Alignment
Alignment is a key game element in Dungeons and Dragons. People, creatures, spells, objects, and places can have an alignment. The term is used in other role-playing games whenever characters or NPCs have a simple stat for their own code of conduct.
Alignment has spawned more debates and motivational posters than anything else in D&D. Alignment threads now belong in /co/ after we swapped them for Empowered. Post alignment threads at risk of sagebombing.
Alignment in Different Editions
- Dave Arneson's First Fantasy Campaign has three alignments, Good, Neutral, and Evil. The forces of Good included The Blue Rider, known for "riding hither and yon fighting the forces of evil and carrying off any likely wench encountered." Because of the framework of the First Fantasy Campaign, it's best to understand alignment as "allegiance".
- Original D&D goes to a less clear-cut list: Lawful, Chaotic, and Neutral, but does not explain the precise meaning of these terms. The reader is left to interpret them from a list of examples. The side of law includes Halflings, Patriarchs and Treants. Animals, Dryads and Minotaurs are left Neutral. Undead, "Evil High Priests" and Hobgoblins serve Chaos.
- Advanced D&D (aka 1st edition) combined these alignment systems, with one axis for Good, Evil and Neutral, and another for Lawful, Chaotic and Neutral. Different alignments had their own "alignment languages" to allow them to properly identify one another. Interpretations of alignment language are controversial in their own right. Gygax compared alignment language to religious languages, especially Latin in the Catholic Church.
- AD&D 2nd Edition made a radical change to the alignment system, by defining alignment as the character's "basic moral and ethical attitudes toward others, society, good, evil, and the forces of the universe in general". While the 1st Edition grid was used, it had gone from being the character's allegiance or team to a personality test. Alignment language was axed.
- 3rd (and 3.5) Editions made no changes to alignment. Same two-axis method, same class restrictions, same hating people who were on the other side of the chart from you.
- 4th Edition made a controversial change. Instead of the classic 3x3 grid which has been in place since the 1970's, the alignment system was changed to a single axis with four positions: good, lawful good, evil, and chaotic evil, with the added option of being unaligned (not smart enough to understand alignments, or simply can't be bothered to give a shit - not to be confused with the old Neutral). The points being that alignments should be a conscious effort on the part of the player, rather than acting as a personality anchor, and that Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil both represent very specific takes on Good and Evil (equal emphasis on law & order as to good for the former, mindlessly impulsive and often self-destructive evil for the latter). As with many of the changes implemented in 4E, this has caused much heated, vigorous discussion about the subject.
- 5th Edition brought back the old grid of nine options based on Law to Chaos and Good to Evil, but drastically shortened the descriptions (their PHB entries average 2 to 3 sentences, and one of those sentences is usually a description of what critters are usually members of that alignment). It also followed in 4e's footsteps by minimizing the actual crunch-value of alignment (even traditional alignment-requiring classes like the Paladin and Monk no longer need to be a specific alignment or lose their powers) and retaining Unaligned, though this "tenth alignment" is reserved exclusively for the sorts of creatures that are too mindless to have an alignment. In other words, 5e Unaligned is "too dumb to understand concepts of law, chaos, good or evil", whilst Neutral is "deliberately recognizes law/chaos/good/evil and chooses to hold the middle ground between the extremes".
Controversy caused by the 2nd Edition Change
Making alignment a personality system has led to vigorous debate.
Some argue that taking alignment seriously in any way entails failure because it tries to simplify and categorizes something philosophers, sociologists, theologists and psychologists have been debating for thousands of years with no tangible results. A famous example shows the goddamn Batman in various periods of his comic and his actions and words correspond to pretty much all existing alignments. Recent developments in D&D (Eberron, 4th Edition) have been relaxing and ignoring the old rigid structure.
Others argue that those people don't understand fuck about how the two-axis alignment system is meant to work (even the hyper-rigid structure of the 2nd Edition alignments was eventually softened to more of a Cartesian coordinates system by Planescape, and every subsequent edition has eased off even further from the alignment-as-straightjacket model to an alignment-as-storytelling-tool one) and that using an inconsistent comic book character who has been written by dozens of different people over the course of his existence to try and demonstrate that the system fails is completely missing the point.
The Iconic D&D Alignments (And Why You Should Party Kill Them)
Lawful Good
Truth, justice, apple pie, and curbstomping. Their ridiculously rigid codes of morality will often lead them to betray the party when you kick a bunny or try to use something demonic (IE they get angry if you do anything cool). When they start to complain about the party's "evildoing" have the rogue engineer an "accident" for them.
Beware of Lawful Stupid.
Neutral Good
The quintessential "nice guy". Is overridingly concerned with being "good", which is extremely vague but generally boils down to mincing around like a useless pansy and trying to talk their way out of every situation. His idiotic insistence on nonviolence is going to TPK the party when he tries to negotiate with Orcus. Tell him to go make friends with a wolverine and head back to the inn for a drink.
Chaotic Good
The coolest Good-Alignment. A chaotic good character is someone who means well. They mean well, but unfortunately, in their attempts to mean well, they may break a few laws (or steal from a bank, or kill a guy) since to them, the "Good" comes before the "Law". And sure, that cop beat his wife or took drug money... and maybe that bank was run by the mafia. But the fact remains he broke rules, he broke them for good reasons, but he broke them. His well intentioned extremism is going to get you in deep shit with the man, so be sure to betray him to the establishment at first opportunity.
Beware of Stupid Good.
Lawful Neutral
Think Paladins without the morality. So basically superhuman DMV employees. At best they're obstructive bureaucrats, at worst they're insufferable Rules Lawyers given the license of roleplay. They're going to turn on you the second you jaywalk across the street to stop a mugger, so as soon as you get out of town leave them in a shallow grave.
Beware even harder of Lawful Stupid.
True Neutral
Comes in two varieties: "Dedicated to Balance" True Neutral and "Can't be Bothered to Care" True Neutral. "Don't Care" types are either extremely uninspired roleplayers, NPC villagers, or bears. However, they'll usually do what seems like a good idea at the time. This means you should kill them, because chances are they're reading this at the same time as you, and will try to kill you preemptively. "Balance" type roleplayers tend to be some of the more insufferable types since they think they're balancing some cosmic chequebook, and their actions are almost always indistinguishable from chaotic neutral to the casual observer. Better kill this guy too before he decides to even out the ledger by murdering the cleric.
Beware of Stupid Neutral.
Chaotic Neutral
The original interpretation was the agent of chaos. Characters of this alignment were often random and completely inconsistent as long as chaos was achieved. Anarchistic and individualistic, AD&D 2e notes that they are extremely difficult to deal with due to their unreliable nature. Abandoned 3.X onwards when everyone realized no-one could ever play this alignment longer than 5 minutes before suffering a forced change for the sake of adventure. That is, of course, if the character wasn't killed thanks to AD&D's high character mortality rate. The current interpretation of this is a perfectly amoral and self serving character. One who isn't necessarily evil but believes in maintaining their own self interest (or cause) above all others. The player interpretation of this is "whatever the fuck I want, whenever the fuck I want." Usually used directly after the DM bans evil alignments and directly before the DM ragequits. Best chance to save the group is to ice the jerk before Rocks fall, everyone dies.
Beware of Chaotic Stupid.
Lawful Evil
Here you have your Fascists, Social Darwinists, contract killers, and anybody else who can be reliably and systematically counted on to be a dick. In real world terms, Lawful Evil would be corrupt politicians, ridiculously wealthy plutocrats who play the system in obviously self serving ways and/or high-functioning sociopaths (ones who are good at hiding their evil and selfish tendencies) , but do it in a socially acceptable manner that sometimes others might applaud as clever tricks, sometimes you might never even know a person is Lawful Evil, since they usually do their utmost to appear integrated in societies. The endgame is almost always multidimensional domination, so be sure to kill them before they get too powerful.
Neutral Evil
The asshole alignment. Follows the law as long as it helps them, then breaks it. Ingratiates themselves to people, before betraying them. Does good deeds, until they cease to elevate them. Social acceptance never really comes into it with these guys. If he's being an insufferable prick you should probably just kill him, nobody will question you. If he's generally acting like a good guy you should definitely just kill him, he's up to something.
Chaotic Evil
This guy loves sticking it to the man. It doesn't have to be The Man specifically, since any man will do. Hell, as far as he's concerned, women and children are fair game too. Loves seeing everyone pissed off/in pain, be they king, commoner, or god. They'd probably be defined as real world psychopaths who generally wind up in jail or on death row. Kill him the second he turns away and leave him in a ditch, before he gets the chance to do the same.
Beware of Stupid Evil or, worse, someone who alternates between Chaotic Stupid and Stupid Evil.
A Broader Perspective
When creating a character after the alignment system, you can run into the problem of the alignment table being too narrow. After all, in a lot of games and stories, characters aren't just "good" or "lawful" - They can be complex characters with more than one side to them, or with a goal to pursue rather than an ideal, that can lead them to behave very different from what the alignment table offers. This is because the ideals and concepts presented on the table can be interpreted in various ways, that might end up harming your character in the long run.
Lawful is usually regarded as "I follow the rules of the land", while Chaotic tend to be "I do whatever I want regardless of laws", but it doesn't in fact have to be like that: Lawful doesn't have to mean that your character follow the laws, just that the character has some kind of ruleset or set of morals they follow and generally won't bend from, even if they are selfimposed, while Chaotic might mean that your character doesn't care for these limitations and will change ideals on a whim, or not have them at all. Likewise, Good is usually "I help and protect and doesn't afraid of anything" and Evil "I will kill because I can", but Good could also mean that your character is generally not self-concerned and will happily defend someone else to preserve something (Remember, humans are flock animals - We only do good to others if it does good to ourselves, even if that is just the good feeling of doing good things), while Evil can be a character who has a goal she wants to achieve and wont be stopped to do so.
Examples using the above mentioned way of making a character could be the Lawful Evil duelist who will happily kill a man on the street, but only if it follows his own code of honour, and who is in a party because he wants to meet stronger foes, or the Chaotic Good mage who one day helps his party with spells, but turns a character into a rabbit the next, just to make sure the spell works properly when he meets an opponent.
Another point is that alignment is meant to represent tendencies rather than hard-and-fast stagnant points. A Good character can be pushed to the breaking point and do something Evil, or a Lawful character can agonizingly choose to make a Chaotic decision that goes against everything he believes in to prevent the unthinkable, or an Evil character might find herself doing something selfless because she's not that evil. Indeed, people acting in ways they normally wouldn't due to pressure and circumstance is where drama comes from. Plus, and this is the important bit, doing one act out of alignment does not constitute an alignment shift. (Unless you're a pre-4e paladin anyway.) The Lawful cop whose heart causes him to make an exception for the hooker who needs to feed her kids, or the Chaotic cop who swears to his dying partner that he'll bring the bad guy in "by the book" don't stop being lawful or chaotic just because they acted out of alignment once.
Just remember that these things aren't set in stone. Talk with your fellow PCs and the DM and make sure they understand how you interbred the system and how you use it with your character. You can have loads of fun with unique characters this way - Anyone can make and play a Lawful Good Paladin who is gonna spare the BBEG, but it is harder to make and play the Lawful Good vigilante who will happily slaughter entire groups of criminals and put them on spires around town as an example of what happens if you mess with the children of the village.
Alignment, Allegiance and Personality in other RPGs
- White Wolf's World of Darkness games clearly separate allegiance and personality. For example, Vampire: the Masquerade has Camarilla, Anarchs, and Sabbat for the character's basic allegiance (although unlike D&D, these have no metaphysical consequences). All of the World of Darkness games use a shopping list of Jungian archetypes to describe a character's personal code of conduct, described as their "Nature." The games have much emphasis on social interactions, betrayal, deception and general being a bastard, so there's also the archetype they present publicly, called their "Demeanor." Good or evil can be a bit irrelevant when the player characters are all vampires/ werewolves/ demigods/ dead/ half-imaginary. Characters that behaved appropriately to their Nature archetype were gained a stronger self-confidence, evidenced by awarding "willpower" points they could spend later to make tasks more likely to succeed.
- White Wolf's Exalted has the four Virtues: Valor, Compassion, Conviction and Temperance. Measured on a scale of 1-5 for mortals, but some beings can go up to ten, it describes, respectively, how brave you are, how nice you are, how good you are at sticking to your guns, and how much willpower you can muster to avoid temptation. Two is considered the human average but since you're (hopefully!) supposed to be some kind of mythical hero you have to at least three in something to start with.
- Being all the way down at one means you are, respectively, a coward, a sociopathic dick who can't feel empathy, an aimless, wishy-washy vagrant, or any flavor of hedonist you care to name. The cosmic spirit of unlikable douchebaggery, the Ebon Dragon, is about the only being with a one in every virtue.
- Having too much, though, turns you a different flavor of psycho, respectively, a frothing berserker, an unbalanced lunatic who can't stop helping people and won't look at the bigger picture, a zealot incapable of realizing that you're wrong, or an uptight jerk who literally wants to stop everyone else from having fun. Each virtue can override one other virtue, but raising them all high takes up lots of XP and can turn you into a neurotic wreck like the Unconquered Sun, who has a ten in every virtue and has turned into a burned-out wreck of a deity listlessly squatting in his celestial house playing World of Warcraft all day because breaking any virtue would lessen him and it's really hard to function without repressing at least one in a weak sort of way.
- d20 Modern uses "allegiances" instead of ethics, indicating the character subscribes to an established code of conduct, or the mores of a social group. Dealing with an NPC with a matching allegiance gives the player a +2 circumstance bonus to social tasks. If an NPC witnesses you violating one of their allegiances, that's a -2 for any social tasks with that NPC evermore. Characters can have multiple allegiances, each providing the +2/-2 when appropriate, but not cumulatively.
- Palladium Fantasy RPG (and all Palladium games that came later) uses three categories for alignment: Good, Selfish and Evil. These break down into seven alignments: Principled, Scrupulous, Unprincipled, Anarchist, Aberrant, Miscreant, and Diabolic. They added "Taoist" for their Kung-fu games, but nobody used it.
- GURPS doesn't have alignments. Instead, it's a long list of mental disadvantages you can take during character generation to restrict the character's behaviour. Since characters are on a point-buy system, these disadvantages can be traded for other advantages. You could take Compulsive Honesty (-10 point flaw), for enough points to get you Ambidexterity (+10 point advantage), or Kleptomania (-15) for a military rank of Lieutenant (three ranks @ +5).
- Warhammer Fantasy had five alignments on a linear scale: Law - Good - Neutral - Evil - Chaotic. This was used as a rule of thumb for reactions between people — identical alignments would be well-disposed towards each other, but the further apart alignments are, the more likely things would come to blows. A character's alignment could shift at most one step left or right from where they started. Later editions of Warhammer de-emphasize the alignment system in favour of allegiances and broad personalities.
- Dungeon World uses alignment as a method for gaining experience points; you choose one of the three offered during character creation. Playing an evil rogue? Get 1 XP when someone else gets in trouble for something you did. Playing a good druid? Get 1 XP when you eliminate an unnatural menace.
- Sitting somewhere between a D&D alignment and a personality test, Magic: The Gathering has a five color system of magic, that also had personality traits wired into make up. A red is the color of acting rather than thinking, and they have the most destructive spells and cheapest creatures. Blue on the other hand is Logical and thinks rather than acts, conversely they have the most counter spells.
- The Star Wars Roleplaying Game uses a form of alignment called Morality which has a mechanical effect, but it only applies to Force users and how they activate their powers, so any other character can behave in whichever manner they choose without penalty. Force users move up and down the Light/Dark scale in a fluid manner which can be incredibly difficult to maintain at the same value from session to session. It has an inbuilt tendency to climb upwards, but can be decreased due to actions on the part of the player. The rules incorporate a hard and fast list of what actually constitutes "bad" and how minor or major it impacts your score, and doesn't really incorporate any level of intention or thought process that goes into the act, meaning that the GM shouldn't be blamed for hitting the character with a big alignment shift at the end of a session, but character could swing back in the following session just as naturally.
- Wizards Star Wars D20 also used a light/dark system which influenced what powers were available to Force users, but the system was incredibly punishing to players, requiring them to have absolutely no dark side points at all in order to get the best out of Light powers while causing them to alignment shift every time they even used a dark-side power, also it risked them losing their characters to the GM if they reach a Dark threshold determined by their wisdom score. Plus while there was a list of what actions accumulate "dark" points, some of them are subjective and call on GM rulings, and those points are quite difficult (but not impossible) to get rid of once obtained.
- Reality: as long as humans have been around we've tried to sort out ethics, and then put people into category of "good" or "Evil", "lawful", or "chaotic". for much of human history we've used religion and race as the measuring stick of how we figured this out. During the 20th century, though the former is still used by some, societies figured out a much better way than the latter (though some people still use that too) to type people's personality, or "Alignment" thanks to personality tests. Developed by armed forces to ease selection, personality tests are, like RPG game alignments, not perfect however they are still a good guide line for describing peoples personality and some like the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory are medically useful when treating mental disorders. one of the most common personality typing systems is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator., the link is to a rough description of what it is. Of course, since people in real-life grow and change, so can their personality and alignment, so re-testing is necessary to keep an accurate idea. Myers-Briggs is really a lot like a horoscope, with descriptions so vague and generic they can easily apply to just about any one. Try reading the descriptions and see how many could apply to you.
Gallery
Did we mention that alignment charts are a meme?
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An alignment chart for gradient alignment tracking.
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Freedom is the right of all sentient beings.
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Batman is a complex guy
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"We are legion!"
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Cue Mark Hamill laughter.
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"Unlimited powah!"
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