environs and society support largely Evil leanings, you will likely have those leanings.
I doubt you have spent much time in the prison system, if you did, you might have a different outlook.
An inmate is likely to behave just as aligned as they have to in order to be as comfortable as they can be.
> I've also found that people tend to lean towards the Lawful end of the Lawful-Neutral-Chaotic axis.
I can understand this position, as it is far easier to progress in life if you conform to society’s laws, whatever your society.
I would think most people don't act chaotic because it’s easier.
That doesn’t mean most people wouldn’t rob a bank if they weren’t afraid of getting caught.
But that opens the debate into whether we judge a person’s heart or their actions and I’ve heard it both ways.
Continued…
>>43918392
>Sociopaths
>Chaotic Evil
You clearly don't know what sociopathy is, anon.
>>43926023
>>43918392
However, as to your conclusion that being "evil" is just having an aberrant psychological disposition, I wholly disagree.
Some people choose evil intentionally and rationally.
Sure, most don’t think of themselves as evil and couch their decisions in pragmatic excuses and mitigate and minimize the impact of their acts.
But a businessman who profits off death and destruction of human lives is not necessarily psychologically aberrant, psychopathic, or sociopathic.
They simply enact the same mental gymnastics that a woman on a diet uses to forgive eating greasy fries if she drinks a diet cola.
Or when you change the channel when the feed the starving children spots air on tv during dinner.
Each act is not weighted the same, but in myuneducatedopinion, none of them would be considered an aberrant psychological disposition.
Evil People aren’t crazy anon.
And they aren’t rare.
If you knew how many of your neighbors would kill you, for little to no reason, if only they could do so consequence free, you might never sleep well again.
>>43925087
>>43924854
In my opinion, from fictional tv shows and discussions with those more educated on the subject than myself, is that the difference between psychopaths and sociopaths is the nature of the dysfunction.
Sociopaths are lacking something they should have: morality and empathy.
This allows them to commit evil acts without guilt or remorse but does not drive them to commit such acts.
Psychopaths have something they should not have: a driving compulsion to commit anti-social or “evil” acts.
As to whether they are made or born, many psychopaths as I have defined them, like Dahmer, seem to be made as there are no signs in their childhood that may have formed their mindset.
But the same can be said for some sociopaths.
I can only opinion with confidence that true sociopaths and psychopaths are rare and possibly born, while people with tendencies are more common and likely made.
>>43922236
>the Cosmos itself distinguishes between Good and Evil in a way that strongly influences magic, summoning, and the like
I prefer this interpretation of alignments, mind-altering supernatural cosmic forces that can suffuse and permeate you, reacting to and affecting how you act, over alignments representing arbitrary definitions of "constants" in morality, which, in reality, are entirely perceived and not objective at all.
>>43926188
eh
He says tomayto, you say Solanum lycopersicum.I just call 'em 'maters and mostly eat catsup.
