At the planar level, the Law-Chaos axis in D&D is a shallow take on randomness

[Yukito01]

Recently I was rereading the AD&D Planescape’s Planewalker’s Handbook, and upon reading about Mechanus and Rogue Modrons, I noticed how shallow the interpretation of what is Lawful is. For example, apparently, Rogue Modrons cannot understand the concept of chance, and for them nothing is random, which strikes me as quite odd. There shouldn’t be anything unlawful about randomness. After all, randomness can also be seen as a law of nature. Even assuming that the planes have their different physics where the inherent randomness of quantum processes do not exist, saying that randomness is chaotic is weird. For example, a single dice roll can be seen as a chaotic thing (unpredictable), but many many many dice rolls are not (overall, we would expect all sides to appear an approximate equal number of times).

Yes, you could say that unpredictability is Chaos in itself, but that seems so shallow, such an uninteresting take. For me, a pure ‘Lawful’ roll dice would still be unpredictable, on a roll-by-roll basis, but over many iterations the results would be exactly (with some degree of error) as those predicted by probability. On the other hand, for a pure ‘Chaotic’ dice roll, the results would be completely unexpected things (say, I roll a d6 and get a ‘tails’.) Another example would be dropping a ball on Mechanus vs dropping a ball on Limbo. If I drop a ball on the former, I would expect it to fall down and bounce perhaps in an unexpected direction, but that is fine. No laws of nature or of the planes were broken. But if I drop a ball on Limbo, perhaps it is me who would fall, upwards, because why not.

Thus, the idea that Mechanus and Modrons are devoid of randomness seems so silly. I know Planescape is a bit old by now, and perhaps this has been changed/addressed in newer releases of the planes, but as far as I know, in 3.5 and to a lesser degree in 5e, the idea that Law is devoid of randomness seems still prevalent, no?

Anyways, what do you think about this? Do you think Law is truly pure order, no randomness whatsoever? I am of course not talking at the Prime material world level, as I assume that any discussion there can always be murkied by ‘but there’s also a Chaotic component!’. I’m talking here at the purest levels of Law and Chaos (i.e. the respective planes and its inhabitants).

[RandomPeasant]

When you get down to it, "Law" and "Chaos" just mean "Opposes Chaos" and "Opposes Law". Any additional detail is something the author writing that particular section thought up, and is as likely as not to be contradicted by the next thing you read about alignment. No one ever sat down, rationalized what these terms are supposed to mean, and then stuck to it, so trying to figure out exactly what they do mean is an exercise in frustration.

The specific idea that Law cannot comprehend randomness certainly seems pretty dumb to me. I think if you were listing out the most classically Lawful professions it was possible to have, "Actuary" would be up there with "Lawyer" and "Engineer", but the whole thing actuaries do is deal with randomness.

[Mechalich]

One definition of random is 'proceeding without definite aim, reason, or pattern.' On Mechanus, a literal clockwork universe, there is a definite aim behind absolutely everything that happens. That aim might not be comprehensible to mortals, but it exists. For Modrons, it's usually the will of Primus - the nigh-omniscient (on Mechanus) power that serves as the core of their life force. Saying that Modrons can't understand randomness, therefore, does not mean they can't understand probability, it's that they cannot understand the concept of things happening for no reason.

[Sparky McDibben]

As soon as I read this, I immediately imagined the following conversation between a modron assigned to observe our world and a pentadrone supervisor of all "Earth-type" worlds.

Modron 1: "Status Report: The English have won the battle of Poitiers. Query: Does this timeline require adjustment?"

Pentadrone: "Negative response to query. The probability of this outcome is within six standard deviations."

I actually really love this interpretation you spotlighted, OP, because OF COURSE the modrons would be working to manage unpredictability, while Chaos is constantly mutating to avoid being modelable

Ducking awesome!!

[Yukito01]

One definition of random is 'proceeding without definite aim, reason, or pattern.' On Mechanus, a literal clockwork universe, there is a definite aim behind absolutely everything that happens. That aim might not be comprehensible to mortals, but it exists. For Modrons, it's usually the will of Primus - the nigh-omniscient (on Mechanus) power that serves as the core of their life force. Saying that Modrons can't understand randomness, therefore, does not mean they can't understand probability, it's that they cannot understand the concept of things happening for no reason.

I mean, but that's not what's happening, is it? It clearly states they do not understand randomness. Also, the description of Modrons also implies that the lower ones, the regular Modrons, may not necessarily be aware of what the aim or purpose is. They just follow orders, no?


As soon as I read this, I immediately imagined the following conversation between a modron assigned to observe our world and a pentadrone supervisor of all "Earth-type" worlds.

Modron 1: "Status Report: The English have won the battle of Poitiers. Query: Does this timeline require adjustment?"

Pentadrone: "Negative response to query. The probability of this outcome is within six standard deviations."

I actually really love this interpretation you spotlighted, OP, because OF COURSE the modrons would be working to manage unpredictability, while Chaos is constantly mutating to avoid being modelable

Ducking awesome!!

Exactly! This is an awesome take, and much better that Law equals to the 'modelability' and consistency of systems than just some vague order definition.

I hope if Planescape is ever brought back, they revisit these interpretations of order and chaos.

[Chauncymancer]

I mean, but that's not what's happening, is it? It clearly states they do not understand randomness. Also, the description of Modrons also implies that the lower ones, the regular Modrons, may not necessarily be aware of what the aim or purpose is. They just follow orders, no?

Well firstly, the impression I get from a lot of published encounters is that low level modrons aren't aware of anything at all- they're not sapient, they get their orders through magic.
Also we're now sort of getting into "what does random actually mean?" because when we say a die is random, what we mean is that it's probabilities are perfectly balanced. When we say the stock market is random, we don't mean that all results are equally likely.
What I think the writeup means is that Modrons are strict determinists. If you were about to roll a die, we could look up that die roll on the cog of rolling randomizers and get a 100% perfect prediction of what number that roll will land on. Because the rolls "not actually random" you just don't know what it's going to be! Which probably makes more sense when you live inside a giant self-aware clock.

[Vahnavoi]

I haven't bothered with Planescape. If I want to pay attention to cosmic levels of Law and Chaos, I'll go back to Moorcock or something even older, the way Shin Megami Tensei series does.

But to deal with the matter at hand, the problem with this talk of randomness is that it misses a connection to what Law and Chaos are on the human level: collectivism versus individualism, large organized groups versus individual benefit.

Approached from that angle, rather than Law being uncomprehending of randomness and variation, it would just hate it and seek to control and eliminate it.

Inability or unwillingness to comprehend randomness has more to do with determinism and fatalism than group orientation. It's possible to bundle those in with group-mindedness if you approach Law from the idea that there's an universal hierarchy, a singular will everyone ought to serve (Primus for Modrons, God for humans, etc.) that covers social relations and physical laws both. But even that is less "unable to comprehend randomness" and more "does not believe real randomness exists". Equivalent to a player at a table denying that die rolls are random and saying they only seem random because the roller does not know enough of the mechanics of the roll to make a foolproof prediction.

"Randomness and probability are only uncertainty of prediction, born of our inability to grasp the Great Will in its full glory. They are not real facets of nature, only useful fiction."

[Glorthindel]

If you were about to roll a die, we could look up that die roll on the cog of rolling randomizers and get a 100% perfect prediction of what number that roll will land on. Because the rolls "not actually random" you just don't know what it's going to be! Which probably makes more sense when you live inside a giant self-aware clock.

That's actually an interesting point; a dice result in theory isn't actually random, its just determined by position at time of release, force of release, trajectory of throw, distance to impact surface, materials of dice and impact surface, and other obstructions in the path of trajectory. Sure, to us who can't (and wouldn't want to) measure such things, that's effectively random, but to a Modron, its probably inconceivable that you wouldn't know these things... why, that's just anarchy!

[martixy]

Randomness is kind of the most fundamental law of OUR reality. k log W and all.


For me, a pure ‘Lawful’ roll dice would still be unpredictable, on a roll-by-roll basis, but over many iterations the results would be exactly (with some degree of error) as those predicted by probability.

This property has a name: Stochastic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic).

Also consider what laws do for us (in the sphere of natural sciences, not jurisprudence). They allow us to model reality. I imagine that's what makes a modron "lawful".

This whole alignment axis is too overloaded. It's frequently referred to as the ethical axis (as opposed to moral). And in the very early D&D it was kind of mislabelled. Back then it was largely meant as civilization vs wilderness.


That's actually an interesting point; a dice result in theory isn't actually random, its just determined by position at time of release, force of release, trajectory of throw, distance to impact surface, materials of dice and impact surface, and other obstructions in the path of trajectory. Sure, to us who can't (and wouldn't want to) measure such things, that's effectively random, but to a Modron, its probably inconceivable that you wouldn't know these things... why, that's just anarchy!

Except it likely is. Since we're talking about dice, which exist in our world, I feel compelled to note the quantum nature of our reality. It is of course possible that a die roll is quite deterministic, but it might also be a highly chaotic phenomenon. And when I say chaotic, I mean in the context of Chaos theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory). Which is an actual branch of mathematics that studies systems highly sensitive to their initial conditions.

[Willie the Duck]

At the planar level, the Law-Chaos axis in D&D is a shallow take on randomness
...
Anyways, what do you think about this? Do you think Law is truly pure order, no randomness whatsoever? I am of course not talking at the Prime material world level, as I assume that any discussion there can always be murkied by ‘but there’s also a Chaotic component!’. I’m talking here at the purest levels of Law and Chaos (i.e. the respective planes and its inhabitants).

I haven't bothered with Planescape. If I want to pay attention to cosmic levels of Law and Chaos, I'll go back to Moorcock or something even older, the way Shin Megami Tensei series does.

Any additional detail is something the author writing that particular section thought up, and is as likely as not to be contradicted by the next thing you read about alignment. No one ever sat down, rationalized what these terms are supposed to mean, and then stuck to it, so trying to figure out exactly what they do mean is an exercise in frustration.

I think this is a good summation of my point. I think the OP is correct that law-chaos is somewhat shallow at the planar level. Thing is, the planes of existence (particularly the outer planes) were this odd little bit of D&D worldbuilding that took on a life of it's own without ever stepping back and thinking as to whether there was any specific point or plan to the whole thing.

Planes of existence as a concept started pretty early in the game (can't remember if they were mentioned in the original Little Brown Books, but certainly by Eldritch Wizardry they were an established thing), but the great wheel and all the different planar descriptions didn't come along until Dragon # 8 in 1977 and then as an AD&D PHB appendix in 1978. In those, the descriptions were rather cursory, and they certainly seem like they were just things put there to inspire DMs to do something interesting with them. The planes were fully fleshed out in 1987's Manual of the Planes, which was 1) well after Gary had been given the boot, 2) well past the point where there was any real 'plan' except keep putting out product to hopefully keep the lights on another month, and 3) at the point when the game worlds were being filled out and all the 'here be dragons'-type signs replaced with exhaustive descriptions of every corner for no well-defined reason. After that, there have been minor changes and revisits (certainly Planescape in general took another crack at interpreting the planes), but for the most part the main 'hooks' of each one had ossified. Some seemed clearly to be simply afterlives for people of various bents. Others as grand places to set a high-level adventure. Mechanus, with a bunch of geometric, logic/axiomatic cartoon characters living on spinning gears, certainly seems like that latter, and on that level, they work. Is it sorta silly? Of course, but no more than a world with gelatinous cubes and color-coded dragons.

[Segev]

This whole alignment axis is too overloaded. It's frequently referred to as the ethical axis (as opposed to moral). And in the very early D&D it was kind of mislabelled. Back then it was largely meant as civilization vs wilderness.

For most practical purposes, that's still a pretty good definition. Law is "society-oriented" while Chaos is "individual-oriented." Law is about authority and rules circumscribing behavior, while Chaos is about "can I do it? Can you stop me?" Law is about organization and smooth operation, while Chaos is about independence and clashing goals.

None of this is perfect ,mind you. But these tend to be how it manifests as "the ethical axis," and while broader ideas of order vs. randomness, of preservation vs entropy ten to crop up, those are ancillary to these core elements, I believe, as used and presented as alignments.

[Vahnavoi]

The Great Wheel takea blatant inspiration from real esoteric beliefs and virtually every outer plane refers to some mythological concept by name.

It the Wheel feels like a mess, it's because the game designers (for various reasons) slowly filed the serial numbers off, replacing them first with theme park versions of themselves, then with second and third hand fantasy derivatives, in a grand game of Telephone where each new iteration is subtly different, but not actually better explained.

[Calthropstu]

Recently I was rereading the AD&D Planescape’s Planewalker’s Handbook, and upon reading about Mechanus and Rogue Modrons, I noticed how shallow the interpretation of what is Lawful is. For example, apparently, Rogue Modrons cannot understand the concept of chance, and for them nothing is random, which strikes me as quite odd. There shouldn’t be anything unlawful about randomness. After all, randomness can also be seen as a law of nature. Even assuming that the planes have their different physics where the inherent randomness of quantum processes do not exist, saying that randomness is chaotic is weird. For example, a single dice roll can be seen as a chaotic thing (unpredictable), but many many many dice rolls are not (overall, we would expect all sides to appear an approximate equal number of times).

Yes, you could say that unpredictability is Chaos in itself, but that seems so shallow, such an uninteresting take. For me, a pure ‘Lawful’ roll dice would still be unpredictable, on a roll-by-roll basis, but over many iterations the results would be exactly (with some degree of error) as those predicted by probability. On the other hand, for a pure ‘Chaotic’ dice roll, the results would be completely unexpected things (say, I roll a d6 and get a ‘tails’.) Another example would be dropping a ball on Mechanus vs dropping a ball on Limbo. If I drop a ball on the former, I would expect it to fall down and bounce perhaps in an unexpected direction, but that is fine. No laws of nature or of the planes were broken. But if I drop a ball on Limbo, perhaps it is me who would fall, upwards, because why not.

Thus, the idea that Mechanus and Modrons are devoid of randomness seems so silly. I know Planescape is a bit old by now, and perhaps this has been changed/addressed in newer releases of the planes, but as far as I know, in 3.5 and to a lesser degree in 5e, the idea that Law is devoid of randomness seems still prevalent, no?

Anyways, what do you think about this? Do you think Law is truly pure order, no randomness whatsoever? I am of course not talking at the Prime material world level, as I assume that any discussion there can always be murkied by ‘but there’s also a Chaotic component!’. I’m talking here at the purest levels of Law and Chaos (i.e. the respective planes and its inhabitants).

Incorrect. There really is no such thing as randomness. Enacted 1000 times, if ALL factors are the same, the result will be exactly the same.

Consider the roll of a die.The die follows numerous physical laws. Laws which are immutable. If you take that die, cast it with the exact same speed at the exact same angle, with the exact same environmental contingencies, you would get the same result every time. But producing an unchanging envirnment is impossible.

There is nothing truly "random" in life. All things are an effect. There is no cause and effect, except for the original cause. All things following that cause is an effect.

This is the philosophy of order and law. Study the laws deep enough, measure all current effects and you can figureout all things past and future usinf mathmatical formulae.

[Segev]

Incorrect. There really is no such thing as randomness. Enacted 1000 times, if ALL factors are the same, the result will be exactly the same.

Consider the roll of a die.The die follows numerous physical laws. Laws which are immutable. If you take that die, cast it with the exact same speed at the exact same angle, with the exact same environmental contingencies, you would get the same result every time. But producing an unchanging envirnment is impossible.

There is nothing truly "random" in life. All things are an effect. There is no cause and effect, except for the original cause. All things following that cause is an effect.

This is the philosophy of order and law. Study the laws deep enough, measure all current effects and you can figureout all things past and future usinf mathmatical formulae.

I won't argue this too strenuously, but feel the need to point out that there are very serious Ph.D.s in physics who will disagree strenuously with you. Especially the last sentence: it is, in fact, impossible to "measure all current effects" to the degree required, due to the Uncertainty Principle (which has been demonstrated in experiment). So there is, in theory, true randomness buried in the quantum mechanics of things.

[Mechalich]

I won't argue this too strenuously, but feel the need to point out that there are very serious Ph.D.s in physics who will disagree strenuously with you. Especially the last sentence: it is, in fact, impossible to "measure all current effects" to the degree required, due to the Uncertainty Principle (which has been demonstrated in experiment). So there is, in theory, true randomness buried in the quantum mechanics of things.

In our universe, sure. On Mechanus, again a literal clockwork universe, probably not. And one of the things about Planescape is that belief changes reality. So it's actually a goal of the Modrons, as a cosmic force, to eliminate all fundamental randomness - in the quantum mechanical sense or any other mathematical sense that might produce such randomness - from reality in order to render it perfectly ordered.

[Willie the Duck]

I won't argue this too strenuously, but feel the need to point out that there are very serious Ph.D.s in physics who will disagree strenuously with you. Especially the last sentence: it is, in fact, impossible to "measure all current effects" to the degree required, due to the Uncertainty Principle (which has been demonstrated in experiment). So there is, in theory, true randomness buried in the quantum mechanics of things.

Sure, modern 20th-21st century physicists defending natural laws which may or may not exist in a given D&D universe.

[TheStranger]

In our universe, sure. On Mechanus, again a literal clockwork universe, probably not. And one of the things about Planescape is that belief changes reality. So it's actually a goal of the Modrons, as a cosmic force, to eliminate all fundamental randomness - in the quantum mechanical sense or any other mathematical sense that might produce such randomness - from reality in order to render it perfectly ordered.

I like this take on Law/Chaos in the planes. Determinism vs free will in a setting that makes it a real conflict, not just an academic debate.

Over the years, though, I think various writers have conflated pretty much every possible definition of the words “law” and “chaos” and pressed those definitions into service at the individual, societal, and cosmic levels. Which is to say, there might be some inconsistencies.

[Jay R]

Good and Evil are real concepts of human behavior. Virtually every philosophical, psychological, religious, or moral system in the history of the human race includes them as components of real human behavior (even if they sometimes hide them under other names).

Law and Chaos are D&D constructs, taken from fantasy novels in which it was not well defined. No philosophical, psychological, religious, or moral system in the history of the human race has ever included them as components of actual human behavior.

You have successfully identified one aspect of why the Law-Chaos axis has no value as a basis or explanation for human behavior. Keep going. There are lots more to find.

[Calthropstu]

In our universe, sure. On Mechanus, again a literal clockwork universe, probably not. And one of the things about Planescape is that belief changes reality. So it's actually a goal of the Modrons, as a cosmic force, to eliminate all fundamental randomness - in the quantum mechanical sense or any other mathematical sense that might produce such randomness - from reality in order to render it perfectly ordered.


I won't argue this too strenuously, but feel the need to point out that there are very serious Ph.D.s in physics who will disagree strenuously with you. Especially the last sentence: it is, in fact, impossible to "measure all current effects" to the degree required, due to the Uncertainty Principle (which has been demonstrated in experiment). So there is, in theory, true randomness buried in the quantum mechanics of things.

I have had this argument with such. And when he went to prove me wrong, simply couldn't. I do agree, it is impossible to produce, even in my original statement, but it stands to reason.

Since true time travel is proven impossible, and the best we could theoretically manage to achieve is to pull objects forward, doing a true test of this is also impossible. He and I came to the conclusion pursuing it further was fruitless and his final statement on the issue was "possible, but indeterminate."

But I am stating from a voewpoint of Mechanus and the gods of order here. To be honest, I prefer to view law vs chaos as stability vs change.

[Beleriphon]

You have to remember that Modrons are strict determinists. They genuinely believe that if they could chart the path of every particle in the multiverse they can determine exactly what will happen, what has happened, and what is happening right now.

They think order, absolute, rigid order is what makes sense. Mechanus is an expression of that, thus the clockwork and crazy levels of Modrons.

And a single die roll is random. You can't effectively predict which face will come up on any given roll. A perfect balanced die will over hundreds, thousands, millions of rolls should show an equal number of each face coming up. But that doesn't tell you want roll will come next. That's what Modron's don't understand.

[Calthropstu]

You have to remember that Modrons are strict determinists. They genuinely believe that if they could chart the path of every particle in the multiverse they can determine exactly what will happen, what has happened, and what is happening right now.

They think order, absolute, rigid order is what makes sense. Mechanus is an expression of that, thus the clockwork and crazy levels of Modrons.

And a single die roll is random. You can't effectively predict which face will come up on any given roll. A perfect balanced die will over hundreds, thousands, millions of rolls should show an equal number of each face coming up. But that doesn't tell you want roll will come next. That's what Modron's don't understand.

Not if they were successful in mapping out all energies and factors involved. The angles the die lands, any air currents shifting in the wind, tge angle the die corner will strike the ground, the force with which it was cast...

Ultimately, if everything were mapped put perfectly, that die would be predictable to an exact degree.

[Mechalich]

Not if they were successful in mapping out all energies and factors involved. The angles the die lands, any air currents shifting in the wind, tge angle the die corner will strike the ground, the force with which it was cast...

Ultimately, if everything were mapped put perfectly, that die would be predictable to an exact degree.

Indeed. True randomness depends on quantum mechanical effects which, in the D&D multiverse, may or may not exist depending on where you are presently standing at the moment. To mangle Einstein a bit, god both does and does not play dice with the universe, just only certain parts. The Modrons are from one of the 'no dice' parts and they are fundamentally incapable of understanding the 'dice' parts and perhaps more importantly they don't want to understand them because they intend to eliminate those pieces from their idealized version of the multiverse.

This is admittedly very bizarre since it implies that your very molecular structure changes depending on which plane you happen to be on, but the D&D multiverse is absolute bonkers, so this is pretty par for the course.

[Beleriphon]

Indeed. True randomness depends on quantum mechanical effects which, in the D&D multiverse, may or may not exist depending on where you are presently standing at the moment. To mangle Einstein a bit, god both does and does not play dice with the universe, just only certain parts. The Modrons are from one of the 'no dice' parts and they are fundamentally incapable of understanding the 'dice' parts and perhaps more importantly they don't want to understand them because they intend to eliminate those pieces from their idealized version of the multiverse.

I think its important to recognize that Modrons 1) don't want to understand randomness to begin with, and 2) think randomness is bad and are actively working to eliminate it from the multiverse.


This is admittedly very bizarre since it implies that your very molecular structure changes depending on which plane you happen to be on, but the D&D multiverse is absolute bonkers, so this is pretty par for the course.

Nah, your molecular structure only changes if you think it does. And you genuinely have to believe it does change, at which point you'd end up becoming a Modron or some other similar paragon of law, chaos, or whatever.

Cogito, ergo sum is pretty much the byword of the multiverse; or more accurately: Et cogito sic est.

[martixy]

You have to remember that Modrons are strict determinists. They genuinely believe that if they could chart the path of every particle in the multiverse they can determine exactly what will happen, what has happened, and what is happening right now.

They think order, absolute, rigid order is what makes sense. Mechanus is an expression of that, thus the clockwork and crazy levels of Modrons.

And a single die roll is random. You can't effectively predict which face will come up on any given roll. A perfect balanced die will over hundreds, thousands, millions of rolls should show an equal number of each face coming up. But that doesn't tell you want roll will come next. That's what Modron's don't understand.

This is far from a given, but you're giving me ideas.

What if the D&D universe was random in nature (like ours is), but modrons WERE strict determinists.
Meaning that one end of one alignment axis is fundamentally broken and does not represent some kind of basic truth about the universe or stance one can take, but a misguided idea.

How did that come to be? Could the universe have been different in the past? What kind of cataclysmic event caused such a change in the nature of reality? Why have the modrons not adapted to this change? What do the alignments represent? Are they the mirror to some fundamental aspect of the universe (or at least supposed to be)? Is someone preventing the modrons from adapting? Why? Or are the axes like a divine portfolio and the modrons are like an old god refusing to change, to make way for the new way of things?

@Calthropstu @Beleriphon That discussion you're leading. Are you guys familiar with the distinction between chaos and randomness? (In the IRL, scientific sense.) I feel like there's a misunderstanding you're not even aware off.


I won't argue this too strenuously, but feel the need to point out that there are very serious Ph.D.s in physics who will disagree strenuously with you. Especially the last sentence: it is, in fact, impossible to "measure all current effects" to the degree required, due to the Uncertainty Principle (which has been demonstrated in experiment). So there is, in theory, true randomness buried in the quantum mechanics of things.

PhDs? Try nobel laureates. :)

To take us further down the rabbit hole of actual physics: It's not that the information is hidden in some fashion (this notion is called, appropriately, "hidden variables theory" and has been experimentally disproven in the 70s; see Bell Inequalities), we just can't get to it, it's that the information does not exist.
Sixty symbols video. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwGyqJMPmvE)

[Beleriphon]

This is far from a given, but you're giving me ideas.

What if the D&D universe was random in nature (like ours is), but modrons WERE strict determinists.
Meaning that one end of one alignment axis is fundamentally broken and does not represent some kind of basic truth about the universe or stance one can take, but a misguided idea.

I think we take objectively that the material plane of D&D is random like ours. The general gist of the material is that is like our universe in all ways, unless otherwise specified.


How did that come to be? Could the universe have been different in the past? What kind of cataclysmic event caused such a change in the nature of reality? Why have the modrons not adapted to this change? What do the alignments represent? Are they the mirror to some fundamental aspect of the universe (or at least supposed to be)? Is someone preventing the modrons from adapting? Why? Or are the axes like a divine portfolio and the modrons are like an old god refusing to change, to make way for the new way of things?

The multiverse, and more importantly the Great Wheel, are more like Platonic Ideals of universes. If, for example, we take Mechanus as the Platonic Ideal of Determinism the Modrons are trying to make everything else like it. I want to be clear I'm not saying that's what Mechanus is specifically presented as, but Planescape definitely takes the concept of Platonic Ideals and turns them up to 11.

Edit: Also keep in mind that mortal thoughts change the nature of the Great Wheel, so if enough mortals stopped think of the Great Wheel and instead of though of it as the Great Haggis Cook Off that's what the multiverse would eventually reshape itself into. In fact its a major Plancescape plot point that an entire layer of Arcadia slid into Mechanus because the Harmonium were running re-education camps on the layer and it stopped being Good.


@Calthropstu @Beleriphon That discussion you're leading. Are you guys familiar with the distinction between chaos and randomness? (In the IRL, scientific sense.) I feel like there's a misunderstanding you're not even aware off.

I'm aware of enough of the difference to get me into trouble. So, maybe. Please share, I'm happy to be proven wrong.

[Calthropstu]

This is far from a given, but you're giving me ideas.

What if the D&D universe was random in nature (like ours is), but modrons WERE strict determinists.
Meaning that one end of one alignment axis is fundamentally broken and does not represent some kind of basic truth about the universe or stance one can take, but a misguided idea.

How did that come to be? Could the universe have been different in the past? What kind of cataclysmic event caused such a change in the nature of reality? Why have the modrons not adapted to this change? What do the alignments represent? Are they the mirror to some fundamental aspect of the universe (or at least supposed to be)? Is someone preventing the modrons from adapting? Why? Or are the axes like a divine portfolio and the modrons are like an old god refusing to change, to make way for the new way of things?

@Calthropstu @Beleriphon That discussion you're leading. Are you guys familiar with the distinction between chaos and randomness? (In the IRL, scientific sense.) I feel like there's a misunderstanding you're not even aware off.



PhDs? Try nobel laureates. :)

To take us further down the rabbit hole of actual physics: It's not that the information is hidden in some fashion (this notion is called, appropriately, "hidden variables theory" and has been experimentally disproven in the 70s; see Bell Inequalities), we just can't get to it, it's that the information does not exist.
Sixty symbols video. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwGyqJMPmvE)

It's not so much that the information doesn't exist, there are simply unmeasurable and unknown factors at work. I am familiar with uncertainty principle. And my friend looked at it long and hard before finally agreeing it was, in fact, possible that I was correct.

But I figured out long ago that theoretical physics is rife with errors, and I disagree with them on major items.

The uncertainty principle is something I personally question. Yes, waves have an unpredictability to them. But I think it is not because they "are inherently unpredictable" but rather forces are at work we are unable to percieve, interact with or measure. Yet.

Because, at a quantum level, matter begins to act like waves, maybe the unknown quantity is present there. But that doesn't mean "it is unknowable." Scientists for thousands of years have made that claim. Until someone ultimately proves them wrong. In a D&D reality, the very nature of this unknown quantity may very well be rooted in the plane of limbo. In pathfinder, this would be a throwback to the maelstrom where all life originated.

But it's nice to know that d&d bull**** can still explain at least some things even at a quantum level.

[Spore]

Nah, your molecular structure only changes if you think it does. And you genuinely have to believe it does change, at which point you'd end up becoming a Modron or some other similar paragon of law, chaos, or whatever.

Cogito, ergo sum is pretty much the byword of the multiverse; or more accurately: Et cogito sic est.

That is a pretty common thing throughout the publications, because it plays so well into the idea of a divine being (aka DM) guiding every move in this game, and to the idea that ideas change reality. Because in D&D it ultimatively does. Which brings the game back into the humanities from the natural sciences, because that is typically what D&D is: An empowering collective game of make believe.

Dice only matter because we as a community decide to add a bit of randomness (read: unpredictability) into our games. D&D is perfectly playable without dice, which is often the preferred way for some things. But ultimatively it looses its luster as a strict game when the DM can make you win/loose at everything.

So no, while Modrons and elemental chaos in the WotR-planescape work on the principles of "quasi-sciences", in reality like many things it is based on esoterics and late 18ths ideas of theoretical science. It is as much physics as alchemy is chemistry. Which means, it is a little of it, and A LOT of esoteric bullcrap.

[martixy]

The multiverse, and more importantly the Great Wheel, are more like Platonic Ideals of universes.
These were kind of rhetorical questions. World-building prompts to be specific.



I'm aware of enough of the difference to get me into trouble. So, maybe. Please share, I'm happy to be proven wrong.

I already talked about this in my first post, but it's likely over the head of most readers. I'll try to explain better.

A chaotic system, is one that is highly sensitive to initial conditions. A double pendulum is the classic example found in the Chaos theory wiki page I linked. Perhaps a more understandable example is a pencil balanced on its tip. A minuscule change in how it is balanced will change which direction it falls toward.

Randomness is the idea that a particular outcome CANNOT be determined by any information you have prior to it. Said another way, there does not exist information that will let you determine the outcome of a random event. Particle decay is fundamentally a random process. There is nothing you can measure, no experiment you can do that will tell you when a particle will decay.

Now combine the 2 concepts. Along with quantum mechanics.

So quantum mechanics generally only works on very small scales. But what if you only need small changes to affect a system drastically - i.e. a system is highly chaotic? Chaotic systems allow quantum mechanical effects, which are normally limited to small scales to escape into the macroscopic world.

Conversely, you can have a very chaotic system, but if you are somehow able to reset it to the EXACT same initial conditions, you will always get the same outcome.
A highly chaotic system can resemble randomness, but the two concept are distinct.




Randomness / Chaos
High randomness
Low randomness


High chaos
Fluid mechanics
Pseudo random number generators


Low chaos
Schrodinger's cat
A marble at the bottom of a concave bowl



Fluid mechanics: As much as we can model certain situations well enough, fluid mechanics is fundamentally both highly chaotic and random. Describing turbulent flow is an unsolved problem in physics.

Pseudo Random Number Generators: These are the random number generators your computer uses (barring hardware sources of randomness present in some chips). They are algorithms designed to statistically resemble randomness. But they are not random (hence the pseudo), they are strictly deterministic. The same input will ALWAYS produce the same output. However the exceptionally high chaos of the system means that they APPEAR random. Input successive numbers (small differences in initial conditions), but get WILDLY differing outputs.

Schrodinger's cat: The cat, and the whole box are a highly random system - it depends on the fundamentally random process of particle decay. But it is a very low chaos system. Outcomes do not vary based on when the particle decays or other factors. The dispenser always releases the same amount of gas. The cat always ends up either dead or alive.

Marble in bowl: A marble at the bottom of a concave bowl is a highly stable macroscopic system. It does not matter how you drop the marble in, it will always end up in practically the same position - at the lowest point at the bottom of the bowl. Changing the initial conditions does very little for the final outcome, and that outcome is practically always the same, there is no randomness.



The uncertainty principle is something I personally question.

I... what?

If you want to continue this particular discussion, do you mind if we stick to experimentally verified science and steer away from personal speculation?

[Yukito01]

Something I'd like to my initial post is that my main gripe with Mechanus is not whether it is deterministic or not. As someone else said, in the end the planes are made out of beliefs, and it may be possible that such belief exists. My point was more of the line of planar Law (the belief in DnD) shouldn't be limited as such. Randomness (and/or chaos; I may be mixing concepts here) should also be part of Law.

Highly chaotic and random processes should not be any more difficult for a modron to understand. It's just along the lines "the process behaves according to models". In Mechanus, anything and everything can and is modelled, according to some laws of the universe. The Great Modron March is done as such because the models have found the most optimum paths, or something like that. Even if the individual low modrons don't know the model, they still believe anything can be modelled, and thus understood. In that sense, nothing is 'random' (as in, nothng that can't be modelled exists). I think that makes a slightly better interpretation.

Plus, even if Mechanus were purely deterministic as some people are claiming, how does it deal with the 'chaos' brought forth by gates? By planeswalkers? I assume some Chaos (as in, chaotic energy) will undoubtedly seep in from the borders of the plane, throwing a wrench into all that determinism. Also, how modrons deal with imprecisions brought forth by trimming down trascendental and other infinite numbers? For any calculation, they will inevitably have to round to some precision, which may bring forward different outcomes (for example, in highly chaotic processes, like a double pendulum). I don't know, this is turning difficult to express into words!

[TheStranger]

Something I'd like to my initial post is that my main gripe with Mechanus is not whether it is deterministic or not. As someone else said, in the end the planes are made out of beliefs, and it may be possible that such belief exists. My point was more of the line of planar Law (the belief in DnD) shouldn't be limited as such. Randomness (and/or chaos; I may be mixing concepts here) should also be part of Law.

Highly chaotic and random processes should not be any more difficult for a modron to understand. It's just along the lines "the process behaves according to models". In Mechanus, anything and everything can and is modelled, according to some laws of the universe. The Great Modron March is done as such because the models have found the most optimum paths, or something like that. Even if the individual low modrons don't know the model, they still believe anything can be modelled, and thus understood. In that sense, nothing is 'random' (as in, nothng that can't be modelled exists). I think that makes a slightly better interpretation.

Plus, even if Mechanus were purely deterministic as some people are claiming, how does it deal with the 'chaos' brought forth by gates? By planeswalkers? I assume some Chaos (as in, chaotic energy) will undoubtedly seep in from the borders of the plane, throwing a wrench into all that determinism. Also, how modrons deal with imprecisions brought forth by trimming down trascendental and other infinite numbers? For any calculation, they will inevitably have to round to some precision, which may bring forward different outcomes (for example, in highly chaotic processes, like a double pendulum). I don't know, this is turning difficult to express into words!

On Mechanus, pi is exactly 3. It’s more *rational* that way.

I can imagine a deterministic multiverse where gates and planeswalkers aren’t truly random/chaotic so much as they are difficult to include in the model. Obviously a fully-realized model of the multiverse would account for these things, but it’s certainly easier to model a reality that doesn’t have to deal with them. Which is perhaps the logical bridge between determinism as a philosophy/belief and individual “lawful” behavior. The average person/modron/whatever isn’t able to process the behavior of every particle in the multiverse to understand how all things are determined, so it is possible for them to perceive events as random or chaotic and to be surprised by them. This is, obviously, undesirable. Thus, all right-thinking beings should strive to conform to expectations so that the observable behavior of the world remains within modeled parameters. As such, gates/planeswalkers/planar boundaries aren’t an exception to the deterministic nature of reality, just harder-to-predict local events that should be minimized if they can’t be avoided.

This thread is giving me an idea for a campaign where Mechanus starts encroaching on the Prime and probability breaks down. Like maybe the first clue/hook is a bar fight because the dice keep coming up seven, or something like that. Flipped coins alternate heads and tails. Everybody dies of natural causes at the age of exactly 71 years, 4 months, and 11 days. Is any of that bad? I don’t know. It’s predictable and orderly, and that’s what’s important.

[Calthropstu]

These were kind of rhetorical questions. World-building prompts to be specific.




I already talked about this in my first post, but it's likely over the head of most readers. I'll try to explain better.

A chaotic system, is one that is highly sensitive to initial conditions. A double pendulum is the classic example found in the Chaos theory wiki page I linked. Perhaps a more understandable example is a pencil balanced on its tip. A minuscule change in how it is balanced will change which direction it falls toward.

Randomness is the idea that a particular outcome CANNOT be determined by any information you have prior to it. Said another way, there does not exist information that will let you determine the outcome of a random event. Particle decay is fundamentally a random process. There is nothing you can measure, no experiment you can do that will tell you when a particle will decay.

Now combine the 2 concepts. Along with quantum mechanics.

So quantum mechanics generally only works on very small scales. But what if you only need small changes to affect a system drastically - i.e. a system is highly chaotic? Chaotic systems allow quantum mechanical effects, which are normally limited to small scales to escape into the macroscopic world.

Conversely, you can have a very chaotic system, but if you are somehow able to reset it to the EXACT same initial conditions, you will always get the same outcome.
A highly chaotic system can resemble randomness, but the two concept are distinct.




Randomness / Chaos
High randomness
Low randomness


High chaos
Fluid mechanics
Pseudo random number generators


Low chaos
Schrodinger's cat
A marble at the bottom of a concave bowl



Fluid mechanics: As much as we can model certain situations well enough, fluid mechanics is fundamentally both highly chaotic and random. Describing turbulent flow is an unsolved problem in physics.

Pseudo Random Number Generators: These are the random number generators your computer uses (barring hardware sources of randomness present in some chips). They are algorithms designed to statistically resemble randomness. But they are not random (hence the pseudo), they are strictly deterministic. The same input will ALWAYS produce the same output. However the exceptionally high chaos of the system means that they APPEAR random. Input successive numbers (small differences in initial conditions), but get WILDLY differing outputs.

Schrodinger's cat: The cat, and the whole box are a highly random system - it depends on the fundamentally random process of particle decay. But it is a very low chaos system. Outcomes do not vary based on when the particle decays or other factors. The dispenser always releases the same amount of gas. The cat always ends up either dead or alive.

Marble in bowl: A marble at the bottom of a concave bowl is a highly stable macroscopic system. It does not matter how you drop the marble in, it will always end up in practically the same position - at the lowest point at the bottom of the bowl. Changing the initial conditions does very little for the final outcome, and that outcome is practically always the same, there is no randomness.




I... what?

If you want to continue this particular discussion, do you mind if we stick to experimentally verified science and steer away from personal speculation?

Questioning "established" science, especially something as horribly sketchy as "it just can't be figured out," is how science evolves.

To be fair, this isn't like the time I proved achieving the effects of time travel was theoretically possible. There really is nothing there we can percieve so I can only guess and conjecture. Is there another force at work we can't percieve in waves affecting them? Is there a quality within waves themselves we have overlooked?

Since I do not have the expertise required to investigate further, I cannot proceed. Just know this particular principle I completely reject.

[Segev]

To take us further down the rabbit hole of actual physics: It's not that the information is hidden in some fashion (this notion is called, appropriately, "hidden variables theory" and has been experimentally disproven in the 70s; see Bell Inequalities), we just can't get to it, it's that the information does not exist.
Sixty symbols video. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwGyqJMPmvE)

That video doesn't really give me any firmer grasp on it than I already had, sadly. I say "sadly" because I "get" that "hidden variables" are supposedly demonstrated not to be there, but all the experiments and probability distributions that I can find that have been done to prove this leave me questioning their logic and reasoning. And perhaps it's just a shortcoming of my own intellect - I only have an M.S. in physics; my Ph.D. is in computer engineering - but they always seem to fail to close the loop and leave me questioning why the interactions used to generate them don't change things.

Entanglement allegedly explains that two particles are linked in such a way that one may as well be the other, but they still break that entanglement at the measurements. (I'm thinking of the photons through three polarized films experiments, here, some of which have been done with entangled particles to try to remove at least one measurement-interaction that could change the hidden variables.)

I don't have the expertise and mastery of the math to say hidden variable theory is RIGHT, but I can't look at the experimental results and say they've successfully falsified it, either.

It only gets weirder when the discussion of entanglement says that, since there's no hidden variables, the state of the two particles isn't determined until one of them is measured, and the other one is instantly locked into the complementary state (which may be the same one or a different one mathematically linked as having to be the other particle's state). But these experiments never seem to, again, close the loop on proving the lack of a hidden variable. Moreover, multiverse theory would require hidden variables, and serious physicists seem to still be arguing for multiverse theory. (That is, every possible quantum state happens, just in different universes.)

[PhoenixPhyre]

I've said it before, but you've got a choice--pick two.

1) Real-world physical law is the correct micro-level description of physical law in <setting>
2) <Setting> has magic
3) <Setting> has internally-consistent physical laws.

D&D has chosen path #2. Thus, it can either use real-world physical law as the basis and have inconsistent physical laws that are impossible to reason about (because they're fundamentally broken by magic) or it can have its own set of physical laws and have consistency, at the cost of those physical laws (at the core level) being very different from what we're used to here.

Multiple infinite planes just don't work with modern physics. You'd have objectively observable effects on the material plane--orbits wouldn't be closed and planets would either decay into the sun or spiral out into the dark because gravity would no longer locally act like a 1/r^2 law due to the infinite energy density.

The level at which you can keep consistency and have magic is somewhere around what a mid-medieval alchemist would recognize with his tools. Things fall when dropped, some things will burn but others won't.

This means that invoking anything like quantum mechanics or relativity[1] in a discussion of D&D worlds is missing the entire point and inserting something where it absolutely cannot belong. Unless you want the world to be internally incoherent. Which is a choice, but kinda makes the idea of talking about physical laws as if they mean anything kinda pointless.

[1] Which, as someone with a PhD in computational quantum chemistry, always makes me cringe. Because frankly, no. Just no. Really but no. Only thing worse are philosophers talking about the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics. It's necessarily a pop-culture level of understanding of QM/relativity because the medium can't handle more. And because we're so far outside the realm of what QM actually deals with that it's all just buzzwords.

[Segev]

I've said it before, but you've got a choice--pick two.

1) Real-world physical law is the correct micro-level description of physical law in <setting>
2) <Setting> has magic
3) <Setting> has internally-consistent physical laws.

D&D has chosen path #2. Thus, it can either use real-world physical law as the basis and have inconsistent physical laws that are impossible to reason about (because they're fundamentally broken by magic) or it can have its own set of physical laws and have consistency, at the cost of those physical laws (at the core level) being very different from what we're used to here.

Multiple infinite planes just don't work with modern physics. You'd have objectively observable effects on the material plane--orbits wouldn't be closed and planets would either decay into the sun or spiral out into the dark because gravity would no longer locally act like a 1/r^2 law due to the infinite energy density.

The level at which you can keep consistency and have magic is somewhere around what a mid-medieval alchemist would recognize with his tools. Things fall when dropped, some things will burn but others won't.

This means that invoking anything like quantum mechanics or relativity[1] in a discussion of D&D worlds is missing the entire point and inserting something where it absolutely cannot belong. Unless you want the world to be internally incoherent. Which is a choice, but kinda makes the idea of talking about physical laws as if they mean anything kinda pointless.

[1] Which, as someone with a PhD in computational quantum chemistry, always makes me cringe. Because frankly, no. Just no. Really but no. Only thing worse are philosophers talking about the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics. It's necessarily a pop-culture level of understanding of QM/relativity because the medium can't handle more. And because we're so far outside the realm of what QM actually deals with that it's all just buzzwords.
Sure. My point in bringing up quantum uncertainty was more about how the statement that things are deterministic is not even true IRL, necessarily, than about how D&D works. The D&D-related point thus being that it certainly need not be true that D&D-setting-world is deterministic.

[Anymage]

Questioning "established" science, especially something as horribly sketchy as "it just can't be figured out," is how science evolves.

Science worth a damn also has to acknowledge that any existing theories have done a pretty good job predicting experiments so far. We know our current model of the universe is incomplete. We keep using our current tools because nothing else has worked better, and because they still let us get useful results. If you want your competing idea to be taken seriously, give us useful new predictions it makes while not contradicting existing experiments too harshly.


Highly chaotic and random processes should not be any more difficult for a modron to understand.

The modron hierarchy, focusing on Primus and those in his immediate orbit, probably do work like you're saying. They're god tier intellects who can understand things to obscene precision, but understand "highly sensitive to initial conditions" chaos and think that there's even more precision they're not grasping behind Limbo, and to some degree every other plane that isn't the deterministic paradise that is Mechanus. PCs are just unlikely to regularly interact with Primus and his inner circle.

Modrons the PCs do interact with are of more mortal tier intellect. And even ones who break from the hivemind enough to be considered rogues are still composed of Mechanus energies and have spent the overwhelming bulk of their existence there. As such, they're understandably closer to scientists of over a century ago who thought that physics was almost completely solved with only a few small details around the margins to figure out. They're wrong. But mortal tier intellects, even smart ones, have been wrong before. If they were raised on a deterministic plane and are made of that plane's energies, it's very likely that they'll consider unknown (but still essentially knowable) laws or insufficient precision to be better explanations for random events than actual, irreducible randomness.

[Calthropstu]

Science worth a damn also has to acknowledge that any existing theories have done a pretty good job predicting experiments so far. We know our current model of the universe is incomplete. We keep using our current tools because nothing else has worked better, and because they still let us get useful results. If you want your competing idea to be taken seriously, give us useful new predictions it makes while not contradicting existing experiments too harshly.



The modron hierarchy, focusing on Primus and those in his immediate orbit, probably do work like you're saying. They're god tier intellects who can understand things to obscene precision, but understand "highly sensitive to initial conditions" chaos and think that there's even more precision they're not grasping behind Limbo, and to some degree every other plane that isn't the deterministic paradise that is Mechanus. PCs are just unlikely to regularly interact with Primus and his inner circle.

Modrons the PCs do interact with are of more mortal tier intellect. And even ones who break from the hivemind enough to be considered rogues are still composed of Mechanus energies and have spent the overwhelming bulk of their existence there. As such, they're understandably closer to scientists of over a century ago who thought that physics was almost completely solved with only a few small details around the margins to figure out. They're wrong. But mortal tier intellects, even smart ones, have been wrong before. If they were raised on a deterministic plane and are made of that plane's energies, it's very likely that they'll consider unknown (but still essentially knowable) laws or insufficient precision to be better explanations for random events than actual, irreducible randomness.

Fair. But I am not questioning their results, but the conclusion they came to as a result. It is perfectly fine to say "we have no idea why these are acting this way." But I take major exception to what is essentially "and it is pointless to try."

[Chauncymancer]

The Great Wheel takes blatant inspiration from real esoteric beliefs and virtually every outer plane refers to some mythological concept by name.

It the Wheel feels like a mess, it's because the game designers (for various reasons) slowly filed the serial numbers off, replacing them first with theme park versions of themselves, then with second and third hand fantasy derivatives, in a grand game of Telephone where each new iteration is subtly different, but not actually better explained.

I think the wheel's messiness is much more rooted in the fact that it's at least five completely different and incompatible religions' other worlds crammed into a shoebox, and any syncretic attempt is going to be a handwave at best.

[Anymage]

Y'know, I think your response actually gets back to the question that kicked this thread off.

Einstein's "god does not play dice with the universe" came as a reaction to his distaste for the uncertainty intrinsic in quantum experiments. Schrodinger's Cat was likewise meant to ridicule the interpretations. Some incredibly smart people have felt that there had to be some deterministic structure underlying the quantum weirdness, and some have set out trying to create interpretations where the information is there in a real way instead of randomly created at the moment that a measurement needs to be taken. The "randomly created at the moment a measurement is taken" hypotheses have tended to better fit experimental evidence, but there are still plenty of people who are sure there's something orderly and deterministic if you just dig deep enough.

D&D characters live in a universe where both Law and Chaos are fundamental cosmic forces, to the point where an alchemic reasoning based on the four basic elements plus the core alignments works better than trying to transpose our periodic table to their universe would. Still, if very smart people from our world keep on insisting that there must be a deterministic underpinning to randomness if only they had enough information, modrons who are as smart as very smart people might also believe that "random" effects could likewise be figured out if only they had enough information to enough precision. If it's an outlook that plenty of real world people have, it's a perfectly believable outlook for outsiders native to a plane of pure Law.

[Beleriphon]

I already talked about this in my first post, but it's likely over the head of most readers. I'll try to explain better.

Alright, I pretty much understood it conceptually then, if not all of the high level theory. Weather versus a die roll. Weather isn't actually random, bu it is so complicated that we can't predict it fully there are just too many variable interacting to really get a senese. While a die roll is just random, or quantum splitting which appears to actually be random whether quantum duplication takes place.

[Calthropstu]

Y'know, I think your response actually gets back to the question that kicked this thread off.

Einstein's "god does not play dice with the universe" came as a reaction to his distaste for the uncertainty intrinsic in quantum experiments. Schrodinger's Cat was likewise meant to ridicule the interpretations. Some incredibly smart people have felt that there had to be some deterministic structure underlying the quantum weirdness, and some have set out trying to create interpretations where the information is there in a real way instead of randomly created at the moment that a measurement needs to be taken. The "randomly created at the moment a measurement is taken" hypotheses have tended to better fit experimental evidence, but there are still plenty of people who are sure there's something orderly and deterministic if you just dig deep enough.

D&D characters live in a universe where both Law and Chaos are fundamental cosmic forces, to the point where an alchemic reasoning based on the four basic elements plus the core alignments works better than trying to transpose our periodic table to their universe would. Still, if very smart people from our world keep on insisting that there must be a deterministic underpinning to randomness if only they had enough information, modrons who are as smart as very smart people might also believe that "random" effects could likewise be figured out if only they had enough information to enough precision. If it's an outlook that plenty of real world people have, it's a perfectly believable outlook for outsiders native to a plane of pure Law.

Huh. I didn't realise that's what schrodinger was doing. Live and learn. But to those who take schrodingers cat as serious, I have this to say: Replace the cat with termites. And the box is now made of wood.

If the radioactive material does not kill them, they will likely eat the box. Does this same state apply to them despite the fact that they can act out of focus? Spiders are currently eating flies. Does this change just because we don't see them? No.

Quantum theory is interesting, but some of it is simply bonkers.

[Beleriphon]

Huh. I didn't realise that's what schrodinger was doing. Live and learn. But to those who take schrodingers cat as serious, I have this to say: Replace the cat with termites. And the box is now made of wood.

If the radioactive material does not kill them, they will likely eat the box. Does this same state apply to them despite the fact that they can act out of focus? Spiders are currently eating flies. Does this change just because we don't see them? No.

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound? I think we'd all say yes, but what makes you so sure it actually does make a sound? You didn't hear, nobody else heard it to confirm that it does.

As for the flies we can infer that spiders are eating them, since we have observed spiders eating flies in the past, and there is a reduction in the number of flies in my house, and I have seen a spider in my house. However, I cannot concretely prove that the spider has been eating the flies, as I have not observed that each fly has been eaten by said spider. The flies might have died on their own, flown out a window, I might have eaten them in my sleep, or any of a myriad of other possibilities.

The balance of probabilities would suggest that the flies are being eaten by spiders, but we can only know for sure that spiders are eating flies when we watch them do it. The line of thought is like the Warner Brothers' cartoon about the singing and dancing frog. Unless I'm actively observing something I can't be 100% it is happening. In fact the only thing I can be 100% certain of is myself, Ergo Cogito Sum and all that.

[Calthropstu]

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound? I think we'd all say yes, but what makes you so sure it actually does make a sound? You didn't hear, nobody else heard it to confirm that it does.

As for the flies we can infer that spiders are eating them, since we have observed spiders eating flies in the past, and there is a reduction in the number of flies in my house, and I have seen a spider in my house. However, I cannot concretely prove that the spider has been eating the flies, as I have not observed that each fly has been eaten by said spider. The flies might have died on their own, flown out a window, I might have eaten them in my sleep, or any of a myriad of other possibilities.

The balance of probabilities would suggest that the flies are being eaten by spiders, but we can only know for sure that spiders are eating flies when we watch them do it. The line of thought is like the Warner Brothers' cartoon about the singing and dancing frog. Unless I'm actively observing something I can't be 100% it is happening. In fact the only thing I can be 100% certain of is myself, Ergo Cogito Sum and all that.

True, from your perspective.

But the spider has a perspective too. That perspective may only be "caught food, eat yum" But it IS a perspective. But why should perspective matter?

Let's take the tree-forest example as it is simplest to work with. A tree falls in a forest. It was once upright, but now it is not. Is it still upright if the last perspective to percieve it percieved it as upright? No. Whether you percieve it or not, bacterial rot will occur. If no one percieves it for 1000 years, maybe there will be nothing left of the once upright tree. The new percievers don't even know there was ever a tree.

But there was. Truth and existence are immutable. Perception can change, Truth, pure and absolute, does not. A tree fell in a forest, forgotten and lost to history. It contributed its matter to thousands of minor organisms which in turn fed maggots and worms. Which in turn fed birds. Which made a pretty little song that a young girl hears who begins to wonder what it would be like to fly and sing pretty songs like the bird.

These things happened regardless of your perception. Existence does not need our perception to exist. With schrodinger's cat, it is not the state of the cat that is in question, but our knowledge of whether the cat is alive or dead.

Our knowledge or lack thereof does not alter existence by itself. If it really were conciousness that determined deality, the fact that nature functions outside perception would mean a conciousness was driving it to do so. And I think I am going to reject that train of thought and ask how the weather is where you are.

[GloatingSwine]

These things happened regardless of your perception. Existence does not need our perception to exist.

Boy have I got a quantum double slit experiment for you....

You know the double slit experiment, right? Everyone does it in school, two narrow slits in a lightbox, causes a pattern of bands of light on a screen when projected due to interference.

Well it turns out that if you do that with a light source so attenuated that it releases only one photon at a time, and a screen which records where the photon strikes, it still produces the banding as if the photon is passing through both slits simultaneously, interfering with itself.

But if you put a detector in the slits which allows you to record which one the photon went through, the interference bands disappear.

Changing where the path was measured changes the path.

At the quantum level, existence is altered by the act of observing it.

[Calthropstu]

Boy have I got a quantum double slit experiment for you....

You know the double slit experiment, right? Everyone does it in school, two narrow slits in a lightbox, causes a pattern of bands of light on a screen when projected due to interference.

Well it turns out that if you do that with a light source so attenuated that it releases only one photon at a time, and a screen which records where the photon strikes, it still produces the banding as if the photon is passing through both slits simultaneously, interfering with itself.

But if you put a detector in the slits which allows you to record which one the photon went through, the interference bands disappear.

Changing where the path was measured changes the path.

At the quantum level, existence is altered by the act of observing it.

Probably a fault of the detector being flawed. Did they try adding more? Did they try timing 100 different timed ones at once? Did they try taking them and timing them to music?

I am willing to wager the detector records it all as continuous because of a flaw.

Simply put, if your experiment disagrees with reality itself, odds are it is your experiment that is wrong.

[GloatingSwine]

Probably a fault of the detector being flawed.

Nope.

This is 100% replicable.

It's just how the universe works at the quantum level.

The problem you're having here is that reality is far stranger than you think it is. When things are very small or very fast or very massive, well, the human intuitive understanding of reality isn't supposed to be able to deal with what happens.

[Calthropstu]

Nope.

This is 100% replicable.

It's just how the universe works at the quantum level.

The problem you're having here is that reality is far stranger than you think it is. When things are very small or very fast or very massive, well, the human intuitive understanding of reality isn't supposed to be able to deal with what happens.

Yes. I imagine it can be replicated with complete accuracy. If you use the same detector, expecting a different result would be quite silly.

But like I said, what happens if you increase the number? Place 100 pairs onto the same detector. If none of them shut off and all seem continuous, but if you can detect the shut off individually, the likelihood that the detector is the problem is pretty much guaranteed.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Yes. I imagine it can be replicated with complete accuracy. If you use the same detector, expecting a different result would be quite silly.

But like I said, what happens if you increase the number? Place 100 pairs onto the same detector. If none of them shut off and all seem continuous, but if you can detect the shut off individually, the likelihood that the detector is the problem is pretty much guaranteed.

You can do it without a detector at all. Just a screen. It's not about observation as much as it is non local effects. Any change to the possible paths the photon could take alters the pattern/probability distribution, and does so in predictable ways before any photons actually travel.

[Calthropstu]

You can do it without a detector at all. Just a screen. It's not about observation as much as it is non local effects. Any change to the possible paths the photon could take alters the pattern/probability distribution, and does so in predictable ways before any photons actually travel.

That sounds far more reasonable than "observing something alters the flow yo"

If something "doesn't make sense" at super speeds or super small or super length, then obviously something is causing it. Figuring it out and going further is the name of the game.

[PhoenixPhyre]

That sounds far more reasonable than "observing something alters the flow yo"

If something "doesn't make sense" at super speeds or super small or super length, then obviously something is causing it. Figuring it out and going further is the name of the game.

Here's the thing. We can observe the necessary effects of quantum mechanics in such a manner and at such a (highly-replicated) precision as to make the Standard Model the working model for anyone working in this regime. We can show (cf Bell's Theorem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem)) that local hidden-variables theories (such as you're proposing) are incompatible with measurements. You either have to give up locality or determinism. Your choice. The only real serious remaining hidden-variables theory (Bohmian mechanics (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-bohm/)) gives up locality. Classical models simply cannot (and can be shown to be incapable of at the core mathematical level) describe what we see around us, including the Quantum Hall Effect, the way molecules bond, the behavior of electrons[1], etc. Things we can measure to extremely high precision[2].

How does this apply to D&D? It doesn't. Unless a setting designer wants it to, and then only to the degree they want it to. D&D could be entirely deterministic (at the cost of very different underlying physical laws). Or it could be even more lol-random than the real world, which is probabalistic (not random). Or anywhere in between. There's no guarantee (and in fact strong evidence suggesting the opposite) that the "stock" D&D cosmology of any edition is compatible with real-world physical laws.

[1] Note--you can do that double-slit experiment with electrons. With the same results. Even weirder, if you make a single slit narrow enough, you can get electrons to show diffraction patterns as if they were waves. Even when only a single electron is fired at a time. In fact, this electron diffraction effect is critical to a lot of scientific machinery. And electron tunneling[3] is critical to a lot of modern electronics.

[2] To a physicist, 99% precision is horrible. Generally the standard for finding something in physics is 5-6 9s. So 99.999 or 99.9999% precision. And some things, like the electron magnetic moment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_magnetic_moment) have been measured to a precision of 7.6 parts in 10^13.

[3] where an electron can be measured to have passed through a barrier that it does not have enough energy to penetrate without actually ever ending up in the barrier (ie it was on one side, then it was on the other, without having passed through the intervening space). Turns out this can be predicted (well, the rate of tunneling anyway) extremely precisely and can be manipulated by electric fields. Much of biology and chemistry depend on this effect. And chip-makers have to worry about this tons as the feature size gets smaller. In fact, it's one of the fundamental limits of any miniaturization effort. Electrons act as if they were non-local entities. While at the same time acting like particles with well-defined positions. Depending on what test you're performing[4].

[4] the fundamental point of uncertainty is that there are pairs of physical observables that cannot be measured simultaneously with more than a certain precision. Changes in energy vs duration (this is implied in atomic and molecular electronic transitions as well as pair creation/annihilation). Position and momentum. The three components of angular momentum form an uncertainty triad (you can only measure two at a time and doing so means you cap the amount of knowledge about the third. No matter which two you chose.). And this isn't even about conscious measurement--it's a fundamental fact of the underlying math. And we've measured the consequences of this to insane levels of precision.

[KorvinStarmast]

When you get down to it, "Law" and "Chaos" just mean "Opposes Chaos" and "Opposes Law". Any additional detail is something the author writing that particular section thought up, and is as likely as not to be contradicted by the next thing you read about alignment...
The specific idea that Law cannot comprehend randomness certainly seems pretty dumb to me. +1

If I want to pay attention to cosmic levels of Law and Chaos, I'll go back to Moorcock As do I.

I think the OP is correct that law-chaos is somewhat shallow at the planar level. Thing is, the planes of existence (particularly the outer planes) were this odd little bit of D&D worldbuilding that took on a life of it's own without ever stepping back and thinking as to whether there was any specific point or plan to the whole thing... the great wheel and all the different planar descriptions didn't come along until Dragon # 8 in 1977 and then as an AD&D PHB appendix in 1978. In those, the descriptions were rather cursory...Is it sorta silly? Of course, but no more than a world with gelatinous cubes and color-coded dragons. Sorry for all of the snipping, but these three points certainly strike a chord.


It the Wheel feels like a mess, it's because the game designers (for various reasons) slowly filed the serial numbers off, replacing them first with theme park versions of themselves, then with second and third hand fantasy derivatives, in a grand game of Telephone where each new iteration is subtly different, but not actually better explained. Bingo. :smallcool:

[Tanarii]

I feel like it would have been better if they had just stuck with Lawful = civilization and Chaotic = destruction of civlization

[martixy]

That video doesn't really give me any firmer grasp on it than I already had, sadly. I say "sadly" because I "get" that "hidden variables" are supposedly demonstrated not to be there, but all the experiments and probability distributions that I can find that have been done to prove this leave me questioning their logic and reasoning. And perhaps it's just a shortcoming of my own intellect - I only have an M.S. in physics; my Ph.D. is in computer engineering - but they always seem to fail to close the loop and leave me questioning why the interactions used to generate them don't change things.

I'm not sure I actually linked the correct video. I thought it was, but now not so sure. I'm fairly certain it was with Phil Moriarty, and was about waves, but it might be a different video.


Entanglement allegedly explains that two particles are linked in such a way that one may as well be the other, but they still break that entanglement at the measurements. (I'm thinking of the photons through three polarized films experiments, here, some of which have been done with entangled particles to try to remove at least one measurement-interaction that could change the hidden variables.)

I don't have the expertise and mastery of the math to say hidden variable theory is RIGHT, but I can't look at the experimental results and say they've successfully falsified it, either.

It only gets weirder when the discussion of entanglement says that, since there's no hidden variables, the state of the two particles isn't determined until one of them is measured, and the other one is instantly locked into the complementary state (which may be the same one or a different one mathematically linked as having to be the other particle's state). But these experiments never seem to, again, close the loop on proving the lack of a hidden variable. Moreover, multiverse theory would require hidden variables, and serious physicists seem to still be arguing for multiverse theory. (That is, every possible quantum state happens, just in different universes.)

I don't understand your first sentence.

But I know the experiments you mean. I am curious why you consider said experiments insufficient to falsify hidden variables.
And I'm baffled how the multiverse theory fits anywhere. (Semantic nitpick: I think you're talking about the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, and it's not a scientific theory - those require experimental backing and a lot more rigor. Currently many-worlds is unscientific since we can't even conceive of any possible experiment that would differentiate it from others. I like it, it's my favourite interpretation, but it's still unscientific and no better than picking your favourite color.)


This means that invoking anything like quantum mechanics or relativity[1] in a discussion of D&D worlds is missing the entire point and inserting something where it absolutely cannot belong. Unless you want the world to be internally incoherent. Which is a choice, but kinda makes the idea of talking about physical laws as if they mean anything kinda pointless.

I will wholeheartedly agree to this.

At least in my own responses I kept both topics strictly separate. I was merely satisfying the curiosity of some of the other posters.


[1] Which, as someone with a PhD in computational quantum chemistry, always makes me cringe. Because frankly, no. Just no. Really but no. Only thing worse are philosophers talking about the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics. It's necessarily a pop-culture level of understanding of QM/relativity because the medium can't handle more. And because we're so far outside the realm of what QM actually deals with that it's all just buzzwords.

This thread is frustrating. I take solace in the fact I'm not the only one who feels this way. Thank you for being a voice of reason.


And just to be marginally on-topic: I'd make my modrons understand randomness, i.e. stochastic processes, but balk at magic to a lesser or greater degree.

[Segev]

I don't understand your first sentence.When you measure one of two entangled particles, they are no longer entangled (though you do now know what measurements you'll get from the other particle, even though you can no longer measure either of them to make similar determinations). Measurement changes the particles' properties, after all.[/quote]


But I know the experiments you mean. I am curious why you consider said experiments insufficient to falsify hidden variables.
And I'm baffled how the multiverse theory fits anywhere. (Semantic nitpick: I think you're talking about the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, and it's not a scientific theory - those require experimental backing and a lot more rigor. Currently many-worlds is unscientific since we can't even conceive of any possible experiment that would differentiate it from others. I like it, it's my favourite interpretation, but it's still unscientific and no better than picking your favourite color.)Like I said, it may be a lack of understanding on my part. I'd have to hunt down the experiments and re-study them to remember the points they made well enough to discuss my issues with them. I get a sort of "chasing your own tail" feeling while trying to follow them, like they're not quite closing the loop to prove they haven't left out something. But I cannot claim to understand them to the level where I can repeat the description of the experiment and its conclusions, which means I do not claim to understand them on the level I could actually refute them. I simply remain unconvinced that they prove what they purport to prove. They're not valueless, even if so: they do demonstrate interesting properties. But I have more of a, 'you didn't cover everything you need to, and I'm not sure you've left yourself falsifiable hypotheses in the areas you didn't cover' sense to it.

I don't expect this to persuade, mind. I'm just explaining where I am and my reasoning and understanding of the subject: imperfect, but also skeptical.

And sure, I will accept your terminology on the many worlds interpretation not being a "theory." That wasn't really a point I was trying to make, anyway.



As to the double-slit experiment with only one photon passing through a slit at a time, if you have a detector on the slits, you will literally intercept and prevent any detected photons from getting past the detector. A single photon can only be detected by being absorbed. And even if you found a way to detect it based on some sort of emanated field effect, you'd perturb its movement so much that you've destroyed the property that made it essentially sourced from the far side of the slit; you've made its mathematical source the slit, itself. At least, according to my best understanding of quantum theory - which, again, I admit is imperfect even by the standards of modern physicists (who, themselves, will admit that they don't know for sure how it all works, because it's still the cutting edge of research and theory).

[KorvinStarmast]

D&D characters live in a universe where both Law and Chaos are fundamental cosmic forces, to the point where an alchemic reasoning based on the four basic elements plus the core alignments works better than trying to transpose our periodic table to their universe would. That's a lot easier to sell at the table than requiring a bunch of amateur method actors to get quantum theory. :smallbiggrin:

The problem you're having here is that reality is far stranger than you think it is. I think that the platypus teaches us that also.

I feel like it would have been better if they had just stuck with Lawful = civilization and Chaotic = destruction of civlization Yeah, it works really well in terms of the amount of flexibility, not rigidity, that alignment offers as a tool.

Gary's two axis grid was gamist in nature (go figure, he got his start writing war game rules) and I think that it was intended to be restrictive. (And for sure the LG issue for paladins, the Lawful issue for monks, can't be good for thieves, etc)
Too bad. Prescriptive is a poorer baseline than descriptive in terms of game play unless you want a board game or Computer game code. Or, unless you like playing gotcha with paladins.

[Jay R]

Gary's two axis grid was gamist in nature (go figure, he got his start writing war game rules) and I think that it was intended to be restrictive. (And for sure the LG issue for paladins, the Lawful issue for monks, can't be good for thieves, etc)
Too bad. Prescriptive is a poorer baseline than descriptive in terms of game play unless you want a board game or Computer game code. Or, unless you like playing gotcha with paladins.

I've said it before, but it bears repeating.

Gygax created a one-axis alignment system for original D&D. It was cribbed from fantasy novels, and the alignments were called Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic.

Despite the names, the very few rules about them made it clear that they really meant Good, Neutral, and Evil. A high level cleric was a Patriarch if Lawful, or an Evil High Priest if Chaotic. The description of reversed clerical spells, and effects of clerics on undead, referred to evil clerics, not Chaotic ones, etc.

But many players in the mid-70s, myself included, pointed out that "Lawful" doesn't mean "Good", and "Chaotic" doesn't mean "Evil".

So the developers at TSR had three choices:
1. Admit their mistake and change the D&D terms to Good and Evil,
2. Make the rules clear by explaining the gaming jargon and spelling out that Law and Chaos were being used in a specific sense of Good and Evil, or
3. Try to hide the mistake by inventing an unrealistic and overly complicated game mechanic.

For Gygax, this was always an easy choice.

[Tanarii]

Despite the names, the very few rules about them made it clear that they really meant Good, Neutral, and Evil. A high level cleric was a Patriarch if Lawful, or an Evil High Priest if Chaotic. The description of reversed clerical spells, and effects of clerics on undead, referred to evil clerics, not Chaotic ones, etc.

But many players in the mid-70s, myself included, pointed out that "Lawful" doesn't mean "Good", and "Chaotic" doesn't mean "Evil".Because of what Lawful and Chaotic represented, they actually did commonly line up with what most people would call good and evil.

E.g. Patriarchs, dwarves, elves, halflings, and some humans support civilization, and Evil High Priests, Orcs, goblins, ogres and some humans try to destroy it.

4e did a pretty nice take on it with a single axis: Lawful Good - Good - Neutral - Evil - Chaotic Evil.

[hamishspence]

4e did a pretty nice take on it with a single axis: Lawful Good - Good - Neutral - Evil - Chaotic Evil.
"Good" in 4E is a conflation of NG and CG. "Evil" in 4E is a conflation of NE and LE.

It's not that different from the Eric Holmes version of Basic D&D, in which there were the 5 corner alignments (LG, CG, LE, CE) and TN.



Despite the names, the very few rules about them made it clear that they really meant Good, Neutral, and Evil. A high level cleric was a Patriarch if Lawful, or an Evil High Priest if Chaotic. The description of reversed clerical spells, and effects of clerics on undead, referred to evil clerics, not Chaotic ones, etc.

But many players in the mid-70s, myself included, pointed out that "Lawful" doesn't mean "Good", and "Chaotic" doesn't mean "Evil".

So the developers at TSR had three choices:
1. Admit their mistake and change the D&D terms to Good and Evil,
2. Make the rules clear by explaining the gaming jargon and spelling out that Law and Chaos were being used in a specific sense of Good and Evil, or
3. Try to hide the mistake by inventing an unrealistic and overly complicated game mechanic.

BCEMI acknowledged that some Lawful monsters were Evil (Hydrax, Hordes), and that some Chaotic monsters were Good (Djinni). It suggested that players should decide for themselves whether their own Chaotic characters were the mean, selfish, "evil" type of Chaotic, or the "happy-go-lucky, unpredictable" type of Chaotic.

[Willie the Duck]

BCEMI acknowledged that some Lawful monsters were Evil (Hydrax, Hordes), and that some Chaotic monsters were Good (Djinni). It suggested that players should decide for themselves whether their own Chaotic characters were the mean, selfish, "evil" type of Chaotic, or the "happy-go-lucky, unpredictable" type of Chaotic.

Oh, for sure. There's certainly instances of that as well. There was precious little consistency, especially when you look between DM and player sections for five* boxed sets, plus all the modules and supplemental material. BX and BECMI, just in general, mixed and matched just how evil they liked their evil as well. Sometimes the bad guys were going to cook and eat anyone they took prisoner, and next book they were villains out of kids television programs or similar (Orcs of Thar being the most 80s cartoon-show-ish).
*Although the Immortal set had its own take on all this, with 'entropy' taking on the 'not inherently evil thing that takes on the role of team evil' mantle.

[Vahnavoi]

I've said it before, but it bears repeating.

Gygax created a one-axis alignment system for original D&D. It was cribbed from fantasy novels, and the alignments were called Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic.

Despite the names, the very few rules about them made it clear that they really meant Good, Neutral, and Evil. A high level cleric was a Patriarch if Lawful, or an Evil High Priest if Chaotic. The description of reversed clerical spells, and effects of clerics on undead, referred to evil clerics, not Chaotic ones, etc.

But many players in the mid-70s, myself included, pointed out that "Lawful" doesn't mean "Good", and "Chaotic" doesn't mean "Evil".

So the developers at TSR had three choices:
1. Admit their mistake and change the D&D terms to Good and Evil,
2. Make the rules clear by explaining the gaming jargon and spelling out that Law and Chaos were being used in a specific sense of Good and Evil, or
3. Try to hide the mistake by inventing an unrealistic and overly complicated game mechanic.

For Gygax, this was always an easy choice.

Well that's one way to put it. :smallamused:

I wouldn't fault Gygax for people's inability to read English, though. 1st Edition AD&D plainly says the Law versus Chaos conflict is that of large organized groups versus individual, AKA collectivism versus individualism. That's an identifiable real conflict.

That people can be confused on that point shows they never read that or that subsequent editions of (A)D&D managed to explain it worse than Gygax, a feat unto itself. :smalltongue:

[Satinavian]

Quantum theory is interesting, but some of it is simply bonkers.Quantum physicists never like the collaps through observation/measurement. It is and was always fishy to say what such a measurement/collaps actually is and why it is happening at a certain time, not sooner or later.

The traditional, easiest way to handle it is saying whenever i stop using the quantum mechanics and derive any classical result, is when a measurement happens. But it is by far not the only idea. Others use multi-world-theory, quantum decoherence or quantum entropy or a mix of those.

[Segev]

Quantum physicists never like the collaps through observation/measurement. It is and was always fishy to say what such a measurement/collaps actually is and why it is happening at a certain time, not sooner or later.

The traditional, easiest way to handle it is saying whenever i stop using the quantum mechanics and derive any classical result, is when a measurement happens. But it is by far not the only idea. Others use multi-world-theory, quantum decoherence or quantum entropy or a mix of those.

While I don't understand those theories nearly as well, instinctively they make a bit more sense to me. "Observation" implies that there's some "mind" watching. If you remove that notion, and declare it's any "interaction" that does it, we have too many things that are interactions on a quantum level that DON'T cause the "collapse" and it just feels like a just-so-story to say "well, it's only the interactions that qualify as measurements that do it." That magically makes it so that if you ever figure out a way to make a previously-unmeasurable interaction measurable, you change it to an interaction that collapses things.

The quantum state has to operate independently of any "observation." The rules have to be functional without brains waiting to interpret the results. Or, alternatively, we have to accept that minds have psionic influence on the world.

That'd make a cool explanation for psionics in a sci-fi setting, actually: "Because quantum states only collapse when observed, psionic minds are those with the talent, discipline, or skill to choose the way they collapse, even in highly-improbable ways."

[Willie the Duck]

Well that's one way to put it. :smallamused:

I wouldn't fault Gygax for people's inability to read English, though. 1st Edition AD&D plainly says the Law versus Chaos conflict is that of large organized groups versus individual, AKA collectivism versus individualism. That's an identifiable real conflict.

That people can be confused on that point shows they never read that or that subsequent editions of (A)D&D managed to explain it worse than Gygax, a feat unto itself. :smalltongue:

I believe this decision-point we at the design phase for AD&D.

[Vahnavoi]

That'd make a cool explanation for psionics in a sci-fi setting, actually: "Because quantum states only collapse when observed, psionic minds are those with the talent, discipline, or skill to choose the way they collapse, even in highly-improbable ways."

You haven't seen this horse beaten to death in speculative fiction yet? I could've sworn BS interpretations of quantum mechanics as an excuse for psionics and magic is old hat by now...

---

@Willie the Duck: when the decision made is one thing; by 1st edition AD&D DMG in 1979 we can firmly say it was put on paper and codified.

It's funny to look at how both versions of the Law-Neutral-Chaos axis exist outside D&D, by the way. ADOM, a roguelike, has the good versus evil version - while Shin Megami Tensei series has the collectivism versus individualism version. I'm not sure where I'd put Nethack's version.

[zlefin]

This reminds me of another way of looking at the law-chaos axis I've considered:

That it all comes down to what the basis of your food supply is. There's 3 basic sources: farming, pastoralism (raising animals to eat), and finding whatevers around to eat (foraging, fishing, hunting). In particular there's the difference between groups that stay in one place to maintain themselves, and those that roam around seasonally based on weather.

From an earlier edition perspective, a lot of the conflicts among humanoids amount to groups based on farming fighting with the groups based on the other types of getting food. (fishing really doens't fit so neatly into this).

It's not a perfect fit by any means, nor is it really based on 'ethics', but it is interesting, and there's no shortage of historical conflicts along such lines (not going into details ofc due to forum rules).

[Vahnavoi]

That's a decent heuristic for classifying civilizations or ways of life and can help explain what the conflicts are about on a societal level.

[KorvinStarmast]

I've said it before, but it bears repeating.

Gygax created a one-axis alignment system for original D&D. It was cribbed from fantasy novels, and the alignments were called Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic. Yes.

Despite the names, the very few rules about them made it clear that they really meant Good, Neutral, and Evil. In a broad sense, with a lot of soft bits.

A high level cleric was a Patriarch if Lawful, or an Evil High Priest if Chaotic. The description of reversed clerical spells, and effects of clerics on undead, referred to evil clerics, not Chaotic ones, etc. Yes, that specificity in OD&D was peculiar to clerics, though. But the assumption was also, in a lot of play groups, that 'we are the good guys in the story' as Conan was, as John Carter was, as Holger was, but some of us wandered into games where being the good guy, Elric, was being chaotic and doing a lot of awful things. D&D had room for both.

But many players in the mid-70s, myself included, pointed out that "Lawful" doesn't mean "Good", and "Chaotic" doesn't mean "Evil". Indeed we did. Our DM in the late 70's (I am recalling about 1978) confronted our party with a whole bunch of Lawful clerics and paladins who (1) gave our paladin massive grief for hanging out with us reprobates and (2) were not our friends and not our allies. (My druid was more or less run out of town on a rail). Lawful? Yeah. Good? Maybe and maybe not. :smallyuk:


So the developers at TSR had three choices:
1. Admit their mistake and change the D&D terms to Good and Evil,
2. Make the rules clear by explaining the gaming jargon and spelling out that Law and Chaos were being used in a specific sense of Good and Evil, or
3. Try to hide the mistake by inventing an unrealistic and overly complicated game mechanic.

For Gygax, this was always an easy choice. What, 3 was the easy choice? :smallbiggrin: One of the other things that early D&D had, and even proto D&D, was rivalry and competition between PCs. In some groups.

"Good" in 4E is a conflation of NG and CG. "Evil" in 4E is a conflation of NE and LE.
It's not that different from the Eric Holmes version of Basic D&D, in which there were the 5 corner alignments (LG, CG, LE, CE) and TN.

BCEMI acknowledged that some Lawful monsters were Evil (Hydrax, Hordes), and that some Chaotic monsters were Good (Djinni). It suggested that players should decide for themselves whether their own Chaotic characters were the mean, selfish, "evil" type of Chaotic, or the "happy-go-lucky, unpredictable" type of Chaotic. Aye.


1st Edition AD&D plainly says the Law versus Chaos conflict is that of large organized groups versus individual, AKA collectivism versus individualism. That's an identifiable real conflict.
That people can be confused on that point shows they never read that or that subsequent editions of (A)D&D managed to explain it worse than Gygax, a feat unto itself. :smalltongue: Chuckle. Yes, reading all of what E.G.G. wrote could be a bit of a chore. Small bites were the way I ingested the DMG.

[Jay R]

Well that's one way to put it. :smallamused:

I wouldn't fault Gygax for people's inability to read English, though.

I don't. I fault him for arbitrariness, inconsistency, and unnecessarily complicated rules.


1st Edition AD&D plainly says the Law versus Chaos conflict is that of large organized groups versus individual, AKA collectivism versus individualism. That's an identifiable real conflict.

Then they immediately created individualist Lawful Good heroes and Chaotic Evil armies. Gold Dragons (LG) do not form more collectivist societies than Red Dragons (CE). Yes, that is one of several ways to interpret alignment. Like all the other ways, it doesn't match what they do with it.


That people can be confused on that point shows they never read that or that subsequent editions of (A)D&D managed to explain it worse than Gygax, a feat unto itself. :smalltongue:

But if people who work full time on D&D at TSR, who were hired specifically to understand and extend the rules, could not agree that alignment is the straightforward approach you claim it is, then perhaps the problem isn't "people's inability to read English". Maybe, just maybe, the alignment concept was always poorly developed, incomplete, and self-contradictory.

When I first read the alignment descriptions in 1st edition AD&D (when the PHB came out in 1978), my conclusion was that nobody could have an alignment unless they had a WIS and INT of 16+. The descriptions were the kind of deep, philosophical treatises that most people just don't have.

"True Neutral: The "true" neutral looks upon all other alignments as facets of the system of things. Thus, each aspect - evil and good, chaos and law - of things must be retained in balance to maintain the status quo; for things as they are cannot be improved upon except temporarily, and even then but superficially. Nature will prevail and keep things as they were meant to be, provided the "wheel" surrounding the hub of nature does not become unbalanced due to the work of unnatural forces - such as human and other intelligent creatures interfering with what is meant to be."

This is supposed to be the alignment of a ravening wolf. Nonsense.

A true neutral thief doesn't care about maintaining the status quo or the "wheel" surrounding the hub of nature. He wants the gold in that rich person's pouch.

I repeat what I said earlier:

Good and Evil are real concepts of human behavior. Virtually every philosophical, psychological, religious, or moral system in the history of the human race includes them as components of real human behavior (even if they sometimes hide them under other names).

Law and Chaos are D&D constructs, taken from fantasy novels in which it was not well defined. No philosophical, psychological, religious, or moral system in the history of the human race has ever included them as components of actual human behavior.

You can claim that it is an "identifiable real conflict" if you like. But it is not one that has ever been used as a major axis in any serious attempt to describe human behavior.

Yes, you can fit it into the mode of "collectivism versus individualism" if you like. But that doesn't fit actual usage in D&D, in which herd animals, pack animals, and solitary hunting animals are all equally lumped into "True Neutral". A Paladin fits the model of individualism better than the model of collectivism. A loner thief is about as individualistic as you can get, but is true neutral.

It's a D&D construct -- as D&D-specific and as arbitrary as owlbears, lizard-based kobold trap-makers, or color-coded dragon breath.

[GloatingSwine]

Yeah, the D&D alignments are, deliberately, so vague they can include a vast range of different characters and modes of being, many of which are fundamentally incompatible with what we would think of when we use the words.

[Vahnavoi]

I don't. I fault him for arbitrariness, inconsistency, and unnecessarily complicated rules.

Feel free to do that. My point is merely that people following Gygax were not much better. :smallamused:


Then they immediately created individualist Lawful Good heroes and Chaotic Evil armies. Gold Dragons (LG) do not form more collectivist societies than Red Dragons (CE). Yes, that is one of several ways to interpret alignment. Like all the other ways, it doesn't match what they do with it.

But if people who work full time on D&D at TSR, who were hired specifically to understand and extend the rules, could not agree that alignment is the straightforward approach you claim it is, then perhaps the problem isn't "people's inability to read English". Maybe, just maybe, the alignment concept was always poorly developed, incomplete, and self-contradictory.

W-w-what? You're telling me people at TSR, WotC, etc. are not able of perfectly following their own rules? Noooo. How could that be? :smalltongue:

Alignment wasn't doomed from the start to be poorly developed, incomplete and self-contradictory in perpetuity. It was and is possible to go back to stated first principles and develop the system to a more complete and less self-contradictory direction. It's not like TSR and WotC didn't try. They just failed. As they did with many other subsystems. Alignment is hardly unique when it comes to published example monsters and characters not following the actual core rules.


I repeat what I said earlier:

You can claim that it is an "identifiable real conflict" if you like. But it is not one that has ever been used as a major axis in any serious attempt to describe human behavior.

Group versus individual benefit is and has been used as one, though. Game theory, to give one example, has a lot of interesting things to say on the subject. See analyses on extended prisoner's dilemma. There's an useful idea there which can be turned into a functional system. You're mostly just ranting about how specifics of the game don't follow through. I agree they don't. But when specifics of a game don't sync with a core idea, the simple solution is to ditch those specifics and replace them with things that do sync. Gygax's failures to do that don't excuse everyone else's.


It's a D&D construct -- as D&D-specific and as arbitrary as owlbears, lizard-based kobold trap-makers, or color-coded dragon breath.

Did I claim otherwise? I agree the two-axis is AD&D construct - one of the most iconic ones. That's not mutually exclusive with it touching on something real.

[KorvinStarmast]

I believe this decision-point we at the design phase for AD&D. Yes, but IIRC, the first chart was in the Holmes Basic book, 1977. (I'll check Strat Review later ... EDIT. OK, it was in Strategic Review Feb 1976 article entitled The Meaning of Law and Chaos in Dungeons and Dragons and Their Relationships to Good and Evil(E.G.G.) but the first time I saw that two axis grid was in Holmes. Strat Review was supplemental material, but I sure wish we'd had a subscription to it. Would have cleared up a lot of stuff as we floundered around now and agian during OD&D games ... so we filled in the blanks ourselves) Hilariously, his conclusion was:

This all indicates that there are actually five, rather than three, alignments, namely: LAWFUL/GOOD, LAWFUL/EVIL, CHAOTIC/GOOD, CHAOTIC/EVIL, NEUTRAL in 1976. I guess that they subsequently changed their minds. :smallcool:

@Willie the Duck: when the decision made is one thing; by 1st edition AD&D DMG in 1979 we can firmly say it was put on paper and codified. Technically, Holmes 1977. And in the PHB.

I don't. I fault him for arbitrariness, inconsistency, and unnecessarily complicated rules. Yeah, there was quite a bit of that in AD&D - no question. It was also a 'barrier to entry' that the Cook/Moldvay and later Mentzer Basic game structure overcame.

When I first read the alignment descriptions in 1st edition AD&D (when the PHB came out in 1978), my conclusion was that nobody could have an alignment unless they had a WIS and INT of 16+.
That made me laugh. Well played.

A true neutral thief doesn't care about maintaining the status quo or the "wheel" surrounding the hub of nature. He wants the gold in that rich person's pouch. Yep. But we also know that Gary never went to college, and he had at best a dilletente's grasp of philosophy. Capacity for hard work? In buckets. (See Calvin Coolidge's short treatment on persistence)

It's a D&D construct -- as D&D-specific and as arbitrary as owlbears, lizard-based kobold trap-makers, or color-coded dragon breath. Spot on.
You may find it interesting that a guy with a PhD in philosophy asked on the philosophy SE about D&D alignment systems (IIRC, from a moral philosophy perspective) and got something like a "are you kidding?" answer.
here is the link (https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/q/144)

[Slipjig]

Part of the problem here is that alignment can refer to very different things depending on the person who wrote a particular rulebook (or who is DMing). Sometimes it refers to personal philosophy (Chaotic = "I believe hierarchy/predictability is inherently a bad thing"), sometimes it refers to personal actions (Chaotic = "I try to maximize freedom for everyone" OR "I break the law whenever I can because laws suck" OR "I don't acknowledge the law exists"), and sometimes it refers to personality traits (Chaotic = somebody who dresses unconventionally, keeps a messy workspace, is a hedonist, or has zero impulse control and cannot stick to the plan). When you slap all of these together and then try to come up with a physical embodiment of the mish-mash of concepts, it's going to be a mess.

But the important thing that we sometimes seem to forget on these forums is that because none of this is real, there is no actual right answer. We've had over forty years of a multitude of authors writing wildly different things about the nature of the multiverse, and some of the concepts have evolved, and some have flat contradicted each other. The only truth that is ACTUALLY knowable in this case is when you ask your DM (and that assumes he gives you a straight answer, and not, "Make a Knowledge check, and I'll tell you what you know about that", because there are plenty of times when common knowledge and even scholars turn out to be very, very wrong).