Clearly, the RNG is the most chaotic deity, regardless of setting or edition.

I love this. Especially the take on the tribal savages people being actually lawful in a chaotic environment and the reverse for the modern citizen in more urban surroundings.

I would argue that chaos, when used to refer to a person, means they live by their own rules. They don't try to live entirely outside of order and organization, rather they take the initiative to create the law and order they live by. The chaotic person is at the top of his own personal hierarchy, not answerable to others who seek to rule from the top down. Instead of being forced to live the way someone else deems acceptable for him, he lives his own way, free to succeed or fail based on his decisions and skills alone.

There’s something weirdly meta about a chaotic entity like Eilistraee having a difficult name to pronounce, as though order holds such limited chord over her that even categorizing her with a name proves difficult.

Ah yes, Chaos. The other Lawful alignment.

How a chaotic character can be as mature as a lawful character: make them a consequentialist. A consequentialist fundamentally rejects the notion of universal rules of behavior in favor of always adapting to circumstances, it doesn't matter what you do, it matters what happens. Rejecting rules not out of immature hedonism but in favor of independent reason based on everchanging circumstances. From their perspective the rules are a crutch for those who are not ready to make their own assessments. It would be a good counter for the stereotype of the chaotic character as an impulsive toddler. Rather than emotions being the source of the chaotic behavior let reason be the source of the chaotic behavior.

I like how you explain that Chaos AND Order are both important to civilization, Order a bit more so but still. I would like to provide a Biologist (even if only of a Bachelor's level) view, as Order and Chaos are important in Nature as well as society. Chaos is change, mutation, adaptability. It is necessary for an organism to survive. Order, meanwhile, is fitting into an ecological niche, having a place in the ecosystem where you do your role so the whole can survive and be healthy. To much chaos, and you might survive, but you'll never thrive, because you can't properly exploit resources without being out competed. Too much order, and you become too specialized and cannot adapt to changing environmental conditions. If you look at extinction events, it's often the more specialized species that die out first, while the adaptable are more likely to survive and thrive later, producing more specialized species in future. Find your niche, create order, but keep some chaos around to handle change. At least, that's my understanding after studying for several years.

I love that Mask is chaotic neutral when in 3rd edition "evil" is literally in his portfolio

I feel like the great old ones/elder evils would be the most chaotic from the perspective of beings from the prime material plane. They're invomprehensible/unknowable.

What i learned from this video is "this guy hates chilldren"

First 6 minutes of the video summarised: We live in a society!

Few understand Chaos. Most cling to a commonly-held view of what "chaos" is, seeking to adoringly match that template of rebellion. To... CONFORM to it. In so doing, they wear the uniform of the anarchist. Thus, they fail.

I think I get why Shaundakut is more chaotic than neutral good. He’s the spirit of curiosity and the bane of secrets. Not all secrets should be spoiled, and not all places visited. Sometimes it’s best to leave well enough alone, but he is the god of intrigue untempered by judgment. That kind of curiosity could be the undoing of the current order, for better or worse.

Mask: The Herald of Shar (until he schemed to share hid Godhood with Erevis Cale......)

I liked the idea that MCDM put forth for his setting where he called law vs chaos for civilization vs nature. I don't look at it that way but it's interesting to hear how other people think about it.

None of these gods of chaos even come close to David Hume not believing we can know if the sun will rise tomorrow morning

Warhammer 40k does it right. In a universe full of endless chaos, it’s no surprise that the Imperium needs to be lawful and traditionalist to the extreme.

Binging chaotic does not mean you do not have or follow rules. If anything being chaotic and having or following rules is quite chaotic as it is a very unpredictable move.

I really like your break down here. I encounter a lot of players that want to be anarchistic and true neutral but I always try to let people know its harder to achieve than you might think. Perfectly stradling the line between chaos and law, good and evil is like trying to balance a disk on a pole, it must be perfectly centers too much to the right it falls to the right to much to the left it falls left. A lot of people want to play true neutral because they believe it gives them carte blanche to pick and choose how to act when in reality it is one of the most narrow and strict paths one can take.

If only modern day Hollywood (and TV) could return to the understanding of story structure, so well defined an described by Joseph Campbell?!

I kinda once made a character who's a bit close to a god, and mostly follows in line with the ideas of Chaos. to summarize who he is, he once was a simple person who used to live freely, however an event happened that made him unintentionally defy fate and reality, which gifted him the ability to control what is basically the worlds version of literal chaos essence (which is called Paradox, and I'll be happy to explain what it is and how it works). after some time, he came to realize this power, and eventually learned its true nature, later developing a philosophy surrounding ideas of chaos, eventually even becoming what is basically the god of chaos the ideals he holds involving his abilities of chaos mainly surround ideas of choice and simply becoming at piece with who you are. an example he commonly has is that, despite chaos not having a true alignment, he still chooses to do good, as it is his choice, not simply the will of the universe. he also encourages people to become at peace with any primal instincts, but to not loose themselves to it. he believes that who a person truly is mainly comes from who they are and what choices they make, without any form of code of honor or a society and its taboo's to force a decision out of them. besides things such as choice and peoples instincts, he also has some connection to ideas such as Life, Death, Emotion, Nature, Art, dreams, etc. another interesting thing is that, despite being basically the god of chaos, he can't actually control it at all, and doesn't seek to. he mainly focuses on creating more raw chaos in several ways, whether it be as big as crumbling societies or as small as allowing a small little flower to grow.

Look, I came here to hear about the most chaotic gods in D&D, not get a lecture about how pursuing freedom from a society drowning in unjust laws is toddler behavior.

The thoughts on chaos as a concept seem...oddly judgemental to me, and even the assessment of some gods; if they have the tiniest hint of pattern to them, are they even chaotic at all? I guess this really just falls into how badly alignments are up to interpretation. I would argue heavily against taking the freedom aspect out of chaos, considering how much it thrives under it. Chaotic freedom is not just "toddler whims" but also unconstrained determinism. You could easily argue that within our ordered society we have as much freedom as we do, not because of our structured laws, but in despite of them. We have the freedoms *because* they are not dictated and left up to individual choice. Though you are still right about safe, orderly places giving birth to counter-culture, but isn't that part of the cycle or things? Order within chaos, within order, within chaos, layers and layers. A chaotic person, doesn't *have* to really on orderly people, a lot do, just as most others rely on others. Don't forget hermits, and those that shunned civilization, those characters make their own houses/tools etc. Of course they don't have to be chaotic but they can be, and they would have no reliance on orderly people at all. This feels like arguing or complaining, and I'm sorry about that, but it truly felt that you were vehemently dismissive to the concept of an "actual" chaotic character, or that it could be a character concept at all.

This was fascinating! I've always struggled to understand what DnD means by chaos or something being chaotic, because often most of the lore about it feels paradoxical.

Loved it and love how you keep reinventing yourself. The part about chaos needing laws to break was kinda weird to me, though as I like to align with chaos myself. Yes, I got stuff I wanna break, but perhaps is because we carry the cavepeople genes we kinda can't imagine pure chaos? Because as you said, life was just that at that time and place. Now to the good ones? Ngl, I got chills from the evil one. The neutral ones was pretty cool too. This one was a welcome expectation break. Will we get the warm and fuzzies good aligned gods?

Loved your take on chaos at the beginning of the video! You've gotten a sub today!

you cannot have order without chaos, nor chaos without order. the law and order of society only grow and exist to combat the chaos of nature. without that chaos, there would be no order.

I always found the Lawful/chaos paradigm a little weird. sometimes the law is not orderly, in fact the law can be somewhat chaotic Many of the Cthulhu cycle gods had very strict laws, rituals that needed to be followed to exact and meticulous detail. If I had been there at the beginning of all things for D&D I would have suggested Order vs Chaos just made me think, very cool video Esper, very fun video!

Now I’m thinking I somehow missed the chaotic part of Iliira’s alignment. Granted, I first learned of her through 5e when I checked out the gods section in the 5e handbook, and thought that was pretty cool of a god to embody joy. I even had the thought of how people might be dismissive, like “oh, she just tells you to smile all the time. What a load.” I feel like if a cleric devotes themselves to Iliira, they have enough sense to know that “just smile” is incredibly reductive. Life’s full of emotions, and bad ones don’t just go away because we force ourselves to be happy. I’d assert that the goal of Iliira is to help people through good times and bad, always making sure emotions are valid and ensuring there’s a good future to fight for. Society needs food and trades, but joy is the glue that holds society together, not an afterthought of society existing.

I'd argue that Lady of Pain is a chaos god or chaos entity, since she is truly unpredictable with her wants and desiers. She has a code but no one seems to really understand anything of what they are without some vague glimpses. The fact so much of her is shrouded in mystery seems more like that true unknown rather than each chaos god clearly declared their domain. And it reminds me of the realm of chaos and the Githyanki where there are some order in chaos, Why? Because expecting to be chaotic all the time is predictable.

I kinda feel like you have your own idea of what chaos is, that doesn't really match what the D&D authors had in mind. This is OK, but I'm not sure that evaluating other people's work from your point of view and getting mad about it is the right thing to do... PS: to clarify, I don't mind this definition of law and chaos. I don't agree that it's *the definition*, and everyone else is wrong about it, including in their own art. Order and chaos are very abstract concepts, and in the context of D&D alignments, they are what you see fits. It's exactly why alignments are so contagious topic in general.

17:44 This is a misconception. Even in your "shooting the target with an arrow" example, there are an infinite number of ways to strike the target dead-on. One can angle the arrow high up like lobbing a mortar shell, use a flat trajectory like firing a rifle, or anything in-between. There are reasons to use each approach, too. In reality, there are an infinite number of ways to succeed, and an infinite number of ways to fail. This reasoning is an example of bad faith in the sense that Jean-Paul Sartre used the term.

A god of war like Tempus should totally be Lawful Evil. He's a god of violence on a massive scale with the mitigating factor is that he supports an order to the methods and motivations of that violence... sounds like a mix of law and evil to me.

You had great thoughts on this, Esper! To me, chaos will always be something very negative and evil. Because if deity also exists in the lack of good, or in the total opposite of it, then it cannot be neutral, it is evil. The "good" sides of this chaotic god are meaningless, when evil is involved. In a way, you could expect a chaotic god to always lean towards evil, merely because evil is also a part of it. It's like playing a Russian Rolette.

How about Talos, the lord of Storms? With a domain consisting destruction and chaos itself, I would think he's a potential candidate.

I think the most realized version of a Chaotic Deity is not from D&D, but rather the Elder Scrolls with Mehrunes Dagon. He is the god of Change and Destruction. Many view him as an evil god because of his commitment to tearing down things that mortals built, but he is more like a force of nature, a hurricane in a sense. His only motivation is to cause continual change in the status quo, and the most effective way to do that is to destroy. If you view the current power structures as evil, then he could be a force for good. If you view the structures as benevolent, then he is a force for evil. In this sense, he is divorced from any kind of good or evil. He is just a force, and his morality is entirely dependent on perspective. This is what I think Chaos should be in an embodiment. A completely different scale from morality.

Very cool video. But I am surprised Talos was not metioned. IMHO this god is Chaos in its pure form.

I'd argue the Abyss itself is since it is considered by some to be an entity almost like the overlord from Starcraft

Sean de cull got the right temperature to shelter you from the storm

Thank you once again for your great content!

would the most chaotic be any more surprising if you didnt understand the beauty in illusions

The most powerful D&D character I ever had was a 3E elven Cleric/Wizard of Leira that got to epic level in both classes. He was a spell slinging powerhouse that delighted in disrupting powerbases throughout the land. He also had a particular hatred of Cyric. I learned that strategic deception is much more effective than pathological lying.

great vid i was wondering were you found that long list of all the gods and goddesses for DND, i still don't know most of the lesser ones and want to put some more into my pantheon for my next play through

Is it just me or is Umberlee has not been mentioned in some of the deity videos ? I was expecting her to be included here as she's chaotic evil

I think that cyric is the most chaotic god in FR. I mean he wrote a book about himself, read it, and then became mad. I think this is one of the most chaotic things I ever read! However, I like your take on this topic!

God, quite an excavation you performed here!!! Thanks! Great thoughts on the nature of "freedom" of a toddler and discipline of a successful grown up in the beginning 👍🏼 😀 💪🏼

I recently found out that freedom and friend are etymologically linked, and that in ancient Greece, tyrants were considered thus because they repressed group bonds. Perhaps something to ber in mind with D&D's concept of chaos.

The reason we don’t like chaos is that our brains are very, very good at recognizing patterns. We naturally seek to find patterns in the world. After all, the ability to see that people who ate fish from a pond and then died is a powerful evolutionary advantage that animals generally do not have. We don’t know why, exactly, the people who ate the fish died, but we can see the pattern and not eat fish from the pond. Chaos then is the anti-pattern. Our brains dislike the idea that just anything can result from an action. We want to believe there is an order to the universe, and when discovered, we can use that knowledge to our benefit. Asmodeus is certainly evil, but he is also lawful. Ordered. We can see the pattern in his actions and use that knowledge. If we lived in Faerûn, we could make a very educated guess what would happen when dealing with devils, what a pact would entail. Demons, on the other hand, we could not. That few of the unknown is powerful.

This has been said by other people, but it definitely seems like you misunderstand Chaos in DnD a bit. Rather than your breakdown at the beginning, you should read the alignment page from 3e/3.5e. It breaks it down pretty well. Chaos does not necessarily mean you can't have a code. It also doesn't mean you are irresponsible, or infantile. But it CAN. That is chaos in its extreme. It seems like you're kinda stuck on the extremes of chaos, while looking at Law in a more tempered way. Love your other videos, just kinda seemed like you missed the target on this one.

I think you articulated very well, an unspoken feeling I've had concerning tribal vs urbanized societies. I feel like urbanites see the aethstetics of tribal societies; the scanty clothing, the tattoos and dances - and assume them without context, to stand out and contrast their own society; and are misled empathetically into assuming that the demeanor of those people must match their own. But whenever one looks at such tribal cultures; the aesthetics are by necessity - scanty clothes require less precious hand-made fabric, and are less sweltering in oppressive climates. The tattoos and dances are all very orderly, with deep symbolism - not a single bead or feather is added without deliberation, or purpose. They are typically quite chaste, lawful, and conservative, and it doesn't jive with modern urban sensibilities.

The way I view chaos is that it reflects unpredictability. You generally stay within your moral compass, but you're willing to bend the rules a little if you don't agree with something or if you're not in the right mood. Let's say there's a lawful good king in charge of a city, and he has to impose harsh rules to keep things safe. A neutral good character might politely decline to help enforce the rules, but promise not to get in the way and help where they can. A chaotic good character would be more likely to tell the king he's dumb and actively flaunt his rules, then proceed to help the city in a better way just to prove a point.

Thanks Esper

Hell yeah! I’ve been waiting for you to make this video. Your introduction tells me you definitely have a bias towards lawful LOL!

Garagos is, I think, worthy at least of an honorable mention in this list.

Some misunderstanding here. Alignments are a representation of defining beliefs systems, and doesn't mean total adherence to order and chaos in it's most extreme representation. If we're following your proposition, then even Leira is somewhat lawful, because she still adheres rigidly to her domains in how she behaves - trickery and illusion. Being truly chaotic would also mean veering out of one's domain as a god. Deciding one day to stop being a god, etc. But being chaotic for a god follows their defining domain/trait, and that's trickery for Leira. Probably only lovecraftian, outer gods are true chaotic. Alignments marital PC/NPC are much easier to define. Barbarians are considered chaotic because they're considered highly disorganized, when compared to that of a city/cloister/monastery. Hence why a monk/pally is always lawful. Fighters are mixed bag, and rogues, barbarians always non-lawful.

Shaundakul seems like a great chaos god. Exploration? Uncharted lands? Going with the wind? These seem like very chaotic things. All his domains are prepared for the unexpexted. Sounds like a god of travel, with no destination. A god of freedom, with no goal.

Loved this

The Leira Trading Center on Seluné(the moon, not the God) is wild.

I am loving this series.

Order is like the fuel, while Chaos is like the flame.

Well written. Liked the definition of Kaos

My ADHD ass listening to the intro of this video: yeah sounds about right...

I have a hunch imma be intrigued by this video

chaotic beast as force of nature, don't need to rely on lawful society...

Bro I wanted to hear about chaos gods not be preached to about lifestyles wtf is this

When the intro is a quarter of the entire video 😮‍💨👌

This description is one of many ways to look at chaos. You could make an argument for this interpretation as well as countless others. It only matters for the game how the DM uses it, so a god as a NPC has alignment based on each DM's interpretation is as chaotic as they need it to be for their game. There is no most chaotic god. I think this demonstrates why alignments is on the way out.

Shaundakul is alive and he is slowly rebuilding is faith on Faerûn

We need a video on the God's version of "The birds and bees". How do gods have babies?

just because the survival of some chaotic beings is dependent on law and structure doesn't mean they are apart of it, part of chaos is destruction, and so they don't always care if they are destroyed or changed of couse chaotic goods beings want to thrive but that just means they need a chaotic plane to inhabit a chaotic good heaven, the mortals that live in structured places often time need the good things that are provided but that doesn't mean they like it, it must feel frustrating to rely on law to thrive, and to be the most chaotic is to change the most and to change into more of everything which includes there opposites you can act lawful and evil without being it, Jack Sparrow may need law to survive, but thats because hes a being in a lawful world with laws of physics or maybe thats a lie in its own right and he lives in a chaotic universe that is just acting lawful. Teehee haha lol XD

Is there any reason why so many chaotic gods in D&D are Elven?

I'm playing a cleric of leira right now. Can confirm she is by far the most chaotic. My poor DM and fellow players are constantly at wits end

I think it would be That One.

I wanna leave a comment to support the channel but after watching the video I have to say we'll I feel your pick for he most chaotic God was correct I also think you have an extremely poor understanding of what true chaos is and it's full importance to our world and people

The first part of this video sounds like Lawful propaganda lol

I think the whole idea of law and chaos can be really hard to unravel. Take for example a wild band society. In some ways they don't go massively far from a traditional way of life with the beats they know as they hunt and herd their animals through the mountains for example. They may also be a society where family ties and bonds of cooperation are important for mutual survival. So in that way they are orderly. But also this society may have only weak and fluid leadership structures, they feel no obligation to continue to obey a leader whom they no longer regard as acting in their best interest, with smaller family groups potentially leaving a band group to seek another if they don't feel they are being treated well and if the majority of the tribe does not feel a leader has their best interest at heart a society without much in the way of institutions means a leader disliked is going to have a very limited ability to command the obedience of others. Likewise the leader may have a limited capacity to command a monopoly on the use of force, with it potentially being acceptable for people to act individually to avenge a wrong or perhaps spontaneously as a group to exclude someone who is breaking the norms. The leader of the group is also unlikely to do many other things that a state may do like collect taxes, with such a band society often being based more on a leader's ability to distribute resources such as the loot from a raid or meat from the livestock the leaders owns or the animal they lead a hunt to kill as a means of achieving loyalty rather than a system where leaders consolidate resources via taxing, collecting rent from, employing or owning other people. The urbanised society may well in some ways include the capacity to live various kinds of life styles, at least if you're in the right social class, thanks to the wider variety of goods it can produce and the wider number of socioeconomic niches it may have. They also have leaders at the top who have the institutions by which they can say that only they are allowed to set the laws and only their appointed judges may decide who is innocent and who is guilty. They may collect the tariffs from the peasants who live on their land, or the taxes from the people, or demand corvee labour. They may hold people in bondage and force them to remain on a particular piece of land or at least prevent them from leaving the kingdom and going off into the wilderness. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States I think is an excellent source of inspiration I think for thinking about things like frontier environments and the wilderness and the like in my adventures.

This video comes off the same as new players who just read the titles of the alignments and didn't bother to actually read the explanation for them.

Personally not sure about this one. There's an ever-present sense of disdain for the concept of chaos as presented here that looks at the gods aligned with it with blood-stained lenses. The concept of what makes a person chaotic aligned seems to fall pretty far afield of what the 5e makers intended, as evidenced by the fact this analysis places plenty of these chaotic-aligned gods as neutral instead. The disdain is once again evident as the chaotic good gods are almost unilaterally viewed as neutral good instead.

now all we need is most good, and most lawful god

This is fun! I feel like one of the best depictions of a chaos 'deity' I've seen in ttrpgs is the Traveler/Artagan in CR. Boy does he have *range.* One moment he's pretending to be a silly little guy making raunchy sketches, the next he's strangling someone for fun. What a guy

Esper, this is Idris Eldritch on my alt account. I just can't stand how much Wizards dumbed down the gods portfolios in 5th edition!

The Great D M is the most chaotic force in D&D, followed closely by... Players.

Chaos is secrets of magister lore

“We’re particularly sensitive to bad things. Bad things can hurt us, they can even kill us.” That’s not to say good things can’t I assume, seeing as anything can prove harmful if in high enough quantity.

Discipline is freedom... yes yes officer!

Christ bless you, bro got philosophical in this one

makes me sad to say cyric always acts according to evil because maybe it's technically true but I'm always very "nobody understands him like i do. hes misunderstood" about him lol. he's my patron in the main long running campaign im in and he gave me a nice necromancy necklace so i think he's quite nice actually (delusional)

Your take on chaos as an alignment type is the reason we have such crappy players trying to play CN as some kind of lunatic.

Not done watching but the most chaotic deity better be Heath Ledger joker!

Part of the problem is the fact that "Law" and "Chaos" has never been defined particularly well. The idea originally came from the Medieval notion of Order and Chaos but D&D got it from Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions and Michael Moorcock's iconic Eternal Champion novels, which were very popular when D&D was first being written. (Moorcock was very influenced by Anderson, so it was a double influence through Anderson.) Order meant "world of civilization" basically, or under the rule of the rightful emperor and church. In Medieval Europe this would be the Catholic Church and the Pope of Rome, with people arrayed in the "Great Chain of Being", which encapsulated even animals, plants, and matter. Chaos meant the world outside of that. It applied to other civilizations (e.g., Islam) but very definitely to non-"Peoples of the Book". Interestingly while I agree that barbarians (so-called) often lived by a code, things like their political alliances and even their religious beliefs were often frequently changing. Even tribal identities changed to suit the blowing political winds and this change is one reason markers of tribal identity become so personal and strong among nomads and pastoralists, as they are in Judaism or in historical societies that did things like practice head deformation (Sarmatians, Huns) or heavy tattooing and body modification (Scythians).

The description of 'tribal life' at 2:40 is nonsense. Since tribes are so tightnit the 'safety net' is literally the community.

Umm...no. if we are talking about real Hunter Gatherers, they do not have strict hierarchies or roles on average - you can always find outliers. The people you showed to refer to as "tribal" are actually "civilized" (i dont like the terms) and have domesticated animals and plants they mostly rely on. Its with large scale organization/wealth accumulation that you get "laws" and strict hierachies. Hunter gathers work like 4 hours a day and rarely war with each other. Its those "civilized" folk with their domesticated animals and plants who adhere to strict societal expectations, class hierachies that protect the rich, and so forth. I think someones conservarive politics is bleeding into their DnD lore.

Is this Esper's way of saying he's having a midlife crisis?

No, I disagree with that. The question of freedom is a philosophical question, and first and foremost you have to distinguish between "positive freedom" (freedom to do ...) and "negative freedom" (freedom from ...). "Law-abidingness" and discipline can certainly help to achieve the positive variety, but one can never achieve freedom from e.g. rules, conventions or ideologies without causing some degree of unrest and chaos. I think the fundamental misunderstanding here (and in Dnd in general) is that order and chaos are some kind of human characteristics. But they are not. They are a way of describing conditions in our world, and they are not objective because they depend on the knowledge, values and perceptions of the people who apply them.

Kezef the Chaos Hound eats Gods hes prob the winner.

i ask myself why in baldur's Gate 3 they didnt use Eilistraee as opposite of Lolth (for people who want to play a good Drow (like myself)

Speaking of chaos. What's your opinion of tharizdun? I always felt like he was childish. Like most multi-versal threats, it kind of feels like playground antics. Like, "My bad guy is stronger than yours." i dont know if it's just me who feels that way.

The intro to this video was such a fabulous low-key dunk on a big slice of modern society! Loved it!

Do a video ▶️ all about Half-Orcs specifically next.

Is this an opinion on chaos or what the title says?