So, like many, I’m a gaming geek. Have been since around 8 years old or so, with my shiny red D&D boxed set, on to many different editions and other games over the decades.
I’ve often found the alignment system trite and oversimplified, but I have mentally used it as shorthand for people over the years as an ingrained habit - although TBH, I think most people fall more along the lines of Palladium’s system of Good/Selfish/Evil. Still more people are familiar with the tropes of D&D so that’s what I’m going with.
For those not familiar, but want to play along at home -
And now the polls.
First, what do you feel is the average alignment of the SDMB on whole?
SDMB Alignment
Lawful Good
Lawful Neutral
Lawful Evil
Neutral Good
Neutral (True)
Neutral Evil
Chaotic Good
Chaotic Neutral
Chaotic Evil
0voters
Again, this represents to oft-mentioned ‘lean’ of the board, and I’m sure different people will see it from different perspectives.
Secondly, how do you self-identify your personal alignment, if you care to share in the poll or post, entirely up to you.
Your own personal Alignment
Lawful Good
Lawful Neutral
Lawful Evil
Neutral Good
Neutral (True)
Neutral Evil
Chaotic Good
Chaotic Neutral
Chaotic Evil
0voters
This is meant to be more on the fun side, rather than a means to call someone out for their behaviors, so please, keep your analysis limited to your own or the board on the whole, let’s not (in IMHO) describe the alignments of others.
Okay, didn’t want my own personal opinions clogging up the OP, so here’s my IMHO.
For the board, I think we lean Neutral Good. While we have our fair share of rules lawyers, our actual rules are pretty loose, moderation is fairly nuanced, and the majority of the posters do seem to care for the greater good and justice. We mostly want to make the systems of the real world better, and more moral, while we also want enough flexibility to deal with individuals and situations than always find a perfect answer.
As for my alignment, I’m basically Lawful Neutral. I have tendency to want to do things the same way every time, I appreciate order, sometimes above getting the best results or being the best person. I probably put far too much emphasis on precedent and how it’s always been, even if I should know better. Ideally, I do want good things to happen to good people, and bad things to bad people, but I want it done within a structure of laws by nature.
I definitely feel I’m basically NG. I try to do good but don’t have anywhere close to 100% support for the law.
I am very honest and frank though, so in that regard I guess I lean Lawful, but I have never supported the bulk of drug laws and many many others. I also pick my fights and do good without any organized religious belief.
I just think humans in general are Lawful Good. Society is set up to punish people who do bad things, and break laws. So, I assume people on the SDMB fall along the lines of most people.
If the question is, “Dumped on an island in the middle of nowhere, with no laws or civilization, what alignment will people gravitate toward?” Then I’m less confident. But we live in a society where there are disincentives for deviating from Lawful Good. I expect most people will fall in line.
Yes, it’s kind of a boring answer, but I think it’s probably a realistic one.
I went Lawful Neutral for both. For the board, you’ve got a fair amount of rules and regulations and they’re designed less for “good” than they are for keeping the Powers That Be out of trouble and for user retention.
For myself, I enjoy structure and a sense of organization of action. That’s not necessarily “Agrees with every US law” but rather appreciates the role and purpose of that structure. I actually almost always fall under Lawful Good when taking the online tests but, if I was pressed, I have more faith in my inclination to act in a lawful manner than in a morally good one.
Isn’t the Law/Chaos axis a LOT more comprehensive than merely correlating with following laws and rules? It would presumably involve aspects like societal conformity vs. being a free spirit, for starters. Established procedure vs. creativity and improvisation.
Anyway, Chaotic Good on that basis mostly-obey whatever rules and laws that I need to which don’t conflict with/obviate said creative explorations.
There’s a lot of room there. We are taking a majorly reductionist analysis of a huge range of personality types after all.
I’m not your DM who is going to say “If you keep not playing your alignment I’m going to forcefully change it!” with consequences for your God / Detect Spells / etc.
I don’t like rules. Especially rules that don’t make sense. I’m not sure whether that makes me neutral or chaotic. I aim to be good, however. So, NG or CG, depending on the day, maybe.
The Board as a whole? LE. That’s my view of the general alignment of modern Western civilization, anyway, and I’m pretty sure the Dope is a fair approximation of that.
No, the board as a whole being vaguely more liberal than the average doesn’t counter that.
Me, I’m somewhere between CE and CG on any given day (without ever being CN), but today, I’d say CG.
I confess, I never quite understood the D&D alignment system, especially the neutral placement, but I chose neutral evil because of the tolerance for some pretty bigoted behavior.
At its most basic, it’s the belief that the basis for society is structure. You can’t have a working clock unless the gears are in place and doing their job. There might be numerous ways to arrange the gears and have a working clock and you don’t have to agree with every arrangement but you recognize the importance. So a Lawful Good or L. Neutral person doesn’t need to blindly follow or agree with every law or go into some terrible country and say “Guess I need to respect owning slaves and beating my wife now since it’s the law here!” They would instead believe that the solution is replacing the bad laws with a better and more just set of laws and that the answer to stopping slave owning and wife beating is to codify it rather than trusting in any innate human goodness (or even “market forces”) to handle it.
He was Neutral Evil. Yeah, Pol Pot he was not, but these alignments work on continuums. If the Good/Evil axis runs from +10 to -10, I’d peg him as around -4.
True neutral was always hard to get a grip on, which is why almost every description of sentient characters with this alignment would be something like ‘Neutral (with good tendencies)’. The only true neutral entities I felt actually ever met the role in the world or fiction were generally non-living or non-sentient: animals, elementals, golems, etc.
Otherwise the so called True Neutrals tended to have the aforementioned tendencies that otherwise informed them. There were also (mostly in the fiction) quite a few True Neutrals that were following a policy of Balance - they themselves may had a preference, but were actively trying to keep the scales between order and chaos, or good and evil in balance. Which worked well when 90% of the time it was chaos or evil that was upsetting the balance, but was rarely touched on the opposite.
Which actually brings me to a favorite book of mine, which addresses that exact subject, Villains by Necessity. In which it throws a bunch of villains who are left after Good defeats Evil on a quest to save the world from the excess of good. It’s a very typical heroes questing story just with the premise reversed, but also points to the inherent simplicity of the trope, as did I when I started the thread. All these terms are super simplified, and people are complicated.
For a similar take on balance in a magical world, there’s the whole Recluse series of novels, which predominantly deal with conflicts between Order and Chaos magic and those that try to bridge the gap. And there are excesses on both sides.
We always treated “True Neutral” as Na or Nb. Na was a person who just didn’t care, they would take each action on it’s own merits without any regard to how good or evil it was, or whether it was a lawful action or not. Or they weren’t sentient.
Nb was someone who worked at all times to actively balance good and evil, law and chaos. Druids were often of that stripe.
Frankly, either one was a pain in the ass to actually roleplay.
I preferred the alignment system the Palladium books used. Rather than axes, they had descriptors.
Their various alignment types went between good, selfish, and evil. It wasn’t a clean chart but I think it was easier to understand. I always really liked the “Aberrant” alignment, which was an evil person with a strong code of honor. (The closest in D&D is LE, and even that doesn’t quite work, because an Aberrant character obeys their own code and ignores society’s laws.)
Agreed, which is why I mentioned that system in the OP. It’s more intuitive, and less absolute overall. But more people are still familiar with the D&D system. And I also had quite a few Aberrant characters, because they’re fun to play.
