Alignment (Dungeons & Dragons)

• 1. Introduction

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  Alignment in Dungeons & Dragons is a label that sorts the ethical and moral outlook of player characters, non-player characters, and creatures. Ian Livingstone defended it against its critics with a memorable line. He said alignment is "often criticized as being arbitrary and unreal, but... it works if played well and provides a useful structural framework on which not only characters but governments and worlds can be moulded." Is a moral tag on a fantasy hero a crutch or a tool? Where did the idea come from, and why did the designers keep rewriting it? What does a game do with a shark, a demon, or a dragon that wants to change sides? And how did a rule from a tabletop game end up inside television reviews, university research, and Internet memes?

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• 2. Borrowed From Fiction

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  Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, credited the fantasy stories of Michael Moorcock and Poul Anderson as the inspiration for alignment. The original game of 1974 offered players only three choices. Lawful implied honor and respect for society's rules. Chaotic implied rebelliousness and individualism. Neutral meant seeking a balance between those two extremes.

  In 1976, Gygax published an article in The Strategic Review, Volume 2, issue 1, titled "The Meaning of Law and Chaos in Dungeons and Dragons and Their Relationships to Good and Evil." It introduced a second axis. Good implied altruism and respect for life, while evil implied selfishness and no respect for life. A neutral position again sat between the extremes. The Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set of 1977 built this model into the game.

  Because the two axes were independent, a character could land in surprising combinations. A tyrant could be lawful and evil at once. Robin Hood could be chaotic but good. The older axis, law versus chaos, had a blunter first definition than anything that followed, and it is where the story turns next.

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• 3. Law Versus Chaos

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  One early definition framed law as "the belief that everything should follow an order, and that obeying rules is the natural way of life." Chaos was its mirror, the belief that life is random and that chance and luck rule the world.

  The early rulebook turned those beliefs into temperaments. Lawful characters put the interest of the group above the individual and strove to be honest and to obey just and fair laws. Chaotic creatures put the individual first and treated laws and honesty as unimportant. The text even claimed that chaotic behavior was usually the same as behavior that could be called evil. Neutral characters thought both law and chaos mattered, wanted to preserve the balance, and were often motivated by self-interest.

  The third edition rules gave each side a bright face and a dark one. Law implied honor, trustworthiness, obedience to authority, and reliability. Its downside included closed-mindedness, reactionary attachment to tradition, judgmentalness, and a lack of adaptability. Supporters of lawfulness argued that only lawful behavior builds a society where people can depend on each other.

  Chaos, in the same edition, implied freedom, adaptability, and flexibility. Its downside included recklessness, resentment of legitimate authority, arbitrary actions, and irresponsibility. Its champions argued that only unfettered personal freedom lets people express themselves fully and lets society benefit from what individuals can offer.

  A character neutral on this axis has a normal respect for authority and feels no urge to obey or to rebel. Such a person is honest, but can be tempted to lie or deceive when it suits them. The companion axis asked a harsher question, about who gets hurt.

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• 4. Good, Evil, and Beasts

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  Good versus evil is a common motif in D&D and in fantasy fiction generally. The game assumes that player characters will oppose evil and fight evil creatures, even when they adventure for personal gain rather than from altruism.

  The third edition rules defined good as altruism, respect for life, and concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others. Evil meant harming, oppressing, and killing. Some evil creatures simply lack compassion and kill without qualms when it is convenient. Others pursue evil actively, killing for sport or out of duty to a malevolent deity or master.

  People neutral on this axis have compunctions about killing the innocent. They lack the commitment to sacrifice for others, and they are tied to others mainly through personal relationships. Angels and altruistic heroes count as good, while villains, violent criminals, demons, and most undead count as evil.

  Sharks show where the scale stops working. They are savage predators, yet they are not evil, because they have no alignment. The rules call creatures that act purely on instinct, without enough intelligence for moral choice, "unaligned." Animals are treated as neutral even when they attack innocents, for the same reason.

  Greg Littmann points out a consequence for monsters. If each monster is assigned an alignment in advance, it is good or evil by nature. Yet the rules still permit individual exceptions, such as "a red dragon looking to defect to the side of good," although Littmann concedes that this is rare.

  Littmann adds a sharper observation about heroes themselves. Respect for others does not necessarily extend to evil creatures. In his words, "a party of good characters will chop and char a tribe of orcs to so much smoking hamburger without the slightest hesitation or regrets." Crossing the two axes gives a three-by-three grid, and each box has its own typical residents.

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• 5. Nine Archetypes

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  Gold dragons, righteous knights, paladins, and most dwarves sit in the lawful good box. Such characters act with compassion and always with honor and a sense of duty. They often regret any action they fear would violate their code, even when they see it as good.

  Many celestials, some cloud giants, and most gnomes are neutral good. These characters act altruistically without regard for or against rules and tradition. They cooperate easily with lawful officials but do not feel beholden to them. If doing right means bending rules, they feel none of the inner conflict a lawful good character would.

  Copper dragons, many elves, and unicorns are chaotic good. These characters do whatever it takes to bring about change for the better and disdain bureaucracies that block social improvement. They prize personal freedom for themselves and for others. Their methods tend to be disorganized and out of sync with the rest of society.

  A soldier who always follows orders is a lawful neutral example, as are a judge who follows the letter of the law mercilessly, a disciplined monk, and some wizards. Such characters believe strongly in order, rules, tradition, or a personal code. They may apply it only to themselves or try to promote order in the world.

  Lizardfolk, most druids, and many humans are true neutral, the middle of the grid. They are neutral on both axes and feel no strong pull toward any alignment, or they actively seek balance. Under Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules, druids were required to be this alignment. The 2nd Edition Player's Handbook imagined a druid fighting a band of marauding gnolls, then switching sides to save the gnolls' clan from total extermination.

  Many barbarians and rogues, and some bards, are chaotic neutral. They are individualists who follow their own hearts and shirk rules and traditions. They cheer for freedom, but it is their own freedom that comes first, with good and evil a distant second.

  Tyrants, devils, corrupt officials, blue dragons, and hobgoblins are lawful evil, and so are mercenaries who keep a strict code of conduct. They see a well-ordered system as the best way to satisfy their own wants and to grow their power and influence.

  Many drow, some cloud giants, and yugoloths are neutral evil. These characters are selfish and will turn on allies-of-the-moment, since they make allies mainly to further their own goals. One reading shows an assassin with little regard for formal laws who does not kill needlessly. Another reading treats evil as an ideal, as with a masked killer who strikes only to spread fear and distrust.

  Liches, demons, red dragons, and orcs are chaotic evil, along with violent killers who strike for pleasure rather than profit. They have no respect for rules or for other people's lives. They prize personal freedom but give little regard to anyone else's. They resent orders, so they work poorly in groups. That tidy grid did not stay fixed, because the designers revised it again and again.

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• 6. Rewriting Across Editions

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  Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, released between 1977 and 1979, kept the two-axis system. The Basic Set of 1981 then went back to the earlier one-axis model. The two lines of the game briefly disagreed about whether morality needed a second dimension.

  In 1988, AD&D 2nd Edition kept two axes and added a penalty. A character who performed too many actions outside their alignment could find the alignment changed. They lost experience points, which made reaching the next level harder.

  The 3rd Edition of 2000 kept the same system. Then the Eberron Campaign Setting of 2004, released for 3.5 Edition, subverted many established D&D tropes, alignment included. It encouraged evil beings of traditionally good races and good beings of traditionally evil races. Good and evil kept their usual meanings. Oppositely aligned characters would briefly side together if a threat loomed over everyone. Keith Baker summed it up by saying that in Eberron "alignment is a spectrum."

  The 4th Edition of 2008 cut the list to five alignments: lawful good, good, evil, chaotic evil, and unaligned. Plain "good" replaced neutral good and did not cover chaotic good. "Evil" replaced neutral evil and left out lawful evil. "Unaligned" replaced true neutral and left out lawful neutral and chaotic neutral. Wired noted that dropping emphasis on alignment and traditional racial stereotypes allowed for "PCs and NPCs with unknown and shifting motives."

  The 5th Edition of 2014 restored the nine alignments and added a tenth option, "unaligned," for creatures that run on instinct. Alignment was also decoupled from most game mechanics. There were "no rules that limit certain classes to characters of a specific alignment, or spells that impact characters differently depending on" alignment. Players no longer needed to be consistently faithful to their choice.

  Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden and Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, both from 2020, stopped giving player and monster races preassigned alignments. In December 2021, official errata removed the suggested alignments for playable races in 5th Edition sourcebooks. Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse, from 2022, revised roughly 250 previously published monsters and removed preassigned alignments, except for specifically named characters.

  Its stat blocks for creatures that are also playable races now say they can be any alignment. Monsters with a strong tie to one alignment, such as demons, carry the word "typically." A commentator read this as an invitation for Dungeon Masters to surprise players by using monsters in unexpected ways. That leaves the question of what a player does with the label once the dice come out.

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• 7. Alignment at the Table

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  Richard Bartle's Designing Virtual Worlds lists alignment alongside gender, race, character class, and sometimes nationality, as one of the ways players categorize their characters. It was designed to help define role-playing, with a character's alignment standing for their outlook on life. The player decides how the character should behave when choosing an alignment, then plays the character accordingly.

  An alignment can also change. If a lawful neutral character keeps performing good acts when neutral or evil ones were possible, the character's alignment shifts to lawful good. During play, the Dungeon Master decides when a violation has occurred. That judgment is subjective, and it is often frowned upon, if not outright disallowed.

  Bill Slavicsek and Richard Baker wrote Dungeon Master for Dummies, which gives advice on mixing alignments. A party should have compatible alignments, because a group containing both good and evil characters may turn against itself. They noted that parties of good or neutral characters work better. Motivations for adventures come more easily, and group dynamics run more smoothly. In their words, the "heroic aspects of D&D shine through in ways that just don't happen when players play evil characters."

  Outside the game, the label found a second life with no dice at all.

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• 8. Life After the Game

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  Heather Havrilesky, a television critic for Salon, reviewed the HBO series True Blood by sorting its characters into D&D alignments. She called protagonist Sookie Stackhouse chaotic good and her vampire boyfriend Bill Compton lawful neutral. She placed Eric Northman as lawful evil and Lafayette Reynolds as chaotic neutral.

  In "Hostiles and Calamities," the 11th episode of season 7 of The Walking Dead, Eugene Porter refers to the system while describing himself. He says he is "...not good. I'm not lawful, neutral, or chaotic."

  Researchers have also used the system to study how people build avatars in digital worlds. The computer role-playing game Neverwinter Nights 2 inherits the D&D alignment system. Using its avatar creation process, researchers showed that American undergraduate students tend to choose avatars similar to their own moral values.

  Zachary Pilon, writing for Comic Book Resources, argued that alignment in 5th Edition is now "more of a storytelling tool" than something with "mechanical benefits." He thought Wizards of the Coast is unlikely ever to remove it entirely, given its history. He also thought the current nine options are outdated and should be improved or changed.

  Pilon's main complaint was interpretation. One character can reasonably be read as several alignments, which is harmless for a favorite movie or anime character. It is a problem when a player is upset about where a Dungeon Master places their character. He suggested borrowing from Magic: The Gathering, whose five colors of mana produce 32 unique combinations corresponding to different outlooks.

  Since 2018, the alignment system has also spread as an Internet meme. Users build their own charts to sort objects, fictional characters, celebrities, animals, and even abstract concepts. The subreddit r/AlignmentCharts is dedicated to sharing and creating these charts, and its members keep introducing new alignments for each theme.

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