The Nature of Man:

Are you Lawful Stupid or Stupid Evil?

I’ve complained about the Dungeons and Dragons alignment system in the past. It is a mechanic which I abhor and one that I’ve spent arguing with Derek over for far too many hours. For those unaware, part of your character creation in D&D involves choosing your hero’s nature. This has been conveniently distilled into the cross section of two diametrically opposed axises: Law vs Chaos and Good vs Evil. Figuring where your character stands in relation to these extremes is meant to create a simple two point summary which summarizes the individuals moral and personal beliefs and attitudes. Thus, we have the classic combinations taking on certain mythological archetypes. Lawful Good individuals value order and charity and are typified by the knight in shining armour motif of the selfless crusader out championing the virtues of his lord and god while raining down benevolence and charity to the unkempt, destitute peasants ravaged by dragons, goblins and an curiously high tax rate for medieval societies. The Chaotic Evil individual, by comparison, is that wicked warlock who spends his evenings in fogged choked graveyards practicing debased necromancy so as to raise an army of filthy and plague bearing undead to march upon the same destitute peasants in the hope of getting his own share of their exorbitant property costs.

It’s all very clean. It’s all very orderly. And it’s all so very useless.

As I mentioned, I hate the alignment system. I hate everything it tries to represent. I hate everything for which it stands. Above all else, I hate how it operates as a classic trap, luring unsuspecting new players and dungeon masters into shallow, derivative cliches that halts the game as everyone bickers over the finer details of law and chaos.

Satire on Romantic Suicide by Leonardo Alenza Y Nieto (1807-1845).

You see, the prime flaw of the alignment system is positing that there exists within the D&D framework a standard, objective truth concerning Good and Evil. Certain behaviour is, as alignment is so classically defined, intrinsically right or wrong. Sure, defenders will wring their hands and assuage that these are merely guidelines used to better categorize and assist in forming a character’s decision making. And they’ll maintain this stance as the party casts Detect Evil and sees the party’s rogue light up like a Christmas tree in Times Square. Alignment is a mechanical tool within the D&D universe itself. It is not a moral or philosophical debate–it exists as a real, tangible thing which is affected by both magic and gods in ways wholly beyond our understanding. Thus, as a true core element of a being’s identity, there must be actions and behaviour which is intrinsically connected to this alignment. If a paladin can detect evil then evil must exist to detect. You can’t have a fiend who gives to the poor and helps the needy for that would be indistinguishable from the paladin himself.

This seems obvious enough. Surely the only difficulty with the system would be hammering out the finer details of what constitutes evil and what does not.

And that statement alone should make obvious how futile an endeavour that would be. We can not agree on what is moral in our own society even without throwing in magic and fantasy into the mix. Take, for instance, the simplest example of murder. Surely murder is an evil action. And yet, every single D&D campaign is rife with heroes going through wholesale slaughter of goblins, gnolls, orcs, kobolds and whatever. “Ah,” says the alignment purist, “but these creatures are inherently evil thus their destruction is a good action!”

So murder in-of-itself isn’t bad but who you murder is. And yet, any campaign worth its salt will have helpful orcs, drow who have turned from their oppressive society or kobolds more interested in friendly exchange than kidnapping babies and worshiping dragons. Would it be just, moral or good to slay Drizzt on sight? He is a subtype of elf who were chased underground for their worship of the malevolent deity Lloth who delights in slaughter and torture. Of course not, for Drizzt has cast aside his society and its bloodlust-filled ways and walks a more charitable path. Well, what of Deekin the merchant? Should I stumble across him on the streets of Neverwinter would I be within my right to run him through with my sword and steal all of his merchandise? No? Because he is simply not situated in a dungeon awaiting eager adventurers to kick down his door and cut of his head on their way to the fabled dragon horde?

The alignment system is quick to tell us that animals lack the necessary intelligence for placement on the alignment system. They are what has become the Unaligned. They have not the self-awareness to judge their actions in a greater moral scope and players don’t have a free pass to slay every cow which they encounter on their way to the city. And yet, possessing the intelligence required to hold an alignment also gives the being the capacity to change their ways. Would not then the good path be to try and rehabilitate these societies instead of murdering them? And yet, paladins have been the quintessential figurehead for Lawful Good and their sole duty is to act as the judging blade to slice down all those that disagree with them. “But they wouldn’t” isn’t a valid excuse as examples demonstrate that they would.

It’s a simplistic black and white system trying to describe a game that encourages, promotes and pushes its players to explore shades of grey. I think anyone that has played the game can see the fruits of this broken system as well. Poll a player base and I’ll be surprised if you don’t find a great proportion who have had their share of moments of their DMs telling them “You can’t do that. It’s against your alignment.” Most experienced players would scoff at such actions but how quick are people to jump to calling for paladins to lose their abilities for betraying the sacred mantra of the ever undefined Lawful Good code? Or how frequent are there denunciations of DMs not dropping player alignment when they stray into territory someone else deems unworthy of their moniker? Should players be held at the whimsy of the DM’s personal moral code and definition of what a real Neutral Good alignment means? Why must these conversations come up for a system that was always only meant to assist beginning players with stepping out of their own skin and inhabiting the mind of someone else? It’s a tool for policing and it is far too rare that one is rewarded for their alignment compared to the numerous punishments for betraying it.

Well, I was thinking of this dilemma in the shower, as one is wont to think of random things while under running water. Personally, I think the biggest problem is that baggage which the system carries. Good and Evil are more than just words. They’re personal ideals that change from person to person and situation to situation. To try and create some absolute yard stick used for measuring them is an impossible task. Law and Chaos aren’t any better and lead to their own set of troubles. I mean, we’ve all know that one Chaotic Neutral character.

Emperor Franz I of Austria in his Coronation Robes by Friedrich von Amerling (1832).

Really, I think if we were to break down a sort of guidepost for character behaviour, it would have to be one that is less restrictive. An alignment should be just that: a guidebook and not a rigid code. It should give a suggestion to a character’s natural response but not dictate their reactions to every situation. Good and Evil is too encompassing. It’s too mutually exclusive. I think it is prone to cognitive dissonance. My character is good thus he can not do evil. But unlike in the real-world where we reshape our belief to compensate for the dissonance, in D&D we can bar an action from being performed to preserve our belief. However, part of the complexity of real people is being faced with the consequences of actions which we didn’t have the full benefit of considering or weighing against our morals. The system should be amiable to these issues, not ready to punish them.

Thus, I think renaming the axises would go a long way to fixing the alignment system. Instead of Good and Evil, we need something that is less oppressive. Altruism vs Selfishness are two concepts that encapsulate the original premise but have a lot more wiggle room. For example, if I were a Good character, I would be more inclined to assist the oppressed out of the goodness of my heart. However, to maintain my purity, I’d extend this charity to near all circumstances even if it were against the desires of my party. Hell, if we were about to be rewarded by an evil character, a good one would have a moral opposition to receiving anything from them. However, an altruistic person could be more negotiable. Now they aren’t constrained by the full encompassing weight of Goodness. They could be open to accepting payment from an able body especially if the party promised that some of their gains were donated to the needy. Now we needn’t completely turn down the quest given by the bandit chief because the paladin can’t abide aiding such criminal scum. We could accept his ill-gotten coin and altruistically turn around and give it to the church to feed the poor and hungry. The paladin is appeased, the party is appeased and the game can continue without coming to a screeching halt as an ultimatum is drawn in the sand.

Likewise, Law and Chaos could be commissioned into Conformity and Individualism. I especially like this pairing because both carry as many positives as negatives in their connotation. More than that, however, we get away from the cartoony depictions of the extremes of the spectrum. The Lawful Good was just as insipid and disruptive as the Chaotic Evil. Every child would need a hug from the LG just as every puppy would need be kicked by the CE. But a conformist doesn’t necessarily need such extreme reaction. Describing your character as a Conforming Altruist communicates readily far more what Lawful Good was meant to without needing to quibble whether the paladin needs to uphold all laws or when does he earn the right to judge whether a law has betrayed the idealisms of Goodness too much. Furthermore, our Selfish Individualist needn’t be as moustache twirling as they are now in D&D. They can be. Our Warlock can still sit in his graveyard unconcerned with his societies ethics over honouring the dead and raise his little skeleton army to steal in his name all he wants. But you can have rulers who are also Selfish Individualists, running their kingdoms without a care for the well-being of their nobles or peasants but without need to sacrifice every virginal daughter to a devil in order to fulfill the requirements of his alignment.

More than anything, these titles leave a lot of room for differences amongst the alignments themselves. They don’t immediately conjure any stereotypes or stock tropes. A Selfish Conformist does not have the baggage which a Lawful Evil name would suggest. It allows both heroes and villains to occupy the same alignment space without any question. And, more than anything, it means that people can drop the constraints of the alignments and focus on the core aspect in the first place: playing their character.