He's Good-Bad But He's Not Evil

A few days ago, Atherne was the latest to bring up the ever-popular topic of D&D alignments, linking a couple of tests, one from the rights-holders themselves and one from Buzzfeed.

It's always fun doing those. I tend to come out fairly consistently as either Neutral, Chaotic Neutral or Chaotic Good. It depends a lot on how game-oriented the tests are. The further away from the ruleset the questions travel, the more good or chaotic I tend to become.

Questions that stick very tightly to the concept of role-playing games, as the Wizards of the Coast ones do, tend to be flat, emotionless and arid so it's hardly surprising they draw a more neutral, less involved response. I much preferred the Buzzfeed test, whose questions felt much more human and immediate.

The results varied quite significantly. WOTC judged me to be True Neutral, which I feel reflects my lack of emotional involvement with their static, abstract scenarios rather than telling you much about me. Buzzfeed rated me Chaotic Good, exactly where I'd like to see myself, so naturally I favor their methodology.

This kind of labelling underpins most MMORPGs. I've been choosing between "good" and "evil" ever since I made my first character in EverQuest, a wood-elf ranger who died, minutes later, falling, from the treetop walkways of Kelethin, city of a thousand elf and safety puns.

Very few MMOs go much further than that simple binary and even then it rarely means what it says. For most, "evil" means something like "moody emo goth" while "good" means "football captain and homecoming queen" (probably not the same person, although it is 2018...).

The ongoing moral panic over the pre-Battle for Azeroth trailers and cinematics over at World of Warcraft has also turned something of a spotlight on alignment, with many Horde players waking up to the fact that they've been Evil all these years and never knew it. Reactions have been...variable.

It occured to me, reading the comment thread at Massively:OP (rarely a good idea) that maybe what we need are some new alignments. Or, I should say, some new names for the old ones. Human nature doesn't change but language and culture does.

I tried to think of things players born long (long) after Gary Gygax might recognize and free-associate with and I took five minutes to come up with the list below. It's a weighty topic. It deserved that degree of in-depth analysis. This is what I've got:

Lawful Good = Control Freak

Neutral Good = Neurotypical

Chaotic Good = SJW

Lawful Neutral = Normie

(True) Neutral = Chilled

Chaotic Neutral = Edgy

Lawful Evil = Asshat

Neutral Evil = Cold

Chaotic Evil = Psycho

If you think you can do better, the comments are down there. Or maybe  you'd like to use this as a springboard for a Blaugust topic. Don't thank me, thank Atherne. She started it!

*Author's note. Yes, I have used that title before but it was in 2011 and no-one remembers, ok?