Topic: Lawful vs Chaotic

In your opinions what are the real driving differences between these two alignments? What truly makes them unique from one another? Also what would you say are their similarities?

Re: Lawful vs Chaotic

To me, for LotFP, there is James' comment which indicates that alignment essentially reflects a characters ties to supernatural forces of one kind or another, "In the real world, every human being that has ever existed has been Neutral."

My "one-line" versions:
Lawful means you get your power from a sense of structure, manifested by mortal minds as gods granting powers.
Chaotic means you are connected to the maelstrom that is the entropic universe and pull energy from the fabric of the universe.

Now it gets a little odd to have anybody NOT a cleric, elf or MU as anything but Neutral, but maybe it just means that they are "touched" by one of those forces and thus have a connection (manifested by the effects of certain spells) but no real capability to access those forces.

Re: Lawful vs Chaotic

What alignment means for the players at our table is pretty simple:

Lawful types are chosen by the gods, who act as mankind's shepherds on behalf of the Great Will, to usher in a predetermined future of blissful harmony. In effect this means that players who play lawful characters can expect to run into oddly specific omens, symbols and foreboding occurences where the other types of characters might not. On occasion such characters may even find themselves being stalked, aided or hindered by invisible or seemingly mundane entities who are there just to push them towards their fates, good or ill.

Chaotic characters are touched by the raging tempest that is bleeding into mankind's world through cracks in the Great Will's plan. Wrong attracts wrong and these characters find themselves face to face with surreal sensations and dangerous, mad or even supernatural occurences even in places that other characters consider safe and civilized.

Fancy wording aside: Lawful characters get vague or painfully specific omens and/or NPCs that may or may not be supernatural but who are definitely there just to treat the character in question like a toy. Chaotic characters, on the other hand, get to experience the weirder side of everything with additional, properly random encounters and weird descriptions of seemingly mundane situations wherever they go.
Clerics and magicians get hit extra hard with the effects while neutral characters, as long as they are smart enough to move on their own, remain in a world where gods are just powerful words and weird things only hide in your grandma's cupboard on rare occasions.

I'm still not quite happy enough with how this has gone down in practice, but I think I'm getting there. The law/chaos section in the Grindhouse rulebook was for some reason one the most enjoyable for me to read and ended up deciding the focus of the entire campaign. I really liked the idea of alignment actually affecting how the character experiences the world so that's what I've been trying to do so far.

Last edited by Sword Lake (2014-01-16 20:25:34)

Re: Lawful vs Chaotic

On another site I've dissected and remixed alignments.

One point I'd like to offer, though, is that there's an asymmetry between Law and Chaos in LotFP.  Law is a purpose, a divine plan, or a pattern determined by some entity or another.  Chaos, on the other hand, is virtually everything else outside the scope of what humans call conventional reality.  Perhaps Law is holding back Chaos somehow to create this safe haven for humankind, but Law struck me as a finite, petty thing while Chaos is infinite and purposeless, a thing with a billion discordant minds or no mind at all, ceaselessly beating at the door until the door breaks.  You see this in Raggi's modules, where occasionally artifacts can DESTROY THE UNIVERSE or alter reality beyond comprehension.  Are these the workings of Law, the same law that empowers certain men to heal diseases and banish undead, or are they aspects of infinite Chaos, the eventual victor?

Toning down the pomposity a bit, the Chaotic character knows infinite Chaos is lurking just outside the little garden we live in, ready to rush in if someone opens the doors between worlds just a little too wide.  The Lawful character, on the other hand, sees portents and omens, feels a great destiny unrolling before him ... but how much is a metaphysical presence and how much just perception?  And, assuming a metaphysical entity, how powerful is it really?

Still, as GM I'd offer Lawful characters little omens and coincidences, not enough to prove a higher purpose but enough to suggest one.  And I like the idea of Chaotic characters as weirdness magnets, perhaps not because Chaos is drawn to the character but because he sees it everywhere.  Neutral characters are probably more grounded and less superstitious, but they're prone to come along for the ride with either alignment.

Frank Mitchell
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." -- Anatole France