(A) Order, Chaos and Evil – sword and sorcery alignment
This is archival material from previous blog
In my mind sword and sorcery genre inevitably is linked to grey morality and lack of objective Good and Evil. This was my biggest problem with alignments and systems like that. Something more subtle like Shadowrun’s losing humanity due to cybernetics overload or Vampire’s losing humanity as they got more powerful and vampiric. It’s the theme of tragedy, of question how much would you sacrifice to achieve your goals. Whatever is surpressing the Humanity in such systems could therefore be even directly Evil for the sake of personal tragedy as a part of game mechanics. But lack of clear distinction of what is better and what is worse made them more compelling.
The notion of great combat of good and evil never really rooted itself in me. I always loved complicated narrations, unclear decision of who is good or if any. Of course I “blame” anime movie Mononoke Hime for this. When I was around 6-7 years old it was on television (I actually checked it out to be sure and these were summer holidays just before my first grade). At first I thought it was just a cartoon, like Pokemon or whatever else I was watching at that time. But then cursed arm of Ashitaka forced him to basically cripple enemies by cutting their arms and legs. He met then the iron lady ruling industrial city. She seems like this “general evil” but as you watch what she has done to people of the city, how she took those who had no future in society and gave them home and purpose you think she is kinda good. But in order for the city to prosper she destroys nearby forests. Then we meet gods and the wild girl. The “nature” side which would supposedly be the “good” is made up of spirits and creatures blinded by rage, pure unproductive hatred. In the end no one is right. Even the main god of the forest is a creature which not only gives life but also takes it. This dynamic balance makes it such compelling narrative and it blew my mind. Still not sure how my parents allowed me to see this – probably were at work or something.
Ok, how does this knowledge can help? To get perspective. Just like in Mononoke Hime no one was entirely good or evil – the stakes were lying in different things – the same was usually with sword and sorcery heroes. The gray morality and lack of clear distinction is so much more compelling due to it being part of life we live in. Of course we like narratives of Good vs Evil but it’s like fast food – you know everything, no need to think, just enjoy the show. It works in grand stories like Lord of The Rings which are more like legendary fairytales bit not necessarily in smaller scale personal stories.
What I’m trying to say is that even in OSR there is deeply seeded simplification. By this I mean systems which let go of the Good/Evil part of alignment and leave Law and Chaos somehow still show the orderly part as more… good. Like, where are the goody, human-like, calm gods and entities? Somehow on the Law side. But by this logic Chaos also should have some of them. But chaos usually gets alien, eldritch entities and moody destructive creatures. Even if you can get similar effect with Lawful and Chaotic powers the latter have some malicious side effects.
Somehow Overton’s window includes “not the best but also not worst” Law, then there is rather morally grey Neutrality and somehow Chaos is inadvertently Evil. I base it on anecdotal evidence of witnessing endless discussions on forums regarding such alignments for various systems, in huge chunk – DCC. But for some of adventure ideas to make sense you’d need Law to be Law and Neutrality to be Chaos, so Chaos could become Evil. Why does it even happen? In order for players to have easily recognizable foes there has to be some evil force. Unless these are only non-inteligent monsters. But they are boring after some time. You want someone to be evil and clever, and intelligent, players want challenge and GM wants enemy who has tools and can be as unpredictable, weird and effective as civilisation can. You want goblins as disposable and evil yet tactically competent (or at least to explain why there is treasure in their camp).
The case is this Law=Good and Chaos=Bad alignment was the issue from the start of the hobby. PCs were supposed to be lawful or at least neutral, because on the chaotic side were all the monsters. If you get civilisation vs wilderness case most humans go for civilisation. Most alien beings go anti-civilization. The average Jan roots for dry houses and warm meals instead of raw and dangerous nature, people are people. “Chaos” of lack of civilization is shown not as the pure nature we all know. “Law” of civilization is not presented as something destroying such nature. In the end you have only small woods and meadows in civilized lands. Rest is warped to serve civilization.
So the wonderful peak of plot beyond good and evil, everything is grey, 1997 Monster Princess is still not sipping into our games. You still get Lawful=teamplayer, and only team players can be part of adventuring group. I wasn’t eager to write this article in the first place. I mean, I’ve got all elements on the table, just putting it together wasn’t coming to me that easy. And then I got my subscription of Glatisant and there was an article about Kriegsmesser, small system in line with Zweihander, Warlock, Warhammer https://bonesofcontention.blogspot.com/2021/07/plate-mail-kriegsmesser.html Author of this article, Zedeck, writes there about the same exact thing. The fight between Law and Chaos is essential in Warhammery systems. But originally the Chaos of beastmen, cultists and mutations was counterbalanced with Empire’s cruelty, indifference and stubborness. This civilization can be as cruel and destructive as it’s enemies, and sometimes it is even motor creating more chaos. Let me quote it, because it is beautiful: “With every passing decade Warhammer abridges its Moorcockian roots more and more; nowadays it is “Order = Good” and “Chaos = Evulz”, pretty much. Gone are the days when chaos berserkers are implied to grant safe passage to the helpless (because Khorne is as much a god of martial honour as he is a god of bloodletting); Or that the succor of Papa Nurgle is a genuine comfort to the downtrodden; Or that Tzeentch could unironically embody the principle of hope, of change for the better.”
Where does it come from? My ‘professional’ diagnosis is laziness. Just like you don’t have Mononoke Hime’s on every corner of other media’s that’s why creators of systems, settings and adventures use this shortcut. It’s easier to paint elves black and say “they bad, kill them”, give green skinned people tribal decorations and say “they stupid and evil, kill them” and so on. Not so strange people recognize racism in it even if it wasn’t intended originally. When you make made up culture inherently evil and it is remotely human-like it will be tainted by real world prejudices. It all stems from thinking “players need clear enemy to kill who won’t make them even slightly probable to feel guilt about”. And now some people see it and are not so pleasant about it, which is very good.
This is why I really strongly lean to human-centric settings. Where you don’t have intelligent, civilised races everywhere. No. These are all people. some have are evil, some good. Some do bad things out of necessity, some out of habit or boredom. The case of Evil Intelligent Enemies in sword and sorcery should be their individual wickedness. Not as a nation, race, tribe. No. Some people are just evil and some of them get strong or powerful enough to mess up a lot. Imagine Michael Myers from Halloween given power of some Conanesque dark magic. This is Evil, this is enemy who is human but also is not, they are so evil they are nigh-inhuman, alien to regular mind. And then cruel but fair dictator next to corrupt but welcoming revolutionists are Good in comparison. Who would PCs follow in fight between cruel Law and corrupt Chaos is their case, but is no longer concern when the Evil arrives. This is how I see it should work. And it seems terms of Law-and-Chaos are too similar in general consciousness to Good-vs-Evil to use them lightly. Just like including traditionally “good” and “evil” ancestries. Or classes.
Why would assassin be chaotic class? It’s huge misunderstanding of what is standing behind these alignments. Hitman for hire is clearly neutral evil. Their profession is outlawed, is based on chaos. But they live off the order, of civilization. They wouldn’t be needed in either extreme – if chaos wins there won’t be any money to earn. If order wins they won’t be able to earn money. They live off dynamic status quo, they just do evil things to achieve this. They’re no more chaotic than they are lawful. And sometimes even monsters are outside of equation. Remember how Witcher was hesitant to kill monsters who were part of natural ecosystem? Yet felt nothing when cutting through hordes of ghouls, because they are parasites and their presence is detrimental to nature around?
At this point I feel like the Order-Chaos alignment axis is corrupted enough in general conscience to be of negative value. Inclusion of it would make worse for in game chaos/order idea than explaining it with other words on the side.