ALIGNMENT

Alignment describes the broad ethos of thinking, reasoning creatures—those unintelligent sorts being placed within the neutral area because they are totally uncaring. Note that alignment does not necessarily dictate religious persuasion, although many religious beliefs will dictate alignment. As explained under Alignment Languages this aspect of alignment is not the major consideration. The overall behavior of the character (or creature) is delineated by alignment, or, in the case of player characters, behavior determines actual alignment.

Therefore, besides defining the general tendencies of creatures, it also groups creatures into mutually acceptable or at least non-hostile divisions. This is not to say that groups of similarly aligned creatures cannot be opposed or even mortal enemies. Two nations, for example, with rulers of lawful good alignment can be at war. Bands of orcs can hate each other. But the former would possibly cease their war to oppose a massive invasion of orcs. Just as the latter would make common cause against the Lawful Good men. Thus, alignment describes the world view of creatures and helps to define what their actions, reactions, and purposes will be. It likewise causes a player character to choose an ethos which is appropriate to his or her profession, and alignment also aids players in the definition and role approach of their respective game personae. With the usefulness of alignment determined, definition of the divisions is necessary.

MAJOR DIVISIONS

There are two major divisions of four opposite points of view. All four are not mutually exclusive, although each pair is mutually opposed.

Law and Chaos. The opposition here is between organized groups and individuals. That is, law dictates that order and organization is necessary and desirable, while chaos holds to the opposite view. Law generally supports the group as more important than the individual, while chaos promotes the individual over the group.

Good and Evil. Basically stated, the tenets of good are human rights, or in the case of AD&D, creature rights. Each creature is entitled to life, relative freedom, and the prospect of happiness. Cruelty and suffering are undesirable. Evil, on the other hand, does not concern itself with rights or happiness; purpose is the determinant.

There can never exist a lawful chaos or an evil good. These, and their reverses, are dichotomous, This is not to say that they cannot exist in the same character or creature if it is insane or controlled by another entity, but as general divisions they are mutually exclusive pairs. 

Consider also the alignment graph. If law is opposed to chaos, and good to evil, then the radically opposed alignments are lawful neutral—Chaotic Neutral, Neutral Good—Neutral Evil, Lawful Good—Chaotic Evil, and Lawful Evil—Chaotic Good. Lawful groups might, for example, combine to put down some chaotic threat, for example, just as readily as good groups would combine to suppress some powerful evil. Basic understanding and agreement, however, is within the general specific alignment, i.e. one of the nine categories. These are defined as follows:

Neutrality. Absolute, or true, neutral creatures view everything which exists as an integral, necessary part or function of the entire cosmos. Each thing exists as a part of the whole, one as a check or balance to the other, with life necessary for death, happiness for suffering, good for evil, order far chaos, and vice versa. Nothing must ever become predominant or out of balance. Within this naturalistic ethos, humankind serves a role also, just as all other creatures do. They may be more or less important, but the neutral does not concern himself or herself with these considerations except where it is positively determined that the balance is threatened. Absolute neutrality is in the central or fulcrum position quite logically, as the neutral sees all other alignments as parts of a necessary whole. This alignment is the narrowest in scope.

Neutral Good. Creatures of this alignment see the cosmos as a place where law and chaos are merely tools to use in bringing life, happiness, and prosperity to all deserving creatures. Order is not good unless it brings this to all; neither is randomness and total freedom desirable if it does not bring such good. 

Neutral Evil. Similar to the neutral good alignment, that of neutral evil holds that neither groups nor individuals have great meaning. This ethos holds that seeking to promote weal for all actually brings woe to the truly deserving. Natural forces which are meant to cull out the weak and stupid are artificially suppressed by so-called good, and the fittest are wrongfully held back, so whatever means are expedient can be used by the powerful to gain and maintain their dominance, without concern for anything.

Lawful Good. Creatures of lawful good alignment view the cosmos with varying degrees of lawfulness or desire for good. They are convinced that order and law are absolutely necessary to assure good, and that good is best defined as whatever brings the most benefit to the greater number of decent, thinking creatures and the least woe to the rest.

Lawful Neutral. It is the view of this alignment that law and order give purpose and meaning to everything. Without regimentation and strict definition, there  could be no purpose in the cosmos. Therefore, whether a law is good or evil is of no import as long as it brings order and meaning.

Lawful Evil. Obviously, all order is not good, nor are all laws beneficial. Lawful evil creatures consider order as the means by which each group is properly placed in the cosmos, from lowest to highest, strongest first, weakest last. Good is seen as an excuse to promote the mediocrity of the whole and suppress the better and more capable, while lawful evilness allows each group to structure itself and fix its place as compared to others, serving the stronger but being served by the weaker.

Chaotic Good. To the chaotic good individual, freedom and independence are as important to life and happiness. The ethos views this freedom as the only means by which each creature can achieve true satisfaction and happiness. Law, order, social forms, and anything else which tends to restrict or abridge individual freedom is wrong, and each individual is capable of achieving self realization and prosperity through himself, herself, or itself.

Chaotic Neutral. This view of the cosmos holds that absolute freedom is necessary. Whether the individual exercising such freedom chooses to do good or evil is of no concern. After all, life itself is law and order, so death is a desirable end. Therefore, life can only be justified as a tool by which order is combated, and in the end it too will pass into entropy.

Chaotic Evil. The chaotic evil creature holds that individual freedom and choice is important, and that other individuals and their freedoms are unimportant if they cannot be held by the individuals through their own strength and merit. Thus, law and order tends to promote not individuals but groups, and groups suppress individual volition and success. 

Each of these cases for alignment is, of course, stated rather simplistically and ideally, for philosophical and moral reasonings are completely subjective according to the acculturation of the individual. The Dungeon Master, must establish the meanings and boundaries of law and order as opposed to chaos and anarchy, as well as the divisions between right and good as opposed to hurtful and evil. Lawful societies will tend to be highly structured, rigid, well policed and bureaucratic hierarchical. Class, rank, position, and precedence will be important, so they will be strictly defined and adhered to. On the other hand, chaotic areas will have little government and few social distinctions. The governed will give their consent to government, acknowledging leaders as equals serving those who allowed them to assume leadership. Obedience and service in a chaotic society is given only by those desiring to do so, or by dint of some persuasion, never by requirement.

ALIGNMENT WITH RESPECT TO THE PLANES

Obviously, the material planes have no set alignment, nor do the other “inner planes” or the ethereal or astral ones either. However, the “outer planes” show various alignments. This is because they are home to creatures who are of like general alignment. If the curves of the alignment table are carried outwards to the planes, only those planes at the corners will correspond to non-Neutral alignments, i.e., Lawful Good, Chaotic Good, Chaotic Evil, and Lawful Evil. Similarly, those on the horizontal and vertical axes correspond to the neutral-based alignments which support an ethos, i.e. Neutral Good, Chaotic Neutral, Neutral Evil, and Lawful Neutral.

The remainder of the outer plane areas are “gray” areas where alignments shade into each other. Inhabitants of these planes will generally have the same world-view as their fellows on the Prime Material Plane.

GRAPHING ALIGNMENT

It is of importance to keep track of player character behavior with respect to their professed alignment. Actions do speak far more eloquently than professions, and each activity of a player character should reflect his or her alignment. If a professed Lawful Evil character is consistently seeking to be helpful and is respecting the lesser creatures, he or she is certainly tending towards Good, while if he or she ignores regulations and consistent behavior the trend is towards Chaotic alignment. 

Such drift should be noted by the DM, and when it takes the individual into a new alignment area, the DM will then inform the player that his or her character has changed alignment. It is quite possible for a character to drift around in an alignment area, making only small shifts due to behavior. However, any major action which is out of alignment character will cause a major shift to the alignment which is directly in line with the action, i.e., if a Lawful Evil character defies the law in order to aid the cause (express or implied) of Chaotic Good, he or she will be either Lawful Neutral or Chaotic Neutral, depending on the factors involved in the action.

It is of utmost importance for the DM to keep rigid control of alignment behavior with respect to such characters as serve deities who will accept only certain alignments, those who are paladins, those with evil familiars, and so on. Part of the role they have accepted requires a set behavior mode, and its benefits are balanced by this. Therefore, failure to demand strict adherence to alignment behavior is to allow a game abuse.

Lawful Good characters should not be allowed to ignore unlawful or shady actions by “looking the other way”. If, for example, a party that includes a paladin decides to use poison on a monster that they know is ahead, the DM shouldn’t let the paladin be distracted or “led away for a few rounds” when it is patently obvious that the paladin heard the plan. If the player does not take appropriate measures to prevent the action, the DM should warn the paladin that his lack of action will constitute a voluntary alignment change and then let the chips fall where they may!

ALIGNMENT LANGUAGE

Alignment language is a handy game tool which is not unjustifiable in real terms. Thieves did employ a special cant. Secret organizations and societies did and do have certain recognition signs, signals, and recognition phrases- possibly special languages (of limited extent) as well. Consider also the medieval Catholic Church which used Latin as a common recognition and communication base to cut across national boundaries. In AD&D, alignment languages are the special set of signs, signals, gestures, and words which intelligent creatures use to inform other intelligent creatures of the same alignment of their fellowship and common ethos.

Alignment languages are never flaunted in public. They are not used as salutations or interrogatives if the speaker is uncertain of the alignment of those addressed. Furthermore, alignment languages are of limited vocabulary and deal with the ethos of the alignment in general, so lengthy discussion of varying subjects cannot be conducted in such tongues.

Each alignment language is constructed to allow recognition of like-aligned creatures and to discuss the precepts of the alignment in detail. Otherwise, the tongue will permit only the most rudimentary communication with a vocabulary limited to a few score words. The speaker could inquire of the listener’s state of health, ask about hunger, thirst, or degree of tiredness. A few other basic conditions and opinions could be expressed, but no more. The specialty tongues of Druidic and the Thieves’ Cant are designed to handle conversations pertaining to things druidical on the one hand and thievery, robbery and the disposal of stolen goods on the other. Druids could discuss at length and in detail the state of the crops, weather, animal husbandry and foresting; but warfare, politics, adventuring, and like matter would be impossible to detail with the language.

Any character foolish enough to announce his or her alignment by publicly crying out in that alignment tongue will incur considerable social sanctions. At best he or she will be thought unmannerly, rude, boorish, and stupid. Those of the same alignment will be inclined to totally ignore the character, not wishing to embarrass themselves by admitting any familiarity with the offender. Those of other alignment will likewise regard the speaker with distaste when overhearing such an outburst. At worst, the character will be marked by those hostile to the alignment in which he or she spoke. 

Alignment language is used to establish credentials only after initial communications have been established by other means. Only in the most desperate of situations would any creature utter something in the alignment tongue otherwise. It must also be noted that alignment does NOT necessarily empower a creature to actually speak or understand the alignment language which is general in the ethos. Thus, blink dogs are intelligent, Lawful Good creatures who have a language of their own. A Lawful Good human, dwarf, or brownie will be absolutely at a loss to communicate with blink dogs, however, except in the most limited of ways (non-aggression, non-fear, etc.) without knowledge of the creatures’ language or some magical means. This is because blink dogs do not intellectually embrace the ethos of Lawful Good but are of that alignment instinctually; therefore, they do not speak the tongue used by Lawful Good.

This is not true of gold dragons, let us say, or red dragons with respect to their alignment, who do speak their respective alignment languages.

CHANGING ALIGNMENT

Whether or not the character actively professes some deity, he or she will have an alignment and serve one or more deities of this general alignment indirectly and unbeknownst to the character. Changing of alignment is a serious matter, although some players would have their characters change alignment as often as they change socks. Not so!

First, change of alignment for clerics can be very serious, as it might cause a change of deity. If a druid changes his or her alignment—that is, becomes other than Neutral—then he or she is no longer a druid at all! Change of alignment will have an adverse effect on any class of character if he or she is above the 2nd level. 

Immediately upon alignment change actually occurring, the character concerned will lose one level of experience, dropping experience points to take him or her to the very beginning of the next lower level, losing the hit die and/or hit points, and all abilities which accrued to him or her with the lost level. If the alignment change is involuntary (such as that caused by a powerful magic, a curse, etc.), then the character can regain all of the losses (level, hit die, etc.) upon returning to his or her former alignment as soon as is possible and after making atonement through a cleric of the same alignment—and sacrificing treasure which has a value of not less than 10,000 g.p. per level of experience of the character. The sacrificial amount is variable, so the DM should use their best judgment as to the total and what and where it should go—magic items to build up the NPC cleric, money out of the campaign, magic items out of the campaign, etc. Similarly, such atonement and sacrifice can be accomplished by a quest. Note that, in all likelihood, the character will desire to retain the new alignment, and it is incumbent upon the DM to ensure that the player acts accordingly.

Some equally powerful means (divine intervention, remove curse, etc.) must be used to restore the original alignment before atonement can begin. 

Characters who knowingly or unknowingly change alignment through forethought or actions permanently lose the experience points and level due to disfavor. They must also accept a severe disability in alignment language during a one level transitional period. Until the character has again achieved his or her former level of experience held prior to change of alignment, he or she will not be able to converse in the former alignment’s tongue nor will anything but the rudest signaling be possible in the new alignment language. Although it is possible for a character to allow himself or herself to be blown by the winds as far as alignment is concerned, he or she will pay a penalty which will effectively damn the character to oblivion.

A glance at the alignment chart will show that radical alignment change is impossible without magical means. If one is Chaotic Good, it is possible to change to Neutral Good or Chaotic Neutral only, depending upon desire and/or actions. From the absolute Neutral alignment one can only move to some Neutral-based alignment. This represents the fact that the character just divorce himself or herself from certain precepts and views and wholeheartedly embrace another set of values, and human nature is such that without radical personality alteration (such as caused by insanity or magic in the case of this game) such transition must be gradual.

It is assumed that the character’s initial alignment has been his or hers for a considerable period prior to the character’s emergence as an adventurer. This ethos will not be lightly changed by a stable, rational individual.