The Legendary Pixel Crew

hmmm lessee Divine caster, Mysterious past, Explains everything except himself, Always smiling with eyes closed. Ignores rules when it suites him.

Remind you of anyone?

Gotta be honest, I think I'm going to hate this series of strips, unless the entire point is ultimately "Alignments are stupid". I've already had to stop myself multiple times from pointing out how logical inconsistencies.

Short version; if you have three perfect Good beings, one Neutral, one Lawful and one Chaotic... how will they be different? The answer... they won't be! The Lawful Good should not accept any law as true law if applying it results in something that isn't Good. The Chaotic Good individual who is perfect will simply always be doing Good regardless of law... but because they are perfect and Good they will naturally be in accordance to higher Law. Same for Neutral Good.

Good cannot be subservient to one of these three and still be "Good". You might select one of Chaotic, Neutral or Lawful as a co-equal with "Good", in which case whichever one you select is the natural state of "Good" and the other two represent lesser (but possibly necessary) forms of Good.

If "Neutral" Good is the highest form of Good, then Lawful Good has laws a crutch for those that aren't Good enough (pardon the pun) to distinguish Good from Evil on their own while Chaotic Good is impulsive and while that is how they are most likely to fall away from being Good, at the same time usually their impulses are to do good.

If Chaotic Good is the true Good, then it represents a state where your natural impulses are Good. Neutral Good and Lawful Good have to use the laws as a guide because they aren't naturally Good, with Lawful likely being the "Least Good".

Of course if Lawful Good is the "true Good", then true Law can never fail to be Good. Blatantly evil laws are seen as pretend legislation. Chaotic Good becomes the "least Good"; though your basic impulses tend to be Good, often enough they aren't and when they conflict with the Good Law, you're going to go with Chaos. Remember, if a so-called law is unjust or being applied in a manner to produce Evil, with this set-up such things fail to be Lawful so the other Good alignments are also ignoring them. Neutral Good represents the middle ground; you're not as impulsive or inclined to stray from the true Lawful Good path as Chaotic Good, but it isn't as natural for you as the Lawful Good.

The purpose of the double axis is to reiterate that "there is no TRUE good, only factions that say they are true good".

Purity is something that does not exist in any form of reality. In good vs evil, neither exist because survival requires actions of both kinds, and without survival, there is no one alive.

Nope.

You assume survival is worth doing evil, which is itself a value judgment. If there is no true good or evil, then how can you label anything as belonging to either?

I'm convinced there are such things as absolutes, including absolute good and evil. I use my mind and my senses to ascertain such a thing. No one has to agree with me, but to be consistent then the entire axis is bunk according to your logic. After all, "Lawful" and "Chaos" are easy to misunderstand, and for that matter "Good" and "Evil" likewise can be misidentified due to limited perspective. Neutrality is just a complete and total farce, tolerated to ease bookkeeping while reducing arguments... which to be fair is really true of all alignments if we go with moral relativism.

I wonder if we're going to go through all nine alignments.

Ok,I have seen people fighting over mostly good-evil,and how good-evil translates to law-chaos,but I see no one complaining about the biger problem:I can accept that,in a world,good and evil exist as an abstract but absolute force,I can accept that law-chaos do too...but chaos is not the opposite of law.A serial killer who is a very meticulous planner,a mafia godfather,a person with ocd who cares not about laws,whether good or evil...these people are all unlawful,yet not chaotic,and neutral wouldn't cut it,as they are the opposite of both lawful and chaotic,not something in between

On the other hand,a law abiding person who never makes plans and ks nevertheless impulsive,a lawyer who never breaks a law yet nevertheless would represent anyone,a person who lets a coin dictate most of his decisions but always picks the legal path when the choice is between legal and non legal...this persons are both lawful and chaotic

What I am trying to say is,while most of the time law is indeed opposite to chaos,they are not absolute opposites,and with a scretch of the imagination this can be proven,even if the bings you imagine are unlikely,as long as they are ossible.Order is the opposite of chaos,unlawfulness the opposite of lawfulness

I get it,unlawful and orderly sound uncool,but nevertheless,this aligment scale is flawed because these stuff are not opposite

Hmm I'm still relatively new to table top games but I have read a lot of the comments on DTs comics so I like what your saying I think I'm going to talk with my friends and see if they'll be fine with using order and chaos instead of law and chaos. Thank you for the idea.

That's a pretty good point storyeater. I think what D&D/Pathfinder was going for is a "simple" way to decide whether someone is heroic or villainous and 30 years ago, not enough people were questioning "Good" and "Evil." Lawful and Chaotic are just as abstracted as Good and Evil in this case. It's not that a Lawful character is Orderly and a Chaotic character is not, I believe that their primary goal in describing that difference is their effect on their surroundings. In this case: a meticulous sociopathic serial killer could just as easily fall into Chaotic Evil because while his plan is a metaphorical Rube Goldberg machine, the end result is things explode and the survivors panic. That's my take on the difference between a "Chaotic" and a "Lawful" character, at least. I think that's another problem that the Alignment system has is that people are questioning the basic concept when this is supposed to be a purely abstract system that players decide upon as they play the game.
Such as starting the story with a Neutral Good character, then deciding that your character is uncomfortable being Neutral or Good and actually has a Lawful aspect in this specific code they come to value and they are more neutral than good or evil. The code becomes an integral part of their character and transforming a Neutral Good into Lawful Neutral based on it.

Don't know why I posted this, you'll probably never see it. :P

but you'll probably never see my reply :p

Ah, a weary GM. I know the sight all too well. Especially when he gives up and lets me play a psionic teddy bear with a tattoo on my belly. And soon learns that I'm not just screwing around, I actually do plan to contribute.

I have a player who is new to D&D and still learning his own way of interpreting Alignment. I'm actually really eager for the rest of these pages to come out before he builds his first character (currently running a game with pre-made sheets) so he has a better idea of what he wants to be than a Chosen Murder Hobo. I'm really enjoying the way you describe the alignment styles and it feels more helpful than the book's explanation.

Keep 'em coming DT!