The one major issue with Law vs Chaos is that most of the time it really does just end up as a variant of good vs evil (that's specifically not in the capitalized form, just as the narrative trope). Like, even with the given examples of campaigns where proteans or aeons are the antagonists, the conflict is still a good vs evil (once more, in the non-capitalized form): The PCs ant to stop the cultists trying to open a portal to the Maelstrom and unleash chaos because that stated goal is "evil". Sure, the motive might not be malicious, but the outcome certainly still a bad one. Likewise, most plots involving aeons as the antagonists have them as antagonists because whatever plot they're doing will be bad for everyone involved.
There's definitely room for Law vs Chaos stories, it's just that it's also really hard (not impossible, just a lot more difficult) to make ones which don't also end up being good vs evil ones as well.
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See, to me Law vs Chaos campaign isn't "players are lawful and fight chaotic enemies" or such, its "Players are between aeons and proteans fighting each other and either need to stop them both or take a side"
Thing about good vs evil is that you don't really have ever reason to side against good to help evil :p
(like Hellknight campaign wouldn't truly be Law vs Chaos campaign, it'd be hellknight campaign)
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I think the law and chaos monitors are really cool, but one problem I often have with the formerly-called Neutral Outsiders comes down to the struggle to define what lies about halfway between good and evil. For example, there is this persistent myth that Neutral is about sometimes helping innocents, sometimes hurting them, or that being evil means enjoying hurting people. I fundamentally don't grok with the idea that it's only evil if you enjoyed it.
I don't for a moment expect sanitized monitors who would never harm a ioton, but for me the bare minimum not to be evil is higher than "not caring who you hurt" - you have to at least mean no harm. At least, not to innocent bystanders. There are more than enough people to left in the world to harm even if we decide that monitors rule out innocents. Most obviously, to an aeon, any creature of chaos (azata, protean, demon) are enemies to be driven off (and likewise vice versa).
When dealing with mortals, you can probably ignore any who don't stand in their way, and those that do can be given a single warning to gtfo before they're no longer innocent bystanders but active opposition (who may be suppressed, driven off, or even killed but killing them all needn't be the first answer except being that this is a game about killing most of the people you meet, so if those people are Player Characters it's probably a fight to the death either way).
As for mortals who happen to lie in the path of a monitor scheme through no fault of their own, those can be sternly warned off. It's not hard to explain why these immortal beings might care to issue such a warning--surely a race as lawful as the aeons has a law against needless killing much as most mortal societies, and proteans are noted for their belief that all beings deserve complete freedom to determine their own lives. Those who remain and oppose once negotiations (if any) are completed and the grace period has ended are now no longer innocents, and they've made their choice.
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See, to me Law vs Chaos campaign isn't "players are lawful and fight chaotic enemies" or such, its "Players are between aeons and proteans fighting each other and either need to stop them both or take a side"
Thing about good vs evil is that you don't really have ever reason to side against good to help evil :p
I actually rather like this idea--some proteans and some aeons are fighting and the PCs are caught in the middle opposing the schemes of either group one after the other. Not that PCs have alignment anymore, but it helps that since characters might be philosophically aligned with one or the other, they don't have to feel put out because even if they have to fight against beings of law one day, at least the next day they'll be quelling an uprising of chaos. Since both parties in this situation are causing trouble, the hypothetical lawful player has no reason to arbitrarily line up along alignment lines because even if they believe in the same right to self-determination the proteans espouse, the proteans are still causing trouble for them and possibly people they care about.
(Whether the fighting has been causing grief for the nearby town, or if the town has been causing its own trouble with the other two groups--or simply both sets of monitors are rivals for the same McGuffin and it would be best if neither got it.)
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Fundamentally, this is just a personal issue for me - I get that. I made the mistake of getting too attached to my primary 1e PFS character and thus haven't taken it well that 2e seems bound and determined to chip away her core character concept one option at a time.
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> Stories taking a "good vs evil" tone is because most people do not want to play the "bad guys".
> But as stated, at least under current paizo, it would be made into "good vs evil" with the PCs playing good revolutionaries and/or "let's stop the monster rampage".
It defaults to good vs evil because, well, it’s the default. Pitching a campaign most won’t be interested in/motivated for isnt really a sound business take.
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> Stories taking a "good vs evil" tone is because most people do not want to play the "bad guys".
> But as stated, at least under current paizo, it would be made into "good vs evil" with the PCs playing good revolutionaries and/or "let's stop the monster rampage".
It defaults to good vs evil because, well, it’s the default. Pitching a campaign most won’t be interested in/motivated for isnt really a sound business take.
We also tend to default to good vs. evil since those are close to the natural language words for "desirable outcomes" and "undesirable outcomes". Like it doesn't matter if you're doing it for wholly selfless reasons, if you stop the monster trying to lay waste to your home town that gets conflated with "good" automatically.
The "evil" version of this story- let's help the monster destroy the town- just doesn't seem that much fun.
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I mean, if you saved a bunch of people from the tsunami or the wildfire, that's going to be seen as "good" even if you're actually a rat bastard doing it for selfless reasons.
Man, I'll be glad when the remaster gets here and we can stop having alignment arguments for good.
Amen
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Man, I'll be glad when the remaster gets here and we can stop having alignment arguments for good.
HahahahaHAHAAAH you WISH that were the case
The french discord was on fire for a solid 45 minutes discussing how this and that god should/shouldn't have sanctification or not because something something portfolio something something free will something paragon something subjectivityI honestly don't think "aLigNeMeNt" debates are going anywhere.
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I agree with Reza no matter how Paizo or any rpg thst has alignment mechanics in it. There will be always discussions sometimes heated about it.
That's a fair way of looking at it, yep.
Myself - I can see arguments both ways. It still seems extremely weird that monitors care about "innocents" when the very idea of "innocent people" is so bound up in morality. I'd argue that monitors are completely amoral. They aren't malevolent, they just have a job to do, and sometimes that job is "blowing up a kingdom" as the aeon writeup says. There's a real difference between the absolute malevolence of demons, daemons, and devils, and the uncaring universe embodied by aeons. In many ways, the aeons are more alien.
And we may be saying the same thing, I'm not sure. In that the aeon may see someone mass-resurrecting people as not innocent and violating the laws of the universe, while an angel would see them as an innocent person just trying to help.
A critical distinction between polar bear neutrality and monitor neutrality for me is that the polar bear does not understand morality and should probably not be considered a moral agent. Perhaps regarding the polar bear as 'unaligned' rather than 'morally neutral' would be more practical for this purpose--animals are capable of cruelty or benevolence, at least it so seems watching them, they are rather outside the purview of morality. (Fire elementals are technically sapient but often get regarded as instinctual creatures much like animals, so that's another argument).
I'll grant that the choice of 'innocent' as my descriptor is not quite as accurate as I'd have liked. I don't expect a monitor to care whether a person is innocent in a morality sense of done nothing wrong re: immoral actions, but I tried to show what I meant by innocents descriptively--more like creatures who aren't involved in the situation, who haven't done anything (yet) to earn the monitors' enmity. Furthermore monitors may not be caring beings by nature, but the protean's own description does show they're not totally apathetic to mortals--they do care about all living beings having the right to choose after all, they just might not care to help people beyond dismantling authority and defending chaos.
The view I tend to take on neutral alignments is more a matter of scope. A neutral being cares more about the own--whether that means their family, their people, members of their church, etc. If you are a stranger in need and you come from one of those groups that a neutral person cares about, you may be helped. For everyone else it's a "you don't hurt me I won't hurt you, we're just trying to get by". It's a bit difficult that these neutral monitors also have inscrutable cosmic goals that would seem beyond the scope of personal ethics (its a bit weird that cosmic entropy and disdain for authority are bundled together, for example) but I'm trying not to get lost in weeds here
As an aside, I forgot to add my speculation that with alignment removed, perhaps monitors like aeons and proteans especially might be free individually to act more good or more evil on a personal level without leaving their niche of "the chaos noodles" or "the law machines" that they might have been restricted to when they were only allowed to be one alignment by definition.
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Man, I'll be glad when the remaster gets here and we can stop having alignment arguments for good.HahahahaHAHAAAH you WISH that were the case
The french discord was on fire for a solid 45 minutes discussing how this and that god should/shouldn't have sanctification or not because something something portfolio something something free will something paragon something subjectivityI honestly don't think "aLigNeMeNt" debates are going anywhere.
Just means we'll start having them for evil. :)
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Y-
Youuuuu-
G$~ d$%mit.
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When Paizo talked about Chaotic or Lawful adventures, they mentioned Hellknights or Rebels : stories that are in everyday life rather than in the outer planes.
And, as mentioned above, this does not sound like a usual theater of operations for Monitors.
Whereas is is easy to have Fiends and Celestials involved in plots that affect everyday life.
3. Neutrality as balance. This is the Gygaxian approach, and as such is pretty much axiomatically a bad idea. This is the "I saved three kittens last week, so I need to kick a puppy tomorrow or I'll become too Good." These are the people who sign on to promote Hellish invasions in order to serve "the great balance between good and evil". This is dumb.
I would agree about neutrality on the good/evil axis -- actively balancing good and evil is really just a complicated version of evil.
But actively balancing law and chaos to some extent is absolutely necessary for the survival and sanity of sapient beings.
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3. Neutrality as balance. This is the Gygaxian approach, and as such is pretty much axiomatically a bad idea. This is the "I saved three kittens last week, so I need to kick a puppy tomorrow or I'll become too Good." These are the people who sign on to promote Hellish invasions in order to serve "the great balance between good and evil". This is dumb.I would agree about neutrality on the good/evil axis -- actively balancing good and evil is really just a complicated version of evil.
But actively balancing law and chaos to some extent is absolutely necessary for the survival and sanity of sapient beings.
I really like the interpretation that FFXIV goes for with it's central "Light vs. Dark" conflict, where Darkness is fundamentally differing expressions of chaos, activity, growth, etc. and Light is order, stasis, stagnancy, etc.
Light and Darkness are often colloquially equated with Good and Evil in universe, particularly early on since your Warrior of Light (player character) and their allies are implicitly backed by Hydaelyn, the goddess of light, while some of your biggest opposition are a cabal of dark-magic wielding sorcerers dedicated to reviving their god of darkness Zodiark, but the Shadowbringers expansion in particular makes it abundantly clear that they're really more properly equated to Order and Chaos, and that not only are both necessary for a world to thrive but either one taken to the extreme can have apocalyptic, world-ending consequences.
I prefer L.E. Modesitt's Saga of Recluse series personally.
Worth reading? Can you give me a quick rundown of the series.
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You start out with black mages trying to survive the forces of chaos, but eventually get some books with heroic chaos mages as well.
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Even from the most well-known beginnings of Law vs Chaos (Moorcock's Elric), there was a definite bias of Chaos = Evil.
It had the merit though, and DnD later, to put far more spotlight on the Law vs Chaos leanings of people in everyday life. Whereas Good vs Evil has been front and center for a long long time (and the most simple/easy conflict IMO).
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One of my homebrew experiments with alignments was more or less replacing good and evil axis with radiance/shadow which is just collectivism/individualism.
So basically, extreme planar version of "good" is hive mind and "evil"'s is extreme selfishness, same way extreme "order" is stilness and extreme "chaos" is primordial chaos soup.
It basically allowed equivalent of "LG" paladin be both the paragon of benevolence who wants good for everyone and the jackass who protects his own group while terrorizing everyone outside of it. On "evil" side of things it basically works like how some edgy people on internet claim "actually evil alignment is valid philosophy" where it can be about healthy amount of self interest and expressing yourself and protecting those you care about or the malevolent bad way.