Aligning Expectations for D&D

Alignment. It’s not just for planets anymore.

Alignment has always been the sticky wicket of Dungeons & Dragons. It presents an objective set of labels to govern the inherently subjective nature of ethical and moral conduct. It’s adjudication – and even the value of its presence in the game – has long been debated, and will continue to be so long as it remains part of the game.

But rather than discussing how alignment is depicted in D&D, we’re going to do something a little different: we’re going to determine the alignment of D&D itself.

The presentation of Dungeons & Dragons has varied wildly across almost forty years and half-a-dozen iterations. While these changes can be viewed in many contexts – from the role of the Dungeon Master to the random-versus-planned nature of character creation – we’re going to use alignment as a shorthand for evaluating the nature of the game’s rules, presentation, and the style of play that it (seemingly) lends itself towards.

Of course, in this regard the “moral” axis of the traditional D&D alignment grid – good, neutral, and evil – is of no help. Hence, we’re going to limit ourselves to the ethical alignments: lawful, neutral, and chaotic. There’s also a general disclaimer that needs to be made, in that these judgments are purely based on the game rules themselves, and aren’t meant to be a critique of what sort of games can be played with them. It’s entirely possible to have a freewheeling, off-the-cuff game using a “lawful” set of rules; that’s just not (how we think) the rules are presented.

So without further ado, let’s look at the alignments of D&D over the game’s lifespan!

Chaotic: OD&D and BD&D

Original D&D was the first incarnation of the game, published in 1974. It received almost a half-dozen support products before the Basic D&D game came along and replaced it. Basic was initially published in 1977, and was meant to be an introduction to OD&D, but very quickly established its own identity.

Both games can justifiably be called Chaotic in alignment. The rules in OD&D, and the early incarnations of BD&D, are notable for their abstruse nature. A large number of game-play elements are left untouched by the rules altogether, ostensibly due to their implicit assumptions that the GM will simply be able to wing it. You won’t find multiclassing or monsters-as-characters rules here, for example, and things such as underwater adventuring or domain-level play are given only superficial treatment, if they’re covered at all.

To be fair, Basic did try somewhat to round out the areas it covered as it continued to expand and evolve throughout the Basic, Expert, Companion, Master, and Immortals boxed sets (known collectively as BECMI), but the comparatively simplistic nature of the rules remained the same. The mechanics didn’t try to cover everything, and were comfortable letting the Dungeon Master and the players work out any undefined areas on their own. As Jeff Goldblum would say, “that’s chaos theory.”

Neutral: AD&D First and Second Edition

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons debuted in 1979 (the Monster Manual came out in 1977, and the Player’s Handbook in 1978; it was only with the publication of the Dungeon Master’s Guide in 1979 that the game was complete as we think of it today), and was updated to a Second Edition in 1989. These were the Neutral years of the game, as it contained both Lawful and Chaotic elements.

The nature of this mixture of law and chaos is that AD&D, in both of its incarnations, clearly expanded its area of coverage, trying to extend its rules to not only much wider areas of game-play, from detailed planar effects to running entire campaigns as rulers of kingdoms to pages and pages of random encounter tables. While trying to bring everything under its umbrella of standardization can honestly be called lawful, the overall results were themselves somewhat chaotic.

Simply put, everything was a mishmash of sub-systems, resulting in odd corner-cases and little-known rules that were all but bewildering if you attempted to bring them all into play. Polymorphing required a system shock check. You could be a bard if you started out as a fighter, dual-classed as a thief, and then received druidic training. Roll randomly to see if you had psionic wild talents, and on and on. The game wasn’t afraid to try and do everything, and each different area was its own thing, without regard for standardization.

What makes a man turn neutral? Playing AD&D.

Lawful: D&D Third and Fourth Edition

Dungeons & Dragons dropped the “Advanced” with the debut of Third Edition in 2000. After a small (but not insubstantial) revision to “3.5” in 2003, the game moved into its Fourth Edition in 2008. These were the editions that for the most part kept the scope of their predecessors, but placed a renewed emphasis on standardization.

It’s that focus on unifying the mechanisms for their various disparate elements that make these the Lawful editions. No more having some rolls that prioritized high results while others wanted low. No more odd restrictions based on class, race, or ability scores. No more using different methods of task resolution: the d20 was king now. “Balance” was the new watchword, and a premium was placed on explaining how this was to be created and maintained, even for custom material.

The use of keywords was another focus for the game’s new Lawful stance. Whereas before there was a high degree of ambiguity over how spells, special abilities, and other powers worked, now things were given descriptors (e.g. spells that were “mind-affecting” or “illusion (phantasm)”) with those definitions thoroughly detailed regarding what they did and did not do. Uncertainty, whether on its own or as a result of various parts of the game being used in conjunction, was an enemy to be defeated.

These were the editions that would glare at you and bellow “I am the law!”

D&D Next

With the release of D&D Next just over the horizon, the question of what alignment it will have remains an open one. Will it keep the Lawful focus of its immediate predecessors? Or will its much-touted modularity allow for it to have a more Neutral stance? Or will it surprise us and reach much further back, taking a Chaotic hands-off approach? An most importantly, which one would you prefer?