What Alignment is Rorschach?

[Hairfoot]

Sex. No, wait! I mean "butterfly".

 

[Mercutio01]

I think we can all agree, however, that Dr. Manhattan is true neutral .

This is where 4E has alignment from 3E trumped. He's not neutral, which implies some sort of caring. Dr. Manhattan is completely unaligned. Once Laurie sends him packing, his attachment to humanity is completely gone. He seriously could not give two craps about anything on Earth.

Edit - and on topic - Rorschach doesn't fit into an alignment box. It's like assigning an alignment to the Punisher. His moral code is less nuanced than a lawful stupid paladin like OotS' Miko. He's not lawful (although he once was when the laws actually allowed for "masks" to operate), but he's also not chaotic. He follows a rigorous routine, is not erratic, and has a plan for just about everything. He's not good because he kills, but he's not evil because he only kills those that are worthy of it. At the same time, his moral code does have a little bit of gray - he lets Moloch off even though Moloch does have illegal drugs.

As further evidence of his not being erratic - he plans so far ahead that he leaves his scripted journal for the New Frontiersman, hoping they print the truth of what happened.

Characters like those in Watchmen so clearly break the idea of alignment boxes that I am actually glad to have "unaligned" as an option in 4E. Every character I play or run as a DM will be unaligned.

 

[Dragonhelm]

Chaotic Good. He works for good, by any means necessary.

Oh, wait, CG doesn't exist anymore. Therefore, Rorschach doesn't exist. Therefore, Watchmen never happened. Yet clearly, Watchmen did happen. Therefore, we're living in a temporal paradox.

I want my old alignment system back.

 

[The_Fan]

In 4e terms, he would have to be Unaligned. He is dedicated to ultimately good ideas, but he has to enforce them in an evil manner. See what he did when he went to the bars gathering information. Several "innocent" (as in, not guilty this time) people got their fingers broken just for being in the wrong place or somehow sticking out from the crowd.

I think he'd also probably be an Avenger, dedicated to a G or LG deity.

 

[Jhaelen]

I love this thread!

It illustrates pretty nicely why I think that alignments weren't a good idea to begin with. Why, oh, why are they still present in 4E?

They aren't helpful for players and they fail utterly at properly portraying anything but the worst npc/monster stereotypes. The personality of lifelike characters is way too complex to gain anything from being sorted into one of nine (or five) drawers.

 

[RyvenCedrylle]

Rorschach is Bad.

(deleted by user)

 

[Klaus]

Rorschach clearly follows an extremely rigid code of ethics and will not compromise that code under any circumstances. So he is lawful.

Rorschach regularly disregards civil law and shows open disdain for legal authorities. So he is chaotic.

From the SRD:

So he is lawful because he always tells the truth, keeps his word and judges those who fall short of their duties. But he is chaotic because he does not respect authority, resents being told what to do and follows his conscience.

Sounds like Rorschach...so...lawful.

So...chaotic...


::Head Explodes::


Do you think maybe they tried to cram about 50 different dimensions of personality and moral code into one dimension? Could that be why nobody can ever agree whether Batman is chaotic or lawful?

Ergo:

True Neutral.

In 4e: Unaligned.

In that vein:

Dr. Manhattan: Unaligned
Silk Spectre II: Lawful Good
Nite Owl II: Lawful Good
Ozymandias: Unaligned
The Comedian: Chaotic Evil

 

[heirodule]

Supporting the "Rorschach is Lawful" side, he's willing to bust Moloch for owning an illegal drug that is only illegal because it is ineffective as a cancer treatment.

President Truman was one of the only noble men to Rorschach. Rorschach is an agent of the FDA.

Very Lawful The problem is he's in a Chaotic society.

 

[Irda Ranger]

Most rebuttles to what I wrote seem to have this misunderstanding at there heart.

They were probably misled by reading the DMG. Shame on them!

A code of ethics does not make one lawful. Adhering to a reviewable defined code of ethics defined by some external authority makes you lawful.

So ... Paladins are lawful in D&D because the Gods are occasionally physically apparent (and can be visited at-will by high level priests to be questioned on the finer points of catechism), but they would by Chaotic in the real world because they would "answer only to God" and ignore the "unjust laws" of King and Pope?

Celebrim, you clearly have a very well thought out definition of alignment, and I'm sure the clarity and guidance you can provide benefit your campaign. But the D&D rules over the years haven't been nearly as clear. Occasionally they're downright contradictory. There are alternative explanations that have just as much support from the text as yours.

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D&D's alignment system is famously inadequate at pegging real world people in one slot or another, but if I had to I'd peg Rorschach as Lawful Neutral.

Lawful: He has his code, which is fully internalized, and abides by it. He judges others and finds them wanting. The fact that the US government in the comic is also found wanting does not make him chaotic; it just shows how unwilling he is to compromise his principles.

Neutral: For the reasons Nivenus outlined, he cannot be considered "Good." But he is also unselfish and can be kind. He does not work to acquire power for himself or for a higher authority, but is trying to improve (as he sees it) the world. So Evil doesn't apply either. Neutral is therefore the default.

P.S. - Picking Unaligned is a cop out. Just admit that the Alignment Axes are a stupid ontology and refuse to play the game.

 

[Celebrim]

Yeah, if I was forced to stuff him in one of these inadequate boxes I think I'd put him in the lawful neutral box. I think he views himself as a servant of some higher justice, one that the authority figures seem to have forgotten.

That's possible, and one of the problems I have with 'chaos' and 'law' is there are couple of extreme cases where it is impossible to determine 'law' or 'chaos' by external evaluation but only by knowing the character's internal mental state. Particularly for law and chaos, we have to know what motivates the character as well as how they act because there is a pretty large subjective component to the law/chaos access.

'The servant of an extinct of forgotten authority' is one of the two cases that is very hard to answer. In this case, the individual would appear to have all the characteristics normally associated with 'chaotic'. They would tend to be a loner, tend to be following a personal code distinct to them, tend to reject existing authorities, and so forth. However, in fact, if we could see their motivations, we'd realize that they weren't motivated by their consciousness and personal choice, but were one of the last isolated members of a now faded organization and were motivated by the loyalty to the memory of that organization and the code which governed it.

With Rorshcach, it's possible that the loyalty could be to 'the America that was' and he rejects modern authority as having lost his way because his deepest loyalty is to 'the American Way' rather than American institutions itself. I don't think that is the strongest possibility, because a number of things argue against that, but it is certainly possible.

Another complexity is that an chaotic philosophy can be instituted into a rigid law which can then become the external authority to which other people then subjegate themselves. We can easily imagine for example, Objectivism becoming the dominate morality of a land and the government being organized according to minimalist principles that celebrated personal liberty. We can imagine then the writings of Ayn Rand and others being used almost as bibles. In such a situation we'd ironicly have at least some Objectivists who were 'lawful Objectivists', who might for example have occasional pangs that perhaps Socialism isn't such a bad idea in the face of human suffering, but who distrusted their own feelings and reasoning in favor of adhering loyally to the admired external authority or who rigidly and fervently adhered to Objectivism precisely because it was the lawful external authority. In such a situation it would be very hard to tell the chaotics from the lawfuls, without internal evidence.

So here is a question. Say I follow the dictates of my conscience. In doing so I evaluate my actions based on how they conform to to some external code I learned and have internalized.

Then like most people you are in the ambigious middle. In particular, someone with a well thought out 'neutral' position on the law/chaos axis would probably say that using the combination you just described would be the only way to choose the middle path that led to correctly maintaining your way on the good/evil axis.

My general assumption is that 80%+ of people have ambigious complicated morals. Only a few 'extremists' are really going to stand out as having a definite ideology. Rorschach is definately an 'extremist' and since he isn't an extremist about 'maintaining the balance', I think we have to throw out neutrality as a likely candidate.

Am I chaotic only in as much as I stubbornly maintain that I can, for myself, adequately judge whether I am adhering to that code? Am I only lawful if I allow others' interpretations of that code and my actions to help determine whether I am in accordance with it? I am still chaotic if I maintain that I am the final judge of my adherence but admit to my shortcomings when they are pointed out by others?

The lawful would argue thusly, "Suppose everyone was allowed to judge for themselves whether they were adhering to that code? If everyone was there own judge, then each individual could interpret the code differently, and no one could judge whether they had done so rightly or wrongly. In such a situation, there could be no order. In such a situation, no one could say that they have rightful authority, nor could they ever issue a decree with the expectation that it would be obeyed. Such a situation would be indistinguishable from anarchy where everyone made their own laws, and held themselves to be the judge."

I think of this as the Martin Luther question. Was Luther chaotic for maintaining that the church authorities were incorrect in their interpretation of scripture (i.e. he relied on his own instincts/conscience/reason rather than on their judgment) and rebelling against them?

I love how you see the heart of the problem clearly. In some cases, we can only answer the question if we know who was right. If Luther was wrong and the church was right, then clearly he is a rebel and clearly his loyalty lies to his own conscious. But if Luther was right and the church was wrong, then its quite possible that it's Luther's loyalty which is true and pure, and the church is the rebel with a corrupt loyalty to its own self-interest.

My position on Luther is too complicated to go into here in much detail, but I would say that the crux for me are two things. First, that Luther was unwilling to become a martyr, and secondly that judged by his fruit, Luther followers had a spirit of contention, division, and strife we would not expect of Lawful minded people. Finally, it's quite possible that both the Luther and the Church were wrong at some levels. (Lest anyone think I'm being too judgmental here, I should say I'm a Protestant myself. Please don't jump me in defense of your personal beliefs, to which I'm probably quite sympathetic, in this forum.)

Or, was he lawful because he was a firm believer in a objective higher law, and, as a servant of that law, attempted to correct the inconsistency?

I think he certainly saw himself in this way, but we aren't always the best judges of ourself. I think personally, he's was a Chaotic follower of his own consciousness who'd been set off by some very hypocritical (and 'not good') actions on the part of those with lawful authority. There are of course other possibilities, but the evidence we would need to make a definitive statement is invisible too us.