payn
Glory to Marik
I’ve always disliked the concept of law being gooder than chsos.
D&D General The History of Alignment: Why D&D Has the Nine-Point Alignment System 4 UR Memes
- Thread starter Snarf Zagyg
- Start date
Bacon Bits
Legend
I'm not sure when we last used alignment in our game. At least, not for PCs. I'm sure if I looked at most of the characters in our recent campaigns, the alignment section would be blank. I know it would be for mine.
I definitely think alignment is no longer particularly useful as a concept. It's primarily useful as a DM shorthand for whether or not the PCs are intended to talk to the creature, or whether you should immediately skip to rolling initiative. That original wargame distinction meaning you had to build an army from lawful or chaotic forces, with neutrals being recruitable by both seems like the most functional the system ever really got.
More recently, I've thought that only deities, celestials, and fiends should have alignments. And that "alignment" for deities really was just a function of their domain. I do think alignment-based cosmology is one of the weaker aspects of the game in terms of functional utility towards storytelling. The game struggles with free will for celestials and fiends, but fallen angels and redeemed fiends are very common trope characters. It's frustrating that the game is forced to hand-wave the fact that an angel is literally fabricated from the ideology of law and good made manifest and that it can be made. In cosmology terms, this should be like making fire cold or water dry. Maybe not matter and anti-matter, but it's a rejection of the fundamental nature of a being that does not make literal sense given the game's stated cosmology.
The complete lack of mechanics at the PC level for alignment, and this friction between cosmology and narrative purpose kind of brings the purpose of alignment as a world-building tool into question. What should it be for, now? It's not fun at all when it's a straight jacket for players. So, what can we do with the idea?
I've begun to think of alignment as primarily a tool for describing a culture. A culture of a nation, a village, a church, a group, etc. It's not necessarily one of the nine traditional alignments, either. A church of the healing god is aligned towards providing care for the sick and injured. Providing that is the alignment of the organization. Individuals in the organization are still individuals, of course, but the organization as a whole bends towards that goal. A kingdom might be aligned with conquest or war. Whether that means they're out fighting in the untamed wilderness to expel the current population so they can colonize and exploit the natural resources there, or whether they're focused on destroying the neighboring kingdom of the undead, that focus on war and conquest is still part of the culture in the kingdom. That kingdom might be described in shorthand to be Lawful Neutral or Neutral Evil or Lawful Good, but knowing the actual cultural inclinations really tells you so much more. It's not really a new way of thinking about things, but letting alignment expand beyond a tic-tac-toe board into anything that's an encapsulation of the general behavior of an organization or social structure as though it were a character itself.
I've also had some thoughts that maybe alignment should be important, but only in the sense that it means a being has a cosmic duty. A duty demanded by the multiverse that does not permit free will. Deities, then, are limited by the fact that they are Aligned beings. The god of healing will heal anyone that asks because that deity is Aligned toward healing. They are as in charge of the concept of healing on a cosmological level. It's similar to how the character of Death is often portrayed in comics and media. Death does what they do because the universe demands that Death do so and the universe breaks if Death stops doing their duty. As a result, truly Aligned beings are terrifying because they're uncontested within their domain but they don't have free will to act because they're a part of the mechanism of the universe. The nice thing I like about this is that it gives a good place for non-divine powers to live in, as well as giving mortals a solid reason for why they're so important (the gods need them to get things done because mortals are unaligned).
I definitely think alignment is no longer particularly useful as a concept. It's primarily useful as a DM shorthand for whether or not the PCs are intended to talk to the creature, or whether you should immediately skip to rolling initiative. That original wargame distinction meaning you had to build an army from lawful or chaotic forces, with neutrals being recruitable by both seems like the most functional the system ever really got.
More recently, I've thought that only deities, celestials, and fiends should have alignments. And that "alignment" for deities really was just a function of their domain. I do think alignment-based cosmology is one of the weaker aspects of the game in terms of functional utility towards storytelling. The game struggles with free will for celestials and fiends, but fallen angels and redeemed fiends are very common trope characters. It's frustrating that the game is forced to hand-wave the fact that an angel is literally fabricated from the ideology of law and good made manifest and that it can be made. In cosmology terms, this should be like making fire cold or water dry. Maybe not matter and anti-matter, but it's a rejection of the fundamental nature of a being that does not make literal sense given the game's stated cosmology.
The complete lack of mechanics at the PC level for alignment, and this friction between cosmology and narrative purpose kind of brings the purpose of alignment as a world-building tool into question. What should it be for, now? It's not fun at all when it's a straight jacket for players. So, what can we do with the idea?
I've begun to think of alignment as primarily a tool for describing a culture. A culture of a nation, a village, a church, a group, etc. It's not necessarily one of the nine traditional alignments, either. A church of the healing god is aligned towards providing care for the sick and injured. Providing that is the alignment of the organization. Individuals in the organization are still individuals, of course, but the organization as a whole bends towards that goal. A kingdom might be aligned with conquest or war. Whether that means they're out fighting in the untamed wilderness to expel the current population so they can colonize and exploit the natural resources there, or whether they're focused on destroying the neighboring kingdom of the undead, that focus on war and conquest is still part of the culture in the kingdom. That kingdom might be described in shorthand to be Lawful Neutral or Neutral Evil or Lawful Good, but knowing the actual cultural inclinations really tells you so much more. It's not really a new way of thinking about things, but letting alignment expand beyond a tic-tac-toe board into anything that's an encapsulation of the general behavior of an organization or social structure as though it were a character itself.
I've also had some thoughts that maybe alignment should be important, but only in the sense that it means a being has a cosmic duty. A duty demanded by the multiverse that does not permit free will. Deities, then, are limited by the fact that they are Aligned beings. The god of healing will heal anyone that asks because that deity is Aligned toward healing. They are as in charge of the concept of healing on a cosmological level. It's similar to how the character of Death is often portrayed in comics and media. Death does what they do because the universe demands that Death do so and the universe breaks if Death stops doing their duty. As a result, truly Aligned beings are terrifying because they're uncontested within their domain but they don't have free will to act because they're a part of the mechanism of the universe. The nice thing I like about this is that it gives a good place for non-divine powers to live in, as well as giving mortals a solid reason for why they're so important (the gods need them to get things done because mortals are unaligned).
Voadam
Legend
I don’t think it worked particularly well as a coherent concept in WFRPG or in 4e to have law or lawful good as gooder than good.
Same for demons being worse evil than devils in 4e.
DrunkonDuty
he/him
Hold my beer.
I work at an archive. I digitise old movies and such. There is a university campus next door to us. Said university has a course on archiving. About once a year we get a tour group of students from said course; we show them what we do. All fun and games.
Earlier this year:
<me> So this is a VHS cassette
<student> OH! My grandparents have some of those.
Kurotowa
Legend
Any discussion of the origins of D&D alignment needs a shout out to Poul Anderson's novel Three Hearts and Three Lions. That particular work was the origin of many D&D staples, such of Paladins and Trolls and Gnomes, all of which appear in very recognizable forms.
In that novel, the forces of Law (good) and Chaos (evil) are well defined and at war with each other. This was one of the earliest examples of this setup, as the original novella came out in 1953. It was later expanded into a novel in 1961, the same year the first Elric story saw print.
In that novel, the forces of Law (good) and Chaos (evil) are well defined and at war with each other. This was one of the earliest examples of this setup, as the original novella came out in 1953. It was later expanded into a novel in 1961, the same year the first Elric story saw print.
the Jester
Legend
My take is that, if you have an alignment other than Unaligned, you have to really be devoted to being that alignment. In other words, it takes more than the occasional good deed to be aligned to Good- you have to actively work at being Good.
MechaTarrasque
Hero
I think actions have an alignment. You can think of souls as nine bags (kind of like the famous two wolves). Your actions fill up the bags. When you die, the contents of the bags go to the appropriate realms (Outlands, Mechanus, Limbo, the Grey Waste/Hades, Elysium, Hell, the Abyss, Arborea, Mt. Celestia). The least filled bag basically gives dirt, and the more filled bags give more useful stuff. The second most filled bag gives a lesser outsider. The most filled bag either creates a bunch of minions (think of it this way, your total joy of being 100 lantern archons is probably better than being 1 hound archon) or a greater outsider, depending on the realm. Gods hang out in the realms between these and recruit outsiders (usually by offering to transform them into a more powerful being).
Law and Chaos are all about how you want someone to see the actions. Law means showing conformity, Chaos means defying conformity (often by stepping out of your socially defined position), and Neutral means you don't want anyone thinking too hard about what you did. Good and Evil is about your feelings. If you hurt someone and feel bad about it or help someone and feel good about, that is Good. If you hurt someone and feel good about or help someone and feel bad about, that is Evil. If helping or hurting someone is just business (no strong feelings), that is Neutral.
In terms of the bags, some actions have more weight than others.
Law and Chaos are all about how you want someone to see the actions. Law means showing conformity, Chaos means defying conformity (often by stepping out of your socially defined position), and Neutral means you don't want anyone thinking too hard about what you did. Good and Evil is about your feelings. If you hurt someone and feel bad about it or help someone and feel good about, that is Good. If you hurt someone and feel good about or help someone and feel bad about, that is Evil. If helping or hurting someone is just business (no strong feelings), that is Neutral.
In terms of the bags, some actions have more weight than others.
Thanks for a great read.
The debts to Moorcock always felt explicit (stronger than Zelazny) when I started playing Basic in the lat 70s, and I think the cool-factor is a big part of its success. Elric as a servant of Arioch, lord of Chaos was rock'n'roll, and the fact that he was a wasted king of a wasted people who rode dragons, but only when they could wake them up resonated well with adolescent minds.
But there were disconnects.
Elric himself wasn't chaotic in his behaviour. Yes, he served the lords of chaos and had a patron and summoned them and cast their spells, but his reasons for doing so always felt that it was due to something arbitrary: both something that had been determined long past that his ancestors served these gods, and that the granting of occasional boons reinforced the association.
That is to say, Elric was chaotic because (a) the people of Melinboné tended towards chaos [i.e. they had a natural alignment, the same way (all) monsters do], and (b) Arioch gave him his cleric spells. Elric's association with chaos (as I saw it, and I think this remains true) was not about his behaviour, but that he was a pawn in some cosmic game that was separate from any choice he made. Sure, he had a soul-sucking life-giving sword and that reinforced that association, but I don't think that there was ever really presented an alternative for him, so any element of choice there too was diminished. And because he was a good pawn (or arguably bishop or knight), he continued to receive benefits from Chaos.
Shifting that association onto D&D was straightforward: some creatures had natural alignments (even blink dogs, which by AD&D were also intelligent enough that it mattered), and aligned forces could give powers to notable adventurers.
And with the rules for Paladins at the time, it was even possible to lose your powers if your actions differed too much from the beings that were empowering you.
But the cool factor, for me, was important: chaos was cool because of its anti-hero in Elric, and there were no problems with characters of multiple alignments hanging out (doesn't Moonglum disparage Elric's association with Chaos?). But the expectations of behaviour were only really present if you wanted to be a paladin.
Fast forward twenty years or so, and alignment has been watered down: chaos and law aren't forces in eternal cosmic conflict, but reflected whether you would steal bread to feed a hungry person or not. It became an anodyne choice reflecting personal morality, and not whether you were caught up in a cosmic struggle. But the cool factor associated with Chaos (and 20 20+ years of gaming) still had a strong pull: many players would say their characters were CG becuase elves and freedom and stuff, but it was tied to something inside the character, personal agency, and not being caught up in a centuries-old conflict of unknowable beings toying with mortals.
By making it about personal choice the paladin-factor made better sense (players could control their characters), but exactly parallel to that development was the sense that it shouldn't work that way: that characters should be able to be CG paladins or they should not be stripped of their powers by an arbitrary god or DM, even as the assoication of alignment with personal choices became stronger.
It was never consistent: alignment reflected natural dispositions, a source of supernatural abilities, a compass of personal ethics, and an element of cool. And, no doubt, each player weighed those differently depending on their table and personal preferences. And even if the source was Moorcock, by the time it hit a game engine it necessarily became something different.
The debts to Moorcock always felt explicit (stronger than Zelazny) when I started playing Basic in the lat 70s, and I think the cool-factor is a big part of its success. Elric as a servant of Arioch, lord of Chaos was rock'n'roll, and the fact that he was a wasted king of a wasted people who rode dragons, but only when they could wake them up resonated well with adolescent minds.
But there were disconnects.
Elric himself wasn't chaotic in his behaviour. Yes, he served the lords of chaos and had a patron and summoned them and cast their spells, but his reasons for doing so always felt that it was due to something arbitrary: both something that had been determined long past that his ancestors served these gods, and that the granting of occasional boons reinforced the association.
That is to say, Elric was chaotic because (a) the people of Melinboné tended towards chaos [i.e. they had a natural alignment, the same way (all) monsters do], and (b) Arioch gave him his cleric spells. Elric's association with chaos (as I saw it, and I think this remains true) was not about his behaviour, but that he was a pawn in some cosmic game that was separate from any choice he made. Sure, he had a soul-sucking life-giving sword and that reinforced that association, but I don't think that there was ever really presented an alternative for him, so any element of choice there too was diminished. And because he was a good pawn (or arguably bishop or knight), he continued to receive benefits from Chaos.
Shifting that association onto D&D was straightforward: some creatures had natural alignments (even blink dogs, which by AD&D were also intelligent enough that it mattered), and aligned forces could give powers to notable adventurers.
And with the rules for Paladins at the time, it was even possible to lose your powers if your actions differed too much from the beings that were empowering you.
But the cool factor, for me, was important: chaos was cool because of its anti-hero in Elric, and there were no problems with characters of multiple alignments hanging out (doesn't Moonglum disparage Elric's association with Chaos?). But the expectations of behaviour were only really present if you wanted to be a paladin.
Fast forward twenty years or so, and alignment has been watered down: chaos and law aren't forces in eternal cosmic conflict, but reflected whether you would steal bread to feed a hungry person or not. It became an anodyne choice reflecting personal morality, and not whether you were caught up in a cosmic struggle. But the cool factor associated with Chaos (and 20 20+ years of gaming) still had a strong pull: many players would say their characters were CG becuase elves and freedom and stuff, but it was tied to something inside the character, personal agency, and not being caught up in a centuries-old conflict of unknowable beings toying with mortals.
By making it about personal choice the paladin-factor made better sense (players could control their characters), but exactly parallel to that development was the sense that it shouldn't work that way: that characters should be able to be CG paladins or they should not be stripped of their powers by an arbitrary god or DM, even as the assoication of alignment with personal choices became stronger.
It was never consistent: alignment reflected natural dispositions, a source of supernatural abilities, a compass of personal ethics, and an element of cool. And, no doubt, each player weighed those differently depending on their table and personal preferences. And even if the source was Moorcock, by the time it hit a game engine it necessarily became something different.
Paul Farquhar
Legend
Zelazny sees Order and Chaos as the fundamental forces shaping the multiverse. They don't relate to personal morality at all. So, close to Chaos, worlds are weird and random (e.g. ambulatory rocks), whereas close to Order, worlds are peaceful and serene, advanced technology tends not to work, and the name "Amber" suggests something that is preserved unchanging. Zelazny seems to be influenced by quantum mechanics - particularly the work of Murray Gell-Mann, and Plato's Allegory of the Cave.
Moorcock was contemporaneous with Zelazny (although with a longer active period), and they seem to have influenced each other. Moorcock puts more of a moral spin on Law and Chaos, but with typical British cynicism, they are portrayed as two different flavours of Bad. Also see Warhammer. Moorcock was also very influenced by REH, having started out importing American pulp fiction, but Elric is a kind of Anti-Conan: physically frail, educated, decadent, dependant on magic, prone to introspection. But that's digressing from the topic.
Moorcock was contemporaneous with Zelazny (although with a longer active period), and they seem to have influenced each other. Moorcock puts more of a moral spin on Law and Chaos, but with typical British cynicism, they are portrayed as two different flavours of Bad. Also see Warhammer. Moorcock was also very influenced by REH, having started out importing American pulp fiction, but Elric is a kind of Anti-Conan: physically frail, educated, decadent, dependant on magic, prone to introspection. But that's digressing from the topic.
Aldarc
Legend
I disagree. Regardless of whether alignment in 4e had any teeth, I think that the 4e alignment system worked incredibly well with the Kaoskampf motif of the World Axis mythos. The general idea is that Lawful Good represents cosmic order whereas Chaotic Evil represents cosmic entropy and ruin. Within this setup "Good(ness)" will push the balance towards cosmic order whereas "Evil" will push the cosmic balance towards cosmic entropy. In many respects, this made 4e alignment more biblical and ancient in its worldview. In retrospect, it actually feels more like a return to B/X but with good and evil added to a singular spectrum.
Similar Threads
