A recent post over at Noism's blog addresses that old bogeyman - alignment in D&D. The post offers some thought-provoking reactions to alignment relativism, both new and old (I remember all that stuff about "neutral balance" in Greyhawk back in Gygax's time seeming kind of irksome.
At any rate, I don't often wade into related waters on this blog, but reading that post made me think of some old notes I typed up ... woah, almost two years ago. Here is one articulation of an aligment system I was thinking about a while ago. I think it's closest, in terms of edition wars, to the alignment system described in 4th edition D&D, of all things. Plus, it's got my own twist on things. The relative position of each alignment is important, as entities might move back and forth over a lifetime, crossing from one alignment into a neighboring one.
A possible alignment system:
+ Good
+ Lawful Good
+ Evil
+ Chaotic Evil
In practice and possibly in rhetoric, Good tends to favor the true wellbeing of self and others, even at personal cost (within the limits of the thinker’s understanding of wellbeing). Good recognizes that Law and Disorder both have a place, both are readily abused, and both must be subordinated to the overall promotion of wellbeing. Good also recognizes, however, that Law is usually closer to it than is Chaos.
Lawful Good tends to favor the wellbeing of self and others, but this is conditioned by a strong pull in favor of Order as a competing claim on individual or collective wellbeing. Because Lawful Good cares about real wellbeing, Lawful Good at times senses a pull toward Good over and against the interests of Law; however, because of Lawful Good’s strong interest in Order and hierarchy, Lawful Good always carries a temptation toward Evil carried out in the name of greater law and order.
In practice and possibly in rhetoric, Evil tends to favor the perceived wellbeing and felt needs of the self over those of others, and/or the perceived wellbeing of some group over that of other groups (usually, the self is part of the favored group). Because hierarchical structures are useful for maintaining such privilege, Evil often feels some pull toward Law; if the stirrings of conscience are allowed room, this can lead to movement into Lawful Good. However, because Evil pushes against the intended moral order of Creation, the seeds of Disorder also remain latent in Evil as a potential draw toward Chaotic Evil.
Chaotic Evil tends to favor its own perceived wellbeing and felt needs over others’, but a strong attraction to Disorder often motivates self-destructive actions that undermine long-term fulfillment of its own felt needs. Stronger feelings of self-interest may draw Chaotic Evil toward Evil.
‘Unaligned’ only exists for non-sentient creatures. Among sentient mortal beings, Evil may be the default alignment in practice (sages debate this point). Movement between alignments is common over a lifetime.
I've of the more understandable takes on alignment I've seen. The nine point system has never sat particularly well with me
ReplyDeleteThis seems workable to me as a classification scheme: I particularly like the framing of Chaotic Evil. The broad point about self versus collective wellbeing is well made and practical (and raises interesting philosophical questions). The natures of 'law' and 'chaos' might prove to be a thorny problem in itself.
ReplyDeleteThe practical questions are always 'what functions do the alignment system serve in play' and 'is alignment a meta-game tag, or a tag assigned within the fiction (or both), and if the latter, is it somehow objectively defined in the fiction (as it appears to be by spells like 'Detect Evil')? And how does one handle PCs in that context?
I use explicit alignment only when playing D&D and when running D&D I only run variants of early D&D, which use the C-N-L axis in conjunction with an inconsistently defined concept of 'evil'. The key game function of alignment in that context is as a tag to determine how a handful of spells and magic items select either a) 'evil' entities; or b) like/ dislike entity alignments. (The rules also highlight (c) 'alignment languages', but I generally house rule those out).
In rare instances, application of (b) to PCs is unavoidable. So it should be regarded as (at least a) 'guide to roleplaying' (i.e. the player should play in accordance with their character's alignment). But since (b) is rarely applied to PCs in my games, and player conduct mostly sticks to the Lawful-Neutral end of the swimming pool, it doesn't cause problems to ignore PC alignment for most purposes. I tend to regard alignment as a fuzzy and fluid property of 'Monsters' (i.e. not-PCs) relative to the PCs. If it's broadly inimical to the PCs or what they hold important, then it's 'evil'/ other-aligned.