On Alignments Continued

And now the alignment that most matches the modern understanding of doing good.  It certainly would have been popular among the hippies of the 60s and 70s.  That is, the Chaotic Good.  As I mentioned in my last Alignment post, the Neutrals are always difficult, and it's tough to see where one ends and the opposite extreme begins. 

But Chaotic Good is how many today operate by virtue of living today.  Many heroes and defenders of the good operate within this ethos.  It is, in so many ways, consequentialism lived out.  But not entirely.  By virtue of good, it would balk at doing actual evil that good may come of it.  The answer to Caiaphas's famous question would be a resounding 'No!' 

Nonetheless, on the other hand, the idea that those rascally rules and procedures of this button down, conformist society have just got to go plays large.  Rules were made to be broken.  It's not 'if it feels good, it is good.'  Nor is it 'no rules, just right.'  But it lives with an almost ingrained disdain for law and order.  Sure laws must exist.  Rules must happen.  But only up until the common good is in any way infringed upon.  At that point, the rule or law is the first thing to go.

Again, it's not for evil.  Evil will not be done.  That's not to say harsh measures may not happen, and some may argue whether such grave decisions as the one that led to the vaporization of Hiroshima falls here or elsewhere.  Certainly it may ask the question of moral relativity.  In this regard, Chaotic Good is not the easiest alignment.  At what time does one kill the prisoners and still remain good?  Even if it's for the greater good and the prisoners are evil?  In fact, in many ways, hearkening back to those peace loving hippies, many of that ilk would resist such things as the death penalty and even all war, no matter what the cost.

So it's a little tougher than at first glance.  Still, on the whole, and for game purposes, it's the alignment for the free spirit, the person who lives within a rules-set only out of necessity, but will gladly break any law, lie, steal, or do anything short of evil for the greater good, particularly the good of the individual.  And at times, the CG will see the good of the individual as supreme to, if not entirely incompatible with, the good of the common law.

Some examples:

There can be no more famous, or better, example of CG in modern fiction than Harry Potter.  Was there ever a rule that kid didn't break?  He and his compatriots lie, steal, break rules, violate standards.  We won't even get into Dumbledore's turn around from wise sage to Machiavellian plotter.  The whole series is a testament to the modern notion that authority is almost always suspect, and when it comes to being good, there just aren't many rules when you're doing it for the individual good.

Batman of course, especially in the Nolan manifestation, is almost borderline Chaotic Neutral, but that his goals are for the greater good.  He operates outside of the laws he tries to protect.  And that's important.  Robin Hood is mentioned here again because while I speculated he would loyally follow a good leader (and Scott's Robin makes that seem more likely), most portryals show him while he fights the evils of Prince John.  To that end, he rebels against the rules on a daily basis.  But they are evil laws and rules, and there's the trick.  Yes, Robin might well be CG all the way, even when the leader is good and the laws are good.  We only see him when the laws are ministered by forces of darkness. 

Unlike Batman, he seems content to operate within the structure as long as the structure is good.  The structure is good in Gotham.  Murder and stealing and breaking and entering are wrong  And there are good cops enforcing that.  Nonetheless, Batman chooses to operate outside of those laws for the greater good.  Robin?  It's hard to say, and a case could be made either way.  But in any event, none of these folks are lawful in the least, and with the possible exception of Robin, who may simply put the good above all things, they are willing to go against laws, rules and standards as a first resort.  The classic Chaotic Good.

First edition oddities

One of the interesting discoveries I've made is the rather grassroots nature of the early Dungeons and Dragons editions.  I've never had long term access to the original rules.  My experience is in the 1st edition.  And what an experience it is!  I much prefer the style, the production, the overall 'feel' of those rules to the more clean and synthetic 3rd and later editions.  Nonetheless, I admit there are some quirks, some ideas that were never developed, other ideas that come and go.  In some ways, that adds to the whole organic nature of the game.  It was not the product of paid think tanks and bean counters.  It was, in many ways, a labor of love.  And like all things associated with that emotion, it both soars and, at times, crashes.

For instance.  In the DMG, in the magic items catalogue, a Necklace of Prayer Beads makes it 25% more likely that your petition for spells will be successful.  25% more likely than what?  Would someone please tell me where else in the first edition rules that there is a chart or matrix unpacking the percentage chance of higher level Cleric spells being heard?  I'll get to what I've done with that rule somewhere down the road.  But for now, it stands next to such things as Orcus's wand and its impact on Saints, and other such anomalies.  They appear, they're mentioned, and then they fade. 

I'm not counting articles in Dragon or Dungeon by the way.  A rule shouldn't refer to the possibility of a future article in a periodical to which most players will never subscribe.  It ought to be in a rulebook somewhere.  Perhaps I've just not found the references.  But I have a feeling these, like others, were ideas that came out at the moment during which the books were being written, only to be dropped as the game and its players moved into different directions.  Such appears to be the context out of which the original rules were published.

Undead in Dungeons and Dragons

It's not easy to invoke fear among players of a pencil and paper game.  Especially for a generation raised on the time honored 'save/reload' style of video game play.  Death is cheap.  At best, an inconvenience.  How does one make death something you truly fear?  Well, you make it more than just 'roll up a new character'.  You hit them where it hurts.  And it hurts in few other ways more than having to recalculate and reduce all of your abilities, only to start from scratch a level or two lower than you were a moment earlier.

Such is the wonder of the Level Draining abilities of certain undead.  One thing I remind my boys when we play: In the end, it's a game.  In the early days, many rules were implemented for the sake of game play.  Fans and devotees would ascribe meaning and insight to various game mechanics over the decades.  I personally have my own image of what Level Draining is and why it causes one to lose abilities and learned skills.  But in the end, it was there as a game mechanic to give the lords of the netherworld a bit more umph. 

And that it does.  This is keenly felt when setting the early versions in juxtaposition to the later 3 and 3.5 editions of D&D.  Like many things, those editions seemed to strip the game from its historical and literary roots, and replace everything with a +2 bonus to this or that die roll.  Even the much feared Level Drain was given a few safety nets.  One could still experience it, but you had chances.  There were opportunities to go toe to toe with a Wight or a Wraith and still come out more or less unscathed.

But not in 1st Edition.  Back then, one hit, one measly little slap, and you just lost an entire level, perhaps weeks or months of game play.  Against the more terrifying foes like Spectres or Vampires, you lose a whopping 2 Levels!  Ouch.  But that's good.

For the undead should terrify.  With some skill, a game session can be creepy, perhaps even scary.  We ran one a few autumns ago, right around Halloween, and it couldn't have been better suited to give a few chills.  I'll unpack that particular jaunt through haunted manors and graveyard mausoleums someday.  On the whole, however, instilling fear isn't easy.  Some healthy reluctance to send a 1st level party against a colossal Red Dragon may be there, but actual fear of something worse than hit point loss, or even character death, is needed for those special cases.

And undead is a special case. Let's face it, we'd all love to see a ghost.  A real live ghost.  And yet it would terrify us just the same.  Even the thought of it terrifies.  All of materialist atheism hangs on a gossamer thread of one verifiable encounter with a supernatural element.  That is the power of meeting the afterlife, the netherworld.  And so when the PCs meet such creatures of the hereafter, the encounter should come with a greater price than 'lose 5 hit points.'  There should be something more.

Ghosts and mummies have their own special attacks, and ghouls and ghasts as good as always.  But it's those level draining undead.  Two or three game minutes with a Vampire, and your 10th level fighter may be back to square one, or at least level four.  And that hurts.  Sure there are magical ways around this.  But as anyone who follows the unpacking of my blog will realize, magic doesn't fall about in my campaign world like apples from a tree.  To obtain such a prize as 'Restoration' will require an epic quest in its own right.  And therein lies the fun of the old versions. 

3.5 almost discouraged such trauma, and made playing safe. I know why they did it.  I understand the marketing and sales aspects.  Yet it stole from the impact.  It reduced the stark terror that encountering such a creature should invoke.  So here's to the Level Draining undead of the early D&D editions.  They scared the pants off the first party I ever played in all those years ago.  They still do quite a job of instilling fear today, as it should be.