So, it IS though. @curriebelle explains how the alignments functioned in Chainmail, but not where those concepts came from, which was *almost certainly* the Eternal Champion stories. That’s why Chaotic Neutral is explained as an alignment of pure randomness – because in Moorcock, Law and Chaos weren’t human concepts, but rather unknowable cosmic forces. Most of Moorcock’s heroes are on the side of Law, not because Law is better (in fact, in the Corum books, the gods of Law are pretty explicitly shown to also be assholes), but because the predictablity and stability of Law isn’t as dangerous for human life. On the flip side, Jerry Cornelius is a hero of Chaos in a world gone too far over to Law, and is imho the quintessential depiction of what Chaotic Neutral *is* (seriously, just read the wiki entry: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Cornelius)
Thing is, Gygax’s understanding of Moorcock’s ideas is… limited, at best, and he reduces it to a boring and kinda racist Nature & Tribal Barbarism (chaos) vs Civilization (Law) nonsense. That’s why Gygax’s Elves are Lawful; they represent Proper Western Civilization. You CAN get that feeling from Moorcock, IF you’d only read his Dorian Hawkmoon & Elric stuff (which tbh was all that was out at the time! Moorcock was a new, hip, edgy dude on the scene in 1971, upending the more traditional notions of fantasy with Weird Shit). But it’s basically the postmodernist problem of continued interpretation and reinterpretation: Gygax’s model was already a simplified version of Moorcock’s, in turn misinterpreted by other people.
*deep breath* Also, @curriebelle ’s take on the Xaosciects in Planescape: Torment is unfair and doesn’t examine the entire situation. Planescape the pre-existing campaign setting was literally designed to examine D&D alignment and take it to its furthest, most absurdist conclusions. To go whole hog and ask, “if we take two axis alignment completely seriously and use it as the cosmological underpinnings of a universe, how does that look..?” It goes back to the Moorcockian ideas of these versions of Law and Chaos being *very much beyond petty mortal understanding*, and asks what does a universe where that is true look like? Which is how we get Absolute Law represented by dice-shaped robots, and Absolute Chaos by giant parasitic carnivorous rainbow frogs. The Xaosciects represent what happens when mortals try to understand absolute chaos and to live under its’ precepts: *it’s not meant for us.* Similarly, the Mercykillers represent what happens when we try to adhere to absolute law with no concern for silly mortal stuff. Planescape at its best is D&D interrogating its own alignment system; at the time of publication, 20 years worth of players and GMs wrestling with it and trying for their own interpretations. And, notably, Planescape’s titular planes actually have seventeen gradients/interpretations of the alignment system, ranging from law-as-just-blind-rules to law-as-civilization to chaos-as-madness to chaos-as-a-state-of-nature. Planescape offers no absolute answers, but at its best is a neat interrogation of all this nonsense.
