What would be some good alternative names for D&D Alignments? Should they have Degrees (i.e. "Strongly Lawful")?

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elderbrain's picture
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What would be some good alternative names for D&D Alignments? Should they have Degrees (i.e. "Strongly Lawful")?

I'm having particular trouble coming up with a good term for "Chaotic"; most of the synonyms seem
to be negative-sounding!

Also, what would you think of rating a character or monsters adherence to a
Alignment by degree? Instead of every, say, Lawful character being described by the same one-word term, the term would be modified by another term like "Strongly", "Moderately", or "Weakly" (or some other equivalent words)? Perhaps with game-mechanical effects (i.e. characters who are "Strongly" Lawful would fare better on Mechanus and worse on Limbo than a "Moderately" Lawful character, etc.)

Are there any missing Alignments? What do you think of "Unaligned" being added to the game, as in 4E and 5E?

Jem
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Re: What would be some good alternative names for D&D ...

Synonyms for chaos are negative because chaos is typically an unwanted and adversarial state. It's one of the weaknesses I've always believed exists in the D&D alignment system; chaos is bad.

Chaos as originally so named was not about randomness but about formlessness: "tovu v'bohu," the Earth was "without form and void": it was Ginnungagap, the Abyss, the gaping maw of nothingness that was to be filled by Creation. What is not nameable or subject to law cannot be spoken of or subjected to reason: it is madness. The Far Realms are more chaotic than the eternal randomness of Limbo.

Synonyms that might not be quite so pejorative include Luck, Chance, and Fortune. Law is often paired with Order, Rigor, or Fate. Ancient terms for the grand scheme of things are Cosmos, Logos, Dharma, Tao, Rta. Thus you might have the forces of Logos arranged against those of Luck; of Form battling the Void; of the Stellar Order of the Cosmos (symbolizing the grand scheme) struggling with the Host of Meteors (one-off events that are unpredictable and inject randomness in to astrology).

As an offhand note regarding Logos, a long time ago I was trying to come up with a non-dual arrangement of moralities, instead of two versuses. I finally suggested that there could be Logos, Ethos and Pathos; three ways of conceptualizing the world, each with their own moral scales. Here's the short version from which you could build conflicts between perfectly well-intentioned entities that disagreed with each other as to means or ends:

Quote:
Pathos: "It is most pleasing to do what makes people happy and avoids causing sadness. Act sympathetically." Ethos: "It is proper to do what is right, and avoid wronging others. Act ethically." Logos: "It is rational to do the most reasonable thing, and avoid error. Act logically."

Pathos on Ethos: "If your ethics cause sadness, they're inherently wrong."
Pathos on Logos: "If your logic doesn't make people happier, abandon it and follow your heart."

Ethos on Pathos: "Hedonism is shortsighted; ethics is historically accumulated wisdom that takes people's interests in to account."
Ethos on Logos: "Logic can lead to morally untenable outcomes, in which case it should be abandoned to go with what is right."

Logos on Pathos: "Following immediate gratification does not optimize long term outcomes."
Logos on Ethos: "Ethics that conflict with facts on the ground must be amended."

Jem
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Re: What would be some good alternative names for D&D ...

Another possibility is to ditch Good, Evil, Law and Chaos entirely, and regard the 17 Outer Planes as each embodying a concept with which a person can be more or less in alignment. That plane which most defines you upon death gets your soul. What motivates you? What did you try to achieve?

Going round from Mt. Celestia, these moral elements would be:

Faith, Labor, Peace, Vigor, Passion, Pride, Freedom, Irrationality, Transgression, Deception, Despair, Desire, Power, Wrath, Discipline, Community

and the Outlands as a featureless state.

And after all, must one not occasionally transgress in order to improve? Deceive, out of sympathy? Throw oneself beyond the traps of one's pre-existing rationality? Is not power needed to take action? Wrath a vital component of righteous warfare? Is desire not part of life? And who has avoided despair -- is false hope better? There is no evil, the inhabitants of these planes might say, only necessary parts of the mortal condition, and you are wrong to condemn us for exemplifying these traits.

A "degree of alignment" quantum would work very well with such a discrete system of values.

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Re: What would be some good alternative names for D&D ...

elderbrain wrote:
I'm having particular trouble coming up with a good term for "Chaotic"; most of the synonyms seem to be negative-sounding!
This is an interesting blog that describes an alternate take on alignment; it suggests honorable/practical/independent instead of law/neutral/chaos.

elderbrain wrote:
Also, what would you think of rating a character or monsters adherence to a Alignment by degree? Instead of every, say, Lawful character being described by the same one-word term, the term would be modified by another term like "Strongly", "Moderately", or "Weakly" (or some other equivalent words)? Perhaps with game-mechanical effects (i.e. characters who are "Strongly" Lawful would fare better on Mechanus and worse on Limbo than a "Moderately" Lawful character, etc.)
You'll have to make a lot of calls and adjustments to spells and abilities that interact with alignment, but I don't see anything horrible about this idea if you're willing to put in the time.

elderbrain wrote:
Are there any missing Alignments? What do you think of "Unaligned" being added to the game, as in 4E and 5E?
Unaligned isn't really an alignment; it's a one-word way of saying "I don't care which label the DM puts on my character, I'm just going to play." Which is IMO a great way to role play. Some players like to write an alignment on their sheet, but as far as I'm concerned, that's just a statement of intent. The DM has final say on who gets which alignment label.

Of course, I also DM 4e -- where alignment doesn't matter -- so take this in context. Eye-wink

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Re: What would be some good alternative names for D&D ...

I thought than "Unaligned" is a good term to use for animals and other creatures not intelligent enough to have an opinion on Alignments. A wild boar isn't "Neutral" in the same sense that a Rilmani is; the Rilmani cares deeply about preserving Balance, whereas the boar doesn't think about the matter at all - nor can it. "Unaligned" could also describe people who don't care about Alignments one way or another, in contrast to "Neutral" individuals who favor Balance. An "Unaligned" person might subscribe to a point of view that says "you leave me alone, I'll leave you alone".

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Chaos = Freedom

To me, the Chaotic Alignment is as much about Freedom as Disorder. I was thinking that perhaps I could find a term that means "Freedom" or "Liberty" to use as a synonym for Chaotic. Obviously Freedom means different things to different creatures : A Demon's idea of Freedom involves creating as much suffering and bloodshed as possible, and not being bossed around by stronger Demons, whereas an Eladrin's idea of Freedom involves protecting people without restricting them.

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Re: What would be some good alternative names for D&D ...

elderbrain wrote:
I thought than "Unaligned" is a good term to use for animals and other creatures not intelligent enough to have an opinion on Alignments. A wild boar isn't "Neutral" in the same sense that a Rilmani is; the Rilmani cares deeply about preserving Balance, whereas the boar doesn't think about the matter at all - nor can it. "Unaligned" could also describe people who don't care about Alignments one way or another, in contrast to "Neutral" individuals who favor Balance. An "Unaligned" person might subscribe to a point of view that says "you leave me alone, I'll leave you alone".
Ah yes, it's been so long since 2e and its strange ideas of Neutrality that I had forgotten about Rilmani-type Neutrality. I suppose if you have people running around with balance scorecards, then unaligned makes a good label for animals and anyone who just can't be bothered to think about morals and ethics.

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Re: What would be some good alternative names for D&D ...

Beastlands: Independence
Arborea: Liberty
Ysgard: Freedom

The Elric! game just uses percentage ratings. A character might, due to her actions, have scores of 26% Law and 10% Chaos.

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Re: What would be some good alternative names for D&D ...

[obviousATjoke]"Will you slay this Unaligned Ant?"[/obviousATjoke]

If I had to redefine them, while still keeping the same matrix I'd probably do it like this.

Chaos - Law axis is changed to Individualist - Collectivist (Which is what it is anyway)

Good - Evil axis is changed to Nice - Malicious (Which is not always the case, but is usually how they end up anyway.)

Neutral gets split into 3 different versions. All of them are neutral, but they allow for clearer indication of purpose.
- Unconcerned - It indicates that the being is aware of the extremes on the corresponding axis, but does not care to form a stance on either of those.
- Balanced - Indicates that the being is aware of both extremes, and strives to keep itself in the middle of them. It cares for it's position, unlike the previous one.
- Unaligned - This is only for True Neutral beings which are unaware of the extremes of the axis, because they lack moral choice. This includes animals and stuff like that. (This is only a very specific version of true neutral. A TN character can also be Unconcerned and Balanced or Balanced and Unconcerned. Alignments would then need to have 2 different spaces where you fill the character's position on each axis, not just compose it of two words.)

As such a guardinal is Balanced and Nice - It strives to care for individuals and collectives, and finds that the most important thing is being Nice.

A Baatezu is Collectivist and Malicious - It believes that each is part of the greater system, and it relishes in abusing it's position on that system.

A Slaad is Individualistic and Unconcerned - It cares nothing for being pleasant or not. A slaad is usually violent, yes, but it's violence does not, in general, bear any malicious intent or hatred, it's just very hungry.

A Modron is Collectivist and Unconcerned - It cares nothing, but fulfilling it's part of the greater collective.

A Yugoloth is Balanced and Malicious - Yugoloths do form sold collectives, however advancement in those is based on individual merit, and, of course, they are probably the most Malicious of all the fiends.

...and so on. Of course it obviously might result in some changes in the general behavior of some planar denizens, but that's what you get when you mess with the alignments.

Edit: And, of course, after bothering to write up all this nonsense, I see Tequila Sunrise has already posted a link to an article that basically does the same thing I did here, but less stupid.

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Re: What would be some good alternative names for D&D ...

http://easydamus.com/alignmentreal.html

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