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This is a term that one of my long time TTRPG companions who has been playing since the original first edition D&D uses a lot to describe how most developers and people in general seem to treat creatures of Chaos, whether that be Slaadi or Proteans or trickster gods like Loki, like Chaos is a synonym for dangerous, destructive, or even just a different flavor of evil.
I'm kind of inclined to agree, and it's one of my pet peeves about the industry as a whole.
Proteans are described as things to be afraid of, seeking confusion and bedlam, and the end of things via entropy. If they end up being helpful, it's more because of their unpredictable whims and they could easily turn on you for no reason.
But this isn't chaos. Heck, some of that seems almost lawful. Sure, confusion can create chaos, but so can giving mortals dreams where they can reshape their world, giving them the inspiration to change long-standing laws and social norms.
And I have never understood the association with chaos and entropy. Like, the state of entropy is when the universe reaches a state of energy equilibrium, where no more reactions to create a change in the energy state of the universe can happen. That's like...the furthest thing from chaos I can imagine and beings dedicated to chaos SHOULD be fighting tooth and nail against it!?
Meanwhile, Inevitables might be unyeilding and unchangeable, and Aons care only about the universe as a whole and are dispassionate about your problems, but they can theoretically be reasoned with and as long as you aren't doing anything to break the laws of reality, they probably have no interest in harming you directly.
They're dangerous, but really only if you're stupid or your desires conflict with them directly. Proteans are dangerous no matter what.
And they're a HUGE improvement on Slaadi for the record.
And this sort of idea encourages bad stereotypes that to this day leads to bad roleplaying. The players who think "Chaotic Neutral" means doing any random thing because it's funny regardless of consequences or how much it hurts the party. When an actual Chaotic Neutral is someone who seeks to change the status quo of the world in some way, and doesn't want to hurt anyone but also isn't going to lose sleep if it happens on the way.
All to say, I am really hoping to a lot more nuanced ideas about the entities of Chaos in the future.
If the goals of the Aons is to uphold the order of the universe, the goals of the Proteans should be to bring about change in the universe and maybe even create new order before going on to something else.
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The original D&D axis was basically LG to CE as a straight line and it kind of shows, with how a lot of CN characters are CE light or how LE often feels more like NE with a different paint job.
That said I think you're overstating a few things. Proteans specifically dislike purely destructive acts of Chaos, it's why they're considered enemies of demons, qlippoths and don't get along well with hunduns.
And I have never understood the association with chaos and entropy
I mean, entropy is the break down of ordered systems into disorder. That's literally what the word means.
Ah, yes. The Saturday night alignment baiting post.
Flagged for staff attention
I'm very sorry, is this against the rules?
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No, but responses like theirs are.
And I have never understood the association with chaos and entropyI mean, entropy is the break down of ordered systems into disorder. That's literally what the word means.
Yeah, I guess. When I think of entropy, I think of the cosmic sense where at max entropy in a system, you have all energy equally dispersed and unless something else acts on it, it never changes.
I hear you on the protean thing too. But their PF2 description on AoN specifically says they seek chaos and bedlam and entropic ends, and I admit I have really only started to get into Pathfinder lore since PF2, so perhaps there is more there that I am not getting?
Alignment can be a bit of a touchy subject. So while discussing it is certainly not against the rules, it sometimes leads to problems.
I tend to think that going too far in either directon along either alignment axis can cause problems.
A Chaotic character that is doing random things and being disruptive to the party and even the players is a problem. But so is someone being too rigid and insisting on making plans for everything and bogging down the decision making in-game. So is the Evil player robbing, pillaging, and looting the towns that you go to. But so is the Good player who is always trying to do nonlethal damage and taking a -2 penalty as a result or spending actions mid-battle stabilizing enemies that their party members kill.
I can see how that would lead to some...uh...chaos in the discussion board (no pun intended), but I had hoped that a basic discussion about whether chaos is too often depicted as just another brand of evil in lore wouldn't be that disruptive.
And for the record I'm open and happy to be proven wrong. Again, my knowledge of PF lore is mostly post PF2 and I'd like to be educated on more of the fine details of these things. Conceptually I love the Proteans. They're one of my favorite things in Pathfinder.
A Chaotic character that is doing random things and being disruptive to the party and even the players is a problem. But so is someone being too rigid and insisting on making plans for everything and bogging down the decision making in-game. So is the Evil player robbing, pillaging, and looting the towns that you go to. But so is the Good player who is always trying to do nonlethal damage and taking a -2 penalty as a result or spending actions mid-battle stabilizing enemies that their party members kill.
I absolutely agree with that, but I would say that a lot more people I have encountered treat that form of chaotic as standard rather than the extreme when compared to the other alignments.
Well, and evil, but that's an entirely different conversation that everyone should have at their own party.
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4e certainly thought so, cutting the alignment grid down into just LG, G, Unaligned, E, and CE. It proved pretty divisive, and 5e returned to the full 9.
Personally? I see lots more Lawful Evil than I do any other flavor, and I'd arguably say the same for Chaotic Good on the other end of the spectrum. It's easy to tell stories about rebels and innovators - and their struggles to triumph over oppression, conformity, and unjust rule.
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Yeah, unplayably aligned characters should be talked to - no matter which direction they are taking to extremes.
Chaos is neither dangerous nor destructive. It's ergodic, incomprehensible, and LOUD but it's it's not in any way bad for you or anybody else. The beings of chaos do not mean you harm- they do not mean you anything at all.
You can look at the ability to change absolutely everything about a thing, and you can use that to create wonders and delights, or you can use that to create horrors and to tear down. But the ability to change anything and everything is neither good nor evil.
I mean we know per canon that the fate of the entire universe in Pathfinder is to be consumed by the Maelstrom and return to structureless potential, but the beings in Chaos are not in any hurry to see that happen nor do they not mind those who are trying to delay that for as much time as it is possible to do so.
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The rebellions in Vidrian and Ravounel were Chaotic acts, but nobody (other than the imperialists and colonizers) would call them Evil. The High King of Dongun Hold having open relations with the humans of Alkenstar and attempting to mend her people's bad blood with the orcs is definitely not Lawful dwarven traditionalism - and neither is distributing gunpowder weapons to places that didn't have them before, arguably. The work of the Firebrands, the Grey Corsairs, and almost any pirate under the sun is going to be Chaotic, and the Magaambya and Pathfinder Society do plenty of Chaotic things, too.
It's not hard to find positive depictions of Chaotic characters.
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Like the baseline PC alignment is "do good things, and don't worry who objects to you doing them" which is basically Chaotic Good.
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Chaos also embodies freedom and individualism so it has the spectrum available from good to evil (depending on how much one embraces/abuses those principles). Or take Lawful for example, where zealousness can also lead to great evil in the name of order (et al), or good if done with people in mind. With both Law & Chaos, I'd say it's when you begin putting the ideology ahead of people's well-being that problems arise.
"I'm going to be so chaotic (or lawful) that it hurts people." is yes, an evil statement, and one hidden in the RPing of players trying do harm w/o bearing the stigma of evil. They might not be trying to do evil or harm, but willful ignorance of the harm one causes is at the root of most evil deeds. And in most if not all instances I've seen of this, the player knows exactly the loophole they're shooting for to excuse their PC's (by which I mean their own) antisocial behavior. Many bad people see themselves as good because of how they picture right and wrong in the world around them. It's innate for us humans to frame events this way, with us as the protagonist, hence good. In a fantasy world like Golarion, bad people are simply wrong since there are objective metrics. I have to wonder what effect that would have psychologically. In most fantasy worlds it seems it's led to the outright embracing Evil rather than changing themselves. :-P
Chaos is neither dangerous nor destructive. It's ergodic, incomprehensible, and LOUD but it's it's not in any way bad for you or anybody else. The beings of chaos do not mean you harm- they do not mean you anything at all.
You can look at the ability to change absolutely everything about a thing, and you can use that to create wonders and delights, or you can use that to create horrors and to tear down. But the ability to change anything and everything is neither good nor evil.
I mean we know per canon that the fate of the entire universe in Pathfinder is to be consumed by the Maelstrom and return to structureless potential, but the beings in Chaos are not in any hurry to see that happen nor do they not mind those who are trying to delay that for as much time as it is possible to do so.
See, this is exactly how I see it and how I'd prefer it to be interpreted.
But the PF2 Bestiary description doesn't seem to bear this out. The first thing that the description says about them is that they seek to create bedlam, which the dictionary defines as confusion and mayhem, and to hasten entropic ends...
Now maybe the description isn't meant to be the be all and end all, and I hope that is the case, but it's the only PF2 era info I have access to.
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The rebellions in Vidrian and Ravounel were Chaotic acts, but nobody (other than the imperialists and colonizers) would call them Evil. The High King of Dongun Hold having open relations with the humans of Alkenstar and attempting to mend her people's bad blood with the orcs is definitely not Lawful dwarven traditionalism - and neither is distributing gunpowder weapons to places that didn't have them before, arguably. The work of the Firebrands, the Grey Corsairs, and almost any pirate under the sun is going to be Chaotic, and the Magaambya and Pathfinder Society do plenty of Chaotic things, too.
It's not hard to find positive depictions of Chaotic characters.
Yes, absolutely. But I'm not talking about people who are chaotic. Plenty of them can be good.
I'm talking about native outsiders who represent the alignment of chaos itself, and how they're represented versus the ones who represent the alignment of law.
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Too much of anything on either axis can prove equally problematic, it depends on how your characterize it. Chaos isn't inherently malevolent any more than Law is inherently benevolent. One is just as likely to be used for vile purposes as the other. I find that TV Tropes is an incredibly useful tool when it comes to things like this, giving a plethora of examples.
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Besides that, Proteans aren't the only outsiders that represent Chaos nowadays: the einherji and valkyries are considered a CN type of monitor called Aesir, and their shtick is glorious battle any time any place.
And as for the Proteans, I think the issue is perspective: you only really get to see Proteans used as antagonists in much of the printed material like APs and such, so you come away with a negative impression of them. Proteans also CREATE as much as they destroy. The whole point of the destruction is so something new may be created in its place. I think Starfinder shows some good examples of how entropy may be looked at positively too. Its Vanguard class is powered by different aspects of entropy, and in addition to concepts that may be considered negative, such as reactions like rust and rot, regression from more complex states to simpler ones and sheer apocalyptic change, there's also exergy, the work entropy can do, and the ability for energy to invert entropy or rebound from it, a creative force. Sure, the creative work of the Proteans is ultimately ephemeral, but that also prevents it from stagnating, and while the end is inevitable, it doesn't have to happen RIGHT AWAY depending on the individual Protean.
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Good point, Zousha, about how Proteans (and most non-humanoid NPCs for that matter) are used as antagonists in what's generally a heroic genre of RPing. Hence they're bad-evil even if not Evil-evil. Writers would lean toward emphasizing the non-good aspects of Law & Chaos, and it's a bit harder for chaotic types since they're less likely to have organizations or stable communities useful to PCs.
This is a term that one of my long time TTRPG companions who has been playing since the original first edition D&D uses a lot to describe how most developers and people in general seem to treat creatures of Chaos, whether that be Slaadi or Proteans or trickster gods like Loki, like Chaos is a synonym for dangerous, destructive, or even just a different flavor of evil.
I'm kind of inclined to agree, and it's one of my pet peeves about the industry as a whole.
Proteans are described as things to be afraid of, seeking confusion and bedlam, and the end of things via entropy. If they end up being helpful, it's more because of their unpredictable whims and they could easily turn on you for no reason.
But this isn't chaos. Heck, some of that seems almost lawful. Sure, confusion can create chaos, but so can giving mortals dreams where they can reshape their world, giving them the inspiration to change long-standing laws and social norms.
And I have never understood the association with chaos and entropy. Like, the state of entropy is when the universe reaches a state of energy equilibrium, where no more reactions to create a change in the energy state of the universe can happen. That's like...the furthest thing from chaos I can imagine and beings dedicated to chaos SHOULD be fighting tooth and nail against it!?
Meanwhile, Inevitables might be unyeilding and unchangeable, and Aons care only about the universe as a whole and are dispassionate about your problems, but they can theoretically be reasoned with and as long as you aren't doing anything to break the laws of reality, they probably have no interest in harming you directly.
They're dangerous, but really only if you're stupid or your desires conflict with them directly. Proteans are dangerous no matter what.
And they're a HUGE improvement on Slaadi for the record.
And this sort of idea encourages bad stereotypes that to this day leads to bad roleplaying. The players who think "Chaotic Neutral" means doing any random thing because it's funny...
I don't really think Chaos is something that's a bad or evil thing. Plenty of good or helpful things are Chaotic in nature. IMO, Chaos and Law are more about the means than they are about the overall outcome of your actions.
Chaos is all about doing things without a specific order or purpose to their actions, mostly to suit a specific goal. They don't really care if they have to follow a rule or not to reach a goal. Law is antithetical to that, using rules and ethics to reach their goal in a way that they feel would be the most effective (or even tolerable). To that end, a Chaotic character would be fine with shaking things up just to see if things stick the way they want them to, or if they are someone that does not care for rules or ethics, and only want a single goal to accomplish, whatever that may be. Conversely, a Lawful character feels that their rules are important and work in concert with reaching their goal, either by a personal code of conduct, or because they believe the goal can't be reasonably reached without those rules in place (that is, the Laws are synergetic to the goal at hand).
There are plenty of Chaotic Good characters in fiction, characters that do the right thing by any means necessary, and aren't afraid of bending the rules to reach that goal, just as there are plenty of Lawful Evil characters in fiction, characters that have a code as a means of dictating their ambitions, even if they are malicious in intent, and find Laws are the most effective way to accomplish this.
While a lot of people conflate Chaos to be Evil and Law to be Good, the alignment system in PF2, as well as a general outlook on life, will tell you that Chaos has served some great purposes, and Law has served some awful regimes. I suspect this line of reasoning is why Chaos and Law were separated from Good and Evil.
No, definitely not.
In Pathfinder, the cycle of souls involves drawing on the Maelstrom. The introduction of chaos to souls is responsible for creativity, individualism, and stuff like why history only rhymes rather than making truly predictable cycles. All innate mortal creativity is already tied back to the CN plane as it is.
Maximum entropy in our universe looks very boring- uniform energy distribution, and nothing but the gentle fizz of wiggling molecules. That's probably not true in the setting, though. Proteans are interested (on the whole) in returning reality to the Maelstrom, which is more like the ideal of chaos. High entropy values for the material plane probably result in that, rather than the ultimate lukewarm.
As for changing the world, that's certainly one kind of chaotic neutral character, but not the "actual" chaotic neutral. You can also play someone who is looking for an unconventional or changing place in the status quo, or someone who sets out largely apart from society to avoid its confines. And the desire for change to society can as easily be lawful, if the focus is on the new status quo rather than the change. Finally, sometimes, someone plays a funny CN character who manages to be funny rather than just annoying.
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Chaos is sometimes used as Evil-lite by players for their PCs. But the problem does not lie with Chaos.
And, based on their description on AoN, I find aeons far more disquieting than proteans.
Proteans act for disorder. Aeons act according to an unfathomable plan that is beyond mortal understanding and where you are just a part of the puzzle or a cog in the machine and you do not get to change this, even if you end up in a really awful fate.
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Not jumping into the conversation fully, but I wanted to say that I'm always curious to see folks discussing proteans and their particular flavor(s) or Chaotic Neutrality, especially as it contrasts with, for instance, the slaadi from D&D. I tried to go out of my way to make proteans less 'evil lite' or 'comic relief' as slaadi (as much as I love them, especially Xanxost) were often portrayed, especially so after Planescape.
Ultimately I think proteans can't be judged on a broad level for "what does CN mean to them" but rather "what does this individual protean, a member of this individual chorus have, for the moment, as a motivating philosophy and immediate course of action".
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Not jumping into the conversation fully, but I wanted to say that I'm always curious to see folks discussing proteans and their particular flavor(s) or Chaotic Neutrality, especially as it contrasts with, for instance, the slaadi from D&D. I tried to go out of my way to make proteans less 'evil lite' or 'comic relief' as slaadi (as much as I love them, especially Xanxost) were often portrayed, especially so after Planescape.
Ultimately I think proteans can't be judged on a broad level for "what does CN mean to them" but rather "what does this individual protean, a member of this individual chorus have, for the moment, as a motivating philosophy and immediate course of action".
And I am incredibly grateful for that. It's exactly what I would want out of the supreme beings of cosmic Chaos in it's purest form.
It really sounds like it's just the Bestiary description that is, maybe not wrong, but perhaps slightly misleading and oversimplified and I was acting on incomplete information.
Regardless, the Proteans are my absolutely favorite things in Pathfinder and the thing which is the biggest improvement over their D&D counterparts.
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Rolling off that, a Bestiary is by no means a definitive source. The context of a Bestiary is "monsters to be fought", so expect a combat focus rather than a cultural one.
Consider how hobgoblins were portrayed differently in the 2E Bestiary, Character Guide, and Ancestry Guide. Same thing.
For a more nuanced view of proteans, try 1E's planar adventures or Concordance of Rivals rather than a Bestiary.
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As a mathematician I am more accustomed to Shannon entropy in information theory than thermodynamic entropy in physics. The YouTube channel Blue1Brown has a nice illustration of entropy in information theory in Solving Wordle using information theory. And a followup Oh, wait, actually the best Wordle opener is not “crane”…, because we mathematicians like to exhaust all the tiny details. But both are about randomness and unpredictablity.
The heat death of the universe, when it reaches a state of energy equilibrium, does not mean a perfectly even distribution of energy. That would be orderly. It means a random distribution of energy. We living things tap sources of high energy, such as sunlight or food, that are predictable. The sun is in the sky every day on a predictable path and if we plant seeds in a field during the spring we predict they will grow into crops by the fall. In a random distribution of energy the energy sources would be unpredictable and would take more energy to find than the sources provide. Thus, the universe won't be able to sustain life.
Dungeons & Dragons' Law-versus-Chaos axis was borrowed from the Elric of Melniboné series by Michael Moorcock. Melniboné is a cruel and decadant empire, but it stands with the side of Order against the forces of Chaos. Early D&D was a combat game that needed excuses for the PCs to battle a strangers. If the setting lacked Good versus Evil as the PC's motivation, it could use Law versus Chaos instead. And the D&D alignment system on those two axes gave quick descriptions of personalities and cultures.
For example, consider the Golarion nations of Molthune and Nirmathas. Originally, they were one province in the Chelish empire, but they broke away in 4632 AR. Molthune developed a militaristic government, fearful of re-conquest by Cheliax. But northern Molthune disliked the heavy taxes and mandatory military service, so they broke away from Molthune 23 years later in 4655 AR and became Nirmathas. They squabbled for 62 years, Molthune as Law and Nirmathas as Chaos, until the Ironfang Legion tried to conquer a piece of both nation in the Ironfang Invasion adventure path in 4717 AR. Neither Nirmathas nor Molthune was the bad guys; instead, one preferred order at a price and the other preferred freedom despite conflict.
The PCs in my Ironfang Invasion campaign are chaotic freedom lovers. They were originally protecting some refugees from the invasion by the Ironfang Legion with the help of a retired Chernasardo Ranger Aubrin the Green. They obtained recognition as Chenasardo Rangers, legendary protectors of Nirmathas, from Aubrin and other rangers that they rescued, because the Chernasardo Rangers are very informal in their recruitment. My wife's scoundrel rogue character Sam still is unsure whether he is a Chernasardo Ranger or merely pretending to be one.
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Melniboné does not side with Law at all. They are unrepentant Chaos-worshippers.
Elric ends up fighting against Chaos, so somewhat aligned with Law, but he is actually an agent of balance, as the Eternal Champion. And all this is only after he abandons Melniboné.
Now, in Elric's stories, Chaos is Evil. I think Moorcock was a bit biased towards Law. I think the Granbretons from Hawkmoon were his attempt at LE, but while undoubtedly Evil, they do not feel that Lawful to me.
Mind you, that is in a multiverse where the Eternal Champion, greatest servant of balance, slaughtered billions of humans, including babies, as Erekose, to extinguish the human race for the threat it was to other sapient beings.
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Now, in Elric's stories, Chaos is Evil. I think Moorcock was a bit biased towards Law. I think the Granbretons from Hawkmoon were his attempt at LE, but while undoubtedly Evil, they do not feel that Lawful to me.
Interestingly enough, in his more recent stories (notably his Second Ether works), he seems to have adopted an opposite view, with the Law-aligned factions having a decidedly more evil (certainly at least authoritarian) ideology, and the Chaos-factions being more ideologically disposed towards free will, self-determination, and taking on the role of the "good guys."
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As Necrog1ant stated, the Bestiary is focused toward utilizing creatures for, mostly, antagonistic and combat oriented purposes. There is a line with some creatures, especially Good ones, where they are more presented as tools for GM use in either non-combative scenarios or as allies. They can equally be used as adversaries all the same, depending on the context of the plot and/or composition of the PCs group.
I myself have had a plot hook I'm hoping to plant somewhere one day, involving heroic PCs coming to blows with something like a Planetar, who is serving as a guardian to an imprisoned great evil. The PCs have been tasked with destroying it, but the Planetar believes that any scenario in which this being is released, even if complete annihilation of it be a prospect, to be absolute folly and would sooner be destroyed itself than allow the beings chains to be broken. Thus, potentially resulting in a fight with the Planetar unless some other conclusion can be met; unlikely given Planetars realative lack of diplomacy.
Looking through some other sources to get a better idea of how Proteans operate outside of the Bestiary would be a great start. Their role depends more on what you need them for. You want to run a campaign about rebels attempting to take down a corrupt regime? A story that puts the PCs in a situation were they become enslaved thanks to the actions of a Theletos, which sees your deal with some great evil to be law-abiding? Proteans make good allies here. Incidently, this is also part of why I find the LN shift in Aeon philosophy to be a bit silly in places. A Pleroma, imo, is just as likely to work with a Izfiitar as they are to fight one. Personally, my head canon believes Aeons simply shift to whatever philosophy is important to their overall plan for the multiverse. So come third edition Pathfinder, they'll be Chaotic. I digress. These are my own musings.
Slight tangent here, but since we are discussing alignment...
One thing that I have difficulty with is the name 'Lawful' for the alignment. I really don't think that it involves following the laws of society.
Doing legal things is a reflection of your alignment on the Good/Evil axis. An Evil character won't feel any obligation to follow the laws other than in a practical or pragmatic sense - getting arrested would be inconvenient. A Good character will generally follow the laws of Good societies, but will rebel against the Evil laws of Neutral or Evil societies.
A Lawful alignment is the opposite of Chaotic alignment. I think a better description would be 'Deliberate', 'Organized', or 'Planned'.
And 'Deliberately Good' doesn't sound nearly as boring as 'Lawful Good', does it?
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But that's simply not the case. As someone who works in law enforcement, laws aren't developed in a black and white vacuum. A law made for the betterment of most is not always for the betterment of all. Take those laws specifically created to restrict or even enslave certain people. To suggest that those would somehow fall into being "good" is highly unlikely. Neverless, the law allowed for it at the time. Yes, generally speaking, laws are put in place with larelgy good intentions behind them. But this is certainly not always the case. The law is manipluatable and can be used for both benign and vile purposes.
But, if you take issue with the word here, perhaps I can suggest "Order" instead. Synonymous to the term "Organized" and a direct antonym to the term "Chaos".
EDIT: That said, I am choosing to leave this particular topic with that. I know how much of a spiral this could devolve into. So I think it best to leave the semantics of real-world law out of this thread.
I really don't think that it involves following the laws of society.
It doesn't really, but I don't agree with the rest of your assessment per se either. An evil character can of course feel an obligation to follow laws, depending on their own perspectives and while a good character might not like evil laws, how they feel about it and what they do about it can vary wildly.
I think the problem is less with the names and more how much sometimes the L-C axis gets used more as window dressing.
Like I remember reading in one book a description of "Lawful" as an ethos as valuing order, tradition, loyalty, honesty, and reliability... and in another a description of Hell's hierarchy being defined by deception and betrayal with those at the bottom looking to upend the status quo so they could get put on top.
In other words, the bastion and primary symbol of LE in the setting is a bunch of Neutral Evil characters who use the trappings of Law to insulate themselves like an executive out of an 80s business movie.
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I'll try to keep this in simple terms as I can but on Proteans.
The don't 'choose' to exist.
Existence is an inherently "Lawful" thing, to 'exist' is to be "defined" to be under "limitations" and "boundaries" and "expectations"
...and so on!
I think you get what I'm saying here so far, right?
Well for them them to influence "Existence" they too much "exist" which goes against their "nature" (another Lawful concept).They are creatures of Paradox, manifestations of "Chaos's Will" to return all things to "Non-Existence" ('Pure' Chaos).
But they aren't 'defined" by just what they 'are' they are MORE "defined" by what they 'are not'. They're not foolish optimists with pie-in-the-sky ideals, nor are they selfish nilhists wnating to destroy everything out of spite (remember the qlippoth don't want the universe to end, they want the universe to be empty). The "niche" to carve out for themselves are none of those things, or anything else for that matter.
What the Proteans want is not a return to Zero, but a return to less than Zero, less than Numbers or Definitions or Structure. Less than Existence.
The want "everything" to become "nothing" again.
They aren't doing it for malice.
They aren't doing it for virtue.
They aren't doing it for ethics.
They just are.
I've just never found the law vs chaos divide particular meaningful if you think too hard about it. Certainly not compared to good vs evil. Valuing freedom and individualism is still a code, after all.
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Alignment as a whole is a sacred cow that couldn't be sacrificed for this product for whatever reason despite how ambiguous, unuseful, confusing, contradictory, and generally problematic it is when applied with more than a glancing thought to what the judgments actually mean in the culture of the current era.
IMO it drags the system, lore, flavor, and ability to actually immerse yourself in the world, setting, and characters. Over the last few months while I've been fiddling around with planning for a game that I hope to run someday soon I came to the decision that the ONLY vestiges of Alignment that I have any intent on using, running, or interacting with are going to be in the cases where Positive and Negative energy is functionally important, limited applications for Champions and Clerics, and extraplanar beings. It isn't worth the headache at all, especially given how little has actually been set in stone in terms of how it DOES or is SUPPOSED to work within the setting from a rigorously defined objective standpoint.
To me, I see it as just a vestige of the history of the hobby much like rolling 3d6 straight down to generate Ability Scores and feel that it has very few benefits compared to the drawbacks and at times circular logic paradoxes it tends to cause when you try to apply alignment as though it were some universal concept and defining aspect of the setting reality.
Nothing against those more patient and flexible than I but it's just really not something that actually seems to ever actually contribute value to the game from my perspective, instead it's just a drain and headache most of the time.
I think one of the biggest reasons it's so hard to imagine Lawful vs Chaotic alignment is because we as people are raised to follow the rules. As players we are taught and guided to follow the game rules. In both cases not following the rules results in punishment. Even when someone does do something "random" it is usually based around doing the opposite of what people normally. So what am I trying to say?
Well simple, we don't see "chaos" as bad because it is inherently bad. We see it as bad because outside of gaming and specific context it is seen as something "undesirable". So much of our lives are devoted to reducing randomness that it doesn't surprise me we can't easily relate to being of pure chaos. Despite the fact that we ourselves exist because of chaos (hooray quantum mechanics).
Decades ago, I took a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator exam. The director of the newly hired mathematicians wanted to show us that we were many different types of people despite all working in mathematics. I scored IN??, where the last two scales Thinking (T) versus Feeling (F) and Judging (J) versus Perceiving (P) were in conflict. Judging is people who prefer structure and firm decisions; in other words, they want order. Perceiving is people who stay open, flexible, and adaptable; in other words, they embrace disorder. I was both Judging and Percieving at once, because I would prepare my orderly mathematical tools and then dive headlong into the unknown of research.
Quick reminder that chaos does not mean random. By it's very definition chaos is order that is so unpredictable it appears random. A character that acts randomly for the sake of being random is not chaotic. A character that acts unpredictably while still having a set of rules is chaotic.
When I was a cryptanalyst, I dealt with randomness that was really an unknown deterministic order. One method of breaking a cipher is to try all possible settings for part of the key and assume that the result from the rest of the key was random. Trying all possible setting of the entire key would take centuries. Likewise, when I performed mathematical research, the algorithm I would discover was a piece of orderly mathematics, but since it was unknown, the research was chaotic.
On the other hand, we also have real randomness, such as thermal noise and the roll of a d6.
Alignment as a whole is a sacred cow that couldn't be sacrificed for this product for whatever reason despite how ambiguous, unuseful, confusing, contradictory, and generally problematic it is when applied with more than a glancing thought to what the judgments actually mean in the culture of the current era.
I am currently building an NPC for a social encounter with my party, who are off the rails in Ironfang Invasion. The orc leader Krov Thirdmother is described in "The Nesmian Plains" article in the back of Trail of the Hunted.
The most recent master [of the Everrest estate] is Krov Thirdmother (CE female orc warpriest of Lamashtu 5), who commands a force of three dozen exiles—all fanatical Lamashtu-worshipers— from the Thornscar orc tribe of the northern Fangwood Forest. She plans to form a new tribe using the fecundity gifted to the sect by their goddess, but currently divides her attentions between raiding nearby ranches and warring with the harpy flock she and her followers bested in battle for control of the ruin.
I am altering the timeline to make her older and to give her tribe long residence at Everrest. She is in an awkward situation. The Ironfang Legion, which consists mostly of Lawful Evil hobgoblin worshipers of the barghest hero-god Hadregash, has asked Krov's tribe to join them in their conquest. But Krov left the orcs of Lastwall because she wanted to focus on the tenets of Lamashtu rather than on war and conquest. Joining the Ironfang Legion would return her tribe to war. Refusing the Ironfang Legion would do the same, because the legion is going to conquer her area regardless of whether she cooperates. She wants to stick to Lamashtu's edicts about embracing the monstrous and seeking corruption.
I want to see whether my clever players and their Chaotic Good and Chaotic Neutral characters can invent a solution for Krov. Meanwhile, I am also inventing how her tribe has embraced the monstrous. They had to give up raiding nearby ranches and now raise monstrous Rosethorn mountain goats and basilisks and snapping turtles. Krov plans to become strong enough to defy the human Chernasardo Rangers who forced her tribe to give up raiding, so her dealing with a party of weird non-human Chernasardo Rangers will be interesting.
Really, this is a religious conflict: the orcs follow Lamashtu, the Ironfang Legion hobgoblins follow Hadregash, and the party members follow Cayden Cailean, the Green Faith, Grandmother Spider, and Chaldira. But the alignment system sums it up with more contrast: can the Chaotic Good party aid the Chaotic Evil tribe against the Lawful Evil army?
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The original D&D axis was basically LG to CE as a straight line and it kind of shows, with how a lot of CN characters are CE light or how LE often feels more like NE with a different paint job.
That said I think you're overstating a few things. Proteans specifically dislike purely destructive acts of Chaos, it's why they're considered enemies of demons, qlippoths and don't get along well with hunduns.
And I have never understood the association with chaos and entropyI mean, entropy is the break down of ordered systems into disorder. That's literally what the word means.
Technically true, although what people might think of as ordered and disordered might not match up so it can lead to incorrect conclusions at time.
For example, one day our universe will reach a state of thermodynamic equilibrium which will also be a state of maximum entropy in which the heat energy of the universe will be evenly distributed through everywhere.
Personally, I find the concept of the equilibrium state to be very orderly, so the words to describe it breakdown for me on a personal level.
Anyways, you have an accurate description.
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I'm not going to quote since these arguments come up often enough that we don't need to get bogged down in wording.
1. A two letter abbreviation is no substitute for a full personality. But it's a very useful shorthand unless you have time/energy to fully describe every single NPC.
2. A lot of players play characters whose actions don't match their paper alignment. That should neither cast doubt on the alignment descriptions, nor should characters be charictures of their paper alignment.
3. Descriptions of the LG-CE and CG-LE axes are predictable if the describer's privilege is known. High privilege individuals tend to trust the system, and consider the system to be good. Low privilege individuals see overthrowing or going against the system as good.
4. The best way to think about alignments is to imagine how the alignments would criticize each other (especially the ones adjacent or that share an axis).
Examples:
LG on CG: "You'd get more done if you were more disciplined."
LG on LE: "You're twisting the rules."
CG on LG: "You're clinging to a system that doesn't work."
LE on LG: "You're as self-serving as I am, I'm just more honest about it."
LE on CE: "If worked together, we would both benefit."
When my kids were younger they both used to steal candy. The older one was more LE, he stole a few pieces and tried to lie about how much there used to be. The younger was more CE, just took literally every piece until it was crunching in his pocket as he walked around. Listening to them argue about how best to steal candy was hilarious (and mildly infuriating).
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It helps define how any NPC is likely to act with only 2 letters. That is almost optimal IMO.
Especially when 95% of them last for one encounter only.
For sure you could do more, and for some styles of game you pretty much have to. I could see you creating tags for things like: Initial Attitude, Goals, Willingness to Negotiate, Temperament, Knowledge - and listing some options. But that gets complex pretty fast. Mostly to help GMs along.
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3. Descriptions of the LG-CE and CG-LE axes are predictable if the describer's privilege is known. High privilege individuals tend to trust the system, and consider the system to be good. Low privilege individuals see overthrowing or going against the system as good.
I honestly believe 3 to be false. Many of the most vocal opponents of a system are of high privilege (high education) while there are instances of low privilege people being highly supportive of the system (the Chouan peasants fighting for the nobles against the revolutionaries in France).
3. Descriptions of the LG-CE and CG-LE axes are predictable if the describer's privilege is known. High privilege individuals tend to trust the system, and consider the system to be good. Low privilege individuals see overthrowing or going against the system as good.I honestly believe 3 to be false. Many of the most vocal opponents of a system are of high privilege (high education) while there are instances of low privilege people being highly supportive of the system (the Chouan peasants fighting for the nobles against the revolutionaries in France).
Yep privilege is often a minor factor. Just because someone knows how to work the system, doesn't mean they support the system, or don't see the flaws in the system. Further decentralised systems are a system too.
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Oh dear. Well, this was an interesting thread while it lasted. I haven't come up with anything useful to add in the spare time I've had this month. I might add that I've never been fond of ascribing habits/preferences to law or chaos ie when lawful characters are described as being more consistent and organised and chaotic character more creative. That seems to me to miss that bards can be lawful. But if course we're supposed to be on the cosmic end of the scale in this particular topic, which, the line between cosmic and personal alignment already is hazy as heck