D&D 5E The "Lawful" alignment, and why "Lawful Evil" is NOT an oxymoron!

[EzekielRaiden]

Thought - if we all live in an essentially Lawful paradigm (collectively), and have no real experience of a "Chaotic" (sans rules) world (with some localised sub cultures that nonetheless exist within the wider Lawful society and depend upon it to support their own chaotic philosophy but without it would be effectively unable to function, making it a de facto lawful society by default), then Chaotic really represents the true, absolute absence and disregard of an overarching concept of rules and law and order - something only the animal kingdom understands, truly. Therefore there could be only 4 alignments:
Lawful Evil
Lawful Good
Lawful Neutral
Chaotic Neutral (animals)

*strokes beard*

Alternatively, if ALL "nations" share these concepts, perhaps we have a flawed definition of Lawful. When Lawful is so expansive that it encapsulates nearly every single possible means of people living together in groups, and makes no differentiation between, say, a Transcendentalist commune, a military junta, a parliamentarian representative democracy, a county-sized theocracy (centered around a single parish/church), and an absolutely autocratic fascist nation, it seems more likely that we should re-asses what Lawful means, rather than turning it into a thing that represents (nearly) all humans ever.

Not that this thought-experiment is bad. I think it's quite interesting. Could be a good supporting element of an "anti-Athas" game: instead of the slowly-crumbling world of Dark Sun, this seems like it would be good for a world where the Wild is incredibly dangerous and longs to tear down any kind of meaningful human settlement. Simply by being human(oid) and wanting to gather with other human(oid)s, you are an Enemy of the Wild--so you'd better find a group you're okay with joining if you want to survive...or else give up part of what makes you human(oid) and embrace the Chaos.

Lot of assumptions about my game being made there - maybe I'm being sensitive.

I apologize--I had not intended to describe YOUR game. Any use of the word "you" was meant to be generic, and not referring to you specifically. I'm mostly just commenting on the "murderhobos" phenomenon, which I figured your post was referencing with tongue in cheek. Many people act as though being a murderhobo is just What Players Always Do, while I think it is just as much (or slightly more) the DM's fault for encouraging that kind of behavior and discouraging (sometimes vehemently) the opposite. Hence, if the DM runs a world more open to "softness," if you will, then that DM will see fewer people engage in murderhobo-ing. Not none--some people just like that sort of thing--but less, because doing other things isn't a waste of time.

I had abandoned D&D and journeyed into Philo&sophy.

Understood. Though, if we're going that route, there's still all sorts of issues, like how we (still!) glorify warfare and the soldier, yet treat veterans (and the problems directly caused by their soldiering) like crap.

 

[The Grassy Gnoll]

All good my friend. Interesting discussion to be had, but for now my time zone has caught up with me (damned Lawful rule of planetary rotation!).

 

[The Human Target]

I always thought the difference was that LE devils are devious plotters and planners with nested plans and whatnot, and CE demons are mindless animals that just destroy whatever happens to be in front of them at the moment.

And that is how they are often flavored.

But then you get to some of the specific demons and demon lords and it really falls apart.

 

[The Human Target]

All good my friend. Interesting discussion to be had, but for now my time zone has caught up with me (damned Lawful rule of planetary rotation!).

But maybe the planet is Chaotic just pretending to be Lawful to lull us into a false sense of security!

 

[Hussar]

Thought - if we all live in an essentially Lawful paradigm (collectively), and have no real experience of a "Chaotic" (sans rules) world (with some localised sub cultures that nonetheless exist within the wider Lawful society and depend upon it to support their own chaotic philosophy but without it would be effectively unable to function, making it a de facto lawful society by default), then Chaotic really represents the true, absolute absence and disregard of an overarching concept of rules and law and order - something only the animal kingdom understands, truly. Therefore there could be only 4 alignments:
Lawful Evil
Lawful Good
Lawful Neutral
Chaotic Neutral (animals)

*strokes beard*

Except that animals are rarely chaotic. There are many, many herd and pack animals with strong social dynamics that are understood by the pack. If animals were truly chaotic, then different groups of the same type of animals (say two wolf packs) would behave entirely differently. But, they don't. They're actually quite predictable and react and act in logical, rarely whimsical, manners. In a chaotic group, it's every being for his or herself. Doesn't make sense to protect someone else's children when you're Chaotic. Yet, herd animals will protect all the young as a group.

Granted, animals don't intentionally pursue order either. So, effectively, neutral (or better yet, unaligned) is the best model here.

I always thought the difference was that LE devils are devious plotters and planners with nested plans and whatnot, and CE demons are mindless animals that just destroy whatever happens to be in front of them at the moment.

I'd agree except that in play, this is rarely the case. I haven't read the new Rage of Demons module, but, the last time I saw Demogorgon was Savage Tides where you had old Demo setting up this years long plan to split himself in two and kill the other half of himself. Demogorgon, really, did fit with what I saw as a demon. But, Malcanthet was a devil, pure and simple. Nothing demonic about her at all. And, that's ignoring characters like Grazz't and Orcus.

I want my demons to be engines of destruction. But, they've rarely been presented as such.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I always thought the difference was that LE devils are devious plotters and planners with nested plans and whatnot, and CE demons are mindless animals that just destroy whatever happens to be in front of them at the moment.

The problem, mostly, is that the universe (or even multiverse) is too big for any one demon, even an insanely powerful one, to address all the time--and insanely powerful ones have all sorts of other issues, like having their movements closely tracked by insanely powerful good (and/or lawful, in some cases--e.g. the Blood War in FR) beings who would love nothing more than to destroy them if they screw up. So in order to wreak chaos, mayhem, and disorder without getting your face punched in literally all the time, you gotta delegate to lower-level beings. In order to pay attention to the entire universe(/multiverse), you need to have nested delegation...which means a hierarchy.

And when you have a hierarchy, where power can literally be obtained by defeating (and/or consuming) your superiors, you have schemes and plots.

It is entirely possible to create a cosmology where this isn't the case, but it requires substantial changes to the power dynamic of the entities involved. For example, 13A has one--or, at least, that's my understanding of it (which could be incomplete). The Gods of Light and the Gods of Darkness (essentially Good and Evil deities) don't like each other at all and, if they had no other enemies, would gladly destroy each other. But they do. They have both devils and demons to deal with. Both of which live outside of reality--one wants things from it, the other "wants in." Demons are the latter. They don't give a about hierarchy or anything else...and the vast majority of the time they cannot gain access to the world, either. When they do, solid excrement really hits the whirling device. Devils, on the other hand, want power. Destroying mortals and their world would be such a waste! They're both so useful. Normally, they too cannot cross over into the mortal world, but generally they don't even if they could--much better to strike deals, to slowly transform mortal beings, through manipulating their behavior, into something like themselves, so that the mortal world really just becomes an extension of their own.

Under this system, the CE "demon" type becomes a bit more like Cthulhu: they can only affect our world under certain circumstances, they really don't give a about anyone in it, and just want to consume and rage around for a while. There is no real hierarchy, even if some are more powerful than others, because their interests are usually unrelated--they might fight each other now and then, but usually they just stay separate from each other. The LE "devil" archetype becomes like its namesake in modern myth: Satan offering an incredible deal in exchange for "your soul." Though "your soul" might be a bit more metaphorical than literal here--it's not taking the essence that makes you individual, but rather slowly transforming you, your very nature, into something indistinguishable from theirs. I'm reminded of the closing paragraph of Animal Farm on that--the pigs became indistinguishable from the men.

 

[Shasarak]

I think in play, the reason they got rid of the Lawful/Chaotic ends of the 9 point alignment is because it rarely actually had any impact. LE devils are devious plotters and planners with nested plans and whatnot. CE demons are devious plotters and planners with nested plans and whatnot. What's the point of having one Lawful and the other Chaotic when they play exactly the same at the table? The Chaotic Good character and the Neutral Good character, again, at the table, were largely indistinguishable. Chaotic Neutral tended to attract problem players who wanted to disrupt the table. And a LN character, again in play, was more or less indistinguishable from a LG character.

My suggestion towards complaints of alignments playing exactly the same would be to not play them exactly the same.

Besides a good personality includes so much more then Alignment.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Besides a good personality includes so much more then Alignment.

That's why I really liked the "personality" section of the 4e PHB, even if it was relatively simple. First time I'd seen a PHB say, "Hey, when you make a character, you should think about the ways they respond to their situation! Personality traits are an important part of roleplay."

 

[TerraDave]

I like it.

Though "legitimate" agents do evil things all the time. And sometimes unlawful things. (often to cover up the evil things).

 

[Charles Wright]

People seem to get too hooked on the root word "Law" in "Lawful". It's alway been very clear to me that it's more about being orderly and following a code and not about "following the laws of the land".

This misconception shines most brightly when people think that having evil laws will make a LG paladin fall... no, they won't. He's following his own code of ethics and honor. He's consistent in his actions, that's why he's "Lawful".

On the flip side, according to this train of thought, someone committing "random acts of kindness" is evil.

It just boggles my mind that people can have such a narrow understanding of a word.