Deuce Traveler
2012 Newfag
You have to remember that the alignment system as we know it today had evolved from something much simpler. At first, we didn't have the 9-point alignment system, but instead a 3-point alignment system based: Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic. According to my 1980 D&D expert rulebook (before AD&D 1st edition), written by David Cook and Steve Marsh, "Law represents respect for rules, and willingness to put the benefit of the group ahead of individuals... Chaos is the opposite of Law. A chaotic is selfish and respects no laws or rules... Neutral is concerned with personal survival. Neutrals will do whatever is in their best interest, with little regard for others."
This is a lot more broad than the 9-point system. The Chainmail miniatures game that D&D was derived from had only two sides: Law and Chaos. This was because of literary influences like Poul Anderson's "Three Hearts, Three Lions" and Michael Moorcock's Elric series. It's interesting to note that in the early years of development, Gary Gygax leaned more towards elves potentially being soulless supporters of Chaos, such as in Anderson's and Moorcock's writings. Elves had better stats than humans, but they couldn't be raised because they had no empathy and no 'soul' to save. Your awesome human Fighting Man might not have the abilities of the elf, but at least he could be brought back to life. In this way, you could think of the forces of Law as those of man and their growing cities, Neutral as those supporting Nature and otherwise being left alone, and Chaos being those who served ancient evils and unnatural magic. Basically, he envisioned something that would have been closer in theme to what the Warhammer tabletop RPG ended up being.*
But then the Tolkien cartoons came out in the 1970s and there was a huge Tolkien revival, so hobbits.... err... halflings... were added and elves were on the side of the law and D&D became more based on Tolkien's vision than that of Howard/Anderson/Moorcock. Later, Gygax, David Cook, James Ward, and Robert Kuntz started embracing the 9-point alignment system because it allowed them to expand some of the game ideas. For instance, Gary Gygax wanted to add a paladin class but needed a device to make the paladin ethos stand out from other Lawfuls. James Ward and Robert Kuntz wanted to play around with the idea of planes, and different denizens, so you needed to show why a devil was different from a demon alignment-wise. David Cook ran with this idea and created the very awesome Planescape setting based upon alignments and philosophies. But I don't think the expansion of the alignment system was ever well thought out. It was a means to expand on some cool ideas, and not really meant to be taken as seriously as it ended up being today.
One final note, Gary Gygax and I conversed some years back on the ENWorld forums and he liked to troll people about the alignment system. One DMing proposal he liked to introduce was the following: have a group of paladins accept the surrender of a tribe of orcs. The paladins take the men, women, and children of this orc tribe back and teach them the ways of their holy religion. They spend the funds to corral them, safely transport them, and give instruction on holy writing and script. When the paladins are convinced that the orc tribe has converted, they then shackle the entire population of orcs and behead them one after another. The reason is that the paladins believe that the orcs souls can be saved at this moment, but if they are returned back to their land they would simply revert to their evil ways. The paladins wipe them out, but they spent their time, fortune, and labor saving the souls of the orcs, which to the paladins was a charitable act done out of love. Now watch the players devolve into a yelling match about whether or not the paladins committed an evil act. Gary didn't have a stance on this himself. He just liked to poke at his fans.
* On a side note, Gary told me once that he and Steve Jackson (the British designer of Warhammer, not the American designer of Steve Jackson games) were actually friends and when Gygax started looking like he might lose the company of TSR, he tried and failed to get Steve Jackson to buy shares in the company to help him out. Steve Jackson didn't understand everything Gygax was trying to tell him when they were cleaning up Gygax's property... maybe partly because he got some bad rashes from poison ivy in Gygax's yard. He told Gary later that if he had known the exact situation Gary was in, than Steve would have done all he could to have had Games Workshop do a takeover of TSR with Gygax's support.
This is a lot more broad than the 9-point system. The Chainmail miniatures game that D&D was derived from had only two sides: Law and Chaos. This was because of literary influences like Poul Anderson's "Three Hearts, Three Lions" and Michael Moorcock's Elric series. It's interesting to note that in the early years of development, Gary Gygax leaned more towards elves potentially being soulless supporters of Chaos, such as in Anderson's and Moorcock's writings. Elves had better stats than humans, but they couldn't be raised because they had no empathy and no 'soul' to save. Your awesome human Fighting Man might not have the abilities of the elf, but at least he could be brought back to life. In this way, you could think of the forces of Law as those of man and their growing cities, Neutral as those supporting Nature and otherwise being left alone, and Chaos being those who served ancient evils and unnatural magic. Basically, he envisioned something that would have been closer in theme to what the Warhammer tabletop RPG ended up being.*
But then the Tolkien cartoons came out in the 1970s and there was a huge Tolkien revival, so hobbits.... err... halflings... were added and elves were on the side of the law and D&D became more based on Tolkien's vision than that of Howard/Anderson/Moorcock. Later, Gygax, David Cook, James Ward, and Robert Kuntz started embracing the 9-point alignment system because it allowed them to expand some of the game ideas. For instance, Gary Gygax wanted to add a paladin class but needed a device to make the paladin ethos stand out from other Lawfuls. James Ward and Robert Kuntz wanted to play around with the idea of planes, and different denizens, so you needed to show why a devil was different from a demon alignment-wise. David Cook ran with this idea and created the very awesome Planescape setting based upon alignments and philosophies. But I don't think the expansion of the alignment system was ever well thought out. It was a means to expand on some cool ideas, and not really meant to be taken as seriously as it ended up being today.
One final note, Gary Gygax and I conversed some years back on the ENWorld forums and he liked to troll people about the alignment system. One DMing proposal he liked to introduce was the following: have a group of paladins accept the surrender of a tribe of orcs. The paladins take the men, women, and children of this orc tribe back and teach them the ways of their holy religion. They spend the funds to corral them, safely transport them, and give instruction on holy writing and script. When the paladins are convinced that the orc tribe has converted, they then shackle the entire population of orcs and behead them one after another. The reason is that the paladins believe that the orcs souls can be saved at this moment, but if they are returned back to their land they would simply revert to their evil ways. The paladins wipe them out, but they spent their time, fortune, and labor saving the souls of the orcs, which to the paladins was a charitable act done out of love. Now watch the players devolve into a yelling match about whether or not the paladins committed an evil act. Gary didn't have a stance on this himself. He just liked to poke at his fans.
* On a side note, Gary told me once that he and Steve Jackson (the British designer of Warhammer, not the American designer of Steve Jackson games) were actually friends and when Gygax started looking like he might lose the company of TSR, he tried and failed to get Steve Jackson to buy shares in the company to help him out. Steve Jackson didn't understand everything Gygax was trying to tell him when they were cleaning up Gygax's property... maybe partly because he got some bad rashes from poison ivy in Gygax's yard. He told Gary later that if he had known the exact situation Gary was in, than Steve would have done all he could to have had Games Workshop do a takeover of TSR with Gygax's support.