Law and Chaos gone? Good Riddance!

[shadow]

From what I gather from the 4e news, law and chaos as alignments are gone in 4e. This change doesn't bother me at all. In fact, I'm kind of glad to see them go. The concept of law and chaos never made much sense to me except as a weird homage to Moorcock. IMO they led to all kinds of endless alignment debates.

For example, what would a lawful good character do when living under a tyrannical lawful evil regime? He could either follow the corrupt laws and not be good, or go against them and not be lawful. What about the bandit with a strong personal code of honor and ethics? Is he lawful for having this code, or chaotic for disobeying societal laws?

I don't mind good vs. evil as much because I see heroic fantasy as a struggle between good and evil. Besides, the concept of good and evil alignments lot easier to explain to the neophyte than the whole arcane and much debated concept of good and evil. 3e went the right direction by removing penalties for changing alignment (nothing was more annoying than losing experience because your thief wasn't acting chaotic enough). Hopefully, 4e will continue this trend and deemphasize alignment further.

 

[bonethug0108]

Law and chaos would end up in worse arguments than good and evil.

 

[Remathilis]

I don't know if law and chaos are going anywhere, but I think this time they are definitely taking a back seat to good and evil (and unaligned).

 

[the Jester]

Should a good character kill the young of evil monsters?

No, this won't end alignment debates.

 

[Xethreau]

Agreed. My friend and I even got into an argument about alignment because of Cruela Devil, from 101 Dalmatians. One of us said that she was manipulative, and never did the dirty stuff herself, so she was Lawful Evil. The other of us said that she had no regard to order and did whatever she wanted whenever it came to her, and was therefor Chaotic Evil.

*shivers*

 

[Kahuna Burger]

I prefer Law and Chaos as cosmological forces, though good and evil tend to be more important personal descriptors.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Seriously, the OP's post demonstrates why Law and Chaos are at least taking a back seat.

Put simply, people get too wrapped up in their own definitions of the term and fail to realize that these are broader concepts than "obeys the law" and "does random goofy stuff" (though these are included in the concepts). Law and Chaos is a more difficult conflict to understand than Good and Evil because they're less instantly emotional, and less rehearsed in our media stages.

For example:

For example, what would a lawful good character do when living under a tyrannical lawful evil regime? He could either follow the corrupt laws and not be good, or go against them and not be lawful. What about the bandit with a strong personal code of honor and ethics? Is he lawful for having this code, or chaotic for disobeying societal laws?

This shows a profound misunderstanding of what it means to be "lawful." Lawful doesn't mean that you obey the laws, simply that you have an ordered, cohesive, bound, logical, mechanical worldview. You believe in Destiny and the Natural Order and even Social Hierarchies. This does mean that you usually obey the law, but a Lawful Good character holds both this idea, and the ideas of compassion and kindness as high. These two aren't incompatible -- they believe that helping each other is the Natural Order, and that the correct way to adhere to a Social Code is to be compassionate, and that it is the Calling of those with to give to those without.

Thus, an LG characater in a tyrannical land wouldn't obey the laws. They'd recognize the laws as in violation of the Way Things Are, a sort of false law, a mockery of order. Obviously, this isn't the correct order, this deceptive lie perverts the idea of a hierarchy to put one person at the top that shouldn't be there. They will resist the law in an ordered, coherent, planned manner that responds to logic.

Of course, the LE villain knows that they are naturally at the top, and can do whatever they want, and that it is only normal for people to worship them and obey their commandments.

This would not cause the hero to loose their alignment, because Lawful doesn't mean "obey the law!" It doesn't mean that any more than Good means "Stop killing the goblins because it's mean!", or any more than Evil means "We can't work together because we're very selfish." It's much broader, more cosmic than that. But players, especially new ones, rarely grok that idea at first.

It'll come back, I'm sure, but I don't mind it sitting on the backburner for now. Good vs. Evil has always been the stronger fantasy archetype, anyway.

 

[Baron Opal]

Really? I must have missed that, somehow. I know that alignment is being downplayed in general not that the Law and Chaos alignments were being removed altogether.

Looks like I'll have to do some rewriting. The conflict between Stability and Change is forefront in my campaign.

 

[Wyrmshadows]

The Law and Chaos axis of D&D is nothing more than Gygax's misinterpretation of Michael Moorcock's "alignment" system. In Moorcock's work there is no cosmological good or evil, there is onlhy law and chaos which, when in balance work out toward the good of all but when out of balance are destructive. Its just the personification of order vs. entropy in Moorcock's vision.

However D&D takes two incompatible systems, the traditional fantasy trope of good vs. evil and adds Moorcock's order vs. entropy axis on top of it. And then adds a neutral alignment to the axis. In the good and evil scheme beings can be morally good or evil but be either rigid or liberal in the manner in which they meet their goals. In the good or evil scheme, no one cares if you are the stoic and honorable knight or a free spirited elven ranger...in both instances you are one of the good-guys.

When you add the cosmic descriptors of law vs. chaos you can get freakish situations like lawful good knights teaming up with lawful evil devils to crush the chaotic good elves who have teamed up with chaotic evil demons!?!?! I have had conversations like this over the years with folks who actually thought a paladin would prefer a devil's company to that of a pixie because the former was LE and the latter was CG. Insane.

The fact is that good and evil are viceral and mythic. These are the catagories we assign to elements of our consciousness, our behaviors and external circumstance. Everyone understands you when you say "Those evil Nazi bastards!!!" This resonates with the human condition.

No one gets excited when someone is too chaotic or too lawful. Someone who is too lawful is seen as rigid and unyielding in both their personal code of conduct and any societal laws/taboos. If this rigidity is coded into law and is used for the elevation of this individual or his group at the expense of others in an extreme way (the Nazis) then he and those like him are deemed an evil that must be stopped.

Someone who is too chaotic can be seen as a flake, undisciplined and anarchist perhaps. However it isn't until the anarchist commits a terrible crime such as those of Ted Kazinski (the Unibomber) and he is deemed evil that anyone really cares.

No one acts merely against law or chaos because no one thinks along these lines. There is nothing coded into our nature that sees law and chaos as forces to be promoted or opposed. However good and evil are part of the human psyche as demonstrated in the worlds myths and religions.

So I would argue that law and chaos, at least as cosmic forces, need to go away because there is no demonstrable archetypes outside of Moorcock's work that utilie this axis. And considering Moorcock used these as a replacement for good and evil I would suggest that the manner in which D&D uses them is a complete misrepresentation of their original intent as well as something that is incompatible with any fantasy tropes when combined with any other moral axis.

The fact is that good and evil represent both a moral highground and a moral lowground respectively. There is no moral virtue or vice that can be assigned to law or chaos because both are wonderful when in balance and both are destructive when one achieves a great deal of ascendancy over the other. Assigning a moral value to law and chaos is like trying to assign a moral value to creation/destruction, life/death, order entropy, day/night, summer/winter, masculine/feminine, etc. or any other natural force or state. All of these things, like law and chaos are by necessity amoral and impersonal.



Wyrmshadows

 

[TwinBahamut]

Wyrmshadows makes a lot of very good points.

I have seen a few very good depictions of a struggle between Order and Chaos in fiction (I saw one of the best very recently, actually), but those good depictions have always been "too much ether way is bad, a balance is good", or have utilized other factors to show "in this case Order is bad" or "in this case Chaos is bad".

The idea of an absolute conflict between Law and Chaos, equated with a conflict between Good and Evil, just doesn't work well.