I still remember making my 1st D&D characters as a kid and being fascinated by the different aspects you had choices for - alignment being one of them.
It opened my eyes to different personalities and moral life views and helped me imagine being put in others’ shoes to see things from their perspectives.
Recently, watching a streaming series, “Jamestown”, I got to thinking about how each of the bad guys were what I consider “evil”, but in different ways.
D&D alignment came unbidden into my consciousness as well as some old memes I recalled seeing.
Could each of those colonial baddies embody a different D&D alignment?
I mean, D&D is just a game, could it actually have real-life application?
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artwork by Jeff Easley
I pulled out my frayed AD&D tomes (Dungeon Masters Guide and Players Handbook) to re-read those bygone descriptions that were now tinkling around in my head.
artwork by Jeff Easley
It was surprising to see just how much those pop-fantasy-psychology lessons had stuck in my subconscious throughout my entire life.
DID YOU KNOW? Original Dungeons & Dragons (1974) only had Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic for characters & creatures. AD&D (1979) introduced a second axis for Good, Neutral, and Evil.
And guess what? I could match each of the 3 main bad guys with the 3 different “evil” alignments.
It’s fascinating how different motivations can lead to the same (evil 😈) results!
It also got me to thinking - as over the years I have grown to love psychology and love learning about what makes people do what they do.
I posed this question to myself:
Which alignment was I?
As a young kid who held high heroic ideals, (I mean, I grew up with Christopher Reeves’ Superman, Luke Skywalker, The Greatest American Hero, Bill Bixby’s Incredible Hulk, Linda Carter’s Wonder Woman, Lindsay Wagner’s The Bionic Woman, along with re-runs of Adam West’s Batman and a slew of other immutably good-aligned characters)
I always felt I should be Lawful Good - after all, isn’t that what knights and personal heroes like Sturm Brightblade were?
Sturm Brightblade by Larry Elmore
LAW & CHAOS: [In AD&D] Law and Chaos represent the opposing principles of order vs entropy, control vs chaos, society vs the individual, and stability vs change. Law and chaos are neither good nor evil; they simply are.
"As originally conceived, lawful meant that you were a creature of habit, not that you wore a badge. You could be predicted to react in a familiar way given a familiar situation, time and time again. You weren't a kender or an elf who was constantly flitting off, okay, that's chaotic.
The personality that can't focus, or won't focus on something, or you literally have no idea how they're likely to react at any given provocation, even if they reacted one way before, they might react a different way. That's chaotic."
But there was some part of me that rankled at always following the rules 100% of the time without question - especially when the rules might not be right, or advantageous, or possibly not even relevant anymore.
It also wasn’t considered cool to be the “Goody Two-shoes” in the 80s. (“Teacher’s Pet” was another disparaging classification you didn’t want your peers to hurl your way!)
Though before the era of the primacy of the anti-hero, there was a zeitgeistian unspoken sentiment of restricting your goodness to peer-acceptable levels.
In D&D it could also be a bit boring - limiting the interesting limitless choices to just “following the rules” of your alignment. At least that’s the way it could sometimes feel to me.
DID YOU KNOW? The original Lawful/Chaotic alignment system can be traced to Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions, one of the works which Gygax cited as an inspiration in the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide (1979), Appendix N.
I wanted MORE! I wanted to have the option to kill the bad guy instead of bringing him back to face justice - especially when he was getting one over on the group and knowingly sneering your way when no one else was looking - after he had your dad, your friend and your sister’s pet Dire wolf cub put to death.
I wanted to tell bawdy jokes to my adventuring party companions without chastisement if the mood struck.
I guess as I got a little older and a little more worldly-wise, I was drawn more towards a free-wheeling Indiana Jones type of hero than a tragic law-bound Ned Stark. I always respected my Lawful-Good heroes, but did this mean I was on the path to the dark side?
If you love Indiana Jones like me, you definitely need to check out this Rediscovered Realms edition:
I also recall being reluctant to playing a Paladin. What if I let my alignment slip and ultimately had my magical Paladin powers and sword taken away by the Dungeon Master! Ooh - the horror. (I wonder what Freud and Jung would say about this!)
"When I enlarged the alignment system from the three used in D&D because chaotic does not necessarily mean evil nor lawful equate to good, I worked up the nine alignments found in OAD&D as I began work in the MM [Monster Manual] in 1976."
- Gary Gygax (co-creator of D&D)
As I moved to my mid/late teens, I remember making my characters more flexible with Neutral Good and Chaotic Good red-tinged-green choices.
It felt uncomfortable declaring that, as if people would judge me for not wanting to be “pure” good. Was this revealing a darker side to my real personality? Was I a huckleberry or did I have a great big hole, right in the middle of myself where I can never kill enough, or steal enough, or inflict enough pain to ever fill it?
But the new choices felt pretty good. They felt more in line with how I vicariously wanted to play . . . or was it more “in alignment” with who I was on the inside?
How about now?
Who am I?
Who have I become?
With decades of living in the often disappointing and harsh real world and making millions of cumulative choices and compromises, could I have now slid into truly being <gulp> evil?
I pored over the descriptions in the DM Guide first, reading, then re-reading.
“I could be this one.”
“Or this one.”
“Yup, I could see myself thinking like this other alignment . . . “
“Ok, not getting resolution. Let’s take a peek in the Players Handbook.”
“Ah, a different way of describing the alignments. Excellent.”
But it turned into the same rinse and repeat of the same internal questions and conflict.
“I feel like I’m some of each”
“Can I be more than one?”
“Wait. The DMs Guide mentioned an “Alignment Chart” in the Players Guide. There shall I find clarification. I’m certain of it.”
Interesting, but no.
Time for process of elimination by comparing 2-at-a-time.
“Am I more this one or this one?”
Taking that winner I repeated the process for my other front runners, each time getting closer to that grail.
And guess what?
I figured out my alignment.
The heavens opened up and spilled their resplendent glory upon me.
The secrets of the universe were whispered into my ear as I witnessed all of time compressed into flashbacks from the dawn of creation through the end of all things.
I had become one with all.
No, not really.
But at least I didn’t come out evil. 😇
What about you? Do you dare delve into the Dungeonic & Dragonic Mysteries of your psyche? Will you share what you uncover?
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Not willing to share the darker parts of your soul - or too pious to participate? Then how about this poll about your poles instead?
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Need some assistance? This decision tree is from a great article at WizardOfTheTavern.com, by Anderson Craftheart - “D&D Alignment How Does It Work?”
Of course, no system is perfect, and there’s ambiguity even within these hallowed alignment assignments.
Batman himself could be considered every single alignment as this chart shows:
DID YOU KNOW? A joke article by Wizards of the Coast resolved the subjective alignment ambiguity of the Batman problem by creating a tenth alignment that they named . . . “Batman”!
There are always shades of gray, and we often flit between different motivations and actions on our personal quests. Many characters in the alignment charts in this article could even be argued to have different alignments than the rigid boxes their likenesses were arbitrarily imprisoned into.
Maybe bad guys can also be good and good guys sometimes bad.
And if nothing else, sometimes just recognizing our diversity & plasticity and trying to figure out where we all fit into this cosmic alignment scheme can be really fun.
"In OD&D I used the Moorcock division of Law and Chaos to serve to describe the general motives of the persons and creatures involved in the game, the Good and Evil.
It soon became evident to me that those descriptors were not synonyms, that all that was lawful was not good, all that was chaotic was not evil, and animals were generally not concerned with any of those ethical mindsets."
The “Dragon REBORN Giveaway Contest” has concluded with the winner being announced next week as well as the NEW Giveaway Contest being declared. Trust me, you’re going to love it - it’s howling good! 🐺
has a fun newsletter out this week with some cool topics: statistical t-tests & Guinness, Rogue ASCII game (I've got to play this!), RPG Metal Moorcock Music, and one of my favorite childhood movies - "Cloak & Dagger". R.I.P Dabney Coleman.
You ever heard of a “Pinball Wizard”? Well, what about a “Pinball Goblin King”? “Barrels of Fun Pinball” partnered with The Jim Henson Company and took 5 years to create a beautifully AWESOME Labyrinth Pinball machine! Check out the trailer and making-of videos below and see who truly is . . . the babe with the power!
Trailer:
Making Of:
Until next week, my Lawful-Chaotic-Neutral-Evil-Good Companions! 🗡
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That was a fun way to talk about the d&d alignment chart. Crazy to think this aspect of original DnD has spread so far across the popular culture. Those people making Harry Potter, Star Wars and Game of Thrones alignment charts probably have no clue it originated in Lake Geneva!
My DM thinks that most people are LG. I'm probably more NG, but I see his point. I don't think Sauron is CE, though; he's pretty orderly in his evilness. :P
That was a fun way to talk about the d&d alignment chart. Crazy to think this aspect of original DnD has spread so far across the popular culture. Those people making Harry Potter, Star Wars and Game of Thrones alignment charts probably have no clue it originated in Lake Geneva!
My DM thinks that most people are LG. I'm probably more NG, but I see his point. I don't think Sauron is CE, though; he's pretty orderly in his evilness. :P