Build A Better Alignment

I like the Dungeons and Dragons rules. Usually. The thing is, nearly every good rule has just ooooone little piece that doesn't work quite right.

In fact, one of my favorite parts is the Alignment section, where character morality is defined and codified. Alignment is defined along two axes: Law vs Chaos and Good vs Evil, with Neutral in the middle for both. You take one of either Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic and one of either Good/Neutral/Evil, so a character can be, for example, Chaotic Good, Lawful Neutral, or Neutral Evil. There are nine in total, and they can be laid out in a chart like this:

It's kinda boring, and you often see the rows and columns switched, but that's basically it. (It's got blank white boxes because you're supposed to fill in characters that match it. If you google "dungeons and dragons alignment chart," you will find literally thousands of versions, most of them not very accurate or funny.)

There are a lot of ways to define these nine alignments, and the different ways are enough to fill an article on their own, but basically Lawful respects and Chaotic disrespects order, tradition, authority, and laws, and Good respects and Evil disrespects innocent life. Neutral can be undecided, uncommitted/unconcerned, or specifically devoted to a balance of both.

I really like alignment as a way to define your character and to give yourself a sort of "alternate conscience." It's hard to say "what would I do if my morals weren't my morals?", but it's easy to say "what would I do if I were Chaotic Neutral?"

Pretty much this.

And it's great for that. I very frequently think about fictional characters (and sometimes real people) in terms of D&D alignment.

But remember how I said there's just this one little thing?

In this case, it's kind of a big thing. See, the Dungeons and Dragons world has a spell called Detect Evil (and various others like Protection Against Evil and Smite Evil, but for the purposes we'll stick to Detect). What does Detect Evil do? Why, it detects Evil. If you cast it on a person with a Lawful Evil, Neutral Evil, or Chaotic Evil alignment, ping ping ping yup, he's evil! Objectively. Absolutely. Unequivocally.

This is a big problem. It's a big problem first of all because it's an objective moral system, which can be argued, but it's more of a problem because it means it's impossible to be mistaken. One of the classic moral grey areas is the crusader; he began his career firmly Lawful Good, fighting evil and protecting the innocent. Over time, he became jaded and disillusioned by the immensity of wickedness in the world and began doing morally grey actions liking beating confessions out of murderers or killing enemy civilians to keep them from becoming soldiers. Nice, gritty moral ambiguity. We get to see him struggle with his conscience, we get questions of the nature of good and evil, all that good stuff.

Oh, but wait. He went to talk to his bosses in the church and the Detect Evil light went off. He goes "oh, my bad, didn't realize I was going that far," repents, he's fine. Story cut off.

The villain taunts the hero with "I'm not evil! I'm just doing what needs to be done!" and the hero responds "Detect Evil... No, you're actually evil. No qualms about punting you into this lava!"

Batman is unable to prevent the Joker from poisoning the reservoir. The deaths are on his hands. He laments, he withdraws, he wonders, "Am I just as bad? Am I the real villain?" Alfred casts Detect Evil, and he's clear; no problem, back to fighting crime with a smile on his face.

On second thought, maybe don't smile.

Alignment is wonderful as a personal description, but the rules attached to it make it dull and story-halting. The simple answer is "don't use them," ignore any spells that affect or are affected by alignment. Detect Evil is out, Holy Word is out, Nondetection stops functioning. Problem with that is that a lot of the world is built around it. This is a world where there are literal angels fighting literal demons; take away their alignment-based spells and they're just dudes with wings fighting dudes with horns.

Or llladies with wings fighting llllllladies with horns.

So we can't just ignore alignment (and we also can't go away from the nine that are given for similar reasons) without breaking a big chunk of the D&D world. The solution has to be in interpretation. We need a way to define the alignments so that we can have both a compelling storyline and a functioning world.

Here are the ground rules for any working system of alignment:

1) It must retain the original 9 alignments.

2) It must not hinder the effects of any alignment-based spell.

3) It must allow for compelling storytelling.

3a) To that end, it must allow for ambiguity, uncertainty, and error on the part of people in the world

5) Batman has to fit in every slot.

In order to make sure we keep (1) in mind, let's pick out some archetypal fictional characters to be our guides; any system of alignments must keep...

Atticus Finch as Lawful Good (follows the law to move society toward a better place),

Robin Hood as Chaotic Good (fights corrupt authority to help people),

Darth Vader as Lawful Evil (brutally enforces the wicked law, but does not kill for amusement), and

The Joker as Chaotic Evil (wants to do evil in the most unpredictable, horrifying way possible).

Let's start with Law vs. Chaos, since it's easier.

From the SRD: 

"Law" implies honor, trustworthiness, obedience to authority, and reliability.

"Chaos" implies freedom, adaptability, and flexibility.

Law, then, is essentially Tradition, and Chaos is essentially Innovation.

This is pretty easy to keep as-is, since there's not a lot of room for ambiguity regardless. Chaos and Law are in conflict, but it's a conflict they tend to be aware of. The only snag is in the descriptions of Chaotic Good and Lawful Neutral.

CG: "A chaotic good character acts as his conscience directs him...."

LN: "A lawful neutral character acts as law, tradition, or a personal code directs her."

The issue is whether a personal code and a conscience are different; more specifically, whether Robin Hood is acting based on his conscience or his code. It seems that the difference is essentially in emotion vs logic: does the character believe his actions are based on his passions or his reason? We can use that for our base, and that fits all four of our archetypes (at least well enough). Law is logic and tradition, Chaos is emotion and innovation; obviously there are situations where it's a little more complex (which meets requirement 3), but that's a solid base.

[Note: by creating a set of rules to determine these, rather than just doing what feels right, I am outing myself as essentially Lawful.]

But don't get too chaotic.

Good vs Evil is where it gets difficult.
From the SRD again:
Good" implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings.
"Evil" implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others.

Pretty simple on the surface. Killing vs not killing, great! But... Oh boy, what about the moral quandaries? What about killing one person to save many people? And you're not allowed to hurt people? So you should arrest them to keep them from hurting other people... but you're not allowed to hurt them. That feels troublesome. Notably, it makes the entire possibility of Good D&D characters impossible.

As opposed to merely hilarious.

An inability to hurt enemies makes it very cut-and-dry when an Evil act is committed, which violates rule 3a. However, if we look at it indirectly, this can still be salvaged; our question now is "is it Evil to hurt somebody to prevent them from hurting other people?" The most interesting answer is sometimes. That allows for ambiguity, which allows for quandaries, which allows for interesting storytelling.

Wonderful! So Good and Evil, in addition to protecting vs harming, also include protecting (by harming people who would harm) and harming (by failing to protect from people who would harm). Buuuut, there's still the Detect Evil problem.
What we need is an alignment system whereby the crusader will stay Good even as he starts to commit Evil acts. We need to de-emphasize Good and Evil by making them essentially unrelated to actions. The solution is to make alignment essentially a question of self-perception.

In other words, to solve the three problems above, Alignment needs to become not a descriptor of actions but a philosophy. Not "how do you act," but "how do you want to act?" The crusader will remain Lawful Good no matter how many heretic orphanages he burns down as long as he continues to believe with the same vigor. His internal struggle moves away from "Am I still the right alignment?" toward "Am I acting in accordance with my alignment?". I think the latter is a much more interesting question, as it can't be answered with magical litmus paper.

So let's run this test by the three rules:
1) Does it keep the nine alignments? Yup.
1a) Do the four archetype characters still hold the same alignments? Yes. In fact, they hold them more strongly; Atticus is firmly devoted to the power of the law to do good (even though he's going against society); Robin Hood is firmly devoted to overthrowing the corrupt government; Darth Vader is willing to do whatever it takes to keep the empire in power (it works better because his moral urges later in the movies don't harm his alignment up until the dramatic philosophy change right at the end); the Joker loves chaos and evil.
2) Does alignment-based magic still work? Yes. Detect Evil and similar are now essentially "Discern Philosophy." They work predictably and effectively.
3) Can stories still be interesting? Oh yeah, this is the best part. Alignment is now an ideal to strive for, like religious tenets; just as there can be members of major religions with Neutral Good tenets who are real jerks, there can be Lawful Good paladins who stray from the path (or Neutral Evil serial killers who love puppies). Alignment is no longer a balance sheet.

Though this does seem pretty fun...

-Charlie