which good is more good? LG, NG or CG?
THAT is certainly subjective even in D&D
Absolutely. You can even add the Evil alignments to that list, since most people think their own alignment is best.
However, which is more Good is pretty clear.
In this example, good-evil and law-chaos are not related at all. They are two different things that exist unconnected to each other.I'm afraid you're missing the point. The good/evil and law/chaos vectors in a multi-dimensional alignment space are either collinear (essentially the same) or not. I guess we all agree that good vs evil is not the same scale than law vs chaos. Thus the two vectors generate a plane (in the multi-dimensional vector space).
That's my point. There is no multi dimensional alignment space, but two unrelated alignment scales.
Three persons all have a goodness score of say +80. The first has a law-chaos score of 10, the ssecond of 55, and the third of 85, making them LG, NG, and CG. But no matter their law-chaos score, they all have good 80.
The great wheel cosmology has no planes which have two strong alignment traits. Which is planescapes interpretation of alignment in a planar context. But the basic alignment system itself doesn't require that.
That's my point. There is no multi dimensional alignment space, but two unrelated alignment scales.
Two scales being unrelated is exactly what makes them orthagonal dimensions.
which good is more good? LG, NG or CG?
THAT is certainly subjective even in D&D
I agree on that. My subjective take on this is, by the way, something like the following. There are no boundaries in how far you can go in the plane but the further you venture from origo the harder it will be. Once you're an epitome of evil murdering a village for fun isn't really going to make you that much more evil. That's where SKR's diagram kicks in. It illustrates nicely how most creatures are limited by their actions. It is possible that they venture further towards, for example, CG but it would be easier to towards NG - because it's closer to the origo. And I agree with SKR that good is the distance from the good/evil axis - that's the whole point of the diagram.
A few key points to notice. It's an illustration, it doesn't prove anything. I guess it has been already shown pretty well that it's easier to do more good if you're NG. It's still absolutely possibly to be as good as NG even when you're LG (Berik's idea). And it's possible to have your alignment anywhere on the plane, not just in nine predefined points. Or as ...
Each alignment represents a broad range of personality types or personal philosophies, so two characters of the same alignment can still be quite different from each other.
Two scales being unrelated is exactly what makes them orthagonal dimensions.
Ditto.
Maybe I should've used ditched the word alignment altogether, and used multi-dimensional personal characteristic space. It doesn't matter whether the two characteristics in are alignment related or not. They don't even need to be personal characteritics. We could as well create a coordinate system with favourite color and number of people named Joe met as axes. Not that it would make much sense, though :)
Once you're an epitome of evil murdering a village for fun isn't really going to make you that much more evil.
To quote the Book of Ratings:
In a fantasy world, "ultimate evil" is a hotly contested title. You may be planning of enslaving the Gossamer Pixies of Sharing Glen and making them weatherproof your onyx tower of doom, but somewhere out there there's an overlord planning on using them as cat toys.
I have a feeling that scale may have been a homebrew thing. I've certainly seen that scale discussed amongst players, but I don't recall seeing a scale like that published.
I think the reason why that conception exists is because in one or several of the older versions of D&D (I remember seeing it in the red Basic box), the alignments were solely the Moorcockian ones of Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic. What we now call the "Ethical" alignment scale, as opposed to the "Moral" one. (Morality and Ethics are probably more complicated than this, but they're the best terms I can think to use for them.)
The three alignments were not meant to insinuate Good/Neutral/Evil but it was often interpreted that Lawful=Good and Chaotic=Evil, largely because most monsters/villains bent on active destruction were aligned Chaotic. (Elves were also aligned Chaotic, but people forgot that part.) Therefore if you wanted the best chance to beat the monsters, you should be Lawful, and since you are on the side of Good fighting the monsters, Lawful must ergo be Good.
When they came around to making AD&D, they decided this fallacy should be discredited, and tried to clean it up by introducing the moral scale of Good/Neutral/Evil on top of the existing Ethical scale.
But the problem was is many players still held in the back of their minds that "Lawful are the good guys and Chaotic are the bad guys" and still try to apply the idea that the ethical alignment scale somehow carries its own moral scale, despite there being a separate moral scale right out there for everyone to see. And the misconception has perpetuated itself as older gamers indoctrinate newer gamers to the game, despite the developers' efforts to clear it up.
Personally, I think at some point I'll introduce my own alignment system into my games, which involves the Alignments of Ralph, Bob, Sally, and Purple.
