D&D 5E Alignment vs. Morality, and the Consequences of Delaying Development of the Planes

[doctorbadwolf]

I've kinda come to think of the Outer Planes and the arrangement thereof as ideas from the Material coagulating and, um, aligning, sorta like a color wheel--but then, I tend toward thinking that people create gawds more than the other way around.

Can I ask why you say “gawds” instead of “gods”?

 

[prabe]

Can I ask why you say “gawds” instead of “gods”?

It's a typographical equivalent of a verbal tic, I suspect, picked up long ago in a place and time where lots of words with similar sound/s were spelled that way (dawgs, frawgs) and I haven't bothered to eliminate it from my casual usage because I don't believe deities exist (and yes that's almost certainly part of why I wrote them out of my homebrew world).

 

[Krachek]

Dnd is a framework to allow gaming in various setting.
The alignement is an important part for a lot of setting but it’s not an absolute,
The 5 colors system of Magic can be used effectively in a setting in place of alignement.
other system can be imagined,
if DnD want to evolve it can just tweak the rules and monsters description to allow multiple system.
Dont have to rewrite DragonLance just allow other systems.

 

[Voadam]

3e did the best mechanical alignment stuff IMO tying it into aligned subtypes for monsters and spell descriptors and the holy/anarchic/etc. magic weapon enhancements and such. I got a lot of mileage out of that with paladins and fiends and such in my 3.X games.

I am still happier with 5e's divorcement of alignment from mechanics, paladins flat out smiting works better IMO.

 

[Khelon Testudo]

Planescape is here again oh Lord
Haven't been to the prime material in a year or more
I hope Greyhawk holds on a little longer

Killed a slaad on a long summer day
Saw a silver dragon, golem made of clay
Ooh, I've been using absolute alignments far too long ...

Ooh, the wheel of the planes keeps on turnin'
I don't know where I'll be tomorrow
Wheel of the planes keeps on turnin'

This is creative, and I like it. I'd probably be even more amused if I knew what song it was riffing on.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

This is creative, and I like it. I'd probably be even more amused if I knew what song it was riffing on.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

And here are the lyrics.

Journey – Wheel in the Sky

One of Journey’s earlier hits. While having moderate success in the charts, it became a staple in their concerts, with enthusiastic crowd participation and long instrumental pieces

genius.com

 

[Chaosmancer]

It strikes me that, since the Little Brown Books onward, Alignment has meant something different; it's rather a sort of macrocosmic conflict – whether one-axis or two-axis – that reflects down through the multiverse from Upper Planes towards the Material Plane. While Gygax gets his take most directly from writers like Anderson and Moorcock, this idea permeates culture and literature for centuries, from Neoplatonic metaphysics to developments of Natural Law theories. Where fantasy literature takes the idea and runs with it is in the population of creatures on a world that is not our own. So, we see in literature and then in D&D the likes of dragons and chimera Aligned directly by their magical nature, while non-magical humanoids have cultures and religions that lean them to sides in the existential conflict but allow them to actual choose (and indeed often define the heroic story by those choices). That's something distinct from classical or medieval virtue ethics – the expectations of behavior among Lawful Good are very different (and far more violent) than those of any Thomistic or Sufi way of perfection.

While there are moral reflections in Alignments, these aren't absolute. We see that not only in the warring nature of Good as mentioned, but in some of the examples mentioned in the other thread. Dragonlance, with its explicit Balance of Good, Neutral, and Evil as cosmic forces is a great example: we see when we follow the story of Krynn where Good's binding principles have nearly destroyed the world (the Cataclysm) and where Evil's refusal to bow has saved it (the Chaos War).

I'm chopping a lot of this, to get to what I think is the heart of the problem.

See, while Law and Chaos are the worst problems when viewing alignment through the lens of morality, the worst problem when viewing it as seperated from morality is good and evil.

First off, the question of morality is itself the question of good and evil, which presents a problem in breaking alignment (which includes all four axioms) away from morality.

But, going deeper. It is very easy to say that extreme law and extreme chaos are both bad. Extreme law is "the world in amber" static, unchanging, unmoving, silent. Extreme chaos is a writhing mass of energy and formless forms that makes anything living impossible.

But, what is extreme good? You mention the Cataclysm in Kyrnn, and it has been a long time since I read anything from Dragonlance, but it sticks out to me because I saw someone mention this exact event in a different thread. Reminding us that the Cataclysm happened because the God-Emperor (or whatever his title was) became incredibly prideful and declared himself greater than the gods, and the gods responded by wiping out the entire civilization.

The problem though, is obvious. Pride and Arrogance are not good traits. They are in fact traits of Evil. How about taking the route of "Purity". That Extreme Good is wiping away all imperfections until everything is pure, and killing anyone who stands in the way?

Well, enforcing your beliefs through violence and removing choice is Tyranny. Tyranny is also not a good trait, it is the trait of Evil.

The only way I can see it, is hyper-pacifism, not only refusing to defend yourself, but refusing to defend others. That is an extreme good that could be used. The problem with hyper-pacifism though is not that a world full of hyper-pacificist is a bad world, it is that it is a bad choice in the face of Evil. But, if Good wins the cosmic struggle, then there is no Evil, so there is no problem with Hyper-Pacifism until Evil comes back.

And to really drive this point home, one of the traits of good is Moderation. The very idea of not taking things to extremes has to be taken to the extreme for an Extreme Good force to work. Which... I'm sure someone can do it, but it is a paradox by its nature.

Agreed. And, in fact, tying a mechanical element (alignment) to a setting element (the Planes) becomes awkward when you're in a game that doesn't make use of the setting element.

I also think that if you're going to markedly note the difference between planar alignment and morality, linking them through natural language is problematic. If the powers of Good will cause great harm that they don't have to... that's not "good". It is a misnomer. Better to say the Celestial Powers will cause great harm... and you no longer have confusion.

So, you have a setting in which there are Celestial and Infernal powers. Your character may have some descriptor or score that indicates their alignment to those powers. Maybe it has mechanical impact. Maybe some spells also interact with those powers. But leave the attachement to morality only a general tendency, rather than a thing of the exact same name.

This style of thing is a lot neater.

One thing I love about the Japanese myths my friend introduced me to is that Hell isn't evil.

The Gods used to chuck evil souls out into the Void, essentially thinking of it like a landfill, until all those souls came back with devastating powers and the ability to unmake things.

So, they stopped that and realized they still needed a place to put the bad souls, so they created Hell (using English anglican terms is not accurate, but it is faster). A place where oni and other denizens could punish bad souls until they had been purified of their sins and could go back to either the mortal world or the heavens (that part depends on whether you include reincarnation.)

So, running into an Oni in the World of Man is a problem, not because he is evil and out to hurt you and drag you to Hell, but because he is there either on the job tracking down an evil soul (which will want to hurt you) or he snuck away from his post and is looking to get drunk (shrug) which is a problem because they aren't "nice" people, and they could possibly be an angry drunk, or have their boss come down and lay a smack down on them.

And Void is much closer to Chaos than evil.