On Alignments

I know that the alignment system has had its share of critics over the years.  I realize it has its roots in the wargaming pedigree from which the hobby emerged.  I know it seems overly mechanical and forced.  And no, I don't have separate alignment languages for each possible alignment.  With that said, I keep the alignments as a guide for gameplay.  After all, some things just need an alignment - I'm thinking Holy Avengers.  And it helps the players, though they are free to change, or may change and not realize it.  As for figuring out the somewhat abstract, sometimes evolved idea of what these alignments are and what they point to, I give you the illustrations I came up with to help my boys, esp. the younger ones, figure out what it means.  I'll unpack different alignments and the system more down the road.

Lawful Good
It's not shocking that in our post-modern age, many products treat LG as a sort of disease, the uptight religious fanatic, intolerant and judgmental.  Yet in the day, in the world of the 1st Edition, it's pretty clear that LG is the good of good.  The best.  Not one prone to consequentialist reasoning, but the one who doesn't lie or do evil that good may come of it.  The one who will suffer pain and death before breaking a vow, a promise, or an ethic.  This is the person who believes the law is a source of good and should be upheld, but never at the expense of the common good. 

A couple examples:

These guys do the right things for the right reasons using the right means.  True, in Jackon's Lord of the Rings, Aragorn (and many characters) loses that and slips into the modern tendency toward a consequentialist, if not downright Machiavellian, approach to problem solving.  The Director's Cut scene at the Black Gate, in which Aragorn hacks off the head of the Mouth of Sauron, was particularly unfortunate, displaying an 'I'm the good guy, so rules don't apply' attitude that would be foreign to the character as described by Tolkien.  With this, I mean the original Superman and Aragorn in the books. 

For instance, when Aragorn is dispensing justice following Sauron's fall, he is confronted with Beregond, who abandoned his post and even killed in order to save Faramir.  Aragorn must uphold the law, correct?  Well he does.  The punishment is that Beregond be stripped of his position and banished from ever being part of the elite guard.  He is rewarded, however, by being promoted to Faramir's captain of the guard.  Aragorn was Lawful Good.  He upheld the law while making sure that in so doing, the law did not create an evil or a bad result.  That is Lawful Good in a nutshell.  It's Betsie ten Boom refusing to lie, even to the Nazis, while making sure that in telling the truth, she never betrayed the Jewish refugees her family risked (and lost) life and limb to hide.  Hence, especially in the early incarnation of D&D, LG is the ultimate good, the best, described in the Players Hand book as none other than Saintly.