Rethinking Alignment (Again)

[jqavins]

This maybe should be in a different section, but I plan to implement it in the world I'm building, so I can justify putting it here. Besides, this is where the cool folks post.

Two things have long bothered me about D&D alignments. (“Two things? (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088930/trivia?tab=qt&ref_=tt_trv_qu)” I hear you cry.) One is the idea of balance between good and evil. Have you ever encountered a neutral character saying “I’m out of balance, because I’ve been too good lately; I’d better go kill some puppies”? No (I bet) you haven’t.

Second is the chaotic good problem. “I can do whatever I want because I’m chaotic, but I really am good. Honest.” That sort of behavior generally involves bad role playing, but doesn’t the system make room for it?

So, these two things have caused me to think about alignment and join the ranks of those who have alternate ideas on the subject.

First, henceforth I will consider alignment as mostly a philosophical matter – what one believes and how one sees the world. This is distinct from one’s personality, though certainly related to it.

Next, I see a fundamental difference between the Good-Evil (vertical) axis and the Lawful-Chaotic (horizontal) axis. Good and Evil each have their own goals. That is, Evil is not simply "anti-good." Anti-good is a probably sign of mental illness, not a philosophy. But Chaotic is simply anti-lawful, without goals of its own.

Good Communal notions


Community/Common good/common gain
Liberty, everyone's
Justice/fairness
Empathy


Evil Selfish notions


One's own good/own gain
Solipsism


By “empathy” here I mean understanding and believing that everyone else’s feelings and needs are as important as one’s own, not necessarily feeling them along with the other person. Philosophy, not psionics. Solipsism is its opposite.

In this context, one can be "evil" without being anti-good (I’m more important than others, but I’m not altogether against others doing well too) so new words are called for. Thus, "Communal" and "Selfish" for now, but I want better ones.

Some people would say that those who place no value on their own good - comfort, wealth, etc. - are the most "good" people going. On the other hand, since liberty and justice for all are part of the communal ideal, someone insisting that everyone should sacrifice all personal good for the common good could carry this to a destructive and evil (i.e. anti-good) degree.

So, Good Communal is complicated. By comparison, Evil Selfish is easy (or at least it can be.)

Neutrality on this axis represents a balance of community and selfish interests. Most people try to balance these to some extent even if they have a distinct leaning. Neutral as an alignment should be a rather narrow band between those who have a clear preference for one or the other. So my figure has five bands; I’ve never liked adding these gradations but it seems that this time I really can’t avoid it.

There’s a whole different aspect to “good” and “evil” though. One of the good ideals that I did not include above is kindness, and its opposite, cruelty, is an aspect of evil. I’ve left those out deliberately, as I see them as different from communal vs. selfish. I also see them as aspects of personality, not philosophical alignment. Perhaps they should fall on a third alignment axis, but I don’t think so.

Law and chaos, on the other hand, don’t have distinct goals this way. Chaos (a philosophy, not a physical phenomenon) is nothing more than anti-law. You like and think there should be laws, or you think laws are a bad idea, but there’s no favoring of random acts just for the sake of randomness. (Well, not to a serious, philosophical degree unless it’s to shake things up for anti-law motives.) Therefore, rather than labeling the horizontal axis Lawful vs. Chaotic, I’m calling it Lawful vs. Unlawful. Neutrality here would mean that one believes laws are good only up to a point.

Now, here’s the thing. Communities are built on, among other things, laws. There are laws or rules, which may be spoken or written or the unspoken rules everyone just knows, for without them there is no community. You can’t pursue a common good without somehow reaching an agreement on what that is. You can’t have justice without rules regarding what is just. People can cooperatively play their parts only if they have parts to play. Thus, one can’t rationally be in favor of community and against law at the same time. So, I’ve removed a portion of the square alignment chart from the top-right. There is no UL (Unlawful Communal) alignment on the chart, and also no Neutral-Strongly Communal or Strongly Unlawful-Neutral. Translating this to traditional terminology, there would be no CG, and little or no NG (Chaotic leanings) or CN (Good leanings.)

Henceforth, I think I’ll use this way of thinking for my own characters (unless directed otherwise by the GM) including for the NPCs and deities I create for my own world.

(I can't post a picture of my modified alignment chart from work, so I'll add it later when I get home.)

[Yora]

First of all, if you want to make alignment work, you need to define what alignment exactly is and what purpose it has for the game. Because that's the main reason nobody can ever agree on anything related to it.

[Everyl]

That's an interesting take on alignment as a way of defining a character's personal morals and/or philosophy, but what does it mean for a setting? The standard two-axis alignment system is pretty terrible from the angle of philosophical definition, but it is integrated with the system and default settings. Alignment determines who and what many spells work on, and in some cases what those effects are. Some entities are inherently Good, Evil, Lawful, and/or Chaotic as part of their nature, regardless of individual personalities or actions. Whether or not you consider it good world-building, the standard D&D two-axis alignment system serves to help define the setting, setting up conflicts at every level from local up through fundamental cosmic forces.

What does your alignment system tell you about the setting you use it in?

[jqavins]

What does your alignment system tell you about the setting you use it in?
That is a completely fair and important question. And I don't know yet.

Lately I've been thinking about gods for the setting, and I can tell you that there are no CG ones. Cosmic geography will not have the outer planes positioned according to alignment, because having a quarter circle gap in the map would just look stupid. With the planes scattered around then even if the nature of each plane and its denizens are aligned to an alignment, it doesn't make for a problematic physical arrangement.

Spells and effects that work for or against good or chaotic aligned creatures will have a smaller scope of application; I need to decide A) is that really a problem and B) what do I do about it.

Beyond that I really don't know. I may have to let it unfold as I think through other aspects of the world and see what alignment affects. Or deal with things as they come up in play. (Players in a new minted world should be aware that to some extent they are play-testing whether that is the intent or not.)

[falsedot]

Thus, one can’t rationally be in favor of community and against law at the same time.

But people are not always rational. I would find it weird if someone believed that good people dont need laws, regardess of the validity or feasibility of such claim. In fact, I'd wager that there are people irl with that belief. And once you add magic, one could even imagine an implementation of such a lawless community perhaps by connected minds, brain washing (or a "good" variation a la sanctify the wicked), supressing (violent) emotions, genetic modifications etc to the point that what we now consider law is nothing but common sense, just like "dont stab yourself with a knife" is not a law.

All in all, I'm not saying that the trope of the peaceful lawless society is realistic, just that having people believe and strive to achieve it is not unrealistic.

[jqavins]

But people are not always rational. I would find it weird if someone believed that good people dont need laws, regardess of the validity or feasibility of such claim. In fact, I'd wager that there are people irl with that belief. And once you add magic, one could even imagine an implementation of such a lawless community perhaps by connected minds, brain washing (or a "good" variation a la sanctify the wicked), supressing (violent) emotions, genetic modifications etc to the point that what we now consider law is nothing but common sense, just like "dont stab yourself with a knife" is not a law.

All in all, I'm not saying that the trope of the peaceful lawless society is realistic, just that having people believe and strive to achieve it is not unrealistic.


Now, here’s the thing. Communities are built on, among other things, laws. There are laws or rules, which may be spoken or written or the unspoken rules everyone just knows, for without them there is no community. You can’t pursue a common good without somehow reaching an agreement on what that is. You can’t have justice without rules regarding what is just. People can cooperatively play their parts only if they have parts to play. Thus, one can’t rationally be in favor of community and against law at the same time.
What I guess I didn't emphasize sufficiently is that "law" in the context of my thinking on this topic doesn't have to mean the codified laws that are enforced by police and courts and so on. It can be the accepted norms of behavior, the moral consensus that folks live by, or some other form of collective order. To believe that collective order is not only unnecessary but actually bad, and yet also believe that community is beyond somewhat worthwhile but actually important is, I propose, not an alignment but rather insanity. "Insanity" most likely in the form of delusion by someone whose true beliefs are different, e.g. a US (CE) rationalizing that he isn't evil or an NC (NG) teenage rebel yelling "Wooo, chaos, man!" But it could also be a true whacko.

[Ettina]

Second is the chaotic good problem. “I can do whatever I want because I’m chaotic, but I really am good. Honest.” That sort of behavior generally involves bad role playing, but doesn’t the system make room for it?

I don't think the system makes room for it at all. It's just dumb people who think chaotic has to mean LOLRandom. Just because people misuse it doesn't mean the system's broken.

A chaotic character who does too many evil things will end up chaotic neutral or chaotic evil, not chaotic good.

You could make a similar argument about a lawful good character dealing with morally questionable laws, really.

[Corneel]

I think the OP exemplifies many problems of some of the interpretations of the law-chaos axis and especially the confusion of lawful with good. For one it assumes communal/community = good while there are enough examples of (an excess) of communalness being oppressive, and ignoring that leaving room for individual spirit can open up creative wells that would otherwise remain untapped.

Secondly I also object to the following characterization: "But Chaotic is simply anti-lawful, without goals of its own." That is simply not true, even in the basic rules (srd20): ""Chaos" implies freedom, adaptability, and flexibility. ", and especially the freedom part of this is clearly a positive goal that could motivate more than one good inclined character (e.g. the character of William Wallace in the movie "Braveheart").

Lastly, though this is not explicitly a concern of this specific discussion, but an error frequently made is that people want to classify any and all acts on the two alignment axes, which is obvious bollocks. Some actions or their aspects are simply not measured on the good-evil axis or law-chaos axis, a prime example being the rationality of actions. Even some source material confuses rationality with lawfulness (since rationality would be adhering to the laws of nature and reason I suppose) but that is simply bollocks. It's quite possible to be irrationally adhering to the law whatever the cost, just as it is possible to make a rational argument for maximizing personal freedom. Hardly anyone would call OCD rational behavior, but chaotic it isn't, so irrational lawful behavior is clearly possible. Rationality is simply not measured in the two axis system and one should refrain from wanting to express any and every act in terms of the alignment axes.

[SkipSandwich]

I'm partial to the D20 Modern and True20 systems myself. In Modern, characters have 3 "Allegiances" listed in order of most important to least important to the character. You can have allegiances to people, organizations, country or philosophical concepts (including 'Good' and 'Evil'). You can even have conflicting allegiances, say a multi-national soldier with loyalty to both his homeland and adopted countries that are currently at war. With allegiances, there can be very big differences between two characters with the same allegiances based on how they are prioritized, such as a Vigilante with Allegiances to Justice over Law versus a Police officer with allegiances to Law over Justice.

True20 has the idea of each character also having a single defined 'Virtue' AND 'Vice'. Performing actions strongly aligned with either one is how characters recover Conviction/Action Points. "Strongly Aligned" in this context is mostly up to DM Fiat, but the general rule-of-thumb I use is as follows; If a Virtuous action involves a non-trivial sacrifice on the part of the character in terms of time, money or other resources, recover Conviction. If a Vice action involves a willful decision that threatens to cause non-trivial harm to either the player's character (for vices like addiction) or another character (PC or significant NPC), then recover Conviction.
Some Examples, listed as Virtue <-> Vice, with a short statement a character with that virtue/vice pair might say.

Loyalty <-> Suspicion "I know where my loyalties lie, do YOU?"
Generosity <-> Ambition "I can't give what I don't have, right?"
Enlightenment <-> Secrecy "Knowledge wants to be free, but some secrets should STAY buried..."

[Shiloh]

Chaotic is simply anti-lawful, without goals of its own.

I disagree with this point, for similar reasons as those which have already been pointed out. Although, I wouldn't say that the chaotic alignment necessarily emphasize freedom--a chaotic evil character would be fine with oppressing others, because oppression can be viewed as an evil concept and not just the overreach of "lawfulness."

In my mind, chaotic characters emphasize the philosophy that change is the only constant. They see that the universe has potential, inclination, even hunger for change, and believe that it is their moral (ethic?) duty to promote and sustain that change. This commonly manifests itself as promoting freedom (as people cannot change without the freedom to change), but in contrast with oppression, freedom is generally a good concept that happens to be better expressed by chaotic characters for whom it is valuable to their own goals.

I simplify this relationship greatly, of course, mostly because concepts of good and evil are mostly subjective, but my point is that chaos is not the absence of law, it's the presence of change. I think this is best illustrated by the Planes in the traditional cosmology that embody these two alignment extremes: Mechanus is a strict clockwork realm where everything has an order and process that no one strays from. Limbo is literally ever-changing; doesn't that seem like it would be an important value for chaotic creatures, then? On a related note, I've always thought that a character's lawful-chaotic alignment says MUCH more about them than their good-evil alignment, as it demonstrates not just their ethics but also how they react to society.

Back to the overall issue at hand, however, I actually don't take offense with most of the problems you have with the alignment system. Specifically regarding your idea that a neutral character must commit evil acts to stay neutral if they start doing lots of good things, while it is true in essence, I think that's a misuse of the system as intended. If the character is doing good things, then they are gravitating towards the good axis; they don't decide to do evil things because that would go against the philosophy that they are forming for themselves. If they constantly see a significant personal difference between good and evil acts, and choose the good acts on a moral basis, then they are becoming a good-aligned character. I think that that's the way it's intended, and I personally don't have a problem with that, although I understand why many players might.

[Teapot Salty]

Personally I like to think of it as for the many (good), the few (neutral), and the one (evil)
The many being: I will go to lengths to help others, even at the cost of self.
The few being: I will go to lengths to help family or close friends at the cost of self.
The one being: I will go to lengths to better myself regardless of the cost to others.

[Thrudd]

The problem with the law/chaos access is that the way D&D defines them do not really make sense as cosmic absolutes.

The archetype normally proposed for chaotic good, for instance, is Robin Hood who robs people and fights the law for the greater good. But the only reason he does this is because in his setting, the rulers are corrupt and cruel. As soon as a good king returns and the evil sherriff is gone, he goes back to being a law abiding person.

chaotic/lawful behavior can only be defined in terms relative to the setting and prevailing laws, except in extreme cases. If there is a change in the characters situation, their position on the law/chaos access could easily shift 180 degrees. "True" chaotic behavior or lawful behavior, divorced from any setting-defined society, would be some kind of insanity.

Good and evil may be absolute and more easily defined regardless of the setting.

I think the use of allegiances in place of law/chaos is more useful for guiding/defining a character's behavior. You want to define their position and philosophy in relation to the conditions in their setting. You might still have good/evil/neutral to define just what types of actions the character may take, though I don't think it is necessary.

So Robin Hood would be good, because he cares for others and will help others at cost to himself. He would have allegiance to the small folk of Nottinghamshire, he'll do what it takes to help them in their poverty and oppression. He has allegiance to his band of merry men, placing brotherhood above obeying the law. And allegiance to social justice, he will do what he feels is right for the community even if there is a law that says otherwise.
If the ruler and laws did not conflict with his allegiances, then he would be a perfectly lawful person.

[Shiloh]

If the ruler and laws did not conflict with his allegiances, then he would be a perfectly lawful person.

I again have to disagree. In my opinion, "lawful" does not equate to "following the law." Otherwise, lawful evil wouldn't be a thing. To me, lawful just means a desire for order and constance.

But obviously, every world is different, every group is different, and every player and GM interprets aspects of the game differently, which is one of the great things about D&D. Ultimately, the alignment system and explanations that work for you are the best ones, regardless of what I or anyone else has to say, which is really a fantastic thing.

[Thrudd]

If alignment is meant to describe a character's morals and behavior, then the good/evil axis does that in the context of interactions with other people.
If we're talking about cosmic metaphysics, order and chaos makes sense as the opposing forces which create reality through their constant interaction. Being aligned with either the cosmic force of order or chaos will inform your behavior in the context of the current situation and setting. the forces of chaos must work to pull down structures and authority. The forces of order must work to build and organize systems.

A person who is aligned with one of these cosmic forces would possibly be prompted to take actions not driven by personal morality or values. Their activity is part of the cosmic battle that must always swing from one side to the other. What would happen when a person's moral outlook (good or evil) encouraged them to contradict their cosmic alignment? Would they be capable of doing so? Would the gods/universe punish them in some way?

I would think a majority of people are unaligned with the cosmic forces and are defined more by how they interact and treat other people, as well as their personal goals and loyalties in the context of the world around them. To be an agent of the cosmic forces requires a surrender of certain worldly values and morals.