Zed Duke of Banville
Dungeon Master
- Joined
- Oct 3, 2015
- Messages
- 11,984
Alignments in the two-axis nine-alignment system should not be treated as nine separate ethos but instead as the combination of good/evil with lawful/chaotic. However, this leaves the question of just what constitutes "lawful" and "chaotic" behavior, which was never as clear in AD&D as it should have been.About post #64, if you disagree—what with, and how so? There are two observations and one question in that post.
In original D&D, with a single-axis alignment system, lawful more or less equated to good while chaotic more or less equated to evil. Gygax then created a two-axis alignment system where the lawful/chaotic axis was intended to be orthogonal to the good/evil axis. However, he did not clearly define lawful and chaotic as coherent concepts similar in importance to good and evil; instead, lawful and chaotic were a mixture of concepts that did not necessarily mesh well and were not necessarily important in the fantasy setting. The traits embodied by Law & Chaos:
- Determinism/predictability versus randomness/caprice
- Collective/group versus individual/independence
- Artificial/civilization versus natural/nature
- Hierarchy/regimentation versus freedom/volition
- Reliable/proper versus unruly/eccentric
- Laws/order versus anarchy/entropy
- Strict/regularity versus flexible/persuasion