The Nazi regime wasn’t lawfully installed, and a LG German would know that.
Even Martin Luther King Jr. - as Lawful Good a man who ever lived - cheated on his wife. Humans are complicated.
But what about a Lawful Evil gangster? He doesn’t care about the law, or society. He’d organize a mob to burn down a factory if it suits his purposes. But while he doesn’t believe in the law, he definitely believes in *rules *- the rules of honor and loyalty particular to his organization or subculture. He’d steal, smuggle, murder… but he won’t snitch, because snitching is against his own laws, which are the only laws he cares about.
In fact, if you think about it, “Snitches get stitches” is essentially a *lawful *statement.
Principles aren’t lawful, or chaotic. Or more precisely, some principles are lawful, some are chaotic, some are neither, and anyone of any alignment can have principles. “Fight the power” and “Evolve or die” are Chaotic principles; “Death before dishonor” and “Your word is your bond” are Lawful principles. And yes, “Obey the law of the land” may be a Lawful principle, but it’s not the only one, nor is it necessarily the most important one.
Sure. Point being, it’s not a “personal code” but as system of rules as an organization. The mob has/had a set hierarchy and rules, it wasn’t everyone just doing their own thing and people who did their own thing were punished for it. A bunch of ruffians who just wander around, stealing shit and busting stuff up as the mood grabs them is chaotic. The mob feels that a set of rules is essential for what they want to do and to flourish as a group and so imposes those rules as (in their opinion) the best way to run things. That’s lawful.
I’m not saying that the only system of rules you can care about is the municipal criminal/civil code. I’m saying that “personal code of morals/ethics” alone doesn’t make the grade.
I disagree. A lawful character will still be act in a lawful manner if he’s stranded in the Abyss, with no laws and no-one looking over their shoulder. They’ll still be lawful if their society collapses into a state of anarchy and the very concept of “law” is forgotten.
In those cases the character is still following a rule system that exists outside of himself, which I think is what Jophiel is getting at. A paladin stranded in the Abyss is still following the dictates of his church, even if his church doesn’t exist in that particular place. Luke Skywalker is following the teaching of the Jedi, even though the Jedi were wiped out when he was an infant. Batman isn’t following anybody’s teachings - he has his own idea about how people should act, and follows that, regardless of what any order or organization says.
True. Also, if that paladin comes across ten other people in the Abyss, he’s going to want to organize them and create a means of distributing resources and resolving differences because he’s still going to believe that “These are the rules we agreed to be held by” is the best way for everyone to survive.
I agree. My point is that principles don’t substitute for laws. Laws are codified rules that apply to sets of people > 1.
And at no point have I argued for that strawman, and have indicated several responses an LG character might make to unjust laws.
Anyone who has problems thinking of Law vs Order as being personality parameters has never met my brother, the Chaotic Neutral one. You know, he who would abolish the Law of Gravity on account of being a law? It’s like being related to a tall, bipolar leprechaun.
I could not-so-easily generate a campaign that emphasized the law vs chaos dynamic, such as lawfuls wanting to destroy a growing time rift the chaotics created, or have chaotics disrupt a lawful society’s attempt to control the masses through drugs and mental domination spells. It’s just that the good vs evil trope is much more of a common <choke> paradigm.
I remember when Fiend Folio had the Modrons, a LN outsider race whose hierarchy depended on the shapes of their bodies and the number of limbs an individual possessed. The Slaads were the CN counterpart, a race of toad-like martial artists, but they were practically demons that weren’t affected by protection from evil spells. Among classical mythical creatures, I’m hard-pressed to think of which would be considered LN, but fey creatures could easily fall into the CN category.
I now have to work Bipolar Leprechauns into my campaign somehow.
Maybe the Sphinx? Answer the riddle and I’ll let you pass. Fail and I kill you. No moral consideration given to circumstance, just a rigid rule that is followed absolutely.
Before I read your answer, I had the same thought. Guarding a location and entrance relies on just a simple binary equation: Answer correctly and pass or answer incorrectly and be killed.
Well, the Devil is a big one, particularly the Faustian/Devil-and-Daniel-Webster version that’s basically an infernal lawyer. God and his angels would also be “mythical” lawful creatures. I understand that a lot of Chinese myths feature a celestial bureaucracy, which sounds pretty lawful, but in fairness, what I know about Chinese mythology mostly comes from D&D and Big Trouble in Little China. Post-Stoker vampires tend to be depicted as generally lawful - probably an artifact of the “aristocratic vampire” trope Stoker started - but even the older, Eastern European one have characteristics (they can be slowed down by untied shoes, which they are compelled to tie, or a handful of dropped oats, which they are compelled to count) that arguably indicate a general disposition towards lawfulness, if you buy obsessive compulsive behavior as a manifestation of a lawful alignment.
I’d say the classical Roman guardian spirits - like a Lar or a Genius Loci - were Lawful Neutral. You showed them respect, they protected you.
Devils and angels are lawful, but neither is Lawful Neutral.
Long ago, our esteemed Bricker quoted a proverb, something like, “If twenty people tell you you’re drunk, go lie down.”
There’s a continuum of people, from those who think this expression is perfect, to those who think it’s pernicious bullshit.
That continuum maps pretty well to my understanding of the “law vs. chaos” continuum.
Way I see it, lawful people think there’s a lot of value in setting up a society such that society has a major impact on individuals’ behavior. You might not agree with any individual rule, but in general following societal rules leads to better outcomes, and you should have a really good reason for breaking those rules.
Chaotic people put very little stock in society’s rules. Those rules are pretty often nonsense that gets in the way of good outcomes, so unless there’s some other reason to follow those rules, feel free to ignore them.
“Good outcomes” is where good and evil come in. Good people will go to some inconvenience or even sacrifice to ensure that things are better for their family/neighbors/tribe/nation, and actively include their outcomes in “good outcomes”. Neutral people will go to some lengths not to harm their F/N/T/N, but won’t go out of their way to make things better for them. Evil people are fine with harming others in order to improve their own circumstances.
So:
Lawful Good: Unless you’ve got a good reason to do otherwise, follow social rules in a way that makes things better for those around you.
Chaotic Good: Make things better for those around you, whether or not the rules make that easy.
Lawful Evil: Unless you’ve got a good reason to break a rule (e.g., significant personal benefit), you’ll prosper best by following rules.
Chaotic Evil: Fuck society, man, fuck everyone else, do your thing.
Golem of Prague?
Whether or not the Golem was actually sentient is debatable.