D&D General The History of Alignment: Why D&D Has the Nine-Point Alignment System 4 UR Memes

I tell you how I would implement it according to my preference and you throw it back in my face as being "halfhearted"? Rude.
i'm sorry but that's just how i feel, that in a world in which these cosmic forces are real and at play i feel that the version where you've just 'picked a side' is deciding to settle on the potential of what alignment could represent rather than the version where alignment is a measure of who your character fundamentally is and how they think and act.
 

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i'm sorry but that's just how i feel, that in a world in which these cosmic forces are real and at play i feel that the version where you've just 'picked a side' is deciding to settle on the potential of what alignment could represent rather than the version where alignment is a measure of who your character fundamentally is and how they think and act.
But the latter part has never worked and really cannot work.
 


i disagree strongly that it 'cannot work', merely that there has not been an implementation of it yet that has worked.
Sure, it has never worked for fifty years, but any moment now!

It just is weird and arbitrary grid, with incoherent definitions. And even if you managed to somehow come up with coherent definitions and have everyone agree on them, you still cannot really map human behaviour on it, as humans are far more complex than that.
 
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Huh. So as I was catching up on the thread, and thinking about cosmic forces and alignment, I started thinking about one of my favorite phrases- GYGAXIAN MUSCULAR NEUTRALITY.

Quick refresher- in early D&D, there was obviously people who picked "Neutral" as their alignment because it doubled your chance of finding a date they were like, "Hey, now we can take stuff from the baddies and goodies! WOOT!"

But there was also the weird concept of "muscular neutrality." That is to say, people who were actively neutral (NOT LIKE YOU SWISS! IMA WATCHIN' U!). The Circle of Eight, Mordenkainen- they would "keep the balance" by helping either good, or evil, to ensure that no "side" became dominant.

Which ... I mean, yeah, it does seem kinda silly.* On the other hand, if you really think about it from a rational point of view ... if there are competing cosmic sides trying to "win" so it's going to be one way forever .... isn't muscular neutrality the one smart play?

That's my new contribution! If alignment is cosmic forces, shouldn't you be muscularly neutral?


*Okay, I do like the idea of all the alignments getting together, and the muscularly neutral one going, "Bruh. Do you even lift? DO YOU EVEN LIFT, BRUH?" And getting no response because, of course, alignments can only speak in alignment languages, so none of them understand each other.
 

Huh. So as I was catching up on the thread, and thinking about cosmic forces and alignment, I started thinking about one of my favorite phrases- GYGAXIAN MUSCULAR NEUTRALITY.

Quick refresher- in early D&D, there was obviously people who picked "Neutral" as their alignment because it doubled your chance of finding a date they were like, "Hey, now we can take stuff from the baddies and goodies! WOOT!"

But there was also the weird concept of "muscular neutrality." That is to say, people who were actively neutral (NOT LIKE YOU SWISS! IMA WATCHIN' U!). The Circle of Eight, Mordenkainen- they would "keep the balance" by helping either good, or evil, to ensure that no "side" became dominant.

Which ... I mean, yeah, it does seem kinda silly.* On the other hand, if you really think about it from a rational point of view ... if there are competing cosmic sides trying to "win" so it's going to be one way forever .... isn't muscular neutrality the one smart play?

That's my new contribution! If alignment is cosmic forces, shouldn't you be muscularly neutral?


*Okay, I do like the idea of all the alignments getting together, and the muscularly neutral one going, "Bruh. Do you even lift? DO YOU EVEN LIFT, BRUH?" And getting no response because, of course, alignments can only speak in alignment languages, so none of them understand each other.

That sort of neutrality as balance makes far more sense if the end points of the scale are law and chaos rather than good and evil.
 

That sort of neutrality as balance makes far more sense if the end points of the scale are law and chaos rather than good and evil.
The only way I could see it working is with a system like MtG, but even there, White does not represent "good" so much as it does a concern for morality, ethics, and also order.

I just have no use for the personality/morality aspect of alignment. It is utterly crap tool for modelling such, you can do much better just describing your character's outlook with a few words. The Moorcockian cosmic struggle, where you align yourself with unearthly forces can be compelling, though even there we could have countless different cosmic arrangements that would not map to D&D's alignment. But law vs chaos certainly is common in both mythology and literature, so as cosmic struggles go, it is a decent one.
Again, a scheme like MtG's color pie could work so that it's not just a simple axis.
 

That sort of neutrality as balance makes far more sense if the end points of the scale are law and chaos rather than good and evil.

It makes more sense, but ... well, I guess it depends on what cosmic "good" and "evil" are. If it's defined by tautology (good is good, duh!) then yeah!

But that's why it is tricky. And also why it gets mixed up with lawful. I don't want to go down that philosophical wormhole, but there is a reason that literature is so full of examples of why we can't and shouldn't just have "good."

But I don't wanna write more words today, so I would just leave it at - yes, it makes more sense with law and chaos, but it still makes sense with good and evil, simply because you can't have just one; that would be, to channel Gygax, the antithesis of weal.
 

But I don't wanna write more words today, so I would just leave it at - yes, it makes more sense with law and chaos, but it still makes sense with good and evil, simply because you can't have just one; that would be, to channel Gygax, the antithesis of weal.
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