@gaditb my point is, i definitely recognize that

fascist / capitalist / ancap

are evil archetypes. but i'm not convinced that

tankie / poststructuralist / ancom

are not ALSO evil archetypes. but like, in a good way

@Lady That's what I was thinking, also.

Those archetypes -- most pre-thought-out-ly tankie, but it can be applied to all of them depending on the specifics (I haven't thought through the specifics of the others*, to say what they are) -- are what I was thinking of as "Desire to control others in order to improve the lives of others", and categorizing as Evil Lawful(/other) Good.

(* also I... don't actually know what "poststructuralist" in the context of "similar to tankie/ancom" means.)

@gaditb (by poststructuralists i mean foucaultians and similar who oppose biopower/necropower/colonialism but don't view power relations as escapable)

@Lady Well, I think that morality is judged in terms of individual actions (however you divide up behavior into separate actions), not inherent traits. I did say "desire", but I think I meant more "acts in ways that produce as an end-result". ("... on a regular basis", for [person] is [alignment]. If the pattern reccurs enough, you can assume it's probably deliberate.)

I'm not sure if I buy the whole "ends/means" separation, as a general thing. You do stuff, and the outcome is a particular situation that is both the end-result and the world that exists after you've taken the means to get there. The specifics of how you did it are part of that outcome. "Somebody grabbed a magic rock with the power of the gods and wished out a restructuring of society" is going to impact how that society plays out (e.g., people now dealing with "one person took and used all that power to individually shape all of our lives" as a political reality).

@Lady I'd just classify that character as sdam Neutral Good, honestly. Selfishness isn't Evil, imo (not by the definitions I gave, at least), and if the character decides their best choice for their own selfish interests is to do things that improve the lives of other people, then they're doing Good and they're Good.

@gaditb but actions which "control others" and "improve the lives of others" aren't mutually exclusive, and in fact every lawful character has an aim of controlling others regardless of alignment

it sounds like you want to say that if it improves the lives of others at all, it is good, and it's only evil if it never does, and i don't think that's a balanced framing

@Lady Oh! no yeah, I was simply Cheating and not actually defining them as opposites. I think I assumed you were doing that too?-- I don't know if I understand how you were thinking of Good Lawful Evil fitting as something coherent with them as real opposites.

So an action can be both, by my definitions! (As a particularly strong example, I'm sure SOME individual actions as part of some specific person's implementation/experience of ABA have been helpful/life-improving for them.)

(I'm not... TOTALLY sure that Lawful implies an aim to control. It could be an aim to structure, systematize, and make consistent. Not necessarily to do those to other people and their behavior. Maybe?)

@gaditb see the question which started this discussion was what alignment i pick for my baldur's gate character so i needed a definite answer

(i wasn't framing good and evil as non-opposites i was just using them with multiple meanings; the adjectival “good/evil” was morally good/evil, while the nominal “good/evil” was good/evil according to the d&d alignment system; i do not equivalate these)

@Lady OOOHHH.

I... think I've seen stuff about various ways to play morally good as a Sith in Star Wars... either KOTOR or TOR, I don't remember. That might be a similar line of thinking.

I think in D&D it's an interesting case, in that by most constructions of the setting there is some external, canonical measure of Good and Evil (detect alignment, various mechanical effects, etc.) -- and I think in that sense, it's maybe-doable and interesting to run that as, well, not in perfectly-opposite-alignment, to pardon the pun. Where like some action can be both Advancing Objective Good AND Advancing Objective Evil.

(I'm also not sure I'm ruling that out in adjectival real-world-morality Good/Evil. Possibly that makes me maybe one of those poststructuralist thingees.)

@gaditb see like if you want to bring in mechanics it becomes very clear, in baldur's gate there is a reputation mechanic where if you help people they like you and give you good stuff

the (smart) self-serving "evil" approach IS to work on behalf of social good because it uplifts everybody (and definitely you)

@Lady @gaditb hmm, then i would say that I do not understand how a person who cares only about their own benefit, caring nothing (positively or negatively) about other people or any other principle seems (this is how 2e describes neutral evil characters) could be morally good.

@alyssa @gaditb oh because i don't believe moral good is a property of people but of actions and systems, and the actions and systems which provide the most benefit for the oppressed happen to be (perhaps definitionally?) good ones

@alyssa @gaditb very simply i think chairman mao is lawful evil and i think that is in fact the maoist position to take

@Lady @gaditb ah, yeah, that is fair. yeah, a neutral-evil-by-D&D-standards person who concludes that doing morally good things is to their benefit is plausible (tho one who consistently does so would be pretty weird)

@alyssa @gaditb i mean i knock out innocent civilians before stealing from them so that my reputation doesn't take a hit……

but by game standards apparently nobody cares so…?

@Lady @gaditb well that certainly sounds by-the-book neutral evil :P

@alyssa @gaditb but what if they're all rich property owners

@alyssa @gaditb and i am a poor orphan

@Lady @gaditb i think D&D generally likes rich property owners.

@alyssa @Lady Not If They're Dragons, Sometimes.

@alyssa @Lady We've got our @Lady out here inventing Dungeons & Dialectics.

("Dialectics & Dragons"?)

@alyssa @Lady (*points to the undiscovered spaces at the edges of the cartograph-ed out map*
"Here Be Dialectics.")

@Lady @alyssa (... simply Observes the present tense of that.)

(Has the flashing, horrible image of, my god, what if there were Yechi Maoists.)

@alyssa @Lady Well, I think that a purely internally-measured metric of Good/Evil is kinda silly and useless.

(This opinion might be influenced by my opinions on the sense I've gotten of certain strains of Christianity. Maybe.)

Possibly that is disagreeing with D&D worldbuilding. but.

@gaditb @alyssa i mean i'm treating it as a term of art and not an actual indication of goodness or evilness because yes i don't believe in individualist frameworks for moral judgment

@gaditb @Lady to some extent i think the D&D alignments as described in the text (at least in 2e) are all conflations of belief/value system/behavior that doesn't fit lots of very plausible and lots of less plausible characters well at all.