Five Alignments?

[Elphilm]

And for the new cosmology, it makes some sense since the elemental Chaos is opposed to the Law of the gods. Working against order automatically sends you sliding to evil.

This is actually what I was thinking. If we forget for a moment the D&D specific notion of Chaotic, chaos in mythology has always been in direct opposition to the material universe, which is essentially a product of imposing order upon chaos. Evil is a part of the world, whereas chaos is outside the world and inherently more harmful to it.

I'm not saying 4E is taking this route, though, merely that there are several possibilities for how the new alignments could work.

 

[Byronic]

There's definitely more Moorcockian influence on alignment now (Law associated with "Good", Chaos with "Evil"). On the surface it feels rather odd for D&D though, given the game's history. I'm curious to see where they're going with this because I'm not seeing an obvious improvement to the game here...

Well there has always been a strong Moorcockian influence on alignment, probably because alignment was inspired by stories written by him and Poul Anderson.

It's funny how people are associating "Law" with "Good" and "Chaotic" with "Evil" though. If we look at the Moorcock inspiration Law is definitely *not* Good, nor is Chaos really Evil. If Law would win then human civilisation would be gone. We would have no creation, no change, nothing. Mankind requires both of them in balance.

Even if we forget that little bit (since we're playing DnD and not Elric!) we still have a problem. Elves were originally "Chaotic" and Dwarves "Lawful" Are Elves really more evil then Dwarves? If the alignment does not fit, you must acquit!

I'll leave real world situations out (especially since most people here (seem) to be "gamist" and not very "simulationist"). In any case I shall have to wait and see what happens with the alignment. I don't really care a kobolds rump though, as a DM I can house rule it and as a player I can just ignore alignment altogether and simply make sure my characters have.. well... character.

 

[Amphimir Míriel]

Don't assume that G, LG, E, and CE mean exactly the same in 4E than they did in prior editions.

Alas, we are foiled from knowing "the true story" by the old NDA!

There's definitely more Moorcockian influence on alignment now (Law associated with "Good", Chaos with "Evil"). On the surface it feels rather odd for D&D though, given the game's history. I'm curious to see where they're going with this because I'm not seeing an obvious improvement to the game here...

If I remember correctly, in some early incarnation of the game, D&D only had Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic as alignments, which undoubtedly was a Moorcock influence... Only later were Good and Evil added to the mix...

edit: Ninjaed!!

 

[Spatula]

The fact that people can, and constantly do, have so wildly different ideas of what Chaotic and Lawful mean is, IMO, the best reason to give up on them and streamline the alignments.

Yeah, they would have been better off ditching Lawful & Chaotic entirely. It's not hard to define workable definitions of them, and even looking at the Great Wheel you can kinda see how they should be used. But the actual words are misleading ("Well, you're Lawful, so you can't break the law, right") and the ideas that people have formed over the years has rendered those particular words problematic.

Personally I would have been happy with just getting rid of LN, NG, CN, and NE. Or with removing alignment altogether, which I thought was the basic approach they were going for. The DDXP characters are mostly unaligned as were almost all of the DDM monsters that we have beta-4e stats for.

There's definitely more Moorcockian influence on alignment now (Law associated with "Good", Chaos with "Evil"). On the surface it feels rather odd for D&D though, given the game's history.

Uhm? I always thought that the original alignments (Lawful, Neutral, Chaotic in OD&D - AD&D added Good & Evil and the 3x3 matrix) came straight from Moorcock.

 

[jeffhartsell]

Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun.

 

[Revinor]

I had a discussion about this with my friend yesterday and this is a summary of what we have came to:

It is Lawful - Good - Neutral - Evil - Chaotic. Good and evil descriptors next to the lawful and chaotic are just extras, not defining parts.

Good versus Evil is about human (demihuman/whatever) souls. Gods are mostly good or evil.

Lawful versus Chaotic is more than just society versus anarchy. It is about preserving the multiverse in the way it is now versus tearing it apart. It is about the war between gods and primordials in the old age. Titans/demons which have the the ties to primordials/elemental chaos are Chaotic (evil). Devils/angels of evil gods are 'just' evil.

Evil gods are NOT close to be chaotic. They still enjoy working in current 'ruleset'. Primordials on the other hand, would be happy to get rid of current multiverse and start again, this time probably without those pesky small gods intervening and messing the Creation with their spawn.

No sane human will be ever chaotic in true meaning of that. No sane god will be ever chaotic. Tharizdun is probably nice example of evil god gone chaotic.

Lawful is about preserving the world. It is beyond 'good' - while it is interpreted by common people as being good, it is just because they perceive laws, civilization, stability of ground below their feet etc as good. There might be a lot of lawful people who act in the way good people do - but as soon as you move to the true meaning of Lawful, you have to make choices. Burning the village of 1000 to get rid of one heretic which could free primordial power is acceptable cost. You will feel regret, but what is the point of those 1000 people living another day, if tomorrow world will cease to exist? Think about it as medieval Inquisition, but with REAL enemy, one which will unmake the world instead of just corrupting few souls. Good versus evil is secondary to preserving the existence/balance of the world.

In certain way, evil gods are a lot closer to 'Lawful Evil' then they are to 'Chaotic Evil' (sane ones at least). Reason why they are put next to it on the scale is because the scale itself is defined by good/neutral people - for commoners, difference between eating their souls and destroying the world is probably very slim. At the same time, Lawful seems to be close to Good, because it is how they are told to believe - plus, from almost every point of view, Lawful behavior will bring them more good in long run, even if it can be painful at any given moment.

I understand that this interpretation goes bit beyond what will be in official D&D - especially possible cruelty of Lawful agents. Still, I think, that evil=Gods corrupting souls, chaotic=Primordials destroying the multiverse will be something quite official.

 

[Elphilm]

Uhm? I always thought that the original alignments (Lawful, Neutral, Chaotic in OD&D - AD&D added Good & Evil and the 3x3 matrix) came straight from Moorcock.

In the Elric stories Chaos was definitely capital E evil and Law represented the forces of good. However, this was simply because Elric's world was being overrun by the forces of Chaos. When the cosmic balance is tipped towards either Law or Chaos it usually spells doom for the mortal world. What Byronic wrote in post #42 is correct - only Balance is inherently good in the works of Moorcock.

So, what A'koss meant was that there is definitely an Elric influence on alignment now.

 

[MaelStorm]

IMO, it was a much needed cleanup, sorry for the fans who preferred the old alignment system from older edition. But alignment in 4E is only fluff, so there shouldn't be any problem for DMs to revert back to it.

Philosophically, it's logical. Chaos is bound to create disorder, and is in direct conflict with law, vice versa.

 

[TwinBahamut]

I am not really sure what to think about all of this, honestly...

What little we know about the new system actually reminds me somewhat of the alignment system of the videogame series called Ogre Battle, though I am sure the similarity is mostly superficial. In that game, alignment is judged on a scale going from the "low alignment" 0, called the Chaotic end of the scale, to "high alignment" 100, the Law end of the scale. Magical attacks based on Lawful alignment were called Virtue effects, and magical attacks based on Chaotic alignment were Bane effects. Healers, Paladins, Knights, Angels and Valkyries were Lawful. Vampires, Dark Knights, Liches, Berserkers, and all forms of Wizards, Witches, and Sorceresses were Chaotic. Beyond that, though, there was not a terrible huge emphasis on true good or evil in the system. At the very least, the heroes (who are pretty much the good guys) could use a mix of lawful and chaotic units, and you are just as likely to fight evil Lawful units as you were evil Chaotic units. I rather liked that system.

Actually, I find that I mostly prefer pure Law vs. Chaos alignments over good vs. evil alignments. Such a split was done very well in the videogame Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, for example. Of course, that split was done in pretty complicated manner, and mostly revolved around the idea that balance is far better than either extreme, since extremes tended to involve a lot of death and destruction...

Maybe they should have just gotten rid of the D&D alignment system altogether.

 

[M.L. Martin]

Uhm? I always thought that the original alignments (Lawful, Neutral, Chaotic in OD&D - AD&D added Good & Evil and the 3x3 matrix) came straight from Moorcock.

I've heard that they come more from Poul Anderson's work, actually, but not having read it, I can't say. (Having read Moorcock's Elric books and some of his comments, I'm inclined to say that the less Moorcock in D&D, the better, but I'm an outlier who would like more heroic epic fantasy and less gritty, amoral swords & sorcery in the game. )

As for the main topic, I'm waiting on a definition of Lawful Good, and to a lesser extent, Chaotic Evil. I get the impression that Chaotic Evil is now more overtly the 'destruction' alignment, as opposed to the 'greed/domination' of ordinary Evil, but we'll have to wait until June 2nd. So far, my only disappointment is that they didn't include a more restricted Lawful Evil for the 'honorable villain' type (cf. the Castle Falkenstein RPG).