Nothing, of course, has changed my basic view of the alignment system -- taking all the moral issues that the best and the wisest have broken their heads over for millennia, misunderstanding half of them, boiling them down to a gaming mechanic, and handing them over to a bunch of sophmoric gamers (some of whom, to be just, have the excuse of being sophomores).
Still, I was thinking of all the different values given law vs chaos:
- personal lifestyle, with lawful valuing structure and chaotic spontaneity
- personal discipline -- monks must be lawful, barbarians must be chaotic
- acting in accord with society
- degree of obedience to the appointed authorities of society
- belief in whether the universe is ordered as a whole
All of which are, of course, if not perfectly orthogonal, still capable of large variation. Indeed, a character may live a life of order to OCD level in reaction to the belief that the universe is chaotic.
