Guest (Unregistered) at [unixtime wrote:1155075659[/unixtime]]
I'm not asking D+D to decide the 'one true answer' to morality, i'm merely asking that a given campaign world provide its standard of morality. We can all pretend that being good in that campaign world means what that standard says it does, regardless of our personal opinions.
But you are asking for it to give some kind of unambiguous definition to good and evil, something that somehow all minds playing the game can universally agree on. The only way you can do this is with a straight up rigid code. So if you want to base your entire campaign on the ten commandments for instance, then maybe you can get a fixed point of good and evil. However, doing things by rigid codes tends to have quite a bit of loopholes and even then requires some interpretation, much as a judge has to interpret the law.
I don't think a decent unambiguous definition of good or evil is even possible, as the topics are so vague that different people are going to consider one act good and one act evil and have different arguments for it. Overall it really is best handled by a DM with a "don't be an alignment dick." guideline.
And i expect any campaign world which logically demands absolute alignment to tell me what its idea of those alignments is. Eg, the Nine Hells is literally Lawful and Evil. What the fvck does that mean if alignment isn't absolute. Because thats a pretty absolute statement, and its made about a *place* which can take no action whatsoever.
Well, all you have to know about the nine hells is that Lawful evil people go there when they die. That's it. We already know what lawful people are, it's just an alignment descriptor. There really isn't any need to try to go farther than that and have every stone in the nine hells be lawful evil. After all, every weapon forged there isn't axiomatic unholy, so why are we even trying to go too deep with the alignment of the plane. It has alignment based planar traits and lawful evil people go there when they die. It's also populated by lawful evil devils. That's really all we need to know and all we should care about.
I expect beings of pure alignment to act in ways totally alien to PCs. Thats good for the game. People aren't cut out to be pure good or pure evil. (Just like they aren't cut out to be dedicated to increasing or reducing entropy). But those guys on the outerplanes are. They're totally alien. They're not just people who look like monsters. They should be more inscrutable than Mindflayers.
But, here's the catch. Those guys were once humans. Most outsiders on the planes started as human (or elven or whatever) souls, became petitioners and gradually worked their way up to pit fiend or solar or slaad lord.
It's also very difficult to have a DM roleplay these alien beings, because if he himself cannot understand absolute good, then how is he expected to play out an angel? It just doesn't work. Even supposedly alien creatures like mind flayers have basic motivations that a DM can understand (like finding brains and slaves, and of course, basic survival). After all, you're not doing your DM any favors if you say "this creature is an embodiment of absolute good, something no mortal can truly understand. Now go try to roleplay it."
Since we are humans playing this game, everything needs to be in some way human playable, or it has to be so incomprehensible that it can take *any* action and have it be justified.
These outerplanar dudes are the real deal - perfect in their ... dedication is the wrong word ... representation of their alignment's ideals. A Solar is literally a Good elemental. You know, like a Fire elemental, except made of pure Good.
Well, I don't believe there is even a such thing as perfection in D&D. There is always some big badder dude who is supposedly a stronger personification of whatever it is you're dealing with. I mean, even solars tend to serve deities (who must then be an even bigger personification of good), only most deities tend to have human like flaws from time to time.
I suggest that you simply think of solars as paladins who got really cool outsider status. It's a lot easier than trying to imagine the incomprehensible "ultimate good" that no mortal being could ever understand yet a DM must try to roleplay. You're not making the game any better by doing that.
what i do know is that the outerplanes themselves are the very embodiment of objective alignments, and make no sense outside that box.
Again, I think you're getting too wrapped up in this.
Mechanically they're just the place you go when you're a given alignment, the place certain gods live and the source of certain types of outsiders. They tend to have a lot of beings of that alignment as well, but that's it. Nothing about Celestia says that a solar can't simply become Neutral good instead of LG, the same as nothing says that a chaotic evil cleric can't plane shift there.
Seriously. Most of the planar crap is just flavor text. Yeah, Celestia is the embodiment of good, but only because all the people of good alignment get drawn there when they die. And well, when 99%+ of your population is good, then you build a community of goodness.