What the tin says.

The first problem is with making an alignment based of Order (Law) and Chaos, those aren't moral choices per se, imagine you're in Nazi Germany, there's an order/law that puts Jews, Gypsies, Gays and other people the government deems undesirable into concentration/extermination camps. A revolt (chaos) would be  good thing as long as you don't target innocent people. On the other hand obeying the law (following orders anyone?) would be a bad thing.

So they should have started with Good vs Evil and no, you can't be neutral here, you can be mostly one or the other falling occasionally on the other side because you're only "human".

From there you could, if you wanted, felt it was needed (I don't) add Order and Chaos to give I don't know what to the characters.

To me it feels mostly as a straight jacket than a good tool unless you're going for the Black and White view of the world, very valid option for your setting in my eyes.

Now let the lynching begin. :cool:

Alignment is a gross simplification of human behaviour, trying to distill a load of virtues and vices down to two words.

The best version of alignment I've ever seen is the list of traits from Pendragon, something like that could be repurposed to be a list of virtues and vices suitable for DnD.

The version I see in practice has Lawful Preachy, Neutral Greedy, Chaotic fuckwit and Evil Bastard.

Lawful preachy is virtuous and demands others be virtuous too, also convinced of their own rightousness.

Neutral greedy doesn't care much as long as there's cash in it.

Chaotic fuckwit will just do random shit with no rhyme or reason. (Can you tell I don't like chaotic characters)?

Evil bastard does things for their own advantage and / or to cause harm for fun.

Doesn't it originate from Gary Gygax's objectivism? I'm not judging the man if he was, it's just what I heard.

Regardless if it is broken, in its broken elements D&D created a neat cosmology that is its own.

People just aren't that tidily put into buckets.  But, for a certain stream of fantasy logic it works okay.  I always assume the human range doesn't extend out as far as the supernatural range.  Most supernatural beings would consider all mortals neutral.

But then my Hobgoblin Rogue Kitten "Kitten: ferocious killer, huge teeth, sharp claws yes?" had "selfish bastard and race traitor" as his alignment.  He sold out his own people out of spite for personal gain and would do it again in a heart beat.  Of course, Kitten was fun because he play'd dumb and used his hobgoblin accent to lull people into thinking he was a harmless idiot.  He also carried a spear and wore leather armour and claimed to be a fighter.  Maybe neutral evil, he was a bad guy.  He wouldn't hurt anyone for cruelty though, he gets paid to be cruel or he's not cruel at all, "everyone's trying to get you to work for free 'cause you're a hobgoblin so you gotta hold your ground or nobody's gonna pay you."

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1132805Doesn't it originate from Gary Gygax's objectivism? I'm not judging the man if he was, it's just what I heard.

Regardless if it is broken, in its broken elements D&D created a neat cosmology that is its own.

Wasn't he a deeply religious man? I think I red somewhere this was true, no judgment either way, but the fact that it remains a broken shit holds true.

Quote from: Altheus;1132798Alignment is a gross simplification of human behaviour, trying to distill a load of virtues and vices down to two words.

The best version of alignment I've ever seen is the list of traits from Pendragon, something like that could be repurposed to be a list of virtues and vices suitable for DnD.

The version I see in practice has Lawful Preachy, Neutral Greedy, Chaotic fuckwit and Evil Bastard.

Lawful preachy is virtuous and demands others be virtuous too, also convinced of their own rightousness.

Neutral greedy doesn't care much as long as there's cash in it.

Chaotic fuckwit will just do random shit with no rhyme or reason. (Can you tell I don't like chaotic characters)?

Evil bastard does things for their own advantage and / or to cause harm for fun.

Interesting, will try and find that list without expending money nor sailing the high seas Har mate!

AD&D alignment, regardless of how it developed, imitates the mythic archetypes, and thus it accurately represents all human experience.

Law is civilization/known in both its protective (LG) and tyrannical (LE) forms. Chaos is the creative (CG) and destructive (CE) aspect of nature/unknown. Then you have the hero (NG -- Jesus/Marduk/Horus) that emerges to restore the balance between known and unknown when things go wrong -- note that in the description, the NG alignment is favorably disposed towards both law and chaos. The opposite of the hero is the adversary (NE - Satan/Set/Sauron). And finally there is the primordial chaos (N) from which everything emerges.

Most commonly, LG is the protective benevolent father, while LE is the tyrannical father. CG is the benevolent mother who creates life, while CE is the destructive Oedipal mother that devours her own children. NG is the hero, while NE is the trickster. N is the Ouroboros.

Thus you have all of the archetypes of mythology and story:

Benevolent/malevolent Father
Benevolent/malevolent Mother
Hero/Trickster
Ouroboros

ALL human experience can be understood in those terms. ALL stories can be broken down into those basic components.

Ideologies are quasi-religions based on partial truths and are thus fundamentally false as they distort the human experience. For example, in SJWism, or Leftism, the world consists of the tyrannical Father (white racism/male despotism) and the benevolent Mother (innocent non-whites/benevolent women). Conservative ideologies flip it into the benevolent Father (white civilization/male protection) vs the malevolent Mother (evil non-whites/promiscuous women). Those ideologies are CE and LE respectively.

For a religion to be true, ALL of the archetypes must be present because they represent the totality of human experience.

One must remember that alignment is NOT 9 points, it is a graph with blurry areas between each alignment, which are ideals. The real work of the DM is not to define the alignments, but to judge where the boundaries are.

Good and evil are wholly apprehensible in terms of God and Satan. Think of all those who are good as Christians, think of all those who are evil as Satanists, and everyone else is in the grey area between the two, the original state of humanity before knowledge of good and evil existed. This is fairly simple. Watch any good movie like the original Star Wars or westerns from back in the day.

Law and chaos are wholly apprehensible in terms of sex. Sex in itself is chaotic, as it represents the ultimate individual impulse. Marriage is lawful because it seeks to harness that impulse and constrain the individual for the benefit of the community. So, CG would be individuals frolicking at an orgy (creation), CE would be gang rape (destruction), LG is marriage in its ideal form (protection), and LE would be sexual slavery used strictly for the purpose of of creating more soldiers and workers (tyranny). N is the origin in the sexual behavior of animals and other organisms.

So on and so forth. Every human experience can be broken down into the archetypes.


Also, consider this: the natural tendency for civilizations is to circle clockwise around the alignment graph. Chaos and destruction, raiding and pillaging (CE) lead to a desire for a strong, tyrannical leader to protect everyone (LE). Once the chaos of nature is controlled there is a push for human rights (LG). Once everyone is safe, there is a push for liberty and the free expression of every individual (CG). Society then descends into decadence and self-indulgence and society collapses back into chaos (CE). And the cycle begins again. There are of course mini-cycles within the greater cycles.

However, it is not a circle, but a spiral. As time goes on, civilizations tend to move outward from the center (N, the beginning) as good becomes more good and law become more lawful. Compare the legal system of today vs the Ancient world -- it is capable of much more good, but also has a greater capacity for evil. Good is much better defined than in the Ancient world or the Middle Ages (read the Catholic Catechism), and after WWII the world came to a consensus regarding human rights. So over time lg become LG, ce becomes CE, and so on.

I like the original D&D alignment quite a bit; the whole Law/Chaos divide separates humanity from monsterdom. When the Good-Evil axis got incorporated, it made A LOT less sense, transitioning from some sort of universal struggle to personal morality, which is why it breaks down.

Warhammer incorporated good/evil better, I think, with the one axis alignment system: Chaos – Evil – Neutral – Good – Law

While I enjoy the cosmic struggle between Law and Chaos, my favorite alignment system is probably the one used in the Palladium System. It holds more true to me that people can be Good, Selfish, or Evil.

Quote from: Cloyer Bulse;1132814AD&D alignment, regardless of how it developed, imitates the mythic archetypes, and thus it accurately represents all human experience.

Law is civilization/known in both its protective (LG) and tyrannical (LE) forms. Chaos is the creative (CG) and destructive (CE) aspect of nature/unknown. Then you have the hero (NG -- Jesus/Marduk/Horus) that emerges to restore the balance between known and unknown when things go wrong -- note that in the description, the NG alignment is favorably disposed towards both law and chaos. The opposite of the hero is the adversary (NE - Satan/Set/Sauron). And finally there is the primordial chaos (N) from which everything emerges.

Most commonly, LG is the protective benevolent father, while LE is the tyrannical father. CG is the benevolent mother who creates life, while CE is the destructive Oedipal mother that devours her own children. NG is the hero, while NE is the trickster. N is the Ouroboros.

Thus you have all of the archetypes of mythology and story:

Benevolent/malevolent Father
Benevolent/malevolent Mother
Hero/Trickster
Ouroboros

ALL human experience can be understood in those terms. ALL stories can be broken down into those basic components.

Ideologies are quasi-religions based on partial truths and are thus fundamentally false as they distort the human experience. For example, in SJWism, or Leftism, the world consists of the tyrannical Father (white racism/male despotism) and the benevolent Mother (innocent non-whites/benevolent women). Conservative ideologies flip it into the benevolent Father (white civilization/male protection) vs the malevolent Mother (evil non-whites/promiscuous women). Those ideologies are CE and LE respectively.

For a religion to be true, ALL of the archetypes must be present because they represent the totality of human experience.

One must remember that alignment is NOT 9 points, it is a graph with blurry areas between each alignment, which are ideals. The real work of the DM is not to define the alignments, but to judge where the boundaries are.

Good and evil are wholly apprehensible in terms of God and Satan. Think of all those who are good as Christians, think of all those who are evil as Satanists, and everyone else is in the grey area between the two, the original state of humanity before knowledge of good and evil existed. This is fairly simple. Watch any good movie like the original Star Wars or westerns from back in the day.

Law and chaos are wholly apprehensible in terms of sex. Sex in itself is chaotic, as it represents the ultimate individual impulse. Marriage is lawful because it seeks to harness that impulse and constrain the individual for the benefit of the community. So, CG would be individuals frolicking at an orgy (creation), CE would be gang rape (destruction), LG is marriage in its ideal form (protection), and LE would be sexual slavery used strictly for the purpose of of creating more soldiers and workers (tyranny). N is the origin in the sexual behavior of animals and other organisms.

So on and so forth. Every human experience can be broken down into the archetypes.


Also, consider this: the natural tendency for civilizations is to circle clockwise around the alignment graph. Chaos and destruction, raiding and pillaging (CE) lead to a desire for a strong, tyrannical leader to protect everyone (LE). Once the chaos of nature is controlled there is a push for human rights (LG). Once everyone is safe, there is a push for liberty and the free expression of every individual (CG). Society then descends into decadence and self-indulgence and society collapses back into chaos (CE). And the cycle begins again. There are of course mini-cycles within the greater cycles.

However, it is not a circle, but a spiral. As time goes on, civilizations tend to move outward from the center (N, the beginning) as good becomes more good and law become more lawful. Compare the legal system of today vs the Ancient world -- it is capable of much more good, but also has a greater capacity for evil. Good is much better defined than in the Ancient world or the Middle Ages (read the Catholic Catechism), and after WWII the world came to a consensus regarding human rights. So over time lg become LG, ce becomes CE, and so on.

LOL, born a catholic, have read that and their bible and also the protestant one.

You might be able to describe everything using those archetypes, doesn't mean they translate well into the game without becoming a straight jacket for the character, a list of what you can't do instead of what you can do.

I insist, as an atheist, if you're gonna have alignment in a pseudo medieval setting it has to be based on the dichotomy between Good and Evil, Since those are the moral questions, Order, Chaos or Neutrality can't come first (and I don't use them at all) since they aren't moral choices per se.

Quote from: arcanuum;1132819While I enjoy the cosmic struggle between Law and Chaos, my favorite alignmenst system is probably the one used in the Palladium System. It holds more true to me that people can be Good, Selfish, or Evil.

Isn't selfish a vice tho? I would say it falls under Evil and not in the middle.

Quote from: Brad;1132817I like the original D&D alignment quite a bit; the whole Law/Chaos divide separates humanity from monsterdom. When the Good-Evil axis got incorporated, it made A LOT less sense, transitioning from some sort of universal struggle to personal morality, which is why it breaks down.

Warhammer incorporated good/evil better, I think, with the one axis alignment system: Chaos – Evil – Neutral – Good – Law

Which is the same as in modern versions of D&D no?

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1132822Which is the same as in modern versions of D&D no?

D&D uses two axis, Warhammer is one.

LG NG CG
LN  N  CN
LE  NE CE

vs.

Law-Good-Neutral-Evil-Chaos

Basically Law is an extreme form of Good, I guess. Also, most people are Neutral because they're self-interested.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1132805Doesn't it originate from Gary Gygax's objectivism? I'm not judging the man if he was, it's just what I heard.

Regardless if it is broken, in its broken elements D&D created a neat cosmology that is its own.

Exactly. Let's not forget how from the "broken" D&D aligment they created Planescape - one of most complex philosophical (in a good sense) settings around.

Anyway Nazi Germany should be lawful evil - maybe the best embodiment ever of the concept.

Quote from: Brad;1132817I like the original D&D alignment quite a bit; the whole Law/Chaos divide separates humanity from monsterdom. When the Good-Evil axis got incorporated, it made A LOT less sense, transitioning from some sort of universal struggle to personal morality, which is why it breaks down.

Warhammer incorporated good/evil better, I think, with the one axis alignment system: Chaos – Evil – Neutral – Good – Law

Even though i dont like it as a game, i like the language age of sigmar uses for this

Death - Order - Destruction - Chaos

Death is extreme order where nothing ever changes, and destruction is more...hedonistic i guess, its like violence for the sake of violence.