Random Roll: DMG, p. 60

The topic of alignment has been coming up a great deal on this blog of late. I suppose that's understandable, considering how many players of Dungeons & Dragons loudly take issue with the very concept. Consequently, I take a great deal of interest in reading about how Gary Gygax conceived of alignment, if only to get a better handle on how he thought it might be used in the game. Today's entry in the Random Roll series isn't directly about alignment but rather a related topic that provides some additional clues to the bigger question, namely the detection of evil and/or good.

Gygax begins by making a distinction

between character alignment and some powerful force of evil or good when this detection function is considered. In general, only a know alignment spell will determine the evil or good a character holds within. It must be a great evil or a strong good to be detected. Characters who are very strongly aligned, do not stray from their faith, and who are relatively high level (at least 8th level or higher) might radiate evil or good if they are intent upon appropriate actions.

From what Gygax says above, it would seem that a character's alignment is a description of his moral/ethical tendencies and little more. For most characters, alignment has nothing to do with cosmic allegiance and is thoroughly mundane. However, Gygax implies that there's some connection between being strongly aligned and being devoted to one's faith, a connection that is explicit in Empire of the Petal Throne. He also suggests a linkage between level and the ability of one's alignment to be detected by magical means. He expands upon this last bit by reference to potent monsters.

Powerful monsters such as demons, devils, ki-rin, and the like will send forth emanations of their evil or good. Aligned undead must radiate evil, for it is this power and negative force which enables them to continue existing. Note that none of these emanations are noticeable without magical detection.

This all makes sense to me and I have no qualms with it. Even if one understands alignment more as a function of one's metaphysical "team," as I tend to do these days, what he says here works fine. His discussion of magic items offers up some additional points. He states that

powerful magic items which have some purpose as respects alignment will radiate evil or good – unless they are aligned with neutrality, which is neither, of course. Most other magic items will most certainly not, even though their effect might be for evil or good.

Purpose seems key here. An intelligent sword forged to "overthrow evil" would clearly radiate good, while a sword that merely grants a bonus to attacks against a specific type of creature, like lycanthropes or reptiles, would not (generally) radiate any alignment, even if using it inflicted harm on an individual example of that specific type of creature. He makes this more explicit when he says:

Likewise, items which are not magical but which have powerful effects will probably not give any evil or good aura. Poison is a prime example. It is perfectly neutral and has no aura whatsoever. 

On the other hand, both holy and unholy water radiate good and evil respectively, since their creation involves "some deity of evil or good" – again connecting alignment to religion, or at least the action of a divine being. Curiously, Gygax says that traps are generally neutral. However,

if the … trap leads victims to the lair of Juiblex … there will be an aura of evil about it; while if it brings victims into the realm of Bahamut, it will send out an aura of good.

This section baffles me somewhat. I can see how a trap intended to send a victim to the lair of a demon lord might be evil, but in what sense would a trap that sends someone to the Platinum Dragon be good? Presumably, such a trap would only be a trap if the victims were themselves creatures whom Bahamut might harm, but, if harm is the trap's purpose, how can that be good? This then makes one wonder how Gygax could have claimed just a sentence earlier that most traps are neutral and thus do not radiate good or evil. What is it that differentiates a trap that takes one to the lair of Juiblex or Bahamut from one that simply drops a party into a pit of spikes? Is it the connection to extraplanar beings of great power? That's a reasonable extrapolation of his earlier comments, but it's far from clear that that's the case.

I'm increasingly coming to feel that alignment is one of those topics that becomes less coherent and useful the more one attempts to explicate its precise workings. Rather than coming away with a better sense of how Gygax understood alignment, this section raises many more questions.