D&D General Worlds of Design: Is Fighting Evil Passé?

When I started playing Dungeons & Dragons (1975) I had a clear idea of what I wanted to be and to do in the game: fight evil. As it happened, I also knew I wanted to be a magic user, though of course I branched out to other character classes, but I never deviated from the notion of fighting evil until I played some neutral characters, years after I started.

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

“The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.” Albert Einstein

To this day I think of the game as good guys against bad guys, with most of my characters (including the neutrals) on the good guy side. I want to be one of those characters who do something about evil. I recognize that many do not think and play this way, and that's more or less the topic of this column. Because it makes a big difference in a great deal that happens when you answer the question of whether the focus of the campaign is fighting evil.

In the early version of alignment, with only Law and Chaos, it was often Law (usually good) against Chaos (usually evil). I learned this form from Michael Moorcock's Elric novels before D&D, though I understand it originated in Pohl Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions. That all went out the window when the Good and Evil axis was added to alignment. That's the axis I'm talking about today.

This is a "black and white" viewpoint, versus the in-between/neither/gray viewpoint so common today. But I like my games to be simple, and to be separate from reality. I don't like the "behave however you want as long as you don't get caught" philosophy.

Usually, a focus on fighting evil includes a focus on combat, though I can see where this would not necessarily be the case. Conversely, a focus on combat doesn't necessarily imply a focus on fighting evil. Insofar as RPGs grow out of popular fiction, we can ask how a focus on fighting evil compares with typical fiction.

In the distant past (often equated with "before 1980" in this case) the focus on fighting evil was much more common in science fiction and fantasy fiction than it is today, when heroes are in 50 shades of gray (see reference). Fighting evil, whether an individual, a gang, a cult, a movement, a nation, or an aggressive alien species, is the bedrock in much of our older science fiction and fantasy, much less so today.

Other kinds of focus?

If fighting evil isn't the focus, what is?

• In a "Game of Thrones" style campaign, the politics and wars of great families could provide a focus where good and evil hardly matter.
• "There's a war on" might be between two groups that aren't clearly good or evil (though each side individually might disagree).
• A politically-oriented campaign might be all about subterfuge, assassination, theft, and sabotage. There might be no big battles at all.
• A campaign could focus on exploration of newly-discovered territory. Or on a big mystery to solve. Or on hordes of refugees coming into the local area.

I'm sure there are many inventive alternatives to good vs evil, especially if you want a "grayer" campaign. I think a focus on good vs evil provides more shape to a RPG campaign than anything else. But there are other ways of providing shape. YMMV. If you have an unusual alternative, I hope you'll tell us about it.

 

[Fenris-77]

I think Hobbits are a better yardstick for LG than any kind of Paladin.

 

[Hoffmand]

Once you understand that men don’t make laws they only make regulations. Lawful makes more sense.

 

[pemerton]

I think Hobbits are a better yardstick for LG than any kind of Paladin.

I really don't get all this angst over LG. Unless people are running games which - in practical terms - make it impossible to do whatever the players are expected to be doing with their PCs while also acting with respect towards the community and its traditions.

But I also don't really get paladin angst. Knights should be paradigmatic characters in pseudo-mediaeval fantasy RPGing, not weird outliers.

 

[Oofta]

My thoughts on alignment and how I explain it to newbies if they ask is that it just defines how a PC perceives the world. So the short version...

We all have frameworks we use to interpret the world around us, it's how we know what a chair is even when it can be anything from a dining room chair to a lazyboy. Keeping in mind that there's a lot of wiggle room, people that are lawful view the world as a clockwork mechanism. There's reason and logic behind everything even if we don't understand it. Chaotic are the opposite, there is no natural order even though we may organize things that way.

So while a lawful person may respect a person because of a title and position, a chaotic person may only care about the person, what they've done, are capable of and what they stand for.

It's nothing hard and fast, lawful doesn't mean the PC is going to enforce their vision on everyone else even if they think other people would be better off if they accepted reality. A chaotic person may respect that civic leader because of what they've done, but doesn't care much about titles.

 

[Fenris-77]

I really don't get all this angst over LG. Unless people are running games which - in practical terms - make it impossible to do whatever the players are expected to be doing with their PCs while also acting with respect towards the community and its traditions.

But I also don't really get paladin angst. Knights should be paradigmatic characters in pseudo-mediaeval fantasy RPGing, not weird outliers.

I don't either, mostly because I use Hobbits as the yardstick, not someone's prissy maiden aunt Petunia. There's no need for LG to be preachy, or completely rigid, or otherwise troublesome in a party. There's a big difference between L meaning respects the laws and values an ordered life, and would never under any circumstance break any law and will snitch on people who do.

 

[Helldritch]

Sure, but in D&D's alignment terms, LG promotes the notion of being the "one true way" above others, and attracts a lot of people with "one true way" sympathies (in my experience), even if their RL philosophy seems anything but that. Historically, especially pre-3E (but a bit in 3E too, and clearly still a little now), it's attracted DMs too into acting as if picking LG is signing up to be treated as if there's a one true way and only the DM knows it.

I blame the LG requirement on Paladins for a lot of this, because people start unconsciously conflating the Paladin code and being merely lawful and good.

And yet, Paladins were just one face of the LG philosophy and an extreme one at that. No paladin ever expected normal people to live by their standards. None. But for some reasons, being so powerful (and with one of the strongest magical item available only to them, the Holy sword) they had such a major impact that a lot of people wanted to restrict them with further limitation and thus the Lawful Stupid we now hate so much today.

Back in the days of 1ed, Paladins were the martial arms of the LG philosophy but it does not mean that LG is all about forcing others to accept their way as the only true way. In fact LG promotes Justice, Equality and Freedom for all within an orderly society. They will accept almost any alignment as long as the person does not hurt others and their possessions. The LG does have a tendency to regulate (just as any other Lawful alignment) but the good aspect is supposed to lessened the strictness as the possibility of hurting someone or his liberties/rights will prevent abuses (where a LE couldn't care less. In fact, it would be the reverse. No freedom, no liberty just order and harsh punishments for transgressions).

I would even go further by saying that playing the LStupid is in reality almost be playing LE-N. A lawful good would never sentence a person to the death penalty for a simple theft (or bodily harm, torture or whatever). A simple prison sojourn would be more than enough. Not the extreme sanctions I have seen imposed by some DM and players over the years.

A simple peasant, soldier citizen of the LG philosophy is not a paladin and would certainly not do the stupid things I saw being done. LG is all about sharing and working for the greater good. It is not about restricting rights, imprisoning people for the pleasure of it or any shenanigans that we would see in a LE society. And yet... many DM were (are?) playing LG as a LE society would be.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

No paladin ever expected normal people to live by their standards. None.

What do you mean here? Paladins don't exist IRL (and Charlemagne's lot weren't the same thing), and obviously loads of people who've played Paladins have expected that, or DMs have expected all LG people to live like that, over the years, hence the problem.

Even you acknowledge that:

And yet... many DM were (are?) playing LG as a LE society would be.

See.

Hence LG is a problem alignment. I get your point that it shouldn't be, but shouldn't and isn't are different things.

 

[Oofta]

Hence LG is a problem alignment. I get your point that it shouldn't be, but shouldn't and isn't are different things.

That may be true in your games, it is not universal. I've played every (non-evil) alignment at one point or another and played with people who did the same.

If someone is playing lawful stupid or chaotic insane it's a problem with the player not the system.

 

[Lem23]

Completely agree with Oofta here. Any alignment can be a problem if a player wants it to be. And any are fine if the player wants it to be.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Hobbits as the yardstick

Hobbits are a terrible yardstick for LG, I'd suggest. They're a decent yardstick for NG. I mean, you remember that time when Frodo, Sam, Pippin and Merry broke into, and trespassed on, a farmer's field and stole tons of mushrooms and had to run away because they were thieves and how they talked about the fact that they did this kind of habitually and it wasn't the first time, right?

They're very G, but they're not really L.

That may be true in your games, it is not universal. I've played every (non-evil) alignment at one point or another and played with people who did the same.

If someone is playing lawful stupid or chaotic insane it's a problem with the player not the system.

"It's the people who are the problem not the system" works the first couple of times the system breaks down. When there are problems as widespread and reliable as LG and CN have caused, there are problems with the system. The same exact argument as yours is traditionally used with LF/QW. And "WELL UR GAMES SUCK BUT MINE ROCK" is just not an actual argument at all, it's an anecdote/insult.

And 2E, as discussed, presenting the alignments basically as personality disorders (in the PHB, later sources discussing them were sometimes much better or much worse), really did not help with this.