The 'Wonderland'-Inspired Faces of the RAGE OF DEMONS

Take a peek at some of the art from D&D's upcoming Rage of Demons storyline. This art is by Richard Whitters, who is the art director for D&D and used to work as a concept artist for Magic: the Gathering. WotC's Chris Perkins has indicated that one of the influences on Rage of Demons was Alice in Wonderland, and I think the influence is clear when you look at the characters below.

OUGALOP, kuo-toa cave cricket catcher extraordinaire.

YUK YUK and SPIDERBAIT, goblin adrenaline junkies.

THE SOCIETY OF BRILLIANCE, the Mensa of the Underdark.

GLABBAGOOL, awakened gelatinous cube.

RUMPADUMP and STOOL, myconid followers.

PRINCE DERENDIL, a quaggoth who thinks he's elven royalty.

TOPSY and TURVY, svirfneblin wererat siblings.

THE PUDDING KING, svirfneblin devotee (i.e., flunky) of Juiblex the Faceless Lord.

D&D's "Legion of Doom." What a wonderful bunch of malcontents.
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[Imaro]

Where the incoherence kicks in is in trying to turn this framework for labelling people's beliefs and outlook into a scheme of social and metaphysical truth. For instance, once we say that the Seven Heavens is, per se, a LG place, we are stipulating that it is true that social order can maximise human wellbeing. Yet, at the very same time, we define Olympus as, per se, a CG place, thereby stipulating that it is true that the best route to human wellbeing can be self-realisation largely free of social constraint.

Why is this incoherent since we are not stating that either has been proven to be 100% true... all we are stating is that the possibility exists that social order can maximise human well being and that the posibility exists that the best route to well being can be self-realisation largely free of social constraint... of course neither of these planes is the entirety of the multiverse (And thus all of humanity) so neither is a truth that has been proven out 100%...

The same thing happens when we label nations as LG, CG etc - we imply that they successfully give effect to their alignment beliefs, although each of LG and CG involves a denial of the other.

I don't follow... in labeling a nation all we say is that for this specific group of individuals the society labelled with this alignment exists... how in simply labeling a kingdom with a certain alignment (usually, though not always, based on the moral outlook of it's rulers) are we in any way implying that they are "successfully" giving effect to their alignment beliefs? If anything all we are saying is that this kingdom has the potential... or not... to successfully implement their alignment beliefs... but unless said kingdom rules the entire world and in fact brings about well being for all... nothing has been proven and it exists in a state of possibility...

I don't know what exactly Gygax intended with his outer planar sceme - did he mean that Olympus is populated by people who have the CG outlook (seems feasible) or that Olympus is a place where the claims of CG people are true (seems uttery infeasible when generalised, as I've just argued)?

Gygay states in the 1e DMG... "However, the "outer
planes" show various alignments. This is because they are home to
creatures who are of like general alignment."

But it's the second approach that is picked up in Planescape and has continued since, and that is what produces the incoherence. A similar question - are devils happy or miserable? Gygax's Appendix IV leaves it open that devils are miserable, because in fact wellbeing is a real thing and living in a place where the most powerful people don't care about others' wellbeing would be horrible. But Planescape and onwards present a realm where the devils are happy with their situation ie where wellbeing is being created. This is incoherent - if the Nine Hells succeed in generating wellbeing via harsh discipline then they show the truth of (a particular view within) LG, not LE!

I think you're off in your view of Planescape, at least as I understand it... the multiverse is a consensus reality... which means that Olympus is what the consensus of the multiverse (not just inhabitants of Olympus) believe it to be at the start state of the campaign setting. You seem to be treating Olympus as some kind of isolated pocket dimension that is only shaped by those who reside in it and thus must be "true", but as I understand PS, this is wrong.

To touch on your comment about Devil's... Devil's don't value well being...
from the 1e DMG...
"Evil, on the other hand, does not concern itself with rights or
happiness; purpose is the determinant."

LAWFUL EVIL: Obviously, all order is not good, nor are all laws beneficial.
Lawful evil creatures consider order as the means by which each group is
properly placed in the cosmos, from lowest to highest, strongest first,
weakest last. Good is seen as an excuse to promote the mediocrity of the
whole and suppress the better and more capable, while lawful evilness
allows each group to structure itself and fix its place as compared to
others, serving the stronger but being served by the weaker."

Evil cares nothing for well being...So I guess in the sense that Devil's want a place where proper place from weakest to strongest is enforced and the weaker server the stronger... then yes they would be "happy" (not sure I would use this word but you chose it)... but as stated by Gygax well being isn't a consideration in that "happiness" whatsoever.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Because of alignment. It's that simple for me. Alignment is objective in DND. There's no subjectivity at all. The universe says that if you generally do X then you are alignment Y. What you believe doesn't matter and no amount of belief changes that any more than trying to believe that rain is not wet.

Which makes DND a very poor game for any sort of philosophical debate. There are other systems much better auited for this.

Dwarves have beards in D&D, but Dark Sun dwarves are hairless.

Golems are monsters in D&D, but Eberron makes them PC's.

Halflings are hobbits in D&D, but Dragonlance makes them kender.

Drow are evil in D&D, but Forgotten Realms make them possibly good.

Alignment is objective in D&D, but Planescape makes it more consensus-based and socially bound.

Whenever you play in a D&D setting, you're going to be changing D&D (more honestly, Greyhawk) assumptions, and alignment isn't somehow any less removable from D&D/Greyhawk than dwarf-beards or hobbits.

If you never want to play a D&D without objective alignment, that's fine enough, but I promise you that others will and it will be for-real D&D using the D&D system and it will not be a problem for them.

 

[Rejuvenator]

The PS idea is that a plane of Lawful-Neutral-Good only exists because people in the setting believe that it exists. So it doesn't exist on its own merits per se, but it also doesn't exist just to fill in a peg on an alignment wheel.

I guess so. IIRC, 5e states that the Great Wheel (the default cosmology) is metaphysical. That is, the planes aren't literally next to each other in a wheel. Now we know the designers had purposesfully designed the planes to go clockwise in order of incremental alignment. And we know that in-game, learned planar sages have also discovered the metaphysical structure of the Great Wheel. How do they explain this metaphysical construct without also acknowledging the existence of Lawful Neutral, Lawful Neutral-Good, and Lawful Good? Objective good and evil is one thing, but Lawful Neutral-Good is like levels and xp; that's a metagame construct that's awkward to acknowledge by PC's in-game.

So to go back to your first sentence above ("The PS idea is that a plane of Lawful-Neutral-Good only exists because people in the setting believe that it exists'), does Arcadia exist as a plane of Lawful-Neutral-Good, because mortals understand Lawful-Neutral-Good (relative to Lawful Good or Lawful Neutral) or because they value the inherent merits manifested in Arcadia?

 

[I'm A Banana]

Trying not to flood the thread...

t's rather trivial to use "generosity" to describe the bare quality of a "liberality in giving or willingness to give" without regarding that as inherently admirable or undesirable.

This claim is highly contentious.

It is literally one of the definitions of the word in the American Heritage dictionary (I checked!). The idea that using a word consistent with an understood meaning is somehow "contentious" is kind of incomprehensibly absurd to me. How else am I meant to use it?

Alternately, you could be claiming that the contentious part is "without regarding that as inherently admirable or undesirable," which is equally befuddling for me.

"He made a generous donation to our cause": clearly admirable.
"She is certainly generous with her affections, the trollop.": clearly undesirable.
"Be careful with your generosity, my love, lest we go hungry on account of it.": more ambiguous.

All three express generosity as a liberality or willingness to give, but have very different judgements on whether that liberality or willingness to give called generosity is admirable, undesirable, or somewhere a little in between.

I don't see what is contentious about claiming that words have multiple meanings and values depending on their context.

The bit of PS that I find verging on incoherent, and mostly unmotivated, is the bit where it says that people's believing Bahamut to be good makes it so.

The force of good in PS doesn't exist outside of the consensus deeming something to be good and ascribing to it that force, so there can be no other source of Bahamut's goodness as determined by alignment spells and talismans and whatnot. If the consensus shifts, then he is, by that definition, not good any more, even if he has not changed anything that he does.

I also find the irrationality worrying: if I am currently labelled "good", and hence vulnerable to the Talisman of Pure Evil, I have to (i) concede that I am good (the evidence of the Talisman affecting me is sufficient for that), but you are saying that I can also (ii) try and persuade everyone (including myself?) that I am really not good, thereby changing the social consensus and hence the effects of the Talisman. It seems that (ii) requires me lying to others, ore else deluding myself (eg by denying that I am vunerable to the Talisman).

In this example, you're not being delusional by denying your goodness, you're asserting that the consensus view of "good" - what powers the talisman - is not what it should be, if it includes you. Because words have multiple meanings, and you're out to change what "good" means.

 

[Fralex]

In my sketch of Gygaxian alignment above I left out LN and CN. (I also left out NG and NE, but that's because I think they're completely uninteresting. They're purely products of grid-fetishism, but don't describe any distinctive evaluative outlooks. NG is basically CG-lite, and NE is basically LE-lite.)

LN, as I read Gygax's alignment descriptions, is rules fetishism. Hence, it's a type of moral failing of the LG: the conviction that wellbeing can be maximised by social order gets corrupted into an obsession with order for its own sake. It's the vice of bureacrats. As for a plane full of LN people - as per my comment upthread about devils, it should be a miserable place. If, in fact, all that order was making them happy, then it would be an instance of order fostering welfare and hence a proof of the truth of LG!

And that just brings me back to my confusion over what LN actually means. If it creates misery, then in Mechanus LN is the "chump" alignment, for people who just do what they're told even if it makes them unhappy and doesn't appear to make anyone else happy except their leader. That means Primus is really LE for not caring that His subjects are miserable, and it really speaks volumes that these subjects are essentially robots, the perfect "chumps" who will always do what they're told and their creators don't need to feel sorry for their slavery because they're not really alive. So by this logic you can make LN people be slaves who have given up any hope that their lives could be better and have just accepted their place in the world, or weirdly neurotic types who are obsessed with rules and tradition for their own sake. But you can't have any LN leaders, people who are champions of their alignments, because anyone who tries to make people adopt the alignment of slaves, robots, and (worst of all??) bureaucrats who isn't doing it in service to some greater power is just taking advantage of them, or at the very least taking away their freedom in exchange for nothing, and that would make them lawful evil, not neutral. And I guess maybe you can have people like that, insisting everyone is just the servant of someone higher up, but most of the people I can think of insisting on that are really just doing it to trick others into obeying them for no reason.

I... I guess I'm saying that the Lawful Neutral alignment is a pyramid scheme created by Lawful Evil creatures?

 

[Imaro]

And that just brings me back to my confusion over what LN actually means. If it creates misery, then in Mechanus LN is the "chump" alignment, for people who just do what they're told even if it makes them unhappy and doesn't appear to make anyone else happy except their leader. That means Primus is really LE for not caring that His subjects are miserable, and it really speaks volumes that these subjects are essentially robots, the perfect "chumps" who will always do what they're told and their creators don't need to feel sorry for their slavery because they're not really alive. So by this logic you can make LN people be slaves who have given up any hope that their lives could be better and have just accepted their place in the world, or weirdly neurotic types who are obsessed with rules and tradition for their own sake. But you can't have any LN leaders, people who are champions of their alignments, because anyone who tries to make people adopt the alignment of slaves, robots, and (worst of all??) bureaucrats who isn't doing it in service to some greater power is just taking advantage of them, or at the very least taking away their freedom in exchange for nothing, and that would make them lawful evil, not neutral. And I guess maybe you can have people like that, insisting everyone is just the servant of someone higher up, but most of the people I can think of insisting on that are really just doing it to trick others into obeying them for no reason.

I... I guess I'm saying that the Lawful Neutral alignment is a pyramid scheme created by Lawful Evil creatures?

This is what the 1e DMG says...

LAWFUL NEUTRAL: It is the view of this alignment that law and order give
purpose and meaning to everything. Without regimentation and strict definition,
there would be no purpose in the cosmos. Therefore, whether a law
is good or evil is of no import as long as it brings order and meaning

My interpretation of this would be that those of LN alignment are first and foremost concerned with order and meaning... not misery or well being, those could/might be byproducts of an ordered and meaningful life but are not in and of themselves desirable or undesirable for LN creatures...some would say this is very similar to the romanticized version of the samurai's code of Bushido... where duty is paramount...

In other words your view above seems to assume that in following rules only misery is created for those that do so...but that's false... both misery and well being are created but neither are considered a primary concern to one of LN alignment since what is most important is whether order and meaning have been imposed by the following of said law.

As to whether you can have a LN leader arise... I would say most soldiers are trained, especially in the heat of battle to follow orders without question... now whether that results in misery or well being is dependent upon whether the LN commander giving the orders is tactically adept or not... however I think more misery would result if every soldier just did whatever they wanted to regardless of what they were commanded to... and thus I could easily see societies, cultures, etc... especially in a world as dangerous as default D&D adopting a LN alignment without necessarily being miserable and in fact even believing their very lives and well being depended upon it.

 

[Rejuvenator]

An interesting challenge for using the Gygaxian scheme as a set of labels for outlooks - which I've argued it can be used for, though it's not perfect by any means - is what to do once the game actually starts, the world is put into motion, and various truths become evident. For instance, suppose that in my game, due to whatever factors (the ideological biases of the participants, the roll of the dice, whatever) it turns out that social structures are nothing but a source of misery. Then, in that game, the Lawful Good have been refuted! Their belief - that social order will be maximising of well-being - has been shown to be false. They can stick to their guns if they like, but (within that game) most morally decent people are going to judge them as deluded or worse.

Gygax gives no advice on this, and I don't recall ever seeing any in any D&D book. But it seems to me that, if we want to use the alignment system as a way of loosely characterising a variety of recognisable moral/behavioural outlooks, this is the number one question that is going to come up in play!

I agree with everything else you wrote in your post, but this one is arguable to me. I think that, if Alignment is used at the gaming table, then the DM and players accept the premise of Good/Evil/Law/Chaos as universal truths. If the table accepts the D&Dism, it is incumbent upon the DM to use whatever pseudo-theology and pseudo-philosophy to counteract this hypothetical emerging narrative that social structures must be a source of misery. It's a fantasy, after all, so you can make whatever utopian facts you need to dispute the PC's subjective opinion about the merits of law and order.

Just like a lot of other various "truths" become evident in D&D, which Gygax gives no advice on. If you can use fantasy to handwave other bits of implausibility in D&D, I think the same applies here. (If exploring such themes is far more important to your gaming table than sticking to the Alignment system, then obviously the Alignment will get tossed out.)

Alignment strikes me as somewhat like phrenology, astrology, etc. which happens to be truth in the fiction. When there's an apparent conflict between the predicative and the actual, the narrative is twisted to make it fit. This may or may not be satisfying to the players.

 

[Hussar]

As I replied to [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] above... Misdirection totally nullifies the reliability of the Detect spells... and on the divine side there is another low level spell called Undetectable Alignment... that makes the Detect good/evil/law/chaos spells useless.

But why would you cast any of those on yourself and then detect your own alignment?

 

[Hussar]

Dwarves have beards in D&D, but Dark Sun dwarves are hairless.

Golems are monsters in D&D, but Eberron makes them PC's.

Halflings are hobbits in D&D, but Dragonlance makes them kender.

Drow are evil in D&D, but Forgotten Realms make them possibly good.

Alignment is objective in D&D, but Planescape makes it more consensus-based and socially bound.

Whenever you play in a D&D setting, you're going to be changing D&D (more honestly, Greyhawk) assumptions, and alignment isn't somehow any less removable from D&D/Greyhawk than dwarf-beards or hobbits.

If you never want to play a D&D without objective alignment, that's fine enough, but I promise you that others will and it will be for-real D&D using the D&D system and it will not be a problem for them.

I repeatedly stated that this was all for me. I was in no way trying to claim that this isn't D&D. It's just that I would never use D&D for this. Again, 100% for me, D&D is a terrible fit for this type of gaming.

 

[Imaro]

But why would you cast any of those on yourself and then detect your own alignment?

The point is that you can never be sure whether you are or are not operating under the Misdirection spell cast by someone else when you cast detect "whatever" on yourself... and thus it is not infallible.