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[Powder Miner]

The law and chaos axis in D&D doesn't come from Lord of the Rings – it comes from the Elric of Melnibone books, where there are gods of Law (which is close but not quite D&D's Lawful Good) and gods of Chaos (which are definitely D&D's Chaotic Evil).

NoooOOoooOOoooOOoo
DnD has a nine alignment system! Chaos isn't inherently evil nor is law inherently good in DnD!

[loose nut]

Yeah yeah yeah, but in the Elric of Melnibone books where D&D's Law/Chaos axis comes from, the Law gods are pretty kind (though if they were to take over, the universe would freeze for lack of entropy, IIRC) while Arioch & Xiombarg & crew are super super evil.

[NW_Kohaku]

Hmm, I actually read a lot of Tolkien a while back, and while I'm aware of his views on the industrial revolution and the wild goose chase of human "progress" (and agree to a limited extent, but it's a lot more complicated than any of the cultural zeitgeist, unfortunately), I think you missed the bit where his dark-lord-opposing heroes ultimately are supposed to answer to some ancient ideal of some theoretically (if not always practically) lawful kingdom that was eventually derived from the forces of good sent to create the world in the first place, or something along those lines, in the whole attempt to see things as allegory for the culture in which they were created. Tolkien himself had people at the time saying it was an allegory for the World Wars and nuclear weaponry, which makes less sense than your own take, and he got pretty fed up with it and basically said he tried to write a story that was good in itself and had truths in it that applied to real life, not a story that was an imitation or allegory of anything. Granted, you're allowed to disagree with him if you want to; an author's not necessarily the be-all-end-all of his own work; but I do think Numenor and the exact nature of the old ideals Tolkien's heroes look back to does make the picture a little bigger. I also kinda liked the notion of the alignment chart precisely because it didn't have to be tied down to a cultural preference for associating chaotic and lawful with good and evil or the other way around, you're free to fill in all nine combinations; I could probably come up with examples of all nine in Tolkien if I thought back on it for a little while (it's been years since I actually read any of his work, though I was a fan I guess -- still kinda am in theory).

Well, Ring of Nibelung was much more clear on it, because it was written specifically to be an allegory. 

LotR had more conflicting views on the subject because it was more influenced by Ring of Nibelung and Tolkien's personal wrestling with the likes of World War 2, rather than a cut-and-dry specific message that he was trying ot get across.  The only major clear story points I at least never have seen in any real dispute are that it's a Hero's Journey story about a Cosmic War between Good and Evil. 

One of the things I've really come to realize over the course of numerous arguments over this silly alignment grid is that it should probably have more dimensions than it actually has.  Chaos can mean general dynamism - that is, hopefulness for the future, as opposed to living purely for the present.  Hence, not to get political, but something like "positive change for our country" as a generic slogan appeals to one aspect of what Chaos can mean.  It also often refers to a sort of divide between the ethnic and artistic cultural types or freespirited bohemian class as opposed to the more straight-laced blue collars and suits, as in City Life.  It also refers to the general outlook towards society, and whether one is individualistic or conformist by general nature, and how much they try to blend in with or conflict with society at large.  It also appeals to a political tendency of (civil) libertarianism versus strong government intervention and control.  It is used in the allegory I mentioned before about the dualism between nature (or perhaps more modernly, environmentalism) and industrial development. (Fey creatures are chaotic, steampunk creatures are lawful.)  It also gets used in terms of general literal "lawfullness" in the sense that chaotic characters are more expected to be thieves or literal law-breakers.  Finally, it gets used in that Zoroasteric sense of a cosmic war between forces of a static, unchanging timeless universe versus total entropic decay.

I remember once having a very difficult argument with someone about whether "Chaotic Good was capable of being as good as Lawful Good" with someone where it came down to an argument about whether Martin Luther King Jr. was Chaotic Good or not.  The other person was arguing that since MLK was not an actual thief (even though he not only directly confronted society and the laws of the land, but actually went to prison for it, only stealing counts as chaotic, apparently), he must be Lawful, completely refusing to accept almost any of those other measures of "Chaos".

The reason so many arguments pop up over alignment is that the terms "Law" and "Chaos" are entirely overloaded.  Whereas you can argue about what is good, (Deontology versus Consequentialism, round 12481, FIGHT!) people are really much less confused about what the notion of good actually is, and it rarely comes up in so much direct conflict with itself.

What about people who are conformist to their own small sub-society's views, but where, because they are a minority, they are viewed as radical, and discrimination has instilled in them a deep sense of a grudge against authority outside their cliques?  D&D alignment basically just throws up its hands in those situations, and says that's "Neutral".  The problem is, almost nobody will actually fall into every single one of those dualisms purely on one side straight down the line.  If nearly everyone is neutral, the whole basis of judgment loses all meaning except on those few extremist outliers. 

[Cobbler89]

Good point; I'd go further and note that depending on the "law" or order in question a thing can be "lawful" in one regard and "chaotic" in another at the same time and in the same respect, all it has to do is follow a set of rules or order (and hence be "lawful") that happen to conflict with some other set (and therefore makes it "chaotic"). But then, most things fall into that -- Firefly has Mal trying to stand up for his principles, wild and crazy as he is, and arguing with Inara who points out that he not only breaks normal society's rules, he breaks most other criminals' rules as well -- so how many layers of lawful and chaotic is that all bound up in one character? Chaotic first for breaking the rules of society, and then chaotic over again for breaking the rules of most people chaotic to that first level, and yet in some sense lawful because he has a certain weird sense of decency that he's trying to uphold that drives him out there in the first place. Then again, one might say that his sense of decency isn't necessarily lawful -- there's a distinction between an idea about morals (right and wrong) and an idea about ethics (a code), however much the two tend to overlap for perfectly valid reasons (having an ethical code to help follow morals, especially among people who can't all be expected to agree on how to figure out right and wrong but need to agree on what they'll treat as right and what as wrong).

The chart's interesting as a loose exercise or if you narrow down the definition of "lawful" and "chaotic" for a particular purpose; it's not exactly all-encompassing because it's only 2D, not bazillion-D like reality tends to be. Granted, the whole reason good and evil tend not to be disputed as often is that some dimensions or reality are clearer and/or more important than others, but that doesn't mean that the full picture is less complex for a few aspects being simple. I still think as a wild generalization it's handy to distinguish many of the chaotic heroes and villains from the "lawful" heroes and villains, granting that the line between being on one side and being neutral can be debatable still, and granting that different stories are going to have different things that are the main focus of "lawful" and "chaotic" (at least when it comes down to which distinctions come up; for example, I might have a kingdom and another kingdom both fighting and want to distinguish more between the nature of their goals than the fact that they have codes/laws/orders, or I might have a kingdom and a band of bandits really on the same side in some war and find the distinction between the code of the kingdom and the ruthlessness of the bandits helpful), simply because it does at least break out of assumptions that "lawful" is good and "chaotic" is evil or vice versa; but it's really more of a first easy step in the right direction than a final, complete view, inasmuch as there is any such thing (in some sense of course, since some elements are more important than others, and in other senses not really, since there's always more to learn about reality).



(Speaking to everybody now...) And here I thought I'd get discussion going about whether Captain No Short Term Memory Planet really fits better as lawful neutral (because they're not really for or against good as anybody else understands it, they just want to save trees, and they make that the supreme order of everything) or as neutral evil (because they make players' lives annoyed and much of this chart takes "good" and "evil" to mean on the side of the player or not, and they don't really go for a total lack of order but the only order they do care about is their precious trees). Little secret: I decided that one based mainly on the fact that while I could see elves either way, I could only see goblins as semi-civilized villains and therefore neutral evil. Much of this chart as it stands is taking a few characters that fit obviously in one place (each) and then trying to figure out how the remaining fit around them.

Of course, you could also question the side comment in the parenthetical above and ask, "has being on the player's side anything to do with 'good' and 'evil'?" If anyone can make an alternative work, feel free to post your own version!

Still would like to see a "famous animals" one involving carp, elephants, unicorns, badgers, giant mosquitoes, giant sponges and... what are two more?



[EDITED TO ADD:] So here I was going back and forth between programming and the forums when something lighter hit me.

(Deontology versus Consequentialism, round 12481, FIGHT!)

http://search.dilbert.com/search?w=neans

[Oliolli]

It's threads like these that remind me why I love Bay 12...

On topic, I tend to think it's easiest to apply the alingments on the spot, to whoever is in question, without trying to regulate them or define them too much.

[Loud Whispers]

Personally, I blame the notion that paladins were somehow paragons of pure good, no matter how relentlessly their brand of "good" has been mocked for the change, although it may well just be the cultural zeitgeist.  Somehow individuality and personal freedom became associated with "acting recklessly and antisocially", whereas conformity became a virtue.

Greetings brother! I heard you liked lawful goodness, so I killed everyone! For the good!

[Sutremaine]

Still would like to see a "famous animals" one involving carp, elephants, unicorns, badgers, giant mosquitoes, giant sponges and... what are two more?

Undead ravens.

[loose nut]

Rhesus macaques.

[Cobbler89]

There you go.

Now which is which alignment, keeping in mind we probably replace "lawful" and "chaotic" with "peaceful" and "savage"? Do they fit into nine spaces by the game's raw data and such, or will we have to tweak them in the idea?

[barconis]

The law and chaos axis in D&D doesn't come from Lord of the Rings – it comes from the Elric of Melnibone books, where there are gods of Law (which is close but not quite D&D's Lawful Good) and gods of Chaos (which are definitely D&D's Chaotic Evil).

NoooOOoooOOoooOOoo
DnD has a nine alignment system! Chaos isn't inherently evil nor is law inherently good in DnD!

It isn't now, but it was originally (pre-AD&D). Just like the original magic system came from Jack Vance's Dying Earth books, but hardly anyone actually played magic that way, but that's off-topic.

[NW_Kohaku]

Good point; I'd go further and note that depending on the "law" or order in question a thing can be "lawful" in one regard and "chaotic" in another at the same time and in the same respect, all it has to do is follow a set of rules or order (and hence be "lawful") that happen to conflict with some other set (and therefore makes it "chaotic"). But then, most things fall into that -- Firefly has Mal trying to stand up for his principles, wild and crazy as he is, and arguing with Inara who points out that he not only breaks normal society's rules, he breaks most other criminals' rules as well -- so how many layers of lawful and chaotic is that all bound up in one character? Chaotic first for breaking the rules of society, and then chaotic over again for breaking the rules of most people chaotic to that first level, and yet in some sense lawful because he has a certain weird sense of decency that he's trying to uphold that drives him out there in the first place.

To pull up another alignment argument I've had, Adell from Disgaea 2 was labelled as "Lawful Good" at one point on TV Tropes, for the reason that he is always talking about how he will do things his way, and by his own (individual) sense of justice.  He doesn't give a damn about society's expectations or norms, and will take actions others tell him are basically self-destructive, because to do otherwise would break his own personal code of "manliness". 

That is Chaotic behavior. 

A Lawful character will follow the rules of others, or simply follow along and do what others do simply because that's "normal" behavior.  A Chaotic character does have a code, and a code of ethics if they are not Chaotic Evil. (How can you really be "good" without a sense of ethics? Do you just have to be random and hope to get lucky?)  What makes their code Chaotic is that they are based solely upon their own personal moral compass, and they are holding themselves strictly to their own internal set of personal moral beliefs, which they hold as absolute, regardless of whether society agrees with their views or not.

The chart's interesting as a loose exercise or if you narrow down the definition of "lawful" and "chaotic" for a particular purpose; it's not exactly all-encompassing because it's only 2D, not bazillion-D like reality tends to be. Granted, the whole reason good and evil tend not to be disputed as often is that some dimensions or reality are clearer and/or more important than others, but that doesn't mean that the full picture is less complex for a few aspects being simple. I still think as a wild generalization it's handy to distinguish many of the chaotic heroes and villains from the "lawful" heroes and villains, granting that the line between being on one side and being neutral can be debatable still, and granting that different stories are going to have different things that are the main focus of "lawful" and "chaotic" (at least when it comes down to which distinctions come up; for example, I might have a kingdom and another kingdom both fighting and want to distinguish more between the nature of their goals than the fact that they have codes/laws/orders, or I might have a kingdom and a band of bandits really on the same side in some war and find the distinction between the code of the kingdom and the ruthlessness of the bandits helpful), simply because it does at least break out of assumptions that "lawful" is good and "chaotic" is evil or vice versa; but it's really more of a first easy step in the right direction than a final, complete view, inasmuch as there is any such thing (in some sense of course, since some elements are more important than others, and in other senses not really, since there's always more to learn about reality).

An important aspect of "Chaos" that should probably be held separate from the "individualistic code of conduct" or "rebel without a cause" sort of thing is, essentially, what is your notion of "Justice" or "Equality"? 

Do you see "Justice" as "punishment to those who break a clearly set-out and defined set of rules, equally to any rule-breaker" or as "those who have done great deeds or terrible deeds are rewarded or face retribution according to their own actions"?  Those are the Lawful and Chaotic views of Justice, respectively. 

What is different is something rather fundamental in the way that you look at the world - in one, a person who is greedy and abusive who finds a way to game the system for their own gain without technically breaking the rules is simply "clever" and "deserving".  If a society has a plutocracy whose children are given every possible advantage getting a better education and job opportunities while those who are born with nothing having no social mobility and are forever doomed to being some sort of "untouchable" street urchin class, do you rebel against the social structure?

This is something that can be seen as something rather distinct from whether or not one is against the imposition of social norms over individualism.  In fact, someone who wants social justice in the chaotic sense would necessarily have to have the lawful imposition of moral social norms over the individual (giving one class an advantage or another a disadvantage to make things "fair", or whether any such action is inherently "unfair") if they saw the need to make an inside-society change for their chaotic social justice beliefs.  The fact that there is an entirely self-consistent rationalization possible for completely contradictory moral alignments using the current system speaks to the fact that there are at least a few major extra axis of alignment you can add into this 2d chart.

On a far more celestial level, a cosmic "Space" versus "Time" or "Static Eternity" versus "Entropic Decay" the way that Auri-El and Sithis play out in Elder Scrolls is something wholly different from the above.  Elder Scrolls plays out its cosmic war as a war between Gnostic "eternal perfection" and Existentialist "transcendence of reality".  This would be on a rather different, although tangentially related scale to the above.

[NW_Kohaku]

It isn't now, but it was originally (pre-AD&D). Just like the original magic system came from Jack Vance's Dying Earth books, but hardly anyone actually played magic that way, but that's off-topic.

If you want to get technical, there were plenty of other "original" concepts for alignment and magic, and D&D didn't need to strictly copy-paste everything about it from just one source.  D&D hardly suddenly invented the notion of Good and Evil, and just stuck it on the Original Law-Chaos axis.

[Satarus]

Somebody is going to have an unfortunate accident.

[helf]

This thread has actually been really interesting to read.

My only addition would be that tolkien denied  that he was inspired by der ring des nibelungen. Just because there are similarities does not denote a direct relationship.

[Cobbler89]

I've definitely learned a few things here (btw, NW, re. "being good without ethics", I've heard some talk about "following your heart" and "intuition" but I didn't quite get it for the reason you point out -- it just seems like the choices are A] seek to understand the heart's reasons or B] hope to goodness your heart is smarter than your head), but I'm with Oli; on-the-spot judgements that deliberately avoid exact definitions are probably the best use of this concept in the first place. Do it for fun rather than science. Or even !!fun!! rather than science. Heck, even do it for !!science!! rather than science.

Hey, that gives me an idea... *modifies OP again*