alignment is bad and you should feel bad

[RedMage125]

This thread is not just you posting and everyone responding to what you post. Other people have said things, and other people are responding to them, not you. And my comments are based on what has actually been said, and how alignment is actually used by players and discussed by players across multiple decades and multiple editions.

Not that it matters, since you are obviously incapable of having a conversation without resorting to insults and calling anyone who disagrees with you a liar.

If you reply to any of my posts on this thread again, I will report you for personal attacks, and place you on ignore.

"Conversation" over.

First off, that's not how the Forum Rules work. You can't just claim that if I respond to you the "now it counts as a personal attack" on your say-so.

I have attacked your argument, which was filled with blatant and intentional falsehoods and misdirections.

The closest thing I have come to attacking you, personally is when I asked you "what kind of self-serving, narcissistic ass thinks he shouldn't be held accountable for his own actions?", which is a hypothetical question I was posing to you. I did not say YOU were that self-serving narcissistic ass, and I apologize if you felt that I did. YOUR statement -which I was responding to- was in regards to a hypothetical person being "held accountable for objectively evil acts", not yourself. I did not interpret you as meaning yourself, and I did not mean you, personally. Again, if you took it that way, I apologize, it was not my intent.

I do not "call anyone who disagrees with me a liar". Red Fel and I disagree, and we were having an entirely civil back-and-forth.

YOU claimed that "alignment only judges actions with no regard to intent or context" AFTER it was already pointed out to you that the BoED and BoVD both state that Intent and Context ARE taken into account. Ergo, intentional falsehood.

You also misrepresented what I-personally-said in regards to claiming that I said that "the only non-evil choice is to do nothing", when what I said was that "the only action that a paladin-specifically- can take and be sure he will not fall is to do nothing. This is because you are CORRECT that the moral weight of murder falls on the villain who tied the 6 people to the track to begin with.

At any rate, I noticed that your "conversation over" seems to be an attempt to avoid the challenge I put to you. That being: Please provide some evidence, from the RAW, to support your claims about alignment. Everything you say alignment is. If what you claim is actually true about alignment, then it must be in print in a rulebook somewhere. This is an edition-neutral forum. I will accept, as proof, a first-party source from ANY edition of D&D (First party being TSR for BECMI, 1e AD&D, and 2e or WotC for 3.xe, 4e, or 5e). I actually welcome coherent debate, but that means citation of source.

I ask again. Please, what are your sources for your claims? Anecdotal evidence is not sufficient.

Interesting, that's not how I learned it... If that is truly the official scenario, I am in agreement with Max_Killjoy, the dilemma is utterly pointless and contrived because the one who tied them up has all of the blood on their hands.

That's what I said in the first place. The blood is on the hands of the guy who tied all 6 people to the track. Which is why I have been advocating that the only "Trolley Problem" useful to this discussion is the Fat Man variant, or the Fat Villain variant. You can follow the link to that Wikipedia page to see all the variants.

Alignment exists to create a basic Us vs Them structure. It's exactly what many players and tables want.

As long as you caveat that with the statement that such is your opinion.

I'm not out to change people's opinions. I'm out to point out incorrect claims of "fact" about the rules.

The trolley problem is bad, and you should feel bad for either bringing it up, or engaging in a debate about it, instead of just dismissing it as bunk and moving on.

Yeah, I mentioned that a few pages ago, that only the Fat Man/Fat Villain variants apply to D&D morality. The way that Intent/Context and Action are weighed together is such that the default Trolley Problem has very little bearing on D&D alignment factors.

What it actually tells us about human morality is:
- some people mistakenly believe stupid hypotheticals tell us something about humanity morality
- some people mistakenly believe a contrived experiment will tell them something about their own, or another specific humans, morality
- some people are more than willing to let themselves get sucked into the morass of a discussion on a pointless hypothetical, especially in an online forum debate.

The latter is hardly surprising. And amusingly, also applies to Alignment threads and me. (edit: although I usually try to avoid the stupid extreme hypotheticals they often involve, as opposed to stuff that might actually happen at a table.)

I also enjoy getting sucked into alignment threads. It's my guilty pleasure.