I'm going to hazard a guess that far more people are familiar - even if they've never played it - with D&D than Magic: The Gathering. D&D is obviously a couple decades older, and I think that the flexibility and openness to player-created content makes D&D a somewhat more welcoming game.
I'm a relative neophyte to D&D, though I think at this point I'm decently familiar with a lot of its systems and I'm getting better at DMing.
One of the central concepts to D&D is the alignment system, which becomes much more significant once you start leaving the physical plane and going off to the Outer Planes, which are sort of these alignments at their essential levels, and house beings who represent the alignments in a pure form.
Even if you haven't played, you're probably familiar with how it works: There are two spectrums that you can think of as being like a Y axis and an X axis, and your character falls at some point on that graph.
The X axis is Law and Chaos. It's pretty open to interpretation, but you can think of it in the most simple terms as those who play by the rules and those who don't. There's a lot of room for ambiguity, of course. Say you're a member of the Time Police - your job is to ensure that the timeline remains unchanged. That's a very Lawful position to take. But what if there's an event that you're witnessing in which a great empire crumbles, falling into anarchy. That's very Chaotic. So you might have an irony in which allowing or even promoting chaos might actually be a lawful act, even though someone who is more interested in the here and now and not the vagaries of time travel would see the only reasonable lawful action as to fight against this collapse.
The Y axis is Good and Evil. To say that this is a complex issue is perhaps the greatest understatement one could make - this is stuff philosophers have been arguing about since philosophy became a thing.
But what's interesting here is that there are things in the D&D cosmos that are literally good or evil by definition. And that's one of the main ways that an entity - particularly a powerful, outer planes entity - is defined. A devil is going to be both lawful and evil - it's just their nature.
Now granted, in practice there's a lot of wiggle room. The Nine Hells - D&D's default Lawful Evil plane - is filled with backstabbing archdevils who are always plotting against each other, which I do think strains the definition of Lawful a bit. None of them simply seeks anarchy, though. The Hells are an evil empire by definition. Still, one could imagine the Lawful Evil plane as a place of infallible loyalty - only that that loyalty is to some evil end.
So Wizards of the Coast also makes Magic, which is a far younger game (though it's not terribly young - it started when I was about seven.)
Central to the mechanics, but also the cosmic order of the game, are five colors. Magic, as conceived of in Magic: The Gathering, comes in five different colors: White, Blue, Black, Red, and Green. Each of these colors represents different worldviews and methodologies, which are reflected in mechanics and the flavor of the cards.
White magic is all about authority and equanimity - it is a cooperative philosophy that allows for a hierarchy and expects respect for leaders, but also expects fair and even treatment - generally in a way that benefits everyone, but White also often requires that acts of destruction be just as equal - affecting everyone.
Blue magic is intellectual and curious, and values abstract thought and wit above all else. The pursuit of knowledge is Blue's highest virtue, and the clever and sometimes circuitous application of that knowledge is paramount to achieving greatness.
Black magic is based in ambition and results. Black magic practitioners believe that nothing should stand in the way of gaining power, and that every person should be responsible for themselves. Rational self-interest is the rule to live by and moral questions cannot distract from the pursuit of one's goals.
Red magic is the color of emotion and passion. Red magic is reckless and active, not worried about making mistakes. It is impatient and irrational, and is probably the most destructive form of magic, but it also gets results quickly.
Green magic is the color of nature and life, encouraging things to develop but also trusting nature and the survival of the fittest to ensure that the strong survive. It is a color of instinct and growth.
So what is interesting to me about these colors is that they're a bit more nuanced. One could certainly assign some of D&D's alignments to them, but it's never totally accurate. White Magic certainly skews Lawful, but you could find examples of that in Blue, in Green, or in Black even. Black magic is, certainly aesthetically, largely evil. But a tyrannical regime that enforces a strict moral code against acts and beliefs that have been arbitrarily designated as immoral would be White. Black might have to stretch a bit to be truly good, but you could easily have neutral characters who are in it for themselves but don't mean anyone else any harm that would fit the Black mold.
There's some really cool stuff you can do with the Five Colors. One of Magic's most popular settings, Ravnica - which is an entire plane covered by a massive cityscape - is built around ten guilds that are made up of each two-color combination - giving them the mechanics of both, but also exploring how these philosophies intersect and complement each other. One of the reasons that they're making a third card block in this setting is that the guilds really nail this blend in a way that almost makes it feel as if there are ten different colors with their own rather distinctive philosophies, rather than making them feel like two distinct things stapled together.
So I'll admit that part of my preference for the Five Colors is that I'm just more familiar with it. I started playing Magic when I was seven or eight. But I think it would be a really interesting way to think about your RPG characters, either instead of or in addition to your existing alignment system.
No comments:
Post a Comment