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Given that I'm putting my own rules together, I've been thinking about the more controversial things and how I can be clear about them and my intent for using them. Alignment us of course, a big one.
I have a degree in psychology, and that affects my perspective here.
This is how I like to break it down.
First, I like to think of each alignment axis as being a scale with a score amd a bell curve, just like rolling ability scores, and people get 3d6. But, only the most extreme 10% on either axis actually have an alignment other than neutral. So, for example, only the 5% most lawful people have the lawful alignment, and the 5% most chaotic have the chaotic alignment, and everyone else is neutral between lawful and chaotic.
Good vs evil is about the focus of a person's morality.
A good person, honestly doesn't even consider themselves in making decisions. When they see a problem, they move to fix it. When doing a cost-benefit analysis, they forget to consider themselves in the costs and benefits. If you've watched Fruits Basket, the main character is exactly this. She ends up living in a tent and no one in her life knows about it until it is discovered by accident because she doesn't want to bring people down by telling them. She is so focused on making everyone around her feel better, she literally does not take into consideration the costs to herself.
Another example is personal. I've seen people in danger, and I responded based on them. I literally did not even realize the risk to myself, all I saw was the risk to others. And I see the same in stories sometimes.
"I can't watch them get slaughtered, I have to save them!"
"But we'll die!"
"Then get to safety, I'll catch up after I save them."
Notice the lack of self consideration?
Fallout Equestria is a decent example. Littlepip saves others whatever the cost to herself. She even feels guilty about having saved somepony and then not helping them get home. Seriously, Fallout Equestria is my number 1 favorite book if all time, and Littlepip is my paragon example of Neutral Good alignment.
Evil on the other hand. I tend to think of evil as coming in two flavors, selfish and monstrous. Both stem from the opposite of the above. They don't really think of the consequences to others, only to themselves. So if someone is having a problem, they either see it as no different than wind moving leaves or they see an opportunity for themselves to gain, in either case they simply don't register in their mind the consequences for someone else.
Selfish is of course the more realistic evil of people who are simply pursuing their own goals regardless of who gets in the way. These folks do not see themselves as evil, but rather either consider themselves as being practical or have some weird justification, such as claiming power as the only real morality.
Monstrous is the more cartoonish evil of people seeking evil for evil's sake, calling themselves evil and loving it, and/or having over the top evil plans like world destruction or similar. These are the ones that revel in evil, torture for the enjoyment of it and similar.
Lawful vs chaotic is more like method or metric.
Lawful considers behavior and state as the basis of morality.
Chaotic considers expected results as the basis of morality.
Thus, a lawful person mught consider lying bad because it is lying, regardless of the reason or justification for it, while a chaotic person considers only the expected result and if lying is the obvious way to get that result then lying is perfectly acceptable.
Of course, unlike good vs evil, there isn't an ideal correct answer between lawful and chaotic. Chaotic is based on expected results, and thus can easily miss longer term results or the less obvious consequences, but lawful can be in-flexible when flexibility might be called for.
Lawful people tend to be the ones that are better prepared for things going wrong, and can end up as the "mom" of the group, while the chaotic people tend to take immediate action and improvise, which can make the difference when facing the unexpected without time to analyze and plan.
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I find this perspective makes alignment restrictions make sense. For example, a monk must be lawful, because it is the dedicated and specific lifestyle and routine behavior that enables them to achieve their discipline.
What do you guys think?
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When we sat down to brainstorm our Hell's Rebels campaign, our GM stated outright "There Shall Be No Alignment ".
Given the focus of the AP series, not having that sort of morality actually made both being 'decent' people while also facing 'hard choices' easier.
Instead, what we had was the 'A-hole' rating -- the further down the 'morality hole' one plunged, the greater a chance of being a target of 'not-A-hole' type powers.
Outsiders, undead, and extraplanar entties still retained an inherent alignment, but it was generally considered that they were an aspect of the plane they were from (even if self-determining and independent) and therefore much more susceptible to such things.
While it's interesting to see your breakdown (even if I don't agree with many of the points thereof) it is part of why I'm glad that trying to map a RL morality to a game morality is generally not an acceptable task.
I don't think Selfish and Selfless acts are necessarily Evil and Good, for that matter based on personal experience:
I've had many people perform what THEY felt were Selfless (proselytizing their faith to 'help' others) have a very negative and arguably 'Evil' impact on the people they were attempting to spread their faith to.
I've seen other people that have taken a step back, arguably Selfish actions that had a positive impact on the people around them (and themselves) by thinking about themselves instead of everyone else, and much Good came of it.
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I think that is just getting hung up a bit on the terminology.
I agree that someone acting for what they believe to be good reasons can be bad. But that is also what I avoided here. Except for the note on caroonishly evil, the alignment I presented has everyone believing they are being decent and good people.
The names here I think is an interesting situation, as when reading name X, it is common to think Y, but when faced with Z and needing a name, X seems the most reasonable, leading to an asymmetrical situation, Z seems like it should be named X, but reading X seems like it is talking about Y.
If you think of it, there can easily be a moral disagreement with what someone is doing, with different opinions on whether it is good or not, but generally speaking, whether someone is being self-sacrificial is a lot harder to debate because that is a more objective fact.
And if you need a name for people being self sacrificial, "good" tends to top the list. If you've got a better name though, I'd love to hear it.
Now lawful vs chaotic, well, I personally would have named it order rather than lawful. Still haven't come up with something better than chaotic though. Disorganized doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.
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I'm starting to learn to dislike alignment talks as much as everyone else at long last, but something I find interesting: There seem to be two solid ways of defining Good vs. Evil. Both work pretty well, but a lot of people don't realize they're mixing them.
"A good person values others over themselves. An evil person values themselves and not others. A neutral person values themselves over others, but still values others to some extent."
"A good person has certain acts and inactions they will basically never stoop to, even with a good cause behind it. An evil person will stoop to at least some of those acts, and will consider doing so either acceptable or unavoidable--even when they aren't. A neutral person will accept certain "evil actions/inactions", but only to the minimum extent that they must."
I fall into the second camp, which is why I classify characters as "Evil" much more readily and also seem to have more sympathy towards them than a lot of people. They both work, but I do think one has to choose, just for the sake of having a clear guiding philosophy guiding the system.
I totally agree with your Law v Chaos takes.
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I'm starting to learn to dislike alignment talks as much as everyone else at long last, but something I find interesting: There seem to be two solid ways of defining Good vs. Evil. Both work pretty well, but a lot of people don't realize they're mixing them.
"A good person values others over themselves. An evil person values themselves over others."
"A good person has certain acts they will never stoop to, even with a good cause behind it. An evil person will stoop to at least some of those acts, and will consider doing so either acceptable or unavoidable."
Isn't that a bit monochromatic?
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What do you mean?
(I did edit in Neutral just for clarity.)
On second thought, it's less that you have to choose so much as "you have to be aware that these definitions are both valid, and that some prioritize them differently, and you should stop getting in dumb arguments". I realize that even I mix these a fair amount.
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We need an alignment chart specifically for takes on alignment. "Alignment sucks and I don't use it" is probably Chaotic Good, right?
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I guess I just don't understand why, when creating ones own rules, the preference would be to continue the clunky and poorly representative two axis alignment.
Games developed in the 45 years since Lawful/Chaotic - Good/Evil was introduced have come up with many different and compelling scenes, and when creating YOUR game - why not make your own system to handle morality...
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That seems a little off-topic for a thread talking about how to use alignment.
(I don't agree, but I don't want to derail things by arguing about the thread's central conceit.)
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The first sentence made it sound like the user wanted to discuss the usage of alignment as they move forward in creating their own rule set.
Given that I'm putting my own rules together, I've been thinking about the more controversial things and how I can be clear about them and my intent for using them.
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Actually, I find in my psychology studies, that alignment does line up nicely with real people, especially if you realize that only the 10% most extreme in alignment are not neutral.
But that is only if step back from what most people think of as morality, and instead think of it the core methodology of thinking that dictates how someone measures value in developing their morality.
For example, while most everyone agrees that fairness is a moral issue (despite disagreements over what is fair), but thinking that issues of authority are moral issues (with disagreements like fairness) is primarily conservatives while most liberals do not consider it a morality thing at all. Thus, a conservative will develop some sort of moral ideas that include how to deal with authority, but a liberal won't. So alignment would be this underlying thing that shapes what a character even looks at in forming their morality.
I think most get hung up on the more direct aspects of morality, like whether lying is bad, when any alignment might hate or embrace lying. Yes, even a LG might accept lying, especially if they are working in intelligence or military where deception and control of information is very important to success.
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The first sentence made it sound like the user wanted to discuss the usage of alignment as they move forward in creating their own rule set.
Given that I'm putting my own rules together, I've been thinking about the more controversial things and how I can be clear about them and my intent for using them.
Though this is my primary intention, as a psychology minor, I love the discussion as well.
Still, I find alignment very useful when thinking of it as the underlying aspect of a character that informs how they think and develop.
For example, a lawful shopkeeper is probably very organized and specific and less prone to falling for conman tactics because they think more analytically, while a chaotic shopkeeper has more charm and connects with customers more, and has products arranged artistically rather than carefully organized.
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So someone who is blindly obedient to the laws and doesn't think analytically can't be lawful?
Not sure where you got that idea. A) Lawful, an extreme BTW, does think more analytically than chaotic, but more on what that actually means here in a moment.
B) The key point here however, is that "obedience to legalities DOES NOT equal lawful!"
Neither in the core rules, nor in my attempt at redefining alignment.
Therefore, saying a person is blindly obedient to the law, does not actually say anything about their alignment at all.
That's conflating "thinks analytically" with "is lawful".
That would be amusing to the perpetrators of the 1980s Savings And Loan scandal. Or any other financial scandal in the past50300* years.
* The South Sea Bubble of 1720 would like a word with you.Accountants, mostly.
Seems to me, that you expect "lawful" to mean "cares about following the legalities." Which is totally incorrect, even in the core rules of the book. In this, you might consider the label "lawful" to be a bit of a misnomer. As I said above, I'd have named it "orderly" rather than "lawful."
Also, the most recent financial issue flies in the face of this as it is about people using the law in a perfectly legal way to make their wealth legally unassailable.
Also, I can't be conflating anything, as I'm not using an existing definition, I'm crafting a new one. If I were to bring in stuff to that definition, that would simply be me establishing that content as part of the definition, not getting mixing up or failing to understand the definition. Thus, conflating does not apply here.
has products arranged artistically rather than carefully organized."rather than"? You think a carefully organized display can't be artistic?
Getting a bit nit-picky aren't you. An artistic arrangement can be considered a form of organization, but it is still "organized" around what is artistic or perhaps a better way of saying it, organizing it around "what feels right."
For example, a lawful shopkeep might organize his crystals according to the more intellectual data, such as having all the quartz together even though they are in different colors, visually a mess, but according to the scientific information about rocks, easy to find and see how they rocks all relate. While a chaotic shopkeep might arrange all the rocks by color, giving a nice appearance, but the different types of quartz will be scattered all over the place. The chaotic shopkeep has an arrangement the "looks good" and is enjoyable to shop through, while the lawful shopkeep has an arrangement that easy to find exactly what you are looking for if you are looking for something based on the science rather than how it looks or feels.
Think a warehouse vs a yard sale.
Still life painters would also like a chance to chat.
Still lifes are nice, but I have yet to see one that is built around anything other than what is artistic.
Artists are about the emotion, that is the core of art. Formulas and math can be interesting, but without the focus on the emotions, it isn't art.
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And finally, "analytically."
I think the best example here comes from Dragon Raja. In the early story of this game, there is a cut-scene, in which a bad guy shoots a kid to demonstrate that the kid is immune to bullets, then after a bit of talking, disposes of the kid by shooting the kid with a bullet, that the kid is supposed to be immune to. Emotionally, it hits all the right beats, and a chaotic person has a good chance of not even noticing the inconsistency there, and certainly won't care even if they do notice, but a lawful person, being analytical, does notice, and it makes a bit of confusion as a rule was established, then broken, in the same scene, without any explanation. Different folks have different tolerances for it of course, but for some of us, it completely shatters the immersion.
This is all due to how one comes to understand a situation.
Emotion is all about the state and relationship of characters (people, animals, personified things, etc).
People can't understand all things at once, rather they subconsciously break things down and build an understanding one piece at a time, and which pieces they start with shape how they understand following pieces.
Well, the pieces can be broken down into a chain, characters, relationships, events, cause-and-effect, and how-the-world-works.
Notice that the emotional stuff, characters and relationships, are all at one end. Chaotic people start understanding things at the character side of things, understanding people first, then from that building an understanding of relationships, and from that building an understanding of events, etc.
Lawful people come from the other end, understanding the rules of the world first, which builds an understanding of cause and effect, which builds understanding of events, etc.
Thus, the chaotic people are fine with shooting the boy immune to bullets as a story beat, as it hits the important part of the story, that the guy is evil, but the lawful people are left with a problem because it breaks the established rules of how the world works, which is their foundation for understanding everything in the story.
Near as I can tell, I haven't moved any goal posts, simply clarified and expounded on a few things. But I'm sure you'll tell me how horrible a job I did at avoiding moving goalposts. :)
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Actually, I find in my psychology studies, that alignment does line up nicely with real people, especially if you realize that only the 10% most extreme in alignment are not neutral.
A mechanic that admittedly aligns with 5% of player characters on one end of the spectrum and 5% of player characters on the opposite end of the spectrum would by its nature exclude 90% of player characters by placing them in a nebulous middle zone of neutral.
Doesn’t this rather diminish the applicability of the mechanic? Or at least lead to factionalism due to the imprecision in interpretations?
I don’t see much in your description that is going to make table arguments about alignment any less common by tables prone to debating alignment.
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I'm crafting definitions here, though with certain objectives, namely,
-Alignment use in the d20 ogl should make sense. For example, paladins needing to be LG should absolutely make sense according to my definition.
-Alignment should be mostly objective. Kinda like how a liberal and conservative can argue about what the morally correct thing to do is, but they can still agree about who is liberal and/or conservative. Likewise, two LG characters can disagree about what the right thing to do is, but they both be able to agree that they are both LG.
-Alignment should make sense as a character building tool, giving a corner point the gm, or player, can use to develop a character's personality.
-Alignment should also be able to say something about the nature of a campaign setting or a society by how the people of that setting/society are distributed on the alignment graph.
I have kept the terms "lawful," "chaotic," "good," and "evil," because those are the terms in use in the ogl, but anything beyond the discussion, such as pairing "lawful" with legalities, should be left at the door and not brought anywhere near the discussion, as that is beside the point. New definitions are being crafted here, not old ones.
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Actually, I find in my psychology studies, that alignment does line up nicely with real people, especially if you realize that only the 10% most extreme in alignment are not neutral.A mechanic that admittedly aligns with 5% of player characters on one end of the spectrum and 5% of player characters on the opposite end of the spectrum would by its nature exclude 90% of player characters by placing them in a nebulous middle zone of neutral.
Doesn’t this rather diminish the applicability of the mechanic? Or at least lead to factionalism due to the imprecision in interpretations?
I don’t see much in your description that is going to make table arguments about alignment any less common by tables prone to debating alignment.
If you think about it, interesting characters tend to be the unique and extreme ones.
Leaving the middle ground nebulous makes sense, as it is the perfect zone for any character that doesn't fit clearly into the defined boxes. Also, that matches my experience of the real world.
Making neutral explicitly the place for characters that don't fit into the clearly marked boxes can actually make it less of an argument, because "oh, it isn't clearly aligned, then it obviously goes right over here."
If everyone can agree on the clearly defined boxes, and the box for anything not clearly defined, then by nature, everyone agrees where everything goes.
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Seems to me, that you expect "lawful" to mean "cares about following the legalities." Which is totally incorrect, even in the core rules of the book. In this, you might consider the label "lawful" to be a bit of a misnomer.
That presumption does come because in the earliest versions of this iterative game the alignments are described based upon their respect to and relationship toward “Law and Order” which as a specific paired phrase has long been directly tied to legal systems.
Lawful Evil: Creatures of this alignment are great respecters of laws and strict order, but life, beauty, truth, freedom and the like are held as valueless, or at least scorned. By adhering to stringent discipline, those of lawful evil alignment hope to impose their yoke upon the world.
Lawful Good: While as strict in their prosecution of law and order, characters of lawful good alignment follow these precepts to improve the common weal. Certain freedoms must, of course, be sacrificed in order to bring order; but truth is of highest value, and life and beauty of great importance. The benefits of this society are to be brought to all.
Lawful Neutral: Those of this alignment view regulationasall-important, taking a middle road betwixt evil and good. This is because the ultimate harmony of the world -and the whole of the universe lawful neutral creatures to have its sole hope rest upon law and order. Evil or good are immaterial beside the determined purpose of bringing all to predictability and regulation.
If everyone can agree on the clearly defined boxes, and the box for anything not clearly defined, then by nature, everyone agrees where everything goes.
A game system that speaks to 10% of players isn’t a set of rules, it’s a set of edge cases that require rulings from every GM.
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Alignment as a concept has evolved over time. I'm not particularly concerned at the moment with the full history, because what alignment was in the first iteration and what is was in 3e, are not the same thing, and shouldn't be confused as the same thing.
Also, I'm not trying to make be the same thing either, I'm trying to evolve it again to something hopefully better while still being useful.
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A game system that speaks to 10% of players isn’t a set of rules, it’s a set of edge cases that require rulings from every GM.
10% of characters is not 10% of players, and also is not 10% of heroes/villains.
Additionally, neutral might a bit nebulous, but with clearly defined ends of the spectrum, a player can still think in terms of the character being closer or further from particular endpoints, and thus derive inspiration on how to craft the character from that without feeling like they need to take everything from those endpoints nor to embody them completely. You can easily get a character that is mostly lawful but not totally, and that can be useful to the player.
And lastly, as far as I'm concerned, every GM should be making rulings all the time about everything, with the rules acting as a guideline, the players should at least be able to guess roughly what those rulings would be, and also, if the GM goes far away from those expectations, then it be a case of the GM making a statement about how their particular setting differs from normal expectations, or as something amiss that the characters need to investigate.
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I guess might come about why I would a system at all if I'm all about rulings. I see it as analogous to grid paper.
If you want to put something on paper, you might find gridpaper useful, as you can use the grid for various things, such keeping your lines of text spaced evenly or straight or for drawing a box or object clearly despite a lack of drawing skill.
Likewise, the rules are to the rpg what gridpaper is the person writing/drawing on paper. A tool, and nothing more. Though, the usefulness of that tool can be greater or lesser depending on it's design as well as one's needs.
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The 3.0 alignment write up still includes references to respect for lawfulness and authority.
There is also a big difference between having to often make rulings about the events at the table, but having to make rulings about the foundational aspects of each character routinely - unless they choose to represent an extreme feels a bit… controlling.
Also yes 10% of character may not be 10% of players. It could be less. Making a rule imprecise enough might mean 99% of players choose to bypass it all together by being neutral
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Wait, I'm confused. You say you have a degree in psychology. But later you say, as a psychology minor leading one to think you are a student pursuing a degree in something with a minor in psychology. Um...what's the deal?
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The 3.0 alignment write up still includes references to respect for lawfulness and authority.
Also includes references in which following the law merely one of multiple lawful options. I don't think they wrote it out very as it vague and unclear and nearly contradicts itself. Hence, alignment arguments.
There is also a big difference between having to often make rulings about the events at the table, but having to make rulings about the foundational aspects of each character routinely - unless they choose to represent an extreme feels a bit… controlling.
I think you've got it backwards here. The definition I provide means you do not need to make rulings except in edge cases.
That said, even the core 3e rules explicitly tell you to make rulings for individual characters when appropriate, even to the point of customized classes for specific character concepts, with examples.
So, I'm not honestly worried about that.
Also yes 10% of character may not be 10% of players. It could be less. Making a rule imprecise enough might mean 99% of players choose to bypass it all together by being neutral
Or it could be more.
Players tends to forget that even a bog standard fighter is special compared to normal people. And while I'd love to see more games about normal people, such a thing is already rare, with most players playing abnormal people, so having 10% of people be an extreme is not exactly avoiding it's use.
To say that 10% of a population is extremely lawful or chaotic is statement about the population as a whole. Players won't be interested in playing 99% of that population though. They will stick with the odd characters, the unique and special ones, because those are the interesting ones, but it is still useful to know where character stands in regards to the norm.
Also, a GM is always needing to make up new NPCs on the fly, and rolling 3d6 for each alignment axis, and knowing what that means, provides a quick thing upon which to build a character even when inspiration is otherwise lacking.
I honestly expect this to be used far more by the GM than by players, but when it used by players, I expect it to tell them generalities about the world more often than telling them what to do with their character.
So, even if players always create neutral characters, there is still room for the alignment to be useful in that way.
Things like what it actually means for devils to be lawful. This tells you that devils are more concerned with behavior than how people feel about things. They judge their minions by behavior rather than what they like of their minions. It tells you that demons are more likely to choose their minions based on how much they like or hate that minion rather than how that behaves, that a demon is more likely to overlook minor misbehavior by their minions than a devil would. Those sorts of things can be very useful to the GM, but can also be handy for players in trying to interact with devils and demons as well.
Getting technical or logical is more likely to work with a devil, while getting emotional and appealing is more likely to work with a demon, are both things that are better communicated by my definitions (or are supposed to be anyway), and that is the type of stuff players should be taking away from reading my definitions.
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Wait, I'm confused. You say you have a degree in psychology. But later you say, as a psychology minor leading one to think you are a student pursuing a degree in something with a minor in psychology. Um...what's the deal?
I have Asberger's, well that's all autism now, and an interest in AI.
I got a minor in psychology to not only understand myself and other people better, but also to build enough understanding to follow my own ideas on crafting AIs that won't go all I-Robot.
So all I got was a minor, but I enjoy the topic none-the-less.
Technically, all I got was minors. In retrospect, not a good idea, though I thoroughly enjoyed it.
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Also includes references in which following the law merely one of multiple lawful options. I don't think they wrote it out very as it vague and unclear and nearly contradicts itself. Hence, alignment arguments.
There are multiple options but there is no reference to law being one of many you can select from on page 88 or 89 of the PHB, so quoting the relevant passage might be necessary.
I think you've got it backwards here. The definition I provide means you do not need to make rulings except in edge cases.
And defining the two extremes and leaving the broad middle ground undefined makes the middle ground a big swarming mass of Edge cases.
That said, even the core 3e rules explicitly tell you to make rulings for individual characters when appropriate, even to the point of customized classes for specific character concepts, with examples.
A revision that requires you to make more custom rulings makes the game better how?
Players won't be interested in playing 99% of that population though. They will stick with the odd characters, the unique and special ones, because those are the interesting ones, but it is still useful to know where character stands in regards to the norm.
The sheer volume of other players I’ve played with who built a character who was one or more stripe or neutral would disagree with that assessment. That is of course just my experience.
Also, a GM is always needing to make up new NPCs on the fly, and rolling 3d6 for each alignment axis, and knowing what that means, provides a quick thing...
Creating a table to have them roll off would be just as quick without creating an incredibly muddy alignment system.
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So all I got was a minor, but I enjoy the topic none-the-less.
Technically, all I got was minors. In retrospect, not a good idea, though I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Wait, what? Minors are required to be completed alongside your major. They do not on their own confer a baccalaureate degree. Multiple minors don’t voltron into a major.
This sounds like you mislead us when you said you had a degree in psychology.
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So all I got was a minor, but I enjoy the topic none-the-less.
Technically, all I got was minors. In retrospect, not a good idea, though I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Wait, what? Minors are required to be completed alongside your major. They do not on their own confer a baccalaureate degree. Multiple minors don’t voltron into a major.
This sounds like you mislead us when you said you had a degree in psychology.
A minor is a degree, a minor one, but a degree. Just like how there is a difference between a baccalaureate, a masters, and a doctorate, yet are all degrees, with a minor you still have to meet all the non-specific stuff required of all degrees and take classes on the actual topic and it represents having some actual knowledge on the topic and not simply being an amateur with google.
So, I'm sorry if you felt it was misleading, but I'm not a couch potato with google, I had actual classes, actual professors, actual studies, actual homework, etc.
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I’ve worked in higher education for over 20 years. A Minor is your non-programmatic course work, it is not a degree program unto itself.
There are not minor and major baccalaureate degrees, there is your major and minor coursework toward your degree. You either received a degree in psychology, you received a degree in another major and minored in psychology, or you received a general studies degree with some psychology course work.
There is no such thing as multiple minors without a major.
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Also includes references in which following the law merely one of multiple lawful options. I don't think they wrote it out very as it vague and unclear and nearly contradicts itself. Hence, alignment arguments.There are multiple options but there is no reference to law being one of many you can select from on page 88 or 89 of the PHB, so quoting the relevant passage might be necessary.
First, the section on 104 about law vs chaos, it mentions lawful behavior but the first sentence of the section and the first sentence of law, both fail to mention legalities.
"Lawful characters tell the truth, keep their word, respect authority, honor tradition, and judge those who fall short of their duties."
"'Law' implies honor, trustworthiness, obedience to authority, and reliability."
These do not specify legalities, and while they do mention authority, legalities is only potential source of authority, and neither of these mean the individual will never resist authority, it just mean they won't do so without a good reason.
Then, on page 105,
"Lawful Neutral, 'Judge': A lawful neutral character acts as law, tradition, OR a personal code directs her."
Which clearly shows that lawful can have a source of what they consider the correct form of behavior be something other than law.
All of these however, have something in common, they are all about acting according to what is consider right behavior, rather than righteous causes.
I think you've got it backwards here. The definition I provide means you do not need to make rulings except in edge cases.And defining the two extremes and leaving the broad middle ground undefined makes the middle ground a big swarming mass of Edge cases.
Not really. Think of it like color, I define Red and Blue, then you can clearly develop a reasonable expectation of mixing various amounts of red and blue, and even be consistent.
Heck, that's the basis of how your computer is showing this text right now, by defining the extremes, and the middle ground is just emergent, defined by nothing more than being partially of multiple extremes, and that gets you everything you've seen on a computer. Heck, even the lighting in the 3d games you play are dynamically figured out the same way as well. The computer doesn't even bring the colors together, it just handles each color independently. (graphics programs might do a bit of mixed color formulas to switch color formats, but that's beside the point).
The only real issue here, is that if you want to know that some red and some blue make purple, you have to actually consider what blue, red, and purple are, instead of passively selecting from a table. I know some people prefer to passively select everything. I do not design anything for those people. I have nothing against them, but they are outside my target audience.
That said, even the core 3e rules explicitly tell you to make rulings for individual characters when appropriate, even to the point of customized classes for specific character concepts, with examples.A revision that requires you to make more custom rulings makes the game better how?
I'm still not sure on what way this is supposed to require additional rulings. You haven't been very clear on that.
That said, if making rulings is easier, but at the cost of making more rulings, that seems like a potentially good trade-off. More reliance on rulings generally means more flexibility, and easier to make adjustments for the specific variances of each specific campaign. I'd consider that a win.
It can be done poorly of course, but if it isn't messed up, then merely requiring more rulings, is not in my mind a problem. Ever hear of 3e being called "Golden handcuffs?" That is from people who felt that since the book defined something, they couldn't change it, even though the book tells you repeatedly to do so. So those folks definitely would find more rulings a benefit, because the mechanics forcing a ruling is leaving it explicitly to the GM's choice.
This was one of the big reasons for lovers of 4e to like 4e, because 4e basically dumped anything outside of combat, those GMs who felt like they couldn't break the established rules suddenly had no rules, and thus had the freedom that 3e told them had but that they never felt right taking.
There is a lot of nuance here. But simply speaking, merely requiring more rulings is not in-and-of-itself a bad thing. Unless you are a GM that can't handle it. And there are such GMs.
Players won't be interested in playing 99% of that population though. They will stick with the odd characters, the unique and special ones, because those are the interesting ones, but it is still useful to know where character stands in regards to the norm.The sheer volume of other players I’ve played with who built a character who was one or more stripe or neutral would disagree with that assessment. That is of course just my experience.
Something tells me, that you have no idea what I meant.
How many of your players, excluding "combat only" games, play characters with absolutely nothing interesting? A bland farmer with no hopes nor dreams of being anything more than a farmer? How many players play a snot-faced kid flipping burgers that has no idea what to do with their life, and no aspirations beyond escaping tedium? Next time you go to McDonald's or wherever, consider the person giving you your food. How many of your players want to play that person?
Heck, consider movies, how often are "normal" people the main characters? Almost exclusively horror films, or the kind of humor that makes you lose 10 IQ by simply witnessing it's existence. Any story or film that makes any kind of impact, the characters are never normal people. Even Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, they were rich people, like the highest class of wealth. Even then, Bilbo still had many quirks and a Took heritage to make him interesting before even he even left the Shire.
If you honestly think Bilbo was a normal person, I think you sadly misunderstand the human race.
Also, a GM is always needing to make up new NPCs on the fly, and rolling 3d6 for each alignment axis, and knowing what that means, provides a quick thing...Creating a table to have them roll off would be just as quick without creating an incredibly muddy alignment system.
Not really. If you have trouble with spontaneity maybe, but that is what supplements are for. Creating a table creates the golden handcuff effect, it implies that everything must fit perfectly into one of the rows of the table and if it doesn't then you can't do it.
This is not a board game. Te mechanics are not a set of rules that dictate what players can and cannot do.
This is the real difference between RPGs and every other game out there. A game like chess, has every move exactly defined, and then players must figure out how to win within the constraints of the rules, hence why mechanical balance is so important for a game like chess, because it is a competition of how well someone can "rules lawyer" their way to victory.
But RPGs, the mechanics are not about how to play, nor about what players can do, but rather about adding risk, tension, and communicating the boundaries of the narrative world. If the campaign has no magic, then mechanics that say "no magic" would be valid since it is about the narrative world. RPG mechanics are not about establishing a structure to strictly define what options are available to you. They aid in communication, and other uses, but if a set of mechanics is strictly defining what you can and can't do, it is not a RPG, it's a complicated munchkin clone, a board game, not a RPG.
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I’ve worked in higher education for over 20 years. A Minor is your non-programmatic course work, it is not a degree program unto itself.
There are not minor and major baccalaureate degrees, there is your major and minor coursework toward your degree. You either received a degree in psychology, you received a degree in another major and minored in psychology, or you received a general studies degree with some psychology course work.
There is no such thing as multiple minors without a major.
What do you think General Studies is? The two year "how to be an adult" class?
As for being "a program," that part is irrelevant. A program is like a railroad, it is a set of tracks for you to follow. That's all it is. There is nothing inherent in a degree program that makes it more valid education than coursework outside such a program. The only difference between a minor and a major is volume, and at anything beyond 4 years might have specific required courses for each interval, but at the 4 year level, all the specific requirements are still there for a minor save the number of classes taken. Number of classes is the only difference between a minor and a major at 4 years.
You talk about it as though a minor is worthless. Might be worthless for getting a job, but as far as I'm concerned, if your only thought for a degree is getting a job, then you're doing it wrong. But that is admittedly just my opinion.
But aside from value for getting a job, a minor is still professional quality education. Those classes for a minor are the exact same classes as for the major in that field. The same coursework, the same homework, the same professors.
Don't deride it.
Pretending a minor makes one a doctor would be worth derision, but I never even implied that.
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First, the section on 104
Nope, Page 104 and 105 are about armor. You set the goalpost as a discussion of 3e. Not 3.5.
I will add that the “obedience to authority” covers adherence to laws, and a “personal code” is shorthand for a personal code of laws, morals and ethics.
I will not however allow you to spin this into a parsing of the text to demonstrate how the inclusion of more than one “lawful” behavior implies a statement that there are many to choose from when it in fact is defining characteristics common to lawfulness. It is a definition, not a laundry list to pick and choose from.
Not really. Think of it like color, I define Red and Blue, then you can clearly develop a reasonable expectation of mixing various amounts of red and blue, and even be consistent
That is fundamentally not how inks and paints work. Different consistencies blend differently, context can effect the result. Ten degrees cooler and violet becomes something more akin to mauve.
I'm still not sure on what way this is supposed to require additional rulings. You haven't been very clear on that.
Because if we go with your red and blue example, and those extreme ends are all we define, all the gradients in between are available to players with no definition of what those states mean, so a GM has to define what it means to be every single other alignment on the spectrum between Good and Evil and Law and Chaos. I have yo define Cerulean Blue and Sky Blue and Royal Purple and Aubergine and everything else because the game designer thought “come up with the rest yourself” was a saleable product.
What you present is not useful and is more subjective than ever.
Something tells me, that you have no idea what I meant.
No you have no what I meant so I will spell it out. 25 years of playing these games and my experience has been the opposite of what you claimed the majority of players would do. The majority of players I have played with have not played Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil characters, they have played in the undefined space you claim most won’t play in.
You can take the rest of your condescension about comparing PC’s to movies and explaining Roleplaying games to me as if I’m fresh on the scene and you can chuck it out the window, because I’m not playing that game with you.
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What do you think General Studies is? The two year "how to be an adult" class?
General Studies is the core BA and BS curricula, and someone who lies about their credentials doesn’t get to deride Associates Degree programs.
As for being "a program," that part is irrelevant. A program is like a railroad, it is a set of tracks for you to follow. That's all it is.
If you don’t follow that track, you don’t get the degree so it is QUITE relevant.
There is nothing inherent in a degree program that makes it more valid education than coursework outside such a program.
Except of course that the degree program confers upon you a degree and the alternative… does not.
The only difference between a minor and a major is volume, and at anything beyond 4 years might have specific required courses for each interval, but at the 4 year level, all the specific requirements are still there for a minor save the number of classes taken.
And hose other classes that you do not take in the minor are what make a major. They are literally the difference between the two. Those are the courses that complete your program and earn you a degree. You don’t take those for your minor.
You talk about it as though a minor is worthless.
No I talk like I’m absolutely galled that someone claimed they had a degree they did not actually have and is now trying to explain Higher Education to someone who works in Higher Education
But aside from value for getting a job, a minor is still professional quality education. Those classes for a minor are the exact same classes as for the major in that field. The same coursework, the same homework, the same professors.
Except without the benefit of conferring a degree.
Pretending a minor makes one a doctor would be worth derision, but I never even implied that.
No, you just expressly stated that you have a degree in Psychology which is an insult to people who actually do. Then you claimed it was a minor then claimed you only took minors in college.
The sadder part is you unraveled the lie for us in real time.
You’ve proven to me that my instincts have been right all along and that you are not deserving of an ounce of my respect.
Good luck trying to sell D&D 3.8 but with 600 pages of paraphrased Alexandrian Quotes to people. Good day
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What do you think General Studies is? The two year "how to be an adult" class?General Studies is the core BA and BS curricula, and someone who lies about their credentials doesn’t get to deride Associates Degree programs.
I spent 4 years learning stuff. The knowledge was my goal, not getting a job.
The first two years is a bunch of low level stuff I learned in my teens that primarily setting one up for learning actual stuff later.
For which I spent years learning everything I could, sqeezing every last drop out of the GI bill to get every class I could.
I don't care about what I can put on a resume. I only care about what I got to learn, and I learned enough to have a written and official acknowledgement of level of knowledge in a topic handed to me during graduation.
You talk down about it as though not a single class was worth anything without a major.
If the goal is a job and nothing more, then that might true, but when the goal is knowledge, then al, that matters is getting out of the kiddy pool they call an associates degree.
As for being "a program," that part is irrelevant. A program is like a railroad, it is a set of tracks for you to follow. That's all it is.If you don’t follow that track, you don’t get the degree so it is QUITE relevant.
If getting a job is not the goal, then what value is there in an official major? Nothing, making it not relevant at all.
The knowledge learned is the only value when getting a job is not the goal.
There is nothing inherent in a degree program that makes it more valid education than coursework outside such a program.Except of course that the degree program confers upon you a degree and the alternative… does not.
Except a degree is worthless for anything except getting a job. It is the actual knowledge that has value for anything else, and you dismiss that as being worthless. A minor is acknowledgement of me having learned something about the topic at a professional level, even if not fully in depth as one can go.
The only difference between a minor and a major is volume, and at anything beyond 4 years might have specific required courses for each interval, but at the 4 year level, all the specific requirements are still there for a minor save the number of classes taken.And hose other classes that you do not take in the minor are what make a major. They are literally the difference between the two. Those are the courses that complete your program and earn you a degree. You don’t take those for your minor.
Perhaps at your college, but the difference at mine, at least at the 4 year level, was how many you took. Once you get certain classes down, then you take a certain number of credits past that, you hit minor, then a number more you hit major.
You talk about it as though a minor is worthless.No I talk like I’m absolutely galled that someone claimed they had a degree they did not actually have and is now trying to explain Higher Education to someone who works in Higher Education
And I'm just shocked that someone that should know better, would put so much more into it than matters to the current situation.
This is basically a terminology debate in a very non-professional setting. Not a thing about this situation requires being super particularly correct. I'm not trying to get a job, nor am I trying to pretend I can give medical advice or anything similar.
The entire point of the distinction I even made is about the fact that I actually learned something of the topic at a professional level, to the point that it actually is officially recognized as something I know about, rather than being an armchair scientist reading google results.
Frankly, never had a reason to believe it anything other than a degree. I walked the stage with official acknowledgement of me knowing stuff from certain topics.
You dismiss it as being worthless, as though I am no better than google informed armchair scientists wannabe. Which is not fair to the effort and work I put in to get that minor.
But aside from value for getting a job, a minor is still professional quality education. Those classes for a minor are the exact same classes as for the major in that field. The same coursework, the same homework, the same professors.Except without the benefit of conferring a degree.
What benefit? I'm not trying to get a job, so there is no benefit I'm missing out on. I got knowledge, which was my goal. I'm not missing out on that.
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Pretending a minor makes one a doctor would be worth derision, but I never even implied that.No, you just expressly stated that you have a degree in Psychology which is an insult to people who actually do.
It would only be insult if I was claiming to be a full doctor or equally knowledgeable. And guess what, I never did.
Then you claimed it was a minor then claimed you only took minors in college.
I had no reason to take more than minors. A job was not my goal.
The sadder part is you unraveled the lie for us in real time.
This is just you being petty. I never lied. I have a piece of paper from an accredited college for having learned what I did, which was more than the kiddy pool stuff from the first two years. Most people call that a degree. You want to disagree with that terminology. Fine, disagree with it. I never had a reason to worry about the technicality of it. I have a certificate. That is and has always been a mere bonus for me, but enough to say I a degree.
If I was trying to get a job, then I might care enough to bother with figuring out whether you are technically correct or not, but I'm not, so I don't.
The aspect here is not about the implications for job searches or comparing years with doctors. It is about being more than an amateur using google. Saying I have a minor degree psychology, says something about where and how I learned what I did and is accurate enough for the common person to understand.
You’ve proven to me that my instincts have been right all along and that you are not deserving of an ounce of my respect.
I have mostly enjoyed this little debate. But frankly, from the start of this little diversion, you've done little except to belittle me. Yet you claim I am the one unworthy of respect.
Good luck trying to sell D&D 3.8 but with 600 pages of paraphrased Alexandrian Quotes to people. Good day
I might need the luck, but at least I'm trying, which is a lot more than lots of people, who simply talk about it and never actually do it.
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I spent 4 years learning stuff. The knowledge was my goal, not getting a job.
The only person making the argument about jobs is you.
For which I spent years learning everything I could, sqeezing every last drop out of the GI bill to get every class I could.
Excellent, you have a military background so you will understand the example I'm about to give. Claiming to have a degree in a field when you do not, to make your argument sound stronger, is the same thing as stolen valor where one claims military service they did not engage in.
You talk down about it as though not a single class was worth anything without a major.
I've literally said nothing of the kind, just explained how majors and minors and degrees actually work to highlight the fact that it is obvious now from what you have said that you are lying.
If getting a job is not the goal, then what value is there in an official major? Nothing, making it not relevant at all.
When you claimed that having a degree in psychology was the basis of your design philosophy here, it is very relevant to have to have completed the psychology degree path, otherwise you are lying to aggrandize yourself.
The knowledge learned is the only value when getting a job is not the goal.
Until you make the claim that you have a degree that you didn't actually earn. I encourage everyone to remain a lifelong student. In the wrong instance, claiming to have a degree when you actually don't comes with serious legal repercussions.
Except a degree is worthless for anything except getting a job.
It also apparently has value when you need to lie about having one to convince people on the internet that your game design is good.
A minor is acknowledgement of me having learned something about the topic at a professional level, even if not fully in depth as one can go.
Nope, a minor is an indication of co-curricular study. A communications major who minors in french does not have a degree in foreign languages, they have a degree in communication.
The fact that after back-pedaling off of having a Psychology Degree you claimed you only took minors is where it all falls apart. Multiple co-curricular studies does not equal a curricular program unless you matriculated until you had so many credits that they had to squeeze you into whatever bachelors degree they could make work. You did however admit that said degree is not in Psychology. None of this lecturing me about how I'm wrong about what I do for a living changes the fact that you lied.
And I'm just shocked that someone that should know better, would put so much more into it than matters to the current situation.
This is basically a terminology debate in a very non-professional setting.
No it's someone calling you out for being a liar and you turning it into a terminology debate because you somehow want to still be right even after being caught lying.
The entire point of the distinction I even made is about the fact that I actually learned something of the topic at a professional level, to the point that it actually is officially recognized as something I know about, rather than being an armchair scientist reading google results.
Except, if it was your minor, then it ISN'T your degree and therefore it is not officially recognized as something you know.
You dismiss it as being worthless, as though I am no better than google informed armchair scientists wannabe. Which is not fair to the effort and work I put in to get that minor.
No I dismiss it as NOT BEING A DEGREE IN PSYCHOLOGY. Claiming that it is, is not fair to the effort and work put in by those who majored in and got their degrees in Psychology. Your field of study WAS YOUR MAJOR. Claiming to have a degree in your minor is inaccurate.
It would only be insult if I was claiming to be a full doctor or equally knowledgeable. And guess what, I never did.
You claimed that you are something that you aren't that they are. That's insulting.
I had no reason to take more than minors.
You had no reason to be in a degree program?
This is just you being petty. I never lied. I have a piece of paper from an accredited college for having learned what I did, which was more than the kiddy pool stuff from the first two years. Most people call that a degree.
Yes, but NO ONE calls that a degree in Psychology unless you completed the major coursework for a Bachelors in Psychology.
And lets's address the "kiddy pool." The students in a two year associates programs have a clearer understand of how degree programs work than you do, so stop denigrating them.
Saying I have a minor degree psychology, says something about where and how I learned what I did and is accurate enough for the common person to understand.
Okay, since you went all the way through college without understanding this. Minor and Major Degrees are not a thing. Your degree is in the field of study you majored in and your Minor is your co-curricular area of study. It is not, on its own, a degree. Your degree is in whatever field they told you it was in when you graduated.
Does it say "Bachelor of the Arts in Psychology" or "Bachelor of the Sciences in Psychology" on your degree? If not - you DO NOT have a degree in psychology.
I have mostly enjoyed this little debate. But frankly, from the start of this little diversion, you've done little except to belittle me. Yet you claim I am the one unworthy of respect.
I haven't belittled you once, I've called you out for lying about your credential. You have however belittled and condescended me, as you always do Interesting Character. I thought I'd give you a chance since you, for once, created your own thread rather than hi-jacking a different one. But here we are and you keep lying about your credentials. How is that deserving of respect?
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Impersonation is the best flag I can find, but misleading people like this is abhorrent. You should be ashamed.
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I had no minor does that mean I don't have a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre?
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Impersonation is the best flag I can find, but misleading people like this is abhorrent. You should be ashamed.
I'm not misleading anyone.
The only difference in degrees, from bachelor's to master's to doctorates, is merely an amount, the depth to which one has studied the topic. There is no other distinction.
A minor is to a bachelor's what a bachelor's is to a master's, simply a lesser amount of study in the field.
I never lied about it. I have a measure of study in the field, that measure is high enough for a minor.
He wants to claim that there is some difference between a minor and a major beyond mere amount of study in the topic. That I disagree with.
Did I call it a degree? Yea, when I made an off-hand reference to it, yes. Getting deeper, I specified it was a minor.
As I said previously, it was mainly about demonstrating actual study of the topic rather than google surfing about it.
I don't understand what you don't get about that.
You keep trying to get into nit-picky specifics and details far beyond the intent and purpose of the situation.
People who are not like you, will understand that "degree" means having gone to college to learn it, and they also assume that "no degree" means you just surf google and never learned anything about it in college.
Frankly, yes, I always considered a degree, cause I never had any reason before you to not do so. But even if you are technically correct, which you haven't even convinced me of, that still doesn't change the fact that I wasn't even trying to be technically correct, that I was using the term primarily to demonstrate, to the common person, that I studied the topic in college. Which is indeed a true fact, and I did indeed study it to a level that my knowledge was officially recognized, which is something a common person would understand from the use of the term "degree."
You might have a deeper knowledge of the specifics and details, and therefore might not consider it a degree. But most people don't know enough to understand such finicky details.
I wasn't writing to communicate to people who understand the finicky details, nor was I writing about the specific depth of my studies, which was irrelevant.
Yet I still mentioned that was a minor, which was a detail that anyone who doesn't know details will take to understand that my knowledge is at a low level, but still professional study, and also anyone who does know, understands what a minor is.
That makes it good communication for generally being understood by the majority of people.
The way I see it, it is like a doctor saying "you broke your leg" and you coming along and complaining about not being specific at a level only other doctors would understand. A patient would not even understand the technical jargon, telling them "you broke your leg" is the best way to communicate what the problem actually is.
Likewise, me saying "degree" and "minor" communicates to a broad audience that I studied a topic at an actual college and not by surfing google.
It was therefore not lying, it was speaking in layman's terms.
Doctors talking to each, will be using jargon most will not understand.
That is what you are doing. I spoke for clarity for the common person, you are speaking at a technical level that only experts or very well informed people are going to understand. Heck, I went to college and this level of detail never came up.
What part of that do you not get? Do you truly fail to grasp the concept of speaking at a more understandable level that might be slightly less accurate? Have you never heard of things being put into layman's terms?
I'm an autistic and I understand enough about communication to know that you don't use highly technical speech unless you are talking to a very specific audience.
And nothing of my comments that started this tangent were aimed at only a highly technically informed audience.
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As for associates on the other hand, it is just the basics in preparation for higher studies of any topic. Not trying to put people down here, but this was all just stuff I knew in my early teens. Grats to those complete it, but it is still just basics they should have been taught in elementary school.
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A minor is to a bachelor's what a bachelor's is to a master's, simply a lesser amount of study in the field.
Incorrect. An Associates is to a Bachelor's what a Bachelor's is to Master's. A Minor is a co-curricular field of study in your Bachelor's Degree Program.
He wants to claim that there is some difference between a minor and a major beyond mere amount of study in the topic. That I disagree with.
Your opinion doesn't make a minor course work suddenly its own degree. You don't get to define that you have a degree because you feel your study warrants the equivalent of one.
Did I call it a degree? Yea, when I made an off-hand reference to it, yes. Getting deeper, I specified it was a minor.
You didn't make an off hand reference, you made a direct appeal at the start of your topic that your perspective flowed from your degree in Psychology. You then clarified that your main focus was in Artificial Intelligence - which would be either Robotics, Electrical Engineering, Programming. Which would mean your degree is in one of those fields, not Psychology.
As I said previously, it was mainly about demonstrating actual study of the topic rather than google surfing about it.
Yeah and that is the point I find offensive. Saying that you have a degree in Psychology when you don't in order to demonstrate that you took courses is lying to present yourself as an authority on the topic of Psychology only to 10 posts later say it isn't even your degree field.
You keep trying to get into nit-picky specifics and details far beyond the intent and purpose of the situation.
You said "I have a degree in psychology, and that affects my perspective here". If in fact you do not, as everything you've said here seems to indicate, then this isn't a nit-picky specific and detail. It's the difference between the truth and a lie to give your post more weight.
People who are not like you, will understand that "degree" means having gone to college to learn it, and they also assume that "no degree" means you just surf google and never learned anything about it in college.
Except a degree means you graduated having completed the requisite coursework in that program and no degree means you didn't. Using the term degree to loosely mean "took classes related to" is misrepresenting your experiences.
I wasn't even trying to be technically correct, that I was using the term primarily to demonstrate, to the common person, that I studied the topic in college.
Which is NOT what having a degree means. I took two film classes in college, I don't have a degree in film.
You might have a deeper knowledge of the specifics and details, and therefore might not consider it a degree.
If it says Bachelor's of the Arts in Psychology or Bachelor's of the Sciences in Psychology on the certificate you were given, then it IS a Psychology Degree, if it doesn't say that then it ISN'T a Psychology Degree. It's not about what anyone "believes" it is about what it says on the paper.
If you don't have a piece of paper that says one of those two things, then you don't have a Psychology Degree and misrepresented the truth.
Likewise, me saying "degree" and "minor" communicates to a broad audience that I studied a topic at an actual college and not by surfing google.
It was therefore not lying, it was speaking in layman's terms.
I have a degree in X discipline is not a layman's term. It's not a phrase you use to communicate to a broad audience, it is a term that means you have that credential in that discipline. If you don't have said credential in that discipline then you were lying to make your experience seem greater than it is.
That is what you are doing. I spoke for clarity for the common person, you are speaking at a technical level that only experts or very well informed people are going to understand. Heck, I went to college and this level of detail never came up.
I'm not speaking at a technical level that only experts or very well informed people understand. If you claim you went to college and the difference between a minor and a major NEVER came up, then I must question whether you went to college at all.
As for associates on the other hand, it is just the basics in preparation for higher studies of any topic. Not trying to put people down here, but this was all just stuff I knew in my early teens. Grats to those complete it, but it is still just basics they should have been taught in elementary school.
100 and 200 level courses are not taught in elementary school - nor are they "just the basics," they're the same classes you would have started with when working toward this bachelors you may or may not have ever received.