The Perfect Order [Any Edition]

[Lappy9000]

After much pondering, I realize that I'm not really quite sure what D&D would consider true Law. Not just the alignment, as in "role-playing a Lawful character," but the supreme, absolute, and ideal manifestation of order. Is it the trains always running on time, all the time? Or is it as simple as an endless clockwork vista, forever turning to some unknown end?

I ask you, fellow playgrounders, what (at least in terms of D&D) comes into mind when you hear the term Law?

[The Rose Dragon]

I like the way Sheogorath's alter ego, Jyggalag, creates order.

Bleak. Colorless. Dead. Boring, boring, boring!

Basically, perfect order means that everything is as it should be and there are no deviations. No movements. No change. Eternal stillness.

If you change perfection, perfection must die. That is why the Perfect Order is changeless.

[Shpadoinkle]

See also: Mechanus.

[Lappy9000]

See also: Mechanus.

Well...yes, but I was hoping for something a little more out of the box.

[Vexxation]

Well...yes, but I was hoping for something a little more out of the box.

You want outside the box and order?
Creativity has no place in order.

A true lawful society is one of either robots or golems, and both must be absolutely flawless.

Think Asimov's Robot City, but without David's interference.

[Lappy9000]

You want outside the box and order?
Creativity has no place in order.

Humor me

[Weezer]

Actually what could be interesting would be if in a universe of perfect order the second law of thermodynamics was reversed. instead of entropy always increases, make it entropy always increases, while this makes no sense in the real world you could pass it off as the work of some cosmic lawful force. I have no idea how this would change a world but one thing that I see is that there is the possibility of chaos, it just takes more work just like in our world there is the possibility of localized decrease in entropy.

That out of the box enough?

[Vexxation]

Actually what could be interesting would be if in a universe of perfect order the second law of thermodynamics was reversed. instead of entropy always increases, make it entropy always increases, while this makes no sense in the real world you could pass it off as the work of some cosmic lawful force. I have no idea how this would change a world but one thing that I see is that there is the possibility of chaos, it just takes more work just like in our world there is the possibility of localized decrease in entropy.

That out of the box enough?

Wouldn't that mean that the colder everything got, the more likely reactions were to occur?
Humans would be ice-creatures living at the poles, with a deathly fear of heat. And since friction makes heat, I guess they'd be afraid to move too much.

I suppose that a barren wasteland full of unmoving human-Popsicles is pretty lawful...

[Eldariel]

Well, perfect laws that are perfectly abided by everything. That's the ultima of lawfulness IMHO. Basically, rules that govern everything that may and may not happen and everything happening by those rules. Every eventuality, every possible outcome mapped out with how it must go. Not only for sentient beings, but indeed everything that happens.

Alternatively, yeah, stillness.

[Lappy9000]

I suppose that a barren wasteland full of unmoving human-Popsicles is pretty lawful...

Sounds more like a plane of stillness than Law. Humans as the native creatures on a plane of Law don't make a lot of sense, since the denizens of the realm would likely be incapable of doing anything but Lawful acts.

[Mando Knight]

Alternatively, utter lawfulness could be an attribute not of one who strives towards some absurd anti-entropic state, but rather one who believes that the entire universe works on a set of well-defined, mathematical rules. Rather than entropy being an agent of chaos, it simply becomes a quantity to measure the irreversibility of a process.

Pure Law is mathematical, scientific. The realm of mathematical and scientific knowledge is based on the discovery of apparent facts about the laws of the universe, the underlying mechanisms for all that is.

Law is not intrinsically artistic, but beauty can result from pure mathematics all the same, for example from fractals. Furthermore, a pure-Law being would find pleasurable the ability to express everything in a set of concise equations, and would seek to find an algorithm defining beauty.

Its creativity is calculating, cold, precise. Function before form. Anything made by a super-lawful being is precisely made to maximize its use, with any kind of embellishment beyond that being seen as unnecessary, and would not incorporate them unless they had a clear tactical advantage.

[dspeyer]

Actually what could be interesting would be if in a universe of perfect order the second law of thermodynamics was reversed.

That would be a rather H2G2ish universe. One where the random movements of pool balls and table felt spontaneously rack balls that were stationary and spread out.

The real pure law would be maximum entropy: heat death: a constant density cloud of 4 kelvin iron gas.

[The Tain]

e.g. The Auditors, from Terry Pratchett's Discword.

[Eldan]

While often in DnD one sees the idea of standstill as law, that's really a boring defintion of it. As one who has created lawful neutral doomguard, I see this as a little limiting.
What about a universe much like ours, but where events at a quantum level would be constantly observed by a near all-powerful being? One who would, through it's observation eliminate uncertainty? The basic rules on a level humans can observe would still be the same. The universe would move in a predictable manner towards maximum entropy, and, while doing so, follow laws that were set in stone since it's creation.

[Halaster]

IMO standstill is one possible definition of ultimate lawfulness. Basically, once all has been arranged into perfect order, every further change could only lead to chaos. But that assumes that some abstract state of perfection even exists.

So I see the ultimate embodiment of law as more of a tinkerer personality/government/plane/god/younameit. It's about control, government and order, not perfection. Rather than try to create some state where no change for the better is possible, it channels all processes, random or otherwise, into productive, ordered, controlled and predictable forms. Creativity is permitted, but once the result is out, Law takes it and fits it into its puzzle, or annihilates it if that is impossible.
A society built on this ideal constantly monitors all variables (e.g. its citizens), checking for deviation, then acting to integrate said deviation into the system, by writing a set of rules for it, so whenever something like it comes up again, it can act according to plan. Say, some citizen has come up with a brilliant new art style that is unlikely anything ever seen. The government immediately takes note of this and sends in a team of assessors to describe this style in detail, regulating its further use by other artists, turning it into a static, well-known constant.
So, ultimately, the incarnation of Law never forbids anything, but it regulates all forms of expression to the point where expression becomes pointless.
Don't think humans could ever live in such a world, but as a thought experiment it makes me want to write a sci-fi short story...

[bosssmiley]

• Core D&D reified the Newtonian ideal of the perfectly predictable clockwork universe into a literal clockwork Nirvana where "alles ist in ordnungs" stamps on a human face FOREVER!
  
• DiceFreaks Lawful Project: Universal law as the Mandate of Heaven gained, and then lost, by successive dynasties of outsiders. Each dynasty having its own conception of what constitutes the expression of Perfect Law (Vaati - universal hegemony, Parai - uniformity, Modrons - omniscience, Formians - ???)
  
• Michael Moorcock writes of perfect law as being dangerous sterility and crystalline stasis; beautiful, but devoid of growth or change. See his book "The Ice Schooner" for a nightmarish world dominated by Law (in the form of all-conquering glacial ice).

For me cosmic Law in D&D is perfectly predictable cause-and-effect, the ideological antithesis of the perpetual ferment and causal non-sequiturs of cosmic Chaos. When allowed to occur at all war, death, disasters, and even fundamental revolutions in the Lawful hierarchy, all occur according to the rules and by the schedule. Those not sufficiently in tune with Law to see the 'rightness' of these seismic changes may see it as a chaotic mess; but these upheavals are no more chaotic than a formal debate is a brawl.

[Lappy9000]

• DiceFreaks Lawful Project: Universal law as the Mandate of Heaven gained, and then lost, by successive dynasties of outsiders. Each dynasty having its own conception of what constitutes the expression of Perfect Law (Vaati - universal hegemony, Parai - uniformity, Modrons - omniscience, Formians - ???)

Wow, that's a pretty awesome link. Thanks!

[The Rose Dragon]

OK, there is something you need to clear up.

Do you want order, perfect, or law? These things are not necessarily the same, and the title says "Perfect Order", which is very different from "Complete Lawfulness".

[Lappy9000]

OK, there is something you need to clear up.

Do you want order, perfect, or law? These things are not necessarily the same, and the title says "Perfect Order", which is very different from "Complete Lawfulness".

"Complete Lawfulness." Perfect Order just makes a better title IMO