On the fringes of civilization sure. My favorite class in D&D is ranger and my favorite alignment is chaotic good. The two are made for one another imo. Someone who lives on the dividing line between civilization and the wilds can’t rely on a greater authority to always be there to uphold good with an entire infrastructure backing it. More importantly, the chaotic good character may not want a wider system to be there. Chaotic good is internal, unwavering, and ultimately unconcerned by the mandates of a bureaucracy. What’s right isn’t written in a law book, it’s felt throughout one’s being.
Could an entire society run on chaotic good? A small community maybe. Larger ones need more structure because of their size. That’s why I mention chaotic good fitting an individual on the frontier better, or perhaps like minded people in a small village, as opposed to an entire city state or kingdom.
In D&D the idea of good and evil is sewn into the fabric of a world by the core rules and governed by the gods themselves (the DM and the source material). You know when you’ve crossed the line because the rules are pretty clear about it. Real life could make a chaotic good philosophy a bit more difficult to manage. Just like a LG (lawful good) system starting to become corrupt, an individual CG person could slowly veer into darkness without realizing it because they are the arbiter of their own code. There really is no system of checks and balances beyond the individuals own perceptions.
P.S. I’m an unwavering fan of 3rd edition D&D as I’ve played the original,2nd and 4th also and think 3rd encapsulates the system well without being overwhelmed by unnecessary mechanics. I haven’t even played 5th edition. So I’m unaware of or concerned with new rules or changes in alignment philosophy.
Best post in thread.
I like the 2nd Edition to be honest but like I've said I read more than play, the mechanics interest me A LOT as I think they can correspond to some deeper thinking about life itself, I think this is part of what has produced the idea that certain alignments are impossible such as choatic good but I also think it is mistaken. Largely for reasons you have outlined here in this post.
The ranger type isnt one that I'm interested in as much as I am cleric, paladin, ninja and monk types but the idea of a "frontier individualism" or frontier context involving exactly what you've mentioned here, the lack of infrastructure or wider questions beyond personal quests and self-government/self-management totally makes sense.
I agree with what you have said also about the idea of generalising CG, or its becoming a universal law, beyond a small settlement of like minded individuals is unlikely, probably impossible, as the capacity for CG to be corrupting to an individual in the way that LG could be corrupting on a structural or social scale (in fact that contrast is itself a pretty interesting one itself which I'm going to think about more).
As I understand it the two contrasting schools of thought in Confucian and Taoist thinking exhibit these same differences, taoists suggest that individuals are naturally good, the traditions and other artifices of the ages impinge upon and inhibit this natural goodness, whereas the confucians supposed the exact opposite that individuals are naturally bad, the traditions and other artifices of the ages the only times preventing an even worse case scenario than is at present. This is, I think, a feature of the characters in The Forbidden Kingdom, Jackie Chan's drunken boxing Taoist Priest versus Jet Lee's Fighting Monk (although this could all be a mistaken interpretation, I do think the Monkey God is a CG avatar in Chinese myth and legend and I really like The Journey Into The West and that particular archetype).
I've also been told that Confucians and Taoists never tried to wipe each other out so much as different schools of thought in west have done. So the contrast is maybe not so sharp but I do think it is fundamental and the difference between LG and CG, both of which I think do exist.
