"Narrativist" 9-point alignment

[pemerton]

A society may have a set of ideals, set by faith, the ruler, or tradition. Much like the American tradition of "pursuit of happiness" enshrines a value of general weal and liberty (CG?). These are ideas and do not describe every individual of a society, but as an abstraction and memory tool quantifying the societies in a particular game world relative to each other, it can be useful. Thus a chivalric nation can be said to be LG, while a meritocracy might be LN or NG, depending on its emphasis and a cruel bureaucracy on the infernal model can be LE.

In my view, in your descriptions we already see the running together of alignment as a description for beliefs/convictions/ideals and alignment as a description of social realities: for instance, describing a society as a meritocracy looks to me like a description of its social structure.

The problem (from my perspective) of using alignment to describe social structures is that, as soon as we have (say) LG dwarven social structures and CG elven social structures, we have lost the conflict I was trying to set up in my OP, because we have already posited that sometimes social order produces wellbeing (among the dwarves) and sometimes individualism produces wellbeing (among the elves) - and so where is the disagreement between Law and Chaos about which is the necessary means to wellbeing?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

In my view, in your descriptions we already see the running together of alignment as a description for beliefs/convictions/ideals and alignment as a description of social realities: for instance, describing a society as a meritocracy looks to me like a description of its social structure.

The problem (from my perspective) of using alignment to describe social structures is that, as soon as we have (say) LG dwarven social structures and CG elven social structures, we have lost the conflict I was trying to set up in my OP, because we have already posited that sometimes social order produces wellbeing (among the dwarves) and sometimes individualism produces wellbeing (among the elves) - and so where is the disagreement between Law and Chaos about which is the necessary means to wellbeing?

Well, in the case of elves and dwarves I guess one could simply state "each race unto their own, what works for elves doesn't work for dwarves" and STILL leave it open what sort of philosophy should prevail in the human kingdom, or the empire that rules all of them, etc. Should the dwarves be able to enforce an ancient right to the wood of the sylvan forest when it becomes the last refuge of the elves, who now claim their interests supersede some ancient pact? There's some imperial court or human allied kingdom or something where that question will weigh. Of course the answer is likely to involve politics and various things. That might be the most ideal way to ultimately frame the whole question. It would probably be a rather dark 'shades of grey' sort of a game, though I suppose the party could be a bunch of dwarves out to prove they're right. More likely they'd be replaying the outer conflict within the party in some fashion. It would probably require some fairly nuanced play.

 

[Tony Vargas]

In my OP, I envisaged the structure of argument slightly differently: "chaos" is defended as a means to wellbeing, and the desirability of wellbeing is treated as largely self-evident (at least within the scope of the alignment system), because it has been given the label "good".

Yeah, I do have to disagree with that. The Law/Chaos and Good/Evil axis aren't really presented as if one were subordinate to the other. And both are supernatural, palpable realities with very real consequences in the universe, and specific, literal places (outer planes) in the multiverse.

we have already posited that sometimes social order produces wellbeing (among the dwarves) and sometimes individualism produces wellbeing (among the elves) - and so where is the disagreement between Law and Chaos about which is the necessary means to wellbeing?

Obviously, that implies that Law & Chaos are opposed ethic philosophies in their own right, without needing justification in the good/evil axis. Order is a virtue, desirable in itself, to the lawful, and freedom, likewise, to the chaotic - whether each values good or evil or is indifferent to morality. Where the lawful and chaotic agree on a moral alignment, they could couch the virtues of their side the the ethical disagreement in terms of that shared morality, but that doesn't mean the ethic axis doesn't have an independent existence.

There was some discussion upthread of whether alignment makes sense as a property of social collectives (like kingdoms). I doubt that it does, unless it is simply a shorthand for widespread beliefs (or perhaps the beliefs of the rulers) - whereas there is a widespread tendency to use alignment as a label for social realities.

Societies profess ideals and those ideals can probably be mapped to an alignment.

A king who was committed to good and thought order necessary to ensure it might go to war with another king with similar convictions, because they disagree over the right form of social order (or, perhaps, over the precise nature of wellbeing). But I don't think that the alignment system helps frame or analyse that sort of dispute, precisely because it happens within the confines of convictions in respect of which the alignment system has nothing useful to say.

I think that the fact that conflicting personal convictions and political policies, even to the point of provoking a war, can neatly fit within a single alignment does say something about both the nature of alignments and the dispute.

 

[Starfox]

I think that any king (or leader) who has *seen* war, and is honestly dedicated to good, is going to have o go a *long* way to justify war, in general, much less over theoretical things like "the right form of social order". War entails *much* woe. In order to really justify war, you'd have to see some really nasty things from that other social order, or see major threat.

This, as opposed to most real-world war, which is more usually not about the good of the people, but about power and wealth, with a rationalization of idealism and goodness layered on after the fact.

This is a very modern way to view things. In a medieval concept, where manliness and courage are very important qualities, war is a positive thing in itself in that it brings these values to the fore. Some woe is inescapable, but is a worthy price to pay for all the moral fiber brought out when warriors test themselves.

Societies profess ideals and those ideals can probably be mapped to an alignment.

Bolded for emphasis. When a land is described as having an alignment, that is an ideal. The actual practices inside the country probably isn't all that different, but the ideals are.

 

[pemerton]

that implies that Law & Chaos are opposed ethic philosophies in their own right, without needing justification in the good/evil axis.

The whole point of my OP was to contest this, drawing on Gygax's alignment descriptions in his PHB and DMG.

He doesn't present LG or CG people as caring about order or individualism in their own right - he emphasises their alleged value as means to wellbeing.

If Law and Chaos were values in their own right, what sort of values would they be? Aesthetic ones? I find the whole Planescape-style set up, where these things are posited as values in their own right, very hard to make sense of.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The whole point of my OP was to contest this, drawing on Gygax's alignment descriptions in his PHB and DMG.

He doesn't present LG or CG people as caring about order or individualism in their own right - he emphasises their alleged value as means to wellbeing.

If Law and Chaos were values in their own right, what sort of values would they be? Aesthetic ones? I find the whole Planescape-style set up, where these things are posited as values in their own right, very hard to make sense of.

I found the whole 'Great Wheel' from its inception to its most evolved form in Planescape to be 'hard to make sense of'. I ignored it, and then some nice fellows wrote 4e, and things were good.

But I think your version of the Law/Chaos question IS more interesting. It certainly fits better into the 4e sort of cosmic world-order where good and evil DO seem to be 'forces of nature'. While alignment doesn't cover law/chaos in 4e, you can certainly bring it out just as you could racial tensions, traditions, etc.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The whole point of my OP was to contest this, drawing on Gygax's alignment descriptions in his PHB and DMG.

Nod. Sorry I have to disagree with you about L/C, but I do.

He doesn't present LG or CG people as caring about order or individualism in their own right - he emphasises their alleged value as means to wellbeing.

they are both Good, so they are both concerned with it. But I'm sure I remember the 1e DMG alignment descriptions mentioning, say, freedom as being an ideal of CG. Of course, haven't looked in a long time, while I assume you just did.

If Law and Chaos were values in their own right, what sort of values would they be?

Ethical ones, I guess. What is 'right' vs what is beneficial. For the lawful, Order is naturally right, they see the universe as orderly, the gods are in an ordered pantheon, people should be orderly in their behavior and societies ordered in some way (like a hierarchy). For the Chaotic, freedom is right, anything else you care about flows from your freedom to choose it, and is thus secondary and an individual value.

I find the whole Planescape-style set up, where these things are posited as values in their own right, very hard to make sense of.

Maybe it is nonsensical in the context of RL philosophies, morality, ethics &c? But, in a multiverse where each alignment (and each in-between 'tendencies' alignment) has their own representative plane of existence, and alignment is detectable and has inescapable, palpable consequences....?

 

[Umbran]

But D&D takes a very relaxed approach to the legitimate moral threshold for the use of defensive violence

I think that relaxed approach is based on two things:

1) We are talking about PCs, not nations - while high level PCs are capable of great destruction, they tend to stay *highly* focused, and keep collateral damage to a minimum. Wars kill and displace people by the thousands and tens of thousands, PCs generally act specifically to *avoid* mass deaths.

2) Up through 3e, we were talking about PCs who could *detect* evil, and the state was largely inherent to entire easily-recognized groups (basically, the enemy is usually in uniform of a creature that is "usually evil") such that discerning a valid target was pretty easy.

Start talking about nations, and/or without a magical power behind alignment, and I don't think the loose approach remains very plausible.

In the real world, where our leaders are not really so stuck on being textbook-good, we have things like Shakespeare's Henry V, in which the author takes great pains to try to divest the king of moral responsibility ("Every subject's duty's to the king, but every subject's soul is his own.") - and who is Harry really trying to convince, there? And ultimately they have to use an atrocity by the French to really justify the fight. You figure somehow it is plausible that people in the fantasy world are going to elide over the question?

So, while this may all work for your players, I am unconvinced this is a direction players in general would follow.

... the war itself isn't the focus of the alignment conflict, but rather provides grist for conflict between the LG participants and CG third parties.

Except that you don't get to decide which moral questions the *players* choose to consider. Stuck in a war scenario, with characters apt to become powerful enough to sway the overall course of history... they are pretty apt to question the morality of the war itself, and whether they need to intervene in that. This territory has already been covered by Babylon 5 - the Vorlons are Law, the Shadows are Chaos. The main characters sought a way to reject *both* the law and chaos sides, and kick them both out as being immoral and non-constructive.

One path to making it work is to limit the PCs such that bucking the system is untenable. For example, if you play E6, you can very easily set it up so that the PCs have no legitimate chance to impact the course of the war. The war becomes an environment, and nobody questions the moral status of a hurricane.

 

[pemerton]

I think your version of the Law/Chaos question IS more interesting.

Thanks!