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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aldarc" data-source="post: 7068504" data-attributes="member: 5142"><p>I agree with you that Law vs. Chaos is a compelling theme in D&D - it is one that I personally enjoy for my own campaigns - but I can also see why WotC chose to minimize it in favor of Good vs. Evil. In the legacy of D&D and fantasy literature, the Chaos/Order is undeniably influential, but I would argue that Chaos/Order conflict no longer carries the same influence in the popular imagination of fantasy media. Big splash epics such as the works of Middle Earth, Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter, and Wheel of Time tend to revolve around the themes of Good vs. Evil. (The science-fantasy epic Star Wars also follows along similar ideas, at least in the popular conception of the story.) I should probably also include World of Warcraft here too. I'm including it not because of the whole "4E is WoW" nonsense, but simply because it is a fantasy series that made a tremendous degree of mainstream success, albeit in another medium. Other popular fantasy epics, such as Game of Thrones (ASoIaF) typically focus on "gritty" political intrigue. The moral ambiguity of most major, contemporaneous fantasy tends to circulate on human agents with complex mutually-exclusive agendas rather than concerns regarding diametrically-opposed cosmological forces, particularly on the Chaos/Order axis. This all not to say that you don't have a point - because you definitely do - but, rather, that mainstream fantasy has drifted away from D&D's sword & sorcery fantasy roots and its cosmological concern for Order vs. Chaos.</p></blockquote><p></p>

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