DDN Alignment Sidebar

[leonarr]

I've not seen the order vs chaos axis as a moral viewpoint; even criminals like laws that benefit them. Good and Evil can be seen as morality, essentially it's the polarity of a sentient being's level of concern for others. Most folks don't want to be cruel but wouldn't go out of their way to champion a cause for the benefit of others. Same goes for law vs anarchy, I like laws that protect me from bad guys, but I'm not a big fan of police raids on Internet pirates.
There are people that are essentially ordered and structured minds; mess the area up and watch them go bug eye crazy; others cants stand too much structure. The ordered guy might consider himself against the government, whilst the messy guy may be a cop.

As far as true neutral? The balance definition sounds like a Buddhist monk, not an average bloke.

I remember Monte did a good/evil and a seperate chaos/law slider in a game book years ago. It seemed the good vs evil seemed to go from saintly to demonic, whereas the chaos vs order was one version of crazy to another.
Maybe I saw it that way because I'm neutral good.

To sum up my blather, none of the alignments has ever worked to describe a characters moral viewpoint or nature (I think Storyteller got it closer with nature and demeanor) but it acts as a set of boundaries for the DM to control the erratic behavior of chaotic players. A lot of groups with mature players I've met ignore alignment, so for the purpose of a morality framework for newer gamers, the 3e version was probably the one I hated the least. Add in 4e unaligned too, to avoid having 80% of the human population as Buddhist Druids.

Sorry for the verbosity.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Aside: After 30 years of D&D, I finally read Three Hearts and Three Lions. As a result, I finally really grok the Law-Chaos axis. From it:

Law isn't so much about rules, as it is stability and the ability to build something lasting. Chaos is the Second Law of Thermodynamics; it's about destruction and pulling down order.

 

[Minigiant]

The Law to Chaos axis to me was always something about dedication, stability and willingness to acceptable something not theirs. The lawful accept other's ways and stick with them. The Neutral accept the ways of others until it becomes inconveniencing. The chaotic never accept the ways of others unless forced or if disobedience is not worth the cost or is against one of the few things they hold dear.

I attribute it to fandom.
A lawful character would be a fan of a team that their father loves because their father says that team is great. And even if they team is at the bottom of the standings, they still root and buy tickets. Betrayal would be of the few ways to get them to switch. A neutral character would at first pick their dad's team but might drop or switch when dad's team stinks for too long. The chaotic character ditched dad's team once they hit third and jumped on the latest bandwagon.

 

[ferratus]

I don't know, sometimes a law is so bad that you can't call someone good, even if they are lawful, if they obey it. Like, you must shoot all insertminority-ites on sight or turn them into the authorities for arrest and extermination for example.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

Arguments about the meaning of Alignment? My god, this is D&D!