CleverNickName
Limit Break Dancing (He/They)
The BECMI rules also had "Alignment languages." Nobody used them and I still hate them to this day. But they were there.
The BECMI rules also had "Alignment languages." Nobody used them and I still hate them to this day. But they were there.
It's also very reminiscent of the set-up of World of Warcraft, with the more 'civlised' forces of The Alliance versus the 'wilder' forces of The Horde, with other factions either caught in between or serving both sides - notably, in terms of playable races, the Goblins and Pandaren.The three point system and law v chaos structure of the world is a much better system since it allows the Civilisation v Wilds set up and also means that the Lawful side while tending to be good could have members who did evil stuff and that the chaotic side while tending to be undisciplined and destructive could sometimes be good. In otherwords it facilitates more roleplaying vs the overly legalistic definitions that AD&D introduced.
The Law v Chaos set up kinda reminds me of Masters of the Universe and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power type morality
hum, pushed "off the chart" into another plane of existence by consistently repeating the same alignment. That explains the Great Wheel cosmology indeed.
It's also very reminiscent of the set-up of World of Warcraft, with the more 'civlised' forces of The Alliance versus the 'wilder' forces of The Horde, with other factions either caught in between or serving both sides - notably, in terms of playable races, the Goblins and Pandaren.
In this setting, there are very much both good and evil factions and individuals on both sides, and neither side can be considered to have the moral high ground overall.
One more data point on how Gygax viewed the constellation of alignments within the nine-point system:
Other decisions pertaining to the nature of characters must be made as part of this section of rules. How will the game account for people and creatures of differing moral and ethical outlooks? Are beings either good or evil, or are there other divisions and categories between those extremes that deserve distinction? The AD&D game uses a spectrum of nine different alignments, ranging from lawful good (the goodest of the good guys) to chaotic evil (the baddest of the bad).
Role-playing Mastery p. 145.
Again, even within the nine-point system he preferred, there is the overlap of law/good and evil/chaos, such that lawful good is the goodest of the good, and chaotic evil is just bad to the bone.
The BECMI rules also had "Alignment languages." Nobody used them and I still hate them to this day. But they were there.
Also I clearly like the the idea of how various memes showed how important 9 alignments were to the identity of D&D, and were likely one of many things that killed the edition which removed the 9 alignments with a more simplistic one.