What's in an Alignment?

Sit back and relax my friends, and I shall tell you a tale of days long past...

Way back in the decade you now know as the 1980's (it was called "nowadays" back then), the internet was still in it's experimental stage with only limited use for military personnel. Computer games usually consisted of characters that had at most 20 or so pixels and maybe three colors. The videogame craze was in full sway, but you had to pay a quarter a pop, and further, you had to *gasp* leave your house to play them. Back then kids did things like play outside or read to pass the time in those Reagan induced dark ages.

Old School DM's Guide

We nerds found a workaround in this carnage-less wasteland by utilizing a rare and almost forgotten human trait called "imagination". While the rest of the kids our age were outside jumping ramps on their bikes for throwing a ball around, we proto-nerds were inside poring over huge books filled with tables that corresponded to the different dice values that were thrown. It was the era of Dungeons & Dragons....

So since then, the core rules of D&D have changed several times (the newest rules are shiite) and the game has gone through several computerized and videogame incarnations. But none (not even Neverwinter Nights) can compare with having a bunch of friends over and having a really deep game going with pizza and the proper age appropriate intoxicants. I miss those days, and not even the most detailed MMORPG can compare to the excitement involved in a ticked off Dungeon Master.

One of the things that managed to stick with me after all these years, was the D&D alignment system. When creating a character, you had to decide whether you wanted to be good, evil, or neutral. And there were several subsets of those decisions making it even more detailed by involving both law and chaos. I have stuck with my personal alignment since I was about 10 years old, and that is a solid Neutral Good. I believe that law and chaos should be in balance and that a person should not be restrained by notions of law when wanting to do good, nor the lack thereof.

This post is more for the blogosphere, which I have grown to love in the last few weeks. I'm sure you've seen a lot of my comments, and I try to keep them as upbeat and humorous as I can. And I always make sure to read through every post a friend makes, up to and including watching any embedded videos so my comments aren't the result of just skimming over material.I feel that I've gotten to know a big part of some of you that ranges from talented to absolutely brilliant. And I'm curious, if you had a personal alignment what would it be? Below is an easy-to-follow picture of what the different alignments mean and how they correspond with popular characters we all know and love.

 So bloggers, what's your alignment? It will have absolutely no bearing on whether I follow you or not, I only seek to satisfy my own curiosity. There is one blogger, a girl, who decided to create a write-in challenge for herself from her readers. They all voted, and now it looks like the poor girl was going to have to drink a glass of her own urine. I would call that Neutral to Chaotic evil. And there is absolutely no way I could bring myself to vote for something like that based on my own personal code.

I'm very curious as to what YOURS is though, and I can't wait to read the comments....