Since I deleted Starfield (maybe I’ll redownload it one day) from Steam I’m thinking of getting Baldurs Gate 3. I hear it can be fun if you ignore the gay stuff. Are 1 and 2 worth it? Also gonna look for some older RPGs on Steam or hack and slash
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I assumed that the entire good/evil, lawful/chaotic came from a Christian based morality. For me lawful good was being Christian, chaotic good was someone who does good even if he is not a believer.
I honestly thought that was the reason they removed the entire thing in 5e.
Nope they are quatifiable measures, lawful good is a unit of measurement. They are as divorced from Christianity as you can get. The alignment spectrum is entirely because (in universe) of the gods and dark powers and (ooc, the wayyyy bigger reason) to control spell and effect targeting. It has nothing to do with Christians and everything to do with game mechanics.
I'm a DM and played d&d for years and even wrote home brew splat books the size of the player manuals, until I dropped all d20 systems as they are ALL for plebeans. I switched over to Exalted 2nd and then Exalted 3rd edition.
Cool, new to me, ofc I realized that it was part of spell mechanics and there is no Christianity in the game but what constitutes good I expected it to be in line with what Christians believe to be good. I guess I was wrong there.
You can TRY but they are not really the same. They are like a resource that fills up in your soul. Lawful vs chaos and good vs evil are marks that tick off within your soul. They are literal absolute values that can be measured like water in a bucket. You could say that Christianity is lawful good but the nuance of real world religion is far more grey and complex than an dummied down, 9 point scale. That's what causes alignment shift, you're literally emptying points of one thing for points in another thing. Good characters don't necessarily get rewarded at death and evil characters are actually never punished either. Its all just how much you served the god you follow as so whether they give enough of a shit to collect your soul when you die.
I get that what you are saying but that does not contradict the idea of what constitutes good and evil it just shows how it is measured in-game.
I mean I don't know that I would say it uses another religion's definition of good and evil. It is Western-centric but including all the pagan thoughts that have also permeated. Ideas about Gods that are less easy to stuff into the box of a single religion -- Gods of thunder and stuff like that.