Doux commerce is the notion that trade has a "sweetening" effect on human relationships: commerce brings about peace, because through it people get to know one another, cooperate, and become able to get what they want from each other without violence. It's a notion that's been around since the time of Adam Smith at least, and is at the root of the existence of the European Union, among other things.
What if amenability to peaceful exchange was at the root of D&D alignment? At one extreme are the genuinely selfless: the monk who has taken the vow of St Francis; the Buddhist priest who gives away all his possessions and lives by begging, and so on. A little bit further in and you have elves, who prefer to enter into relationships of exchange rather than violence if they can possibly help it. In the middle you have humans who are about as likely to engage in trade as war. Moving further towards the other extreme you have dwarves, who jealously guard their own possessions and do not trade them away even at an apparently fair price. Then you have orcs and goblins who prefer to steal or take by force. And then at the very opposite extreme are dragons, who zealously guard every last copper coin of their treasure hordes and never give any of their possessions away at any price.
It's not a matter of good and evil: ostensibly evil things (illithids, githyanki, ogre magi) may be generally more willing to give and take than ostensibly good ones (dwarves, sverfneblin, werebears). It's not about morality, per se. It's about whether, in a sense, you play well with others - whether you do so for selfish reasons or otherwise.
I'd be willing to say parlay/attack is a much more useful data point with critters you meet down in the dungeon than good/evil or lawful/chaotic. It operates on a meta level that controls GM and player actions as well as monster and character actions.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I think so too.
DeleteThis spirit makes for a fine non-violent exploration motive: charting unknown territory, cajoling suspicious rulers, learning to speak new languages, assessing the potential of a new land.
ReplyDelete(One runs straight into the spectre of the colonial, of course.)
This might be called a very adventurer-centric form of alignment; the kindly priest with the vow of poverty that heals you is useful and you might protect them; the ascetic hermit that does not, is not. Dwarves might be sharp traders, but at least they aren't dragons or demons.
All this reduces the grand cosmic battle Good vs Evil or Law vs Chaos elements - if you wanted them in the first place. A rather pragmatic form of alignment, perhaps.
That's true, although the ascetic hermit might have other uses, obviously.... A non-violent exploration game is one I'm increasingly interested in figuring out how to operationalise.
DeleteNice. “Size of ingroup” (ie, “number encountered”) might be a nice second dimension to alignment to complement this “willingness to deal productively with outgroup” dimension.
ReplyDeleteSo dwarves or kobolds tend to have large ingroups but don’t play well with the outgroup, elves have smaller ingroups but deal pretty well with the outgroup, and dragons have tiny ingroups and also don’t deal well with the outgroup.
Yeah, that's interesting. So you could have two axes, like the good-evil law-chaos ones.
DeleteOfficial D&D seems to lean this way, with their selfless-to-selfish description of good and evil.
ReplyDeleteReally? Is that what it is in 5th edition? I forget.
DeleteI thought it was, but I just went back and looked now and no, it's not. :p Nevermind...
DeleteThere is definitely an good=selfless/evil=selfish interpretation out there because I've seen it, too. Maybe it was in one of the older editions, I'd have to check.
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, this is a nice, useful way to use alignment. It's also very similar to how you can interpret monster reaction rolls whith good results meaning the other party is friendly and willing to offer you stuff and assistance for free, middling results mean it could go either way and you need to pay at least a fair price, low results mean they will demand more than it's worth or make life difficult for you and lowest results are plain hostility/get off my lawn.
I hope the question doesn't come off as hostile, but how is this different from a trade-specific formulation (separated from, say, authoritarian traits, the strength of social contracts, etc.) of the law/chaos axis in the ninefold alignment system? For that matter, doesn't this kind of conflate "trade vs. violence" with "willingness to trade"? A dragon that guards an inherited hoard and a dragon that actively steals wealth when it can will have very different impacts on the game world even if they're identical in terms of willingness to trade any of it away.
ReplyDeleteGreat idea, I'd add an extra layer to shift things a little, take the monk out from being the opposite of the dragon, and replace him with the outgoing and collaborative merchant, then add a separate axis asking the question, how do they deal with people who are helpless or in need? Because people willing to trade with equals or rough equals, might be totally unwilling to give gifts, show mercy, let people out of deals etc. and whereas you could have people who like taking whatever suits them, and also giving out gifts from their vast wealth.
ReplyDeleteSo then you get a triple axis, chaotic/lawful, cooperative/warlike, generous/ruthless.
So you can get the chaotic cooperative rutheless character, who will wheel and deal, always sell out former allies for a new better position,
or the lawful cooperative rutheless character, who will deal with you if you have something to offer, and stick to their word, but will leave you in the dust without pity if you have nothing to give in return.
Or on the other side, chaotic warlike generous; easily offended, willing to fire off into conflicts at a moment's notice, but also willing to give away what they've earned to random children, show sudden mercy to people they've beaten etc.
Then lawful or chaotic cooperative generous, could be the monk types you referred to, either following oaths or just helping out random people without much concern for their wealth.
This mostly everything except for the most evil of the evils, so I'd add that instead of making it a point on an axis, evil is just something awful or terrible that they want or need that makes them incompatible with normal society or long term peace.
So Illithid, lawful, neutral, ruthless.
Evil: Eats minds, driven to enslave.
So... an alternative to the traditional morality system? How would you express this in terms of game rules and mechanics?
ReplyDelete