Data
Be wary travelleer, for the lands of Faerun are treacherous. What creatures lurk beyond? Be they friend or foe? The statistics tells all.
Introduction
Dungeons and Dragons is a table top role playing game published by Wizards of the Coast. It is set in a high fantasy setting. In the core modules, players are cast into the land of Faerun, where monsters and creatures are aplenty. D&D is a very statistics based game as almost everything is decided by the luck of the dice. I decided to focus on the monsters within the game and the alignments they fall under. A creature's general moral and personal attitudes are represented by its alignment: lawful good, neutral good, chaotic good, lawful neutral, neutral, chaotic neutral, lawful evil, neutral evil, or chaotic evil. This data was extracted from 5eTools,based on 3 major books published by Wizards of the Coast : Volo's Guide to Monsters, Mordenkainen's tome of foes, and the Monster Manual.
Data Visualisation
I first used a donut chart to document the percentages of different monster types as a whole. I then broke it down further by compiling data the data of percentages of alignments within each monster type.When compiling my data in Google Sheets, I learned about the conditional formatting option and used it to create a heat map. Within my data, there were quite a lot of '0' values. In my p5.js heatmap sketch, I made it so that when the user mouses over to the left, all the units and numbers of the data is visible, but when moused over to the right, the '0' values are blocked out so that you are able to see the heat map clearer. I also made it so that when you click on the screen, the hue changes.
Findings
It is an interesting way to visualise how certain monster types have a bias towards certain alignments. For example, Celestials are always Good aligned and Beasts are mostly unaligned due to them mostly being basic animals. However, we also have to take into account for the number of different types of each monster type. The donut chart illustrates the quantities of each unique species under each monster type. Given that some monster types like Humanoids have such a large quantity of unique species under it, it makes sense that it has a wide range of alignments under it. However, some monster types are also written intentionally to have a certain bias towards certain alignments. Fiends are a group term for things that belong in the Hells, like Devils for example.
Each monster type is just a generic classification designed by Wizards of the Coast in order to easily group the vast expanse of unique creatures that is still ever growing. That being said, as I've only sampled from 3 out of the many books released to this date, these statistics would definitely change up a lot. As the years progress, Wizards of the Coast have begun to move away from type casting monsters to fit specific alignments; creating new settings and species that break the stereotypes set from early editions of the game.
Insights
The disparity between certain alignment types vs monster types generally boils down to 2 things. The sample size of the monster type, i.e. the quantity of different unique species under each monster type leading to a bigger variety of results; and the lore, i.e. how these monster types are written and classified. We also have to take into account how some of these classifications are very broad. Humanoids could refer to any bipedal sentient creature that resembles human anatomy that does not fall under the other categories. This vague classification leads to a very broad array of subjects to draw from. On top of that, as mentioned previously, a lot of these monster types are just simply subject to the setting. Celestials are basically angels, if they fall and become evil, they may be classified as Fiends.
Given that D&D is a role playing game, the alignments given by Wizards of the Coast are meerly a guide. The Game Master can simply choose to ignore these set alignments and create their own set of rules as they see fit. If they will a Fiend to be good, as long as they are able to justify it then it simply becomes canon within their players' universe. This set of statistics on serve as a surface level guide. If anything it's just interesting fun facts at a glance, as the rules of D&D can simply be rewritten as the Game Master sees fit. These are rules created by humans to fit within a fictional setting. Everything goes.
Conclusion
Monsters within D&D are so unique, at times it is quite difficult to define them. They are grouped under specific monster types in order to facilitate an orderly means of classifcation, however at times these rules for classification can be quite vague. This leads to a big sample size of various creatures being grouped under a specific monster type. In theory, the bigger a sample size, the more likely that the alignments of these monsters would be mpore varied. This is the case for monster types such as humanoids or monstrosities. However, the percentage of alignments within monster types is also hgihly dependent on the lore and setting of these creatures. Undead are mostly evil simply because they are either a product of necromancy or are creatures such as vampires, who are programmed to be inherently evil. No matter what the rules and statistics govern, at the end of the day it is up to the Game Master to discern if they wish to follow the rules by the book, or if they would rather change things up simply because they can. These statistics only act as a visual guide. The rules are in the hands of the player and Game Master.