D&D General Alignment: the problem is Chaos

[Mind of tempest]

I am excluding politician out of my analysis. They are between Neutral Evil and Chaotic Evil, hahaha

do I look like I work in politics? I do know a guy who does bleeding heard does not do him justice, he is nice if utterly out of his depth.

 

[FrozenNorth]

The problem is both Law and Chaos get mixed up, even in lots of offical rule books. Law is not "obeying the law", Cosmic Law, or better Cosmic Order is structure, orginization and planning. In nature it is thing like honeybees making perfect hexagons vs mice just making a mess. Or how weather is just about 100% pure random, as after all forecasting is another word for guessing....but the phases of the Moon are 100% exact on a set unchanging cycle.

i can appreciate where this take is coming from, but I think it is impossible to reconcile these two approaches.

This first approach is interesting, but by its nature, it is something that would be relevant to only a certain subset of longterm campaigns. Also, this would lead to giving alignment only to a few creatures/PCs: those that have a strong investment in the Cosmic Law/Chaos dispute.

When you get to people it is someone who carries around food and kitchen items and plans out ever future meal vs someone who just finds food when they are hungry.

This is the astrological approach to alignment. Split every entity in the universe into one of 9 categories based on arbitrary criteria. It has its own problems, among them, the persistant idea that people who plan meals and those who just find food when they are hungry cannot possibly work together, and the idea that just because you like to plan meals, you apply that quirk to all aspects of your life.

 

[Oofta]

In my twenty years playing the game, I'm not entirely sure that they do for most people. This distinction seems to matter more for people who invested years in the game lore, and the difference in feel may be the result of those people bringing additional cognitive information to play rather than something that's actually present in play.

For what little my observation is worth and in full sincerity: One of the common lore hurdles I have seen with people coming into the game is (1) learning the difference between fiends (e.g., devils, demons, yugoloths); (2) even remotely caring about that difference; and then (3) seeing that difference actually play out in the game in a meaningful and clear way. While I think that it's easy to blame the GM in such scenarios, I have played with a fair number of GMs and new players over my years.

As to why this might be the case: I think that the game's heroic emphasis means that the Law vs. Chaos aspect generally gets ignored in favor of Good vs. Evil. This means that a lot of players - again IME - tend to broadly depict, see, and regard fiends under the more general catch-all umbrella of "evil" rather than fixate on differences like Chaotic Evil vs. Lawful Evil.

Edit: this is to say that I think for a lot of casual players Demons and Devils are not so much, respectively, Chaotic Evil and Lawful Evil, but, rather, they are seen as EVIL (chaotic) and EVIL (lawful).

I also don't think that most lay people coming into this hobby, for example, would really be able to understand why demons and devils are separate entities, especially since these terms are fairly interchangeable in the wider cultural lexicon.

Obviously your experience may (and likely does) vary, but I thought that I would offer my 2 cents.

For me it's useful to have a difference. All fiends are evil incarnate (except for that one in a gazillion exception), but if you want it you can make them feel very different.

Now, I agree someone new to the game isn't going to know the difference. A person new to the game doesn't know the difference between a dragon and a purple worm. Heck, quite a few groups probably run them pretty much the same, as brutes that show up and engage in melee with no distinguishing tactics other than different attacks. But for the DM that cares they can have similarities and vast differences. Either approach is perfectly fine.

But I like the idea that demons are just about destruction and tearing down anything orderly while devils want to subvert and revel in that moment when their victim realizes that they missed the fine print. Both can just be extraplanar enemies that want to kill you or corrupt your soul. But with the split? Demon's preference is to just tear you apart and enjoy being covered in blood, Devils will do it wearing a tux while speaking with sophistication. Kind of like the chainsaw killer Leatherface and Hannibal Lecter.

 

[Mind of tempest]

For me it's useful to have a difference. All fiends are evil incarnate (except for that one in a gazillion exception), but if you want it you can make them feel very different.

Now, I agree someone new to the game isn't going to know the difference. A person new to the game doesn't know the difference between a dragon and a purple worm. Heck, quite a few groups probably run them pretty much the same, as brutes that show up and engage in melee with no distinguishing tactics other than different attacks. But for the DM that cares they can have similarities and vast differences. Either approach is perfectly fine.

But I like the idea that demons are just about destruction and tearing down anything orderly while devils want to subvert and revel in that moment when their victim realizes that they missed the fine print. Both can just be extraplanar enemies that want to kill you or corrupt your soul. But with the split? Demon's preference is to just tear you apart and enjoy being covered in blood, Devils will do it wearing a tux while speaking with sophistication. Kind of like the chainsaw killer Leatherface and Hannibal Lecter.

look honestly they still seem super similar and need far greater differences, and that is before we get into the upper plane things which just kinda suck.

 

[Marandahir]

Others may have said this upthread (I don't have time right now to read 12 pages), but this is part of why 4e broke the 2-dimensional alignment into a single axis (the other part is to echo the World Axis cosmology they were adopting).

Lawful Good - Good - Unaligned - Evil - Chaotic Evil.

This essentially meant that Lawful Neutral entities had to be redefined as Lawful Good or Unaligned, and similarly Chaotic Neutral entities as Chaotic Evil or Unaligned. Chaotic Good and Neutral Good were condensed and Lawful Evil and Neutral Evil into one grouping too.

The point is to say that "Lawful Evil" characters aren't particularly lawful, they're just less chaotic in their evil. And when we say Chaotic Good, we're meaning Good characters that aren't so beholden to law and order, so a bit more Robin-Hoody. We're not saying they're opposed to good laws, just that they're willing to break the rules for the sake of good. Lawful Good characters are doing everything by the book and in that sense are the most good and the hardest path to walk. Chaotic Evil are doing nothing by the book and are the most evil and the easiest and most violently problematic path to walk.

This also harkens back to the single alignment axis of Law vs Chaos of D&D's early inspirations. Law = Good, Chaos = Evil in those books, and the splitting of the two was somewhat arbitrary and attempting to cut hairs in ways that didn't always make sense.

 

[Aldarc]

look honestly they still seem super similar and need far greater differences, and that is before we get into the upper plane things which just kinda suck.

I can deal with the co-existence of demons and devils, but yugoloths, angels, and the other celestials feel like D&D artificially filling in alignment boxes.* The need to fill every planar alignment with its own brand of outsiders has always felt like a hot mess to me.

* The irony is not lost on me of people criticizing 4e's classes as about filling in power/role boxes - which they never fully did (e.g., martial controller) - while ignoring how the Great Wheel is one giant exercise in artificial box filling.

Others may have said this upthread (I don't have time right now to read 12 pages), but this is part of why 4e broke the 2-dimensional alignment into a single axis (the other part is to echo the World Axis cosmology they were adopting).

Lawful Good - Good - Unaligned - Evil - Chaotic Evil.

This essentially meant that Lawful Neutral entities had to be redefined as Lawful Good or Unaligned, and similarly Chaotic Neutral entities as Chaotic Evil or Unaligned. Chaotic Good and Neutral Good were condensed and Lawful Evil and Neutral Evil into one grouping too.

The point is to say that "Lawful Evil" characters aren't particularly lawful, they're just less chaotic in their evil. And when we say Chaotic Good, we're meaning Good characters that aren't so beholden to law and order, so a bit more Robin-Hoody. We're not saying they're opposed to good laws, just that they're willing to break the rules for the sake of good. Lawful Good characters are doing everything by the book and in that sense are the most good and the hardest path to walk. Chaotic Evil are doing nothing by the book and are the most evil and the easiest and most violently problematic path to walk.

This also harkens back to the single alignment axis of Law vs Chaos of D&D's early inspirations. Law = Good, Chaos = Evil in those books, and the splitting of the two was somewhat arbitrary and attempting to cut hairs in ways that didn't always make sense.

Again, this worked well IMHO of evoking ancient notions of the Chaoskampf found in human mythologies. A common idea therein is that moral evil (i.e., Evil) leads to cosmological chaos (i.e., Chaotic Evil) and conversely that moral goodness (i.e., Good) leads to and preserves cosmological order (i.e., Lawful Good).

This is likely why 4e's use of alignment and its mythic cosmology resonated better with me than prior iterations, such as 2e and 3e's.

 

[Mind of tempest]

I can deal with the co-existence of demons and devils, but yugoloths, angels, and the other celestials feel like D&D artificially filling in alignment boxes.* The need to fill every planar alignment with its own brand of outsiders has always felt like a hot mess to me.

* The irony is not lost on me of people criticizing 4e's classes as about filling in power/role boxes - which they never fully did (e.g., martial controller) - while ignoring how the Great Wheel is one giant exercise in artificial box filling.


Again, this worked well IMHO of evoking ancient notions of the Chaoskampf found in human mythologies. A common idea therein is that moral evil (i.e., Evil) leads to cosmological chaos (i.e., Chaotic Evil) and conversely that moral goodness (i.e., Good) leads to and preserves cosmological order (i.e., Lawful Good).

This is likely why 4e's use of alignment and its mythic cosmology resonated better with me than prior iterations, such as 2e and 3e's.

gods do we need a better plane system and better plane entities.

I never saw why 4e even bother with alignment they should have just killed it.

 

[Cadence]

I never saw why 4e even bother with alignment they should have just killed it.

Because they were trying to keep things that would make it feel like D&D to the previous players?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Because they were trying to keep things that would make it feel like D&D to the previous players?

Were they though?

 

[Mind of tempest]

Because they were trying to keep things that would make it feel like D&D to the previous players?

if they want that why keep the appendix there were better features to keep.