I’ll never forget reading Roger Moore’s evocative Dragon magazine article about the astral plane at age 12 in 1982 as I was flying to Germany with my family. I imagined the pea soup outside the plane’s windows was the astral plane!
What a cool story! I remember his article on Asgard (the Norse gods article in #90, as that was the first issue I subscribed to) and one day at soccer practice after dinner, it was cloudy and overcast with mountains in the background and I imagined these huge giants and gods fighting each other in the distance. Not quite as evocative as your story, but I still have strong memories of it all these decades later!
I'm having so much fun reading it now that I have a copy! It's the last of my AD&D Hardback collection that I acquired and now I have a full set! (I don't have all the revised Easley covers, and I don't have an original cover DMG, but "book"-wise, I have them all!). Thank you for watching and commenting!
I've been very lucky. In particular, a very kind person on Reddit (which I almost never use because I don't get it) saw me post about my video of the 18 AD&D Hardbacks, and after he watched it and noted that I didn't have the Manual of the Planes, sent me an extra copy he had just because he enjoyed my video and said I seemed like a nice guy! What a super nice treat! I acquired a few of these books far after the fact on Ebay or via other online sellers: Fiend Folio, Monster Manual, Deities & Demigods 2nd Printing with Cthulhu and Melnibonéan), Dragonlance Adventures, and Greyhawk Adventures. All the rest are ones I've owned since I was a kid in the 80's! They've made it through several moves across different states, to my college dorms and back, and multiple apartments until my wife and I moved into our house. Thank you for watching and commenting!
It is so strange to see how alignment and the planes evolved from the early editions. It is also fascinating to see how by the time I started in the early 80s, everything was set and really hasn't changed that much.
Yes, that's a good point - it kind of all came together after about a decade after the game was created and, especially with alignment, hasn't really changed!
@@TenositSergeich Yes, I've considered perhaps doing a future follow-up video on that. I also recently discovered that Steve Marsh (who worked on the Expert Set that predated the BECMI one) had planned a different Planar Cosmology for the Companion Set he was going to do, before that got scrapped and replaced with BECMI. But, he's working on publishing it now!
I am doing my best! In the poll I did, about 2/3 of folks wanted more historical videos, so while that's not what I had originally planned on doing when I started my channel, they've been fun to make and folks seem to enjoy them, so I'll keep going. Thank you for watching and commenting! Glad you enjoyed it!
@@leadingauctions8440 Thank you so much! Really glad you enjoy them! I'm going to be making a few videos on how I prep for a campaign and for individual sessions, specific to my daughter's campaign, but the advice will be applicable to anyone regardless of age, AND I'm using the 1981 B/X Rules so I'll be talking about that set of rules from an historical perspective when I do my videos, so hopefully you'll like those as well. Thanks again!
I think a big part of early alignment was to split players into “teams”. If you have a campaign with twenty players many may have conflicting goals. You see this sort of campaign in Boot Hill where some players may be outlaws and other the law or just common citizens. Alignment languages then become a way to facilitate coordination between players characters who may not share any other languages but need to work together, or work together with other creatures. If a PC has a campaign objective “Sack the city of Purplerock” maybe they’ll want to team up with a band of chaotic orcs out in the Misty Marshes. Meanwhile you’ll have a group of Lawful player characters trying to destroy the orcs and then fun results! This idea of play being focused around a “party” with some sort of specific narrative plot comes out of early D&D but it’s not there “in the beginning” so we can miss some nuance looking at it from that angle.
Yes, exactly! I mention this aspect of the game (that it was players whose characters had individual goals versus a cooperative goal) often in my videos, and sometimes I feel like I'm repeating myself too much. But, I try to get that point across because it's so central to understanding a lot behind why the rules were crafted the way they were.
@@daddyrolleda1 yeah, for sure. I never really “got it” till I started reading these earlier games on their own terms or Jon Peterson’s work like The Elusive Shift. I’d argue that most groups could play without alignment and be better off except its vestigial mechanical effects like who can or can’t use a certain magic weapon.
Thanks for making this. I'm researching the history of the evolution of alignment mechanics in D&D, and your video easily appears to be the most thorough on this subject on youtube. Your documentation is very helpful, much appreciated and saves me alot of time. So again, thanks!
I'm so glad to hear this! Thank you very much for letting me know, and good luck on your research into the evolution of alignment. Are you going to be publishing/talking about it somewhere?
I’m not sure Gary knew, exactly, what he was trying to say when D&D came out and so blurred the lines. By the time we get to Moldvay the descriptions of “Law” and “Chaos” included moral descriptors. And, hey, they were inventing brand new things so murkiness is expected.
Yeah, I really think he was just borrowing the terms from the literature that inspired him and using them as a way to differentiate two sides of armies for fantasy battles. At the beginning, while there *were* individual characters, most of the players were just playing extensions of themselves (hence, names like Drawmij for Jim Ward, or Keoghtom for Tom Keogh, etc.), so the thought of playing a PC as "good" or "evil" wasn't something one did, just like when they played wargames, the generals weren't "good' or "evil" but they might align themselves with the Allies or the Axis.
Thank YOU for watching and commenting! I'm working on Part 2 of this video, during which I'll be going through the Manual of the Planes book in much more detail. Cheers!
Another interesting and informative video. I had no idea that alignment was originally created as a way to assign troops in war games. I can't wait for the next instalment, as I love the planes and cosmology. Thanks for putting so much effort into your videos, I always finish watching more knowledgeable than when I started.
That is a really nice compliment, and I truly appreciate it. Thank you for saying that. I am working on the "script" for Part 2 as we speak. I tend to speak off the cuff, as you probably noticed (I don't really make a true script) but I do conduct a lot of research to put these together. I'm glad you find them helpful and informative. Cheers!
Cool video. I remember being a kid and misunderstanding the concept of Law and Chaos, I definitely equated them to Good and Evil, so did the rest of my group. It wasn't until we switched to AD&D that we understood that a person can follow the law and be good, but they can also follow the law and be evil (especially if the laws are morally corrupt). I really miss those old, old books, the ones that look like they were written by a type writer and the drawings/maps. So much nostalgia for me. Great video, I love hearing about the history of the game and little nuggets that I never knew before. Living in the middle of nowhere playing with my friends we didn't really have our finger on the pulse of the community!
Thank you so much! I appreciate you taking the time to comment and share your story. When I was a kid, alignment confused me, too! In fact, I still have my old character sheets and while looking at them recently, it's funny to see all the mistakes we made. Quite a few of my characters were elves, dwarves, or half-orcs, but under religion, I put "Protestant" because I didn't know there were fantasy pantheons until I got my Deities & Demigods book!
In BECMI D&D, Undine, Kryst, Djinni, and Efreet all were given alignments on the three points, but their descriptions explained complex nine-point locations (eg Efreet being Lawful but evil natured, Djinn being Chaotic but good natured) BECMI outer planes were also not tied to alignment, but instead to spheres of power (thought, time, matter, energy, entropy), or to more bizarre concepts.
That sounds like a really fun and interesting take on the D&D Cosmology (and, maybe if I'm reading it correctly, a little less complicated and easier to understand?).
In the vein of “mechanics should support the intended fantasy”, I find that the OSR does a lot of good work in driving why alignment will matter in the gameplay. Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC) specifically, but also Black Sword Hack and the new Shadowdark all make an excellent effort on this front. Thanks for the videos!
I agree! I think older style games hew a bit closer to the idea of alignment as choosing sides in a cosmic war as opposed to using it to define personality. But, for me, either way is fine. I prefer one over the other, but don't begrudge those who prefer the other way, or those who would prefer to eliminate the concept entirely. I do think, though, before eliminating it, it's important to understand *why* it was included in the first place, and what the repercussions are for removing it. I have a player in a 3.5/Pathfinder1E game I've been running since May 2001 who is a Holy Warrior (from Book of the Righteous). He specifically has issues with one of the organized religions in the world. To him, that religion is "evil" and as an organization, it could be argued that the administration are Lawful Neutral at best, but might have evil tendencies (not from a cosmic standpoint, but for things like executing all arcane magic-users and all non-believers, etc.). So, he has tried to make the case that his PC should be able to use his "Smite Evil" ability on anyone from that faith, since his character firmly believes people of that faith are evil. It's a very interesting philosophical discussion, but that's partially why a lot of folks get tripped up on alignment and think it "doesn't work." Thanks for the fun and engaging discussion!
I got the Manual of the Planes last year and it's one of the best of the hardback books from 1st edition. Like you, I did not own it but was so happy the day I got it and completed my collection. It was a great copy but did not come cheap.
Yes, as it came toward the end of the 1E era, I think there were fewer of them sold and therefore they are more rare on the secondary market. I, too, was also glad to finally get a copy! Thanks for watching and commenting!
Totally makes sense. I think the 3-point system works for that as well. The 9-point system is a little more complicated and less "faction-oriented" - at least, to me. Thank you so much for watching and commenting!
I feel like nine is when we start getting into personalities and small groups. Because in most cases more than one axis aligning just won't happen in large groups
The more Alignments the more confusion about them. For people unfamiliar with Law and Chaos, I guess the question could be, “How does your character feel about castles: places safety or seats of brutal oppression?
This can be a really good way to approach it, definitely! It can also be something like Civilization vs Wilderness. Neither is necessarily good *or* bad, but they're differently philosophies. But I do think the waters got a bit muddy when Gary associated every creature we would normally think of as being "evil" with "Chaos" in OD&D.
In "Crap Guide to D&D: Alignment", JoCat describes as more of a personal code than the law of the land. To invoke TvTropes, Lawful characters would typically be "The Fettered", while Chaotic characters would more likely be "The Unfettered".
The world I have homebrewn over years started out with the five point alignment system because I didn't understand English well enough to figure out the various neutral alignments. It's been expanded now, but the core pantheon is still dawn (law), noon (good), dusk (chaos) and midnight (evil). Sometimes represented by the phases of the moon, or even the hands of a watch. When I expanded to a kind of nine point system, I placed the True Neutral god(s) outside the wheel, and used the various neutral gods as links between the wheel and the True Neutral deities. It is fun to see that I somehow stumbled across doing this the "historical way" due to my mediocre English at the time
Great video! Love your depth of knowledge and paging through all that old stuff. I had no idea that alignment kind of grew out of necessity as a way to organize fantasy wargaming.
Thank you! I always appreciate comments like this - it helps me know what people like and/or don't like. Glad to add to your knowledge of the history of the game.
Congrats on getting the Manual of the Planes. I think that was the last one I picked up when I was looking to complete the collection. Yours looks to be in much better condition. I had most of the early books to start with but there were 4 or 5 of the later hardcovers that I grabbed on ebay in order to complete the 1st edition hardback set. The F-116-R that I needed to go with my F-115-R box came a few days ago (ebay). I still might find the original at my parent's house. They are probably moving into assisted living and I will be cleaning out all the closets and other storage. Hoping eventually to find/collect all the parts of the 'first', but not 'true first', print of the basic set. And thanks to you I know exactly what parts I need (as you pointed out that they are listed/pictured on the outside of the bottom of the box).
Thank you so much for remembering to share the updates on your old boxed set! That's amazing! I am sorry your parents are having to move into assisted living (my dad will very soon; my mom passed about 10 years ago) but I do hope there's a silver lining for you in finding some of your RPG treasures. Thanks again!
For sure! Almost all the changes happened in just the first few years but it's been relatively set since then. Thanks for watching and commenting, as always!
Very cool stuff. While we all had an alignment for our character, it rarely came up, or mattered all that much. I really don't think that anyone is just one alignment anyway. I would say most people are either Lawful or Neutral Good, but sometimes have Chaotic tendencies, but even that isn't completely accurate, but I think most people won't be 100% consistent in "their alignment", and the idea that you'd lose experience points, or a level, for acting somewhat contrary to your alignment never really made much sense to us. Perhaps in the game it made sense, but for the most part, we pretty much ignored it. It wasn't like any of our characters started doing evil stuff. We all just played from our own perspective, mostly, I'd say. Regardless though, thanks for the content. I wish I had all the OD&D & Chainmail stuff.
Alignment confused us as kids, as well. That picture in the Moldvay Basic rulebook often caused more confusion than help, as we would argue over which one of the characters was Neutral vs Chaotic. It seems silly now, but back then we had trouble deciphering it. I kind of "lucked" into my OD&D stuff. Greyhawk I first got from a friend in the early 80's. We had a sleepover at his house and he had a copy that he'd tried to punch holes in, but he messed up the holes, so there was only one set of holes that lined up and he had a big "c-ring" on it. The other holes were misaligned and screwed up much of the actual content of the book. But that was my first exposure to anything OD&D. I finally replaced it with the copy you see in the video years later. I also picked up Blackmoor shortly thereafter - my local game store at the time had very clean copy on the shelf for the original price of $5.00. My mom actually got me the White Box I show in the videos. In the late 90's she went to the local game store I was currently shopping at, and the staff there all knew me. She asked them she a good gift would be, and they pointed her to the White Box, which had just come in. It was missing "Monsters & Treasure" but it included the copy of Chainmail you see in the videos. About a year later, then came across a loose "Monsters & Treasure" and gave it to me, so my box is what they call a "Frankenstein" as it includes all the parts but they are from different printings. But it was a great gift because it's something that, at the time, I probably wouldn't have purchased, but now am so happy to have. Thanks as always for watching & commenting!
Only book I´m missing is Greyhawk Adventures, orange spine books are best looking book that has ever come from D&D and AD&D. I like that they put Cacodemon from Doom to front cover of Manual of the Planes ;)
Ha! That's funny - I have heard that Doom was inspired by this cover. I went for years missing four key books from my 1E Collection. I finally got them all post-Pandemic lockdowns (a Cthulhu Deities & Demigods, Dragonlance Adventures, Greyhawk Adventures, and Manual of the Planes). Thanks for watching and commenting!
It would seem that the original conception was so confused that it ended up through clarification as the nine point system. Seems like it's impossible to hold on to a the point alignment without mixing chaos with evil and law with good so to keep them separate you need specific assignments of the good-evil pole. Law and Chaos as cosmic forces and factions sound cool until you begin to poke them a little more.
Basic Fantasy RPG has no alignment system, but the party’s adversaries are known as “chaotics,” because they follow a goddess who is offended that the physical world, known as “Order in the Chaos” was ever created. She sees it as a prison and wants to “free” the denizens of the world to return to the “endless explosion of chaos.” I got a nice video on it, even.
Great video Daddy! New fan here! Indeed a great misconception on how to implement the Law/Chaos of the great writers of the era into a more gamelike environment. Some very good details in here to shed some light on the problems that alignment caused to many gaming groups thoughout the years. As always it seems it's imperative we perform some reversed engineering to get it right. I would like to also refer to a thought provoking article that set some more depth in the lore of the planes and how the planar creatures might develop, interact and affect the prime material. The incredible "Politics of Hell" by Alexander van Thorn (Dragon #28, 1979).
That is indeed a great article! Thanks for reminding me about it! I actually first encountered it in "Best of Dragon, Vol. 2" that I acquired in the early 80's. Just looking at it again, now, and there's so much in there to use in the B/X game I'm currently running for my daughter & her friends! I also remember, years later, the article on Gladsheim in Dragon #90 by Roger Moore, that informed that part of the Outer Planes as detailed in the MotP. Thank you so much for watching and commenting, and for being a fan. I truly appreciate it!
Thank you so much! This was a gift from my mom, I'm guessing in 1982 or 1983 and it's the one I've used ever since! The cover still has a shine to it! I try to take really good care of my books - when you see one that looks really worn, that's most likely because I acquired it second-hand or a friend gave it to me.
I wonder how much other d&d weirdness is attributable to Gary just assuming that everyone had read the same books as him and his friend group and therefore not thinking to explain any of it for newcomers.
I think that's a very plausible theory. As the world expands and our shared cultural influences cease to gain the traction they use to have, I often wonder about this. As an example, I was explaining to my daughter a few weeks ago how, when I was a kid, Cable TV had very minimal penetration at all. I grew in a household with the three main networks, PBS, and one local independent channel. At least, that's what I remember. On PBS, I watched Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, and Electric Company. On the local independent channel, I watched reruns of Gilligan's Island, Batman (Adam West), Leave it to Beaver, the Partridge Family, the Walton's, and other shows like that after school. In PrimeTime on the major networks, we watched stuff like CHIPS, Love Boat, Happy Days, M*A*S*H, and other stuff. And... EVERY OTHER KID my age did the same thing. We all watched the same shows. And part of what we watched was stuff our parents had watched when they were kids, because we watched it in Syndication. So, as a consequence, we had a shared lexicon of pop culture that every kid knew, and also we could talk about it when our parents, because we had seen many of the same shows they had watched as kids. For my daughter... we don't have that. She has an almost infinite amount of stuff she can watch, so for her, she doesn't go to school and talk about "that episode that was on last night" because they're all watching their own self-curated content with far fewer viewers. They can share it, but it's very different. Anyway, that's a very long way of saying... Gary grew up with these stories and many of the folks he was gaming with had a "shared lexicon" of fantasy, science-fiction, and historical war-games as their "language," so yes, I think your point that many of the things we take as "weird" were probably second-nature to early adopters of the game.
Yep! I talk about that at this point: ua-cam.com/video/b6QE5_Yydl0/v-deo.htmlsi=hnTxjCozD786PtGj&t=396 But the idea of alignment is more complex than just Gary reading about it in a book and adding it to the game. I really wanted to dive into *why* it was included in D&D in the first place. To me, the ideas from Moorcock, and also Poul Anderson's "Three Hearts & Three Lions" (which I discuss right before Moorcock in the video) are more about implementing *how* to include alignment as opposed to why it's there at all. Thanks for commenting! I hope you enjoyed the video.
Prior to the enlightenment, every culture would have seen Order as synonymous with Good, and chaos with evil. The basic assumption would have been that there is a proper order to the world, which is divinely ordained, and chaos, which is introduced when men rebel against that order. There existed the concept of the tyrant, for example, but they were not seen as evil because of modern notions of unjustified hierarchy, but because they ruled foolishly, displeased the gods, and brought chaos to the kingdom. This is the moral frame adopted by fairytails, Tolkein, and DnD, because it is the frame every medieval person through history would have had.
I've really grown to like the three point alignment system. And I think the key to using alignment is defining what "alignment" means, and that, to me, is that you are allied, interested in, or a servant of, the greater beings that represent that alignment. So in my own home setting, which uses the 4e cosmology heavily, there are two primary pantheons: the gods, and the primordials. The gods are lawful, and they represent an interest to keep the planes as they are, if the gods were completely in control all of creation would be stagnant and never-changing. The primordials are chaotic, they wish to see creation change and morph, if they had complete control all of creation would be destroyed and remade constantly. So neither side is better than the other, but most sentient species have an interest in seeing law have the upper hand at least. The gods also tend to be more friendly to lesser beings on the whole as well. Neutrality represents either that you want to see a balance of law and chaos, or that you have no real interest in this chaos struggle.
I'm currently running a B/X game for my daughter and her friends, and trying to wrap up a 3E/3.5/PF1E campaign that began in May 2001. I have played 5E just a few times but I've never run it. What specifically about his video on Alignment & Planes prompted your question about playing 5E?
@@daddyrolleda1 you mentioned something along the lines of 'in 5th edition' Note: I don't hate running 5th but I think it's a little bland, I grew up with 3.5 and 3rd edition shadowrun as staple games so I think 5th is a bit mechanically bland and like to clown on it
I’ll never forget reading Roger Moore’s evocative Dragon magazine article about the astral plane at age 12 in 1982 as I was flying to Germany with my family. I imagined the pea soup outside the plane’s windows was the astral plane!
What a cool story! I remember his article on Asgard (the Norse gods article in #90, as that was the first issue I subscribed to) and one day at soccer practice after dinner, it was cloudy and overcast with mountains in the background and I imagined these huge giants and gods fighting each other in the distance. Not quite as evocative as your story, but I still have strong memories of it all these decades later!
I remember that article as well!
Daddy rolled a nat 20!
Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it!
@@daddyrolleda1 love your content, the history, and seeing you go over these awesome artifacts
@@RuiSaltao Thank you so much for saying that! I really appreciate your support and compliments. Cheers!
Manual of the planes is one of my favorite AD&D hardbacks, i still use and refer to it today!
I'm having so much fun reading it now that I have a copy! It's the last of my AD&D Hardback collection that I acquired and now I have a full set! (I don't have all the revised Easley covers, and I don't have an original cover DMG, but "book"-wise, I have them all!).
Thank you for watching and commenting!
You have an amazing collection of books 👍
I've been very lucky. In particular, a very kind person on Reddit (which I almost never use because I don't get it) saw me post about my video of the 18 AD&D Hardbacks, and after he watched it and noted that I didn't have the Manual of the Planes, sent me an extra copy he had just because he enjoyed my video and said I seemed like a nice guy! What a super nice treat!
I acquired a few of these books far after the fact on Ebay or via other online sellers: Fiend Folio, Monster Manual, Deities & Demigods 2nd Printing with Cthulhu and Melnibonéan), Dragonlance Adventures, and Greyhawk Adventures. All the rest are ones I've owned since I was a kid in the 80's! They've made it through several moves across different states, to my college dorms and back, and multiple apartments until my wife and I moved into our house.
Thank you for watching and commenting!
It is so strange to see how alignment and the planes evolved from the early editions. It is also fascinating to see how by the time I started in the early 80s, everything was set and really hasn't changed that much.
Yes, that's a good point - it kind of all came together after about a decade after the game was created and, especially with alignment, hasn't really changed!
Besides a brief detour with 4e, this is a really cool point!
Yup!
BECMI D&D had a different system in regards of planes, sadly it did not see much elaboration further.
@@TenositSergeich Yes, I've considered perhaps doing a future follow-up video on that. I also recently discovered that Steve Marsh (who worked on the Expert Set that predated the BECMI one) had planned a different Planar Cosmology for the Companion Set he was going to do, before that got scrapped and replaced with BECMI. But, he's working on publishing it now!
Please keep these historical videos up!
I am doing my best! In the poll I did, about 2/3 of folks wanted more historical videos, so while that's not what I had originally planned on doing when I started my channel, they've been fun to make and folks seem to enjoy them, so I'll keep going. Thank you for watching and commenting! Glad you enjoyed it!
@@daddyrolleda1
You found a niche.
One you are good at.
@@leadingauctions8440 Thank you so much! Really glad you enjoy them!
I'm going to be making a few videos on how I prep for a campaign and for individual sessions, specific to my daughter's campaign, but the advice will be applicable to anyone regardless of age, AND I'm using the 1981 B/X Rules so I'll be talking about that set of rules from an historical perspective when I do my videos, so hopefully you'll like those as well. Thanks again!
I think a big part of early alignment was to split players into “teams”. If you have a campaign with twenty players many may have conflicting goals. You see this sort of campaign in Boot Hill where some players may be outlaws and other the law or just common citizens.
Alignment languages then become a way to facilitate coordination between players characters who may not share any other languages but need to work together, or work together with other creatures.
If a PC has a campaign objective “Sack the city of Purplerock” maybe they’ll want to team up with a band of chaotic orcs out in the Misty Marshes. Meanwhile you’ll have a group of Lawful player characters trying to destroy the orcs and then fun results!
This idea of play being focused around a “party” with some sort of specific narrative plot comes out of early D&D but it’s not there “in the beginning” so we can miss some nuance looking at it from that angle.
Yes, exactly! I mention this aspect of the game (that it was players whose characters had individual goals versus a cooperative goal) often in my videos, and sometimes I feel like I'm repeating myself too much. But, I try to get that point across because it's so central to understanding a lot behind why the rules were crafted the way they were.
@@daddyrolleda1 yeah, for sure. I never really “got it” till I started reading these earlier games on their own terms or Jon Peterson’s work like The Elusive Shift.
I’d argue that most groups could play without alignment and be better off except its vestigial mechanical effects like who can or can’t use a certain magic weapon.
Thanks for making this. I'm researching the history of the evolution of alignment mechanics in D&D, and your video easily appears to be the most thorough on this subject on youtube. Your documentation is very helpful, much appreciated and saves me alot of time. So again, thanks!
I'm so glad to hear this! Thank you very much for letting me know, and good luck on your research into the evolution of alignment. Are you going to be publishing/talking about it somewhere?
I’m not sure Gary knew, exactly, what he was trying to say when D&D came out and so blurred the lines. By the time we get to Moldvay the descriptions of “Law” and “Chaos” included moral descriptors. And, hey, they were inventing brand new things so murkiness is expected.
Yeah, I really think he was just borrowing the terms from the literature that inspired him and using them as a way to differentiate two sides of armies for fantasy battles. At the beginning, while there *were* individual characters, most of the players were just playing extensions of themselves (hence, names like Drawmij for Jim Ward, or Keoghtom for Tom Keogh, etc.), so the thought of playing a PC as "good" or "evil" wasn't something one did, just like when they played wargames, the generals weren't "good' or "evil" but they might align themselves with the Allies or the Axis.
My favorite element of D&D. I remember staring at the planar charts in 1e. Thanks for this video!
Thank YOU for watching and commenting! I'm working on Part 2 of this video, during which I'll be going through the Manual of the Planes book in much more detail. Cheers!
@@daddyrolleda1 looking forward to it!
Another interesting and informative video. I had no idea that alignment was originally created as a way to assign troops in war games. I can't wait for the next instalment, as I love the planes and cosmology. Thanks for putting so much effort into your videos, I always finish watching more knowledgeable than when I started.
That is a really nice compliment, and I truly appreciate it. Thank you for saying that. I am working on the "script" for Part 2 as we speak. I tend to speak off the cuff, as you probably noticed (I don't really make a true script) but I do conduct a lot of research to put these together. I'm glad you find them helpful and informative. Cheers!
Cool video. I remember being a kid and misunderstanding the concept of Law and Chaos, I definitely equated them to Good and Evil, so did the rest of my group. It wasn't until we switched to AD&D that we understood that a person can follow the law and be good, but they can also follow the law and be evil (especially if the laws are morally corrupt).
I really miss those old, old books, the ones that look like they were written by a type writer and the drawings/maps. So much nostalgia for me.
Great video, I love hearing about the history of the game and little nuggets that I never knew before. Living in the middle of nowhere playing with my friends we didn't really have our finger on the pulse of the community!
Thank you so much! I appreciate you taking the time to comment and share your story. When I was a kid, alignment confused me, too! In fact, I still have my old character sheets and while looking at them recently, it's funny to see all the mistakes we made. Quite a few of my characters were elves, dwarves, or half-orcs, but under religion, I put "Protestant" because I didn't know there were fantasy pantheons until I got my Deities & Demigods book!
@@daddyrolleda1 That's awesome!
I am loving everything about your channel! You are filling in a TON of gaps in my knowledge.
Thank you so much for watching and commenting! I really appreciate it!
I'm glad you find my videos educational! Cheers!
In BECMI D&D, Undine, Kryst, Djinni, and Efreet all were given alignments on the three points, but their descriptions explained complex nine-point locations (eg Efreet being Lawful but evil natured, Djinn being Chaotic but good natured)
BECMI outer planes were also not tied to alignment, but instead to spheres of power (thought, time, matter, energy, entropy), or to more bizarre concepts.
That sounds like a really fun and interesting take on the D&D Cosmology (and, maybe if I'm reading it correctly, a little less complicated and easier to understand?).
In the vein of “mechanics should support the intended fantasy”, I find that the OSR does a lot of good work in driving why alignment will matter in the gameplay. Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC) specifically, but also Black Sword Hack and the new Shadowdark all make an excellent effort on this front. Thanks for the videos!
I agree! I think older style games hew a bit closer to the idea of alignment as choosing sides in a cosmic war as opposed to using it to define personality. But, for me, either way is fine. I prefer one over the other, but don't begrudge those who prefer the other way, or those who would prefer to eliminate the concept entirely. I do think, though, before eliminating it, it's important to understand *why* it was included in the first place, and what the repercussions are for removing it.
I have a player in a 3.5/Pathfinder1E game I've been running since May 2001 who is a Holy Warrior (from Book of the Righteous). He specifically has issues with one of the organized religions in the world. To him, that religion is "evil" and as an organization, it could be argued that the administration are Lawful Neutral at best, but might have evil tendencies (not from a cosmic standpoint, but for things like executing all arcane magic-users and all non-believers, etc.). So, he has tried to make the case that his PC should be able to use his "Smite Evil" ability on anyone from that faith, since his character firmly believes people of that faith are evil. It's a very interesting philosophical discussion, but that's partially why a lot of folks get tripped up on alignment and think it "doesn't work."
Thanks for the fun and engaging discussion!
This channel is outstanding. Wonderful job with all these videos. Thank you!
I really appreciate that! Thank you so much for taking the time to let me know, and also for watching!
I got the Manual of the Planes last year and it's one of the best of the hardback books from 1st edition. Like you, I did not own it but was so happy the day I got it and completed my collection. It was a great copy but did not come cheap.
Yes, as it came toward the end of the 1E era, I think there were fewer of them sold and therefore they are more rare on the secondary market. I, too, was also glad to finally get a copy!
Thanks for watching and commenting!
I Really love getting to know the background history on how this came to be and how it changed.
Thank you so much. I really appreciate that!
5 pt system is a very good launching pad for factions.
Totally makes sense. I think the 3-point system works for that as well. The 9-point system is a little more complicated and less "faction-oriented" - at least, to me.
Thank you so much for watching and commenting!
@@daddyrolleda1 nine or more works really well for politics however. :)
I feel like nine is when we start getting into personalities and small groups. Because in most cases more than one axis aligning just won't happen in large groups
The more Alignments the more confusion about them. For people unfamiliar with Law and Chaos, I guess the question could be, “How does your character feel about castles: places safety or seats of brutal oppression?
This can be a really good way to approach it, definitely!
It can also be something like Civilization vs Wilderness. Neither is necessarily good *or* bad, but they're differently philosophies. But I do think the waters got a bit muddy when Gary associated every creature we would normally think of as being "evil" with "Chaos" in OD&D.
In "Crap Guide to D&D: Alignment", JoCat describes as more of a personal code than the law of the land. To invoke TvTropes, Lawful characters would typically be "The Fettered", while Chaotic characters would more likely be "The Unfettered".
I recommended your channel and this video in particular to the guys in the current Planescape campaign that I’m playing in!
That's awesome! I hope they enjoy it. Cheers!
The world I have homebrewn over years started out with the five point alignment system because I didn't understand English well enough to figure out the various neutral alignments. It's been expanded now, but the core pantheon is still dawn (law), noon (good), dusk (chaos) and midnight (evil). Sometimes represented by the phases of the moon, or even the hands of a watch.
When I expanded to a kind of nine point system, I placed the True Neutral god(s) outside the wheel, and used the various neutral gods as links between the wheel and the True Neutral deities.
It is fun to see that I somehow stumbled across doing this the "historical way" due to my mediocre English at the time
That sounds really fun! I hope you're able to organize your notes some day! I know it would be a monumental task!
Great video! Love your depth of knowledge and paging through all that old stuff. I had no idea that alignment kind of grew out of necessity as a way to organize fantasy wargaming.
Thank you! I always appreciate comments like this - it helps me know what people like and/or don't like. Glad to add to your knowledge of the history of the game.
Congrats on getting the Manual of the Planes. I think that was the last one I picked up when I was looking to complete the collection. Yours looks to be in much better condition. I had most of the early books to start with but there were 4 or 5 of the later hardcovers that I grabbed on ebay in order to complete the 1st edition hardback set.
The F-116-R that I needed to go with my F-115-R box came a few days ago (ebay). I still might find the original at my parent's house. They are probably moving into assisted living and I will be cleaning out all the closets and other storage. Hoping eventually to find/collect all the parts of the 'first', but not 'true first', print of the basic set. And thanks to you I know exactly what parts I need (as you pointed out that they are listed/pictured on the outside of the bottom of the box).
Thank you so much for remembering to share the updates on your old boxed set! That's amazing! I am sorry your parents are having to move into assisted living (my dad will very soon; my mom passed about 10 years ago) but I do hope there's a silver lining for you in finding some of your RPG treasures.
Thanks again!
It all happened really fast once the ball got rolling. It took 25 years for Lucas to get out the Prequels for Star Wars.
For sure! Almost all the changes happened in just the first few years but it's been relatively set since then. Thanks for watching and commenting, as always!
Manual of the Planes is the book I also did not get. I was in the Army as a commissioned officer (thus not playing D&D) at the time of its release.
It's my newest AD&D acquisition that I only got earlier this year. It's the one I needed to complete my set!
Very cool stuff. While we all had an alignment for our character, it rarely came up, or mattered all that much. I really don't think that anyone is just one alignment anyway. I would say most people are either Lawful or Neutral Good, but sometimes have Chaotic tendencies, but even that isn't completely accurate, but I think most people won't be 100% consistent in "their alignment", and the idea that you'd lose experience points, or a level, for acting somewhat contrary to your alignment never really made much sense to us. Perhaps in the game it made sense, but for the most part, we pretty much ignored it. It wasn't like any of our characters started doing evil stuff. We all just played from our own perspective, mostly, I'd say. Regardless though, thanks for the content. I wish I had all the OD&D & Chainmail stuff.
Alignment confused us as kids, as well. That picture in the Moldvay Basic rulebook often caused more confusion than help, as we would argue over which one of the characters was Neutral vs Chaotic. It seems silly now, but back then we had trouble deciphering it.
I kind of "lucked" into my OD&D stuff. Greyhawk I first got from a friend in the early 80's. We had a sleepover at his house and he had a copy that he'd tried to punch holes in, but he messed up the holes, so there was only one set of holes that lined up and he had a big "c-ring" on it. The other holes were misaligned and screwed up much of the actual content of the book. But that was my first exposure to anything OD&D. I finally replaced it with the copy you see in the video years later. I also picked up Blackmoor shortly thereafter - my local game store at the time had very clean copy on the shelf for the original price of $5.00.
My mom actually got me the White Box I show in the videos. In the late 90's she went to the local game store I was currently shopping at, and the staff there all knew me. She asked them she a good gift would be, and they pointed her to the White Box, which had just come in. It was missing "Monsters & Treasure" but it included the copy of Chainmail you see in the videos. About a year later, then came across a loose "Monsters & Treasure" and gave it to me, so my box is what they call a "Frankenstein" as it includes all the parts but they are from different printings. But it was a great gift because it's something that, at the time, I probably wouldn't have purchased, but now am so happy to have.
Thanks as always for watching & commenting!
Only book I´m missing is Greyhawk Adventures, orange spine books are best looking book that has ever come from D&D and AD&D. I like that they put Cacodemon from Doom to front cover of Manual of the Planes ;)
Ha! That's funny - I have heard that Doom was inspired by this cover.
I went for years missing four key books from my 1E Collection. I finally got them all post-Pandemic lockdowns (a Cthulhu Deities & Demigods, Dragonlance Adventures, Greyhawk Adventures, and Manual of the Planes).
Thanks for watching and commenting!
OK, this is excellent.
I'm glad you liked it! Part 2 will be coming soon!
It would seem that the original conception was so confused that it ended up through clarification as the nine point system. Seems like it's impossible to hold on to a the point alignment without mixing chaos with evil and law with good so to keep them separate you need specific assignments of the good-evil pole. Law and Chaos as cosmic forces and factions sound cool until you begin to poke them a little more.
Basic Fantasy RPG has no alignment system, but the party’s adversaries are known as “chaotics,” because they follow a goddess who is offended that the physical world, known as “Order in the Chaos” was ever created. She sees it as a prison and wants to “free” the denizens of the world to return to the “endless explosion of chaos.” I got a nice video on it, even.
I am slowly going through your past videos, so I will get there eventually! You have a ton of content!
@@daddyrolleda1 aww, thanks!
Great video Daddy! New fan here! Indeed a great misconception on how to implement the Law/Chaos of the great writers of the era into a more gamelike environment. Some very good details in here to shed some light on the problems that alignment caused to many gaming groups thoughout the years. As always it seems it's imperative we perform some reversed engineering to get it right. I would like to also refer to a thought provoking article that set some more depth in the lore of the planes and how the planar creatures might develop, interact and affect the prime material. The incredible "Politics of Hell" by Alexander van Thorn (Dragon #28, 1979).
That is indeed a great article! Thanks for reminding me about it! I actually first encountered it in "Best of Dragon, Vol. 2" that I acquired in the early 80's. Just looking at it again, now, and there's so much in there to use in the B/X game I'm currently running for my daughter & her friends!
I also remember, years later, the article on Gladsheim in Dragon #90 by Roger Moore, that informed that part of the Outer Planes as detailed in the MotP.
Thank you so much for watching and commenting, and for being a fan. I truly appreciate it!
Love this
Thank you so much! I'm glad you enjoyed it, and thanks for watching and commenting!
What a nice looking PHB you have! Looks to be in such nice shape. :-)
Thank you so much! This was a gift from my mom, I'm guessing in 1982 or 1983 and it's the one I've used ever since! The cover still has a shine to it!
I try to take really good care of my books - when you see one that looks really worn, that's most likely because I acquired it second-hand or a friend gave it to me.
@@daddyrolleda1 That is extra special that your mom bought it for you. :-) You certainly kept it in amazing condition! Kudos!
Good stuff.
I wonder how much other d&d weirdness is attributable to Gary just assuming that everyone had read the same books as him and his friend group and therefore not thinking to explain any of it for newcomers.
I think that's a very plausible theory. As the world expands and our shared cultural influences cease to gain the traction they use to have, I often wonder about this.
As an example, I was explaining to my daughter a few weeks ago how, when I was a kid, Cable TV had very minimal penetration at all. I grew in a household with the three main networks, PBS, and one local independent channel. At least, that's what I remember.
On PBS, I watched Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, and Electric Company. On the local independent channel, I watched reruns of Gilligan's Island, Batman (Adam West), Leave it to Beaver, the Partridge Family, the Walton's, and other shows like that after school. In PrimeTime on the major networks, we watched stuff like CHIPS, Love Boat, Happy Days, M*A*S*H, and other stuff. And... EVERY OTHER KID my age did the same thing. We all watched the same shows. And part of what we watched was stuff our parents had watched when they were kids, because we watched it in Syndication.
So, as a consequence, we had a shared lexicon of pop culture that every kid knew, and also we could talk about it when our parents, because we had seen many of the same shows they had watched as kids.
For my daughter... we don't have that. She has an almost infinite amount of stuff she can watch, so for her, she doesn't go to school and talk about "that episode that was on last night" because they're all watching their own self-curated content with far fewer viewers. They can share it, but it's very different.
Anyway, that's a very long way of saying... Gary grew up with these stories and many of the folks he was gaming with had a "shared lexicon" of fantasy, science-fiction, and historical war-games as their "language," so yes, I think your point that many of the things we take as "weird" were probably second-nature to early adopters of the game.
For the algorithm
THANK YOU!
Law and Chaos presumably come from Moorcock’s books.
Yep! I talk about that at this point: ua-cam.com/video/b6QE5_Yydl0/v-deo.htmlsi=hnTxjCozD786PtGj&t=396
But the idea of alignment is more complex than just Gary reading about it in a book and adding it to the game. I really wanted to dive into *why* it was included in D&D in the first place. To me, the ideas from Moorcock, and also Poul Anderson's "Three Hearts & Three Lions" (which I discuss right before Moorcock in the video) are more about implementing *how* to include alignment as opposed to why it's there at all.
Thanks for commenting! I hope you enjoyed the video.
Prior to the enlightenment, every culture would have seen Order as synonymous with Good, and chaos with evil. The basic assumption would have been that there is a proper order to the world, which is divinely ordained, and chaos, which is introduced when men rebel against that order. There existed the concept of the tyrant, for example, but they were not seen as evil because of modern notions of unjustified hierarchy, but because they ruled foolishly, displeased the gods, and brought chaos to the kingdom. This is the moral frame adopted by fairytails, Tolkein, and DnD, because it is the frame every medieval person through history would have had.
Do you need to have your alignment written down and set in stone? Perhaps one wants to be unalligned or formally so.
I've really grown to like the three point alignment system. And I think the key to using alignment is defining what "alignment" means, and that, to me, is that you are allied, interested in, or a servant of, the greater beings that represent that alignment. So in my own home setting, which uses the 4e cosmology heavily, there are two primary pantheons: the gods, and the primordials. The gods are lawful, and they represent an interest to keep the planes as they are, if the gods were completely in control all of creation would be stagnant and never-changing. The primordials are chaotic, they wish to see creation change and morph, if they had complete control all of creation would be destroyed and remade constantly. So neither side is better than the other, but most sentient species have an interest in seeing law have the upper hand at least. The gods also tend to be more friendly to lesser beings on the whole as well. Neutrality represents either that you want to see a balance of law and chaos, or that you have no real interest in this chaos struggle.
Sounds very cool - a fun way to include alignment in a setting. Thanks for sharing, and for watching and commenting!
Please say Leipzig again :D
I don't have that book. Envy.
Yeah, it was the last one on my list, as you saw. It was very kind of that person who sent it to me - all he asked was that I pay the shipping!
Wait y'all are playing 5th?
I'm currently running a B/X game for my daughter and her friends, and trying to wrap up a 3E/3.5/PF1E campaign that began in May 2001. I have played 5E just a few times but I've never run it. What specifically about his video on Alignment & Planes prompted your question about playing 5E?
@@daddyrolleda1 you mentioned something along the lines of 'in 5th edition'
Note: I don't hate running 5th but I think it's a little bland, I grew up with 3.5 and 3rd edition shadowrun as staple games so I think 5th is a bit mechanically bland and like to clown on it
Rpgs are not as team vs. team based as a wargame is, so alignment could be not set in stone.