Alignment

I’ve always been mildly puzzled, and, because I am a geek, mildly annoyed, by the ‘Alignments’ in Dungeons and Dragons.

For those of you who never played Dungeons and Dragons, I gaze with covetousness upon your good sense spending time outdoors or playing chess or collecting stamps or something clearly more useful to God and man. But I have to explain that when you invent a character to play in this game, you are asked to assign him an alignment.

Gary Gygax, the co-inventor of the game, establishes nine alignments: Lawful Good, Lawful Neutral, Lawful Evil, Neutral Good, True Neutral, Neutral Evil, Chaotic Good, Chaotic Neutral, and Chaotic Evil.

Good basically means being altruistic and helpful to others, and Evil basically means being selfish and cruel and Objectivist. Lawful means obeying the letter of the law whether it is just or unjust, and Chaotic means anything from being free-spirited to being an anarchist to being insane.

Lawful Good are paladins and white knights; Lawful Evil are Nazis in snappy uniforms; Chaotic Good are loveable rogues like Robin Hood or Han Solo; Chaotic Evil is the Joker from Batman.

The first thing to notice about alignments is that Gygax is trying to stuff into his game the moral quality from legends and stories ranging from tales of Arthur or Charlemagne to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and also stuff in the amoral quality from Moorcock’s Eternal Champion cycle.

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.