Styles

2021-06-12

About axes and triangles

How about a simple dissatisfaction with the use of the two axes-alignment system for D&D cosmology leads to an explosion of triangles, and a description of a more fundamental conflict that could remain hidden behind the Good vs. Evil conflict we know and love for our Dragonlance campaigns...

Alignment in D&D

Any D&D setting comes up with an alignment system, even if the 4th Edition's version was very broken, and the 5th Edition actually greatly reduces its importance.

(I will ignore the original AD&D1's alignment drawing inspired by the templar cross, because its artsy details are nonsensical)

You usually have two axes, the "good vs. evil" axis, and the "law vs. chaos" axis, which combine into a 2-dimensional space of alignment that usually represented as the following array of squares:

This diagram is interestingly simple, but the truth is that it does nothing to represent "distance", as in: "Let's say I'm in the middle between lawful good and neutral, does it means I'm also in the middle between lawful neutral and neutral good?".

This is why I prefer the circular diagram:


This is a more accurate description (IMHO) of a typical D&D alignment system. It also gives back "pure goodness" (or even "pure evil", "pure chaos" or "pure law") its rightful place, without diminishing combination extremes like "lawful good"): Someone who is "pure good" is not some kind of "lawful good light" philosopher.

I am not the only one who thought about that: Already, the alignment in the 1st Edition of AD&D Deities & Demigods, used a round (but still templar-crossed and non-sensical) diagram:


Nearest to the 21th Century, the video game Pathfinder: Kingmaker actually measures one's character alignment with a similar (but more finely graduated) graph...


... where the progression of your character's alignment can be tracked as a path of successive points, moving in directions depending on specific choices you made.

Alignment in Dragonlance

Dragonlance is clearly colored by a "good vs. evil" theme. And it even shows in its custom alignment system, in the AD&D1 Dragonlance Adventures rulebook:

... which was one of the many innovations the Dragonlance setting proposed on top of the D&D system (the best among them being, IMHO, clerical spheres/domains).

There are (at least) two remarkable things, here:

  • The alignment chart is graduated, as is the Pathfinder Kingmaker video game alignment did, much later.
  • There is no mention of law/chaos. I mean, not even a single suggestion of using a similar chart for lawful/neutral/chaotic alignment axis. Nothing. Nada.

My guess is that the "good vs. evil" conflict overshadowed the "order vs. chaos" conflict, and thus, that such "moral conflicts" were not deemed worthy of a dedicated chart, even if all NPCs were described with a full, two-axes, alignment rating.

Triangles Incoming!

There's one thing that's missing, there.

It's a bit of information that I've read years (decades?) ago, and that is hard to find now, but remains hinted everywhere Dragonlance.

The fact that any "conflict" in Dragonlance is not described with a axis, but a triangle.

For example, take the mythos of creation of Krynn. In the same AD&D1 Dragonlance Adventures rulebook, p8, we find the following:

Three were the pillars upon which this universe was forged: Good, Evil, and Neutrality. This was the great triangle upon which all the universe was brought to be.

Isn't that interesting?

But it continues further, later, in the same page:

The Alignments of the Gods

All of the universe stands upon the Great Triangle. This foundation has always existed and will exist down through the ages of time and until the end of the world.

At the apexes of the triangles stand the three anchors upon which the universe is built. These are known among men as Good, Evil, and Neutrality. It is into these positions that the gods align themselves in their effort to maintain progress in the universe they have brought into being.

The whole thing is how everything is described as a triangle whose points are forces, and a pendulum oscillate (more or less) freely between those extremes. The axis "good vs. evil" would become "good vs. evil vs. balance", as in the following diagram:


I use "Balance" instead of "Neutrality" for obvious reasons: The main takeway is not that "neutrality" is some kind of passive state (think "Switzerland"), but a more active force trying to balance the two others.

It is telling that the main contribution of the Gods of Balance to the mortal souls of Krynn was free will:

The Gods of Neutrality gave the spirits the gift of free will, to choose freely between Good and Evil. Thus did they preserve the Balance.

... but this is the subject of another, later discussion...

So what?

I'm writing a Dragonlance campaign, so I went deeper in the rabbit hole. In summary, the current creation of Krynn is something like:

  • At the beginning, everything was chaos
  • The High God called the gods of Good, Evil and Balance, to build his idea of Krynn.
  • Reorx, one of these gods, using is mighty hammer to stike the chaos, and thus slow it down, so Krynn could be built
  • From the sparks of Reorx' strike, stars and souls were born

... and later in the chronology, we had:

  • Chaos was not really happy about what had happened
  • Reorx was tricked to create a wondrous gem, and he used a tiny bit of chaos to empower it
  • Bad move: He actually locked up Chaos itself in that "gray gem", but no one will realize that until too late
  • The gray gem brought chaos into Krynn, causing mutations and wild magic to appear (if you wonder at how a pegasus might be born, think about the centaurs and the minotaurs!)

In the end, what we have is another conflict, beyond "good and evil".

In the next main book, Dragons of a Summer Flame, this conflict is explored, with the gods of Good, Evil and Balance coming together to fight against Chaos, who had been freed from the gray gem. The conflict was so destructive that, in the end, the gods and Chaos were banished, leaving the mortals to fend for themselves in a new age called: Age of Mortals (this is also a discussion for later...).

Do you see something wrong here?

I'm not talking about the fact Dragons of a Summer Flame is not a trilogy, but a single book (which might explain why things seemed a bit rushed), nor the fact the end of that book was essentially killing Dragonlance as a fantasy RPG setting (IMHO), as everything "magic" was now gone.

It took me a while to put words on it, so I won't blame you for not finding immediately: I'm talking about the fact that, unlike the triangles powering everything when designing Dragonlance until now, here, all we had were two sides.

The Return of the Triangle

I am writing (and DM-ing) a Dragonlance campaign right now, and in my canon, only the two trilogies are "true". Everything else is either bards' tales (e.g. the Lost Chronicles, for different reasons), or will never come to pass (e.g., Dragons of a Summer Flame and The War of Souls Trilogy).

Yet, Chaos and the High God are part of the original lore of Dragonlance, so, where do they stand?

My guess is: We need another Triangle:


These are three forces powering the physical creation of Krynn (note: "physical" in the sense of "physics", not in the sense of "you can touch it"... Yeah, I'm a physics nerd...).

These three fundamental forces are:

  • Order:
    • Order is organization. A minimum of organization is needed from something to exist. Indeed, it is needed for causality, which naturally leads to predictability, intelligence, but also the passing of time (as before is the cause of now, which is the cause of after)
    • But too much order means everything becomes more rigid, everything crystalizes into something that will smother down anything that doesn't perfectly fit. At its most powerful, time loses its meaning, as everything is fossilized, becomes cyclic, or becomes perfectly predictable with no way out.., as would be a perfect clock.
  • Chaos:
    • Chaos is energy. Experiment, tries, changes and evolution need energy to happen, as do randomness and surprises. Chaos challenges a status quo, chaos gives power out of nothing.
    • But too much energy, and no structure has a meaning anymore, nothing is stable, so creation is fleeting, at best. In the end, this is a universe where time loses its meaning, too, as there's no causality, meaning, each instant is totally independent from the previous one, as each moment can lead to any of the infinite possibilities with no logic remaining to predict anything. This is a universe where one can't remember the past, nor predict the future.
  • Entropy:
    • Entropy is decay (in the physical sense), and coldness. Entropy will make sure no structure, nor organization, will remain crystalized, unless there's an outside constant effort to repair decay damage. Entropy will also calm down the most explosive expressions of chaos. In this way, Entropy is a moderating factor of the two other creation forces.
    • And yet, unchecked, Entropy will erode structure and organization to nothingness. Entropy will smother down energy and creativity. In the end, Entropy unchecked naturally leads to a single singularity of nothing, a single state where time itself stops passing for those experiencing such an entropic universe.

As you can see, all these forces are necessary for creation, and yet, each force could, if unchecked, lead to destruction.

(If we were to make link between these RPG-based fantasy creation forces and real universe physics, you might think of chaos as the age of big bang/inflation, order as the current age of the universe, with stars, planets, and all, and entropy as the age of heat death of the universe. In this, "rpg chaos" is not the pure "physics/mathematics chaos"... Enjoy your wikipedia research...)

(Bonus: If you add a subtle notion of uncertainty you could then postulate than no force would be completely smothered, and that with enough "time" and "chance", entropy might be suddenly overwhelmed by order and chaos once more, leading to another cycle of creation. But (and this will blow out your mind) each creation is unable to communicate/affect another creation across cycles causally, as each creation would always come from, and lead to, a single state of entropy.)

Conclusion: Triangles! Triangles Everywhere!

 I like this existence of at least two fundamental triangles:



The first (Good vs. Evil vs. Balance) being about moral choice for souls, and the second (Order vs. Chaos vs. Entropy) being about fundamental forces of creation. In alignment terms, one character's alignment might be measure as a point in the first triangle plus another point in the second triangle.

But as I don't plan to use alignment much, this idea won't be tested. (if only because D&D5e doesn't really care for alignment anymore)

Dragonlance is a fantasy world about Good vs. Evil, but also gods... lots of meddling gods who rarely shy away from orbital-bombing when not happy with how their plans unravel...

So, what will be tested, instead, is the signification of the first, and of the second triangle, by mortal characters, potentially putting them at odds with their own gods.

But who said the coming of the Age of Mortals would be a cakewalk?

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