D&D General For those that find Alignment useful, what does "Lawful" mean to you

[Bohandas]

I think "Lawful" in this context is best understood as "the opposite of chaotic". Chaotic, in turn, is not one monolithic thing, but several things: Disuniformity (including change, ie disuniformity in the temporal direction), Conflict, Entropy, and Lawlessness/Normlessness

Vader is 110% a CE dumbass.

Prequel Vader was a CE dumbass, by the time period of the original trilogy (and of Rogue One) he jad gotten it together, NE or LE, and the CE dumbass baton had been passed to Tarkin.

 

[Aldarc]

One thing that I think makes the Law and Chaos axis a bit harder to use in D&D than it otherwise could be is that there isn't an undisputed authority in-setting on what Law is.

In real world mythology and religion with chaoskampf motifs, chaos (often represented by sea monsters, or even the sea itself) is subdued to create order. However, those real-world belief systems also usually have a chief god or singular deity that defines what order should be like and how a lawful society should behave (sometimes these laws are not even related to morality, but to reinforcing social structure or setting adherents apart from others through certain rituals or taboos).

I agree, though I wouldn't necessarily say that this requires an undisputed authority. It only requires identifying one group with Law/Order/Civilization/etc. Zeus is the king of the Greek gods, but it's the gods as a whole who are associated with (human) Order.

IMHO, what makes "Law and Chaos" harder to use in D&D is the presence of "Good and Evil" as a separate axis. Mythologies or creative worlds with metaphysical axes are typically not juggling two overlapping axes; instead, they usually focus on one.

• Star Wars: Light Side vs. Dark Side
• Moorcock Multiverse: Law vs. Chaos
• Tekumel: Stability vs. Change
• Diamond Throne: Green vs. Dark
• Dragonlance: Good vs. Evil (The setting minimizes the importance of Law vs. Chaos to focus on one axis.)

The aforementioned Chaoskampf views Chaos as an "evil" and Order as a "good," connecting ethical goodness with a move towards order and ethical immorality with a move towards chaos. And this is also, I suspect, what informs the 4e alignment system: LG - G - UA - E - CE. While many people focus on the Good vs. Evil in Tolkien, I think that the worldview in his books is closer to this sort of moral framework.