Re: what is it about angels?

On 30 Jan 2007 20:37:56 -0800, "psychohist" <psychohist@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:

>"Will in New Haven" posts, in part:
>
>  Fritz' defiance of the angel reminds me more than
>  a little of Huck Finn when he was sure he would
>  go to Hell if he helped Nigger Jim, but he helped
>  nonetheless. If an angel out of a cloud had told
>  him not to, Huck would still had done the right
>  thing. The most heroic moment in American
>  literature, in my opinion.
>
>I don't remember Jim selling orphans into slavery.

No, he was just stealing valuable property...

Alignment flame bait: If an orphanage takes in foundlings and orphans,
and finances itself by selling the older ones into slavery, then is
rescuing those slaves a Good act of foiling a slaver ring, or an Evil
act of stealing money from an orphanage? (OK, not much of a flame;
there's a strong consensus now that slavery is much more evil than
even ordinary theft, much less the "theft" of slaves from their (not
so) rightful owners.) 

>
>I agree with you that part of what Mary is seeing here is a clash
>between a style which allows the characters to figure out their own
>ethics and morals and a system with predefined alignments.  That said,
>given that the system has predefined alignments, I think the angel is
>fulfilling itself perfectly:  it is forcefully reminding the player
>characters of what those alignments are, in a way the player
>characters can't ignore.
>

I suspect that what Mary wants is for alignment to be real but not the
complete and overwhelming answer. A powerful but still
potentially-defeatable angel would fulfill this role well. It would
forcefully remind the PCs about alignment, and the PCs couldn't ignore
it. But the PCs *could*, possibly, rebutt it. 

The actual angel encountered - so powerful that the PCs didn't have a
chance against it - didn't properly fulfill this role. Instead it
fulfilled the undesired role of making alignment overwhelm any other
moral and ethical considerations. 

-- 
Erol K. Bayburt
ErolB1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]