D&D General Worlds of Design: Is Fighting Evil Passé?

When I started playing Dungeons & Dragons (1975) I had a clear idea of what I wanted to be and to do in the game: fight evil. As it happened, I also knew I wanted to be a magic user, though of course I branched out to other character classes, but I never deviated from the notion of fighting evil until I played some neutral characters, years after I started.

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

“The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.” Albert Einstein

To this day I think of the game as good guys against bad guys, with most of my characters (including the neutrals) on the good guy side. I want to be one of those characters who do something about evil. I recognize that many do not think and play this way, and that's more or less the topic of this column. Because it makes a big difference in a great deal that happens when you answer the question of whether the focus of the campaign is fighting evil.

In the early version of alignment, with only Law and Chaos, it was often Law (usually good) against Chaos (usually evil). I learned this form from Michael Moorcock's Elric novels before D&D, though I understand it originated in Pohl Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions. That all went out the window when the Good and Evil axis was added to alignment. That's the axis I'm talking about today.

This is a "black and white" viewpoint, versus the in-between/neither/gray viewpoint so common today. But I like my games to be simple, and to be separate from reality. I don't like the "behave however you want as long as you don't get caught" philosophy.

Usually, a focus on fighting evil includes a focus on combat, though I can see where this would not necessarily be the case. Conversely, a focus on combat doesn't necessarily imply a focus on fighting evil. Insofar as RPGs grow out of popular fiction, we can ask how a focus on fighting evil compares with typical fiction.

In the distant past (often equated with "before 1980" in this case) the focus on fighting evil was much more common in science fiction and fantasy fiction than it is today, when heroes are in 50 shades of gray (see reference). Fighting evil, whether an individual, a gang, a cult, a movement, a nation, or an aggressive alien species, is the bedrock in much of our older science fiction and fantasy, much less so today.

Other kinds of focus?

If fighting evil isn't the focus, what is?

• In a "Game of Thrones" style campaign, the politics and wars of great families could provide a focus where good and evil hardly matter.
• "There's a war on" might be between two groups that aren't clearly good or evil (though each side individually might disagree).
• A politically-oriented campaign might be all about subterfuge, assassination, theft, and sabotage. There might be no big battles at all.
• A campaign could focus on exploration of newly-discovered territory. Or on a big mystery to solve. Or on hordes of refugees coming into the local area.

I'm sure there are many inventive alternatives to good vs evil, especially if you want a "grayer" campaign. I think a focus on good vs evil provides more shape to a RPG campaign than anything else. But there are other ways of providing shape. YMMV. If you have an unusual alternative, I hope you'll tell us about it.

 

[dragoner]

I mean... if y'all are saying that alignment worked fine before we decided to have two separate axes, and then pretending we understood the difference... yeah, I feel ya. It was also before you had punishments for "not playing your aligmment right" and over half the classes in the PHB had alignment restrictions.

My entire point is that D&D works better without all of this nonsense. Unfortunately, I don't like the games that WotC made after they figured it out, too.

"Works better" is sort of a value judgement; D&D also has mechanics for the supernatural through magic and gods which influence, work with alignment, that don't map at all to reality. How much gets removed before the game is entirely different? Certain aspects can be downplayed, though through the whole supernatural, Gods and Demons, with wondrous magic is good for higher level play, vs low power grinding like just killing Goblins that threaten the village.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Moorcock's philosophy boils down to anti-extremist, anti-fundamentalist, and anti-fascist; and pro-freedom, tolerance and harmony.

Yes and don't you love the beautiful irony of how similar the core values there are to Tolkien? If we assume, and I think it's reasonable to do so, that the Shire and the Hobbits are the moral core of LotR.

I mean I definitely feel his "Epic Pooh" essay, but the more I read of stuff that Tolkien said, in his letters and so on (including the amazing one I can never find where he calls Aragorn "a lesser Sauron" or something close to it, when discussing how actually is kind of a fascist too, not that Tolkien uses that word), and actually understanding Tom Bombadil a bit (re-reading LotR as an adult, TB is no longer an unwelcome and dumb interlude, but kind of more fascinating than a lot of what surrounds it), the more I feel like if it hadn't been for issues of class, age, language, and so on that those two might have got along after all.

 

[Helldritch]

I think from earliest days of D&D, despite preferring G characters and often being the goody-two-shoes of the group in D&D, I would definitely say L-N-C works drastically better than the two-axis alignment system. Whilst debates about the precise nature of "Lawful" happen (not Chaotic, weirdly), they tend to peter out quickly, whereas the G-N-E stuff can cause havoc. And LG remains the most dangerous alignment to an adventuring party (albeit a thousand times less dangerous in 5E than 2E and before).

I'm really sad that LG does not work in your games. It works wonders in mine.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'm really sad that LG does not work in your games. It works wonders in mine.

Oh it works, most of the time, I've played it a lot myself, but it's the alignment most likely to be misinterpreted, RP'd badly/excessively, and to cause adventures to crash into a wall (CN is close second). Obviously it's vastly less of an issue in 5E where no class is hard-required to be an alignment. Entire essays could be written on how and why it specifically was most likely to cause issues.

 

[Helldritch]

Strange, CN is the alignment that causes campaign crashes in my area. And I am not the only DM who banned this alignment from all his campaigns. I much prefer seeing/DMing a CE campaign than having a single CN character at my table.

Yes the LG alignment is often misinterpreted to the Lawful Stupid point. We had quite a few discussion about it back in the days and we reached a middle ground where the dozen or so DM in my area reached an understanding. It eliminated the LS and brought the Good in LG again. Whenever I have a new player, I often give them a list of what a LG, NG, CG, LN, N, CN, LE, NE and CE character is likely to do and how he reacts to certain situations. It is very close to the alignment you can find in Palladium Games. It works wonders. When I am back at home, I can share it on the forum if you'd like. (I am working right now).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I much prefer seeing/DMing a CE campaign than having a single CN character at my table.

Well there's something we agree on! I mean definitely for real. I ran an all-monster campaign in 2E once (I forget how we did levels and stuff, but it was fine, it only lasted about three sessions). Obviously the monsters were largely NE and CE. They cooperated and the adventures were fun, and yeah sure a lot of humans got immolated, petrified, eaten, or disintegrated, but everything ran well and everyone had a good time, even with some backstabbing (which all sort of worked because it was "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal". Where bloody CN characters have just slowed down or messed-up any number of adventures from a similar era.

It is very close to the alignment you can find in Palladium Games.

Yeah I remember when we first saw those we were like "These make way more sense than D&D alignments!" (particularly in that they match up with fictional characters really well). And yeah my experience was they far less often caused issues (too bad the mechanics of those games so often did...).

The sad/hilarious thing is one of the much-later Palladium books has an actual-play account, and one of the actual Palladium dudes is DMing, and he DMs like a really bad 1980s AD&D session and totally doesn't seem to understand his own alignment system and spends half the session telling the players off for being the wrong alignment or whatever. I was like "Man, what possessed you to write this down and put it in a book for posterity?".

 

[Lanefan]

what does "LN DM" mean?

Lawful Neutral Dungeon Master, I'd guess.

Lawful because she follows (and enforces) the rules; Neutral because she presents the game and setting, and enforces the rules, in a neutral and non-biased manner.

 

[Hoffmand]

that's... a dangerous thought process tbh.

All the dangerous people I see generally believe in shades of gray. Imho when people say something is a shade of gray they are normally just trying to justify something that benefits them.

 

[Lanefan]

I mean... if y'all are saying that alignment worked fine before we decided to have two separate axes, and then pretending we understood the difference... yeah, I feel ya. It was also before you had punishments for "not playing your aligmment right" and over half the classes in the PHB had alignment restrictions.

My entire point is that D&D works better without all of this nonsense.

It does, and it doesn't.

Class-based alignment restrictions are cool where they make sense: Clerics and Paladins have to line up with their patron deity; Assassins and Necromancers can't be Good; things like this add to the game and in some cases to the challenge of playing it.

Punishments for not playing to alignment - for non-restricted classes I don't see much point. If you're in theory a CG Fighter but your actions in play define you more as N with a little E attached, then the only real consequences are that you'll come up "Ne" if detected and you might not get invited to the same sort of social events you did in the past.

But a restricted class? An Assassin or Necromancer that turns Good is going to have a very hard time finding anyone willing to train it, or any guild willing to associate with it. And Clerics or Pallies that violate their alignments have to answer to Da Boss - and if Da Boss doesn't like the answer there can and will be consequences* that the offender probably isn't going to like.

* - though only once in 35 years of DMing have I ever pulled out and used the stereotypical "bolt of lightning from the sky turns the offending Cleric to ash" routine, it's always been there as a threat...

 

[Hoffmand]

It does, and it doesn't.

Class-based alignment restrictions are cool where they make sense: Clerics and Paladins have to line up with their patron deity; Assassins and Necromancers can't be Good; things like this add to the game and in some cases to the challenge of playing it.

Punishments for not playing to alignment - for non-restricted classes I don't see much point. If you're in theory a CG Fighter but your actions in play define you more as N with a little E attached, then the only real consequences are that you'll come up "Ne" if detected and you might not get invited to the same sort of social events you did in the past.

But a restricted class? An Assassin or Necromancer that turns Good is going to have a very hard time finding anyone willing to train it, or any guild willing to associate with it. And Clerics or Pallies that violate their alignments have to answer to Da Boss - and if Da Boss doesn't like the answer there can and will be consequences* that the offender probably isn't going to like.

* - though only once in 35 years of DMing have I ever pulled out and used the stereotypical "bolt of lightning from the sky turns the offending Cleric to ash" routine, it's always been there as a threat...

Monks being lawful always made sense. And raging barbarians being chaotic also makes sense.