Divided Loyalties: How to be good at being lawful good.

Hey all,

This is something I've been wanting to talk about here for a while. The alternate title for this article would be: "How not to be lawful stupid".

For anyone unfamiliar, lawful good is one segment of the classic dungeons and dragons alignment chart. The chart uses two spectrums to help define characters' motivations and goals. The two axes are Good-Neutral-Evil, and Lawful-Neutral-Chaotic. These two spectrums create nine individual alignments. I'll do a brief run-down of them, and them go into the main thrust of this article:

Chaotic Evil: a self-seeking force of chaos, like the Joker.

Neutral Evil: self-seeking above all else. Willing to use or break laws as suits them.

Lawful Evil: a loyal devotee of evil establishments.

Chaotic Neutral: anti-establishment for the sake of being anti-establishment. "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité"

True Neutral: This might be the most difficult alignment to get a handle on. Some players use it to remain aloof and uninvolved in the world, as the Brotherhood of Steel would. Some build characters who view good and evil as human constructs, best kept in strict balance in the world, in a form of pseudo-eastern mysticism. Still others, use this to refer to simple, honest folk, unlikely to join the militia, and even more unlikely to be the threat that makes a militia necessary. Rest assured, I plan to come back and talk about True Neutral characters once I finally get a handle on them myself.

Lawful Neutral: law above all else. "My hands are tied.", "The Prime Directive is not a suggestion." etc.

Chaotic Good: freedom fighters and vigilantes. The law is either too corrupt or too incompetent for good men to follow blindly.

Neutral Good: do the right thing. Act with compassion, and strive for harmony.

Lawful Good: and now, we come to the crux of this article. Most players see lawful good characters as absolute paragons who never need to stop and think in order to do the right thing. I'd like, however, to propose a different read on these characters.

Lesser of Two Evils is Still Evil
This boils down to drawing a line between what is lawful and what is right. Perhaps a character believes that it is never right to take a life, but that in some circumstances, it is the lesser of two evils. This phrase in particular can do a lot to define the lawful good character. "The Lesser of Two Evils."

C.S. Lewis once said: "Do not let us mistake necessary evils for good." For the lawful good character, every necessary evil weighs heavily on the soul. When the character must choose between saving one and saving two, they will save two, and live on, haunted by the one they abandoned to lethal fate.

Bad Government is Better than No Government
For the lawful good character, the law is right. More men, women, and children are made safe by the rule of law than by any actions of a single heroic individual. The character must weigh the rule of law against their own desire to do right when the law is wrong.

Every act of vigilantism weakens the edifice of government, yet not every government rules as it ought. If the king's guard takes bribes with the king's knowledge and consent, yet the presence of the guard saves lives from the tribal marauders; how much can one really do about the bribery?

Loyalty is Ethical, even Loyalty to the Unethical
For the lawful good character, loyalty is a high calling. To be loyal is to be moral. Yet, the authorities demanding loyalty may require acts of loyalty that are wrong for the common people.This leads into the last point.

Obey the Liege Lord and Serve the People
The royals rule by divine right. It is fitting that they should rule, and yet, their rule is often unsuited to the good of the common people. For the lawful character, the will of the authorities is supreme; but for the good character the good of the common people commands the highest loyalty. It is here that we have the central conflict of the lawful good character. For this character, his loyalties are divided. You cannot please everyone, and for the lawful good character, this impossibility can become a consuming guilt.



For more on complex, lawful good characters, I highly recommend the Sano Ichiro novels by Laura Joh Rowland. The first in the series is called Shinju. These are the best books I've ever read at dealing with the internal character drama of the lawful good character, and I'd go so far as to call it a must-read for anyone who plays tabletop games and thinks lawful good characters are "bad" or "boring".

Happy gaming, all.