D&D General The Birth Of Alignment: The Rise of the Nine-Point System

[CleverNickName]

The BECMI rules also had "Alignment languages." Nobody used them and I still hate them to this day. But they were there.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

The BECMI rules also had "Alignment languages." Nobody used them and I still hate them to this day. But they were there.

Alignment languages were always ... a tough sell. If you squint and looked at them just right, you could kind of, sort of, see them as a bridge between the platonic alignment ideals and the real world.

But then that crashed on the shoals of, "Wait, so everyone with a similar outlook on life has learned a secret language that they can use to speak to each other? This makes sense .... how exactly?"

 

[Laurefindel]

hum, pushed "off the chart" into another plane of existence by consistently repeating the same alignment. That explains the Great Wheel cosmology indeed.

 

[MarkB]

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

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.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

hum, pushed "off the chart" into another plane of existence by consistently repeating the same alignment. That explains the Great Wheel cosmology indeed.

That was always one of the most interesting things to me; not to mention an early version of what was later published in Deities & Demigods re: ascending to divinity, but instead of acting at the behest of a particular deity, you were acting out an ideal moral/ethical position.

There was some weird stuff in the early years that tends to get glossed over in all the, "But all people did was go into dungeons and hobomurder" revisionism.

 

[Marandahir]

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.

Which is an artefact of 1994's Warcraft: Orcs vs Humans, where the chaotic evil Orc Horde (incl. Undead, Ogres, and Goblins) fought the lawful good Human Alliance (inc. Elves, Dwarves, & Gnomes). Very much a Law/Chaos divide that was made more grey and nebulous in sequel entries as we learned that the Humans could be jerkasses and the Orcs not so bad. And then in Warcraft III they go all out and add the Tauren to the Horde and the create the alternate factions the Night Elf Sentinels and Undead Scourge (later merged into the Alliance and Horde respectively when they went MMO), creating all sorts of different alliances and rivalries and alignments going on (WC III expansion Frozen Throne also added additional factions for each campaign - a Night Elf Warden's campaign to recapture a Night Elf Sorcerer/Demon Hunter/Actual Demon that sets her at odds with the Druids and Sentinels, the campaigns of the Blood Elves to survive the ruin of the High Elf homeland by the Undead Scourge, and their the risen undead elven cousins rising up against the Scourge as the Forsaken faction (nominally the Undead faction that joins the Horde in WoW). Shows how Warcraft's alignments and factions have run parallel to D&D as they've evolved in the last 3 editions.

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.

Which is very, very, very similar to the 4e single-line version of alignment, where True Neutral, Chaotic Neutral and Lawful Neutral are essentially indistinguishable, and Chaotic Evil is more evil than Evil and Lawful Good is more good than Good.

Honestly, along with nuking alignment restrictions, I thought it was the best way of reconciling the alignment system of yesteryear with modern sensibilities. Gygaxian "preserving the balance" can just as easily be understood as Lawful Neutral as it can as True Neutral. What's more lawful than maintaining a strict rule about keeping things balanced? It also created a neat dichotomy where Evil entities like Devils are necessary evil allies of the Good Gods and Angels in a greater war against the demons of the Abyss.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Having Law vs Chaos as a separate axis from Good vs Evil, allowed for more modern ideas to enter the game. With the idea that Law can now be Evil and Chaos can now be Good, one could now add the concept of Tyranny vs Freedom. Sure there's a bunch of issues and flaws with the 9 alignments, but I feel the having an extra axis for alignment allowed for more nuance in D&D's idea of morality.

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.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Yeah, those were mystifying to us back in the day as well. I think that they work just fine with the simple three-axis alignment system. If I recall correctly, Moorcock references runes of Chaos and Law plenty of times, so that's not without precedent. But on the AD&D level of granularity, it just is baffling.

The BECMI rules also had "Alignment languages." Nobody used them and I still hate them to this day. But they were there.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Among the Planescape fandom many theorized that "Alignment languages" were essentially the languages of the Alignment paragon races like the Slaad, Archons, Rilmani, Demons (Tanar'ri) and so on.

 

[Marandahir]

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.

Not surprised if the memes played a role in keeping meme-meisters away from 4e, though it should be mentioned that those memes were almost always invariably followed by someone posting a meme of "Batman is EVERY Alignment."