Character Alignments

[Kureous]

Hi! I'm new to ScribbleHub, but it has been excellent so far. I love the community and am grateful to everyone who has written helpful tutorials for newbies like me. Anyway, with that out of the way, I'd like to discuss some things I came across recently, namely, D&D alignments.

Now, I'll post a chart for those who don't know.

I'm not much of a planner, but I believe understanding character morality is crucial for any character-building. At the very least, you have to have an idea of who your character is, what they believe, and what their motivations are; this is where alignment becomes essential. To explain, I will use my favorite alignment, Chaotic Neutral. When I first heard about this alignment, I felt a pull. I wanted to know more, so I started searching for answers. What does it mean to be Chaotic Neutral? I came across some confusing videos and some that were misrepresentative. At first, I thought this was the alignment for the bastards who don't want to be evil but still want to be assholes until I came across a series on YouTube called 'D&D Character Alignment Done Right.'

There, I was exposed to what 'chaotic' really meant: an unprincipled character. These characters don't believe in ideals like justice or honor. If anything, they laugh at these principles and do whatever they want, but neutral implies that they are unsure about their motivations. They don't know if they're selfish or selfless, good or evil, which makes them neutral. It was a fascinating interpretation.

On the other hand, 'lawful' characters are principled characters. They have a personal code that they follow unquestioningly, and their motivations make them either good or evil. If they are principled and selfless, they are lawful good; if they are principled yet selfish, they are lawful evil characters. The 'law' in lawful doesn't mean that they try their best to follow the law, and that's what I love about this interpretation. It's freeing for authors like me.

Some may argue that characters are very complex, and I understand. This chart and your characters are not meant to be fixed. I know that one character could easily go from lawful good to chaotic evil, but despite its simplicity, I find it to be mighty regarding character-building. I built an interesting mc for my first novel that I thought was hopeless by applying Chaotic Neutral to his character.

 

[Representing_Tromba]

I keep accidentally making chaotic neutral characters on accident with the exception of the occasional lawful dumbass character.

 

[Mephi]

Oh my. One thing you will learn very fast about alignment. Very few can agree on any kind of details, and arguments about it go crazy fast.

The thing about alignment is that it's super simple and reflects a world of hard, objective good and evil. Which
.... Is not really reflected well when people are shades of grey or orange and blue. This isn't even about complex characters, it's about the fact that good and evil are subjective.

Interestingly, there's people that consider Chaotic Neutral to be more evil than Lawful Evil.

 

[ThrillingHuman]

It immediately fails when we have more than one ethical system or culture to work with.
In one marrying your 13 year old cousin is highly immoral, but light drugs are ok
In another it is the other way around.
How good would a good character be in another system's eyes?

 

[RepresentingWrath]

I haven't read a sinle word so I will shitpost. Paul_Tromba is lawful good, Hans.Trondheim is lawful good, greyblob is chaotic neutral, CupcakeNinja is chaotic good, Anon2023 is chaotic evil, Bartun is true neutral, and Aaqil is true neutral.

 

[Kureous]

Oh my. One thing you will learn very fast about alignment. Very few can agree on any kind of details, and arguments about it go crazy fast.

The thing about alignment is that it's super simple and reflects a world of hard, objective good and evil. Which
.... Is not really reflected well when people are shades of grey or orange and blue. This isn't even about complex characters, it's about the fact that good and evil are subjective.

Interestingly, there's people that consider Chaotic Neutral to be more evil than Lawful Evil.

Oh, no, I didn't mean to start an argument.

 

[LunaSoltaer]

It immediately fails when we have more than one ethical system or culture to work with.
In one marrying your 13 year old cousin is highly immoral, but light drugs are ok
In another it is the other way around.
How good would a good character be in another system's eyes?

There are ways to make it work. Good and Evil are concepts that cannot be approached via human means so approximate as best we can. Law/Chaos is easy enough: Whereever you're at, those laws are in force. When in Rome, do as the Romans, and if you're in a lawless area or you don't know the law, you act as if your home laws are in force.

It's Good/Evil that's the weird one. I have seen one person sidestep it by saying Good is whether you live up to your own morality and Evil is if you don't, but that causes weird glitches like Hitler being Lawful Good, which I wanna say is pretty much a universal test case for "NOT GOOD." Lawful? I'll buy Lawful, don't care enough to dig up the remains of a dead guy.

A better way to measure Good/Evil is: are you dedicated to some subset of universal ideals, such as the saving of lives, or the preservation of the planet? Something pretty much all cultures would see as at least on the positive half of Neutral. (I would say betterment of society, but that would again fail the obvious alignment system unit test.)

Honestly I have done away with alignment systems entirely because the Good/Evil axis is obnoxious. But if I HAD to use it, I would probably define Good as adhering to a set of human rights (usually don't kill unless in self-defence, aid fellow man when necessary, etc), and Evil is, well, not. Specifically, Good is prioritizing those rights of others over your own aims, since Evil is very friendly when you're not in their way (They're Evil, not Stupid)

The other thing is: I'd make 96% of humanity True Neutral. You only get an Alignment aura when your dedication toward one side of the axis is dangerously absurd. This would make 4% of people have any alignment at all, and 0.16% would have two alignment descriptors. And so in a population of 10,000 people, FOUR would be Lawful Good.

This would make Paladins, Monks, Shadowknights, etc, very very rare.

Or you can just toss it in the bin and use a personality based alignment system. Hell, make the MBTI system give superpowers, that'd be kinda cool

 

[NotaNuffian]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alignment_(Dungeons_%26_Dragons)

So here is my worthless two cents.

Ask yourself what role is your MC initially? Normally to attract readers, you will give MC either a low to low-mid tier life, eg a student, a deadbeat white collar or a NEET or someone with a high tier life that also consist of high risk eg a noble who is about to die because he is weak (or foolish) and people are eyeing for his goodies.

For all of that, if we were to use the DnD alignment chart, Good is no longer an option. Because Good requires altruism, self sacrifice and some other BSs that only can fit into side characters, not main.

And yet, MC cannot be Evil (or at least too Evil that murdering babies is fun) as it might alienate initial readers.

We are then heavily focused on Neutral in the Good-Evil Scale then.

Lets talk about Lawful-Chaotic, in most cases, MC has the tendency to display dislikes to rules, laws and regulations because they are restrictive and often used as tools by the "higher ups". So having a full fledged Lawful MC is no go.

Also, MC often represents change in the book itself, meaning breaking boundaries, changing the norm, etc, leaning them towards Chaotic at best.

So... your MC HAS to be Chaotic Neutral or even True Neutral at best.

 

[Rhaps]

My MC is Lawful Neutral, she act and live with a personal code, that is to wear no mask - which made her come up as Chaotic Neutral sometimes but she doesn't want to cause trouble, but her personality and nature tends to cause trouble for the people around.

I play DnD, and knows that Chaotic Neutral characters would get boring after a while. From personal experience as a player and the DM, Chaotic characters would range from pranking and annoying everyone, to straight up kill and fvcked up the nicely crafted story.

Plus, writing a Chaotic Neutral character is hard for me. It hurts my soul everytime I need to be an bastard.

 

[ThrillingHuman]

The other thing is: I'd make 96% of humanity True Neutral. You only get an Alignment aura when your dedication toward one side of the axis is dangerously absurd. This would make 4% of people have any alignment at all, and 0.16% would have two alignment descriptors. And so in a population of 10,000 people, FOUR would be Lawful Good.

And at the same time it would render the entire thing pointless. Since the OP uses it to write. Can't expect somebody to write 10000 characters to make only 4 different.

some subset of universal ideals, such as the saving of lives, or the preservation of the planet? Something pretty much all cultures would see as at least on the positive half of Neutral

That'd be both tedious and very bland. Oh, yes you don't rape, eh, some people, um, most of the time and you - generally - don't kill innocentsssss, oooops, I mean, civillians, from your homeland, not too often, so I guess you are kinda sorta good? Yep.
And that'd make it very hard to be evil or neutral. Ok, let's just say evil.
You raped a 4 year old? I mean it's not exactly wrong in your culture and I don't want to be insensitive... Oh, you enslaved a bunch of people! Erm, good for you, you made your mom proud.

 

[Kureous]

There are ways to make it work. Good and Evil are concepts that cannot be approached via human means so approximate as best we can. Law/Chaos is easy enough: Whereever you're at, those laws are in force. When in Rome, do as the Romans, and if you're in a lawless area or you don't know the law, you act as if your home laws are in force.

It's Good/Evil that's the weird one. I have seen one person sidestep it by saying Good is whether you live up to your own morality and Evil is if you don't, but that causes weird glitches like Hitler being Lawful Good, which I wanna say is pretty much a universal test case for "NOT GOOD." Lawful? I'll buy Lawful, don't care enough to dig up the remains of a dead guy.

A better way to measure Good/Evil is: are you dedicated to some subset of universal ideals, such as the saving of lives, or the preservation of the planet? Something pretty much all cultures would see as at least on the positive half of Neutral. (I would say betterment of society, but that would again fail the obvious alignment system unit test.)

Honestly I have done away with alignment systems entirely because the Good/Evil axis is obnoxious. But if I HAD to use it, I would probably define Good as adhering to a set of human rights (usually don't kill unless in self-defence, aid fellow man when necessary, etc), and Evil is, well, not. Specifically, Good is prioritizing those rights of others over your own aims, since Evil is very friendly when you're not in their way (They're Evil, not Stupid)

The other thing is: I'd make 96% of humanity True Neutral. You only get an Alignment aura when your dedication toward one side of the axis is dangerously absurd. This would make 4% of people have any alignment at all, and 0.16% would have two alignment descriptors. And so in a population of 10,000 people, FOUR would be Lawful Good.

This would make Paladins, Monks, Shadowknights, etc, very very rare.

Or you can just toss it in the bin and use a personality based alignment system. Hell, make the MBTI system give superpowers, that'd be kinda cool

I agree. In the D&D Alignment Done Right series, the YouTuber said it'd be best to redefine some terms to improve our understanding. In his view, lawful means principled, and chaotic means unprincipled, while good is selflessness and evil selfishness.

 

[Deleted member 54065]

While it sure is helpful, I try not to 'box' my characters into certain labels. Human character is complex, and I aim to use that in contrast to the illogical setting my MC has been put in.

For that, instead of labeling, I observe real people...their behavior, their character, as well as their backgrounds.

I haven't read a sinle word so I will shitpost. Paul_Tromba is lawful good, Hans.Trondheim is lawful good, greyblob is chaotic neutral, CupcakeNinja is chaotic good, Anon2023 is chaotic evil, Bartun is true neutral, and Aaqil is true neutral.

Dang...in every community I go and someone brings up DND character alignment, they always give me the 'lawful good' alignment.

However, in reality, I'm just a potato. ?

 

[RepresentingWrath]

Dang...in every community I go and someone brings up DND character alignment, they always give me the 'lawful good' alignment.

However, in reality, I'm just a potato. ?

Potato is good, lawful good.

 

[Deleted member 54065]

Potato is good, lawful good.

And they are killed while assaulting the country that pushed titans into an isolated island.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

And they are killed while assaulting the country that pushed titans into an isolated island.

BRUH!

 

[Deleted member 54065]

BRUH!

Bruh... Sasha should've lived.

Okay, sorry I'm hijacking the thread once again. Back to you OP!

 

[LunaSoltaer]

And at the same time it would render the entire thing pointless. Since the OP uses it to write. Can't expect somebody to write 10000 characters to make only 4 different.

That'd be both tedious and very bland. Oh, yes you don't rape, eh, some people, um, most of the time and you - generally - don't kill innocentsssss, oooops, I mean, civillians, from your homeland, not too often, so I guess you are kinda sorta good? Yep.
And that'd make it very hard to be evil or neutral. Ok, let's just say evil.
You raped a 4 year old? I mean it's not exactly wrong in your culture and I don't want to be insensitive... Oh, you enslaved a bunch of people! Erm, good for you, you made your mom proud.

You have a strong point with it being tedious and bland, but then you then use a stupid-as-hell hyperbole to undermine your point.

Seriously: You find an active recognized culture on Earth today who considers raping a 4-year-old to be anything other than abominable before trying to suggest it as a serious rebuttal. (inb4 you were trolling, in which case, please don't troll with that.) You could have used an actual counterexample, but instead decided to throw up a stellar example of my suggestion of universal ideals WORKING CORRECTLY by throwing it into Chaotic Evil at p>0.999999.

Speaking of crazy extreme probabilities: no one writes 10,000 characters in any story, and far less probable things have happened. There are a LOT of 1-in-a-million type probabilities thrown about, not to mention the "Hey I'm the only one on my PLANET OF BILLIONS who can use this power" type premises. So yeah that doesn't counter anything, except maybe that if you want lots of alignment aura funnies in your book maybe don't make it obscenely rare.

 

[ThrillingHuman]

Seriously: You find an active recognized culture on Earth today

Who said anything about today? This was a well-placed example in my opinion. Nowadays, especially, personal views change very rapidly on a global scale with the rapid change in world economic structure.
It feels like yesterday when people in my country didn't even know, for example, what transgender people are and most would consider them suffering from some body dismorphia or similar mental illness.
Now? Well, they know who transgender people are and will probably consider them an example of moral social decay due to decandence of the western society rather than a personal mental issue.
(Here I do not diss transgender people, nor do these views reflect my own, but it did come as a handy example)
I kind of felt annoyed when I was writing the statement above because I was certain that some would take my point (some will) the wrong way and realised that such a polarising topic is an even better example than I thought.
Because in the modern world would being gay, or better, being openly trans, affect your alignment?
Because it might, since most of the world's population is concetrated in more traditionally minded countries in Asia, where being openly trans will label you a horrible pervert (maybe). And this trend seems to will have only grown with time as those countries have population growth, while the more liberal generally grow population from immigrants from those countries. I wonder and fear what kind of Europe I will see in a generation or two. Will it have islamic temples everywhere?
Polarising topics that wouldn't even make sense outside of the very context-based environment all act towards making this idea even more confusing.
After all, Ancient Romans wouldn't care id a dude fucked other dudes. There was an Emperor there who once had never taken a male lover and was looked at like he was a weirdo. So the entire sexuality and maybe even gender identity would fly right past Ancient Roman heads since they didn't think in this framework but had theirs.
If we speak about sex, then what of the sexual liberation movement? What of doing drugs? What of listening or creating punk rock or rap?
Context context context.
Morality is not just killing/not killing. What about the small things?
People around the world will all look at (regular) onanism differently. But at an even smaller scale it is a small controversy.
Another good example would be the following:
It was just before WWII that Hilter was not just accepted, but he was looked favourably upon by Western countries and such. Because they believed that fascism was THE answer to communism.
Speaking of communism, a lot of mentality amongst people all around the world changed after the fall of the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union existed for less that 100 years! Long before it and after it, its effects will not be felt, not directly at least. Again modern context.
I am losing my train of thought and winding rn, so I'll wrap it up:
morality globally now means nothing when in just some 5 years or a bit more it will change so don't diss on my example because "it's not modern". Who knows, maybe my grandchild and their 3 year old spouse will look at your arguments now and cringe at their barbarism.

Speaking of crazy extreme probabilities: no one writes 10,000 characters in any story, and far less probable things have happened. There are a LOT of 1-in-a-million type probabilities thrown about, not to mention the "Hey I'm the only one on my PLANET OF BILLIONS who can use this power" type premises. So yeah that doesn't counter anything, except maybe that if you want lots of alignment aura funnies in your book maybe don't make it obscenely rare.

The author of the thread uses the alignments for writing characters, which I said. And it's not a setting for him, but a tool. And I meant to say that it'd be a god-awful tool of it only worked with the probability of 0.0004

 

[Sola-sama]

And they are killed while assaulting the country that pushed titans into an isolated island.

*sad ptsd intensifies*

 

[Kureous]

I keep accidentally making chaotic neutral characters on accident with the exception of the occasional lawful dumbass character.

Yeah, lawful dumbasses, indeed.

Who said anything about today? This was a well-placed example in my opinion. Nowadays, especially, personal views change very rapidly on a global scale with the rapid change in world economic structure.
It feels like yesterday when people in my country didn't even know, for example, what transgender people are and most would consider them suffering from some body dismorphia or similar mental illness.
Now? Well, they know who transgender people are and will probably consider them an example of moral social decay due to decandence of the western society rather than a personal mental issue.
(Here I do not diss transgender people, nor do these views reflect my own, but it did come as a handy example)
I kind of felt annoyed when I was writing the statement above because I was certain that some would take my point (some will) the wrong way and realised that such a polarising topic is an even better example than I thought.
Because in the modern world would being gay, or better, being openly trans, affect your alignment?
Because it might, since most of the world's population is concetrated in more traditionally minded countries in Asia, where being openly trans will label you a horrible pervert (maybe). And this trend seems to will have only grown with time as those countries have population growth, while the more liberal generally grow population from immigrants from those countries. I wonder and fear what kind of Europe I will see in a generation or two. Will it have islamic temples everywhere?
Polarising topics that wouldn't even make sense outside of the very context-based environment all act towards making this idea even more confusing.
After all, Ancient Romans wouldn't care id a dude fucked other dudes. There was an Emperor there who once had never taken a male lover and was looked at like he was a weirdo. So the entire sexuality and maybe even gender identity would fly right past Ancient Roman heads since they didn't think in this framework but had theirs.
If we speak about sex, then what of the sexual liberation movement? What of doing drugs? What of listening or creating punk rock or rap?
Context context context.
Morality is not just killing/not killing. What about the small things?
People around the world will all look at (regular) onanism differently. But at an even smaller scale it is a small controversy.
Another good example would be the following:
It was just before WWII that Hilter was not just accepted, but he was looked favourably upon by Western countries and such. Because they believed that fascism was THE answer to communism.
Speaking of communism, a lot of mentality amongst people all around the world changed after the fall of the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union existed for less that 100 years! Long before it and after it, its effects will not be felt, not directly at least. Again modern context.
I am losing my train of thought and winding rn, so I'll wrap it up:
morality globally now means nothing when in just some 5 years or a bit more it will change so don't diss on my example because "it's not modern". Who knows, maybe my grandchild and their 3 year old spouse will look at your arguments now and cringe at their barbarism.

The author of the thread uses the alignments for writing characters, which I said. And it's not a setting for him, but a tool. And I meant to say that it'd be a god-awful tool of it only worked with the probability of 0.0004

While this has an element of truth, I still want to clarify something. I didn't say I USED alignment to write my characters. I said I APPLIED alignment to my mc. The story I'm working on was an edit of my bad first novel. Though my first mc was overpowered, that was his only good quality. He was weak, boring, and didn't even survive till the end of the novel, so this time, I changed him from the goody-two-shoes, lawful dumbass that he was to a freer, stronger version of himself. He wouldn't be selfless, but I didn't want him to be an asshole, and Chaotic Neutral was precisely what I was looking for, so I added that to all my other character-building.

My intent in writing this was for alignment to be used as a tool, as you rightly pointed out, but it shouldn't be the only tool because that would be bland. Writers should consider other things about their characters, and when they need to navigate the complicated world of morality, they can lean on these interpretations of alignment to help them. My character is confident yet not overconfident, realistic with a touch of idealism, and playful but can be mature when he needs to be. I didn't sum up his entire personality in two words, "Chaotic Neutral," and neither should you do that with any alignment.