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

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What is this? Do I have a reputation or something, that you think this is funny? You mean, let me understand this cause, you know maybe it's me, it's a little messed up maybe, but I'm funny how? I mean ... funny like I'm a clown, I amuse you?

I make you laugh, I'm here to friggin' amuse you? You think that my medical condition of uncontrollable logorrhea is funny, funny how? How am I funny?

This is just like Lee Gold calling out Lakofka as recounted in The Elus....
 

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This is true, and he did likely coin (or at least popularize) the exact terminology, but the concept of a "happy hunting ground" in terms of "Native American heaven" (which is all kinds of messed up for reasons far beyond the complete lack of existence of a universal "Native American" culture/religion) became part of contemporary (mis)"understanding" of indigenous Americans long before there was an "American" nation to speak of; the colonists were still distinctly "British" at that time
Cooper was born in 1789, so very definitely not in the Colonial era.
 

Cooper was born in 1789, so very definitely not in the Colonial era.

I didn't know, so I tried to find out. Also @Gradine

AFAICT based on the minimal amount of research I did, and the paucity of information available, the phrase first appeared in print in the early 19th century, "notably" in a James Fenimore Cooper novel. But it's very doubtful he invented the phrasing, instead just employing a phrase that already had currency.

HOWEVER, the wikipedia entry that states, "The phrase most likely originated with the British settlers' interpretation of the Indian description." is sourced to an academic article, which I went through, and I don't see support for that either.

So .... ¯\(ツ)
 

I kinda wish I still had my copy of Roleplaying Mastery. The one thing I remember from it is that it says something like "The AD&D system has nine alignments, arranged as combinations of Good, Neutral, or Evil, with Law, Neutral, of Chaos. The system in your game might not be that complex, but..."

Which implies that all games should have alignment systems, and that the AD&D one is particularly complex. Which is... a take.
The White Wolf games generally had personalities types as central to it's characters, but some of the World of Darkness games sort of had 3 or 4 forces a lot like D&D, it was generally something Order/Stasis/The Weaver and the opposed Chaos/The Wyld with a corrupted Entropy/The Wyrm trying to balance the two forces as "evil" in a world that already was Shades of Grey, with maybe the other or whatever opposed the Wyrm as "good" or at least a non-corrupted balancer of order and chaos.
 


The alignment system is absolute nonsense when it comes to describing a personality. I mean, that's just obvious. It's basically worthless as anything but the most superficial role playing aid, but something is (slightly) better than nothing, I suppose.

It becomes interesting if you want to give it teeth and prescribe specific behaviours as part of a cosmic struggle between literal teams, which is what D&D kinda sorta tried to do in a half-assed way. But that is antithetical to letting players RP their characters in ways that make sense to them, and most people are not interested in RPing a strict, Moorcock-inspired setting.

Alignment basically survives as a weird vestige of D&D's past that the game doesn't need and works better without, but a lot of tables keep for nostalgia's sake while paying lip-service to their interpretation of what it means. I've never bothered with it - even as kids we just wrote an alignment on our character sheets because the rules said to, but otherwise ignored it and played our characters as made sense to us (so basically as Tolkien rip-offs).
 

The alignment system is absolute nonsense when it comes to describing a personality. I mean, that's just obvious. It's basically worthless as anything but the most superficial role playing aid, but something is (slightly) better than nothing, I suppose.

It becomes interesting if you want to give it teeth and prescribe specific behaviours as part of a cosmic struggle between literal teams, which is what D&D kinda sorta tried to do in a half-assed way. But that is antithetical to letting players RP their characters in ways that make sense to them, and most people are not interested in RPing a strict, Moorcock-inspired setting.

Alignment basically survives as a weird vestige of D&D's past that the game doesn't need and works better without, but a lot of tables keep for nostalgia's sake while paying lip-service to their interpretation of what it means. I've never bothered with it - even as kids we just wrote an alignment on our character sheets because the rules said to, but otherwise ignored it and played our characters as made sense to us (so basically as Tolkien rip-offs).

I love alignment both for characters and as the cosmology.

Let players who like it use it and players who don't leave it.
 

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.

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!
Here comes my obligatory The Nightmares Underneath reference (YES YES, I'm finally going to run it starting this week). It even includes a Snarf-bait reference to bards! The "may not become" references are to five of the system's eight character classes.

The five alignments in Johnstone Metzger's TNU:

Alignment
Your alignment describes your character’s primary motivation. You must choose one, and only one, of the following alignments for your character: chaotic, evil, good, lawful, or neutral.

Chaotic characters believe in the power of self-expression, imagination, and every person’s inner life. They reject complicated social structures, advocate for personal liberty even when such liberty proves to be dangerous, and believe that individuals should be free to make their own choices and either reap the rewards or suffer the consequences.
• Chaotic characters may not become scholars.

Evil means your primary motivation is to cause harm. You might be seeking revenge on a specific foe or you might be a violent psychopath. You might be righteous, you might have friends—you might even be generous and charitable—but you have enemies to fight and this is what consumes you, more than anything else.
• Evil characters may not become bards.

Good characters want to help people more than anything, whether through charity, healing, effective organization and management, counselling and therapy, or even building space for them to live in comfortably.
• Good characters may not become assassins.

Lawful characters believe in a well-ordered society. If you’re lawful, preserving law and order in your community is your primary goal, and you work toward this goal more than anything else.
• Lawful characters may not become cultists.

Neutral characters are perhaps the most self-serving of all. If you’re neutral, you’re all about personal gain. You don’t pick sides, other people do. They’re either on your side, or they’re not—or it’s not your business and you stay the hell out of it. Neutral is often considered to not be a “real” alignment by more ideologically fervent adventurers.
• Neutral characters may not become champions.
 

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.
This post was Saturday, and today is Tuesday, so I am surprised that there was not a follow-up to this post.
 


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