What are the nine alignments on an alignment chart?

The nine come from pairing two axes. Along the top sit Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic. Down the side sit Good, Neutral and Evil. That gives Lawful Good, Neutral Good and Chaotic Good on the top row; Lawful Neutral, True Neutral and Chaotic Neutral through the middle; and Lawful Evil, Neutral Evil and Chaotic Evil along the bottom.

What do lawful and chaotic actually mean?

Lawful and chaotic describe how something relates to rules, not whether it's good. Something lawful keeps to a code, a hierarchy or a promise. Something chaotic follows its own judgement and treats rules as negotiable. Robin Hood is the standard Chaotic Good example: he breaks the law constantly, and he's still the hero of the story.

What is the difference between True Neutral and Chaotic Neutral?

True Neutral sits at the centre of both axes, with no strong pull toward rules or against them and none toward helping or harming. Chaotic Neutral is neutral on the moral axis only. It actively rejects structure, it just isn't doing so for anyone's benefit or at anyone's expense. One is indifferent, the other is unpredictable.

Where does the alignment chart come from?

Dungeons & Dragons. The 1974 original offered three alignments: lawful, chaotic and neutral. Gary Gygax added the second axis in a 1976 article in The Strategic Review, setting good and evil against law and chaos, and the 1977 Basic Set turned that pairing into the nine-box grid. Since around 2018 the same grid has circulated as a meme for sorting almost anything.

What can you sort with an alignment chart?

Anything with enough variety to fill nine cells. Teams sort programming languages, design approaches, project ideas or ways of running a meeting. Outside work people sort fictional characters, snacks, cities and household habits. One rule is worth following: pick a set whose items genuinely differ, or everything piles into the middle and the chart says nothing.

TemplatesPrioritization & matricesAlignment Chart

Alignment Chart

An alignment chart sorts things into nine cells on two axes: lawful to chaotic across the top, good to evil down the side. This template draws both axes and names every cell, from Lawful Good in the top left to Chaotic Evil in the bottom right. Teams use it to place characters, tools, opinions or snacks, then argue about which square each one really belongs in.

Use this template

The nine named cells, both axes drawn, colour-coded green through red by row.

What's included

A drawn lawful-to-chaotic axis. The horizontal arrow across the top, labelled at both ends, so the three columns read left to right.
A drawn good-to-evil axis. The vertical arrow down the left, labelled at both ends, so the three rows read top to bottom.
Nine named cells. Lawful Good through to Chaotic Evil, each square already labelled so nobody has to work out which is which.
Colour-coded rows. Green across the Good row, yellow across Neutral, red across Evil, so a finished chart reads at a glance.
Open drop zones. Every cell is sized to hold a handful of cards or images, not just a single label.

Why make an alignment chart?

Forces a two-axis judgement. You can't just call something good or bad. You also have to decide how it behaves about rules, which is a different question.
Surfaces disagreement fast. Nobody argues about the corners. The fights are over whether something is Chaotic Good or Chaotic Neutral, and that's the interesting part.
Works on any set. Programming languages, project ideas, fictional characters, ways of loading a dishwasher. The grid doesn't care what goes in it.
Warms up a room. Sorting nine boxes of something daft gets a team talking before a workshop in a way that a round of introductions never does.
Holds more than a ranking. Two axes means two reasons an item landed where it did, so a finished chart explains itself without a legend.

How to use this template

Open the template. Both axes and all nine labelled cells copy into your workspace ready to fill.
Pick a set with range. Choose a category varied enough to fill nine boxes; a set where everything is much the same just clumps in the middle.
Add a card for each item. Text or an image, dropped outside the grid to begin with so you can see the whole set.
Place the obvious ones first. A clear Lawful Good and a clear Chaotic Evil anchor the scale and make the rest easier to judge.
Argue about the middle. True Neutral and Chaotic Neutral are where most of the disagreement lives, and that's the part worth doing together.
Share the board. Send the link so people can move cards themselves or leave a comment on the ones they'd contest.

Open the alignment chart in Whimsical

Alignment chart vs tier list

Both grids sort a set of things, but they measure a different number of things. A tier list ranks on one axis, best to worst, so every item lands in a single band from S down to F. An alignment chart uses two axes at once, lawful to chaotic and good to evil, so an item's position carries two judgements rather than one. Reach for a tier list when you want an order, and an alignment chart when you want a personality.

Frequently asked questions

The nine come from pairing two axes. Along the top sit Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic. Down the side sit Good, Neutral and Evil. That gives Lawful Good, Neutral Good and Chaotic Good on the top row; Lawful Neutral, True Neutral and Chaotic Neutral through the middle; and Lawful Evil, Neutral Evil and Chaotic Evil along the bottom.
Lawful and chaotic describe how something relates to rules, not whether it's good. Something lawful keeps to a code, a hierarchy or a promise. Something chaotic follows its own judgement and treats rules as negotiable. Robin Hood is the standard Chaotic Good example: he breaks the law constantly, and he's still the hero of the story.
True Neutral sits at the centre of both axes, with no strong pull toward rules or against them and none toward helping or harming. Chaotic Neutral is neutral on the moral axis only. It actively rejects structure, it just isn't doing so for anyone's benefit or at anyone's expense. One is indifferent, the other is unpredictable.

Dungeons & Dragons. The 1974 original offered three alignments: lawful, chaotic and neutral. Gary Gygax added the second axis in a 1976 article in The Strategic Review, setting good and evil against law and chaos, and the 1977 Basic Set turned that pairing into the nine-box grid. Since around 2018 the same grid has circulated as a meme for sorting almost anything.
Anything with enough variety to fill nine cells. Teams sort programming languages, design approaches, project ideas or ways of running a meeting. Outside work people sort fictional characters, snacks, cities and household habits. One rule is worth following: pick a set whose items genuinely differ, or everything piles into the middle and the chart says nothing.