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Altair_the_Vexed
2013-05-26, 03:20 AM
I'm researching for my blog again (http://running-the-game.blogspot.co.uk/)! This time, I'm looking for opinions regarding alignments.

I don't only mean the D&D alignments. There are other games that have ideas that are close to alignments - for example: WoD uses Nature / Demeanour (or Virtue / Vice, depending on which edition you're playing), so for the purpose of this thread, I'd like to consider any moral or ethical label that you apply to your character to be an "alignment".

So, the questions: What do you like about alignments? What do you dislike about alignments? What is your preferred alignment system? ("None" is a valid answer.)

TuggyNE
2013-05-26, 03:50 AM
In case anyone wishes to read past here without seeing previous answers, I've spoiler'd my post.1. I like the descriptiveness of alignments; the ability to measure and discern certain key aspects of a personality is quite handy, as is the ability to quickly boil down an overlong discourse on moral and ethical ideas or practices for a brief summary. The team-flagging nature is good, although sometimes the teams in question are maybe not quite so thoroughly opposed as all that.
2. I dislike the imprecision of most of the terms, and (worse) the baggage terms tend to carry. Good and Evil, for example, have a whole lot of often contradictory implications, and while it's convenient not to have to explain the very basic idea, it's annoying if you want any kind of rigorous system, since you basically have to relearn the concept from scratch for that system's quirks.
3. I don't have a favorite alignment system; I do have a "least-hated" alignment system, and it's probably bog-standard G/E/L/C, possibly with tweaks. But I'm still considering alternatives.

Rhynn
2013-05-26, 04:00 AM
What do you like about alignments? What do you dislike about alignments?

Which alignments?


What is your preferred alignment system? ("None" is a valid answer.)

For what game? They create different effects, and you want different effects for different games.

For old-school D&D, Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic as seen on Grognardia/in Dwimmermount and in ACKS and implied in OD&D. More Anderson than Moorcock.

Elric!'s alignment system is great, too.

Craft (Cheese)
2013-05-26, 05:08 AM
For the purposes of this post, I will presume that by "alignment" you mean a system where a label is placed upon the character describing their personality and/or ethics, with either explicit rules for or the implicit assumption of player punishment if they act outside of or against this label.



What do I like about alignments? Little. Occasionally, you see someone come up with a clever implementation, but ultimately I've never seen one succeed.



What do I dislike about alignments? Alignment the right answer to a wrong question. That question is "How do I enforce or encourage in-character behavior?"

I used to think people who disparaged "metagaming" were silly. I thought "not metagaming" meant "I waste my actions not using Fire or Acid on the troll and pretending to wonder why it won't die, because my character doesn't know how troll regeneration works even though I do" and that just didn't feel right. I was really confused because this hatred of "metagaming" seemed to be a universal thing and nobody could give me a satisfactory answer as to why.

It turns out we agreed all along: My obviously ridiculous "not metagaming" scenario was actually metagaming all along. Roleplaying has nothing to do with what your character actually does and everything to do with how you think and feel and arrive at these decisions. It's about maintaining the illusion of a secondary reality. Metagaming is when this illusion shatters: You're back in the primary world again, looking at the little abortive secondary world from the outside. When I realized I understood about troll regeneration but my character had no good reason to, that's when the illusion shattered, not when I took my action either way. I stop thinking of the character as myself and start thinking about her as a little sock puppet and how best to handle her.

The problem with the question is there's no such thing as in-character behavior, only in-character thinking. Because roleplaying proper is purely internal whenever we say someone is "acting out of character" what we're really doing is speculating as to the player's motives and thought process. Maybe they arrived at that decision through roleplaying, maybe they didn't: We can't know for sure unless they decide to tell us. By using alignment mechanics to focus on the result rather than the process I think we actually damage roleplaying by polluting the player's decision-making process unnecessarily. What we need are mechanics that help keep players in the secondary world, not slap them on the wrist when we suspect they've broken out of it.



What is my preferred alignment system? None, at least for the definition of "alignment" that I stipulated above. If we broaden the definition to include anything that anyone has ever called Alignment, my favorite is what you find in Lamentations of the Flame Princess's default fluff. Alignment in that game represents metaphysical influence rather than behavior: A Lawful character is a literal Chosen One destined to advance the causes of the gods, whether they like it or not. A Chaotic character is an Antichrist destined to help to bring about the end of the world, again whether they like it or not.

Amphetryon
2013-05-26, 05:42 AM
1. What do you like about alignments? Alignments, in theory, are a good tool for getting into the particular mindset of your Character, allowing you to understand motivations and behavioral triggers that will make your Character feel more fleshed-out.

2. What do you dislike about alignments? Used improperly (a subjective term), alignments become a tool for the GM/Storyteller to enforce behavior or otherwise railroad Players into matching his or her preconceived ideas of how a Character will act, preventing any organic growth of a Character in response to a circumstance.

3. What is your preferred alignment system? ("None" is a valid answer.) Their games had/have some well-known issues, but I rather liked how the Palladium systems (Rifts, and Ninjas & Superspies, for example) handled alignment, by giving concrete examples from popular culture of behavior that conformed to a particular alignment.

Yora
2013-05-26, 05:44 AM
1. It's a quick reference for GMs to instantly get a general idea about how the character or creature would behave when encountering the PCs.
2. Alignment, if it follows the good/evil line in some way or another, tells you clearly who is a good guy and who is a bad guy. In reality, there are no good guys and no bad guys, and it usually ends up with the assumption that the good guys would never do anything wrong and that the bad guys are always okay to kill without second thought. The tendency of even the defense industry to call "enemy combatants", "opponents", or "attackers" simply "bad guys" in promotional material is pure insanity. And I think it makes a very weak game if the players approach interaction with people in the game world with the same black and white, no questions asks mentality.
In addition, alignment doesn't really add anything useful or interesting to the game that wouldn't be there without it.
3. The only type of "alignment" I actually like is the Allegiance system from d20 modern and used in the Conan d20 RPG (any my homebrew setting). Under allegiance, you don't have a clear classification of how a person does things, but rather write down to what groups and ideologies the character feels strongly commited to.
Allegiance is a tool that is actually useful for players as a reminder of the concept for their character, especially if that concept is for a character with moral values different from their own. If there is a situation in which it is not immediately clear what options is the "good" one or the "evil" one, a quick look at the allegiances might help a player to remember what values he wanted the character to have. For example, a character with the allegiance "Police Force" would probably tend to cover for his fellow cops, while a character with the allegiance "Justice" might instead report them.

Altair_the_Vexed
2013-05-26, 05:59 AM
Thanks for the answers so far!

It seems that a couple of questions need my attention:

Which alignments?
A: Any you care to mention.


For what game? They create different effects, and you want different effects for different games.

For old-school D&D, Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic as seen on Grognardia/in Dwimmermount and in ACKS and implied in OD&D. More Anderson than Moorcock.

Elric!'s alignment system is great, too.
A: Again, any alignment system.

These are deliberately open questions - feel free to bring up any RPG alignment, as I said, in bold, in the OP.

Rhynn
2013-05-26, 06:39 AM
A: Any you care to mention.

A: Again, any alignment system.

These are deliberately open questions - feel free to bring up any RPG alignment, as I said, in bold, in the OP.

That's just evil. I own something like 50 RPG core books, and I am more than a little obsessive about discussing them. The questions are almost ridiculously broad. It's impossible to deal with them comprehensively. If you'd narrowed one of them down a bit...

Warhammer FRP 1E
Alignments were, as far as I recall, completely irrelevant and boring in play. They were just vague descriptions of your character (Lawful, Good, Neutral, Evil, Chaotic). They just never came up, and I'm not sure NPCs were even given alignments, so the whole system might as well not have existed (and probably mostly did for legacy reasons). For a game where Chaos is such an active and real force in the world, that's a bit odd! 2E dropped them entirely, AFAIR.

RuneQuest (mostly 3, but also 1-2 and MRQ1-2 and RQ6) & HeroQuest
I'm not entirely clear on 1st and 2nd editions, since I'm mostly familiar with 2E only through Cults of Prax and the other cult books (and have never quite figured out if 1E is actually distinct from 2E). Alignment was a bit vague. In theory, it's very important, in that Chaos is a very real and powerful force that tries to drive the world into entropy and the void, and leaves an indelible mark on anything it mutates or corrupts. But in practice, I never figured out what cults were aligned with "Law." Did that mean any cult opposed to Chaos? But all non-Chaotic cults are, except Lunar cults. Does it mean cults that actively oppose Chaos, like Orlanthi and Uroxi? Who knows!

So, RQ "alignment" (not actually a term ever used) boils down to "Chaotic or not," but even so, that's pretty important in play: if something is Chaotic, players generally may take this as carte blanche to destroy it, and some cults require them to. Some players criticize Chaos as providing "easy enemies" (no consequence to fighting them), but given that its use in a given game is up to the GM, and it plays an enormous role in Gloranthan mythology, I think that's just silly. Besides, the whole assumption of "Chaos is good to destroy" is almost necessary for some subtler Gloranthan philosophies to really "work" on the players: for instance, the assumption is needed in order to throw players for a loop if their character is Illuminated and "understands" that Chaos in itself is not good or bad; or when you "turn the tables" and have them play Lunars, who are taught the same basic thing from the get-go.

HârnMaster (and Chivalry & Sorcery)
HM's lineage from C&S is as clear, IMO, as C&S's descent from D&D. C&S 1E started out with alignments, C&S 2E replaced them with Piety, and by C&S 5E alignments were back. They were divided into sub-alignments: Lawful (Saintly, Devout, Good, Virtuous, Worthy, Trustworthy, Honourable) Neutral (Law Abiding, Worldly, Corruptible) and Chaotic (Unscrupulous, Base, Immoral). I've never played C&S so I can't much speak to them.

In HârnMaster, the lineage is obvious, although it's now called Morality: both games default to rolling your alignment (but, as is often the case in HM, you're expected to use common sense and may choose them), and several of the same descriptors are used (Law Abiding, Worldly, Corruptible, Unscrupulous). The effects are mostly nil: it affects what deities you can worship, sort of (each has a range of Morality scores for worshippers), and it gives some idea of how your character would behave, but you choose it based on how you want them to behave.

D&D
D&D alignment mostly got boring, especially after 2E. In 1E and by-the-book 2E, it's an actual philosophical alignment: your stance on the conflict of Good and Evil and the conflict of Law and Chaos. Especially the ethical alignment (Law-Chaos) is very philosophical: being Lawful involves believing that order and law aren't invented by mortals, but come to them from without, from the concepts itself. Sort of Platonic, really. The effect, IMO, ends up being almost nil. Even in 1E and 2E, it mostly matters for some class restrictions and magical abilities.

Old D&D alignment is much more interesting: Lawful, Neutral, Chaotic. OD&D doesn't really bother to explain it much, but the implications in the book are downright titillating. For instance, clerics can't advance past a certain level without choosing a side. (This is why there are no True Neutral allowed clerics in AD&.) Chaotic priests wield reversed clerical spells (darkness, cause wounds, etc.). It's really about choosing sides in a cosmic struggle, but more in the Poul Anderson fashion than the Michael Moorcock fashion.

The OSR has really run with this idea. I first read some of the best stuff on it on the Grognardia blog, and Autarch's Adventurer Conqueror King System ran with it: Chaos is chtonic, inhuman, subhuman, and suprahuman all at the same time. Evil is human, but Chaos is from Outside, from the Void, from beyond unaccountable gulfs of space and time. It seeks to destroy civilization. Lawful tries to preserve and protect civilization. You can be Lawful and evil - a tyrant trying to maintain and protect order and society through cruel means, for instance. The game doesn't care. Most people are Neutral, but clerics follow Lawful or Chaotic deities. Beastmen (goblins, orcs, ogres, etc.) are Chaotic, which justifies killing them (if you want to be all philosophical about it): they exist to bring down civilization. Not to supplant it, but to ruin it.

Dungeon Crawl Classics also runs with Lawful-Neutral-Chaotic alignment in absolutely delightful ways. Neutral gets defined as more than "not Lawful and not Chaotic." Neutrality is the Old Ones, who dreamed up Law (Unity) and Chaos (Entropy). Here, Law and Chaos are more Moorcock, particularly with their chosen champions. Mind you, Neutrality actually gets a bit damn scary: it can represent not siding with anyone, but it can also represent siding with the Old Ones, Great Cthulhu, and the Void.

The examples of allegiances are very interesting. On the Lawful side are celestials, angels, demi-gods, and the Lords of Law. On the Chaotic side are demons, devils, monsters, extraplanar creatures, and Chaos Lords. On the Neutral side are elementals, extraplanar undead, and astral and ethereal beings.

Alignment is very important for clerics. In addition to determining their pantheon of gods in th default setting, it determines what "unholy creatures" they can turn: Lawful clerics can turn undead, demons, devils, monsters (e.g., basilisks), chaotic humanoids (e.g., orcs) and chaotic dragons; Neutral clerics can turn mundane animals as well as perversions of nature, monsters (e.g., basilisks), undead, demons, and devils; and Chaotic clerics can turn angels, paladins, lawful dragons, and law-aligned humanoids (e.g., goblins).

That's right, a Lawful PC is on the same side of the Cosmic struggle as goblins.

But there's more. For one, arcane (wizardly) magic is innately Chaotic. Its use can cause Corruption over time, horrible mutations of the body. More than that, wizards seek supernatural patrons to provide them with magical knowledge and power: example patrons include Bobugbubilz the demon lord, Sezrekan the wickedest of sorcerers, Azi Dahaka the demon lord, the King of Elfland, and the Three Fates. None are explicitly given alignments IIRC, but they appear mostly Chaotic, possibly Neutral in some cases.


There's also Pendragon's traits and passions which might be relevant, I guess...

Seharvepernfan
2013-05-26, 07:32 AM
What do you like about alignments?

I like just about everything about them. With two letters, I can give you a picture of a person's moral/ethical outlook and behavior.


What do you dislike about alignments?

The fact that most people are mentally incapable of understanding them. You can blame baggage, I suppose, but the sheer amount of made-up wrongness and false assumptions I see on the internet anytime the word "alignment" pops up....is a bit staggering. I always find myself muttering "just read the damn book!"

I do wish that they had said "Order" instead of "Law/Lawful" in the PHB.


What is your preferred alignment system?[/LIST]

The one in the PHB, when playing D&D at least.

Anonymouswizard
2013-05-26, 08:20 AM
What do you like about alignments?

The fact that they allow both the DM and players to have a reasonable judge of the character's behaviour while leaving room for variation. A good alignment system should be vague.

What do you dislike about alignments?
The fact that they can either be used as straight jacket, be overly restrictive, or be unclear.

What is your preferred alignment system? ("None" is a valid answer.)

Single axis law/neutral/chaos, ideally with law representing stability and order and with chaos representing destruction and disorder. The good/evil axis has the entire 'do the ends justify the means' problem far more than law vs. chaos.

Waar
2013-05-26, 08:32 AM
I'm researching for my blog again (http://running-the-game.blogspot.co.uk/)! This time, I'm looking for opinions regarding alignments.

I don't only mean the D&D alignments

So, the questions: What do you like about alignments? What do you dislike about alignments? What is your preferred alignment system? ("None" is a valid answer.)

my responses are about Dark side score in SAGA and might not be applicable to all alignments
I like that dark side score proveides an easy way to judge how "evil" a character is.
I dislike that it is as easy to gain dark side score no matter what dark side score you already have (which result in characters gravitating towards the extremes and away from the middle)
Preferred aligment system: None

JusticeZero
2013-05-26, 09:30 AM
I'm going to have to rant again on this.

If there is no crunch that has the universe reacting to your alignment quality, then there is no need for alignment and in fact it is a misshapen crutch for awful roleplay in such a case. A fighter in a world without divine gods does not need alignment. It simply doesn't do anything useful.

If the universe does react to the property of alignment, then you need to identify what exactly it is reacting to. You could have acts that are widely agreed upon to be "evil" that count as "good" acts, because the culture has changed. The Gods might have a bunch of rules about how to acquire and manage slaves, and the people who are trying to free the last slaves left over from the emancipation of the slaves are all committing Evil acts right and left by definition.

DnD cosmology has more than two afterlives with various patrons, but there seems to be some idea that there are specific triggers and ways to earn a place in any given one. There is no reason to presume that the gods spend a huge amount of time adjudicating these rules, and the rules are probably not aligned with culture perfectly. Alignment in DnD seems to be a universal property, like electrical charge or mass. Once set in place, it probably won't change much if any.

As such, it is important to define what, exactly, triggers each alignment, what that actually means to the universe, and use only the universal definitions. On the personal level, a fighter does not care in the slightest bit when their alignment shifts. It shouldn't affect their roleplay in the slightest. The Cleric cares mostly because their entire job involves being a servant to an entity that is by definition utterly obsessed with alignment. Their view is likely to be more pragmatic. "Sigh. Ludwig, you are spending time alone in the library enjoying reading. The search for knowledge is noble, but the isolation shifts you away from the graces of the Golden One, and if you do it too much, I might harm you accidentally in battle with spells designed to harm evil. If you must study, please wear a white robe while you are in the library. If you will excuse me, I need to tell Lissa that her choice in clothing is making her too Lawful and stop her from practicing her sword technique so diligently before she loses her fighting powers."

Water_Bear
2013-05-26, 09:36 AM
My 2cp;

What I Like About Alignments: They show what side your character is aligned with in a struggle or conflict. This applies to internal struggles, interpersonal conflict, political strife and even cosmic issues; if you can draw a line and put people on sides, it's useful to know roughly where your character will fall.

What I Dislike About Alignments: Arguments about morality. I don't care if my imaginary elf would be a monster or a saint in your opinion if they actually existed; I just want to play my character. People who take deep moral offense at IC actions which they disagree with, or try to bend alignments to fit their own moral compasses, irritate me to no end. Unfortunately, most alignment systems encourage this with names like "Good" and "Evil" which just beg for people to get preachy.

My Favorite Alignment System: Law/Neutral/Chaos. I like the idea of the conflict between the powerful but decadent forces of Civilization, the noble brutality of the Barbarians and the uncaring destructiveness of the Wild. It has a very strong Pulp feel and is great for figuring out where people Align in a conflict.

SimonMoon6
2013-05-26, 10:46 AM
What I don't like about alignments (in D&D):

(1) They're fairly artificial constructs. It's incredibly hard to decide who fits which categories, to the extent that early editions often had alignments like "Neutral but with good tendencies". Fine, but that's not one of the categories. Think about your favorite fictional characters... then try to decide which alignment they *unambiguously* have, the alignment that nobody could disagree with. Heck, there were people who think Belkar was neutral!

(2) The categories don't even mean anything. Or at least, nobody can agree on what they mean. People will go through extreme mental gymnastics to try to explain why their murderous villain is actually LG (or at least neutral). There are no set rules saying, "Oh, you voluntarily killed an innocent person. You are evil and nothing you do afterwards will change that fact," even though maybe there ought to be such rules. After all, in the real world, we don't let murderers go free if they promise to beat up some monsters. And we shouldn't.

And there's such a disagreement about what is good and what is evil. This is only natural because there are similar disagreements in the real world. What the Western civilizations consider to be "good" is in sharp contrast to what the Middle Eastern civilizations consider to be "good".

And then, there are the "know alignment" or "detect evil" spells. Honestly, evil people in a D&D world *must* know that they are evil and therefore in the wrong. What impact this would have on someone's psychology must be inconceivable. Imagine knowing that everything you choose to do is wrong. Your entire life goals are wrong. Fundamentally wrong. The universe constantly tells you that what you're doing is wrong. Factually wrong. It's not just someone's opinion. You. Are. Wrong. How would that make you feel? Would you consider changing? Would you accept your fate when good people show up to kill you?

And those are just the problems with the good/evil axis. What about the law/chaos axis? That's just absurd and impossible to adjudicate. For example, a typical Fox-news conservative... would he be lawful or chaotic? Well, he's against having lots of government, meaning against having lots of laws. That sounds chaotic to me. But, on the other hand, he has a strict code of conduct (mainly for *other* people to follow, but I digress) and has a strict sense of what laws there should be, that everyone should follow. That sounds lawful to me.

Yeah, I know, the law/chaos axis is a descendant of the Moorcockian stories, but it just doesn't work in this context. And considering how many D&D PCs are "murder hobos", they all ought to be considered chaotic for being beyond the concern of law, right?

(3) They're a crutch for role-playing. Once we can detect that certain people are evil, is it okay for a good character to simply kill them on sight? That's the default assumption and it's hard to argue with. I suppose it works well for brainless dungeon crawls... but it makes for rather crappy role-playing in other situations. It's hard to have moral shades of grey, when there are precisely three types of morality: good, neutral, and evil.


And honestly, shouldn't any decent city then have alignment-detecting people all over the place so that they can kill off anyone who detects as evil? It's not like detecting alignments requires high level spells or anything. But suddenly that takes us into a world so different from our own that it's hard to understand.

And then, there's the other role-playing crutch, the Chaotic Neutral alignment. Since nobody knows what that means, that alignment can justify any action. "Sure, I killed the innocent damsel, which sounds like an evil act. But that's okay, because I'm Chaotic Neutral. I have a get out of plot free card."

Neutral should *not* be "I'm good half the time, I'm evil half the time," but that's how many people interpret it. And without strict rules to tell them otherwise, it becomes hard to argue.

I am reminded of the silliness of the alignment system in the video game Fables II. After completing the game with a virtuous character, I played the game again, trying to be as evil as I could (though even then, my own personal morality made this difficult). Then, once I was as evil as the game could possibly allow, I started to become a good person again through my good works... by eating healthy food and engaging in as much polygamous sex as possible. And I ended the game as a saintly pure person, despite having wiped out villages full of innocent people for no reason other than to prove how evil I could be. That's not how an alignment system should work, and yet that's how people seem to think the "neutral" alignment works: balance good with evil and you're neutral! The lack of any kind of rules to back up my claim that "Once you're evil, you're evil" is somewhat frustrating.


(4) Remember alignment languages from 1st edition? Wow, what a lame idea that was!

Telonius
2013-05-26, 11:30 AM
What I like about alignment: In a universe with deities (or magic) that care about morality and behavior, alignment is a useful shorthand to figure out how that stuff would affect your character. If it's defined well, it's also useful to determined what sorts of reactions a random person would have to (for instance) necromancy, worshiping a god of slaughter, that sort of thing; basically, a shorthand for the sorts of things a society would generally value.

What I don't like about alignment: In a universe that cares too much (i.e. has too many mechanical effects based on alignment), it can mean that a player has to play to an alignment, not a character. Just where the line for "too much" might be is subjective.

It's also really, really hard to define alignment well - or at least in a way that would be compatible with the morality of most of the game's players. In D&D, for example, you have the question of "no-win scenarios" for Paladins, whether or not someone devoted to a formal anarchy could be considered Lawful, and (at least) a significant minority who think that Lawful Barbarians, Lawful Bards, and Chaotic Monks would make perfect sense within the definitions. When there's that much disagreement, you'll get arguments that have more to do with the players' real-world moral sentiments, than how much sense the system makes within the game.






And then, there are the "know alignment" or "detect evil" spells. Honestly, evil people in a D&D world *must* know that they are evil and therefore in the wrong. What impact this would have on someone's psychology must be inconceivable. Imagine knowing that everything you choose to do is wrong. Your entire life goals are wrong. Fundamentally wrong. The universe constantly tells you that what you're doing is wrong. Factually wrong. It's not just someone's opinion. You. Are. Wrong. How would that make you feel? Would you consider changing? Would you accept your fate when good people show up to kill you?


Under this sort of a system, Evil wouldn't be "wrong," it would just be "Evil." To an Evil person, the morality of a Good person is "wrong" (as in, "incorrect.") A Cleric of a Lawful Evil god gets a Detect Evil cast on him, and pings evil; "Great! I'm serving my deity in exactly the way I'm supposed to." The people involved know for absolute certain what's going to happen to their souls afterwards. That Lawful Evil Cleric is actively choosing Baator (or whatever the game system has) as a superior option to the other soul destinations.

Rhynn
2013-05-26, 12:22 PM
(1) They're fairly artificial constructs. It's incredibly hard to decide who fits which categories, to the extent that early editions often had alignments like "Neutral but with good tendencies". Fine, but that's not one of the categories. Think about your favorite fictional characters... then try to decide which alignment they *unambiguously* have, the alignment that nobody could disagree with. Heck, there were people who think Belkar was neutral!

:smallcool: Easy. Elric is Chaotic then later Neutral, Corum is Lawful, Fafhrd and Mouser are Neutral, Conan is Neutral despite ending up slaying a lot of Chaotic things, Paksenarrion is Lawful, Sauron is Chaotic and everyone opposing him is Lawful...


(4) Remember alignment languages from 1st edition? Wow, what a lame idea that was!

Yet Abyssal, Celestial, and Infernal make perfect sense...


And then, there are the "know alignment" or "detect evil" spells. Honestly, evil people in a D&D world *must* know that they are evil and therefore in the wrong.

Detecting evil, etc. explicitly doesn't work this way in AD&D (2E, anyway).

And at the risk of repeating an argument from another thread, "evil" doesn't mean the same thing to everyone, and spell names are just rules constructs. The clerics might think of/call the spell as "detect piety" or "detect might" or "detect righteousness" or whatever else. Any notions about gods etc. coming down with definitions of "good" and "evil" (probably on tablets of some sort) are setting-specific.

Seharvepernfan
2013-05-26, 12:50 PM
Remember alignment languages from 1st edition? Wow, what a lame idea that was!

I liked those. Haven't you ever talked to somebody and just knew that they agreed with you on things or felt how you did, just based on how they talk and what they say? It's not really a "language" so much as a choice of words.

You weren't supposed to show them in public, just like how you're not supposed to talk about your inner beliefs in public.

Mastikator
2013-05-26, 01:05 PM
So, the questions:
What do you like about alignments?
It streamlines things and helps people who are new to RPGs by giving them more or less clear guidelines on how to make up a character's "character". I like that it gives the character some cosmic "right and wrong" significance.
What do you dislike about alignments?
It steals attention away from doing a more in depth and nuanced (less linear) character personality, and it tends to lump together personality traits unnecessarily, which IMO is destructive to roleplaying.
Sometimes a cosmic "right and wrong" is not appropriate.
What is your preferred alignment system? ("None" is a valid answer.)
The Exalted one. It was years since I played that so I don't remember the names of the things, but I thought it tied well into the mythos and well described the character.

QuidEst
2013-05-26, 03:43 PM
What do you like about alignments?
I like that there's an easily recognizable description of a character's attitude that has nerdy connotations and allows for lots of jokes.
What do you dislike about alignments?
I dislike having another player argue with my interpretation of my character's alignment. (This is the DM's job if it's necessary.)
What is your preferred alignment system? ("None" is a valid answer.)
The D&D/Pathfinder system. It's well-recognized, and fun to place my characters on.

Rhynn
2013-05-26, 06:40 PM
I liked those. Haven't you ever talked to somebody and just knew that they agreed with you on things or felt how you did, just based on how they talk and what they say? It's not really a "language" so much as a choice of words.

IMO they'd make more sense if everyone didn't have to have an alignment. Really, the alignments in 1E AD&D (and by-the-book 2E) are so dang ... powerfully philosophical it seems unlikely that regular people would have an alignment. Then they could be secret languages of faith or philosophy or of the planes tied to the languages. They'd also work better if they weren't automatically known.

They could also be considered "modes of speech" that allow communication on specific alignment subjects (IIRC the 1E rules hint at this) and allow people to recognize each other as sharing the same philosophy, but still require a shared language for communication.

All that said, I don't remember really ever using them in BECMI when I played that as a kid.

Sutremaine
2013-05-26, 06:47 PM
I like just about everything about them. With two letters, I can give you a picture of a person's moral/ethical outlook and behavior.
I'd really like to see a picture that depicts Roy, Eugene, Durkon, Miko, O-chul, and Hinjo equally well.

TuggyNE
2013-05-26, 08:01 PM
I'd really like to see a picture that depicts Roy, Eugene, Durkon, Miko, O-chul, and Hinjo equally well.

I assume you mean pre-fallsville Miko? :smalltongue:

Also, Roy's mom, whose name I have conveniently forgotten.

Seharvepernfan
2013-05-26, 08:06 PM
I assume you mean pre-fallsville Miko? :smalltongue:

Nah, they're all basically loyal and moral stiffs who work with legitimate authority and oppose evil.

Greylond
2013-05-26, 08:20 PM
So, the questions:

What do you like about alignments?
For a Medieval Fantasy RPG I like an alignment system that highlights Heroic Characters in a Good vs. Evil way. Or even a system that allows for "Dark Heroes" that work for the side of Good.

What do you dislike about alignments?
I strongly dislike how over the years D&D alignments have gone from describing base Good/Evil Morals and Society/Individual Freedoms(and nothing else) to asystem of also describing the character's Personality, i.e. 1st Ed AD&D vs the later systems where a "Chaotic" character is impulsive and almost random in personal choices.

What is your preferred alignment system?
The newest version of HackMaster, which has an alignment system that is strongly influenced by 1st Ed AD&D.

Greylond
2013-05-26, 08:37 PM
There's also Pendragon's traits and passions which might be relevant, I guess...


+1 to this!

Scow2
2013-05-26, 09:17 PM
I'd really like to see a picture that depicts Roy, Eugene, Durkon, Miko, O-chul, and Hinjo equally well.

Surprisingly, I can definitely see the similarities between all of those in terms of outlook and behavior, although they are to different degrees. The result is overwhelmingly blue, though.

Anyway... my answers to the questions:

1. What do I like about Alignment?

On the good/evil axis: That characters that are inarguably virtuous are capable of smiting the evil scum who's existance makes the world a worse place for everyone else. That those who are a paragon of justice have the system recognize them as such, and the depraved and vile can be recognized as such. It also plays strongly into mythology.

On the Law/Chaos axis: This axis only works if the struggle between the spread of order and categorization of the universe and the opposition to such rigid encroachments are an important thing. However, it's nice to be able to take a stand.

2. What do I dislike about Alignments? That people can absolutely and utterly fail to understand them. Craft(Cheese) and SimonMoon6's responses pretty much show everything wrong with people getting alignment wrong. Especially the Law/Good axis.

Also: People failing to understand the murkier Law/chaos axis in D&D. Attempting to define them rigidly is a task in futility, because words are a Lawful construct. It's possible to define law in a structure that covers all situations, but doing so creates a document that takes years of Legal Study to understand. Chaos is antithetical to definition, and can only be vaguely defined at best.

Because words are a construct of Law and Order, Good and Evil cannot be defined as clearly as Law can. Good and Evil are not deontologically defined - it requires flexibility and intuition as much as structured language. Those who claim there's no such thing as Good and Evil have a disturbing tendency to migrate toward the latter end of the spectrum.

Also, something that cannot be stressed enough: Archons, Guardinals, Eladrins, Modrons and Formians, Slaadi(Isn't there a more primal Chaotic outsider?), Demons, Undead, and Devils are not human(Or any other fantasy race): Those that come from Good lack humanity's vile flaws. Those that come from Evil lack humanity's redeeming virtues. Those that come from Chaos lack humanity's sense of community and search for structure. Those that come from Law lack humanity's intuition, emotion, and subjective experiences.

Preffered alignment system?
OD&D's Law-Chaos axis, and AD&D's Good/Evil axis.

Seharvepernfan
2013-05-26, 09:21 PM
Those who claim there's no such thing as Good and Evil have a disturbing tendency to migrate toward the latter end of the spectrum.


I wasn't going to say it, but yeah, I agree.

TuggyNE
2013-05-26, 09:39 PM
I wasn't going to say it, but yeah, I agree.

I assumed everybody knew that, with the possible exception of those making that claim. :smalltongue:

Greylond
2013-05-26, 09:39 PM
I wasn't going to say it, but yeah, I agree.

Yea, +1 to this!

Also, another thing that is related but not exactly Alignment specific is allowing Player Characters of "Monster Races." IMO in Medieval Fantasy RPGs you need races to represent what is Evil and thus needs to be purged from the world, i.e. a constant foil to the "Good Guys" aka the Player Characters. Allowing "Monster Races" as PCs muddles this distinction. One specific reason is related to Alignment. Alignment was(in original D&D/AD&D) intended to be from the point of view of the Human Races(and of course the other "Good Races"). Allowing Monster Race PCs muddles the alignment point of view by showing how a Monster as a "Good Guy" and just protecting his homeland or sheltering her offspring. IMO, an Alignment System must have a set Point of View otherwise the whole system breaks down when presented from "The Other Side" and thus breaks the Theme of the Heroic MFRPG.

Mr Beer
2013-05-26, 09:43 PM
I like having a quick short hand way of deciding what 'team' people are on.

I used to be less keen on the silly, non-real world Good and Evil alignments except inasmuch as it applies other planar creatures. So yeah, demons are explicitly evil for the sake of being evil...people, not so much. Then I decided that's how D&D works, along with all the other things that don't happen in the real world and stopped worrying about it.

The law vs. chaos stuff less important and therefore less interesting to me. Again, I only really like this as it was used to create the Outer Planes around a great wheel.

So I suppose I'm kind of not hugely enamoured of alignments in general but they are so embedded into the game that I don't intend to do anything about it.

If I was ever going to write a fantasy universe (non D&D), there is zero chance that I'd use alignments.

Scow2
2013-05-26, 09:47 PM
I assumed everybody knew that, with the possible exception of those making that claim. :smalltongue:
The exception to this, however, is General Tarquin. Yes, he professes to be above good and evil/the alignment axis is bunk/etc. But that's because he's aware that, as evil overlord, he's supposed to try to discredit the good/evil axis, in an attempt to sway his son over to his side (Which he knows will fail, but he needs to put the effort forth anyway).

the OOD
2013-05-26, 10:53 PM
the basic D&D scale can be useful at the start of a game to communicate character ideas and understand who a character is, but I don't have my players write it on their sheets.

to avoid bad connotations the axis I use are:
(empathic/self-sacrificing) vs. (apathetic/self-preserving)
(holds self accountable for a code of ethics/morals) vs. (dose not hold self ethically accountable)

rough alignment scales are damn helpful, but bad connotations/"you're not following your alignment" arguments are (generally) no enjoyable or constructive.

I must check out pendragon's system, it sounds handy

valadil
2013-05-27, 06:47 AM
Like. I like the questions alignments raise about my character. Anything that provoked discussion about my character is a good thing in my book. I think this is particularly true when the character doesn't fit nicely into a particular alignment.

I also like systems that include alignment as an actual setting mechanic. D&D does this.

Dislike. I absolutely hate some of the misconceptions that come from alignment. The first is that alignment is restrictive. I've seen players insist that a D&D alignment system means you can only play 9 possible characters. This is pretty rare though.

I'm also not a fan of the terminology in some alignment systems. When new players see lawful and chaotic they jump to conclusions about the meanings of those alignments without reading about what they really mean. Evil too. I've seen players go on murder sprees just to keep up their evil quota. That's not what the evil alignment is meant for.

Favorite systems. I'm biased in favor of my own additions to D&D's system. I've never played with them but I'm curious to try.

First off is active and passive alignments. This separates characters who casually belong to an alignment from those who are agents of that alignment. A passive evil character is selfish but doesn't burn orphanages when he gets bored. An active evil character does. The notation for this is a capital letter. ce and cE are different alignments.

The second change is that I like recognizing alignment shifts. Characters should change or at least resist changing over the course of the story. To use Game of Thrones as an example, take Stannis Baratheon. He is introduced as the paragon of LN. But as things progress he sacrifices more and more to gain power. He's on the road to LE. To represent this I'd mark his alignment as LN->LE.

Anyway I like these two changes because they add quite a bit more granularity to the existing system without really changing anything or introducing new concepts.

Raineh Daze
2013-05-27, 08:41 AM
What do you like about alignments?

Handy shorthand for reminding me the general appropriate reaction of this one character out of the many I have. Making it clear to what extent mercenary attitudes and selfishness are likely to come up.

What do you dislike about alignments?

Use as a straitjacket. Misinterpretation of a morally neutral axis to mean that one is better. Oversimplification (especially prevalent with Law/Chaos in later D&D stuff). Assumptions that one's ethical and moral outlook is synonymous with personality.

What is your preferred alignment system? ("None" is a valid answer.)

Hm. Well, I do like the D&D system, when used properly, but I think the oWoD was onto something (or at least V:tM) when it had that hierarchy of sin. They aren't discrete categories, there should've been a bit more effort put into filling in the gaps.

Exalted's got a nice way of describing character personality in a way that gives it mechanical impacts, without getting into morals. Also nice. 2E, at least, no idea about the original or what the next edition'll have.


Easy. Elric is Chaotic then later Neutral, Corum is Lawful, Fafhrd and Mouser are Neutral, Conan is Neutral despite ending up slaying a lot of Chaotic things, Paksenarrion is Lawful, Sauron is Chaotic and everyone opposing him is Lawful...

Sauron would be Lawful, actually. He doesn't want to destroy everything, he wants to control it all. Because everything is too disorganised, see? It's why the Ring's main effect, used properly, is mind control. :smallbiggrin:

Water_Bear
2013-05-27, 09:32 AM
Also, another thing that is related but not exactly Alignment specific is allowing Player Characters of "Monster Races." IMO in Medieval Fantasy RPGs you need races to represent what is Evil and thus needs to be purged from the world, i.e. a constant foil to the "Good Guys" aka the Player Characters. Allowing "Monster Races" as PCs muddles this distinction. One specific reason is related to Alignment. Alignment was(in original D&D/AD&D) intended to be from the point of view of the Human Races(and of course the other "Good Races"). Allowing Monster Race PCs muddles the alignment point of view by showing how a Monster as a "Good Guy" and just protecting his homeland or sheltering her offspring. IMO, an Alignment System must have a set Point of View otherwise the whole system breaks down when presented from "The Other Side" and thus breaks the Theme of the Heroic MFRPG.

Except not everyone wants to play heroes* all the time. Even the oldest editions of D&D gave rules for playing Chaotic Clerics and 4e, despite being built around the assumption that PCs were heroes, still lets you play Chaotic Evil characters. That element of freedom is why tabletop RPGs are so great; you're not forced to follow anyone's idea of "good" or "heroic" if you don't want to.

*Personally I like the classical/Nietzschean conception of heroes as being about amoral power, but the common usage dominates.

Rhynn
2013-05-27, 11:30 AM
Sauron would be Lawful, actually. He doesn't want to destroy everything, he wants to control it all. Because everything is too disorganised, see? It's why the Ring's main effect, used properly, is mind control. :smallbiggrin:

Nope. Sauron is the enemy of civilization and of the Valar, ergo he is Chaotic. It doesn't matter if he wants to control or destroy, that's the conflict: humanity and civilization vs. chtonic dark forces that seek to ruin it. (Moreover, he's the dude who breeds cannibalistic orcs and would happily commit genocide, which are Chaotic.) Sauron may want control in the short term, but in the long term, it's all about destroying and corrupting the work of Eru Ilúvatar.

There's also a matter of pedigree. The original Law vs. Chaos conflict of Eä is Ilúvatar/Manwe/Valar (Lawful) vs. Morgoth (Chaotic) - one creates, the other destroys and corrupts - and Sauron was on Morgoth's side and continued his work.

Saruman I might buy as Lawful, though. I don't think he was looking to be a stooge or a lieutenant, he wanted to be a power to rival and presumably defeat Sauron (and rule himself), and was just willing to use Sauron's own weapons.

Law vs. Chaos doesn't really have anything to do with control. Orcs (the archetypal Chaotic humanoid) can want control plenty. They brutally control anyone weaker than them. But they don't build civilizations, they tear them down.

"Chaos" in the OD&D sense (expanded on my the OSR, like ACKS and DCC) can pretty much be summed up as "Enemy of Mankind." Even when Men serve it - the Mabden (sort of über-humans) in Moorcock's Multiverse serve Chaos, sometimes thinking they're establishing or creating civilization for themselves, but ultimately driving towards ruin, because Chaos seeks a return to the primordial void of endless possibility (but ironically that will ultimately exhaust itself and become nothingness; Chaos is Entropy, too).

Of course, in the Moorcock Multiverse, Law proceeds through civilization and order into an eternal stasis in which nothing moves and changes. That's because, unlike in the more Anderson-based dichotomy, in the Moorcock cosmology Balance ("Active Neutrality") is the "best state" of the universe (but it can never be achieved as a permanent equilibrium, only as a struggle towards the middle when one side dominates, with occasional respite). In the Moorcock system, both Law and Chaos are necessary.


Except not everyone wants to play heroes* all the time. Even the oldest editions of D&D gave rules for playing Chaotic Clerics and 4e, despite being built around the assumption that PCs were heroes, still lets you play Chaotic Evil characters. That element of freedom is why tabletop RPGs are so great; you're not forced to follow anyone's idea of "good" or "heroic" if you don't want to.

I don't think OD&D, Basic, and AD&D 1E were really about playing "heroes" in the sense of "champions of good and right." They were about playing "heroes" in the sense of "bad-ass fighters who are out for gold and glory" (Conan, Fafhrd & Mouser, etc.), or at the most characters like John Carter (who certainly does heroic things, but not necessarily "good"). Certainly, the possibility of being heroes was there, but it wasn't the focus until late 1E when things started shifting and culminated in Dragonlance.

So, uh, yeah, IMO D&D was originally more about these heroes:


*Personally I like the classical/Nietzschean conception of heroes as being about amoral power, but the common usage dominates.

Seharvepernfan
2013-05-27, 12:38 PM
Nope. Sauron is the enemy of civilization and of the Valar, ergo he is Chaotic.

He's not an enemy of "all civilization", just the ones of his enemies. Neither that, nor defying the Valar, is an inherently chaotic act. Sauron is LE, this is made pretty clear.


Moreover, he's the dude who breeds cannibalistic orcs and would happily commit genocide, which are Chaotic

The orcs are just his soldiers; breeding them doesn't make him chaotic. Genocide isn't chaotic, it's evil. The freakin' nazis were LE, and they committed genocide. Stalin was LE, he committed genocide.

I think you're connecting chaos with evil.


Law vs. Chaos doesn't really have anything to do with control. Orcs (the archetypal Chaotic humanoid) can want control plenty. They brutally control anyone weaker than them. But they don't build civilizations, they tear them down.


Wat.

Law vs. Chaos has almost everything to do with control. Some lawful people only want to control themselves, but just some. The rest want everybody else to follow the same rules/laws/whatever. That's control.

We don't know for sure if Tolkien orcs are CE (I bet they are, but they're fairly different from D&D orcs).

Law isn't just about building civilizations, it's about lawful civilizations. Any alignment can build civilizations, and a civilization can be of any alignment.

Raineh Daze
2013-05-27, 01:13 PM
A bigger issue with describing Sauron as 'destruction' is that his beef isn't so much with civilisation as civilisation opposed to him. He liked order. His original boss was Aule. Even the elves learned from him. Guy liked making stuff. Rings, towers, war machines...

It only really fits if you describe those of Numenorean descent as the One True Civilisation. :smallyuk:

Rhynn
2013-05-27, 01:42 PM
Wat.

You keep talking about AD&D 1E and onwards alignment, I was talking about OD&D/OSR alignment. That was like the whole point of my original throwaway comment (hence the :smallcool: ).

(Incidentally, no human in the real world has ever been Lawful or Chaotic, because Law and Chaos don't actually exist; LotFP got that very right.)


Law vs. Chaos has almost everything to do with control. Some lawful people only want to control themselves, but just some.

Nope. Lawful and Chaotic are unrelated to your personality. They're about which side of a cosmic struggle you're on. The problems with AD&D 1E and 2E and D&D 3.X alignment largely arose from increasingly abandoning this notion.

D&D orcs explicitly started out Chaotic (but also Neutral). OD&D, Men & Magic, page 9. They are not Lawful. AD&D confused this issue, too.

It really does boil down to "Enemy of Mankind" and its minions of ruin being Chaotic.

I suppose you can frame the struggle as being about "control," but it's not about "no control" vs. "yes control" - it's about "who controls the universe."


I think you're connecting chaos with evil.

Naw, Chaos is pretty explicitly not evil. Humans can be good or evil, but Law and Chaos are so much more. A Lawful tyrant can do evil in his fight against Chaos. A Chaotic monster can do evil in its fight against Law. Not taking a stance on good and evil is rather the attraction of the three-side alignment for many people who prefer it - it's not about people, it's about a cosmic struggle with two sides (sometimes three, as in Moorcock and Dungeon Crawl Classics).

Now, granted, someone who's Lawful can absolutely commit genocide, too (after all, alignment doesn't tell you what to do, it describes what side you're on), but it's a Chaotic act because it's destruction of people and communities on a grand scale. The point of Chaotic humanoids (such as orcs) largely is that they're trying to genocidally wipe out humans. In the Moorcock cosmology, of course, genocide is more of a tool than an element of either philosophy.

Mind you, evil does have a closer connection to Chaos, because Chaos sort of encourages it. Law encourages moral codes and responsibility, but what place do those have in the ethos of entropy, void, and ruination? Yes, Chaos is also "freedom," but it's freedom without responsibility or consideration. Even in the Eternal Champion stories, where Law is absolutely not "good" (the war of Erekosë, the final fate of a Lawful cosmos in Elric's saga, etc.), extreme Chaos doesn't have that much to recommend itself. That's why Balance is the "correct" path.

Edit:

A bigger issue with describing Sauron as 'destruction' is that his beef isn't so much with civilisation as civilisation opposed to him. He liked order. His original boss was Aule. Even the elves learned from him. Guy liked making stuff. Rings, towers, war machines...

But Sauron's real beef is with the plan of Eru Ilúvatar, just as Morgoth's was. "The Enemy" is Chaos, the Creator who made and ordered the world is Law. The Free Peoples are on the side of Law. They aren't Law themselves, but they're on the side of the Valar in the cosmic struggle.


It only really fits if you describe those of Numenorean descent as the One True Civilisation. :smallyuk:

That you should probably take up with Tolkien. I'm not endorsing his, er... shall we say, "by now anachronistic views."

Since I'm on the topic of Moorcock and Tolkien, here's Michael Moorcock on the topic of Tolkien (http://www.revolutionsf.com/article.php?id=953).