Dungeons & Dragons: Understanding Alignment

Dave and Ryan discuss the surprisingly complex outworking of the relatively simple D&D morality system, how it developed over time, and what the alignments mean in 5e today.
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[@SkywalkerOne1977]

Alignment is super helpful for DMs to know how to run a monster

[@M0rchaint]

Your discussion is painful. I have played since the White Box. Originally Gygax only had "Lawful Good", "Selfish", and "Evil". Later people began asking how you accounted for organized creatures that were evil. So the two axis system was born but in reality it was a four alignment system. "Lawful Good", "Lawful Evil", "Balancers", "Chaotic Evil". If you look at monsters such as "Chaotic Neutral" you'll struggle to separate them from "Chaotic Evil". Further people like "Neutral Good" and "Chaotic Good" just made Gygax's head spin. Gygax got hung up on the words "Lawful" and "Chaotic". And Gygax could not separate "Chaotic" aka "Random" from his concepts of "Evil". In fact, you'll often see definition struggles with "Lawful Evil" creatures acting just plain "Evil" and "Chaotic". L/E became a simple excuse why they didn't wipe themselves out. The usable definitions we defined way back in 2E were much better. "Lawful" meant you thought about people as "Community", "Friends", "Family", "Self". After all, who do you hold to a higher standard than those closest to you. "Chaotic" is the reverse "Self", "Family", "Friends", "Community". True Neutral can mean Gygax's "Balancers" but we consider it to be "Not Yet Committed". We also don't consider that anyone can have their alignment scryed until they reach 5th (priests) or 7th (all others). At 1st only clerics have an alignment to push. Others we tend to consider to be just north of center i.e. Neutral with Good Tendencies.