Dumbest Official Take on Alignment?

[Libertad]

Back when I reviewed the Dragonlance sourcebook Legend of the Twins, I talked about how the setting is basically the /r/enlightenedcentrism of D&D worlds. It is a setting where Good and Evil are really just team jerseys, and murdering innocent people for political power can just as much be "too good" as "too evil" and that the neutral-aligned gods are the most tolerant people.

For all the talk Dragonlance gets, it's not the only hot take. 2nd Edition AD&D had True Neutral who determines who is an enemy based on who is the dominant political faction and will even switch sides during combat if Team Evil or Team Good starts losing too much.

A long time ago I wrote up how alignments changed between Editions. I covered pretty much everything save the current 5th Edition, but didn't touch more unique settings like Dragonlance or Eberron.

For our readers, what is the dumbest take on alignment you've read in an official sourcebook? We're not including 3rd party stuff because then we'd be here all day and the wildly varying quality between publishers would make this too easy.

[Username17]

I'm going to say The Drow. Whether we're talking the AD&D Fiend Folio, the Complete Book of Elves, or Drow of the Underdark, watching first and second edition tie itself into mental knots justifying Drow as Chaotic Evil while Orcs and Mind Flayers were Lawful Evil was nothing short of surreal.

Of course, Law and Chaos have always been the worst. All the way back to OD&D where those were the only alignments and Elves and Demons were on the same side or something. But the attempts by Gygax, McComb, and Greenwood to explain the Chaotic portion of the alignment of the fiercely hierarchical slave-holding Drow was absolute gibberish.

-Username17

[JigokuBosatsu]

Drow being chaotic sounds like an artifact of Moorcock's "Chaos" which was always kind of paired with the whole "secluded society of depraved nobles and magical skullduggery".

[Emerald]

But the attempts by Gygax, McComb, and Greenwood to explain the Chaotic portion of the alignment of the fiercely hierarchical slave-holding Drow was absolute gibberish.

I mean, it makes sense when you keep in mind that the "strict hierarchy" is nothing of the sort and the drow don't actually follow any of their own supposed rules.

Lower-ranked noble houses aren't allowed to attack higher-ranked ones and jump ahead in rank by subterfuge, but they do it all the time anyway and only get punished if they miss an enemy noble or two in their assassination sweep. Noble houses on the Menzoberranzan council listen to House Baenre because no one other house can take them on and no two or more houses could hold together long enough to dethrone them, but the instant something bad happens to Baenre the other houses all pounce on them.

Lesser priestesses are supposed to defer to greater priestesses on pain of pissing off Lolth, but any priestess who manages to depose a rival is immediately favored by Lolth rather than punished, and yochlol go around sowing dissent among the priestesses to keep them sharp and/or for the lulz. Males are supposed to be completely disposable and not given any power, but there's an entire wizard school for the favored sons of noble houses because they know arcane power is the bees' spiders' knees. Slavery isn't a massive institution with an underclass of slaves and a slave-labor-based economy and such, nobles just grab slaves when they feel like it to show off that they could afford to keep (and break) an exotic half-fiend or tortured elf or whatever.

The drow hierarchy is less an actual thing and more a façade they put on to keep the lower classes in their place and present a united front to all the other Underdark factions that would otherwise attack them if they sensed weakness (which is exactly what happened during the Silence of Lolth). They're basically Lawful in the same way and to the same extent that the Republican Party is the party of "family values."

[Blade]

I remember a story about a true neutral village, I think it was in Neverwinter Nights but I might be mistaken.

Anyway, it was a village where people considered that you had to stay firmly in the middle, so when you did a good deed you had to do a bad one to keep the equilibrium: "I've baked some cookies for my neighbors, now I'll have to kick puppies"

[Kaelik]

I remember a story about a true neutral village, I think it was in Neverwinter Nights but I might be mistaken.

Anyway, it was a village where people considered that you had to stay firmly in the middle, so when you did a good deed you had to do a bad one to keep the equilibrium: "I've baked some cookies for my neighbors, now I'll have to kick puppies"

So CNN then?

[Iduno]

The alignment-based planes in Planescape were insane for Planescape, and veered way into Poe's Law territory.

I remember you got a movement penalty based on how far you were from the "correct" alignment of that plane, which must have been great fun for mixed-alignment parties.

[tussock]

2nd edition Chaotic Neutral.

Where, on coming to a bridge, a CN character might just swim across the river instead, because Zeb Cook was a horrible person who hated classic free thinkers.

People would play characters and try to think up inanely stupid ways to respond to any fucking stimulus whatsoever, because that was their official fucking behavioral guideline in the actual rules. There were treatises about how LG didn't mean you were stupidly self-sacrificial in response to other people's problems, because obviously that was CN behavior.

And then, same 2nd edition, CN monsters didn't do any of that!

[DrPraetor]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaversa ... #Alignment

https://palladiumbooks.com/forums/viewt ... 8&t=112800

check and mate motherfuckers.

In case I need to spell this out:
Traditional Chinese religion is a real thing, with actual practitioners.

These practitioners do not believe that this is how you should behave.

[GnomeWorks]

As a Taoist, I find the notion of a list like that existing to be ridiculous, regardless of its contents.

[souran]

The thing is that picking a "worst" version of alignment is impossible because alignment, especially when there are lots of rules attached to it, is beyond terrible.

Alignment is really just a short hand for how a character would act when faced with different stimuli. Unfortunately, the descriptions are so muddled as to be meaningless.

If alignment was only used for monsters and NPCs and was stuck in the DMG it would be a minor item and mostly ok. If a DM wants to play all their LG NPCs as lawful stupid so be it. If a DM wants neutral to mean "does equal good and evil" fine whatever.

However, alignments are a part of each players character sheet and depending on how asinine your DM is could result in you losing class abilities for not playing to their notions leftover from freshmen philosophy.

There does need to be a quick way to communicate that Drow are:

1) Evil
2) Willing to back-stab anybody, including their own kind, to get ahead
3) have a contemptuous view of other races and will enslave them if possible.

However, labeling drow Chaotic Evil doesn't really help. Consider the archetype chaotic evil create: Demons. Going by the same 3 point bulletin, demons in D&D are:

1) Evil
2) Cause wanton destruction for the purpose of causing destruction and havok
3) need the mortal races to worship or deal with them to increase their power.

Notice that other than being evil, none of these things are remotely similar. Demons kill things and wreck stuff because they literally want to undo creation. Drow don't care about breaking stuff but don't cause destruction needlessly, they need stuff like food and shelter. They also have totally different interactions with other races. Demons want fear worship and serve them. Drow want slaves and don't care about how other races feel about that.

Alignment is an even dumber version of https://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test

[DrPraetor]

The Tao that can be written is certainly not the true Tao in this case.

Souran is wrong, however - there are many relevant degrees of distinction, and the more you namecheck-and-screw-up real world ethical or religious positions, the worse you've done. You might argue that all alignment systems are equally bad for playability, but even this, I do not think, is true.

For one thing, it depends on whether you want alignment to be a real thing in your setting:

you probably don't

I mean, in a lot of the source material, evil is objectively real, and a source of concern independent of any moral distinctions we may make in the real world. Many people believe this is true of the real world as well and find moral philosophy perplexing for that reason.

This sort of alignment may be a bad design decision in terms of how it makes your setting suitable for playing a game, but if you're determined to play in Middle Earth or in a Galaxy, Far Far Away, you're losing a lot of emulation if evil is not a real and concrete thing.

OTOH, Souran makes a good point in that Myers-Briggs types are used in actual hiring decisions and things, so are worse in that sense than any alignment system in any game.

[souran]

I am not exactly sure what DrPraetor thinks I am wrong about. I think he is trying to argue that the words that constitute the 2 axis alignment have definitive meaning.

My response is the image below:

I have been discussing and debating the meaning of alignments since I was in the freaking 4th grade and playing 2nd edition.

Alignment doesn't mean shit. At best it is a combination of generic stage direction and the mental gymnastics that the character uses to justify how they act.

However, as the definitive example of how alignment doesn't mean shit I present "True Neutral"

True neutral alignment has TWO definitions that are not at all similar presented in the rulebook from at least 3rd edition onward. It actually has a 3rd definition applied in the monster manual.

The first definition for true neutral presented is that its the most common alignment and represents a sentient creature that acts in their own general self interest without a lot of thought put into good/evil lawful/chaotic.

The second definition is a character who actively seeks to balance good/evil and law/chaos. This is the classical D&D druid who has to kick a puppy for every old lady they help across the street.

The thing is that these are NOT similar at all. If a monster or NPC says that their alignment is True Neutral how does the DM know which of these two philosophies they actually follow? The characters motivations have be further written out which voids the value of the alignment.

Also, remember I mentioned a 3rd version of true neutral, which is an creature that acts on instinct instead of rational thought. Again, this is totally different than the other 2.

If instead we had alignments of

Instinct: The creature acts on instinct alone.
Balance: The person is focused on maintaining the natural order and balance to the universe. (Note this still needs to have something that prevents it from not being stupid about good and evil).
Neutral: The person acts according to their general self interest and does not align to a higher code.

it would be better all around. However, you would have to have more than 9 boxes....

[Thaluikhain]

You might want to spoiler that image.

On one hand, alignment rather infamously and obviously doesn't work.

On the other, I can certainly see why people thought it was a good idea to try, there's some useful stuff there if you can get it to work.

For several decades people have made a mess of it, though, best dropped.

[Whipstitch]

On the other, I can certainly see why people thought it was a good idea to try, there's some useful stuff there if you can get it to work.

I don't even think there's useful stuff there, frankly. If it worked at all the practical use of alignment would be to have a quick shorthand devs could use to truncate bestiary entries. That's a nice thought but many D&D critters are balls out weird enough that their behavior is going to require a real entry. The ones that don't are fucking bears or whatever and at that point I don't need your charity.

[Thaluikhain]

I don't even think there's useful stuff there, frankly. If it worked at all the practical use of alignment would be to have a quick shorthand devs could use to truncate bestiary entries. That's a nice thought but many D&D critters are balls out weird enough that their behavior is going to require a real entry. The ones that don't are fucking bears or whatever and at that point I don't need your charity.

For most monsters, yeah, I was thinking more of demon and devils that are inherently evil and all the weird magic stuff that goes with that. Can't have "Protection from Evil" and "Detect Good" and planes of Neutral Evil if you don't have those terms nailed fairly firmly into place. Though, I don't think the trade off is worth it, not least because any discussion about alignments seems only a few steps away from arguing over whether or not it's good to kill orc babies.

[DrPraetor]

The thing is that picking a "worst" version of alignment is impossible because alignment, especially when there are lots of rules attached to it, is beyond terrible.

I dispute this statement here.

Different versions of alignment - I linked to an example that doesn't depend on the double-axis of AD&D at all, so I'm not sure how you thought I was defending the AD&D alignment wheel? - are different degrees of bad.

[nockermensch]

I'm beating a dead horse here, but 4E alignment is notable for how they managed to make something that:

1) uses D&D terms of art wrong;
2) alienates a lot of existing players (people who like elves or Dr. Doom type villains)
3) is still stupid and harmful to the game, anyway

If you don't remember, 4E alignment works on a single axis, where the alignments are, in order of goodness:

Lawful Good > Good > Unaligned > Evil > Chaotic Evil

It ended being a great example of the Dunning-Krugger effect Mearls and co. mindset: It'd be super simple to simply leave Alignments alone, specially if one is removing all their mechanical effects anyway, but they were so overconfident that they went and created their own flavor for Alignments. And the result was stupid and made no-one happy.


For the record, I think D&D is absolutely married with the two-grid Alignment system. Even if it's because meme alignment charts are just a thing pop culture does by this point (as this thread already demonstrates), so having a new edition of D&D without them is bound to cause confusion and disappointment when new people are told that their elf rogue cannot be "chaotic good".

Yes, alignments are a nightmare to define, but people are very good at mind-caulk anyway and everybody is able to "get" how a "Lawful Evil" or a "Chaotic Good" character behaves, so the game should own up its cultural baggage.

[Trill]

everybody is able to "get" how a "Lawful Evil" or a "Chaotic Good" character behaves, so the game should own up its cultural baggage.

which depends fully on what the GM and other players think it should mean.
Is a lawful evil Character one who has a personal evil code? Or someone who is willing to bend the law to his purposes no matter how many people it hurts? Or is it someone who selectively applies laws for a evil purpose, but doesn't bend or break laws willingly?

Is a chaotic good character someone who is a benevolent Utilitarianist, deciding his actions based only on the current situation? Is it someone willing to help people without taking law into account? Or even someone who gladly breaks some laws?

Biggest example is of course Lawful Good. Is it a stuck-up god cop following his gods tenets to the letter with no care about wiggle room? Is it a Kantian, having a Code he follows? And what does a Lawful Good person do when a law ain't good?

[Whipstitch]

Alignment is really only useful for personal notekeeping because when you're writing letters to yourself it is far more acceptable to jot down humpty dumpty bullshit that other people may misinterpret. Personally though, I find it more useful to jot down which version of Gary Oldman I am ripping off rather than bothering with LE/CE/NE.

[Username17]

4e's alignment system is the one from WHFRP. No one knows why.

-Username17

[magnuskn]

Just as a point of discussion, wouldn't alignment make more sense in a world where there are literal gods which you know are not just figments of your imagination (due to their clerics having actual magic powers through their worship), which require you to behave in a certain way to get into their version of the afterlife?

[Trill]

Just as a point of discussion, wouldn't alignment make more sense in a world where there are literal gods which you know are not just figments of your imagination (due to their clerics having actual magic powers through their worship), which require you to behave in a certain way to get into their version of the afterlife?

Sure. But then the question is: Is Good good? Is Evil evil?
Are the Good Gods actually good or is that just a similar name?
And of course: Can you be a follower of a Good god and still do evil things?

Because often Good and Evil become just group names, which you could equally replace with Red and Green, without any loss of information.

[Sunwitch]

Sometimes, I try to play with Good and Evil as if they're some kind of "element" system at this point. Concepts come to make more sense if you just whittle down alignment to its mechanical skeleton and then fluff something else on top of it. Sort of like "Light/Holy" and "Dark" in a JRPG, characters can draw on either one's power, maybe even in conjunction, as if they associate with positive and negative energy and such as well.

While generally the guys with Dark Energy are bad guys while those with Light Energy are good guys, maybe there are exceptions. Maybe playing with "evil energy" is essentially like playing with fire. It allows more moral ambiguity for angels and devils and such as well - maybe there are succubi out there who are tired of the Nasty, Brutish and Short life the Abyss may or may not offer, or Daevas pulling genocidal crusades against The Evil Races™. It obviously isn't really compatible with most established settings' notions of alignment and the things that make it up, but it's not like fantasy hasn't played with similar concepts before.

[Foxwarrior]

"We've just struck a vein of Pure Evil. Doesn't even need refining, it's the good stuff. With this we can power the Evil Reactors needed to keep the lights on in people's homes, improving quality of life for everyone." Just remember to build your Evil Reactors far enough away from cities that the screams of the damned as the Pure Evil is burned don't cause too much harmful noise pollution.