02-25-2003, 07:35 AM
Warning: somewhat rantish post ahead. Though I'm not trying to offend anyone, those easily offended should stay away. It'll save a lot of time on both our parts.
As a long-time player of AD&D and one of those devoted role-players always trying to take the system beyond one-dimensionality, alignment tests like these never fail to irritate me. For several reasons.
1. Always too simple. The fact is, no philosopher, not even Plato who loved the dialectic, ever couched morals and ideals in short one-sentence questions. The format breaks it; you can't determine someone's ethics based on one-line questions with no detail. Details are important.
2. Easily loaded. The last one you picked is an incredible offender in this regard. There are rarely any surprises on tests like these because people come in with an alignment type they believe themselves to be, and conform their choices to them. That way, you get an incredibly skewed result. And, a second question to ponder. Is it possible to be evil while thinking that one's good? Absolutely, but alignment tests don't seem to think so. Just who isn't going to answer that they're out there to do what's right? It's just that the definition of "right" tends to vary. Of course, every test naturally has this vulnerability, but it doesn't make it a good thing just because it always exists.
3. Rife with strange personal interpretation. I hate to break it to whoever wrote that first test, but the priorities you place on a party do not make you any more good, evil, lawful or chaotic. In fact, just playing with the "party" variables, leaving all other choices the same, you can flip a character from lawful good to neutral evil. Um, no. For alignment to mean anything (and, I might point out, this takes quite a bit of work; in its basic form alignment is meaningless and rightfully excluded from many serious games of D&D), it has to be based on something more fundamental than party selection.
4. Absolute issue spin. A certain belief on a specific issue is cast as a specific alignment behaviour, which isn't the case. Two people can believe the same things for different reasons and be different alignments. They can believe the same thing for the same reason and be different alignments. No test takes this into account. For example, the last test on the list associates the response "laws allow the best people to rise to the top" with lawful evil - but since when was a belief in the general underpinning of meritocracy "evil"? The fact is, society works on the basis of the best people rising to the top through gradings and rankings - and we're not all evil. Complicating it further with the sensitive issue of the death penalty, I might point out that there are good reasons for all nine alignments to support it - and there are good reasons for all nine alignments to oppose it, too. Two lawful good characters can in fact take opposing viewpoints and argue them very well. Alignment refers to deeper, more basic tendencies - not one of a set of nine moulds, within which everyone agrees. To make alignment worthwhile it has to rise above nine pigeonholes, all in a row.
5. Caricaturization. Evil is cast as the maniacal alignment, concerned only with destruction and the deliberate attempt to harm others for no particular reason. Anyone who answers like that is insane. More importantly, people can be evil and yet answer none of those maniacally destructive questions. Another victim of the caricature is lawful, which is unfairly represented as oppressing, rulebound, and against freedom, all wrong assumptions. Again plucking an example from the last test, "The government which governs least governs best" is just as lawful a viewpoint as "Without law, society would collapse." In fact, those two views are often held by the same person, yet one is called chaotic and the other lawful.
6. Related to 4 and 5 above, choice counterposition. What I mean by that is the multiple-choice format of the tests tends to position certain (unrelated) viewpoints against each other, artificially. It forces one to choose between views that are only contradictory because the test says so. Can one not help others and yet plan the next adventure at the same time?
For all of these reasons, alignment tests really don't tell you anything. About you, about your characters, or about the game, and it's a shallow treatment of alignment and by extension, the nature of morality. Yes, I know these are just fun and games, and I'm not dumping on anyone who's amused by them. I just think it needs pointing out - that alignment tests really give short shrift to a topic that needs a better quality of discussion, if only that it helps catapult D&D past the stereotyped "buckets o' dice resolution system", hack'n'slash, and slaying bigger and bigger things.
As a long-time player of AD&D and one of those devoted role-players always trying to take the system beyond one-dimensionality, alignment tests like these never fail to irritate me. For several reasons.
1. Always too simple. The fact is, no philosopher, not even Plato who loved the dialectic, ever couched morals and ideals in short one-sentence questions. The format breaks it; you can't determine someone's ethics based on one-line questions with no detail. Details are important.
2. Easily loaded. The last one you picked is an incredible offender in this regard. There are rarely any surprises on tests like these because people come in with an alignment type they believe themselves to be, and conform their choices to them. That way, you get an incredibly skewed result. And, a second question to ponder. Is it possible to be evil while thinking that one's good? Absolutely, but alignment tests don't seem to think so. Just who isn't going to answer that they're out there to do what's right? It's just that the definition of "right" tends to vary. Of course, every test naturally has this vulnerability, but it doesn't make it a good thing just because it always exists.
3. Rife with strange personal interpretation. I hate to break it to whoever wrote that first test, but the priorities you place on a party do not make you any more good, evil, lawful or chaotic. In fact, just playing with the "party" variables, leaving all other choices the same, you can flip a character from lawful good to neutral evil. Um, no. For alignment to mean anything (and, I might point out, this takes quite a bit of work; in its basic form alignment is meaningless and rightfully excluded from many serious games of D&D), it has to be based on something more fundamental than party selection.
4. Absolute issue spin. A certain belief on a specific issue is cast as a specific alignment behaviour, which isn't the case. Two people can believe the same things for different reasons and be different alignments. They can believe the same thing for the same reason and be different alignments. No test takes this into account. For example, the last test on the list associates the response "laws allow the best people to rise to the top" with lawful evil - but since when was a belief in the general underpinning of meritocracy "evil"? The fact is, society works on the basis of the best people rising to the top through gradings and rankings - and we're not all evil. Complicating it further with the sensitive issue of the death penalty, I might point out that there are good reasons for all nine alignments to support it - and there are good reasons for all nine alignments to oppose it, too. Two lawful good characters can in fact take opposing viewpoints and argue them very well. Alignment refers to deeper, more basic tendencies - not one of a set of nine moulds, within which everyone agrees. To make alignment worthwhile it has to rise above nine pigeonholes, all in a row.
5. Caricaturization. Evil is cast as the maniacal alignment, concerned only with destruction and the deliberate attempt to harm others for no particular reason. Anyone who answers like that is insane. More importantly, people can be evil and yet answer none of those maniacally destructive questions. Another victim of the caricature is lawful, which is unfairly represented as oppressing, rulebound, and against freedom, all wrong assumptions. Again plucking an example from the last test, "The government which governs least governs best" is just as lawful a viewpoint as "Without law, society would collapse." In fact, those two views are often held by the same person, yet one is called chaotic and the other lawful.
6. Related to 4 and 5 above, choice counterposition. What I mean by that is the multiple-choice format of the tests tends to position certain (unrelated) viewpoints against each other, artificially. It forces one to choose between views that are only contradictory because the test says so. Can one not help others and yet plan the next adventure at the same time?
For all of these reasons, alignment tests really don't tell you anything. About you, about your characters, or about the game, and it's a shallow treatment of alignment and by extension, the nature of morality. Yes, I know these are just fun and games, and I'm not dumping on anyone who's amused by them. I just think it needs pointing out - that alignment tests really give short shrift to a topic that needs a better quality of discussion, if only that it helps catapult D&D past the stereotyped "buckets o' dice resolution system", hack'n'slash, and slaying bigger and bigger things.