Does Anyone Really Still Follow the Law/Chaos Crap?

[Oberoni]

(Note: This is cross-posted from Nifty)

I realized in the last few months that I've pretty much given up on trying to assign any value to the D&D terms "lawful" and "chaotic."

Oh, sure. Just like everyone else here, I realized that the terms (as used in D&D) were convoluted. I even posted about it back in the day, about how stupid the example of a chaotic good character opposing a lawful evil tax collector was as far as demonstrating what it mans to be chaotic.

However, the more I think about it, these terms are actually, truly meaningless. And I don't mean just that the examples and definitions in the book are bad. I mean that, with rare exceptions, having to list a character as "lawful" is akin to having to list a character's hair and eyes and nails as brown. That is, only getting to check one box to describe several different aspects of a character is dumb.

Consider the adventuring wizard, for example.

Now, by this guy's very nature, he methodically pours over books and uses complex formulae (lawful) to bend the forces of reality to his will (chaotic). He might be very disciplined in his morning routine of waking up and preparing spells for the day (lawful) but will then do any one of a large number of different activities, each and every day (chaotic). He probably values the individual, and the rights of the individual to make of his life as he wishes (chaotic), but he might see himself apart from the herd of common folks that need to be sheparded to form the gears that keep society running (lawful).

And so on and so forth.

For one of Medesha's online games, I was going to play an evil character that was all in favor of killing petty and corrupt masters and rulers, so that the truly gifted in society have a chance to realize their own potential. How the heck do you categorize that, anyways?

I mean, he breaks the law by committing murder (chaotic) of people in positions of power in society (double chaotic) so that society as a whole can work far more efficiently (lawful) and thus enable gifted individuals the chance to excel (chaotic, I guess) and use their gifts to improve society (lawful).

And that's not even going into anything on his character sheet, that's just a basic philosophy.

Nowadays, I find that if I create a character with any complexity at all (which would be every character), I just can't say "oh, he's lawful," or "oh, he's chaotic" because there's just so much baggage with each term. I have go with either the old standby of "neutral" or come up with some mumbo-jumbo like "chaotic with neutral tendencies."

So...does anyone still see a point in using law and chaos? Does anyone use it, no problems? If so, how do you reconcile the large number of aspects of a character law and chaos are supposed to cover?

I say "screw it." I can deal with good, neutral, and evil, but law and chaos...bah.

[Fwib]

Agreed - Law and Chaos are more like meta-elements than philosophies.

Magic systems that use Chaos as raw magical power and Law as control are cool, but I have never yet seen anybody write anything that convinced me they were sensible as alignments.

[RandomCasualty]

1133761559[/unixtime]]
For one of Medesha's online games, I was going to play an evil character that was all in favor of killing petty and corrupt masters and rulers, so that the truly gifted in society have a chance to realize their own potential. How the heck do you categorize that, anyways?

That's textbook chaotic. Anyone who defies order and favors the outlook from the point of view of the individual is chaotic.

The grey area for your character seems to be the good/evil axis, not the law/chaos. If your character is doing these things to benefit society as a whole, he may well be good or at least neutral as opposed to evil. Evil implies selfishness and from what you've stated there's not really any personal gain in it for him to kill off these rulers.

I've never really had much of a problem with the law chaos axis. Generally if a character is devoted to an organization or a code of honor or some duty, then he's lawful. If he's a free spirit and takes things on an individual case by case basis, then he's chaotic. If he falls somewhere in between he's neutral.

Good/evil IMO is much harder to quantify because morality is so relative. In D&D common "evil" acts like murder are not necessarily evil in the D&D sense. It's basically ok for you to kill someone that's evil, that's what paladins and the like are trained to do.

[Fwib]

Hmmm.... /agree RC - sounds reasonable...

Maybe we only think Good and Evil are well-defined because of the legacy of thousands of years of philosophical thinking about it? ...and the legacy of people being executed for claiming that they weren't well-defined

[Username17]

Law and Chaos are inherently impossible to quantify. Lawful actions are everything that fits with your own code, and also everything that fits with society. If you alter your own actions to fit better with society, that's lawful, if you adhere to your own way of doing things that's also lawful. Similarly, chaotic actions are everything that you do in spite of society, and also everything you do that is against your own preset ideas. So if you take action against the wishes of those around you, that's chaotic. Similarly, if you allow others to use peer pressure to sway your actions, that's chaotic as well.

All actions and inactions are both lawful and chaotic, depending upon whether you consider them from the standpoint of being a positive or negative actions. And I mean that in the strict sense, not with any kind of moral judgement. Any time you do things because of anything, that's lawful. Every time you do something in spite of anything, that's chaotic. So being "Pro Life" is lawful, but being "Anti Abortion" is chaotic. The fact that those positions are in fact exactly the same means that the entire concept of Law/Chaos is completely pointless.

--

Not, of course, that I think that Good and Evil are particularly meaningful concepts either. Noone has ever satisfactorily demonstrated a defintion of "Good" that people can agree with.

The examples in the books of what constitutes Good and Evil are so full of holes that you can actually nest cliff swallows in them. And that's not just because the people who wrote them are idiots, it's also because the concept is not workable and never has been.

Good people do things you agree with. Not necessarily things *I* agree with. Evil people do things you don't agree with. And so on. Good and Evil only work so long as everyone at the table has an extremely similar moral structure.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1133810887[/unixtime]] So being "Pro Life" is lawful, but being "Anti Abortion" is chaotic. The fact that those positions are in fact exactly the same means that the entire concept of Law/Chaos is completely pointless.

Not quite. It depends on the reason you are pro-life or pro-choice.

If you're pro-choice because you feel that it's the individual's right to choose and not the government's right to regulate that, then that's chaotic thinking.

If you're pro-life because you believe life is sacred and should be preserved, that's actually a good/evil argument and not a law/chaos one. Not that I'm saying abortion is necessarily evil, as good/evil tends to be screwed up in D&D anyway.

If you believe in pro-life because of some paragraph in the bible, then that's lawful.

So you can get to different conclusions through various means, and it's not necessarily contradictory. The idea of lawful and chaotic generally only applies to one's own view. You can be lawful and defy societies laws, so long as you obey your own personal code. The idea however is that you must adopt some code and follow it rather rigidly. If you have a loose code, then you're probably neutral. If you have no code at all or one you hardly follow, then you're chaotic. Note that your code can be almost anything meaningful, It could be a city's particular set of laws, it could be the knight's oath to a king, the wizard's code, or whatever.

But like anything, law/chaos isn't a science as far as determining what someone is. In general though, I find law and chaos to be a lot easier to determine than good/evil morality, which is very subjective.

The main problem with lawful and chaotic that I have is how people try to define certain actions as being either lawful or chaotic without first analyzing them. Just like good and evil, there are very few things that are always lawful or always chaotic. What is chaotic for you may actually be lawful to someone else.

I think what causes a lot of confusion (even among some designers) is the word 'lawful'. There's often some crazy implied connection to legal laws and that lawful characters won't do illegal things. That's not really how the alignments are supposed to work and I think once people get past the idea that lawful = legal and chaotic = illegal, then the law/chaos axis makes a lot more sense. They seriously should change it from lawful to Ordered or something, though lawful evil sounds better than Ordered evil.

[Oberoni]

1133806806[/unixtime]]

1133761559[/unixtime]]
For one of Medesha's online games, I was going to play an evil character that was all in favor of killing petty and corrupt masters and rulers, so that the truly gifted in society have a chance to realize their own potential. How the heck do you categorize that, anyways?

That's textbook chaotic. Anyone who defies order and favors the outlook from the point of view of the individual is chaotic.

But you're oversimplifying.

The hypothetical character in this example would be murdering tyrants, masters, and bureaucrats in order to create a new, better social order.

While I doubt that the concept of the social contract has been developed in, say, Eberron, he could easily argue that these oppressive individuals he's blowin' up are failing at fulfilling their roles in society, and as a result, stopping others from fulfilling theirs. By weeding out the bad parts of society, he can ultimately create a better society that lives up to the standards of the governed.

It's actually akin to pruning a plant. You wouldn't say that a Druid pruning a plant is being destructive of nature, right?

So yeah, his behavior is:
Chaotic: He's creating more short-term discord by axin' people in charge...
Lawful:...to create a better society that serves its gifted people.

Or

Chaotic: He's breaking the law of the land...
Lawful:...to maintain his own strict moral guidelines.

See what I mean?

[Oberoni]

1133814785[/unixtime]]

I think what causes a lot of confusion (even among some designers) is the word 'lawful'. There's often some crazy implied connection to legal laws and that lawful characters won't do illegal things. That's not really how the alignments are supposed to work and I think once people get past the idea that lawful = legal and chaotic = illegal, then the law/chaos axis makes a lot more sense. They seriously should change it from lawful to Ordered or something, though lawful evil sounds better than Ordered evil.

When you say "even among some designers," you must mean the ones that wrote the book:

Lawful Neutral, "Judge"

A lawful neutral character acts as law, tradition, or a personal code directs her. Order and organization are paramount to her. She may believe in personal order and live by a code or standard, or she may believe in order for all and favor a strong, organized government.

That's right, they conflate "following society's laws" and "following your own laws" right into the same paragraph. Same sentence, even. They're two very, very different things, and there they are, getting lumped together.

And on the flip side:

Chaotic Neutral, "Free Spirit"

A chaotic neutral character follows his whims. He is an individualist first and last. He values his own liberty but doesn’t strive to protect others’ freedom. He avoids authority, resents restrictions, and challenges traditions. A chaotic neutral character does not intentionally disrupt organizations as part of a campaign of anarchy.

That's right, being an individualist and valuing liberty gets lumped right in with challenging tradition!

Oy vey.

Maybe the definitions were clearer in older definitions, I don't know. But I will tell you that the 3.0 and 3.5 book definitions are unworkable, since they lump in several completely disparate concepts under one banner.

[RandomCasualty]

1133824548[/unixtime]]
The hypothetical character in this example would be murdering tyrants, masters, and bureaucrats in order to create a new, better social order.

Who says it's about creating social order. He just wants to let the gifted individuals realize their own potential. It doesn't seem like he cares much for the average citizen or creating a new government.

While I doubt that the concept of the social contract has been developed in, say, Eberron, he could easily argue that these oppressive individuals he's blowin' up are failing at fulfilling their roles in society, and as a result, stopping others from fulfilling theirs. By weeding out the bad parts of society, he can ultimately create a better society that lives up to the standards of the governed.

Yeah, sure. That *could* be his motivation and that may make him lawful or neutral. The odd thing about the law/chaos axis is that it can approach similar goals from different angles, but that's also what's good about it. Because we want CGs and LGs working together. Law and chaos doesn't mean you possess some drastically different world view. A CN and an LN could both see the current government as being "bad", but for different reasons. It's that reason that's important.

As far as I understood the character he was more interested in the individual than society as a whole. Since he wasn't doing it for the common man, he was doing it for the truly gifted in society.

Chaotic: He's creating more short-term discord by axin' people in charge...
Lawful:...to create a better society that serves its gifted people.

Or

Chaotic: He's breaking the law of the land...
Lawful:...to maintain his own strict moral guidelines.

You're trying to create lawful and chaotic absolutes. They don't exist. Chaotic isn't about "creating discord" or "breaking the laws of the land".

As far as the alignments are defined in the book, there is a lot of ambiguity. But note that there are a lot of "or"s in those definitions, meaning there's a lot of ambiguity. While it can mean that the character embraces the law as a rigid code, it doesn't have to. His code could be anything he wants it to be.

And while challenging tradition is put into chaotic, it also specifically says that the character is not on a campaign of anarchy, which goes along with the fact that breaking the law of the land and killing rulers is not an absolute chaotic act.

[Oberoni]

As far as I understood the character he was more interested in the individual than society as a whole. Since he wasn't doing it for the common man, he was doing it for the truly gifted in society.

Oh, sure, but the character realizes that maximizing the talent of gifted individuals ends up benefiting society. It might be a side effect, but it's there. After all, every genuinely talented poet, writer, and playwright who's given the opportunity can produce a work that might enrich the lives of everyone who is exposed to it.

But let's say that the ruler of the country bans free speech and actually hordes talented artists in his own palace. He has them produce works that only please him, instead of what they want to truly work on.

This guy's a prime candidate for axin,' even if he otherwise maintains a strong army that protects the people and stuff like that. If he's replaced by someone that allows free speech, than all these artists actually get the chance to impact society and its people. Perhaps it will help to raise the general morale of the public, which will in turn make the kingdom more efficient.

And so on and so forth.

Basically, RC, we could go back and forth on this for a very long time--which is my point. There's so much that's lawful and chaotic about this particular mindset that it just shows that trying to boil things down to "lawful" and "chaotic" is futile at best.

[RandomCasualty]

1133827967[/unixtime]]
Oh, sure, but the character realizes that maximizing the talent of gifted individuals ends up benefiting society. It might be a side effect, but it's there.

If it's a side effect that something happens, it doesn't matter. For it to be part of your alignment it has to be your main motivation. Just because an evil power hungry lord poisons his king to try to ascend to the throne may save lives if the king was evil himself, it doesn't mean that the lord's actions were somehow 'good'.

If creating a better society wasn't his primary motivation then it doesn't really factor into it as far as alignment is concerned, even if you knew it was a likely side effect.

I think that most of the problems from law and chaos come from overthinking. You can do the same with good and evil.

"I'm killing the evil orc chieftan, so that's good. But when he dies, that'll result in the ogres getting stronger and causing deaths, that's evil. It may also get the surviving orcs to retaliate against humanity which would cause innocents to die, which is also evil. But that would also lead to orcs and ogres dying, which may prevent death in the long run, which is good."

And you can go on like that forever. D&D alignment isn't supposed to be something you think about. You just pick the most direct fit based on the character's motivation.

[Crissa]

Frank's right, as you apply it personally, it's meaningless.

However, as he'd point out, D&D deals in absolutism - there is a definition of what is good, and what is evil; what is lawful, and what is chaotic.

And the material plane is some mix of all of them: Too much of any one and the world doesn't work anyhow. Too much good and everything is shiny and boring; too much lawful and everything is stifled, too much evil or chaos and the world is a burning wasteland or jungle.

And it's up to the players to decide which of these paths to follow: You could call them pink, white, black, and swirly. It doesn't matter.

-Crissa

[User3]

Chaotic and Lawful don't seem to be coherent philosophies which are mutually exclusive.

Rather, they are anologues to the Democratic and Republican political parties. Chaotic and Lawful represent a sort of flavor or type of self-righteousness rather than anything consistant. They are fashions. They both embody the same general set of American ideals.

Now I'm going to contradict myself: Political revolutionaries (like the revolutionary above) are always chaotic. This is why, when they successfully revolve, they tend to create such shitty governments. They're good at fighting against the current paradigm, not making a new one.

Democrats just want to look like political revolutionaries, without doing anything revolutionary. Which is more where most chaotic characters tend to lie.

Gah!

[RandomCasualty]

1133910213[/unixtime]]Frank's right, as you apply it personally, it's meaningless.

However, as he'd point out, D&D deals in absolutism - there is a definition of what is good, and what is evil; what is lawful, and what is chaotic.

The idea of ethical absolutism is stupid in the first place, I won't even begin to defend that. I dont' think it's even possible to have a coherent system of ethics that isn't in some way relative.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

IIRC, Ethical Absolutism, as pertains to fantasy, came out of old Moorcock novels where instead of forces of Good and Evil clashing, it was forces of Order and Chaos. But then, from what I'm given to understand, Order and Chaos were all but analougs for Good and Evil anyway.

-Desdan

[RandomCasualty]

1134018279[/unixtime]]IIRC, Ethical Absolutism, as pertains to fantasy, came out of old Moorcock novels where instead of forces of Good and Evil clashing, it was forces of Order and Chaos. But then, from what I'm given to understand, Order and Chaos were all but analougs for Good and Evil anyway.

Yup. Considering Chaos had an empire and Law was banished from the world. It was basically good versus evil, only evil had all the badass weapons and powers and good just sucked.

[Username17]

1134022929[/unixtime]]
Yup. Considering Chaos had an empire and Law was banished from the world. It was basically good versus evil, only evil had all the badass weapons and powers and good just sucked.

You know, a lot of people seem to want things that way. It somehow feels more "epic" if Evil has fancy cars and armies of ass kickers, and the forces of Good are a couple of gardeners and a minor aristocrat.

Personally, I find the whole idea insulting. If the vast majority of people on the planet are in favor of "Evil", then democracy being what it is, those are actually the good guys.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1134024955[/unixtime]]
You know, a lot of people seem to want things that way. It somehow feels more "epic" if Evil has fancy cars and armies of ass kickers, and the forces of Good are a couple of gardeners and a minor aristocrat.

Personally, I find the whole idea insulting. If the vast majority of people on the planet are in favor of "Evil", then democracy being what it is, those are actually the good guys.

Well, it works better if good isn't powerful because you can tell a better story that way. After all if the good guys are nothing more than messengers who go to the big "good empire" and call in the cavalry, then things aren't all that fun. Good organizations need to be understaffed, underbudgeted and overall lacking in resources and/or competence, otherwise the heroes feel more like messengers for their organization. And generally the idea isn't for the heroes to call in the marines, the heroes *are* the marines.

And the idea isn't necessarily that the people are in favor of evil, it's that they have no choice. Like any real world dictator, the evil guy has the armies and all the power, and it doesn't matter if the citizens don't like it. He oppresses and terrorizes them and prevents them from rising up agianst him through a variety of evil methods. The idea for most stories is in fact that the average citizen is good and the governments and rulers are evil. Much like Bush portraying the Iraqi civilians as peaceful dogooders who are just waiting for liberation from the evil tyrant, that's pretty much how fantasy worlds really are supposed to be. Occasionally you have an evil city or even a fully evil country, but for the most part, the average person is a good guy.

[User3]

Well, it works better if good isn't powerful because you can tell a better story that way. After all if the good guys are nothing more than messengers who go to the big "good empire" and call in the cavalry, then things aren't all that fun. Good organizations need to be understaffed, underbudgeted and overall lacking in resources and/or competence, otherwise the heroes feel more like messengers for their organization. And generally the idea isn't for the heroes to call in the marines, the heroes *are* the marines.

The heroes can be the marines, no matter how powerful the good guys are. You can certainly tell your story with the good guys being few and powerless, but then the bad guys better be dumb (or suffering from internal conflicts or whatever) or your story is going to feel artificial.

And on the other hand you can have powerful good guys going up against powerful bad guys and that actually allows you to have bad guys who are smart and determined and powerful and who do their very best to win. And that works just fine for me. It just seems to me like the bad guys are scarier and more real when they are smart, when they actually work well with other bad guys and when the odds are actually sometimes against them.

At the very least it is a nice change from the standard plots which always seem to feature an evil overlord and his empire going up against a few determined heroes. I would love to just once read a story where the good guys outnumber the bad guys ten to one, where the bad guys desperately try to destroy the ring / fulfill the prophecy / complete the ritual before the armies of good destroy them, where the bad guys have to play hit-and-run and perhaps even a story where the bad guys actually win.

Nothing against a good old-fashioned artifact destruction story, but I would like to see a little more variety. And I don't see why it would make a worse story just because the good guys are not outnumbered and outforced.

[Murtak]

Bah, I hate it when that happens. Can we have a "that was me posting up there" emoticon?

[RandomCasualty]

1134051608[/unixtime]]
The heroes can be the marines, no matter how powerful the good guys are. You can certainly tell your story with the good guys being few and powerless, but then the bad guys better be dumb (or suffering from internal conflicts or whatever) or your story is going to feel artificial.

Well the main disadvantage of evil is that it doens't play well with others. So you can have large evil empires that don't get much done due to infighting and all.

At the very least it is a nice change from the standard plots which always seem to feature an evil overlord and his empire going up against a few determined heroes. I would love to just once read a story where the good guys outnumber the bad guys ten to one, where the bad guys desperately try to destroy the ring / fulfill the prophecy / complete the ritual before the armies of good destroy them, where the bad guys have to play hit-and-run and perhaps even a story where the bad guys actually win.

This could work if the PCs were the evil side, but the PCs by definition pretty much need to be the outmanned and outgunned, because they don't win by sheer numbers, they win against sheer numbers.

Having only small groups of bad guys simply means that you've got only one or two encounters against the evil guys, and that's a pretty short story. The PCs fight against the bad guy, and either die or live. Hell, the PCs may not even get to fight him if someone else from the good army knocks him off first.

Part of the nature of fantasy stories is that there's heroes and stuff-heroes-kill. If the stuff-heroes-kill is less than the number of heroes you're going to run into a situation like everquest where you've got heroes camping locations and fighting over kills, and that's just stupid.

[Username17]

That depends upon what kind of adventure you are running. In Hack and Slash, sure, the bad guys have to outnumber the PCs substantially. But what about the detective adventure?

In the detective mode, the villains are horribly outnumbered and outgunned. The trick is to find them before they kill again. And when you do, the second trick is to subdue them before they kill you, or delay them long enough for backup to arrive.

There's nothing wrong with the detective mode, in fact I rather like it. There's an investigative stage, where the good guys are racing the clock, and then there's a confrontation stage where the villain is racing the clock. If the clock is in the same hands all the time, it becomes boring.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

Well the main disadvantage of evil is that it doens't play well with others. So you can have large evil empires that don't get much done due to infighting and all.

This really annoys me, its part of why the alignment system sucks so much.

It encourages this delusional view that being evil makes you incapable of signing on to some form of the social contract.

There is no reason in hell why I couldn't say "Well the main disadvantage of GOOD is that it doesn't play well with others".

Because lets face it. An evil character would have no qualms cooperating with good people doing good deeds if it benefited them. But would a good character cooperate with evil?

An evil overlord gets overthrown if he is too weak or incompetant. But how often does he get over thrown for being insufficiently evil or too moral? Does it not seem more plausible that good subjects will overthrow good rulers based on insufficient goodness or morality more often?

Clearly it is GOOD empires which are likely to be in constant states of rebellion and infighting. Which explains why they haven't used their mechanical superiority to conquer the universe.

Alignment should go the way of the dinosaurs. It makes as much sense as (and is less amusing than) making all the characters in the universe align their attitudes and "teams" by character class.

[Username17]

1134083515[/unixtime]]
Alignment should go the way of the dinosaurs. It makes as much sense as (and is less amusing than) making all the characters in the universe align their attitudes and "teams" by character class.

Ugh. That was totally tried. It was called "World of Darkness".

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1134083515[/unixtime]]
This really annoys me, its part of why the alignment system sucks so much.

It encourages this delusional view that being evil makes you incapable of signing on to some form of the social contract.

No, that's what lawful evil is. BUt signing a social contract doesn't necessarily mean that you're actually out for everyone's well being, it just means you follow some rules. So while you may not be a psychopath who runs around murdering everyone in sight, you still are out for yourself. ANd selfishness isn't great for societies to form. It just means that your villains are Bill Gates and Dick Cheyney as opposed to Hannibal Lecter.