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Was talking about the dnd alignment system with my dad and he claimed he thought of the Joker as Lawful Evil, which it of course struck me as odd to consider Joker as lawful anything (warning: long thread)
I’d always thought of a LE using the system already in place to get what they want, or a villain with a goal they want to achieve by any means EXCEPT for the lines they won’t cross, which Joker doesn’t really leave any uncrossed
Meanwhile my dad saw it as a character whose motives were a hard goal, while a chaotic evil character is motivated by simple destruction
The difference of course being classifying by motive vs classifying by moral code, neither of which are incorrect interpretations of the alignments
But both kind of render the classification system pretty useless, as all it tells anyone about a character is what the player THINKS that alignment means, based on how they then play that character and any oogame discussion that of course takes place
This of course lines up pretty well with the alignment system falling out of use, since the recent popularity of the game has newer players looking to tell stories, and creating an interesting character goes beyond a simple alignment chart
And the alignment chart was mostly a tool to help dms keep players from acting out of character by adding penalties, which of course only encouraged the creative interpretations and/or just being chaotic neutral so you could do whatever without getting in trouble with the dm
So the interpretations I’ve seen of the alignment chart are kinda useless in that sense, since a player knows the character better anyway and out of alignment penalties have effectively fallen out of practice due to how loosely the alignment system works
So, Motive and Moral are both incredibly subjective, and any well developed character, even chaotic ones, have something of both.
Method, on the other hand, is much easier to see from an outside perspective and much less subjective. You can better classify Lawful Neutral Chaos based on method, and motive then determines Good Neutral Evil
This thread is a bit of a mess tbh and I need to make like a visual cue or something to go more in-depth about Alignment Chart Theory but for now let’s keep to Lawful and Chaotic Evil and DC Villainssince that’s what I’ve been talking about
By the Method classification system Lex Luthor is Lawful Evil, because he is manipulating and using the law to keep out of trouble while he works towards his goal of world domination
Joker is Chaotic Evil because he uses chaos, seemingly random destruction, and fear to try and gain control of Gotham’s criminal underground, keep himself entertained, and of course keep Batman’s attention
These are of course extreme cases and what sort of methods classify a Neutral character on the Method scale I haven’t figured out with but if any of y’all have any thoughts pls jump in cuz I fucking love talking Irrelevant Theory and have fairly limited dnd experience
