this post was submitted on 21 May 2025
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Because some people enjoy playing a game with fair and consistent rules, and find playing calvinball to be frustrating bullshit that is very often obviously biased towards certain kinds of actions, decisions, player builds, even just outright biased toward specific players.
Calvinball! is that a C&H reference? ive never seen that particular joke in the comic strip but i feel like i instantly get what the reference means
Yes.
Calvinball is a convoluted game where Calvin amd Hobbes constantly and arbitrarily introduces new rules and addendums and exceptions to existing rules, on the spot, whenever something they don't like happens, so that the outcome will always bend toward what they want it to be, ie, the rule composer winning.
The strips are basically a storyboarded out version of the concept of 'moving the goalposts'.
EDIT:
I got some details wrong:
There are are multiple short and longer strips that mention or are fully based around calvinball.
Hobbes is actually usually the one more successful at rembering the current, but also ever shifting set of rules, and is also usually better at making up rules that overtly benefit himself.
Some of the strips seem to involve rules being made up that are more just chaos for the sake of chaos, other strips more clearly feature biased, weaponized rules.
So... sometimes its chaotic neutral, sometimes it is chaotic evil that is based around chaotic rule making, so perhaps thats lawful evil...
I've always found this particular 'loophole' kind of problematic and nonsensical with the DnD alignment chart of lawful v neutral v ~~evil:~~ chaotic:
There are many real world systems where complex codes, rulesets, laws, are in fact so complex, contentious, inconsistently modified or interpreted that... chaotic evil and lawful evil begin to merge.