Ruin Explorer
Legend
You mean re: Chaos-Nature connection? I think it's something a lot of fantasy fiction has considered, unfortunately none that I'd recommend really makes it a central point. Miles Cameron's Traitor Son series (starting with The Red Knight) makes it a core point = Law = Civilization/Safety/Sanity, Chaos = Nature/Risk/Instinct, but I didn't really enjoy those (and only read the first and part of the second), so can't endorse them.I want to see more of your point about chaos.
D&D has touched on it at times, but has been utterly hamstrung by the boneheaded and nonsensical "Druids = True Neutral balance-keepers" bad idea from back in the day (where on Earth they got that from I do not know). Also a lot of authors can't really handle the ambiguity so end up leaning excessively to one side or another, which makes the conflict boring or even stifling.
@Umbran is right though - because to make it work, you have presuppose balance is the right thing for humans, and once you do that, anyone who is pro-Chaos or pro-Law is obviously an alien-minded maniac who wants to destroy humanity and life, so can be completely and immediately dismissed as a dangerous loon. Thus the poles merely become a source of weird villains and nothing more.I think it works if both sides would generate a situation so antithetical to what we want out of life as to be equally undesirable thus by keeping them in balance you create a good situation to be in
So as such it's not really that meaningful or compelling. It doesn't have anything to say beyond that "extremes are bad, man". Like wow whoa thanks for that amazing 1960s insight.
I'm not saying Tolkien's approach is better, which is basically "Monarchy by pre-destined guys is cool, but yo did you ever hear about Utopian Anarchism, here's a
I feel like that's certainly true of later Moorcock, but when I read most of his works (at the time) in the mid-90s it felt - and I can't back this up with cites, because it's been a very long time - like there was a period particularly re: Von Bek, where he thought he was making a serious point with Law/Chaos, and then he got over it.So, I never got the idea that Moorcock was worried about being philosophically deep on Order and Chaos, and he certainly wasn't setting up a system for others to work in. He simply wanted powerful antagonists and complications for his characters. Yes, either of them "winning" would be bad for mortals. But neither of them winning isn't really a good situation, either, because then they keep using people as proxies in their conflicts, making life unpleasant that way.