Goodman Games

I have done a search for "alignment" and read many of the posts, yet I had a hard time finding exactly what I am seeking. It is a subject that isn't overly complicated, or at least on the surface appears to be that way, but in the end, arguments abound over alignment. I want to try to avoid this as much as possible at my table.

Please explain in detail what these alignments are in the game so that I might understand why certain beings are of certain alignments. Since it affects game play, according to a few of the rules, this is very important to me to fully understand.

Example: Why are Elves Chaotic? What does that even mean in that context? Do they rip apart their own governance?

Example: Will Law and Chaos PCs work together?

Example: Explain Law, Neutral and Chaos in reference to the game world. I realize there isn't a setting but any generic setting is fine. What is Law? What is Neutral? What is Chaos? How might one find them in a typical fantasy town, city, country or setting? What of the races? How do Law, Neutral and Chaos behave within different societies?

Example: What about Deities, Patrons, spells, classes, races, any conflicts there?

As you can see I have having trouble grasping this, but I have a strong desire to fully understand. crystal clearly, in a wide range of situations, races, monsters, etc., as a DM so it does not create stalling during game play.

I remember Stormbringer RPG by Chaosium had these alignments, but I was never a GM for that game and I must admit I never fully grasped it there either.

For those who take the time to really flesh out DCC alignment expounding and full explanations, thank you, thank you, thank you!

I don't have the time right now to go into lengthy discussion, especially since I use alignment lightly, but I'm going to answer your questions. Of course answers may vary with different Judges and settings.

Rolemancer wrote:Example: Why are Elves Chaotic? What does that even mean in that context? Do they rip apart their own governance?

Nothing forbids an elf to be neutral or lawful in my campaign. Most of them are neutral or chaotic, since they don't ally themselves with humanity and their growing civilizations. Either they don't care about them or oppose their views and see them as a plague. High elves can be an exception, I can imagine them easily as lawful beings.

Rolemancer wrote:Example: Will Law and Chaos PCs work together?

They do in my campaigns, but often they aren't really sure about each other's alignment. None of them follows strict gods. If somebody would, he would be punished for such heresy by loosing luck. Most of my players prefer neutrality.

Rolemancer wrote:Example: Explain Law, Neutral and Chaos in reference to the game world. I realize there isn't a setting but any generic setting is fine. What is Law? What is Neutral? What is Chaos? How might one find them in a typical fantasy town, city, country or setting? What of the races? How do Law, Neutral and Chaos behave within different societies?

Oooh, essay question. I'll try to answer shortly.

Followers of law want order. The greater good is more important than the individual. Pravus is an ancient and evil wizard, who rules on the city of Tarsum with iron hands. His goal is keeping his empire from falling apart. He achieves this by strict rules, fear and a network of secret agents. Bill, the sheriff of the Greenhill halflings is lawful too, but he's a nice fellow who tries to make sure everyone is happy and satisfied in his small community. He knows, that while there's enough bread, tobacco and the monsters are kept outside, there won't be any disorders.

Neutrals either try to fight for balance between law and chaos, or they simply don't care. The druids of Inis are fanatical about battling both the creatures of chaos of law, once they feel that one is getting stronger, than the other. The elves of Tularen live deep in the woods and they don't care about the outside world.

Chaos is all about change and freedom. The individual's goals are more important than the society. Snargal, the orc warlord loathes humanity and loves entropy. Hearing the screams of dying villagers is his favourite music. He achieved power by killing the previous warlord, and knows, that one day another orc will chop his head off to get his position. The mysterious Hood is a thief in Arkwyn, who had a rough childhood and simply wants to enjoy life. He works for himself and whoever he wants to, all he wants is to have enough money for his next dose of wine and women.

Rolemancer wrote:Example: What about Deities, Patrons, spells, classes, races, any conflicts there?

Varies by individual. Entities of the same alignment don't have to like each other, but they would ally in a heartbeat to reach a common goal or battle a common foe. Alliances with the opposing alignments are rare, it depends who strict one follows his alignment. My gods are also picky about which spells they give to their followers.

If you want a good advice about alignment: don't sweat is. Differnet settings and Judges do it differently. I think it's clear from my examples, that in my campaign it isn't black & white, they aren't strict rules but guidelines about behaviour and morality. Just like in real life, there are people who barely fit their alignment and people who are radical about it. The simple question which helps me a lot when deciding about alignment is "which party would you vote for in the next election for ruling Cosmic Power" - somebody has a strong opinion about that, others choose who they find the lesser evil.

This is a huge topic and one that is really very much the decision of the individual judge and their players, I think. It is difficult to grasp sometimes in my opinion, because as longtime rpg players most of us are used to the 9 alignment system from D&D. It's also generally our experience that the differences between good and evil are far more important than the differences between law and chaos, so a system like this can be confusing and hard to grasp at first.

I think Ravenheart does a great job of depicting the alignments so I see no reason to comment further on the specific definitions of each except to reiterate one thing: Think of the 9 alignment system with the emphasis on Law vs. Chaos instead of Good vs. Evil and you will probably see things very clearly.

Example: Will Law and Chaos PCs work together?

ahhh, the age old question. Do conservatives and liberals generally work together for their mutual benefit in our society? I understand that the media likes to make it sound like they don't so they can play off of the emotions of consumers, but the truth of the matter is, yes, in the world today we see that people of different philosophical points of view can obviously cooperate for their mutual benefit. My take on things is that in a fantasy world, you would be able to cooperate similarly, and making minor concessions or doing things to help other people of different philosophical points of view will generally not infuriate the powers of the universe or bring down bad luck on a PC. But that's me and my group. There are others who think it should be done differently, and they are no less "right", they are just playing the game the way that they like.

In the end, there's no reason you can't just use the 9 alignment system and discard the 3 alignment system (in my opinion, it's really almost impossible not to do this anyway). Especially if it's disrupting play somehow because there are players interpreting it differently from the way the judge interprets it. The 9 alignment system works perfectly in DCC especially if you can just shift the emphasis to make the Law/Chaos differences more important than the Good/Evil like we are so used to from years in the D&D world.

The original D&D alignment was mostly "us" versus "them" where "us" were the good guys and "them" were the bad guys. Certain types of creatures were builders and others were destructors.

In Appendix N, the two main sources of inspiration for alignment were Poul Anderson and Michael Moorcock. Anderson's battle of law versus chaos followed a similar "good guy versus bad guy" model, where the humans were law and elves (sidhe) were chaos. Moorcock broke the pattern somewhat by featuring Elric, who was a "hero" but followed gods of Chaos.

For years this is all we knew about alignment, and how we played the game. The OD&D books had a list of which creatures generally fit which alignments, but much of the purpose of this list was for miniatures battles and getting to decide which figures you could buy if you were the "chaos side" or the "law side" in the battle. Elves, for example, were rated at either Law or Neutrality. This meant that if you were building an army of orcs it would be harder to buy a unit of elven archers.

AD&D shook things up a little by saying "evil and chaos don't have to be the same thing" and introduced the second axis for alignment; now you would pick both good-evil and law-chaos with neutral in the middle of each. (This created the 9-compartment model everyone talks about.) Frankly, the 9-alignment model is more detail than I've wanted in my alignment system and my campaigns have featured law v. chaos for more than 30 years, no matter what rules system I use.

One problem with the law/chaos system is that it doesn't account for the fact that Law can be bad. Examples of this could be Nazi Germany in WWII or the Empire in Star Wars, where Law is trying to crush the spirit of the good guys. I don't let this bother me, because I have no problem with the "bad guys" trying to enforce their own rules if they are doing so to crush the "good guys" and I still can call them Chaos. Not everyone is comfortable with such hand-waving, but I don't see any real reason to make things more complex than I have to and a 9-alignment system is more compex than I like. I just like the feel of the "us" against "them" concept in my gaming.

DCC has the stated goal of rolling back the clock and going back to the days of yore, then rebuilding the game in a different way. This means that the "standard" alignment model chosen was more like the original model rather than the AD&D one. As cjoepar noted, however, it's easy enough to switch to a different system if you don't like the one in the rulebook.

Hope that helps.