Hexmage-EN
Legend
That’s so wild to me. Maybe your games just have far more complex interactions between different factions than mine, but I can’t imagine alignment being necessary to keep track of that. Even with really complicated webs of alliances and rivalries, I don’t see how alignment would even be helpful for that. Like, is it just that factions/characters that share a alignment on one axis are allied with each other? Wouldn’t that prevent alliances from changing as the story progressed? Or would alignments change if alliances chabged?
Personally I have used alignment before as a basis for what creatures would be more likely to form alliances, what monsters a creature would choose as minions, and what monsters might be forced into servitude but potentially willing to rebel against their masters.
For example, mummies are Lawful Evil undead, which implies to me that something about becoming a mummy makes the creature Lawful Evil. They'd be unlikely to be associated with Orcus, the Chaotic Evil demon lord of undeath, so any mummies used by a cult of Orcus would be forcibly controlled somehow and may actually help fight the cult if freed from domination.
As another example, mind flayers and devils are both Lawful Evil, so that leads me to imagine connections between them. Perhaps they form an alliance so that devils get a person's soul but the mind flayer's get a person's body.
I look at Law and Chaos especially from a Moorcockian point of view. If something or someone is Lawful or Chaotic then they are part of team Law or team Chaos, either as a minor pawn or as a main player. Good and Evil are secondary in importance.I don’t get it. If the description tells you why they’re Lawful Evil, why do you need it to say they’re Lawful Evil at that point? You know how they behave, what benefit is there on placing a moral judgment on that behavior?
For example, if someone were to try and destroy the Nine Hells (which would have the consequence of demons winning the Blood War and, no longer having a distraction, go on to attack the rest of the multiverse), then forces of Law like modrons and even some angels would help protect the Nine Hells for the sake of keeping the Blood War going and preventing the spread of Chaos across the multiverse that a demonic victory would bring.
As a side note, I went from not getting why demons and devils were enemies and not caring about the Blood War when I first started running and playing D&D to it being one of my favorite parts of D&D lore. If demons are around in the Material Plane I often have devils show up to as "allies" who want to 1) prevent demons from gaining a foothold and 2) find a way to further their own subtle plans. Devils have been recurring NPCs more often than they've been monsters to fight in my campaigns due to their Lawful Evil society, which never would have developed in D&D's lore the way it did without the concept of Lawful Evil being a thing.
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