Five Alignments?

[Tervin]

Here is why Chaotic Good is a bad distinction, in retrospect. Suppose a Good person sees one law as mandating truly "good" behavior and another law as rewarding "evil" behavior (for those in charge, at least). Yeah, a non-lawful person would have no problem rejecting whatever laws they see fit to reject. But a truly Good person could never see fit to reject a law they believe to be good, even if they believe legal hierarchies are generally bad for society. Thus, all good people who are not Lawful Good are simply Good. You could, of course, reject Neutral Good instead and keep Chaotic Good. But LG-CG implies polarity that doesn't necessarily exist to any great degree. (One Good person might reject a single evil law out of a multitude of good laws, but this shouldn't seem to make them Chaotic). It is better to think of Lawful Good as a species of Good overall.

Chaotic Evil makes sense, on the other hand. The evil side of the equation includes monsters and creatures that may well reject any and all laws, even evil ones. Good is good, but evil is anything it wants to be at any given time.

Now let's look at Lawful Evil. Suppose a Lawful Evil creature discovered a utopian kingdom with laws that perfectly mandated good behavior. Would that creature cease to behave evilly in order to remain lawful? It seems unlikely. Hence, it is unlikely that there are any truly lawful evil creatures. Rather, there are only evil creatures who can tolerate lawfulness. That makes them simply Evil, not Lawful Evil.

I don't think your reasoning holds up. You are assuming that laws can be "good" and "evil", which to me is a lawful assumption. From a chaotic point of view every law is sometimes "good", sometimes "evil", no matter what the lawmaker intended. A CG person would not necessarily reject laws, just always feel that every situation needs to be looked at individually, and that the laws don't take everything into account.

A simple example is that a good person would in general think that a law against stealing is a good law, but might feel that there are situations when stealing is acceptable. Simplified. a NG person would sometimes feel ready to look the other way at small theft, while a CG person could readily do the stealing themselves, if there was a good reason.

 

[Tervin]

Why is everyone assuming a perfectly linear continuum, anyway? Where did the notion that either G or LG must be "more good" than the other, or that E or CE must be "more evil," come from?

True. I guess many of us assume too much. And I am probably one of them. What seems clear to me though, is that a system with five alignments is less refined than a system with nine. And, that there is no alignment conflict between law and chaos that doesn't take good end evil into the equation.

On the other hand the system is just as at least as easy to ignore as before, which right now seems like the best solution to me.

 

[Jack Colby]

Stop. Take a deep breath. Wait for the books and then read the alignment section in context with the rest of the game.

THEN freak out over the change, if you so choose.

 

[Revinor]

This is why I mentionned the primordials equivalent in real world mythology. They want to re-establish the original order, with them on top if possible, even if that means destroying other races. This is not chaotic, not "beyond evil", not as original but it makes more sense and has more potential in my opinion than "must...destroy...universe"

The primordials set out to destroy the world rather than let it become the gods' plaything, while the gods fought to save it and the mortals they had made to inhabit it.
[...]
When that moment [primordials get released] finally comes, they will unleash elemental retaliation upon all of creation.

To me it seems more in the camp of "destroy universe" rather than "enslave humanity".

As far as your 'old order' versus 'new thing' comes into play, I plan to do it on another layer IMC. Gods are presented in PHB will be 'old order', but for last few hundred years they are getting pushed back by new, monotheistic, human-centric religion (thing about Empire of Rome + Christian Crusades in one). But this is IMC, we should probably discuss world as presented by WotC, not what 'makes more sense' And IMHO, WotC is presenting CE quite clearly as 'insane-destroy they world' attitude, just on different levels (nobody expects Hill Giant to really understand it, he just behaves toward destruction on his small, limited level).

 

[Fiendish Dire Weasel]

I liked the suggestion for alignment would be only 3 alignments:

Unaligned for most people 80%+

Good and Evil would be for those who activley participated being a force of Good/Evil in the world/universe.

For some reason I thought this was how it would be, but guess I was wrong. Inclusion of LG & CE bugs me, but guess I'll have to wait and see.

 

[M.L. Martin]

Why is everyone assuming a perfectly linear continuum, anyway? Where did the notion that either G or LG must be "more good" than the other, or that E or CE must be "more evil," come from?

Legacy material from BECMI, where Law generally equaled Good and Chaos generally equaled Evil, and 1E/2E, which tended to treat Lawful Good as the pinnacle of Good?

My own expectation is:

Lawful Good: Traditional paladins and knights, Gandalf, Aragorn, Frodo and Sam, Superman, Captain America, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Hermione Granger
Good: Robin Hood, 'cowboys', Pippin and Merry, Batman, Spiderman, Anakin and Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter
Evil: Traditional villains, Sauron, Saruman, Lex Luthor, Darkseid, Doctor Doom, Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader, Tom Riddle
Chaotic Evil: Sociopaths and anarchists, Morgoth, Azathoth, the Joker, Bellatrix Lestrange.

 

[lutecius]

Why is everyone assuming a perfectly linear continuum, anyway?

Because other solutions would be clunky and some people are optimistic.

I know you know what we don't know yet, but I don't expect some "oh, now it all makes sense!" moment.
So far, most of the intriguing things that were hinted at didn't make more sense to me after the "big reveal".
The simple fact that, late in the design process, some wotc staffers weren't sure which alignments made the cut doesn't bode well.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Why is everyone assuming a perfectly linear continuum, anyway? Where did the notion that either G or LG must be "more good" than the other, or that E or CE must be "more evil," come from?

More precisely, because some gamers equate anything that isn't perfectly linear with being clunky.

 

[kennew142]

Meh, 4 down, 5 to go. Really I don't think anything would be lost by trashing the whole alignment concept.

QFT.

Five is more than enough, with the emphasis on more. I'm just glad that with alignment based mechanical effects out the window, I can throw out alignment completely without rewriting half the system.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Because other solutions would be clunky and some people are optimistic.

*blink*

Anything non-linear is clunky? The alignment system only works if it runs on a straight, single-line continuum?

Uh, sorry, but that's just nonsense.

The simple fact that, late in the design process, some wotc staffers weren't sure which alignments made the cut doesn't bode well.

I'd love to see a source on this. Because I've seen playtest drafts dating back over half a year, now, and I can tell you that in terms of alignment, some terms may have changed, but the content and meanings have stayed pretty consistent.