World-Building: About Alignment
Elfland’s Ethics & World Building | World-Building: Causes & Consequences | World-Building: Geneses
B/X D&D presents three alignments. These are “basic ways of life” that “guide the acts of both player characters and monsters.” The three alignments are Lawful, Neutral, or Chaotic. Implicit in the rules are three important ideas:
- Alignment guides a creature’s actions. Thus, a Lawful creature will behave in a Lawful behavior at least most of the time.
- The cumulative moral weight of a creature’s actions determines that creature’s alignment. Thus, a Lawful creature who starts to behave less Lawful and more Chaotic may experience a shift in alignment at some point in time determined by the DM.
- At no time does a creature’s alignment dictate that creature’s actions. Thus, a Lawful creature is free to act in a non-Lawful manner.
The fundamentals of moral philosophy/theology fit in well with alignments. These fundamentals, adapted to B/X D&D terminology, tell us that:
- Actions have an objective moral quality. Every action is either Lawful, Neutral, or Chaotic. The creature’s opinion about the action it performs do not change the action’s objective moral quality. Murder does not become a good act just because of the murderer’s opinion about murder.
- The seriousness of an action’s objective moral quality falls into two categories: minor and major. Once again, the creature’s opinion about the action’s seriousness does not change the action’s seriousness. Murder does not become a minor action just because the murderer thinks murder is not seriously wrong.
All of this results from my son Christopher asking me about the alignments of the false deities who rebelled against Iesmi, the One and True. Let’s draw some conclusions from the previous world-building post.
Iesmi’s alignment is Lawful. Iesmi is the only actual deity; consequently, only Iesmi can justly demand worship from his creatures. Isarn Egni, the Forge Lord, claims to be the creator of the dwarves, and this claim is partially true, but Isarn Egni is not a deity. He is one of Iesmi’s creatures. Iesmi gave life to the lifeless dwarf form made by the Forge Lord. This means dwarves who worship Isarn Egni worship a false god. What’s more, Isarn Egni knows he was created by Iesmi. The same must be true of the other so-called deities.
So, Christopher reasoned, that means the false deities are Chaotic and those who worship them are also Chaotic? Not necessarily. We further complicate matters by addressing the issue of culpability. To be fully culpable for a seriously evil action requires both:
- That the creature freely chooses to commit the act.
- And that the creature understands the objective moral quality of the act.
Thus, someone who is forced to murder is not fully culpable for the act of murder. Someone who does not know murder is seriously evil is not fully culpable for the act of murder. In either case, however, the act of murder is still evil (or Chaotic, to return to B/X D&D terminology).
Since I am not interested in a campaign world where player characters who follow deities other than Iesmi are automatically Chaotic, that means I must expand on the two criteria used to determine culpability. In the process, we can find a way through the dilemma posed by Christopher’s question. So, in the next world-building post, I’ll take a closer look at Deorcynsse and his guise as Valsch Witan, the entity that the halflings understand is the False Light opposed to Way of Iesmi.
