Is it possible to have a Chaotic society?

[Varianor Abroad]

Do any of you think that would correctly model a Chaotic society, and if so, are there are any examples of such societies I can look at? And if not, what is a Chaotic society supposed to be based on?

Many excellent points already made. A Chaotic society should be based upon the DMs interpretation of Chaos in their campaign. As already stated, alignments are absolute. You just can't agree on what absolute parts when discussing on a message board.

The Middle Ages with knights who were more armored thugs, church bishops who behaved like roustabouts, and a society where laws were more the veneer over a dark underbelly of tensions is an example of a culture that I would term Chaotic, if not Chaotic Evil.

 

[WayneLigon]

When designating a region as lawful or chaotic, I usually look at how the government is structured and how power is distributed. Especially if I'm designing a region on the high end of each scale.

A strongly lawful area will have clear divisions along one or more lines (distribution of wealth, who really rules, how power passes from one place to another). Region A might be a kingdom that features a strong king that makes many of the decisions. The succession is well-established. There is probably a strict class division between nobility and everyone else. There will be laws that are enforced by a central authority.

A chaotic society on the other hand will have few of these things. It can be an urbanized society, even, but it's more likely that it's a region that used to be lawful and now is not (through war, pestilance, or something else).

There will be no clear division of power. There may be a king, but he will be a king in name only. He's delegated too much power to others; his advisors and the military make most of the governing decisions. Also, his power may be cut by other things the people look to: a powerful religious leader for instance. It could also be a region where tribal/familial ties are more important than a central government. The people will listen to the tribal elders more than representatives of the king.

Another chaotic society would be a quasi-tribal situation only with more sophisticated elements. City-states are a good example; internally lawful, perhaps, but the region itself is chaotic because the cities compete with each other, and maintain no common ground or goal. Each has it's own code of laws, it's own internal organization, etc.

Another is the Drow model: a series of almost-equally powerful Houses or organizational units each working against all the others at cross purposes. Alliances are fluid, treachery is expected, and power ebbs and flows.

 

[ErichDragon]

For example: Holidays. Chaotic societies will reschedule a holiday if it turns out to be at an inconvenient time. Holidays are not for remembrance of past events, but for celebration. Old holidays can be forgotten when their meaning becomes muddy, and new ones declared on the drop of a hat.

Lawful societies are big on ANNUAL holidays, and the date is as important as the meaning. Holidays are often focused on a historical event of some kind, and celebration is secondary to the purpose. Old holidays, whose original purpose has been forgotten, linger on for years or even decades, gradually finding new meaning and purpose.

Another example of how real world societies really can't be pegged as Lawful or Chaotic.

Applying the above example to U.S. Holidays we are lawful because we always celebrate Independence Day on the 4th of July and Thanksgiving on the third Thursday of November but Chaotic because we casually move Labor Day, Memorial Day, and President's Day so they make nice 3 day weekends.

I agree with Elder Basilisk, you can't apply simplistic labels like Law/Chaos or Good/Evil to the real world. If you want to run a realistic game, drop alignment altogether and have your players come up with personality traits, codes of conduct and religious beliefs instead for their characters. You will then have to fudge or house rule the inherent mechanics of Good/Evil and Law/Chaos that are present in the game.

 

[Wombat]

I was going to try and come up with a cogent discussion of "What do we mean by 'Chaos'", but in the end I decided to merely say this:

This discussion is just one more reason I am happy to have dropped the whole alignment concept in my games!

 

[smetzger]

Examples of Chaotic societies:

Wild West
Mexican border towns
Afghanistan before the U.S. invasion
The Internet

All of those fit _my_ definition of a chaotic society. However, as Elder-Basalisk has pointed out, the difference between Law and Chaos very much depends on what the GM decides. Thats why I don't use Law and Chaos in my game.

 

[Utrecht]

In addition to all of the discussions above - I think that it is important to look at why societies formed.

Granted this will be a very humanocentric analysis but since this is the only real history we have to look at - I will go with it (and yes, I acknowledge that there are exceptions to each of the below) - more information about this can also be found in Jared Diamonds book "Guns, Germs and Steel" - a good read IMO.

Fundamentally homo sapiens is a social creature and as such has a very strong desire to congregate into groups. However, we also tend to be a fairly territorial/agressive species as well - consequently it became necessary for first a set of traditions and then formalized laws to be created allowing both sides of our natures to co-exist. Thus, even the most chaotic of societies will have some measure of law - this typically includes such things as don't kill your neighbor, etc. (Which means IMO that humans are inherently LN)

For the first part of our history - mankind was a very tribal based - forming tribes along extended families. These tend to be very chaotic societies - ruled by some sort of patriach/matriarch - who rules tend to be fluid depending on circumstance and whim (with some laws/traditions constant - again don't kill your parents). These families tended to be hunter-gathers living from day to day - with all members of the society working towards gathering food.

Once manking discovered agriculture - we were able create long-term settlements - thereby leading to food surplus - allowing individuals to focus on non-food producing activities - and the generation and formation of the concept of wealth. Obviously those that obtained wealth then wanted to manner of protecting this wealth - thus necessitating the formation of formalized laws - and the social constructs to enforce them

Over time, these cities became city-states, kingdoms, proto-empires and full empires - with each step along the way introducing more laws defining the social constructs of the organization. Again, most of these laws were designed to:

1) Define power (what it meant, who held it, what their responsabilites to the masses were
2) Protect wealth (whether nation wealth, personal wealth or social wealth (things like rape, abuse, etc)

Therefore, when I look at chaotic societies - I would expect to see very little in the way of formally defining power - and very little done to protect wealth. Thus, as the more people congregate, the more inherently lawful a society will become....

 

[Urbannen]

Elder Basilisk, I hope that WotC hires you when they start working on 4.0 so that you make one of two following things happpen:

1. Law/Chaos are thrown out of D&D. OR
2. Law/Chaos are given objective and consistent definitions.

I couldn't agree more with your analysis. The question in this thread's title is impossible to answer definitively, since there is no definitive definition of Law/Chaos.

 

[Ferret]

My opinion is that a lawful society is a society where laws are strictly followed. This comes down to high context societies such as the united states. As you may have guessed my opinion of chaotic society is where laws can be lain(sp?) aside for the good of the comunity. This one comes down to low context societies such as arabs (The only one I can think of). This means a lawful society can have traditions where laws are not (Don't bake bread on a wednesday) because it's not a law. Similary Chaotic societies can have laws because they are not strictly followed, (Don't climb on the elder tree).

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Elder Basilisk, very insightful piece there.

Would you consider it possible, if we were to use Dr Strangemonkey's definition, that there is actually nothing hindering a group of chaotic individuals to build a lawful society? Therefore, the society built by the elves can be regarded as lawful, but the elves themselves as individuals are chaotic?

Absolutely. However, if you were to make that statement, you would be operating on two different definitions of law and chaos--one for society and one for individuals. Saying that chaotic people can make a lawful society doesn't mean much when the chaoticness of the people has nothing to do with the lawfulness of the society. It also disregards what D&D normally means by giving a society an alignment--it's the alignment of the largest plurality of individuals in the society.

Just as occasional minor acts of evil do not make a Good character Evil, why should the occasional lawful act make a Chaotic creature Lawful? Should not the same standard be applied to societies?

I could buy that WRT individuals and societies if we were discussing occasional chaotic acts. However, when you can see the best examples of the supposedly lawful traditionalist tendencies in societies without strong institutions and the best examples of the supposedly lawful strong institutions in the supposedly chaotic societies, it's time to rethink the idea that weak institutions and individualism both belong in the same category (Chaos).

The extremes present in societies with regards to Law/Chaos can be present as well with regards to Evil/Good. This is because societies are collections of diverse individuals and past and present events can have a profound bearing upon the attitudes and laws within, as well as how it deals with other societies. Thus, a society is more likely to have such extremes present, but this does not invalidate applying a measure (albiet a rough one)

Except that I'm maintaining that societies don't REALLY have any tendencies WRT Law and Chaos. And that nobody thinks in those terms. They're an arbitrary and misleading description of individual and societal tendencies because they lead people to connect concepts which are not and never have been connected.

Individual/community orientation, formal/informal power structures, stable/unstable governments and institutions, mental discipline/inconsistency, etc are all recognizable societal and psychological traits but any correlation they actually have to each other is actually opposite what the Law/Chaos D&Dism would lead one to believe.

I agree with Elder Basilisk, you can't apply simplistic labels like Law/Chaos or Good/Evil to the real world. If you want to run a realistic game, drop alignment altogether and have your players come up with personality traits, codes of conduct and religious beliefs instead for their characters. You will then have to fudge or house rule the inherent mechanics of Good/Evil and Law/Chaos that are present in the game.

You misunderstand what I'm saying. The idea of good and evil is fundamentally different from the idea of law and chaos for quite a few reasons (some of which I briefly outlined in the previous message). As long as you don't expect a good/evil alignment to tell you everything about a character (since Sir Galahad and Saint Francis are both reputedly good, there's clearly a lot more information you need to know about your cleric/paladin than that he's "good") or society (using the standard D&D meaning that the alignment of a society is the alignment of the largest plurality of its members (and that this may be different from the alignment of its power centers)), ideas of good and evil are coherent enough that they can be helpful to players and DMs. More importantly, good and evil are the actual terms that at least westerners tend to think in when confronted with moral dilemmas. Unlike Law/Chaos, I think it's quite possible to run a realistic game using good and evil spells etc straight from the book. One can run a simplistic campaign using the good and evil alignments but using good and evil alignments won't make a game simplistic unless the DM and players have a simplistic treatment of good and evil. If you ask me, abandoning ideas of good and evil in-game is likely to lead to games which, while not simplistic comapred to the worst of good/evil games are simplistic compared to either the real world or a well done game dealing with good and evil. For instance, while I think that the ideas expressed in Sepulchrave's story hour are mostly rank nonsense (but the quality of the storytelling and the characters as well as the fact that it's exploring interesting ideas at all still make it worth reading), it's certainly not simplistic.

 

[Ferret]

These tend to be very chaotic societies - ruled by some sort of patriach/matriarch - who rules tend to be fluid depending on circumstance and whim (with some laws/traditions constant - again don't kill your parents).

This is my meaning of chaotic.