Law vs. Chaos - the forgotten conflict

[Kahuna Burger]

If Chaotic morality's fundament is Individual Over All, then Dan has no obligation to Ari as part of a society and Ari has no claim over something he did not produce, assuming property rights that supported the individual's claim to his product. In this case you have rules, laws, that are supporting a Chaotic ideal; would not the end result be Chaotic?

ah, we have a philosophical and quasi political disconnect. No need to pursue it.

 

[Arkhandus]

The chaotic choice would be to throw away the bread just because it's unexpected, and it may provide amusement from the other guy going ballistic.

 

[Sundragon2012]

Um, what? No, not at all.

What I said is that neither is innately harmful. Law is not inherently good or bad; chaos is not inherently good or bad. Too much law or bad laws--or too much chaos and disorder--are bad. Yes, there's some disagreement on what "too much" means, but that doesn't change the truth of the underlying statement.

"Too much" law or "too much" chaos, however, invariably results in the discovery that they have crossed the line into "evil." Oppressive laws are evil, not just "excessively lawful." Wanton destruction is evil, not just chaotic. Thus, once either law or chaos becomes something that must be fought, it is has crossed the line into a "good vs. evil" conflict.

This is very true. If we look at the political spectrums of right and left we have fascism on the far, far right and communism on the far, far left. If we look at Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia they both eventually morphed into the same hideous, evil, controlling, limiting, murdering regime at least when it came to methodology as opposed to philosophy or ideology. Too much leftism becomes evil and too much rightism becomes evil.

This is useful in regards to fantasy such as D&D as well if one were to symbolically see leftism as chaos and rightism as law. Both taken to extremes become life crushing monstrosities. However, what makes folks try to fight against either law or chaos is when they become evil and not before.

A paladin might see a group of elven warriors as undiciplined and a nightmare to attempt to lead, but they are still good folk and to be supported against any evil no matter how lawful. No devil is going to convince a paladin to turn on them because they are undisciplined rabble (in his opinion) because he knows that they aren't going to turn around and kill his family and friends and burn his temple to the ground making his faith illegal and turn him into a slave.

Good vs. evil is viceral and powerful in human consciousness. Law vs. chaos is more an argument had by philosophers until such a time as either morphs into lawful evil or chaotic evil. Once it does, it becomes a problem folks can sink their teeth into.


Starlion

 

[I'm A Banana]

I think the Law v. Chaos is externally civilization v. barbarism and internally the rational v. the irrational.

YES.

I think, just like Good and Evil, Law and Chaos can get bogged down in what people think they ought to mean rather than what they do (or should) mean.

It's an easy trap to fall into, and it's especially so with Law and Chaos, because our culture doesn't give us the standard pop take on it. "Barbarism" is used more to imply Evil than to imply Chaos.

It's Organization vs. Entropy, Order vs. Disorder, Logical Control vs. Emotional Resonance, Computers vs. Fleshbots, Nature vs. Nurture....all these debates are contained in Law and Chaos.

But so many people interpret it to mean "Lawful people don't do illegal things and Chaotic people do illegal things unless someone EXPECTS them to!"

Which is a very, very shallow way of viewing it.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

[Snip]

Spoken like a true Neutral Good believer.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

I think, just like Good and Evil, Law and Chaos can get bogged down in what people think they ought to mean rather than what they do (or should) mean....But so many people interpret it to mean "Lawful people don't do illegal things and Chaotic people do illegal things unless someone EXPECTS them to!"

QFT. That's the major problem labeling it [Law] when it should have been [Order] and it makes people equate [Law] with 'law' and legality when it's actually about universal order rather than mortal perceptions of legal. Just as [Chaos] isn't 'randomness' its unrestrained potential and unstructured individual agency.

 

[Teflon Billy]

I always thought an entire campaign world split along the law/chaos lines would be awesome... paladins working with devils and monks to stop the bards, barbarians, and their slaad allies...

I ran a game like that once...there had been a war amongst the Gods, and a lot of concepts just literally had no deific backing any longer...Good, Evil, War, Peace, Magic etc.

So the Gods that were left were a pretty disparate pantheon of second-stringers...Law vs. Chaos was the new big fight, Warriors tended to flock to the banner of the God of Metalwork for lack of anything more compelling, Wizards tended to follow the God of Knowledge...etc.

It was pretty great. Paladins got to keep their powers basically because there was no one to revoke them for poor behaviour...if they devoted themselves to Law, they got Smite Chaotic, but otherwise Smite evil was just...nothing.

Also, there were no new Paladins coming down the pipe (No deific Backing from Good), but very similar Holy Warriors for most any Deifically backed cause began appearing.

It went pretty well.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Spoken like a true Neutral Good believer.

nah, I'd say it's a little more than that. A G-E neutral character is not generally ambivilent to the G-E alignment of his neighbors, or just as happy to have an evil king as a good one. Such a character is (by my reading of the SRD alignments) in favor broadly of other people being either good or at least not evil. He simply does not rise to the level of good himself because he is not willing to make sacrifices for others.

A neutral person who sees a wounded man by the side of the road may not go to help him if it would represent a sacrifice (or time, of obligation to continue to help, of danger that it could be an ambush, etc) but is not just as pleased to see another passerby kick the wounded man and laugh as to see one stop to help. The idea that Good is something the world needs, and Evil is something it needs less of is not an exclusively Good viewpoint. Neutrals and even some Evils will agree, while either not making the effort themselves, or living as parasites on the Good done.

This is one of the reasons, IMHO, that GvE is a bad supernatural alignment but a useful personal one.

 

[Galieo]

The two best examples of law verse chaos are the already mentioned Babylon 5 series and one of my altime favorite book series - the Elric series. Elric by Moorcock was one of the best storylines of that conflict I have read in over35 years of reading sfi-fi and fantasy.

-KenSeg
gaming since 1978

QFT, though I would add Moorcock's Corum series as an even clearer discussion of Chaos v. Law. Heck, any of the Eternal Champion stories would serve.

 

[I'm A Banana]

nah, I'd say it's a little more than that. A G-E neutral character is not generally ambivilent to the G-E alignment of his neighbors, or just as happy to have an evil king as a good one. Such a character is (by my reading of the SRD alignments) in favor broadly of other people being either good or at least not evil. He simply does not rise to the level of good himself because he is not willing to make sacrifices for others.

I think this is right. They don't want to have to put up with any abuse themselves, and having an evil alignment and living next to evil people is likely to give them a massive problem.

However, I don't think that most neutral characters have any issues with an evil king in some other country. As long as it's not in their back yard, affecting their lives, making them worse, they're perfectly happy to stay out of the issue.

A neutral person who sees a wounded man by the side of the road may not go to help him if it would represent a sacrifice (or time, of obligation to continue to help, of danger that it could be an ambush, etc) but is not just as pleased to see another passerby kick the wounded man and laugh as to see one stop to help.

Pleased? Probably not. Though they probably wouldn't get involved unless that wounded man was somehow important to them.

The idea that Good is something the world needs, and Evil is something it needs less of is not an exclusively Good viewpoint. Neutrals and even some Evils will agree, while either not making the effort themselves, or living as parasites on the Good done.

Really good interpretation there, KB.

This is one of the reasons, IMHO, that GvE is a bad supernatural alignment but a useful personal one.

...though I don't think I share the conclusion.