Am I just getting old?

[coffee]

busman said:

It's curious to me that Law is seen as good and Chaos as evil. Personally, I think if that were what they were meant to be, they would be called Good and Evil. I don't think Gary was a guy to choose words lightly.

I've had this same discussion many times. Here's what Gary himself said about it in The Strategic Review, v II, No. 1 (Feb '76):

"There is considerable confusion in that most dungeonmasters
construe the terms “chaotic” and “evil” to mean the same thing, just as they define “lawful” and “good” to mean the same. This is scarcely surprising considering the wording of the three original volumes of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS. When that was written they meant just about the same thing in my mind — notice I do not say they were synonymous in my thinking at, that time."

Add in the Greyhawk items like the Book of Vile Darkness (a Chaotic item) and you can see why we get confused.

[jdrakeh]

Why choose Evil? Because Evil gets the chicks.

[howandwhy99]

It is what it is. Let 'em pick what they want.

Honestly, the game is about goal setting and team building. Being the loner or not working for the good of the group is a good way to end up dead. The game itself builds heroes. And saving the world if they realize how much effect they have on it and the fact that no other heroes are going to come save the world in this story. It feels pretty sick robbing or stabbing the guy whose life you have saved by stopping the orc invasion. Reputation gets around too.

[lordtwang]

coffee said:

busman said:

It's curious to me that Law is seen as good and Chaos as evil. Personally, I think if that were what they were meant to be, they would be called Good and Evil. I don't think Gary was a guy to choose words lightly.

I've had this same discussion many times. Here's what Gary himself said about it in The Strategic Review, v II, No. 1 (Feb '76):

"There is considerable confusion in that most dungeonmasters
construe the terms “chaotic” and “evil” to mean the same thing, just as they define “lawful” and “good” to mean the same. This is scarcely surprising considering the wording of the three original volumes of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS. When that was written they meant just about the same thing in my mind — notice I do not say they were synonymous in my thinking at, that time."

Add in the Greyhawk items like the Book of Vile Darkness (a Chaotic item) and you can see why we get confused.

Reading a bit of the Elric Saga should clear up most people's wrongheaded views about Law and Chaos. They're both evil!!! Or at least, they can be. Good and evil exist in both. And neutrality is the better place. I think people's views of law and chaos would have gone over better had they used the term Balance instead of Neutral. But then, I guess Balance implies active neutrality while Neutral could be passive.

[philotomy]

lordtwang said:

I think people's views of law and chaos would have gone over better had they used the term Balance instead of Neutral. But then, I guess Balance implies active neutrality while Neutral could be passive.

One could use the terms Law, Chaos, Balance, and Unaligned.

[busman]

lordtwang said:

Reading a bit of the Elric Saga should clear up most people's wrongheaded views about Law and Chaos. They're both evil!!! Or at least, they can be. Good and evil exist in both. And neutrality is the better place. I think people's views of law and chaos would have gone over better had they used the term Balance instead of Neutral. But then, I guess Balance implies active neutrality while Neutral could be passive.

I generally agree with you on all points. I don't know that I'd call it wrongheaded, but that's very Gygaxian of you. =)

[doc]

In my campaign I try to downplay alignment for most characters/NPCs. Law and Chaos have less to do with gods than with how a person looks at life, right vs. wrong, and destiny. In my game, the only characters required to have an alignment are clerics and (if they are used) paladins. Clerics must follow the mores of either Law or Chaos, depending on what path their chosen deity is linked to. As guardians of Man and civilization, Paladins are servants of Law, plain and simple. Since only gods that are considered to be relatively benevolent appoint paladins, it is generally a good idea for paladins to also exhibit behavior that would be considered "good."

All other characters may choose to align themselves with Law or Chaos, but most people are too concerned with surviving, raising a family, and making a living to worry much about such weighty concepts as Law and Chaos and the implications behind them.

Doc

[badger2305]

doc said:

In my campaign I try to downplay alignment for most characters/NPCs. Law and Chaos have less to do with gods than with how a person looks at life, right vs. wrong, and destiny. In my game, the only characters required to have an alignment are clerics and (if they are used) paladins. Clerics must follow the mores of either Law or Chaos, depending on what path their chosen deity is linked to. As guardians of Man and civilization, Paladins are servants of Law, plain and simple. Since only gods that are considered to be relatively benevolent appoint paladins, it is generally a good idea for paladins to also exhibit behavior that would be considered "good."

All other characters may choose to align themselves with Law or Chaos, but most people are too concerned with surviving, raising a family, and making a living to worry much about such weighty concepts as Law and Chaos and the implications behind them.

Doc

I like this. One of the debates that got tiresome a long time ago was how much did your alignment force you to behave a particular way. Keeping it as a "higher issue" allows greater freedom on the part of the players (and the referee). Have an exalt for this.

[coffee]

I agree with Badger, Doc. I don't like the whole "DMs must enforce alignment rigidly; it must control your character's every action."

For clerics it makes sense. In a wargame, when you're picking sides and go to recruit the neutrals to join your side, it makes sense.

For Joe Fighter, facing a goblin horde, it just doesn't make much sense to me.

Apparently I'm not getting old; I'm just way too uptight for my own good. I hereby resolve not to let such things worry me so much.

[Deleted]

In my not-so-humble opinion, many young folks (myself included at one point in time) perceive role-playing games as a sort of wish fulfillment fantasy, to be able to do things one ordinarily would not be able to do. Traditionally, this has meant partaking of fantasy tropes such as leading troops in large-scale medieval battles, discovering ancient magic items of wondrous power, or casting magic spells. In modern-day gaming, these tropes have been repeated so often that they begin to lose their sense of awe and wonder.

As gaming traditions become set in their ways (killing monsters grants you power in the form of experience, accumulating wealth is the most effective way of augmenting one's own power), more and more people are brought to the table with a different sense of right and wrong- surviving and growing more powerful is right, losing one's character or becoming weaker is wrong. An examination of the D&D rules without a proper social context to explore them leads many new players to assume that since combat, casting spells, and gaining experience are given the most text space, they are the most important parts of the game.

Consequently, any moral scruples a character may have are seen as a hindrance to the important parts of the game: Accumulating wealth, entering combat, and gaining experience. I have seen many new players needlessly engage in combat under the assumption that combat always grants experience and is therefore preferable to negotiation & discussion which might forestall the need for combat. This has been exacerbated in this 'new generation' of gamers quite simply because they have grown up around these gaming conventions while the first generation, those of us who cut our teeth on Basic D&D, had no conventions whatsoever- we were, for better or for worse, gleeful trapeze artists working without a net.

It certainly does not help that gamers love to lampoon the worst examples of our kind, that venerable type known as 'hack-and-slashers'. This tendency for lampooning can all too easily come across as affectionate and even glorifying to new gamers. Imagine, if you will, someone finding out that you are interested in this strange new thing you have found called "Dungeons and Dragons," and thrusting a copy of Knights of the Dinner Table into your hands! Would you be familiar enough with the stereotypes to recognize them as caricatures and buffoons, or would you regard them as role models to be admired and imitated?

Many a new gamer I have taught has come to admire the ingenuity of the rules lawyer and the cleverness of the number-crunching hack-and-slasher instead of the more subtle nuances of the player who relishes playing a role or exploring the grey area between good and evil.

Instead, too many fresh faces quickly learn to regard alignment as the "straitjacket" later handbooks warn of by DMs who inadvertently reinforce these assumptions by imposing arbitrarily heavy penalties on characters who choose chaotic or evil alignments. DMs are thus stuck between a rock and a hard place: Providing the harsh penalties justice demands of evildoers threatens to destroy the fragile illusion of freedom granted to new players, while *not* providing said penalties is quickly misconstrued as permission to behave badly. Either players 'get away with' being evil, which is far more satisfying for youngsters than being good, or players 'are punished for playing their characters'.

The happiest solution I've found in fantasy is to associate some kind of taint or stigma with evil acts. Such stigmas function best when they provide cumulative penalties, minor at first but increasing in severity in accordance with the severity of the moral transgression. The most evil of acts visibly deform the evildoer through the blessings of evil gods, marking them publicly as one not to be trusted. Granted, this solution is less amenable to intrigue and the concept of hidden or banal evil, the wolf in sheep's clothing, but I find such concepts are best suited to advanced role-players comfortable with the system and more willing to explore their characters beyond 'how much damage can my wizard do with her fireball???'

[korgoth]

Apr 18, 2008 20:58:59 GMT -6 @muraenidae said:

lamthingy

Har! The language filter strikes again. That thing cracks me up.

Also, welcome!