What OD&D Got Right About Alignment

Alignment is an iconic feature of D&D. It's also the feature that has probably sparked the most arguments, which really shouldn't be any surprise. The most popular alignment system involves classifying all characters as "lawful," "neutral," or "chaotic," (whatever those mean) as well as "good," "neutral" (in another sense), and "evil" (whatever those mean). Players are expected role play their characters and make decisions in ways that reflect their chosen alignments. Up through the third edition, some classes had alignment requirements, and they could be penalized (sometimes very severely) for doing things that didn't match their required alignments.

And so, with so much at stake and such unclarity in the relevant concepts, arguments and debates were inevitable. The history of alignment in D&D is largely a history of attempts to make the concepts clear enough for players and DMs to understand exactly how to fulfill the requirements of classes that had the requirements, along with adjustments to the alignment requirements. Ultimately, in 5e, alignment is almost meaningless, as it has next to no mechanical consequences whatsoever.

I think almost every change to the alignment system over the years has been for the worse, starting with the Greyhawk supplement that come out a year after the original D&D rules. That supplement introduced the idea of alignment behavior. It forbade paladins from "chaotic acts," and it explained the chaotic monsters ought to behave erratically, unpredictably, and more randomly than others.

But in the original three little brown books, the "LBBs," there is no such thing as alignment behavior. Instead, a character's "alignment" is identified with the "stance" they take with respect to Law, Neutrality, and Chaos.

Law, Neutrality, and Chaos themselves are basically undefined. Instead, there are lists indicating which sorts of creatures can take which of those stances. Traditional villains and bad guys are on the Chaotic list, including vampires, orcs, and evil high priests. Some monsters on that list, including orcs, also appear on the Neutrality list. Humans can side with Law, Neutrality, or Chaos. Dwarves and gnomes go with Law or Neutrality. Elves are Neutral.

Consequently, the "alignments" in the original D&D rules look like "alignments" in international relations: loose alliances or groupings of factions with similar interests and goals. Law, Neutrality, and Chaos are the D&D equivalents of the West, the Communist Bloc, and the unaligned nations familiar to anyone living through the Cold War.

So, the first thing LBB alignment tells you about a character or monster is just who their friends and enemies are. Of course, only a certain kind of person would consider evil high priests their friends and unicorns their enemies. So, a character's alignment does tell you something about their values and personality, but it is far from the gamified moral and personality psychology that developed over the coming years.

Even without paladins and druids in the game (yet), LBB alignment choice has mechanical consequences. Here's the most comprehensive list I've been able to compile:

• Each alignment has its own language. Creatures of the same alignment can use it to communicate with each other. Creatures of opposing alignment who hear it won't understand, but they will attack.
• High-level clerics have to take a stance for Law or Chaos, never Neutrality, and they are penalized if they switch.
• Clerics who side with Chaos have "evil" in their level titles, up to "evil high priest," and they cast reversed versions of the clerical spells. (It's not clear if they can turn the undead.)
• Lawful high priests who cast the finger of death except in an emergency become evil high priests.
• Non-human character types are limited to certain alignments. Halflings must align with Law; dwarves and elves must not align with Chaos. (It's not clear if that applies to PCs or only NPCs.)
• Characters can persuade monsters of similar alignment into their service.
• Your alignment influences what happens if you are reincarnated with the reincarnation spell.
• Your alignment and actions together determine what sort of curse you suffer for ignoring a quest.
• Magic swords have alignments, (most often Lawful), and you take damage if you pick up a sword whose alignment differs from yours. A sufficiently powerful sword can change your alignment to match its own.
• There are helmets that can change your alignment to Law or Chaos.

(If I've missed some, let me know!)

Although there are spells like "detect evil" and "protection from evil," there is no direct connection between alignment and morality or behavior in the LBBs. Chaos and evil are strongly correlated, but they don't appear to the be the same thing.

Here's what I like about this system:

• LBB alignment is focused, simple, and complete. The whole system boils down to a matter of where a character stands in the Big Conflict of a campaign, and it includes all three logical possibilities.
• The system easily accommodates all character types. Take a character like Sage, from The Boys, who can be hard to categorize in modern systems because she is very disciplined and orderly even as she deliberately and systematically, sows chaos. No problem for LBB alignment. No matter how disciplined and orderly her behavior might be, she's on Team Chaos. Or consider a weak-willed character who is loyal to Law, but personally fails to live up to its demanding ideology. Again, no problem. They're Lawful, no matter how disorderly their personal behavior might be. The system allows for every possible way in which someone could side with any of the three alignments, including the possibilities of taking a stance reluctantly, half-heartedly, hypocritically, or ineptly.
• The system is easy to hack. Because the rules don't specify ideologies for Law and Chaos, the DM can make them up to suit their own milieu. It's trivial to just  replace Law and Chaos with something else: Capitalism and Communism, Liberty and Oppression, Imperialistic Religion 1 and Imperialistic Religion 2, Rome and the Barbarians, or even, if you must, Good and Evil.
• The system is vague in just the right way. Also because the rules don't list specific ideologies, but just names, it's clear to players that the precise meanings of Law and Chaos will be determined by the DM for the purposes of their particular milieu.
• LBB alignment is playable. The consequences of alignment choice in the LBBs are clearly specfied, especially by OD&D standards. Further, the consequences can be applied without figuring all the nuances of each faction's ideology. Like in the real world, the real question is who are you helping or hurting, much more than do your actions suit ideology X? 

There is still a possibility of a character avowing one alignment (probably Lawful), but not really acting like they're on that side at all. They might routinely pass up opportunities to strike a blow against Chaos, or help Chaos when the price is right, or refuse to help allies of Law against Chaos when it's inconvenient. Then the DM and the player should have a chat about where the character's loyalties really lie. The character might change alignment, or the DM might decide the character says they are loyal to one side, but in fact they are not.

My Blacknight campaign uses B/X for most things, but I use LBB alignment. Law, Chaos, and Neutrality are different sides in a cosmic conflict. If you change sides voluntarily, you can't use any alignment language for a year, as you are still attuning to your new affiliation. Your behavior can change your alignment, but only when your behavior amounts to changing sides in the conflict.