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[gildarumarth]

I would just like to note that Tolkien was probably referencing World War one rather than World War two as he was a WWI vet.(Though it was probably some of both.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolkien#World_War_I

Tolkien was referencing WWII in LOTR quite obviously, although he always denied doing this. Silmarillion does seem to have some minor hints at WWI.

[Oliolli]

I'd say unicorns go into the Chaotic Good -square. They live in good areas etc. but will skewer any dwarf who comes too close. Other suggestions?

I would just like to note that Tolkien was probably referencing World War one rather than World War two as he was a WWI vet.(Though it was probably some of both.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolkien#World_War_I

Tolkien was referencing WWII in LOTR quite obviously, although he always denied doing this. Silmarillion does seem to have some minor hints at WWI.

I always thought of it as the Cold War from the west's point of view. In the east is a great evil rising to power, in the west are the good guys. Beyond the sea in the west is an incorruptible land. Eastern Europe, Western Europe and the US. To the north are the dwarves, who want to be more or less neutral (by what little I know of LOTR lore) but all in all would be on the west's side here. Think Scandinavia.

[gildarumarth]

LOTR was written before cold war began. Also, Germany is to the east of England. The land beyond the western sea might be incorruptible, but it does not want to interfere with what goes on in Middleearth(Europe).

[Cobbler89]

I would just like to note that Tolkien was probably referencing World War one rather than World War two as he was a WWI vet.(Though it was probably some of both.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolkien#World_War_I

Tolkien was referencing WWII in LOTR quite obviously, although he always denied doing this. Silmarillion does seem to have some minor hints at WWI.

Again, it depends what you mean by "referencing"; Tolkien denied it was an allegory, not that he was inspired by real life. The problem with allegory, specifically, is twofold (and if you dig around on the net I'm sure you can find Tolkien's own take on these from his letters, I just want to make the point here):
1) You start arguing about how "Middle Earth" fits into European geography (despite originating in Norse Mythology as a semi-theological name for the realm of mortals 'twixt Valhalla/paradise and Hell or whatever the Norse thought of as the realm of the giants and other enemies of good, but more on filtering in a moment) and ignoring how things like the creation of the world or like the Ring never being aquired and used by Gondor to end the war don't fit into the WWI/WWII filter or the industrialism vs pastoralism filter or even the fact that you can really pick any filter you want and make it work. I could say that Tolkien's work exhibits a strong hippie bent -- I just have to ignore where it considers civilization in general a dignified thing (the entire conflict winds up restoring an ancient kingdom and all the heroes like that; the ancient kingdoms that have fallen are considered to have made their mistakes but the world is considered the worse for their fall through those mistakes; etc.) and looks approvingly in principle upon bathing! Even in the things that you argue are "obvious" the fit really isn't that tight (and this is equally obvious): for America to have been the "True West" that stays out of wars in Middle Earth, America would have to be far more an idealized paradisical kingdom than any American has ever dreamed of -- and we've had our city-on-a-hill folks pressing "manifest destiny" (a code word for imperialism justified by our superior virtue -- same thing most imperialism is justified by) from before splitting with England -- all of which makes no sense coming from a traditional-leaning English Catholic like Tolkien. The alternative geography-matching filter is that America is Numenor; but Numenor is not a new kingdom, it's the ancient kingdom that fell and whose colonies split off into Gondor and whatever the northern branch Aragorn comes from is (this is why I begin discussions of Tolkien with a note that I'm familiar with much more than LotR but am due for a rereading, har har). Now, it's all very well and good to discuss interesting similarities here and there, to argue their differences, and to try to see what insight can be gleaned from them; but the problem with allegory is that it requires these arguments be the most relevant thing, such that...
2) You miss out on entire things in Tolkien's work that have nothing to do with the allegory one way or the other. For a trivial, fun example, balrogs -- you can have entire debates about whether they can fly, but that will never come up in an allegorical filter unless the filter happens to have a place for balrogs in which their flight or lack thereof is relevant (even if you look at Tolkien's religion and make the mistake of comparing elves with angels and big beasties with devils, that wouldn't really follow -- devils aren't supposed to be of this plane of existence, and "flight" is about as applicable outside it as "shaving one's mustachios"). For a bigger example, it's possible to write entire books about his philosophy of subcreation reflected in The Silmarillion and elaborated upon in some of his letters. I know someone who wrote a thesis on it. There are bits of it that take from medieval philosophy, there are bits of how he reflects it in the Silmarillion that explain why Sauron could pour his strength out into the Ring... are we really going to argue about geography and ignore "how is it that Sauron could pour his very strength into the Ring?" That'd be rather foolish, if you ask me.

So, yeah, if you simply find that the story's got a lot of stuff that's applicable to real life or that stuff in real life helps you understand the story, rock on -- just keep in mind that it's using a particular area of real life as a filter for the story, because of an assumption that the story is just a veiled telling of that area of life, that Tolkien (as far as I know) objected to. Oh, and if you do look his comments up, keep an eye out for the notion of "applicability", which was the more flexible relationship of truth and myth he advocated as an alternative in this matter.



On topic, I think we've got:
Carp = CE
Badgers = CN
Giant Sponge = NE
bugged Giant Mosquito swarms = LX (X being indetermined at this time)

Are elephants LE because the enemy harnesses them in battle (haven't seen that myself yet, so I'm hoping I'm not mixing vanilla up with Fortress Defense here)? Are they particularly famous for anything more than their danger in those situations?

The other famed animals we've got to place into LG/LN, NG, CG and NN/TN:
Unicorn (probably somewhere on the nominally "good" side of the chart, silly as it is)
Rhesus Macaque(s) (if I'm not mistaken these are somewhat social animals irl; do they fill in the third L space?)
Undead ravens
and shoot, I miscounted earlier so we have a slot for one more animal! What's another historically infamous DF animal?

[Oliolli]

Cats

Infamous enough to have a reference to it on the DF main page...

[Cobbler89]

*facepalm* Oh duh. I should've thought of that. 8^)

Cats strike me as obviously True, True, True Neutral: they kill your lesser enemies and annoyances, seem to care about you, don't directly interfere with your business, and yet don't really give a darn if their fruitful multiplication drowns the FPS of their host fort; and most important of all, they defy your notions of good and evil, lawful and chaotic by asserting that they, not you, are the ones with mastery over the metasystem, for you don't adopt them as pets, they adopt you. Anyone disagree? I guess a plausible alternative is that their refusal to bend to others' wishes is chaotic and their general benevolence is good, hence they'd fill the GC spot; but I kinda like the notion that at the end of the day the balanced place is that of the creature infamous for being the secret overlords of the world, beyond even the gods and the demons.

Also, I've heard that monarch butterflies (if I recall correct) are remembered for contributing to the murder of a boat. If that's so, then we could always swap them out with one of the other animals if we have an animal that just won't place interestingly and is only moderately famous and we realize the butterfly fills a spot... we could always swap that out. Basically, we've got a certain measure of surplus/alternative if we need it.

[RabidAnubis]

D&D takes the heaviest amount of "inspiration" they can take from Lord of the Rings as they can without outright plagiarism.  Lord of the Rings, meanwhile, was basically inspired by The ring of Nibelung. 

In it, the villain was a dwarf crafted an artifact ring that gave him the power of the gods in exchange for forswearing all positive emotions. 

The whole thing was an allegory for the Industrial Revolution, and the basic sentiment was that in exchange for industrial might, humanity was giving up its better instincts, what with all that child labor in the factories and tearing people away from their farms through dubious legal means to work in typhoid-choked cities and all. 

Dwarves, living in factory-caves and eating mushrooms were seen as a terrible way to live, whereas elves were seen as living an idyllic lifestyle at peace with nature...

Boy how times change. 

Likewise, Lord of the Rings came off with a very Lawful Evil versus Chaotic Good vibe, with the heroes being rangers and simple farming hobbits, while the villains were tyrants who industrially produced their orcish armies. 

Yet somehow, "lawful" is now seen as more heavily aligned with "good" now, to the point where "Law" and "Chaos" are basically used as stand-ins in games that want to use Good versus Evil (or just Evil versus slightly less obviously Evil). 

Personally, I blame the notion that paladins were somehow paragons of pure good, no matter how relentlessly their brand of "good" has been mocked for the change, although it may well just be the cultural zeitgeist.  Somehow individuality and personal freedom became associated with "acting recklessly and antisocially", whereas conformity became a virtue.

Interesting.  I have learned something today!

[gildarumarth]

I would just like to note that Tolkien was probably referencing World War one rather than World War two as he was a WWI vet.(Though it was probably some of both.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolkien#World_War_I

Tolkien was referencing WWII in LOTR quite obviously, although he always denied doing this. Silmarillion does seem to have some minor hints at WWI.

Again, it depends what you mean by "referencing"; Tolkien denied it was an allegory, not that he was inspired by real life. The problem with allegory, specifically, is twofold (and if you dig around on the net I'm sure you can find Tolkien's own take on these from his letters, I just want to make the point here):
1) You start arguing about how "Middle Earth" fits into European geography (despite originating in Norse Mythology as a semi-theological name for the realm of mortals 'twixt Valhalla/paradise and Hell or whatever the Norse thought of as the realm of the giants and other enemies of good, but more on filtering in a moment) and ignoring how things like the creation of the world or like the Ring never being aquired and used by Gondor to end the war don't fit into the WWI/WWII filter or the industrialism vs pastoralism filter or even the fact that you can really pick any filter you want and make it work. I could say that Tolkien's work exhibits a strong hippie bent -- I just have to ignore where it considers civilization in general a dignified thing (the entire conflict winds up restoring an ancient kingdom and all the heroes like that; the ancient kingdoms that have fallen are considered to have made their mistakes but the world is considered the worse for their fall through those mistakes; etc.) and looks approvingly in principle upon bathing! Even in the things that you argue are "obvious" the fit really isn't that tight (and this is equally obvious): for America to have been the "True West" that stays out of wars in Middle Earth, America would have to be far more an idealized paradisical kingdom than any American has ever dreamed of -- and we've had our city-on-a-hill folks pressing "manifest destiny" (a code word for imperialism justified by our superior virtue -- same thing most imperialism is justified by) from before splitting with England -- all of which makes no sense coming from a traditional-leaning English Catholic like Tolkien. The alternative geography-matching filter is that America is Numenor; but Numenor is not a new kingdom, it's the ancient kingdom that fell and whose colonies split off into Gondor and whatever the northern branch Aragorn comes from is (this is why I begin discussions of Tolkien with a note that I'm familiar with much more than LotR but am due for a rereading, har har). Now, it's all very well and good to discuss interesting similarities here and there, to argue their differences, and to try to see what insight can be gleaned from them; but the problem with allegory is that it requires these arguments be the most relevant thing, such that...
2) You miss out on entire things in Tolkien's work that have nothing to do with the allegory one way or the other. For a trivial, fun example, balrogs -- you can have entire debates about whether they can fly, but that will never come up in an allegorical filter unless the filter happens to have a place for balrogs in which their flight or lack thereof is relevant (even if you look at Tolkien's religion and make the mistake of comparing elves with angels and big beasties with devils, that wouldn't really follow -- devils aren't supposed to be of this plane of existence, and "flight" is about as applicable outside it as "shaving one's mustachios"). For a bigger example, it's possible to write entire books about his philosophy of subcreation reflected in The Silmarillion and elaborated upon in some of his letters. I know someone who wrote a thesis on it. There are bits of it that take from medieval philosophy, there are bits of how he reflects it in the Silmarillion that explain why Sauron could pour his strength out into the Ring... are we really going to argue about geography and ignore "how is it that Sauron could pour his very strength into the Ring?" That'd be rather foolish, if you ask me.

So, yeah, if you simply find that the story's got a lot of stuff that's applicable to real life or that stuff in real life helps you understand the story, rock on -- just keep in mind that it's using a particular area of real life as a filter for the story, because of an assumption that the story is just a veiled telling of that area of life, that Tolkien (as far as I know) objected to. Oh, and if you do look his comments up, keep an eye out for the notion of "applicability", which was the more flexible relationship of truth and myth he advocated as an alternative in this matter.

I apologize for not wording myself clearly enough, but it seems you assume too much from couple of sentences I wrote.

1)By 'reference' I meant allegory, not inspiration. To make it clear, I'm talking about allegory in LOTR, not Tolkiens works in general. LOTR doesn't deal with creation of world and its mythos.
2)I do aknowledge of concepts and ideas that have nothing to do with allegory, yet they don't prove that allegory doesn't exist. You seem to read too much into my remark about the reference.
3)I do agree with pretty much all of your points, thou I still think LOTR is too heavy on WWII references.

[Oliolli]

It seems we'll have some serious problems filling the LG spot...

[GreatWyrmGold]

Oddly enough, standard D&D-style alignment has Dwarves as Lawful, and Elves as Chaotic. 

... Of course, that's partly because the origin of the lawful/chaos alignment axis was actually something more like industrial revolution/pastoralism.

I thought it was more because dwarves had regimented lives and tried to avoid outside influence and stuff, and elves preferred personal freedom over strict laws. Or something like that.

I'll see what I can do. No promises, though.

[Di]

Cats strike me as obviously True Neutral

For me, they're Lawful Evil. "I'm the cat. I shall not harm you in any direct way and shall kill lesser beings that devour your food but I shall slay even those little ones who were beneficial to you. I shall destroy titanic butterflies that assault your fort but I'll trail their poisonous blood inside. I shall comfort you in a moments of sadness but I will slow down your universe and when it stops I'll devour your soul. So is our pact, the one you cannot deny."

Some of my ramblings on other positions:
Lawful Neutral - Elephants. "My ancestors used to slay dozens of bearded ones and I'm proud of their blood flowing through my veins. But the bearded ones showed me delusiveness of space, fed me their fish and taught me to walk in shadows. Thus tusks and my fury shall be pointed at the ones who oppose them"

Lawful Good - Dogs. "We bow to Thee, Our Lords. Taketh us wherever thou shall cometh. Taketh our children and growst them in war beasts to fightest the enemies of Thee. Claimest our lives and let our flesh to sate Thine hunger, makest our bones into arrows to pierce enemies of Thee. We bow to Thee, Our Lords."
(sorry for my not-so-modern English)

Neutral Evil - GCS. "Look what we've got here. A bearded snacks!"

True Neutral - Giant sponge. "Ah, fresh water, delicious fresh water taste you can never become paled on. Peace. Oh, a dwarf, if I ignore it, maybe it'll go away. Aww, it stroked me, I'll let him do it 98 times more, then I'll crush it's brain." 99 strikes later "Ah, fresh water, delicious fresh water taste you can never become paled on. Peace."

[Kogut]

Giant sponge is a perfect true neutral, better than... ekhm, what is this? Pink zombie?

[NW_Kohaku]

I thought it was more because dwarves had regimented lives and tried to avoid outside influence and stuff, and elves preferred personal freedom over strict laws. Or something like that.

I'll see what I can do. No promises, though.

They came to represent that as well, but it was after they were adapted into D&D.

Tolkien elves weren't exactly the free spirits they are in D&D.  They go more the stately dignity and regimented lives route.  D&D altered elves in order to fit more into the alignment niche that was carved out for them, and has influenced the perception of elves ever since.

Of course, the original fae of folklore that elves spring out of were far more "chaotic" in a more literal sense.  They were unpredictable sorts that might gut you and wear your skin for a hat for telling a lie or give you a magical artifact and save your life for treating a sparrow with respect.

[Cobbler89]

Giant sponge is a perfect true neutral, better than... ekhm, what is this? Pink zombie?

I think I can assure you that necromancers will not be in the animal version...

Some great suggestions here -- I will have to take some time to chew them over.

It only just occured to me, in addition, that we could do Adventurer Mode and Fortress Mode variations on the original -- Fortress Mode would substitute something from that for the human swordsman, necromancer, kobold (though maybe it'd just be changed to the color of a thief), adventurer and bogeyman (obviously the substitute is a forgotten beast), Adventurer Mode would substitute something for the miner, the elf merchant and the noble...

[Di]

It only just occured to me, in addition, that we could do Adventurer Mode and Fortress Mode variations on the original -- Fortress Mode would substitute something from that for the human swordsman, necromancer, kobold (though maybe it'd just be changed to the color of a thief), adventurer and bogeyman (obviously the substitute is a forgotten beast), Adventurer Mode would substitute something for the miner, the elf merchant and the noble...

Well, you can probably substitute necromancer with vampire, those kill your dwarves if they can but can experience the same spectra of feelings as normal dwarf would (well except nice drink, masterful food and great bedroom).
As for adventurer, deity and vampire administrator could be put in lawful column (they're [DUTY_BOUND] after all). The former is actually a demon but is done with murders and now performs duties of ethereal entity representative in the world of mortals, the latter carries out the management of state but still kills from time to time.