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Cyberserker
2022-07-13, 12:00 AM
Getting pretty sick of people judging my CN in character actions when my IRL alignment is chaotic neutral. Look, spending all my adventuring money funding a charity orphanage to turn the kids into my own little Oliver Twist style thieves guild is the literal definition of chaotic neutral. I'm committing an act of both helping and corrupting people simultaneously and breaking the law in the process. What's more chaotic neutral than that? Please validate me so my DM can see and doesn't change my alignment. What, you thought there would be a pretense? I'm chaotic neutral, remember? We're the most honest people in the game. We're not on anyone's side.

Velaryon
2022-07-13, 12:34 AM
I've been fortunate enough to not have to play with too many people who use "it's what my character would do" as an excuse for being a jerk at the table. And those that I have had to deal with are generally long in the past at this point.

The first thing to come to mind for me in terms of legit "it's what my character would do" moments is actually from the very first D&D game I ever played in, back in the early days of 3rd edition. Our party had ended up in a forest full of evil lycanthropes, who managed to capture the party (thanks to a weretiger pouncing my fighter while he was climbing into the rope trick and then threatening to end me if the others didn't surrender). The party cleric had his holy symbol built into his armor and refused to remove it or hand it over, even with the DM urging him OOC. So the lycanthropes killed him, which the player accepted gracefully, and brought in a new character.

Pex
2022-07-13, 12:35 AM
It's not a question of what it is you are actually doing. It's a question of how disruptive you are being to the game. Are you derailing the campaign plot everyone else agreed to play and the DM wants to run? Are you monopolizing game time with your own personal story, with or without continuously passing notes with the DM? Are you stealing from the party or keeping found loot to finance yourself and/or your schemes? When the party agrees to do something do you deliberately don't do it or do what you want anyway that happens to ruin the plan? Do you withhold from the party vital information learned? Do you mock other players in whatever decisions or actions they take, especially when it's to help an NPC or otherwise be a 'goody-two-shoes'? When other party members are talking to NPCs do you do or say something that ticks off the NPCs and ruin the conversation, with or without causing a combat encounter?

The more yeses you answer the more you're being a disruptive donkey cavity and that it what everyone is yelling at you about, not because you want to be Fagin of "Oliver Twist".

Pauly
2022-07-13, 01:50 AM
Getting pretty sick of people judging my CN in character actions when my IRL alignment is chaotic neutral. Look, spending all my adventuring money funding a charity orphanage to turn the kids into my own little Oliver Twist style thieves guild is the literal definition of chaotic neutral. I'm committing an act of both helping and corrupting people simultaneously and breaking the law in the process. What's more chaotic neutral than that? Please validate me so my DM can see and doesn't change my alignment. What, you thought there would be a pretense? I'm chaotic neutral, remember? We're the most honest people in the game. We're not on anyone's side.

Theft is evil.
Recruiting and training orphans to break the law is evil.
Creating a guild that follows your rules is lawful.

Nothing about what you’re doing is chaotic or neutral.

Mastikator
2022-07-13, 03:54 AM
Your roleplaying chops are not in question. You're the author of your character, if you decide to make a character that would do disruptive things then you are a disruptive player.

Also being on "not on anyone's side" is disruptive. You're supposed to be on the party's side.

Vahnavoi
2022-07-13, 04:04 AM
The thread title and the question asked have next to nothing to do with one another.

Ideally "it's what my character would do" is true of most or all you do with a character in a game... because that is basics of roleplaying. It's also the most common explanation for why you would do something in a game that you would not do outside of it... because your role dictates or suggests it. Duh.

The phrase gets a bad rep because some people use it to excuse dubious behaviour - in the exact same way people may use "it's just a game", "we're just playing" or "it's a joke" to excuse dubious behaviour. The thing to remember is that a lot of the time, it is just a game, you are just playing or it is a joke, so the behaviour is perfectly fine in that context.

So what, if anything, does this have to do with OP's conundrum?

Well. A lot of D&D players struggle with few basic notions about Chaotic alignments. Despite the fact that they were spelled out in 1st edition AD&D that codified the system. Mostly because 2nd edition forward kept the same terms and framework but changed the definitions, to the point where Chaotic Neutral was called Alignment of lunatics and madmen. This isn't at all what it was about in 1st edition.

What was it about? Individualism and radical freedom. On the level of characters, 1st edition calls the opposition as Law and Chaos being that of large, organized groups versus the individual. The opposition between Good and Evil is the opposition between promoting life and happiness (or "weal") versus promoting death and suffering (or "woe").

Chaotic Neutral, then, puts the concept and pursuit of individual freedom above that of Good and Evil - and might not believe in things such as "Good" and "Evil" to begin with. The balancing act between those things does not happen because it is the goal, but as a result of pursuing that individual freedom above all else, with neither malice nor strong desire to do good.

So, this thing about taking in orphaned kids to raise them to be your thieves' guild... is not "literal definition" of Chaotic Neutral at all. Thieves, in the original iteration, can be of any alignment except Lawful Good. Guilds and charities, meanwhile, imply large, organized groups - engaging in such activities implies Lawfulness. Thieves's guilds and Assassins' guilds are, on paper, archetypical Lawful Evil organizations - creating identity with and demanding loyalty to a group that's fundamentally decided other groups are deserving of exploitation for their benefit. In practice, members of these organizations might fail to be so because they don't actually follow their rules when it isn't to their individual benefit (no honor among thieves).

This a very basic observation anyone with two brain cells could make - highly individualistic people don't necessarily work well in a group. And indeed, the 1st edition books outright say this to prospecting game masters: general agreement and prolonged co-operation can only exist WITHIN an alignment category. Expecting it amidst people with radically different alignments is nonsense. This gaming trope where you have have party members with five different alignment? Yeah it was never meant to work. These kinds of set-ups naturally lead to a situation where two characters are diametrically opposed on some opinion. Why the Hell would the guy who places their individual freedom above all else got along well with, say, a religious militant who believes individual freedom should be subservient to common good? (https://existentialcomics.com/comic/23)

Expecting 100% unproblematic group play, nevermind demanding it, is ridiculous. Yet that is exactly what a lot of D&D players expect and demand. They fail to get that this kind of "Everything is for the Party" mentality is not what Chaotic alignments are about.

Satinavian
2022-07-13, 04:10 AM
If "It is what my character would do" is used i good faith, it is a solid argument. If actions are fiiting for th character and still a problem, the mistake was bringing that particular character into the group/adventure. That is why you always think about that before you start the game. And this is also how you fix those problems most of the time: Changing the PC when the party dynamics just doesn't work or when there is a bad fit to the campaign.

Now, sometimes that argument is used in bad faith. When players want to be disruptive for whatever reason and hide behind their character. But that is rare and in those cases the underlying problem is always something else.

Mechalich
2022-07-13, 05:03 AM
From the perspective of the average human society a Chaotic Neutral individual is only slightly less disruptive than a Chaotic Evil one. Chaotic Neutral characters tend to make a huge mess simply because they prioritize their individual needs and wants above everything else. They aren't trying to hurt people, but if people get hurt - and people used to the norms of a lawful society who don't know what they are dealing with will get hurt - which turns them into a problem that society has to handle irrespective of the lack of maliciousness. This is exponentially more so when the Chaotic Neutral individual isn't helpless (humans aren't actually very good at surviving entirely on their own and individuals of this type have a tendency to end up in dreadful circumstances), but is the kind of deadly superhuman represented by a D&D adventurer with a few levels under their belt.

Accurately roleplaying a CN character is likely to result in that character doings things that causes society to come down upon them like a ton of bricks, almost certainly leading to exile, imprisonment, or execution, almost as rapidly as happens for a CE character (in some cases even more rapidly, because many CN individuals lack the malevolent paranoia that keeps CE individuals a step ahead of consequences). So really, playing a CN character, without some fairly significant restraints that pull the character away from the full-Slaadi experience, is almost as inherently disruptive as playing as CE one.

Considered this way "it's what my character would do" is not a defense, but rather ammunition for prosecution.

Morgaln
2022-07-13, 05:20 AM
Theft is evil.
Recruiting and training orphans to break the law is evil.
Creating a guild that follows your rules is lawful.

Nothing about what you’re doing is chaotic or neutral.

And yet, Robin Hood is the textbook example for Chaotic Good even though he:

Robs people (robbing is arguably worse than stealing)
Recruits and trains people to break the law.
Creates an organized group of rebels that follow his rules.


Alignment was and is the worst idea ever implemented in D&D. It's trying to objectively measure something that is largely influenced by circumstances and subjective opinion. You cannot neatly compartmentalize morality.

Pauly
2022-07-13, 05:39 AM
And yet, Robin Hood is the textbook example for Chaotic Good even though he:

Robs people (robbing is arguably worse than stealing)
Recruits and trains people to break the law.
Creates an organized group of rebels that follow his rules.


Alignment was and is the worst idea ever implemented in D&D. It's trying to objectively measure something that is largely influenced by circumstances and subjective opinion. You cannot neatly compartmentalize morality.

Legends vary but in the most common versions of the Robin Hood story the people he robs either gained their wealth through unfair taxation (nobles) or exploitation of the their charitable donations (abbots) and thus he is returning the wealth to the people from those who unjustly took it.
Nor does Robin raise or recruit people to break the law. People decide to join him because they have either been outlawed themselves, often unjustly, or they believe that John Lackland’s laws and taxations were an unjust usurpation of the true King Richard’s rights as king.
Nor are the outlaws of Sherwood Forest represented as a group trained to follow Robin’s orders in any disciplined way. They are presented as a group of like minded individuals that choose to work together to achieve their aim of returning the kingdom to as it was before John became regent in Richard’s absence. The outlaws are free to leave at any time and in some of the legends less well known outlaws return to their farms because of family reasons.

Alcore
2022-07-13, 06:42 AM
IRL alignment? Unless you found a burning bush and it told you so I doubt that... besides; people are more of a spectrum.


What's more chaotic neutral than that? Please validate me so my DM can see and doesn't change my alignment. What, you thought there would be a pretense? I'm chaotic neutral, remember? We're the most honest people in the game. 1. Acting CN would be a start. The incident feels CE or even LE in some contexts.

2. No.

3. Yep. :smallsmile:

4. Being the most honest is a strong choice of words. CN has a worse reputation than CE...


We're not on anyone's side. And this flawed "That Guy" reasoning is why I have an easier time applying with CE than CN; the sheer amount of honesty is considered refreshing. Unlike that wildcard CN where you have no clue as to how evil or good they are going to habitually remain at.



Also being on "not on anyone's side" is disruptive. You're supposed to be on the party's side. +1 to this and...

When you sit down at the table it is your job to make a member of the party. Even a CE nutjob needs to be a net positive for the group. Not only are you being disruptive but adversarial; what three (or more) positive things do you add by being you?

Vahnavoi
2022-07-13, 06:59 AM
Again, in the original iteration, thieves can be of any alignment other than Lawful Good.

Robin Hood is the archetype of a Good thief, for reason Pauly mentioned. Whether he is the best archetype for Chaotic Good, specifically, is a bit more shaky. As Pauly notes, some of the elements are definitely there, with people joining the Merry Men out of their own free will, etc.. But just as well, in many versions, Robin Hood's actions are founded in opposition of unlawful governance. He is not fighting for freedom of individuals per se, he's figting to restore lawful rule of the land. Characterizing Robin as non-Lawful is hence mostly based on the notion that thievery is socially disruptive - or in D&D's terms, he's Neutral or Chaotic because his opponents are Lawful Evil. With rightful rules on the throne, the motive for Robin's thievery disappears, and so does the objection to him being Lawful Good.

---

EDIT:


IRL alignment? Unless you found a burning bush and it told you so I doubt that... besides; people are more of a spectrum.

The Law - Chaos axis is defined by opposition of large organized groups versus the individual. Nothing exotic is required to determine if a person is group-minded or individual-minded. (https://medium.com/@carole.kanchier/individualist-or-collectivist-which-one-are-you-eec59060b0e4)

Good - Evil axis is defined by life & happiness versus death & destruction. Furthermore, detailed description of the individual alignments place the nine alignments within particular philosophical frameworks. Nothing exotic is required to determine if you are, say a classic Utilitarian versus a moral nihilist.

Also? This is the actual, original alignment graph. (https://images.app.goo.gl/5YNaoNmGLNkEWzb78) This is a two dimensional spectrum. It literally shows each alignment has an area to it and the rules explicitly call out that a person can move within an area without changing their overall alignment, such as a Lawful Good person leaning more towards Law at a point in their life and then towards Good at another. Saying "people are a spectrum" is no argument against Alignment, the actual implementation literally gives you a moral spectrum.

Faily
2022-07-13, 07:25 AM
Again, in the original iteration, thieves can be of any alignment other than Lawful Good.

Robin Hood is the archetype of a Good thief, for reason Pauly mentioned. Whether he is the best archetype for Chaotic Good, specifically, is a bit more shaky. As Pauly notes, some of the elements are definitely there, with people joining the Merry Men out of their own free will, etc.. But just as well, in many versions, Robin Hood's actions are founded in opposition of unlawful governance. He is not fighting for freedom of individuals per se, he's figting to restore lawful rule of the land. Characterizing Robin as non-Lawful is hence mostly based on the notion that thievery is socially disruptive - or in D&D's terms, he's Neutral or Chaotic because his opponents are Lawful Evil. With rightful rules on the throne, the motive for Robin's thievery disappears, and so does the objection to him being Lawful Good.


The Chaotic-part of his alignment could also simply be because he's breaking against the established law of the land and society's expectations. In the Robin Hood-legend (and historically), Prince John *was* lawfully the temporary-regent until King Richard would return. He was lawfully tasked running the country on his brother's behalf. So while Robin Hood might fit Lawful Good (or Neutral Good) in many respects overall, he dedicates himself to a Chaotic-mission in D&D terms by fighting against a lawful ruler.


EDIT: To stay on topic; OP, what is the motivation for your character in creating this thieves guild of kids?

KorvinStarmast
2022-07-13, 07:38 AM
It's not a question of what it is you are actually doing. It's a question of how disruptive you are being to the game. {snip} The more yeses you answer the more you're being a disruptive donkey cavity and that it what everyone is yelling at you about, not because you want to be Fagin of "Oliver Twist". In a nutshell, yes. Teamwork is an implied part of playing in a D&D party.
The thread title and the question asked have next to nothing to do with one another. We also are unsure how many people are in the party, what level of play they are in (low level, medium level, high level) and how many discussions OP has had with fellow players. We then get to this:
Please validate me so my DM can see and doesn't change my alignment. Your DM is free to change your alignment if your behavior doesn't match your professed alignment; you've gotta walk the walk, not just talk the talk. But if you are at the state of the game where you are in argument mode with the DM, and the other players, I'd suggest that you take a step back and discover why you arrived at that point.
"Not getting along well with others" may be a below average grade at this point.
Re engage with your fellow players and see how your character can be an asset to the party.

Well. A lot of D&D players struggle with few basic notions about Chaotic alignments. Despite the fact that they were spelled out in 1st edition AD&D that codified the system. Mostly because 2nd edition forward kept the same terms and framework but changed the definitions, to the point where Chaotic Neutral was called Alignment of lunatics and madmen. This isn't at all what it was about in 1st edition.When I was told by some 3.x ers that CN was sociopaths (having played a few CN in AD&D 1e) I was appalled at that lack of understanding. Since you could not have a good alignment and be a Thief in AD&D 1e, you had to pick something else. (CG rogues/thieves were more acceptable in 2e).
What you are advising me is that this is a product of the game morphing over time due to devs not grasping what was going on with the original two axis scheme. Aha, thanks, that makes sense. The other problem is that it's a continuum along two axes, there are Not Nine Boxes. :smallfurious:


And indeed, the 1st edition books outright say this to prospecting game masters: general agreement and prolonged co-operation can only exist WITHIN an alignment category. Expecting it amidst people with radically different alignments is nonsense. This gaming trope where you have have party members with five different alignment? Yeah it was never meant to work. Indeed. There's an old note that Arneson left during an interview about some back stabbing players creating a need as referee to come up with chaotic alignment and the restraints/penalties that imposed. I'll see if I can find that.

When you sit down at the table it is your job to make a member of the party. Even a CE nutjob needs to be a net positive for the group. Not only are you being disruptive but adversarial; what three (or more) positive things do you add by being you? Nice framework. +1

Kardwill
2022-07-13, 07:46 AM
Your roleplaying chops are not in question. You're the author of your character, if you decide to make a character that would do disruptive things then you are a disruptive player.

Also being on "not on anyone's side" is disruptive. You're supposed to be on the party's side.

Yeah, if a player's only explanation for ruining other players' fun is "it's what my character would do", then maybe play another character? He made that caracter, decided on its behavior, and then took decisions according to this. If the only way to be true to a character is to be disruptive and disrespectful of the other players' feelings, then I don't care if "it's what my character would do" is true or just an excuse, that character is a problem.

But frankly, finding a reason for which your CN thief type can get along with the group or follow the same adventure as the rest of the group should be easy, and even fun. We are social animals, and are pretty good at rationalizing the stuff we do IRL, and we have far more control about our characters' thoughts in the game. A playgroup can usually find goods reasons for the paladin and the rogue to play together, as long as the 2 players are willing to respect each other's fun, and willing to make some small adjustments about their characters' backstory/motivation/relations :)

And if you really want your character to do something that you know will cause friction (like recruiting kids into a city-based thieves guild when your PC group is a bunch of goody-2-shoes never staying at the same city), then discuss it with the players. See if you find a way for it to be interesting/fun/palatable for all at the table, or how to adjust the idea to not disrupt the flow of the game. Maybe the paladin will agree to "never find out as long as you don't do anything blatant, but please don't eat up too much gametime"? Sure, the surprise will be lost, but I think that surprising the other players with something they find unpleasant or disruptive is not worth it. Some predictability in your CN character is a small price to pay to avoid unpleasantness at the gametable.

Morgaln
2022-07-13, 09:23 AM
Legends vary but in the most common versions of the Robin Hood story the people he robs either gained their wealth through unfair taxation (nobles) or exploitation of the their charitable donations (abbots) and thus he is returning the wealth to the people from those who unjustly took it.
Nor does Robin raise or recruit people to break the law. People decide to join him because they have either been outlawed themselves, often unjustly, or they believe that John Lackland’s laws and taxations were an unjust usurpation of the true King Richard’s rights as king.
Nor are the outlaws of Sherwood Forest represented as a group trained to follow Robin’s orders in any disciplined way. They are presented as a group of like minded individuals that choose to work together to achieve their aim of returning the kingdom to as it was before John became regent in Richard’s absence. The outlaws are free to leave at any time and in some of the legends less well known outlaws return to their farms because of family reasons.

I agree with everything you are saying here but you claimed that theft is evil and training to break laws is evil. Considering that "steal from the rich" and "outlaw" are major defining features of Robin Hood, that should make him evil by your argument. My point is that you cannot infer alignment just by classifying certain actions as good and other actions as evil. Intentions and circumstances matter; in fact, even subjective opinion can matter (rather like the difference between terrorist and freedom fighter).
In other words, I refuted your point of "theft is evil" and in extension that "OP cannot be acting CN" by pointing to a well-known example of thief that is commonly not considered evil in any way, shape or form. Although I'm sure the Sheriff of Nottingham would disagree...

Alcore
2022-07-13, 09:29 AM
The Law - Chaos axis is defined by opposition of large organized groups versus the individual. Nothing exotic is required to determine if a person is group-minded or individual-minded. (https://medium.com/@carole.kanchier/individualist-or-collectivist-which-one-are-you-eec59060b0e4)

Good - Evil axis is defined by life & happiness versus death & destruction. Furthermore, detailed description of the individual alignments place the nine alignments within particular philosophical frameworks. Nothing exotic is required to determine if you are, say a classic Utilitarian versus a moral nihilist.

Also? This is the actual, original alignment graph. (https://images.app.goo.gl/5YNaoNmGLNkEWzb78) This is a two dimensional spectrum. It literally shows each alignment has an area to it and the rules explicitly call out that a person can move within an area without changing their overall alignment, such as a Lawful Good person leaning more towards Law at a point in their life and then towards Good at another. Saying "people are a spectrum" is no argument against Alignment, the actual implementation literally gives you a moral spectrum.I think that those labels are irrelevant and harmful when a person tries to embody them. If you say you are "classical Utilitarian" that only tells me that is the label you wish to embody. It does not mean you actually embody that. And classical Utilitarian paints a much clearer picture than chaotic neutral ever could for the people hearing it.


I am making no argument against alignment (an in-game mechanic). I am making an argument against trying to embrace an in-game alignment in real life. I feel it is detrimental to his or her own health; preticularly in the social area.

I carry no label for I know that I will forsake such a thing the moment it interferes with my own morals.



When I was told by some 3.x ers that CN was sociopaths (having played a few CN in AD&D 1e) I was appalled at that lack of understanding. alas... if I were to run a DnD game seeing CN would be a red flag. CN has been warped by bad players.

LibraryOgre
2022-07-13, 11:46 AM
Theft is evil.
Recruiting and training orphans to break the law is evil.
Creating a guild that follows your rules is lawful.

Nothing about what you’re doing is chaotic or neutral.

I disagree on pretty much every point.

Theft is chaotic; it only becomes evil if the foreseeable consequence is harm to another person (i.e. stealing money from the poor, causing them starvation, is evil; stealing money from the rich, who are mildly inconvenienced, is simply chaotic).

With point one refused, point two becomes irrelevant.

Creating a guild that follows your own laws is NOT lawful; it's chaotic, because the laws and rules are dependent upon yourself, and they are enforced by your strength (be it physical, magical, or mental). Chaos is not the absence of rules... it is the dependence of those rules on a singular individual, rather than institutions which uphold themselves through the effort of people directed towards those institutions.

I think making a thieves guild out of children you're rescuing from poverty is fairly chaotic neutral... you're providing them a benefit, but mostly for your own ends (morally neutral; selfish, but without the destructive edge that pushes it to evil), and you're using them to further your own ends at the expense of other people. It might cross into evil, especially if you're encouraging them to hurt people (either directly, through violence, or indirectly, through theft of necessary resources), but so long as you're keeping above that threshold (especially personally), you stay out of evil.

Slipjig
2022-07-13, 12:13 PM
This kind of reads like a fake letter to an advice column. I just wanted to point out that not caring whether your actions hurt others so long as you get what you want is NOT Neutral. You don't have to be deliberately spreading woe to qualify as Evil, it just has to be the predominant outcome of your actions.

And I think the issue may be less about alignment than it is about whether your *character concept* fits the campaign and the party. It's entirely possible to have PCs with compatible alignments who don't work as a party for other reasons.

Kvess
2022-07-13, 12:36 PM
Treating Neutral as 'a little good and a little evil' is a rookie mistake. Neutral is an entirely separate category of behaviour.

Good people are rare and remarkable; they would put themselves in harm's way to help others. An evil person would be willing to harm others to get what they want, but might be willing help others if there was some benefit to them. A neutral person would be reluctant to put themself in danger without reward, but wouldn't cross the line of sacrificing others to get what they want.

Without mitigating factors, I would be inclined to see press-ganging orphaned children into a life of crime as evil. Sure, you're giving them a home — but they don't have much choice, and it seems fairly exploitative. If it was a particularly crapsack world where they would have few other prospects and you were teaching them to steal from tyrants and corrupt nobles, I might be inclined to see it differently.

hamishspence
2022-07-13, 12:45 PM
Treating Neutral as 'a little good and a little evil' is a rookie mistake. Neutral is an entirely separate category of behaviour.
Some books do recommend playing "ruthless yet altruistic" people as Neutral. Heroes of Horror, for example.

If the character routinely commits evil deeds in the cause of Good (animating the undead but using them to protect the innocent, for example, and fighting alongside those undead in the process, risking their neck as a combatant) then they "are probably neither Good nor Evil but a flexible Neutral".



Good people are rare and remarkable; they would put themselves in harm's way to help others.
Good is defined by "making sacrifices" but that doesn't have to mean Going in Harms Way - not every Good character is constantly putting themselves in physical danger.

Vahnavoi
2022-07-13, 03:05 PM
I think that those labels are irrelevant and harmful when a person tries to embody them. If you say you are "classical Utilitarian" that only tells me that is the label you wish to embody. It does not mean you actually embody that.

I am making no argument against alignment (an in-game mechanic). I am making an argument against trying to embrace an in-game alignment in real life. I feel it is detrimental to his or her own health; preticularly in the social area.

I carry no label for I know that I will forsake such a thing the moment it interferes with my own morals

It's not meant to work that way even in the game. Personal claims of alignment are aspirational, a game master determines actual alignment by observing behaviour. Applied to real world, this is no different than any other personality test, matching patterns of observed behaviour to a set of descriptions. You can question reliability of self-reporting, but there's still nothing exotic to any of it. Your opinions of "harmfulness" and "irrelevance" are besides the point. You might as well be making those arguments abou Big Five personality model or the Kinsey scale.


And classical Utilitarian paints a much clearer picture than chaotic neutral ever could for the people hearing it.

Irrelevant. I might as well argue measuring distance using the metric system is much clearer than using the imperial system.

truemane
2022-07-13, 03:20 PM
Your character is made up. And so their motives are made up and their priorities are made up and their goals and dreams and likes and dislikes and fears and everything else are all made up. So, even if your character (were they a real person) absolutely would do action X, you can just find a reason why they don't.

Even if your real-life alignment is Chaotic Neutral, you probably wear matching socks and obey the speed limit and don't shoot heroin for kicks and cross busy streets on green lights and avoid punching old people randomly and etc etc.

Because, even if in your deepest heart of hearts there is no such thing as good or evil and the only thing in life that's worth anything is the subtle whispering whims of your wild untamed soul, there are all kinds of reasons presented to you (from social judgement to prison) to make different choices.

So your made-up character can do the same. Be Chaotic Neutral all you want inside your heart, but just find reasons to be a part of the game without being a distraction or a detriment.

AND IF THAT'S NOT POSSIBLE, even if your character is just too particular to ever betray their moral code for anything, then why did you make that character? It's not every table's job to find room for every single thing that every single player wants every single character to do. Every table is a contract (stated and implied) between the people who have sat down around it. And, by joining, you declare your allegiance to that contract.

If someone came to my table and said "I want to pretend to be someone who's Chaotic Neutral, in a bad way." I'd say "Can you find reasons to toe the line so we can all have fun?" And they said, "Nope." I'd respond "Well then pretend to be someone else instead."

Jay R
2022-07-13, 03:24 PM
First, let me deal with the alignment issue. You are not the first to disagree with your DM about alignment; you won't be the last. If you have clearly communicated what you are doing to the DM, and he wants to change your alignment, then don't worry about it. The DM thinks those actions belong to that alignment, so in that universe, they do. And it won't impede your actions at all, because he thinks those actions are consistent with that alignment.


Now, on to "it's what my character would do".

I run a very wide variety of characters. They have very different alignments, motivations, and goals.

But one thing they all have in common is this: they all get along with the party, and work for the party's shared goals.

Why do all my characters have that one thing in common? Because all the games have this in common: we are a group of players working together.

If you work together with the party, then I do not care about your PC's alignment, or how you spend your PC's money, or anything else. And if you don't work together with the party, then no excuse will justify it.

In this case, if your character is spending his (or her) own money building an orphanage/guild, while supporting the party in all things, then I have no problem with it. I don't even think it's any of my business. But if it gets in the way of the party's business, or you use it as an excuse to disrupt, or even not to support, the party, then it's a problem. But the problem isn't about the orphanage. It's not even about not getting along with the party. It's about not getting along with the other players.

Most often, I have seen, "It's what my character would do" used as an excuse to not get along with the party.

I don't care what the excuse is. I just don't. The problem isn't about "It's what my character would do." The problem is about not getting along with the party.

Because that isn't about the PC. That's about not getting along with the players.

When you are considering not getting along with the players, in any form, you shouldn't ask what your kind of person your character is and what your character would do. You need to ask what kind of person you are, and what you would do.

Pauly
2022-07-14, 03:41 PM
I disagree on pretty much every point.

Theft is chaotic; it only becomes evil if the foreseeable consequence is harm to another person (i.e. stealing money from the poor, causing them starvation, is evil; stealing money from the rich, who are mildly inconvenienced, is simply chaotic).

With point one refused, point two becomes irrelevant.

Creating a guild that follows your own laws is NOT lawful; it's chaotic, because the laws and rules are dependent upon yourself, and they are enforced by your strength (be it physical, magical, or mental). Chaos is not the absence of rules... it is the dependence of those rules on a singular individual, rather than institutions which uphold themselves through the effort of people directed towards those institutions.

I think making a thieves guild out of children you're rescuing from poverty is fairly chaotic neutral... you're providing them a benefit, but mostly for your own ends (morally neutral; selfish, but without the destructive edge that pushes it to evil), and you're using them to further your own ends at the expense of other people. It might cross into evil, especially if you're encouraging them to hurt people (either directly, through violence, or indirectly, through theft of necessary resources), but so long as you're keeping above that threshold (especially personally), you stay out of evil.

Theft is not wrong because it is against the law, theft is against the law because it is wrong. If you try to take a bone from a dog it will tell you that you are doing a wrong to it despite it having no concept of man made laws. Apart from predator-prey theft is the primary source of conflict in the animal world - attempted kill stealing by scavengers; territorial disputes to prevent other animals stealing your stuff as there are no territorial disputes with animals who do not for the same resources. Theft is a direct harm to another person and is evil, as is coercing others to steal.

Coercing others by force to follow rules is lawful behavior. Criminal organizations based around the use if children use savage violence to enforce their rules, nor are the children allowed to keep anything they steal. The children are not free to choose which rules they will follow.

What would be chaotic neutral would be to create an orphanage that trains children in circus skills. The children would learn things such as acrobatics, stage magic sleight of hand, lockpicking for escape artistry, disguises with makeup and costumes and so on. Then allowing the children to run free at nights and turning a blind eye if they used their skills as thieves. The children might freely choose to give the owner of the school gifts from their ill gotten gains as a sign of gratitude. That’s the type of thing a CN would do.

Taevyr
2022-07-14, 04:07 PM
If you try to take a bone from a dog it will tell you that you are doing a wrong to it despite it having no concept of man made laws.

Just needed to chime in here that this is a ridiculous example: if my dog manages to get his paws on a piece of chocolate, he'll be just as annoyed with me trying to take it away as he'd be for something that he can eat. Or something that he thinks he can eat. Or something that obviously is inedible but he likes chewing on for some reason. Anyway, I doubt I'd be doing my dog a wrong by stopping him from eating poison, or some plastic thing he found while we're taking a walk.

The only thing the dog is telling you is "Me no want lose potential food", which doesn't really have anything to do with morality.

King of Nowhere
2022-07-14, 07:15 PM
can we please get past the prejudice that chaotic neutral means unhinged?
CN is individualistic, not crazy.
CN would not hurt some children and protect some others because "hey, i do some good and some bad because I'm neutral". neutral doesn't work like that since 2e druids - and frankly, it was dumb even then.
CN has friends and family, and would generally stick for them.
CN is not contractually obligated to backstab anyone just because "chaotic". They have an underlying logic for their action, same as everyone else.
CN does not want to get in trouble any more than anyone else, and he would not do stuff that would likely get him in trouble. Therefore CN would respect most laws because they are sensible, and would likely respect the other laws too to avoid trouble - unless he had a good reason to risk trouble.
CN doesn't have to be a wild card or a disruptive character.
And if you play a CN with those traits...

You're the author of your character, if you decide to make a character that would do disruptive things then you are a disruptive player.

Also being on "not on anyone's side" is disruptive. You're supposed to be on the party's side.
this says it all

Mechalich
2022-07-14, 07:57 PM
can we please get past the prejudice that chaotic neutral means unhinged?

Chaotic neutral doesn't mandate being unhinged, but because of the way the alignment system works most 'unhinged' (meaning presumably, persons with severe and probably disabling mental illness) individuals qualify as chaotic neutral. In fact, it is entirely possible that in a human population the majority of Chaotic Neutral individuals present such conditions especially considering the lack of medication or treatment in most quasi-medieval societies.

This is not the only alignment where this is true for humans. A significant percentage of the Neutral Evil and Chaotic Evil population is comprised of psychopaths and sociopaths respectively.

Vahnavoi
2022-07-15, 02:10 AM
CN would not hurt some children and protect some others because "hey, i do some good and some bad because I'm neutral". neutral doesn't work like that since 2e druids - and frankly, it was dumb even then.

This one deserves its own reply because people keep strawmanning them druids...

There is nothing odd or exotic to sometimes hurting some children and sometimes protecting them. This directly stems from ecological conservatism - desire to retain some balance of nature - that is core ideology of druids.

Imagine that you're hunter. You want to snack on baby deer. But you also know that if you snack on too many baby deer, there won't be any deer left for you to snack on in the future. So when deer are plenty, you kill and eat some deer. When they're not, you protect the deer, from starvation and from other hunters.

Druids simply extend the same logic to humans and other "people". Humans in threat of dying out? Help them humans. Humans threatening the natural world? Time to cull the human population.

Simple as.

The big error is trying to use this rationale when you're not a druid - True or Absolute Neutral is not really meant for anyone else. Treating the middle of the alignment graph as some kind of large default when actually looking at the graph, it's one of the narrowest alignment, is the root of the error. The presentation of alignment as "nine boxes" obscures this.

Tanarii
2022-07-15, 02:31 AM
Chaotic neutral (CN) creatures follow their whims, holding their personal freedom above all else.

Ideals associated with Chaotic are:
Change
Independence
Freedom
Creativity
Free Thinking
No Limits



Creating a guild that follows your own laws is NOT lawful; it's chaotic, because the laws and rules are dependent upon yourself, and they are enforced by your strength (be it physical, magical, or mental). Chaos is not the absence of rules... it is the dependence of those rules on a singular individual, rather than institutions which uphold themselves through the effort of people directed towards those institutions.
Most Thieves Guilds are usually envisioned as some kind of organize crime -alike, with some kind of code of tradition/honor. That's associated with Lawful Neutral or Lawful Evil, not chaotic anything.

Being (in effect) a strong-arm or charismatic gang leader heading up your own "guild" wouldn't be though.

MoiMagnus
2022-07-15, 04:10 AM
What's more chaotic neutral than that? Please validate me so my DM can see and doesn't change my alignment.

For alignment questions, please refer to your GM. Every GM has some different opinion on what alignment means. And as you can see in this thread, some peoples would classify this behaviour as Chaotic Evil, if not Lawful Evil.

And to be fair, it doesn't matter if your GM's vision of alignment matches what the designers of D&D intended. They can decide that necromancy is not fundamentally evil if their universe if they want to. The GM is the one crafting how the metaphysics of alignment works, and internet strangers are unlikely to make them change their mind about it, so "validation" from us is pointless.


Getting pretty sick of people judging my CN in character actions when my IRL alignment is chaotic neutral.

I'd strongly discourage you from identifying too much with the morality of your D&D character, and argue with the GM about real life morality, otherwise you might end up realising that your GM would consider you evil IRL too, should you ever put in practice what your vision of "chaotic neutral" is.

KorvinStarmast
2022-07-15, 07:45 AM
This kind of reads like a fake letter to an advice column. I note that the OP has not come back to respond to the responses, so you may be on to something here. (Or it may have been a case of venting after a frustrating session at the table ...)

Cygnia
2022-07-15, 08:17 AM
I know when I play CN (especially in PBP), I go out of my way to stress to the GM & other players that I'm going for chaotic selfish rather than chaotic psychotic or chaotic a****** and that if I go too far please tell me.

Right now, I'm running a duskblade who's CN who could have easily gone edgelord if I was being a jerk. Instead, he's found a way to be a viable party member (and begrudgingly is protective of the party mage because the little guy was willing to pay him 3 gold -- which was more than what the so-called "good" party members did!) while I let him snark.

Batcathat
2022-07-15, 09:24 AM
I think this is yet another potential downside of using alignments. If someone says "My character is CN" (or whatever other alignment, really) other people are going to make a lot of assumptions about how the character is going to act. They might be exactly right (in which case alignments are helpful) but odds are they are somewhere between a little and a lot wrong (in which case it's not so helpful).

LibraryOgre
2022-07-15, 09:48 AM
can we please get past the prejudice that chaotic neutral means unhinged?


This is one of the three great sins of 2e's alignment descriptions, IMO.

1) Evil and good are culturally relative.
2) True Neutral means a philosophical devotion to neutrality (this one was inherited from 1e)
3) Chaotic Neutrals are erratic because they are crazy.

wilphe
2022-07-15, 10:07 AM
When I was told by some 3.x ers that CN was sociopaths (having played a few CN in AD&D 1e) I was appalled at that lack of understanding. Since you could not have a good alignment and be a Thief in AD&D 1e, you had to pick something else. (CG rogues/thieves were more acceptable in 2e).

What you are advising me is that this is a product of the game morphing over time due to devs not grasping what was going on with the original two axis scheme. Aha, thanks, that makes sense. The other problem is that it's a continuum along two axes, there are Not Nine Boxes. :smallfurious:



The other problem was players choosing "Chaotic Neutral" :smallwink:

When they really wanted to play Chaotic Evil but the GM banned evil alignments or they did not want to ping to Paladins or tip off the rest of the party what they were about


The other other problem was people taking the 2E definition and deciding they were going to Fishmalk around the place hitting people with rubber chickens and acting wacky


The alignment has never quite overcome the resulting stigma

Catullus64
2022-07-15, 10:08 AM
I'm curious, are there still many DMs out there who actually demand a player change their alignment to reflect their behaviors? I'm all for the DM creating accountability to reflect on a player's actions, but alignment no longer really has the mechanical bite to make such a required change anything but grandstanding. Change NPC relationships, mess with class features from Patrons, Deities, Sacred Oaths, introduce consequences for a character acting inconsistent with their stated moral outlook, I can see the value of all of that. But saying 'you've got to change what it says on your sheet' seems to serve no real purpose other than being an aggressive flex by said DM.

Anyways, the notion of having an "IRL alignment" seems pretty absurd to me. Alignment is a thing for D&D characters, and its applicability pretty much ends there. Putting aside the OP's strange ideas about the CN alignment itself (heck, everybody's ideas about the alignments look wacky to somebody), trying to make an appeal to to your own alignment doesn't exactly make this look like a very seasoned argument.

Psyren
2022-07-15, 10:20 AM
"IRL morality," to the extent that we can even discuss such a concept here, does not fit very well into D&D's 9-box alignment grid.


Theft is evil.

Robin Hood is evil?



Recruiting and training orphans to break the law is evil.

Sherlock Holmes is evil?

(Actually, those two could probably be 50-page debates themselves, never mind.)

LibraryOgre
2022-07-15, 10:33 AM
Theft is not wrong because it is against the law, theft is against the law because it is wrong. If you try to take a bone from a dog it will tell you that you are doing a wrong to it despite it having no concept of man made laws. Apart from predator-prey theft is the primary source of conflict in the animal world - attempted kill stealing by scavengers; territorial disputes to prevent other animals stealing your stuff as there are no territorial disputes with animals who do not for the same resources. Theft is a direct harm to another person and is evil, as is coercing others to steal.

Animals do not have an alignment (or are true neutral, depending). Using animals as an example falls down on that front.

By defining theft as evil, you are saying that the only non-evil theft is survival theft... i.e. stealing bread to feed the starving. I maintain that stealing from those who have more than enough is not evil; it is considered wrong, it violates the idea of property, but it does not harm another in any appreciable way, so it is not evil.



Coercing others by force to follow rules is lawful behavior. Criminal organizations based around the use if children use savage violence to enforce their rules, nor are the children allowed to keep anything they steal. The children are not free to choose which rules they will follow.

The Abyss is Chaotic Evil. Using force to coerce others into doing things is the essence of a Demon. Devils will trap you and trick you... they're not beyond force, but their method is based on agreements and rules. Demons threaten to destroy you if you don't follow THEIR rules. Both are evil, because they seek to harm you for their own gain... they just prefer different methods.

My definitions of the axes are pretty simple. Good and Evil are about Ends; Law and Chaos are about Means.

Good is helping people; sometimes at the expense of yourself, but not always without recompense; you're not going to take their last cow, but you've got to eat, too, and being paid for your work and risk isn't selfish or evil in and of itself.
Evil is hurting people solely to further your own ends; good may hurt people, but it furthers another end... fighting evil foes to protect the good. Evil is not caring if your actions hurt people, even if your goal isn't to hurt people.

Law is respecting ideas and property. A lawful person may not AGREE with your particular code, but they respect that you have one, and won't force you to violate it capriciously (i.e. they won't force you to eat a food you are forbidden to, but a LG person will oppose slavery, because of the harms it inflicts).
Chaos is about respecting no ideas and property but your own. They do not necessarily break the law for funsies, because they fear punishment, but they don't respect it for itself.

Thus, starting an orphanage to make a thieves guild can reasonably fall into CN. It is pure disrespect for property, which is chaotic, without, necessarily, the indifference to the suffering of others (again, a distinct "rob from the poor" ethos would edge it towards evil, as taking from those who have little creates harm). As this orphanage does take care of the children, it alleviates some suffering, but it also does so to meet the ends of its chief thief, rather than out of altruism.

The exemplar of CG is really Robin Hood... he robs from the rich (chaotic) to give to the poor (good), taking what he needs to support his men out in the middle (folks gotta eat, including good guys). Some versions interpret him as more LG, through a personal devotion to Richard and a interpretation of Nottingham and Prince John as illegitimate, but that doesn't account for his theft being used to help people... one cannot be lawful and a thief, but one CAN put theft to good ends. Also, a personal devotion to an individual doesn't make something Lawful.


"IRL morality," to the extent that we can even discuss such a concept here, does not fit very well into D&D's 9-box alignment grid.


I've always maintained it works fine, once you properly define the terms. D&D has a tendency to not clearly lay out the terms, though.

Satinavian
2022-07-15, 12:08 PM
Theft is in essence harming others for your own benefit. It would be not strange at all to be classified as evil. Sure, you can construct situations where the harm is negligible or the stolen good are used for a good cause etc, but you couls similarly construct extraordinary excusing situations for every other classically evil behavior : murder, poisoning, slavery etc. Theft would fit with those quite well.

Now historically theft is rarely called out as evil in D&D because people want to allow the thief class and its successors in "no evil allowed" groups. And because dungeon delving usually implies a very lax attitude to property of other sentient beings. But both do not change that most instances of thievery should be classified as evil acts.

Now, of course theft is chaotic as well considering both the braking of laws and the disregard of pillars of civilized society and its norms based on nothing but your own whims.

Pex
2022-07-15, 01:26 PM
The exemplar of CG is really Robin Hood... he robs from the rich (chaotic) to give to the poor (good), taking what he needs to support his men out in the middle (folks gotta eat, including good guys). Some versions interpret him as more LG, through a personal devotion to Richard and a interpretation of Nottingham and Prince John as illegitimate, but that doesn't account for his theft being used to help people... one cannot be lawful and a thief, but one CAN put theft to good ends. Also, a personal devotion to an individual doesn't make something Lawful.



You can be lawful and a thief, such as a criminal family or organization. There's a distinct pecking order and acceptable means of advancement. Respect and Honor within the Organization is paramount. An Organization can have a Big Boss whose word is law or there may be a Ruling Council who vote and share equally in the spoils. Maybe there are both where the Council is a mutual concern and benefit of a Meeting among Big Bosses. The Bosses agree not to compete and deal with matters that threaten them all, such as those annoying Heroes and Superheroes.

RazorChain
2022-07-15, 04:42 PM
I hate alignment and I think it's stupid.

So when people ask me I tell them: How your character acts defines your characters alignment. Your characters alignment does not define how your character acts!

LibraryOgre
2022-07-15, 08:02 PM
Theft is in essence harming others for your own benefit.

Only if you consider possessions to be an inalienable part of a person, such that removal is harm. It is not a "constructed scenario" to say that taking something someone doesn't need is not harm to them.

TaiLiu
2022-07-16, 02:49 AM
This kind of reads like a fake letter to an advice column.

I note that the OP has not come back to respond to the responses, so you may be on to something here. (Or it may have been a case of venting after a frustrating session at the table ...)
Yeah, I read this as like a joke thread. Maybe that's being too generous. :smalltongue:

MoiMagnus
2022-07-16, 05:39 AM
Only if you consider possessions to be an inalienable part of a person, such that removal is harm. It is not a "constructed scenario" to say that taking something someone doesn't need is not harm to them.

It's still harming them.

If you take something that I consider as belonging to me, you're harming me, it doesn't matter if I'm right or wrong about it belonging to me. Whether or not I'm right or wrong will determine whether or not it is legitimate and reasonable to harm my feelings over it, but it doesn't change whether it harms me or not.

Thief can be justified by legitimacy (by arguing that the property didn't belong to them in the first place) or by the end (by arguing that you're doing a greater good with this property), or both like in the case of Robin Hood, where the robbed persons were evil peoples abusing their power to extract more taxes, and the money robbed was given back to the poor.

But thief itself is still harming peoples. In the same way that killing is harming peoples, but can be justified by legitimacy or by the end.

Vahnavoi
2022-07-16, 06:26 AM
Theft is in essence harming others for your own benefit. It would be not strange at all to be classified as evil. Sure, you can construct situations where the harm is negligible or the stolen good are used for a good cause etc, but you couls similarly construct extraordinary excusing situations for every other classically evil behavior : murder, poisoning, slavery etc. Theft would fit with those quite well.

D&D is fantasy though, so extraordinary situations abound. This why there can be non-evil thieves and champions of Lawful Good can be armed zealots who go around cutting off heads of evildoers.

Cluedrew
2022-07-16, 06:33 AM
I have my own options on alignment (which are slightly higher than average) but here I think actually hammering it out it actually kind of a red haring here. In that whether you use the "proper" definition or not it kind of doesn't matter as long as your group knows what you are talking about. Alignment is a two word overview of a character so other people at your table kind of know who to expect in the party, if you are achieving that then other things, like how this maps onto morality for your life, doesn't matter as much.

Vahnavoi
2022-07-16, 07:04 AM
The OP is directly asking for an argument to convince their game master that their action is of specific alignment. That is impossible to discuss without discussing definitions.

If the OP was clear on and in agreement with how their game master is running alignment, there'd be no point in even asking us that.

Fiery Diamond
2022-07-16, 09:18 AM
It's still harming them.

If you take something that I consider as belonging to me, you're harming me, it doesn't matter if I'm right or wrong about it belonging to me. Whether or not I'm right or wrong will determine whether or not it is legitimate and reasonable to harm my feelings over it, but it doesn't change whether it harms me or not.

Thief can be justified by legitimacy (by arguing that the property didn't belong to them in the first place) or by the end (by arguing that you're doing a greater good with this property), or both like in the case of Robin Hood, where the robbed persons were evil peoples abusing their power to extract more taxes, and the money robbed was given back to the poor.

But thief itself is still harming peoples. In the same way that killing is harming peoples, but can be justified by legitimacy or by the end.

Wait. Are you really lumping "causes physical harm" and "hurts my feelings" together as equivalent "harms me" things? And saying that they're both evil because they cause harm? Regardless of whether they're justified or not? That's... uh... let's go with "controversial."

LibraryOgre
2022-07-16, 09:19 AM
If you take something that I consider as belonging to me, you're harming me, it doesn't matter if I'm right or wrong about it belonging to me. Whether or not I'm right or wrong will determine whether or not it is legitimate and reasonable to harm my feelings over it, but it doesn't change whether it harms me or not.


So, if you stole something, but I then took it back from you, I'm harming you by taking it back?

Tanarii
2022-07-16, 09:45 AM
Killing isn't even D&D Evil.
So trying to argue that stealing is D&D Evil is a non-starter.

False God
2022-07-16, 12:21 PM
Well, ideally everyone should be doing "what their character would do", because ya know, that's role-playing. That's what we're all here for.

BUT, we are also playing a cooperative game both in and out of character and we all want to have fun*. Our characters need to have reason to cooperate other than "John, Sue, Tim and Jo all sat down at the same table" and our play-group needs to have reason to cooperate beyond "we all want to play D&D".
*Definitions of fun may vary please see side label for possible side effects.

To that end, whatever you do, whatever your character does should facilitate those needs. Sometimes characters, like people, can be jerks, but for the party to function, for the IRL group to function, neither players nor characters can always be jerks, or even by-and-large be jerks. Or at least not be jerks to each other IRL. An entire party of jerks can function with the right group, jerkishness focused away from the party that advances the party's goals can work, but generally speaking, a group of people who are jerks to each other do not remain a group for very long.

And as a group game, having a group is pretty necessary to continued play*.
*Exact numbers may vary, please see your DM to ensure group size is right for you.

IMO: Alignment is a terrible addition to any game without strict definitions of what is actually means. They cannot be willy-nilly wishy-washy ideas that vary from table to table. If they're part of the game, they should have definition. If a DM wants to ignore those definitions, it should be made clear that DM is deviating from the rules. No different than if they made changes to any other portion of the game.

Regardless, if "what your character would do" causes problems with the party and the players, it's a problem. It doesn't matter if you're Lawful Stupid, Chaotic Murderhobo or Mother Theresa. The group as a whole has a general idea of how it wants to operate and if your behavior causes trouble with that, it is well within the purview of the group to remove you, if you don't realize you're not a good fit for the group and leave yourself. Worse is of course when a player knows they're causing trouble for the group and that's why they're doing it. Trolling is only acceptable when you're on a boat and you're fishing. Or maybe living under a bridge.

KorvinStarmast
2022-07-16, 01:01 PM
So when people ask me I tell them: How your character acts defines your characters alignment. Your characters alignment does not define how your character acts! That seems to a reasonable approach.

Killing isn't even D&D Evil.
So trying to argue that stealing is D&D Evil is a non-starter.
+1

Cluedrew
2022-07-16, 05:02 PM
The OP is directly asking for an argument to convince their game master that their action is of specific alignment. That is impossible to discuss without discussing definitions.Let me put this a different way: They should probably discuss definitions, at least in broad strokes, with their group so everyone is on the same page. But being in complete agreement with a bunch of other people they are not playing with is not as important.

On Stealing: The discussion is starting to remind me of the quote from Kill 6 Billion Demons: "How can I live in peace with my fellows." "Nonexistence."

Liquor Box
2022-07-17, 03:15 AM
I disagree on pretty much every point.

Theft is chaotic; it only becomes evil if the foreseeable consequence is harm to another person (i.e. stealing money from the poor, causing them starvation, is evil; stealing money from the rich, who are mildly inconvenienced, is simply chaotic).


This is a big call - that stealing from someone is only evil if it causes starvation (or some similar degree of harm). Even stealing what we think of as poor wouldn't usually cause them starvation, so it would mean almost all theft is not evil.


Only if you consider possessions to be an inalienable part of a person, such that removal is harm. It is not a "constructed scenario" to say that taking something someone doesn't need is not harm to them.

Even if you do not consider possessions to be an inalienable part of a person, stealing those possessions is harmful. Someone had something that gave them positive utility, and you took it from them so they lose that utility and that's almost the definition of harm.

Whether the money you took would cause the person to forgo bread to stave off starvation or caviar because it's yum is just a matter of degree. So in a good/evil context, stealing from the very poor may be worse than stealing form anyone else, but it doesn't make stealing from those who would not starve ok.

There may still be exceptions - and you could interpret Robin Hood that way if you think that his looking after the poor more than offsets his theft. But I agree with those who say that the starting point is that stealing is at least somewhat evil.

Satinavian
2022-07-17, 05:01 AM
So, if you stole something, but I then took it back from you, I'm harming you by taking it back?

You can find circumstances where you steal from others and it is not evil. But in the same way you can find circumstances where you kill your fellow humans(or sentient beings) and it is not evil.

But without such excusing circumstances both are wrong and evil. And that theft has a component of self.enrichment attached and is thus usually motivated by selfishness does make it even harder to excuse.

Tanarii
2022-07-17, 08:36 AM
But I agree with those who say that the starting point is that stealing is at least somewhat evil.
Given that even under actions-hold-alignment-weight D&D editions, killing is not automatically evil, and requires a specific set of circumstances to become an evil action, how do you justify this point of view on the act of stealing?

Meanwhile in the current edition, individual actions do not carry alignment 'weight'. Alignment only has an associated typical but not consistently required overall behavior. As in "a good person normally will not steal from those it particularly harms, although exceptions may apply" might be a a statement that at least fits the paradigm of the current alignment system based on the associated general behaviors of the three good alignments, as might "an evil person might not hesitate to steal, even from those it harms", but "(the act of) stealing is at least somewhat evil" can not be an accurate statement due to the way the system works.

Murphy80
2022-07-17, 08:59 AM
I note that the OP has not come back to respond to the responses, so you may be on to something here. (Or it may have been a case of venting after a frustrating session at the table ...)

....and this was his only post...

Liquor Box
2022-07-18, 03:05 AM
Given that even under actions-hold-alignment-weight D&D editions, killing is not automatically evil, and requires a specific set of circumstances to become an evil action, how do you justify this point of view on the act of stealing?

Killing does not require "a specific set of circumstances" to be evil. There are lots of circumstances where killing is evil. I'd say most circumstances, with the times killing is not evil being the exception. Much like stealing (just worse in terms of degree because the harm you are doing is greater).

Chronic
2022-07-18, 06:13 AM
Theft is evil.
Recruiting and training orphans to break the law is evil.
Creating a guild that follows your rules is lawful.

Nothing about what you’re doing is chaotic or neutral.

Arguable. In a society where social mobility is non existent and orphan have no consideration and prospects, this could be a chaotic good endeavor as long as the orphaned are well treated and loved in the orphanage. Crime is more often than not a consequence of the environment, more than an evil doing.
Also he's creating a guild to break the established law, this is clearly a chaotic act. Chaotic alignment is not necessarily doing random things, it's refusing to abide by the established law and custom of a place. Technically you could be considered lawful in a place and chaotic in another if you followed the law and customs of the first place in both places.

Moral is relative and contextual.

Batcathat
2022-07-18, 06:21 AM
Moral is relative and contextual.

Not in D&D though. There morality is objective, detectable and neatly divided into nine little boxes. Which to me seems more unrealistic than all the magic and monsters put together, but it's case none the less.

KorvinStarmast
2022-07-18, 07:17 AM
Not in D&D though. There morality is objective, detectable and neatly divided into nine little boxes. Not really, and that perception is part of the problem with how alignment is used. The original 2 axis approach had various creatures scattered all over the map (a two axis cartesian grid)...and if you look at after lives that number greater than 9 in some of the editions, you can see how the error in creating a box was being corrected conceptually.

Batcathat
2022-07-18, 07:24 AM
Not really, and that perception is part of the problem with how alignment is used. The original 2 axis approach had various creatures scattered all over the map (a two axis cartesian grid)...and if you look at after lives that number greater than 9 in some of the editions, you can see how the error in creating a box was being corrected conceptually.

Fair enough, though I don't really see how viewing it like that does much to help with any of the major issues I have with the system.

Easy e
2022-07-18, 02:22 PM
The real question is not about alignment. The real question is if you are following the Most Important Rule of gaming.

Are you helping yourself and everyone else at the table have fun with the way you are playing? If the answer is NO, then you have a big problem. You just violated the Most Important Rule of gaming.

The consequences of violating this rule is pretty simple. Eventually, you will have no one to play games with. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow; but the world is littered with outcasts who violated the Most Important Rule to often and too liberally.

Do not be an outcast.

Jay R
2022-07-18, 02:39 PM
Not really, and that perception is part of the problem with how alignment is used.

I wish that were true. But in fact, the problem isn't perception; the problem is the actual rules of the game


The original 2 axis approach had various creatures scattered all over the map (a two axis cartesian grid)...and if you look at after lives that number greater than 9 in some of the editions, you can see how the error in creating a box was being corrected conceptually.

Yes, I remember that graph. It first appeared in the February 1976 issue of The Strategic Review. I agree with you that it would be nice if that more-or-less continuous two-axis grid had any effect on the rules or play of the game.

Meanwhile, back at the actual rules, a Protection from Evil spell protects against anything that is Lawful EvilTM, Neutral EvilTM, or Chaotic EvilTM, no matter how "Evil" they are. Similarly, the rules for Protection from Law, Chaos, and Good (and other spells and items that relate to alignment) functionally divide all creatures into nine little boxes that are objective and detectable.


... despite that 46-year-old graph.

Vahnavoi
2022-07-18, 04:31 PM
Not in D&D though. There morality is objective, detectable and neatly divided into nine little boxes. Which to me seems more unrealistic than all the magic and monsters put together, but it's case none the less.

The boxes aren't little. They are very big, and if you take a look at the world around you at all, you'll see being able to sort objectively detectable existence into a few big boxes is nothing unusual.

For contrast, this is an actual theory of how moral reasoning develops in humans. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg%27s_stages_of_moral_development)

Even if you reject (for real life) notions of cosmic good, there is no actual issue in objectively observing behaviour and rationalizations of people and sorting them into boxes - which is what a game master actually does when determining alignment for game purposes. All of this is no more exotic than a personality test.

---

@JayR: from 1st to 3rd edition, detection spells regularly make a point about strength of aligned auras, so the idea that there gradations within alignment categories never left the rules for editions that made strong use of the dual axes. The concept was well-established enough that it even made its way to multiple independent computerizations of D&D rulesets.

You can argue it's an underutilized concept. But it's an underutilized concept because people pay more attention to alignment as a meme than as an actual system. I extend this to actual game design of 5th edition, which I maintain only has alignment at all for IP and legacy reasons.

KorvinStarmast
2022-07-18, 04:45 PM
Fair enough, though I don't really see how viewing it like that does much to help with any of the major issues I have with the system. Fair response, as you still often end up with mechanical sticking points.

I wish that were true. But in fact, the problem isn't perception; the problem is the actual rules of the game Only if one choses to be rules bound. :smallbiggrin:

Yes, I remember that graph. It first appeared in the February 1976 issue of The Strategic Review. I agree with you that it would be nice if that more-or-less continuous two-axis grid had any effect on the rules or play of the game. It's been done violence to by the nine box meme.

Protection from Evil spell protects against anything that is Lawful EvilTM, Neutral EvilTM, or Chaotic EvilTM, no matter how "Evil" they are. Yes, any brand of evil triggers that.

Similarly, the rules for Protection from Law, Chaos, and Good (and other spells and items that relate to alignment) functionally divide all creatures into nine little boxes that are objective and detectable. But not in D&D 5e, though. That "protection from" (and now dual purpose) spell protects one from Aberrations, Celestials, Elementals, Fey, Fiend, and Undead
Protection from Evil and Good / 1st-*‐‑level abjuration / Casting Time: 1 action / Range: Touch / Components: V, S, M (holy water or powdered silver and iron, which the spell consumes)
Duration: Concentration up to 10 minutes
Until the spell ends, one willing creature you touch is protected against certain types of creatures: aberrations, celestials, elementals, fey, fiends, and undead. The protection grants several benefits. Creatures of those types have disadvantage on attack rolls against the target. The target also can’t be charmed, frightened, or possessed by them. If the target is already charmed, frightened, or possessed by such a creature, the target has advantage on
any new saving throw against the relevant effect.

Batcathat
2022-07-18, 05:30 PM
The boxes aren't little. They are very big, and if you take a look at the world around you at all, you'll see being able to sort objectively detectable existence into a few big boxes is nothing unusual.

I've yet to see a box size that's actually useful to me though. It seems that either they're small and specific, making them useful descriptions but very limiting in what kind of characters you can play or they're big and rather vague, allowing for pretty much any kind of character but being practically useless as descriptions (since you still have to explain how this particular Lawful Good character behaves to the point of the label "Lawful Good" itself being rather superfluous). There are a lot of potential issues with alignments, but I think most of them can be avoided, there just doesn't seem to exist any upside making it worth the trouble.

Mechalich
2022-07-18, 06:51 PM
I've yet to see a box size that's actually useful to me though. It seems that either they're small and specific, making them useful descriptions but very limiting in what kind of characters you can play or they're big and rather vague, allowing for pretty much any kind of character but being practically useless as descriptions (since you still have to explain how this particular Lawful Good character behaves to the point of the label "Lawful Good" itself being rather superfluous). There are a lot of potential issues with alignments, but I think most of them can be avoided, there just doesn't seem to exist any upside making it worth the trouble.

The upside of alignment is that you can have inherently moral beings present in the setting, like angels and demons. Without some kind of objective morality framework for the fiction setting many of the traditional tropes of fantasy don't work.

One of the problems of alignment is that it is both overly complex and rather counter-intuitive. In particular the 'neutral' section of the alignment doesn't match with almost any extant human-derived morality system due to its positing of a huge moral space between good and evil (and an equally huge space between lawful and chaotic).

A point of reference to how this works: boxes is a terrible metaphor for how the alignment system functions. The Great Wheel as presented in D&D or the pie chart used in Pathfinder, which both display moral alignment zones spread around a True Neutral hole in the middle is a much more effective visualization as to how alignment actually works.

RandomPeasant
2022-07-18, 06:57 PM
The upside of alignment is that you can have inherently moral beings present in the setting, like angels and demons. Without some kind of objective morality framework for the fiction setting many of the traditional tropes of fantasy don't work.

I don't buy this at all because those tropes are present, and in many cases established, in stories and setting without any objectively-detectable morality. Demons are all over in fantasy, and it's basically only in D&D and closely D&D-derived media where they have an explicit "is the bad guy" tag. But you can figure out that the giant horned dude who lives in a world full of fire and offers people power in exchange for getting to eat them later is a "demon" without also needing a HUD that says he is Evil.

awa
2022-07-18, 07:05 PM
I don't buy this at all because those tropes are present, and in many cases established, in stories and setting without any objectively-detectable morality. Demons are all over in fantasy, and it's basically only in D&D and closely D&D-derived media where they have an explicit "is the bad guy" tag. But you can figure out that the giant horned dude who lives in a world full of fire and offers people power in exchange for getting to eat them later is a "demon" without also needing a HUD that says he is Evil.

There are plenty of stories where demons are nothing more than the bad guys, its definitely not exclusive to d&d. Its not wildly uncommon for pure of heart to be able to sense the demons evil in some fashion. In fact this seems so self evident that I feel their most be a miscommunication here.

RandomPeasant
2022-07-18, 07:10 PM
There are plenty of stories where demons are nothing more than the bad guys, its definitely not exclusive to d&d. Its not wildly uncommon for pure of heart to be able to sense the demons evil in some fashion. In fact this seems so self evident that I feel their most be a miscommunication here.

There are stories where demons are the bad guys, but there are very few stories where it is metaphysically important that demons have a "Bad Guy" tag in a detectably real way. The demons in The Warded Man are antagonists, but that's because they are monsters that eat people, and any question of whether or not they detect as Evil is entirely irrelevant. Their actions could be ordained as correct by the metaphysics of the universe, and the people in the setting would still be opposed to them because "I would prefer not to be eaten" is a strongly adaptive trait.

awa
2022-07-18, 08:45 PM
There are stories where demons are the bad guys, but there are very few stories where it is metaphysically important that demons have a "Bad Guy" tag in a detectably real way. The demons in The Warded Man are antagonists, but that's because they are monsters that eat people, and any question of whether or not they detect as Evil is entirely irrelevant. Their actions could be ordained as correct by the metaphysics of the universe, and the people in the setting would still be opposed to them because "I would prefer not to be eaten" is a strongly adaptive trait.

The demons in warded man are just monsters called demons, they do not traffic in souls or rule over an after life for the wicked they are not set up in opposition to an often absent being of perfect good. I mean is the exorcist based on d&d? The number of stories where demons are intrinsically evil and corruption is a fundamental part of their nature is overwhelming.

Have you really never read/ seen a story where a deal with a demon/ the devil no matter how well intentioned is a road to damnation?

Off the top of my head here is an urban fantasy novel about evil demons trying to corrupt a good person https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12146537-diabolical

RandomPeasant
2022-07-18, 09:19 PM
The demons in warded man are just monsters called demons, they do not traffic in souls or rule over an after life for the wicked they are not set up in opposition to an often absent being of perfect good.

No true demon has butter with his damned souls.


I mean is the exorcist based on d&d?

You see the exorcist casting detect evil? No. I mean, it doesn't even meet your standard, because the movie never takes a stance on the afterlife one way or the other.


Have you really never read/ seen a story where a deal with a demon/ the devil no matter how well intentioned is a road to damnation?

Something ruining your life is different from that thing being capital-E Evil in a cosmological sense. No matter how well-intentioned your meth addiction is, it's still going to cost you your teeth. That doesn't give meth an inherent moral character.

Pex
2022-07-18, 09:50 PM
The demons in warded man are just monsters called demons, they do not traffic in souls or rule over an after life for the wicked they are not set up in opposition to an often absent being of perfect good. I mean is the exorcist based on d&d? The number of stories where demons are intrinsically evil and corruption is a fundamental part of their nature is overwhelming.

Have you really never read/ seen a story where a deal with a demon/ the devil no matter how well intentioned is a road to damnation?

Off the top of my head here is an urban fantasy novel about evil demons trying to corrupt a good person https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12146537-diabolical

Technically in the Xanth books the hero Bink deals with demons in The Source Of Magic. They aren't Team Evil, not that they're nice either. The demon X(a)nth even rewards Bink for helping him to Understand Things - he guarantees all his descendants will have Magician Level magic.

awa
2022-07-18, 11:06 PM
Technically in the Xanth books the hero Bink deals with demons in The Source Of Magic. They aren't Team Evil, not that they're nice either. The demon X(a)nth even rewards Bink for helping him to Understand Things - he guarantees all his descendants will have Magician Level magic.

I'm not certain why you are quoting me here, I have made no reference to the xanth books just the fact that demon being aligned with a cosmic evil is not unheard of in non D&d fiction.


No true demon has butter with his damned souls.



You see the exorcist casting detect evil? No. I mean, it doesn't even meet your standard, because the movie never takes a stance on the afterlife one way or the other.



Something ruining your life is different from that thing being capital-E Evil in a cosmological sense. No matter how well-intentioned your meth addiction is, it's still going to cost you your teeth. That doesn't give meth an inherent moral character.

So is your argument that only d&d has the exact spell detect evil? What actually is your argument?

RandomPeasant
2022-07-18, 11:23 PM
So is your argument that only d&d has the exact spell detect evil? What actually is your argument?

What is your argument? Your last post simultaneously asserts that The Warded Man isn't an example of what you're talking about (because no afterlife), then gives The Exorcist as an example of what you are talking about, despite the fact that it too is neutral on the question of an afterlife. So what exactly are you defending here? You'd think if this sort of thing were so common you'd be able to give an example that you did not directly contradict and that I had ever heard of.

Vahnavoi
2022-07-19, 05:36 AM
@RandomPeasant: your entire line of argument is backwards. Demons in fiction have horns and hooves because at a point those were seen as symbolic of moral and religious evil - they are outward indicators of moral alignment and examples of "bad guy tags" you say aren't there.

Magical ability to detect alignment, as opposed to simply deducing it from behaviour and appearance of a being, is a minor part of the overall system. Yet, if you go looking, folklore and fantasy predating D&D is full of magical means to detect moral or supernatural evil, insofar as people even made a difference between those. Silvered mirrors not reflecting vampires, milk curdling or grains of rice spoiling in presence of evil spirits, a blade glowing in presence of the enemy, so on and so forth.

Retrojecting modern ideas of what is "adaptive behaviour" is even worse

Batcathat
2022-07-19, 06:14 AM
Magical ability to detect alignment, as opposed to simply deducing it from behaviour and appearance of a being, is a minor part of the overall system. Yet, if you go looking, folklore and fantasy predating D&D is full of magical means to detect moral or supernatural evil, insofar as people even made a difference between those. Silvered mirrors not reflecting vampires, milk curdling or grains of rice spoiling in presence of evil spirits, a blade glowing in presence of the enemy, so on and so forth.

Almost all of those are against a particular type of evil creatures though, non-vampiric evil still have reflections even in stories where vampires don't. That's not to say that those attributes aren't intended as a sign of their evil, but I can't think of anything as broad as Detect Evil.

Elkad
2022-07-19, 07:33 AM
Even if your real-life alignment is Chaotic Neutral, you probably wear matching socks and obey the speed limit and don't shoot heroin for kicks and cross busy streets on green lights and avoid punching old people randomly and etc etc.

Because, even if in your deepest heart of hearts there is no such thing as good or evil and the only thing in life that's worth anything is the subtle whispering whims of your wild untamed soul, there are all kinds of reasons presented to you (from social judgement to prison) to make different choices.

Sure. Restricting your actions because of potential consequences is perfectly normal. Even if you are CE, you don't do your murdering in front of law enforcement, because you might get caught/dead.

But I don't think any of those things, other than the last, should actually be LAWS. I cross busy streets against the light. I'll do it right in front of law enforcement. I just do it with a bit of caution so I don't go gwish under a bus. The socks on my feet right now are the same style, so they feel identical, which I care about. They are NOT the same color, because I don't care about that, and I don't care if anyone else does.

And I don't claim to be CN. More like CG. Not the outer planar ideal, as I do have some differing outlook.

For example, I think there should be exactly ONE traffic law. Reckless driving, with the evidence considered by a jury of my peers (other drivers - even just one), not a judge. Societal custom covers the rest, and should offer no penalty if you do it safely.

KorvinStarmast
2022-07-19, 07:54 AM
The upside of alignment is that you can have inherently moral beings present in the setting, like angels and demons. Without some kind of objective morality framework for the fiction setting many of the traditional tropes of fantasy don't work. They are borrowed from cultural archetypes though, aren't they?

A point of reference to how this works: boxes is a terrible metaphor for how the alignment system functions. The Great Wheel as presented in D&D or the pie chart used in Pathfinder, which both display moral alignment zones spread around a True Neutral hole in the middle is a much more effective visualization as to how alignment actually works. Agreed. An intermediate L-N-C approach that includes LE/LE, N, CG/CE for five alignments was a lot less difficult to use.

But you can figure out that the giant horned dude who lives in a world full of fire and offers people power in exchange for getting to eat them later is a "demon" without also needing a HUD that says he is Evil. You can, but that requires one to not be rules bound as an approach, I suspect.

Vahnavoi
2022-07-19, 08:17 AM
Almost all of those are against a particular type of evil creatures though, non-vampiric evil still have reflections even in stories where vampires don't. That's not to say that those attributes aren't intended as a sign of their evil, but I can't think of anything as broad as Detect Evil.

Not quite. Silver, for example, was seen as symbolically pure substance that was used to ward off many kinds of evils and impurities - which is why it hurts werewolves and faeries also (insofar as those were distinct from vampires to begin with) and refused to reflect other evil thongs as well. Some theorists hold that the folkloric evil-warding properties of such things came about as a result of their real anti-microbial properties. The idea that it was specific is because some piece of folklore remained in circulation while others declined in popularity.

These kinds of folklore are clear, sometimes direct precursors to how magic and supernatural alignment works in D&D. Saying they aren't exactly alike isn't really an argument for anything. A similar relationship exists between wish-granting entities of folklore and the Wish spell of D&D. In folklore, wishes were almost always expressed to a specific entity and limited in scope by power of that entity - there was no generic all-purpose Wish spell. But it would be strange to argue the D&D spell doesn't have its roots in the older versions.

Batcathat
2022-07-19, 08:38 AM
Not quite. Silver, for example, was seen as symbolically pure substance that was used to ward off many kinds of evils and impurities - which is why it hurts werewolves and faeries also (insofar as those were distinct from vampires to begin with) and refused to reflect other evil thongs as well. Some theorists hold that the folkloric evil-warding properties of such things came about as a result of their real anti-microbial properties. The idea that it was specific is because some piece of folklore remained in circulation while others declined in popularity.

Sure, there are some methods said to work against multiple types of Evil creatures but the leap between that and something like a Detect Evil spell is still very big, I think. I'm not saying there's not a kind of relation between them, but it's pretty weak and something like D&D alignments isn't the only way (nor the best, in my opinion) way to include the sort of things seen in folklore in a game.

(And yeah, gotta watch out for those evil thongs. :smalltongue: )

Satinavian
2022-07-19, 08:42 AM
There are a lot of stories of supernatural beings using various disguises (shapeshifting, Illusion, glamour, masks or just a literal mundane disguise for e.g. hiding nonhuman bodyparts) and about various countermeasures, some of them specialized against specific beings, other multipurpose like mirrors showing the true nature of a thing or such.

But none of these depend on a framework of good and evil. So i wouldn't say that slignments or alignment detection are needed or even useful for recreatin the feel of such stories. If anything, a gem of true seeing or somesuch would even work better.

Tanarii
2022-07-19, 08:44 AM
Agreed. An intermediate L-N-C approach that includes LE/LE, N, CG/CE for five alignments was a lot less difficult to use.

I mean, the current edition alignment system isn't difficult to use at all. Choose alignment, choose personality, ideal, bond, flaw, jot the descriptions from them down, keep them in mind when making decisions for the character in the fantasy environment, aka roleplaying.

The problem only comes when folks try to apply concepts to it that weren't even correct in older editions. Most commonly their own person views on morality and/or ethics or their own personal definitions of the words lawful, chaotic, good or evil.

KorvinStarmast
2022-07-19, 09:03 AM
The problem only comes when folks try to apply concepts to it that weren't even correct in older editions. Most commonly their own person views on morality and/or ethics or their own personal definitions of the words lawful, chaotic, good or evil.
No argument there. And alignment doesn't exist in a vacuum. As you have often mentioned, character motivations and goals are also part of the properly fleshed out character. Simply slapping on an alignment tag and considering that sufficient for RP is lazy thinking.

A similar relationship exists between wish-granting entities of folklore and the Wish spell of D&D. In folklore, wishes were almost always expressed to a specific entity and limited in scope by power of that entity - there was no generic all-purpose Wish spell. But it would be strange to argue the D&D spell doesn't have its roots in the older versions. FWIW, in the original version there wasn't even a wish spell: there was a ring of wishes. It is arguable that the "wish" spell should never have been added to the spell list, except that in the campaign style of play, if someone gets to a high enough level to craft the mightiest of magical items, how then does one try to craft a Ring of Three Wishes?

{Ring of} Three Wishes: As with any wishes, the wishes granted by the ring must be of limited power in order to maintain balance in the game. This requires the utmost discretion on the part of the referee. Typically, greedy characters will request more wishes, for example, as one of their wishes. The referee should then put that character into an endless closed time loop, moving him back to the time he first obtained the wish ring. Again, a wish for some powerful item could be fulfilled without benefit to the one wishing ("I wish for a Mirror of Life Trapping!", and the referee then places the character inside one which is all his own!). Wishes that unfortunate adventures had never happened should be granted. Clues can be given when wishes for powerful items or great treasure are made. A wish can be a great narrative device in story telling (see the story of King Midas for example) but mechanically it's always been messy.

RandomPeasant
2022-07-19, 09:22 AM
Retrojecting modern ideas of what is "adaptive behaviour" is even worse

Famously modern notion that being eaten is bad. Demons aren't evil because they have horns. They don't even have horns to show they are evil. They have horns (when they do, plenty of demons don't) because horns are scary. Which is the point: it's not about some metaphysical "Evil", it's about doing things that are bad.

Vahnavoi
2022-07-19, 09:24 AM
@BatCatHat:

Sure, you can include folkloric beliefs in a roleplaying games in other ways. This is a poor argument against alignment when and where such beliefs existed against a background of belief in a moral universe.

---

@Satinavian: D&D includes virtually all of the non-moral tropes about illusions and seeing through them as well (as various spells and special abilities). Bringing such up is hence pointless; alignment isn't used to facilitate them and they don't exist to facilitate moral fantasy.

---

EDIT:


Which is the point: it's not about some metaphysical "Evil", it's about doing things that are bad.

A distinction without a difference.

Batcathat
2022-07-19, 09:32 AM
@BatCatHat:

Sure, you can include folkloric beliefs in a roleplaying games in other ways. This is a poor argument against alignment when and where such beliefs existed against a background of belief in a moral universe.

Sure, if the folkloric belief you want to include is specifically objective morality being a thing then D&D alignment or something similar might indeed be the best choice. But if what you want to include is the various methods of detecting and protecting yourself from supernatural creatures, I think something like Detect and/or Smite Evil is a poor choice.

RandomPeasant
2022-07-19, 09:53 AM
A distinction without a difference.

Exactly! Alignment is either offensive (if the list of actions that get the [Evil] tag does not align with the list of actions generally agreed to be bad) or pointless (if it does). Glad we're on the same page about kicking this outdated relic to the curb.

Vahnavoi
2022-07-19, 09:56 AM
@Batcathat:

Why?

Smite & Detection spells work only on limited subset of beings and have their own set of counters that necessitate using other, more specific or powerful means from time to time. They also aren't universally available. They have never actually precluded a game with various methods to find and protect one's self from supernatural threats. In terms of game balance, True Sight, nominated as one possible replacement, is considerably more dominant due to working against nearly all illusions.

---

@RandomPeasant:

The idea that alignment is pointless if everyone agrees with it is silly, comparable to the idea that saying daggers do damage is pointless. The idea that alignment not mapping to "generally agreed" definitions of Good and Evil is automatically offensive and shouldn't be done because of that is even worse - it reeks of lack of moral imagination. Moral frameworks can be worth exploring regardless of whether they're "generally agreed" upon and this is one thing extended thought experiments like tabletop roleplaying games are good for.

RandomPeasant
2022-07-19, 10:10 AM
it reeks of lack of moral imagination. Moral frameworks can be worth exploring regardless of whether they're "generally agreed" upon and this is one thing extended thought experiments like tabletop roleplaying games are good for.

No, what lacks moral imagination is the idea that you can't engage with a moral system without declaring it objectively true. Have whatever moral systems you want for factions in your game. But saying to someone "your morality is objectively wrong" is not just offensive, it's incoherent. Utilitarianism isn't based on objective moral properties of actions, changing them can't make it false, and asserting that it can simply means you don't understand what it means to be utilitarian.

Morgaln
2022-07-19, 10:31 AM
it's not about some metaphysical "Evil", it's about doing things that are bad.




A distinction without a difference.

You really don't see a difference between objective (metaphysical) evil and subjective ("things that are bad") evil?

Satinavian
2022-07-19, 10:33 AM
@BatCatHat:
@Satinavian: D&D includes virtually all of the non-moral tropes about illusions and seeing through them as well (as various spells and special abilities). Bringing such up is hence pointless; alignment isn't used to facilitate them and they don't exist to facilitate moral fantasy.
Yes, D&D has all those and thus can easily cover all those folk tales already without relying on detect/good/evil. Which means that none of those tropes are a reason to keep mechnaical good/evil and all the corresponding baggage.

Or do you really know a single fairy tale that actually doesn't work without alignment ?

Vahnavoi
2022-07-19, 10:33 AM
@RandomPeasant:

Oh, now you're trying to raise Utilitarianism as counter-argument to alignment?

You are aware that 1st Edition definition of Lawful Good paraphrases Bentham's "greatest good for the greatest number", right? Or that the usual counterargument to Utilitarianism is that taken to its logical conclusion, it leads (https://existentialcomics.com/comic/283) to (https://existentialcomics.com/comic/253) ideas (https://existentialcomics.com/comic/426) that most people find odd, the very quality you raise as argument against alignment?

Or that as consequentialist moral theory, Utilitarianism is in fact congruent with moral realism, objective morality and, dare I say, reliant on the idea that human life and happiness are measurable? Since, you know, another classic counterargument to Utilitarianism is that if we ever found a creature capable of more profound happiness than we are, we should change our actions to maximize its happiness? (https://existentialcomics.com/comic/8)

Because if you knew all that, then your counterargument amounts to saying that it's lack of imagination to declare, for purposes of a game, that the world works differently than however you think morality works in real life.

---

@Morgaln:

I know what the distinction in that regard is full well; it doesn't support the argument RandomPeasant is making in the context he's making it. The actual point being made was that demons have horns and hooves due to symbolical association with religious and moral evil - narrative equivalent of having a baby-eater detecting as Evil. The people who came up with the trope definitely believed their behaviour was symptomatic of objective evil, and that belief is background for D&D alignment. Trying to retroject moral relativism into it by arguing that was just subjective notions of people back then because it was "adaptive behaviour" is hence meaningless.

Batcathat
2022-07-19, 10:34 AM
Smite & Detection spells work only on limited subset of beings and have their own set of counters that necessitate using other, more specific or powerful means from time to time. They also aren't universally available. They have never actually precluded a game with various methods to find and protect one's self from supernatural threats. In terms of game balance, True Sight, nominated as one possible replacement, is considerably more dominant due to working against nearly all illusions.

I'm not saying they're unbalanced, I'm saying they seem like a poor choice if the goal is to emulate folk lore. As with most other aspects of the alignment system, their existence isn't necessarily bad, it just doesn't seem particularly useful (from a world-building perspective, obviously the abilities can have their uses in a setting built around alignments).

RandomPeasant
2022-07-19, 10:55 AM
Or do you really know a single fairy tale that actually doesn't work without alignment ?

The better question is if you can find a single fairy tale that includes alignment.


You are aware that 1st Edition definition of Lawful Good paraphrases Bentham's "greatest good for the greatest number", right?

So what? Perhaps it is the case that [Good] aligns with Utilitarianism in some interpretation of some version of the game. But surely you can imagine an interpretation where it does not.


the very quality you raise as argument against alignment?

I would certainly find it offensive if utilitarian claimed to be objectively correct as a property of the universe, or if someone felt that only by postulating that could they meaningfully engage with utilitarianism as a philosophy. Of course, those aren't things that happen, so what it has to do with the problems of alignment I don't quite understand.


reliant on the idea that human life and happiness are measurable?

Ah, but how do we measure them? Is "human life" best understood as years of life, or quality of life, or a mixture, or something else entirely? If it's a mixture, what's the rate of tradeoff between time and quality? If it's quality, how should that be assessed? Medical data? The arguments of some grand council of utilitarians? Asking people? Some notion of "Coherent Extrapolated Volition"? Number of grapefuit consumed? Grown? Certainly you could pick "how much [Good] does detect good detect in the overall population" (had you access to detect good), but such a metric is no more inherently valid than any other.


that the world works differently than however you think morality works in real life.

And that's exactly the problem. You're postulating that because the world works differently, morality must work different. But, of course, you've never bothered to check that the changes in the functioning of the world implicate morality. If I believe in the Categorical Imperative, I can jolly well keep using that as my basis for not lying to people regardless of what detect evil says about lying. You've got a cause, but you are simply blithely asserting an effect without any connective tissue.

Tanarii
2022-07-19, 11:01 AM
Which is the point: it's not about some metaphysical "Evil", it's about doing things that are bad.


A distinction without a difference.Not to get too far down in the weeds, but there's a pretty significant difference between category of person/creature and category of action taken by person/creature.

Between "you're a evil person" and "you did a bad/evil thing".

kyoryu
2022-07-19, 11:43 AM
The problem isn't "doing what your character would do".

The problem is "being disruptive" and using "that's what my character would do" as an excuse. If you're doing what your character would do, and it's not disruptive, nobody cares.

Don't be disruptive. You made the character, so you decide what they do.


Not to get too far down in the weeds, but there's a pretty significant difference between category of person/creature and category of action taken by person/creature.

Between "you're a evil person" and "you did a bad/evil thing".

This.

Good people might do evil things (note that the Paladin in AD&D is specifically called out as losing their paladinhood if they commit an evil act - this is explicitly an exception).

For instance, a Good person might steal bread. They'd do so likely if it was to prevent someone from starving, and they'd do so only if all other options had been exhausted. And they'd almost certainly try to make amends for it in the future.

An Evil person would steal bread because it looked kinda tasty, even though they just ate, and they'd happily take a bite and toss it away, and steal even though they had more than enough money to trivially buy it.

Vahnavoi
2022-07-19, 11:48 AM
@Batcathat & Satinavian:

That goes back to what I already said. Let's go back to silver because it makes a good example: to have the mechanical effect, all you need is a bunch of clauses like "silver hurts vampires" and "silvered mirrors don't reflect vampires". But the actual reason why is because silver is pure and vampires are impure; there is background belief behind these interactions explaining why they are so. Correct understanding of that leads to general use of silver against many impure things, not just vampires.

Those kinds of background beliefs and division of the world into broad categories is what alignment and the associated spells are there to facilitate, and I don't really agree the non-moral spells as-they-are fill that same niche.

RandomPeasant
2022-07-19, 11:54 AM
Except that the silver interactions in D&D are not mediated by alignment at all. All the stuff that silver interacts with is already done by mechanical "silver hurts this" tags, and it applies to things that aren't evil (like wereboars) and even things that are good (like werebears). So again, what the hell is alignment supposed to be doing here?

Batcathat
2022-07-19, 12:04 PM
@Batcathat & Satinavian:

That goes back to what I already said. Let's go back to silver because it makes a good example: to have the mechanical effect, all you need is a bunch of clauses like "silver hurts vampires" and "silvered mirrors don't reflect vampires". But the actual reason why is because silver is pure and vampires are impure; there is background belief behind these interactions explaining why they are so. Correct understanding of that leads to general use of silver against many impure things, not just vampires.

Those kinds of background beliefs and division of the world into broad categories is what alignment and the associated spells are there to facilitate, and I don't really agree the non-moral spells as-they-are fill that same niche.

Although silver shows up here and there in folk lore and mythology, it's nowhere near as frequent as you make it sound, certainly nothing that implies it protects against everything (or even a substantial section of) evil or impure. I've heard the theory about silver in mirror (and old-school photos) being the explanation behind vampires not showing up in them, but I've never seen any proof of it being the case (simply "they don't have souls" seems to be just as common, if not more so).

So no, I don't think "silver is bad for some evil creatures in mythology" and "Smite Evil hurts beings that are objectively evil" are particularly closely related concepts.

RandomPeasant
2022-07-19, 12:13 PM
Yeah, that's the other end of it. If you want to do mythology (perhaps for some sort of urban fantasy game), there's nothing that works against everything. Some stuff is vulnerable to silver, some stuff is vulnerable to wood, some stuff is vulnerable to water, some stuff is vulnerable to sunlight, some stuff is vulnerable to salt, some stuff is vulnerable to prayer, some stuff is vulnerable to iron. There's a whole laundry list, which is why characters in a show like Supernatural or Angel (which involve fighting all manner of supernatural stuff) have big-ass arsenals and spend a bunch of time researching the weaknesses of specific opponents.

Batcathat
2022-07-19, 12:24 PM
I tried looking into the whole "can't be seen in mirrors" thing and found that Bram Stoker (I think he invented the weakness, but maybe I'm wrong?) mentioned in his notes that Dracula also can't be painted, the painter just end up painting someone else. Not that relevant to this discussion, but I found it funny, so I thought I'd share. :smallsmile: (Apparently Dracula also has "insensibility to music", whatever that's supposed to mean).

Vahnavoi
2022-07-19, 12:41 PM
So what? Perhaps it is the case that [Good] aligns with Utilitarianism in some interpretation of some version of the game. But surely you can imagine an interpretation where it does not.

Of course I can, since I've pointed out how the definitions and interpretations have changed over the years several times. The actual point is that your supposed beef with alignment exists with the real moral theory you seemingly raised as its superior - as it does with likely majority, if not all, morally realist philosophies.


And that's exactly the problem. You're postulating that because the world works differently, morality must work different. But, of course, you've never bothered to check that the changes in the functioning of the world implicate morality. If I believe in the Categorical Imperative, I can jolly well keep using that as my basis for not lying to people regardless of what detect evil says about lying. You've got a cause, but you are simply blithely asserting an effect without any connective tissue.

I'm postulating that because that is how games and other thought experiments work: by postulating their own rules. Declaring morality is objective for purposes of a game is no different than declaring the world of a game setting is flat and the only connective tissue required is for a player to choose to entertain it. Whether such declarations stop anyone from acting or believing contrarily has never been the issue. Alignment system explicitly allows for non-Good behaviour; a character can believe in and try to follow a categorical imperative even if it is objectively wrong and their soul will burn in eternal fire because of it. At this point, I'm willing to conclude your argument against alignment is sophistry, equally applicable to virtually every game that dares to posit something (fantastic or not) is true for its own purposes, and has next to nothing to do with how the system actually works or what it claims. You are being reactionary towards concept of "objective morality" and nothing else.

---

@Batcathat:

At this point, your idle musings about silver in folklore are better served by a Google deep dive than me. Silver as general ward against evil was not a rare belief and still lives on in phrases such as "silver bullet". Just as well, divisions of things into pure and impure, holy and unholy etc. mythological and folkloric prototypes for alignment and alignment-based magic in D&D are not rare.

KorvinStarmast
2022-07-19, 12:41 PM
(Apparently Dracula also has "insensibility to music", whatever that's supposed to mean). Won't follow the Pied Piper off into the mountain is my guess on that one.

"In Barovia, you don't charm vampire, vampire charms you!"

Batcathat
2022-07-19, 12:51 PM
At this point, your idle musings about silver in folklore are better served by a Google deep dive than me. Silver as general ward against evil was not a rare belief and still lives on in phrases such as "silver bullet". Just as well, divisions of things into pure and impure, holy and unholy etc. mythological and folkloric prototypes for alignment and alignment-based magic in D&D are not rare.

You're the one who brought up silver affecting vampire reflections, so I would think it most likely being false (after some admittedly shallow research, but still) would be at least a little relevant.

But sure, silver mirrors and vampires in particular is a tiny detail. I still haven't seen evidence that silver warding against evil is in any way as common as you seem to imply. And more importantly, I still don't see much of a connection between how silver is used in folk lore and alignment based effects in D&D. Again, if I wanted a folk lore feel to my role playing alignment would be waaaaaaay down the list.

RandomPeasant
2022-07-19, 01:09 PM
The actual point is that your supposed beef with alignment exists with the real moral theory you seemingly raised as its superior

I never said Utilitarianism was superior to Alignment. It's just different. Which one you prefer is a subjective question. Whether you think that maximizing self-reported happiness (or whatever metric you choose to be Utilitarian about) or doing actions that make you detect as [Good] is more important is not a question with an objective answer.


I'm postulating that because that is how games and other thought experiments work: by postulating their own rules. Declaring morality is objective for purposes of a game is no different than declaring the world of a game setting is flat and the only connective tissue required is for a player to choose to entertain it.

Saying "what if morality was objective" isn't like saying "what if the world was flat". It's like saying "what if five was actually twelve". It's not a question that makes any sense to ask. I can certainly imagine a universe with different properties than our own. Indeed, basically every game postulates that. What I can't imagine is a universe where there are objective answers to subjective questions, because that inherently does not make sense.


a character can believe in and try to follow a categorical imperative even if it is objectively wrong and their soul will burn in eternal fire because of it.

What if I consider following the categorical imperative more important than the final disposition of my soul? What if I consider burning in eternal fire a desirable outcome? "You will go to hell if you do this" is not a moral argument. It is a factual one. Just as some moral systems will tell you that there are circumstances under which the correct action to take is one which kills you, it is entirely plausible to postulate a moral system in which the correct action to take is one that damns you to hell. You may disagree with such a moral system, but that does not make it "objectively wrong" any more than the pacifist's disagreement with a moral system that condones violence makes that one "objectively wrong".


I'm willing to conclude your argument against alignment is sophistry

I'm sure you're willing to conclude that. Sadly, your willingness to conclude things has as little to do with whether they are right as objectivity does with morality. The sophistry here is the notion that "objectivity" is some sort of magic spell that dissolves any competing moral system into dust without need for argument or debate.


still lives on in phrases such as "silver bullet".

Except that's not what a "silver bullet" means. A silver bullet is effective against a specific thing. Stuff that is generally effective against a wide range of opponents is just bullets.

LibraryOgre
2022-07-19, 01:16 PM
I've yet to see a box size that's actually useful to me though. It seems that either they're small and specific, making them useful descriptions but very limiting in what kind of characters you can play or they're big and rather vague, allowing for pretty much any kind of character but being practically useless as descriptions (since you still have to explain how this particular Lawful Good character behaves to the point of the label "Lawful Good" itself being rather superfluous). There are a lot of potential issues with alignments, but I think most of them can be avoided, there just doesn't seem to exist any upside making it worth the trouble.

For me, the best way to approach it is the the Outer Planar Model, with planes between "pure" alignments. You have Seven Heavens, but you also have Arcadia, which is LG(N) and LN(G), and Bytopia, which is (L)NG and (N)LG. The two intermediate planes will have a mix of those alignments... people who were LG, but trended a little bit neutral, either morally or ethically (or were NG and trended Lawful, or LN and trended Good). Each of those planes, though, was itself a plane, with things "north", "south", "east" and "west" on the plane of that plane. Someone could be so LG it's painful; someone else might be so nominally LG that they're almost in Concordant Opposition.

But it is important to remember that all alignments are planes, or even several planes. They're Venn Diagrams, with "pure" portions that don't overlap, but also "messy" ones where different people will be different alignments, partially depending on their own interpretations of themselves, but also based on their direction. Alignment in the messy sections is partially subjective... but it's still going to be A or B (or, perhaps rarely, A, B, C, or D, in the corners of Concordant opposition... might be LG, LN, NG, or N, within a couple "miles" of each other).

Satinavian
2022-07-19, 01:51 PM
@Batcathat & Satinavian:

That goes back to what I already said. Let's go back to silver because it makes a good example: to have the mechanical effect, all you need is a bunch of clauses like "silver hurts vampires" and "silvered mirrors don't reflect vampires". But the actual reason why is because silver is pure and vampires are impure; there is background belief behind these interactions explaining why they are so. Correct understanding of that leads to general use of silver against many impure things, not just vampires.As far as i know, the vampire and mirror thing is because the mirror as symbol for revealing stuff, not because of the silver.

But yes, silver does come up in a couple of tales. But in all of those it is useful against the supernatural, not against the evil. Sure, many monsters are both, but silver never helps against evil humans and silver does hurt benevolent supernatural critters as well. Also, i am pretty sure i have read more tales about iron than about silver.


The only things regularly popping up in falk tales that might be against evil as such are of religious nature. But that would be better handled as cleric power to smite enemies of ones faith and protecting adherents without using the alignment stuff.

Vahnavoi
2022-07-19, 01:57 PM
Saying "what if morality was objective" isn't like saying "what if the world was flat". It's like saying "what if five was actually twelve". It's not a question that makes any sense to ask.

That you make this argument places you squarely in a tradition of philosophy that has nothing at all to say on the subject matter. Your opinions on moral realism were already noted & are irrelevant to making alignment function in a game.


What if I consider following the categorical imperative more important than the final disposition of my soul? What if I consider burning in eternal fire a desirable outcome?

Then per basic interpretation of the rules you end up burning in Hell in the described setting. That's it. Arguing that this is a factual statement instead of a moral one is meaningless in the context of alignment; under moral realism moral statements are not special.

The most hilarious thing is that nothing in the alignment system stops a character from making the rest of your argument from within the alignment system. Indeed, this is one plausible explanation why some supposedly very wise and intelligent beings are not Good. But there's nothing more to it in that context. It is just sophistry.


Except that's not what a "silver bullet" means. A silver bullet is effective against a specific thing. Stuff that is generally effective against a wide range of opponents is just bullets.

Even checking Wikipedia page for "silver bullet" would show you your opinions of the current meaning is not at all descriptive of past usage.

RandomPeasant
2022-07-19, 02:22 PM
Arguing that this is a factual statement instead of a moral one is meaningless in the context of alignment;

Quite the contrary. Arguing that it is a moral statement instead of a factual one is meaningless in the context of moral debate. If someone really does believe that fidelity to the Categorical Imperative is more important than eternal torture, your insistence on shouting "moral realism! you're objectively wrong!" is simple sophistry. It does not persuade them, it does not end debate, it does not even advance debate. It's just you shouting.

And shout all you like. But it won't make you right because it can't make you right. You can't simply assert that one answer to a subjective question is true, because that doesn't make any sense. It's like having a setting declaration that strawberry is the best flavor of ice cream. It doesn't make sense, and to the degree that it does anything at all it simply reveals precisely the "lack of moral imagination" you are so quick to accuse others of.

Vahnavoi
2022-07-19, 03:15 PM
The purpose of alignment is to categorize a character's behaviour and determine where they stand in a game world's cosmology; whether a character is persuaded to change their opinion based on this determination is irrelevant for all its game functions. You're the only who thinks my points are about "ending the debate".

There is also no problem in stating "strawberry is best icecream flavor". It is in fact trivial to go further and mechanize it: a player gets 10 points for eating strawberry and -1 point for all other flavors. Player with most points at the end of a game wins.

If this doesn't tell you how little I care about your idea of "being right" or "making sense", nothing will.

Pauly
2022-07-19, 03:42 PM
As far as i know, the vampire and mirror thing is because the mirror as symbol for revealing stuff, not because of the silver.

But yes, silver does come up in a couple of tales. But in all of those it is useful against the supernatural, not against the evil. Sure, many monsters are both, but silver never helps against evil humans and silver does hurt benevolent supernatural critters as well. Also, i am pretty sure i have read more tales about iron than about silver.


The only things regularly popping up in falk tales that might be against evil as such are of religious nature. But that would be better handled as cleric power to smite enemies of ones faith and protecting adherents without using the alignment stuff.

As for silver affecting the supernatural the research I’ve done clearly indicates a real world religious belief behind it. The religious belief was binary in regards to the supernatural in that anything that was not explicitly from the source of the religion was automatically evil. Forum rules prevent me being more explicit.
The same goes for wood against vampires. Originally It wasn’t any wood, but a particular type of wood that held religious significance.

Having said that there are a number of folk beliefs that have no obvious religious connotations. e.g. werewolves affected by the full moon, vampires not being able to cross running water. or needing to be invited into a building.

KorvinStarmast
2022-07-19, 03:54 PM
Also, i am pretty sure i have read more tales about iron than about silver. I have read more with silver than iron, but have read ample numbers of both. Which means, to me, that we both have a broad range of folk tales that we are familiar with. That's a good thing, as a DM, in terms of resources to draw from. :smallwink:

As for silver affecting the supernatural the research I’ve done clearly indicates a real world religious belief behind it. The religious belief was binary in regards to the supernatural in that anything that was not explicitly from the source of the religion was automatically evil. Forum rules prevent me being more explicit.
The same goes for wood against vampires. Originally It wasn’t any wood, but a particular type of wood that held religious significance. Gotcha. :smallsmile:

Having said that there are a number of folk beliefs that have no obvious religious connotations. e.g. werewolves affected by the full moon, vampires not being able to cross running water, or needing to be invited into a building. Or their origins are muddled in the synthesis that overlapping story telling traditions bring with them.
(See also how many different versions of the song / ballad The Lady and the Gallows Pole, or The Cutty Wren arise, morph, and change over the years)

Vahnavoi
2022-07-19, 04:16 PM
Vampires unable to cross running water is of the same root as their vulnerability to holy water. Running water also has connotations of ritual purity which relates to the juxtaposition of pure and impure things, and witches, ghosts, faeries and demons were variably considered subject to similar prohibitions.

RandomPeasant
2022-07-19, 04:25 PM
You're the only who thinks my points are about "ending the debate".

You're the one claiming something is "objectively correct". If you don't mean that, feel free to not say it.


There is also no problem in stating "strawberry is best icecream flavor". It is in fact trivial to go further and mechanize it: a player gets 10 points for eating strawberry and -1 point for all other flavors. Player with most points at the end of a game wins.

That doesn't make strawberry the best flavor, it makes it the one that gets you the most points. You can choose to declare that "best" must always mean "gets you the most points" but that is, again, empty sophistry and semantic manipulation. You assert that something can be "objectively Good", but all you mean by that is the tautology "things that have the [Good] tag have the [Good] tag" which, while true, has no moral implications. Try to use some of that moral imagination of yours to imagine a moral argument between detect good and a Utilitarian.


If this doesn't tell you how little I care about your idea of "being right" or "making sense", nothing will.

I understand you don't care about being right. What you don't seem to realize is that the word for that is "wrong".

Pauly
2022-07-19, 08:48 PM
Vampires unable to cross running water is of the same root as their vulnerability to holy water. Running water also has connotations of ritual purity which relates to the juxtaposition of pure and impure things, and witches, ghosts, faeries and demons were variably considered subject to similar prohibitions.

That’s good to know and it is along the lines of what I had surmised.

As for not entering buildings I believe it’s related to consecrated ground, buildings being blessed on completion and the tradition of hanging religious icons on the walls. However I have not being able to find any references to verify if that is the actual source.

Vahnavoi
2022-07-20, 03:28 AM
@RandomPeasant:

I'm reasonably confident that if I actually pitched the icecream game to people, few to none would bother quibling about the rules like you just did. What you call "empty sophistry" and "semantic manipulation" is in fact just defining game rules and only a truly committed contrarian would bother.

The fact that you're still asking me to imagine an Utilitarian arguing with results of Detect Good shows you are still arguing past me, and that's all you've ever done. Again: nothing stops a character from making the argument you just did from within the alignment system and using it to rationalize belief in arbitrary alternate moral system. Regardless of which system that is, they are still evaluated and placed in a game's cosmology based on their behaviour according to axial definitions of the game. Characters having a plurality of moral systems in a game with alignment is completely normal, some of them are simply a priori wrong and sometimes to a degree that leads to them becoming non-Good or Evil.

The point about tautologies likewise fails. Every logical system, such as a game, boils down to a tautology on some level and has to consider some founding statements as self-evident. For alignment, the relevant statements would be something like "life and happiness are objective goods", "destruction and suffering are objective evils", "placing group before individual is objectively lawful" and "placing the individual before the group is objectively chaotic". You can twist such axioms into tautologies all you like, it doesn't prove me wrong, it doesn't even prove alignment wrong.

icefractal
2022-07-20, 03:34 AM
While it's usually not too much a problem in practice, I've yet to see what alignment adds to the game. You can still have paladins and demon armies and scheming viziers and conflicts between loyalists and reformers and revolutionaries, and in fact many of those things work better without an absolute tag which can be easily checked.

So what is alignment providing? A "stab the mobs with red outlines" shortcut? Besides the question whether that's even a desirable thing, many gods would be happy to give their opinion on who needs a smiting - the Cleric casts "Detect Foes of Pelor" instead of Detect Evil and you end up stabbing the Lich either way.

Batcathat
2022-07-20, 04:07 AM
While it's usually not too much a problem in practice, I've yet to see what alignment adds to the game. You can still have paladins and demon armies and scheming viziers and conflicts between loyalists and reformers and revolutionaries, and in fact many of those things work better without an absolute tag which can be easily checked.

So what is alignment providing? A "stab the mobs with red outlines" shortcut? Besides the question whether that's even a desirable thing, many gods would be happy to give their opinion on who needs a smiting - the Cleric casts "Detect Foes of Pelor" instead of Detect Evil and you end up stabbing the Lich either way.

Yeah, this. I've yet to see a use for alignment that doesn't fall somewhere between "useless" and "harmful".

EDIT: Well, I suppose that's not entirely fair. If the setting has objective morality, alignments or something like it has a place. It's more from a roleplaying perspective they seem pointless at best.

Vahnavoi
2022-07-20, 05:16 AM
While it's usually not too much a problem in practice, I've yet to see what alignment adds to the game. You can still have paladins and demon armies and scheming viziers and conflicts between loyalists and reformers and revolutionaries, and in fact many of those things work better without an absolute tag which can be easily checked.

So what is alignment providing? A "stab the mobs with red outlines" shortcut? Besides the question whether that's even a desirable thing, many gods would be happy to give their opinion on who needs a smiting - the Cleric casts "Detect Foes of Pelor" instead of Detect Evil and you end up stabbing the Lich either way.

I've already answered this but apparently it bears repeating:

If all you want is the game mechanical effects, you can do that by adding a (huge) number of isolated clauses for each detail. This is all carefully dancing around the point that those details stem from and are explained by a background belief in a moral universe. Alignment is one such background belief system, and that's what alignment and systems like it exist to facilitate.

From a roleplaying perspective, the point is simple: there's a difference between a person who has memorized a list of interactions as pieces of isolated trivia versus someone who is reasoning these interactions from a set of fundamental beliefs and internalized worldview. It's the difference of knowing the correct answers in Trivial Pursuit because you memorized what's on the question cards, versus deducing the correct answer from a broader body of knowledge you have due to lived life; the difference between knowing vampires cannot cross running water versus knowing why vampires cannot cross running water & believing in it.

KorvinStarmast
2022-07-20, 08:54 AM
The original L/N/C scheme was quite flexible, and useful. But, for a certain sector of the gaming audience it wasn't 'rules' enough.
It raised enough questions among the gamers who game and who thus need a rule for their game (one of four kinds of player types identified in the early SF&F/RPG scene) that those answering the mail (game authors) provided an answer. And then another answer. In time it grew into the two axis scheme.

I note that Barker, in Empire of the Petal Throne, took a similar-but-different (and very playable) approach that didn't end up with the same mess D&D ended up with. His approach was aided by his game being built into a setting (Tekumel) that was, fiction-wise, pretty coherent before the game itself was published.

RandomPeasant
2022-07-20, 09:07 AM
I'm reasonably confident that if I actually pitched the icecream game to people, few to none would bother quibling about the rules like you just did.

That's because it's simple to the point it's not a roleplaying game. I don't have an issue with Candyland saying the goal must be to free the Candy King (or whatever the goal there is supposed to be), because Candyland is a children's game with no meaningful decisions. But making those sorts of declarations in an RPG is bad, because the point of an RPG is that people have a range of meaningful choice.


Characters having a plurality of moral systems in a game with alignment is completely normal, some of them are simply a priori wrong and sometimes to a degree that leads to them becoming non-Good or Evil.

And this is the sophistry. Because you're just abusing "wrong" to mean "will go to a specific afterlife" when that's not what people care about. A Utilitarian doesn't have their beliefs about morality because they will get them into Arcadia or Ysgard or whatever, so whether or not they do does not make them wrong. It's a category error. It's like saying that the guy who has decided to do meth is "a priori wrong" because you happen to value having teeth more that he does.


it doesn't even prove alignment wrong.

Why would it prove alignment wrong? Tautologies aren't wrong, they're just pointless. Much like alignment.


So what is alignment providing? A "stab the mobs with red outlines" shortcut? Besides the question whether that's even a desirable thing, many gods would be happy to give their opinion on who needs a smiting - the Cleric casts "Detect Foes of Pelor" instead of Detect Evil and you end up stabbing the Lich either way.

I would say that most of what alignment provides that's worthwhile mechanically is how it works with Outsiders, and maybe Undead. Priests banishing demons makes sense. But the idea that banishing demons should imply spells that are more effective against murderers is not, despite claims to the contrary, consistent with any particular source material. And it's not really clear to me that priests should be constrained to only banish opposed-alignment outsiders.


If all you want is the game mechanical effects, you can do that by adding a (huge) number of isolated clauses for each detail.

You mean exactly like the game already does with silver, the thing you gave as an example of something that should have a generalized interaction with Evil to the point that you claimed that's what "silver bullet" means?


the difference between knowing vampires cannot cross running water versus knowing why vampires cannot cross running water & believing in it.

There is an enormous amount of vampire folklore. This encyclopedia (https://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Vampire-Mythology-Theresa-Bane/dp/0786444525) is 200 pages long and covers 600 distinct types. Whatever rules you have about vampires are going to be arbitrary, and while they may well correspond to characters beliefs about a "moral universe", there's very little reason to expect they'll correspond to player's. From the perspective of the person who is making the decisions, the vampire is very much a collection of arbitrary rules that must be memorized.

Tanarii
2022-07-20, 11:26 AM
Yeah, this. I've yet to see a use for alignment that doesn't fall somewhere between "useless" and "harmful".
The 5e personality system, which includes alignment as one of the 5 personality traits, is useful for roleplaying. It could of course have a shorthand for moral and social outlook replaced or removed as a category, if a table didn't want players to think about their character's moral and social attitudes when making decision for their character in the fantasy environment, aka roleplaying.

Batcathat
2022-07-20, 11:40 AM
The 5e personality system, which includes alignment as one of the 5 personality traits, is useful for roleplaying. It could of course have a shorthand for moral and social outlook replaced or removed as a category, if a table didn't want players to think about their character's moral and social attitudes when making decision for their character in the fantasy environment, aka roleplaying.

Players thinking about their character's moral and social attitudes is great, but I've yet to see an implementation of alignment that helps with that. As I mentioned earlier, it seems to me that either an alignment describes a very specific type of person (in which case it's a useful description but very limiting) or it's a lot more vague (in which case it's basically meaningless, since you still have to explain how your specific character thinks and acts).

RandomPeasant
2022-07-20, 12:51 PM
I think if you wanted a useful version of alignment, the thing to do would be to cut out the middle man and use the outer planes directly. "Believes in ruthless Social Darwinism were rules are enforced without regard for their fairness or benefit" is a coherent set of moral values that can guide a character's actions, but it is massively clearer if you refer to that as "Baatorian Values" rather than pretend it is "objectively Evil" and "objectively Lawful". Especially when there are other sets of values that you are also presenting as "objectively Evil" and/or "objectively Lawful" that are different.

KorvinStarmast
2022-07-20, 01:28 PM
I think if you wanted a useful version of alignment, the thing to do would be to cut out the middle man and use the outer planes directly. "Believes in ruthless Social Darwinism were rules are enforced without regard for their fairness or benefit" is a coherent set of moral values that can guide a character's actions, but it is massively clearer if you refer to that as "Baatorian Values" rather than pretend it is "objectively Evil" and "objectively Lawful". Especially when there are other sets of values that you are also presenting as "objectively Evil" and/or "objectively Lawful" that are different.
In a game where only maidens of pure heart can ride a unicorn,
in a game where certain artifacts do damage to a character if their alignment (in the cosmic sense, not their sociological outlook sense) is out of synch with the item,
in a game where deities are objectively present and interfere to a lesser or greater extent in mundane matters,
alignment can either be a useful tool or a crutch, depending on what you want out of it.

What Barker did with his deities and their cohorts worked (half 'good' and half 'evil') but he didn't use a two axis model, and the 'good' and 'evil' didn't have this afterlife framework to add to the noise. (Well, not in the original EPT game, which is what I GM'd for three years). He also didn't have druids.
We didn't miss them.

RandomPeasant
2022-07-20, 01:43 PM
In a game where only maidens of pure heart can ride a unicorn,

Doesn't the whole "maiden" bit suggest that the unicorn isn't really checking for alignment per se, but rather an idiosyncratic set of criteria that are specific to unicorns?


in a game where certain artifacts do damage to a character if their alignment (in the cosmic sense, not their sociological outlook sense) is out of synch with the item,

Yes, if you were jettisoning alignment, you would also jettison the Holy and Axiomatic weapon properties. It's really not a good fit for the source material, because the holy symbols that hurt demons do not generally also hurt orcs (even in those stories that include both demons and orcs).


in a game where deities are objectively present and interfere to a lesser or greater extent in mundane matters,

Do we really need to go into the absolute laundry list of stories with active deities and nothing remotely resembling alignment?

KorvinStarmast
2022-07-20, 02:06 PM
Do we really need to go into the absolute laundry list of stories with active deities and nothing remotely resembling alignment? That usually gets a smack from the mods since a great many of those stories are inextricably bound to RL religions that are not acceptable to mention at GiTP forums.

RandomPeasant
2022-07-20, 02:31 PM
That usually gets a smack from the mods since a great many of those stories are inextricably bound to RL religions that are not acceptable to mention at GiTP forums.

I mean, there are plenty of stories on that list with totally fictional gods. As far as I'm aware, no one's out there worshipping Odium (https://coppermind.net/wiki/Odium) or Burn (https://malazan.fandom.com/wiki/Burn), nor has there ever been.

Plus, as far as it goes, the fact that you're using the plural of "religion" there sort of suggest that perhaps what's being discussed is not best represented by a single "objective Good" in any case.

Segev
2022-07-20, 04:06 PM
To the OP: Why do you care what alignment your DM says you are? Play your character. If he determines your alignment to be something other than what you think it is, so what? Do you have class features that care?

Psyren
2022-07-20, 06:52 PM
While I don't subscribe to everything he writes, I think AngryGM made a pretty well-written defense of the concept of alignment in D&D (https://theangrygm.com/alignment-in-dd-5e-s-or-get-off-the-pot/), complete with reasons for abolishing it but ultimately explaining why he keeps it around in his games. It contains (censored) swearing, but assuming his writing style doesn't put you off, I think it's worth a read.

Jay R
2022-07-20, 07:36 PM
The original L/N/C scheme was quite flexible, and useful. But, for a certain sector of the gaming audience it wasn't 'rules' enough.
It raised enough questions among the gamers who game and who thus need a rule for their game (one of four kinds of player types identified in the early SF&F/RPG scene) that those answering the mail (game authors) provided an answer. And then another answer. In time it grew into the two axis scheme.

This is mostly correct, but leaves out the essential personality. "Those answering the mail" didn't provide the two-axis alignment. Gary Gygax did.

The original D&D was unambiguously trying to simulate fantasy literature. So a morality system was put in the simulation because the challenge of good vs. evil is a crucial aspect of many fantasies. The extremes were called "Law" and "Chaos" from Moorcock and Dunsany because it sounded cool, but they were clearly intended to represent good and evil. High level clerics were Patriarchs if Lawful and Evil High Priests if Chaotic, etc.

Eventually, enough people noticed the discrepancy that they had to fix it. They could:
1. change the words to "Good" and "Evil",
2. make the rules clear by explaining the gaming jargon, or
3. try to hide the mistake by inventing an unrealistic and overly complicated game mechanic.

For Gygax, this was always an easy choice

Tanarii
2022-07-20, 07:42 PM
or it's a lot more vague (in which case it's basically meaningless, since you still have to explain how your specific character thinks and acts).
The second part doesn't follow from the first part.

Batcathat
2022-07-21, 12:47 AM
The second part doesn't follow from the first part.

It doesn't? Because it seems to me that if the alignment system is vague enough to include every type of character, saying that someone is "Lawful Good" requires explaining just how this particular character is Lawful Good and how that impact its actions. This could be a couple of words, a few sentences or much more, but in any case I don't see what difference it makes to just remove those first two words, since they're superfluous at that point.

And that's assuming the people involved have matching expectations about the alignments, maybe what you think is Lawful Good I think is Lawful Neutral or Neutral Good, in which case the alignment label is actively making it harder for me to properly understand your character.

To me, it seems like asking someone what their character is like and being told "Lawful Good" is a lot like asking someone where they live and being told "North". It's not nothing, but it's also not very helpful under most circumstances.

Mechalich
2022-07-21, 04:44 AM
It doesn't? Because it seems to me that if the alignment system is vague enough to include every type of character, saying that someone is "Lawful Good" requires explaining just how this particular character is Lawful Good and how that impact its actions. This could be a couple of words, a few sentences or much more, but in any case I don't see what difference it makes to just remove those first two words, since they're superfluous at that point.

The problem is more that the universe of D&D includes every possible type of sapient being and that means the universe encompassed by a supposedly 'universal' objective moral system is uncomfortably vast.

When you take a moral system designed for humans (and very human-like species like Elves, Dwarves, and Halflings) and try to apply it to sapient plants (Treants), hegemonizing swarms (Formians), sapient-obligate parasitoids (Illithids), and on and on it becomes a gigantic, incomprehensible mess.

A world that had only humans that used some kind of alignment-like system would probably divide up Lawful Good, Lawful Neutral, and Neutral Good (the overwhelming majority of all humans have one of these alignments) into subcategories to provide a greater degree of nuance and at the same time might compress together rare alignments like Neutral Evil and Chaotic Evil (the difference between psychopaths and sociopaths being somewhat contentious already).

Mastikator
2022-07-21, 06:17 AM
I think what's funny about the discussion of alignment is that it's already deprecated. It has two functions, both have been replaced with better options.

One is the roleplaying aspect, which needs to be supplemented with things like personality traits, ideals, bonds, flaws. But we have those already. If you fill out the trait/ideal/bond/flaw you're done. You can't freely skip alignment with no loss at that point.

The second one is cosmic morality, but here we have the dnd setting eberron that proved almost two decades ago that you can skip the alignment part and instead focus on the ideal of the plane.
If we transpose this idea to forgotten realms cosmology then we can do without alignment here as well.
9 hells is the plane of tyranny, limbo is the plane of chaos, arcadia is the plane of serene beauty, etc. They don't need alignment. And are better off without it

KorvinStarmast
2022-07-21, 07:47 AM
3. try to hide the mistake by inventing an unrealistic and overly complicated game mechanic.

For Gygax, this was always an easy choice
Cackled, I did. :smallbiggrin:

Yes, EGG was the only one answering the mail, I suppose, given that his first hire (Tim Kask) was trying to make heads or tails out of the pile of notes that became the Blackmoor supplement.

2. make the rules clear by explaining the gaming jargon, or I wish they'd have done that, since I like the Law / Chaos structure better than the G/E. It seems to capture the never ending struggle to promote civilization and order versus entropy, anarchy, and chaos while staying in the secondary world.

You can argue that this tension is a never ending struggle for mankind (both real and fantastic). The chaos/disorder of the Dark Ages/Feudal times/early Middle Ages are the sweet spot for the D&D simulation at the campaign level, just add magic, demons, dragons, and other mythical monsters. I've been digging through some historical stuff lately, and cross referencing Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, and the breakdowns in civilization that the Black Death brought with it ...)

@Mastikator
It's interesting that a problem statement that was more or less a self reporting of "My Guy Syndrome" has devolved, or maybe branched, into arguments about alignments in the game system(s) ...

@Psyren
Yeah, Angry did the topic justice there.

Tanarii
2022-07-21, 08:26 AM
It doesn't? Because it seems to me that if the alignment system is vague enough to include every type of character, saying that someone is "Lawful Good" requires explaining just how this particular character is Lawful Good and how that impact its actions. This could be a couple of words, a few sentences or much more, but in any case I don't see what difference it makes to just remove those first two words, since they're superfluous at that point.It does not. A broad strokes description of typical but not always required behavior associated with each alignment gives a player something to think about, but doesn't constantly conflict with other personality traits. It's not a straight jacket but it is a touch point to consider when trying to decide on a PCs actions in the fantasy environment,

That makes somewhat vague associated behaviors extremely useful in combination with other categories of personality traits. Not useless.


And that's assuming the people involved have matching expectations about the alignments, maybe what you think is Lawful Good I think is Lawful Neutral or Neutral Good, in which case the alignment label is actively making it harder for me to properly understand your character.Nobody else's assumptions matter. Alignment in 5e is one of several motivations used by the player to help with roleplaying a PC. Not for a different player or the DM to "understand" the character.

If a DM wants to dictate alignment in 5e somehow, they need to specifically override that assumption. For example, when I banned evil alignments, I had to phrase it as "No evil alignments, which means no characters regularly behaving like any of the evil alignment associated behaviors, in my judgement."

Batcathat
2022-07-21, 08:49 AM
It does not. A broad strokes description of typical but not always required behavior associated with each alignment gives a player something to think about, but doesn't constantly conflict with other personality traits. It's not a straight jacket but it is a touch point to consider when trying to decide on a PCs actions in the fantasy environment,

That makes somewhat vague associated behaviors extremely useful in combination with other categories of personality traits. Not useless.

Nobody else's assumptions matter. Alignment in 5e is one of several motivations used by the player to help with roleplaying a PC. Not for a different player or the DM to "understand" the character.

If a DM wants to dictate alignment in 5e somehow, they need to specifically override that assumption. For example, when I banned evil alignments, I had to phrase it as "No evil alignments, which means no characters regularly behaving like any of the evil alignment associated behaviors, in my judgement."

I don't see how "pick one of these nine super vague collections of morals" is in any way more useful than just "decide roughly what your character is like" but I suppose it's a matter of taste. If it helps some people that's good. Though considering how many issues seem to come up as a result of alignments (see this thread and about a billion others) I suspect the end result is negative.

Of course, it could be argued that the majority of these issues comes from people thinking alignment is something it isn't, but as long as the supposed advantages of alignments can be achieved without it, it seems easier to me to just remove the system in its entirety.

RandomPeasant
2022-07-21, 11:10 AM
I don't see how "pick one of these nine super vague collections of morals" is in any way more useful than just "decide roughly what your character is like" but I suppose it's a matter of taste.

I think there is value in having a set of moral systems for players to pick from. My issues with alignment in that context are A) calling those things "Lawful Good" or "Neutral Evil" is not a useful set of descriptions B) there's really no reason to limit it to nine and C) it's absolutely unforgivable to not have a custom/opt-out choice, especially when it's mechanically meaningless. Don't say "some characters are Lawful Good" and then explain that you think Lawful Good means following a categorical imperative (or whatever it is you think it means), just say "some characters follow a categorical imperative". That's clearer and it makes it way easier to expand your system without having to declare "actually these contradictory moral systems are both objectively Lawful Good because I don't understand what 'objectively' means".

LibraryOgre
2022-07-21, 11:42 AM
I think there is value in having a set of moral systems for players to pick from. My issues with alignment in that context are A) calling those things "Lawful Good" or "Neutral Evil" is not a useful set of descriptions B) there's really no reason to limit it to nine and C) it's absolutely unforgivable to not have a custom/opt-out choice, especially when it's mechanically meaningless.

a) This is part of why I advocate for definitions of the pieces that work in most cases... what is Lawful? What is Evil? You still need an example of what Lawful and Evil looks like in combination, but that's easier to build if you know what Lawful means, and it meaningfully opposes the viewpoint of Chaotic. To an extent, some editions of the game have done this, but I think any given definition tends to get muddled.

b) The limit of nine really comes from having a two-axis system, with a delineation of three groups on each axis. 32 is 9. To get more complicated, you'd either need to add another axis, or further delineation on the two axes... and I can't see what you would do with the second. I could see "subtle" v. "direct" as a good addition, but I am comfortable with the current "Means" v. "Ends" definitions I have.

c) I liked that 4e introduced "unaligned" as distinct from True Neutral; AD&D had True Neutral as a philosophical position, except when it came to animals, but I can also see "**** it" as a viable alignment category... until you get to the metaphysics of the universe, and the assumption that the souls of the dead go to their planar correspondence. Which is where my "planar" explanation comes in... characters who trend one way go to a place that matches that trend.

As for mechanically meaningless? That's relatively recent. AD&D had a lot of penalties for alignment change, with 1e going so far as to have alignment languages (which were pointless, in practice). 3e leaned heavily into alignment as part of magic. That I recall, 4e didn't have a lot to do with alignment as a descriptor

KorvinStarmast
2022-07-21, 12:37 PM
I think there is value in having a set of moral systems for players to pick from. None of the alignments in D&D are moral systems, though. And if I can confine myself to the current edition, alignment is descriptive, not prescriptive.

Telok
2022-07-21, 12:59 PM
I've slways had good results from the Palladium/Rifts alignment system. It has a nice distinction between scrupulous & principled. Avoids, mostly, loaded baggage words like "good" & "evil". Works well as actual codes of conduct & social norms.

Also in one campaign I implemented d&d alignment as an explicitly supernatural aura based on specific magics & powerful outsiders (and usually 100% optional for most characters). That one worked perfectly because the players still said "good", "evil", "law", "chaos" when the alignments were explicitly light, dark, order, cheeseburger*. That matched the popular public relations, common misunderstandings, & massive over simplifications most people like to engage in about alignment type stuff. Best of all I didn't need to change anything from the books. Even the d&d 3.x screwups of putting idiotic alignment mismatch tags on spells & items worked in its favor. Stuff like having a "evil"/dark spell telling you if an ally is wounded, or a "good"/light spell causing hideous agony & protracted nasty death, it was all a good fit.

The fact that setting documents explicitly laid out the difference, had a light-order god that rewarded you (piety & boon system) for declaring people 'evil' then setting them on fire and had a protector/death/rebirth god of dark-yardsale* alignment, was completely missed by everyone who didn't play a divine caster. Worked perfectly. Players acted like non-philosophers who took priest advertising at face value because of years of d&d alignment screwballing.

* commonly referred to as "chaos", but I open a dictionary to a random page and pick the first noun I find just to be really accurate.

Psyren
2022-07-21, 01:29 PM
This is mostly correct, but leaves out the essential personality. "Those answering the mail" didn't provide the two-axis alignment. Gary Gygax did.

The original D&D was unambiguously trying to simulate fantasy literature. So a morality system was put in the simulation because the challenge of good vs. evil is a crucial aspect of many fantasies. The extremes were called "Law" and "Chaos" from Moorcock and Dunsany because it sounded cool, but they were clearly intended to represent good and evil. High level clerics were Patriarchs if Lawful and Evil High Priests if Chaotic, etc.

Eventually, enough people noticed the discrepancy that they had to fix it. They could:
1. change the words to "Good" and "Evil",
2. make the rules clear by explaining the gaming jargon, or
3. try to hide the mistake by inventing an unrealistic and overly complicated game mechanic.

For Gygax, this was always an easy choice

It was also the right choice imo. For all its flaws, a two-axis system does a much better job of explaining, for example, what differentiates Robin Hood's morality from that of Steve Rogers. Gygax himself may not have done the best job of fleshing it out, but I think it's come a long way.

Also, we tried to move toward a single axis with 4e and it was yet another one of that edition's colossal mistakes.


I think what's funny about the discussion of alignment is that it's already deprecated. It has two functions, both have been replaced with better options.

One is the roleplaying aspect, which needs to be supplemented with things like personality traits, ideals, bonds, flaws. But we have those already. If you fill out the trait/ideal/bond/flaw you're done. You can't freely skip alignment with no loss at that point.

The second one is cosmic morality, but here we have the dnd setting eberron that proved almost two decades ago that you can skip the alignment part and instead focus on the ideal of the plane.
If we transpose this idea to forgotten realms cosmology then we can do without alignment here as well.
9 hells is the plane of tyranny, limbo is the plane of chaos, arcadia is the plane of serene beauty, etc. They don't need alignment. And are better off without it

1) Eberron's cosmology/afterlife is not some kind of ideal to be aspired to. It works for their morally-ambiguous pulpy setting, but if it was the only or even the primary one for D&D, the game would be a lot worse off.

2) Traits, Ideals, Bonds and Flaws are powerful tools, but saying alignment no longer has value because they exist is a bridge too far. Alignment on your sheet represents an aspiration, and those aspirations can help you figure out how your character might act in a situation that doesn't cleanly align (natch) to your BIFTs.


Though considering how many issues seem to come up as a result of alignments (see this thread and about a billion others) I suspect the end result is negative.

"Threads exist" is not enough to conclude on a net negative. It's not like the hundreds if not thousands of playgroups who do find it helpful have reason to rush to message boards to proclaim so.

BRC
2022-07-21, 01:33 PM
It was also the right choice imo. For all its flaws, a two-axis system does a much better job of explaining, for example, what differentiates Robin Hood's morality from that of Steve Rogers. Gygax himself may not have done the best job of fleshing it out, but I think it's come a long way.

Also, we tried to move toward a single axis with 4e and it was yet another one of that edition's colossal mistakes.



For all it's flaws, the 2-axis alignment system is a great Descriptive system.

If I say "The King is Lawful Evil" that's a very loaded phrase that gives you a lot of information about The King.

The problem is always when you have to take a character and then precisely pin them into one of nine boxes. Is the Sheriff of Nottingham Lawful Evil, or just Lawful Neutral. Robin Hood and the Merry Men are Outlaws after all, does the Sheriff need to be evil to try to stop them?

Which is a fine question until you need to determine if Friar Tuck's Spell affects the Sheriff as an Evil Creature, and suddenly you need a hard-and-fast answer about the true nature of the Sheriff of Nottingham.

GloatingSwine
2022-07-21, 01:35 PM
Most Thieves Guilds are usually envisioned as some kind of organize crime -alike, with some kind of code of tradition/honor. That's associated with Lawful Neutral or Lawful Evil, not chaotic anything.

Being (in effect) a strong-arm or charismatic gang leader heading up your own "guild" wouldn't be though.

Any thieves guild which didn't *at least* adhere to some sort of Omertà would last about fifteen seconds before the first knife slipped between the first set of ribs to keep a secret.

Keltest
2022-07-21, 01:45 PM
Any thieves guild which didn't *at least* adhere to some sort of Omertà would last about fifteen seconds before the first knife slipped between the first set of ribs to keep a secret.

Indeed. Chaotic beings can cooperate and organize, they just do so because they all individually decided its for the best in this specific circumstance, not because they think organization is intrinsically superior or anything like that.

BRC
2022-07-21, 01:54 PM
Indeed. Chaotic beings can cooperate and organize, they just do so because they all individually decided its for the best in this specific circumstance, not because they think organization is intrinsically superior or anything like that.


I'm always of the opinion that "Neutral" and "Chaotic" are the most confusing points on the alignment chart.

Neutral is just a question of, like, is it enough to be not especially one way or another, or is Neutrality an aspiration in of itself?
Similarly, is "Chaotic" merely a rejection of Law, or do you have to value the absence of Law? Can you be Chaotic without being some sort of philosopher on the subject.


A Thieves Guild could adopt Omerta simply as a survival strategy, rather than because they inherently value the idea of following rules. Snitching isn't seen as a betrayal of the Guild's code, so much as just a stupid thing to do because the rest of the guild will murder you for it. The rest of the guild murders you for it, not because they see it as WRONG, but because the way they discourage people from snitching is to murder anybody who snitches.

But even that isn't necessarily "Chaotic", just not Lawful.

Batcathat
2022-07-21, 01:58 PM
"Threads exist" is not enough to conclude on a net negative. It's not like the hundreds if not thousands of playgroups who do find it helpful have reason to rush to message boards to proclaim so.

Sure, that's probably true and it's not like it could be reasonably proven either way. I don't doubt there are plenty of groups for whom alignments help more than they hurt, but that's probably true of any part of the system, not matter how criticized.

Still, with several potential downsides and few potential upsides (with the main one, as RandomPeasant pointed out, being quite achievable by just having examples to inspire without it being objective truth within the setting or a mechanical part of the system) I'm leaning towards it being a net negative.

Psyren
2022-07-21, 02:07 PM
Sure, that's probably true and it's not like it could be reasonably proven either way. I don't doubt there are plenty of groups for whom alignments help more than they hurt, but that's probably true of any part of the system, not matter how criticized.

The parts they kept after re-evaluation, surely.


For all it's flaws, the 2-axis alignment system is a great Descriptive system.

If I say "The King is Lawful Evil" that's a very loaded phrase that gives you a lot of information about The King.

The problem is always when you have to take a character and then precisely pin them into one of nine boxes. Is the Sheriff of Nottingham Lawful Evil, or just Lawful Neutral. Robin Hood and the Merry Men are Outlaws after all, does the Sheriff need to be evil to try to stop them?

Which is a fine question until you need to determine if Friar Tuck's Spell affects the Sheriff as an Evil Creature, and suddenly you need a hard-and-fast answer about the true nature of the Sheriff of Nottingham.

The solution there is to change the spells that affect Evil creatures. This is why Detect/Protection From Evil and Good don't actually look for alignment anymore. Even Hallow no longer cares about alignment.

LibraryOgre
2022-07-21, 02:24 PM
I've slways had good results from the Palladium/Rifts alignment system. It has a nice distinction between scrupulous & principled. Avoids, mostly, loaded baggage words like "good" & "evil". Works well as actual codes of conduct & social norms.


In a lot of ways, I find the Palladium system more difficult to deal with than the D&D one, simply because it is so specific. If I do X like Principled, but Y and Z like Scrupulous, am I principled, or scrupulous? In the D&D system, it's lack of specificity lets you pin yourself in the big fields, rather than trying to fit to an unbending list of definitions.

Also, the names are kind of horrible. "Evil but kind of honorable" is "Aberrant". "Always follows the rules" is Principled, but "will bend the rules for good reasons" is "Scrupulous", and "doesn't like rules, but has lines they will not cross" is "Unprincipled". The names barely connect to the ideals of the alignment.

Tanarii
2022-07-21, 02:45 PM
I don't see how "pick one of these nine super vague collections of morals" is in any way more useful than just "decide roughly what your character is like" but I suppose it's a matter of taste. If it helps some people that's good. Though considering how many issues seem to come up as a result of alignments (see this thread and about a billion others) I suspect the end result is negative.
Don't get me wrong. I'd probably be happier if alignment went back to meaning you were aligned with Team Law (civilization) and Team Chaos (destruction of civilization / entropy), with Team Neutral (nature/balance) in between. :smallamused: And the personality system instead had a motivations category named "Moral/Social attitudes", in which the player was given 6 examples from their background but was free to pick their own description if they spdesired.


Of course, it could be argued that the majority of these issues comes from people thinking alignment is something it isn't, but as long as the supposed advantages of alignments can be achieved without it, it seems easier to me to just remove the system in its entirety.Yes. Especially when it's been adapted in the new edition to something actually useful, and folks keep trying to bring old edition thinking to it. But even in older editions it was rife with folks bring personal definitions, especially for Good and Evil.

KorvinStarmast
2022-07-21, 02:51 PM
Don't get me wrong. I'd probably be happier if alignment went back to meaning you were aligned with Team Law (civilization) and Team Chaos (destruction of civilization / entropy), with Team Neutral (nature/balance) in between. :smallamused: And the personality system instead had a motivations category named "Moral/Social attitudes", in which the player was given 6 examples from their background but was free to pick their own description if they so desired. Yes to all of the above. :smallsmile:
But even in older editions it was rife with folks bring personal definitions, especially for Good and Evil. Which is where the table of players need to arrive at an agreement. And that often takes effort, and actual people skills.

Psyren
2022-07-21, 03:15 PM
My problem with single-axis is that there's a big difference between the guy who is "Team Civilization" (for the benefit of all), the guy who is "Team Civilization" (so long as he is in charge), and the guy who is "Team Civilization" (regardless of which of the first two comes out on top).

And sure, I agree that needing to know which is which in any given moment because a PC happened to cast a detect X spell is a headache. But I also know that an Archon probably only wants to punch one of these guys in the face too - after filling out the proper forms, anyway.

Telok
2022-07-21, 04:08 PM
In a lot of ways, I find the Palladium system more difficult to deal with than the D&D one, simply because it is so specific. If I do X like Principled, but Y and Z like Scrupulous, am I principled, or scrupulous? In the D&D system, it's lack of specificity lets you pin yourself in the big fields, rather than trying to fit to an unbending list of definitions.

Also, the names are kind of horrible. "Evil but kind of honorable" is "Aberrant". "Always follows the rules" is Principled, but "will bend the rules for good reasons" is "Scrupulous", and "doesn't like rules, but has lines they will not cross" is "Unprincipled". The names barely connect to the ideals of the alignment.

True, the names are quasi-random thesaurus associations. But I find it nice that they don't come with RL cultural & religious baggage attached. They, to me, communicate more about an individual's social contract expectations & actions than D&D's

I don't think the specificity is any more stringent than D&D's alignments. You can read D&D's just a hard bounded or Palldium's just as range/examples as the other way around. It may be a factor of simple familiarity, I ran into the Palladium alignments pretty soon after I started gaming and during the high Gygaxian prose era. I basically adopted them over the classic AD&D post order-chaos gibberish pseudo-explanations. So I'm used to thinking of them more like the "alignment is a spectrum" that D&D gets painted with, while the D&D ones started and always feel like weird iron-clad perscriptions to me.

I mean, "lawful evil" doesn't actually tell me anything except that the individual thinks rules matter in some way, shape, or form, and they either aren't a nice friendly person OR they may be a perfectly nice friendly person who happens to animate a skeleton to clean the floor every weekend.

KorvinStarmast
2022-07-21, 04:19 PM
My problem with single-axis is that there's a big difference between the guy who is "Team Civilization" (for the benefit of all), the guy who is "Team Civilization" (so long as he is in charge), and the guy who is "Team Civilization" (regardless of which of the first two comes out on top). That's actually good, not bad, as it gives a lot of room to work, room to have nuance, and room to have gray areas and overlap. As an example (hmm, gonna use RL examples, forum rules) the King of X and the Duke of Y are both generally lawful in terms of wanting their own nations to be healthy and thriving, but they are of course in a bickerfest over the region Z between them. They are rivals.

It is not helpful to throw G and E into this mix. That's just a bunch of name calling.

They get into each other's grill, maybe there are a few border skirmishes, but then the ravening hordes of {monsters} show up and they set aside their differences and ally, for the time being.
There's a risk that they go right back to the bickerfest once they have defeated the Evil High Cultist leading the ravening hordes of {monsters} or, maybe, they learn that they can get along and figure out a way to resolve that earlier bickerfest .... so much room for role play there.

And, L N C allows for some good "where ya sit determines what ya see" Aha! moments without all of the Gotcha DMing that the 9 boxes and hard coding leads to.
:smallyuk:
One of my favorite examples of that was an OD&D (add Greyhawk, add Blackmoor, Add eldritch Wizardry) group where our party (we always believed we were the good guys) had to deal with (after a battle nearby, we helped out) a large contingent of troops, clerics, and a few NPC paladins showing up and not liking the party at all.
They were, for, sure lawful.
My Druid was not appreciated by the clerics at all, basically got run out of town.
Our paladin was getting regular butt-chewings from the lead cleric and the lead paladin about even hanging around with us low lifes, who included quite a few thieves, thief magic users, and a wizard (name level magic user) who was not nice to the clerics at all ...

RandomPeasant
2022-07-21, 04:28 PM
If what you want is nuance, it's not really clear to me why you need explicit "teams" at all. Certainly "this guy is Lawful and this guy is Chaotic" is less provocative than "this guy is Good and this guy is Evil", but it's still not great. Does "Lawful" mean "fidelity to the written law", "fidelity to abstract principles", "fidelity to cultural tradition", "fidelity to your personal word", or something else. If it means all of those things, why do we have a single term? When you get down to it, the issue is that we have terms for describing different sets of principles. Philosophy is full of them. But none of them are "Good" or "Lawful", because those are just not descriptive things. If you need names, either use ones that have a clear and unambiguous meaning (you might not adhere to the Categorical Imperative, but you can agree with someone who does about what it is), or terms that don't carry any baggage at all (like "Green" or "Baatorian"). The demand that we use a specific set of terminology that has the sole exclusive property of causing heated debates is the worst sort of sacred cow.

KorvinStarmast
2022-07-21, 04:28 PM
Does "Lawful" mean "fidelity to the written law", "fidelity to abstract principles", "fidelity to cultural tradition", "fidelity to your personal word", or something else. If it means all of those things, why do we have a single term?. It is that kind of pedantry that gets in the way of playing a game.

GloatingSwine
2022-07-21, 04:30 PM
It is that kind of pedantry that gets in the way of playing a game.

Unless the game is "argue about it on the Internet".


The alignments are what they are because they're from an older time, a time where the rules had Opinions about what sort of game you were playing. Opinions which, in the modern era, are either quaintly outdated (law vs chaos) or outright unwelcome (who is allowed to be good and who is "always evil").

Tanarii
2022-07-21, 04:32 PM
That's actually good, not bad, as it gives a lot of room to work, room to have nuance, and room to have gray areas and overlap. As an example (hmm, gonna use RL examples, forum rules) the King of X and the Duke of Y are both generally lawful in terms of wanting their own nations to be healthy and thriving, but they are of course in a bickerfest over the region Z between them. They are rivals.
More importantly, it means their natural inclination is they fight on the same side, or at least take action independently, against Team Chaos. They don't work with Team Chaos. Barring unusual circumstances. And vice versa.

As an example, in Mystara the Black Eagle Baron Ludwig von Hendriks was Team Chaotic, and he regularly used humanoids (also from Team Chaotic) to terrorize and dominate his Barony. As an exceptional circumstance, his cousin Grand Duke Stefan of Karameikos (Team Lawful) refused to believe the rumors since he was getting so many false ones from other areas he ruled at the time and it was his cousin, and left him in power. Until a group of Halflings kidnapped him and dragged him into the Barony to show him the truth of what was happening. At which point he sided with the Halflings (also Team Lawful) against his Cousin.

Batcathat
2022-07-21, 04:33 PM
Unless the game is "argue about it on the Internet".

That is a good point. Alignments have certainly led to quite a few entertaining discussions so I'll add that as a definitive upside. :smallamused:

LibraryOgre
2022-07-21, 04:37 PM
It may be a factor of simple familiarity, I ran into the Palladium alignments pretty soon after I started gaming and during the high Gygaxian prose era. I basically adopted them over the classic AD&D post order-chaos gibberish pseudo-explanations. So I'm used to thinking of them more like the "alignment is a spectrum" that D&D gets painted with, while the D&D ones started and always feel like weird iron-clad perscriptions to me.

Trust me, I'm familiar with Palladium alignment, too. For me, the definitive statements always made them feel more prescriptive, and the fact that the names associated with them were random made them infuriating. "Lawful Evil" may not get specific, but it's a pair of words with meaning, as opposed to Palladium's random assignment of words.

AD&D, especially, DID have a problem of being prescriptive, especially since the penalties for switching alignment were so severe... but I'd argue that Palladium went too far to embrace relativism... q.v. Victor Feral, a vivisectionist who creates then dissects mutant animals getting classed as "Scrupulous", while keeping slaves and instructing them to commit crimes for him.


I mean, "lawful evil" doesn't actually tell me anything except that the individual thinks rules matter in some way, shape, or form, and they either aren't a nice friendly person OR they may be a perfectly nice friendly person who happens to animate a skeleton to clean the floor every weekend.

To me, that's part of the appeal (though I disagree that a single animated skeleton would move them to evil, in and of itself; I never bought in much with 3e's "evil spell" idea). Palladium's "Diabolical" almost always means psycho killer. Lawful Evil can mean a lot of things, while staying in the "believes in social structures, and uses them to benefit themselves" basket.

Mechalich
2022-07-21, 05:35 PM
That's actually good, not bad, as it gives a lot of room to work, room to have nuance, and room to have gray areas and overlap. As an example (hmm, gonna use RL examples, forum rules) the King of X and the Duke of Y are both generally lawful in terms of wanting their own nations to be healthy and thriving, but they are of course in a bickerfest over the region Z between them. They are rivals.

It is not helpful to throw G and E into this mix. That's just a bunch of name calling.

This illustrates problems with how people think about alignment, that it somehow implies the Good can't fight Good, even though various editions have explicitly stated that they can and that in fact this happens all the time (and of course we see this in other media as well, like Marvel). In fact Lawful Good and Chaotic Good individuals are likely to absolutely despise each other (classic action anime s.CRY.ed is a masterclass in this) even if they periodically unite to beat up actual evil guys.

Part of the problem is world-building related. D&D setting designers have a bad habit of filling the world with waaay too much 'Evil' to the point that in order to even just hold back the tide of darkness all of the good guys and a huge chunk of the neutral guys need to work together to prevent the apocalypse. This was often codified through comments like 'for every Elminster there's one hundred Manshoons' and other such BS. They also tend to cheat and make evil somehow infinitely replaceable, especially when the bad guys wail mightily on each other but somehow this never has any long term consequences.

LibraryOgre
2022-07-21, 05:46 PM
A few years ago, I had an ambition to remake Dragonlance, but flipped... instead of a war between Good and Evil, it was a war between Law and Chaos. I think my own definition of the alignment axes as being about Ends and Means, made this impossible for me; I tend to see the ends as far more important.

Damon_Tor
2022-07-21, 06:36 PM
Getting pretty sick of people judging my CN in character actions when my IRL alignment is chaotic neutral. Look, spending all my adventuring money funding a charity orphanage to turn the kids into my own little Oliver Twist style thieves guild is the literal definition of chaotic neutral.

An "Oliver Twist style thieves guild" is pretty evil my dude. Whether theft is inherently evil or not (it doesn't have to be) using kids to perform criminal acts in a lawful society is setting them up for a short, miserable life. It shows a callous disregard for the well-being of the children in question and is thus an evil act. Basing "neutral" behavior on Fagin of all people shows a total lack of understanding of the character BTW. He is just as evil as Bill Sykes, he's just more clever and less willing to get his own hands dirty. Fagin is closer to neutral evil than he is to chaotic neutral. Find a better role model.

RandomPeasant
2022-07-21, 06:39 PM
It is that kind of pedantry that gets in the way of playing a game.

That kind of pedantry is absolutely necessary to play a game where alignment is meaningful, because any of those are things "Lawful" could plausibly mean. So you have to figure out which of those it does mean before you can get anywhere. You can try to just punt that to the designers, but then you can end up with absolutely bizarre situations like tables where "Good" means something that no one agrees is "Good", which can be philosophically interesting, but is probably not what the defenders of alignment have in mind.


That is a good point. Alignments have certainly led to quite a few entertaining discussions so I'll add that as a definitive upside. :smallamused:

It's certainly good for the brand. Those things where it has Batman quotes for every alignment or whatever get people talking about D&D. Less clear if it's good for the game.


Part of the problem is world-building related. D&D setting designers have a bad habit of filling the world with waaay too much 'Evil' to the point that in order to even just hold back the tide of darkness all of the good guys and a huge chunk of the neutral guys need to work together to prevent the apocalypse.

Of course, that's only a problem when you insist those dudes are "objectively Evil" and would like to do an apocalypse. Mind Flayers don't have to be apocalyptic schemers who dream of shutting off the sun, they can do their job as antagonists just fine as *******s who eat people and don't think anyone who isn't a Mind Flayer has moral value. Similarly, it's outright bizarre that there are cultures (generally multiple cultures) that explicitly and knowingly identify as "Evil", even if they're not more numerous than the Good ones. People don't do that! The <insert whatever historical group you think is just the worst> didn't even do that!

Psyren
2022-07-21, 06:57 PM
It is not helpful to throw G and E into this mix. That's just a bunch of name calling.

No, it's not. I mean, sure it is from the perspective of the actors in question, since hardly anyone (well-written) actually considers themselves E. But there's still cosmic forces of G and E, and their agents, in D&D settings. Unless you plan on abolishing all the fiends, undead, celestials and mindflayers from the game - and while we're at it, you know, Dragons - then G and E do matter, and the devils are going to sponsor one of the three factions I mentioned.


This illustrates problems with how people think about alignment, that it somehow implies the Good can't fight Good, even though various editions have explicitly stated that they can and that in fact this happens all the time (and of course we see this in other media as well, like Marvel). In fact Lawful Good and Chaotic Good individuals are likely to absolutely despise each other (classic action anime s.CRY.ed is a masterclass in this) even if they periodically unite to beat up actual evil guys.

Part of the problem is world-building related. D&D setting designers have a bad habit of filling the world with waaay too much 'Evil' to the point that in order to even just hold back the tide of darkness all of the good guys and a huge chunk of the neutral guys need to work together to prevent the apocalypse. This was often codified through comments like 'for every Elminster there's one hundred Manshoons' and other such BS. They also tend to cheat and make evil somehow infinitely replaceable, especially when the bad guys wail mightily on each other but somehow this never has any long term consequences.

I love S-Cry-Ed!

But I disagree with your second paragraph, it's not a bad habit. If Good and Neutral weren't outnumbered, why would they need heroic PCs to help pick up the slack?


A few years ago, I had an ambition to remake Dragonlance, but flipped... instead of a war between Good and Evil, it was a war between Law and Chaos. I think my own definition of the alignment axes as being about Ends and Means, made this impossible for me; I tend to see the ends as far more important.

Didn't Dragonlance turn from "Good vs. Evil" to "Everyone vs. Chaos?"



It's certainly good for the brand. Those things where it has Batman quotes for every alignment or whatever get people talking about D&D. Less clear if it's good for the game.

It certainly doesn't hurt the game. Whereas purging any mention of it from the books likely would.

Mechalich
2022-07-21, 07:11 PM
But I disagree with your second paragraph, it's not a bad habit. If Good and Neutral weren't outnumbered, why would they need heroic PCs to help pick up the slack?

A single villain, with relatively modest resources, can cause catastrophically tragic levels of damage. Public safety requires the expenditure of comparatively vast resources in order to control threats. Security is expensive and in fact the level of expense on rises as the system weakens or the number of oppositional individuals increases.

RandomPeasant
2022-07-21, 07:42 PM
But I disagree with your second paragraph, it's not a bad habit. If Good and Neutral weren't outnumbered, why would they need heroic PCs to help pick up the slack?

Why do PCs need to be picking up the slack? If there are basilisks that need slaying, it follows that someone must slay them, and as that story is considerably more interesting than the stories of all the people who do not slay basilisks, it is not at all implausible that one might wish to tell stories about the people who do it. The real world doesn't have overwhelmingly more serial killers than non-serial killers, but Netflix still made Mindhunter.


It certainly doesn't hurt the game. Whereas purging any mention of it from the books likely would.

Really love the analytical and empirical arguments you've provided here. But the reality is you're already wrong. They took out the mechanical bits of alignment, and those are the bits that people said were necessary for genre emulation. What's left now is solely the tedious argument bits, and they're a spandrel that can be replaced without loss.

Psyren
2022-07-21, 07:55 PM
Why do PCs need to be picking up the slack? If there are basilisks that need slaying, it follows that someone must slay them, and as that story is considerably more interesting than the stories of all the people who do not slay basilisks, it is not at all implausible that one might wish to tell stories about the people who do it. The real world doesn't have overwhelmingly more serial killers than non-serial killers, but Netflix still made Mindhunter.

Basilisks make for a fine encounter but poor BBEGs, generally.


The reality is you're already wrong.

I'm not, alignment is still in the books and will remain so in 5.5. Do you know what "purged" means?


A single villain, with relatively modest resources, can cause catastrophically tragic levels of damage. Public safety requires the expenditure of comparatively vast resources in order to control threats. Security is expensive and in fact the level of expense on rises as the system weakens or the number of oppositional individuals increases.

If "single villains" are the ones outnumbered, where are their "modest resources" coming from?

RandomPeasant
2022-07-21, 08:09 PM
Basilisks make for a fine encounter but poor BBEGs, generally.

I see you've chosen to nitpick my example rather than engage with my actual point. I can only assume this means you agree with the general thesis.


I'm not, alignment is still in the books and will remain so in 5.5. Do you know what "purged" means?

You really are. It means less with each passing edition. Of course, we've gotten rather distracted from the point, which is "what good is alignment" not "what words does Psyren want me to define".


If "single villains" are the ones outnumbered, where are their "modest resources" coming from?

Can you really think of no examples, perhaps real-world examples even, of a small force that was able to gain modest resources despite existing in a system generally opposed to their existence?

Psyren
2022-07-21, 08:36 PM
I see you've chosen to nitpick my example rather than engage with my actual point. I can only assume this means you agree with the general thesis.

You assume incorrectly.


You really are. It means less with each passing edition.

But it's not gone and never will be, which was my actual point.


Can you really think of no examples, perhaps real-world examples even, of a small force that was able to gain modest resources despite existing in a system generally opposed to their existence?

I'm not agreeing with the "modest resources" premise. It's an understatement if you look at, well, any published setting ever.

RandomPeasant
2022-07-21, 08:44 PM
You assume incorrectly.

Interesting. I find that when I disagree with something, I usually make arguments against it. I suppose your strategy of "say you disagree with it and nothing more" is valid too. Bit less persuasive though.


But it's not gone and never will be, which was my actual point.

I imagine you made the same point to people who said animate dead didn't really need its [Evil] tag. Perhaps you do not have quite the predictive power you think.


I'm not agreeing with the "modest resources" premise. It's an understatement if you look at, well, any published setting ever.

I can't quite speak for Mechalich, but I think his point is that a villain with modest resources is capable of substantial villainy, not necessarily that the particular villains in any particular setting are modestly-resourced. You don't need a great nation of people whose hearts are devoted to capital-E Evil to summon a demon lord into the world, so postulating such a nation raises questions like "why haven't they used their nation-scale resources to do enough summoning rituals to overpower the forces of capital-G Good". It seems like a better setting-building premise to assume that nations are mostly motivated by realpolitik, as they are in the real world, and that apocalypse cultists are a marginalized fringe, rather than a full third the philosophical space.

RazorChain
2022-07-21, 08:57 PM
My problem with alignment has always been this. The players reasons his characters action because he is evil, good, chaotic. "My character does that because he is chaotic neutral".

But ingame the PC would never have the same reason. It's like a serial killer reasoning his deeds based on that he is chaotic evil or a genocidal maniac giving reasons for his actions based on alignment.

Nobody justifies their actions based on some alignment axis in real life so how does it help in a game world?

It's like a former policeman and crime author Jørn Lier Horst said "I believe that all people are capable of killing another person, it just depends on the circumstances the person finds itself in"

So when the Lawful Good character is killing things he has to justify or find reason for it somehow. So either morality is subjective or it is objective.

Psyren
2022-07-21, 09:06 PM
I find that when I disagree with something, I usually make arguments against it.

I did.


I imagine you made the same point to people who said animate dead didn't really need its [Evil] tag.

I did. I also read the 5e PHB, specifically the sidebar on page 203.



I can't quite speak for Mechalich,

I'll wait for him then.

KorvinStarmast
2022-07-21, 09:08 PM
That kind of pedantry is absolutely necessary to play a game where alignment is meaningful, No, it isn't. Over reliance on rules is antithetical to what made D&D so unique and so special, since the entire concept of "the rules define the game" was discarded. That paradigm was abandoned. It is arguable that EGG did a disservice to his own game with AD&D when he went all in on making it a closed system, and rules heavy which it wasn't at its birth (but we may be getting way off topic with that) but he more or less couldn't help himself given that he'd already been immersed in producing rules for games for about a decade before that (although the profit margins were meager to non existent in the early years)

Damon_Tor
2022-07-21, 09:17 PM
I've found alignment a useful tool when playing with my kids. My son is 8 and generally selects a chaotic good alignment. When he begins to consider whether or not he should try to steal things in the village they are staying in, I'll remind him of his alignment and whether or not that choice would hurt other people or help them, and what that means for a good character.

I don't think it's very meaningful for adults though

Telok
2022-07-21, 09:28 PM
the fact that the names associated with them were random made them infuriating. "Lawful Evil" may not get specific, but it's a pair of words with meaning, as opposed to Palladium's random assignment of words.

Interesting thing, having seen umpity different interpretations of "good", "evil", etc., in RL & games, they've become effectively meaningless words to me. And having different DMs force their sometimes wildly different personal visions of them down on players (often in annoyingly unexpected ways) has caused me to associate D&D alignment labels with arbitrary & apparently random "you must do x because <alignment>" perscriptive crap coming down a pipe. So apparently I feel the way about D&D alignment that you feel about Palladium alignment. Funny, old world eh?

RandomPeasant
2022-07-21, 09:33 PM
I did.

Oh, really? Were they in some other thread?


I did. I also read the 5e PHB, specifically the sidebar on page 203.

You mean the one that specifically does not describe casting animate dead as an Evil act, thereby actively disproving the argument you are trying to make and demonstrating that your past analysis on this exact issue was exactly as bad as your present analysis is.


No, it isn't. Over reliance on rules is antithetical to what made D&D so unique and so special, since the entire concept of "the rules define the game" was discarded.

So then what the hell is the point of having established alignment in the first place. "We need these rules so we can deviate from them and do what we want" is not a particularly compelling argument for having rules.

Mechalich
2022-07-21, 11:26 PM
I can't quite speak for Mechalich, but I think his point is that a villain with modest resources is capable of substantial villainy, not necessarily that the particular villains in any particular setting are modestly-resourced. You don't need a great nation of people whose hearts are devoted to capital-E Evil to summon a demon lord into the world, so postulating such a nation raises questions like "why haven't they used their nation-scale resources to do enough summoning rituals to overpower the forces of capital-G Good". It seems like a better setting-building premise to assume that nations are mostly motivated by realpolitik, as they are in the real world, and that apocalypse cultists are a marginalized fringe, rather than a full third the philosophical space.

Right. A very small number of genuine agents-of-chaos are capable of causing immense amounts of damage using fairly modest resources. For example, the animated series Arcane is all about how much damage one such agent - Jinx (who also happens to be a very good example of what chaotic neutral by way of severe mental illness looks like) - can cause to society. And it's a lot. Lawful organizations have to constantly fight against entropy simply to sustain themselves which means entropy really doesn't need that much help before you hit societal collapse. Historically, most societies are no more than one mega-drought away from oblivion.

Now, it is admittedly possible for fantasy scenarios to change the calculus, but the overwhelming majority of the time fantasy elements added to a world make things worse compared to a similar tech level Earth, not better. Often, especially when you engage with the fridge logic, they produce a grimdark hellscape from which there is no escape. D&D, for example, allows for immortal, un-killable god-wizards who can reshape the world to their will. Introduce the slightest bit of 'magic is bad' and boom, Dark Sun.

Psyren
2022-07-21, 11:34 PM
You mean the one that specifically does not describe casting animate dead as an Evil act,

You have a very interesting (tortuous?) interpretation of "only evil casters cast it frequently."


For example, the animated series Arcane is all about how much damage one such agent - Jinx (who also happens to be a very good example of what chaotic neutral by way of severe mental illness looks like) - can cause to society.

I'm glad you brought up Arcane and Jinx because it proves my point. You know the criminal syndicate that absconded and corrupted her? The one that rose to prominence in the first place by meddling with evil mutating void forces? Are those the "modest resources" you mean?

Mechalich
2022-07-22, 12:10 AM
I'm glad you brought up Arcane and Jinx because it proves my point. You know the criminal syndicate that absconded and corrupted her? The one that rose to prominence in the first place by meddling with evil mutating void forces? Are those the "modest resources" you mean?

What percentage of said syndicates resources does Jinx utilize? 5%? 1%? 0.1%? It's not much. The syndicate is a mostly lawful organization primarily engaged in the (mutated) narcotics business. A huge portion of its energy is expended defending the status quo.

Psyren
2022-07-22, 12:24 AM
What percentage of said syndicates resources does Jinx utilize? 5%? 1%? 0.1%? It's not much.

What percentage was needed to save her life after the bridge explosion? What percentage fueled the mutant enforcers that led to her kidnapping in the first place? And how did Silco and Singed acquire it?

The evil voidstuff drives the entire plot. And even without it, Piltover was quite happy to oppress Zaun so its corrupt councillors could stay rich. Good is very much outnumbered in that setting, as in most if not all D&D ones. So again, thanks for bringing it up.

Mastikator
2022-07-22, 03:28 AM
1) Eberron's cosmology/afterlife is not some kind of ideal to be aspired to. It works for their morally-ambiguous pulpy setting, but if it was the only or even the primary one for D&D, the game would be a lot worse off.

2) Traits, Ideals, Bonds and Flaws are powerful tools, but saying alignment no longer has value because they exist is a bridge too far. Alignment on your sheet represents an aspiration, and those aspirations can help you figure out how your character might act in a situation that doesn't cleanly align (natch) to your BIFTs.

2) Ideal represents aspiration, and is an order of magnitude more varied, nuanced, precise and detailed.
Alignment (if evil) can also represent drawback, but again flaw does a better job.

Alignment tried its darndest to do every job, it's your personality, your aspiration, your flaw, your side, your afterlife. It's overburdened.

1) using ideals for planes could absolutely work for great wheel cosmology. The dirty secret is that the great wheel is already based on ideal and theme. If you remove the alignment text then nothing would be lost, really. The blood war would still happen the way it does. Mechanus would still be orderly and full of robots.

Satinavian
2022-07-22, 03:57 AM
1) Eberron's cosmology/afterlife is not some kind of ideal to be aspired to. It works for their morally-ambiguous pulpy setting, but if it was the only or even the primary one for D&D, the game would be a lot worse off.
I thoroughly disagree. It is the best afterlife D&D ever had and one of several reasons i like Eberron.

If i build my own settings, they are somewhat similar.

KorvinStarmast
2022-07-22, 07:43 AM
So then what the hell is the point of having established alignment in the first place. On the campaign side, it was a world level "whose side are you on?" (or are you in between) general classification - that fits nicely into the swords and sorcery genre. See the table in Men and Magic. It was as much descriptive as it was anything, although the Paladin's introduction (you get this benefit, you must pay this price as a "balance point") it began to accrue some of what it's grown into. There is some narrative benefit to that, but as Tanarii has so often pointed out, alignment by itself is incomplete as a tool for describing a character for role play. Goals and motivations matter, which takes us back to the pre D&D (Braunstein and other) games that DA ran with player goals as an integral part of play. Those goals and motives aren't rules, they are stuff that the player brings with them.

Dave Arneson apparently discovered, in play in Blackmoor, before the game was published, a need to describe particular kinds of behavior. Some of his players started back stabbing each other, rather than working against the significant dangers of his dungeons. He labeled that behavior chaotic. That's from one of his notes years later, so it's a bit elusive how much of that was folded into the published game and how much was an EGG input based on the experiences of publishing various game rules for that niche hobby that was wargaming. DA was notorious for being late, incomplete, or simply missing deadlines and submissions before, during and after his time with TSR.
A few of the notes ...

'You can't stab me in the back. We're on the same side!" Early Blackmoor game Introduction of the Chaotic thief. (Character Class/Alignment)

I spent the time reading CONAN novels and watching old monster movies while munching on popcorn.

Almost immediately, like during the first game, things got changed. I started making notes in a black binder and the seeds took root and germinated.

Well since there were NO rules for practically anything the players wanted to do the game was "loose" and "unstructured". The old referee got VERY good at thinking on his feet. I say I was good because the game, and I, both survived the player's onslaught. And even without a lot of rules we had rules lawyers back then too! Thank he lord for that black notebook. Even if the rules weren't all in there I was usually able to convince the players that the rule was in the black folder, or at least would be soon.

We began without the multitude of character classes and three alignments that exists today. I felt that as a team working towards common goals there would be it was all pretty straight forward. Wrong!

"Give me my sword back!" "Nah your old character is dead, it's mine now!"

We now had alignment. Spells to detect alignment, and rules forbidding actions not allowed by ones alignment. Actually not as much fun as not knowing. Chuck and John had a great time being the 'official' evil players. They would draw up adventures to trap the others (under my supervision) and otherwise make trouble. The tension between being 'rules bound' and 'loose and unstructured' in an role playing game is never ending. Getting too rules bound gets in the way of play.

Tanarii
2022-07-22, 09:15 AM
Introduce the slightest bit of 'magic is bad' and boom, Dark Sun.
This was different from "more chaotic/evil than lawful/good" though. This was caused by wide-scale permanent ecological damage that can't be reversed, by anyone using magic regardless of alignment or intention.

Agreed that if you have too many world-ending power level threats from Team Bad Guys, then Team Stop The Bad Guys will eventually let one slip through, and No More Campaign World. That's fine if you're running single group of players through a single adventure arc, and don't mind the "campaign" ending with a bang. Not so good if you're trying for a persistent campaign for many groups of players.

Psyren
2022-07-22, 09:51 AM
2) Ideal represents aspiration, and is an order of magnitude more varied, nuanced, precise and detailed.

Ideals are recommended to stem from alignment and that's for a good reason. "I want to one day rise to the top of my church's hierarchy" is an ideal (PHB 127), but alignment helps you figure out how the character might go about achieving that - and what (or who) they might deem it acceptable to sacrifice along the way. Having that general signpost helps many players to flesh out their ideal.

It can also help you deal with situations that have nothing to do with your ideal. Not every adventure your party undergoes will have anything to do with your church, and they might not even learn the details of what you did or didn't do.


I thoroughly disagree. It is the best afterlife D&D ever had and one of several reasons i like Eberron.

If i build my own settings, they are somewhat similar.

Even if I agreed with you that theirs was the best thing since sliced bread (I don't), I'd still ultimately want variety. Every setting being Eberron would mean no Great Wheel, no World Tree, no Great Beyond, no Blood War, no Duat, no Valhalla etc. That's a lot of interesting stories getting set on fire for no good reason.

Even the Wall of the Faithless, as much as I dislike it as written, has potential with a few tweaks.

LibraryOgre
2022-07-22, 11:31 AM
An "Oliver Twist style thieves guild" is pretty evil my dude. Whether theft is inherently evil or not (it doesn't have to be) using kids to perform criminal acts in a lawful society is setting them up for a short, miserable life. It shows a callous disregard for the well-being of the children in question and is thus an evil act. Basing "neutral" behavior on Fagin of all people shows a total lack of understanding of the character BTW. He is just as evil as Bill Sykes, he's just more clever and less willing to get his own hands dirty. Fagin is closer to neutral evil than he is to chaotic neutral. Find a better role model.

Now this is a good argument for it being evil... the effects on your "tools".


Didn't Dragonlance turn from "Good vs. Evil" to "Everyone vs. Chaos?"

Chaos as a single, individual entity, not as an axis of cosmic forces.


Interesting thing, having seen umpity different interpretations of "good", "evil", etc., in RL & games, they've become effectively meaningless words to me. And having different DMs force their sometimes wildly different personal visions of them down on players (often in annoyingly unexpected ways) has caused me to associate D&D alignment labels with arbitrary & apparently random "you must do x because <alignment>" perscriptive crap coming down a pipe. So apparently I feel the way about D&D alignment that you feel about Palladium alignment. Funny, old world eh?

Which gets back to my starting with definitions of the terms... you say what Good, Evil, Law, Chaos, and Neutrality mean, then you can define the specific intersections. When you get down to it, the Palladium alignments mostly map to D&D alignments... Principled is a good line for LG, Scrupulous for NG, Unprincipled for CG, Anarchist for CN/TN, Aberrant for LE, Miscreant for NE, and Diabolical for CE. If you used Palladium alignment definitions, you've pretty much got a map to D&D alignments... you might have to soften Anarchist a bit to reach TN, and LE has some parts that Aberrant wouldn't touch, but it's a not bad list.

LibraryOgre
2022-07-22, 11:37 AM
The Mod Ogre: Please be mindful of how you argue with people in this thread. Lines in the Flaming/Trolling rules (https://forums.giantitp.com/announcement.php?a=1) that I have seen toed, and considered infracting:

*Tell a poster that they didn't read something, whether upthread, elsewhere on the forum, or anywhere else. This is not a discussion tactic we permit here. Additionally, any statement that states or implies that the only way someone could disagree with you is because they don't understand/can't read properly is likewise not allowed.
*Comments that, while directed at another's post content, are inherently insulting to the poster, such as, "Your comment is moronic/insane/nonsensical."
*Comments that accuse other posters of lying, being deliberately obtuse, being or acting ignorant, or similar inherently insulting attacks on others’ good faith.

It is suggested that everyone review the rules, especially regarding flaming/trolling, before I have to start swinging a sword in a modly fashion.

KorvinStarmast
2022-07-22, 12:49 PM
IIt seems like a better setting-building premise to assume that nations are mostly motivated by realpolitik, as they are in the real world, and that apocalypse cultists are a marginalized fringe, rather than a full third the philosophical space. Yep. That seems to be a common theme in SF&F, and Horror, stories that D&D grew out of. (And IIRC it's also that way in Call of Cthulhu).

Right. A very small number of genuine agents-of-chaos are capable of causing immense amounts of damage using fairly modest resources. Another nice example {1} is Heath Ledger's Joker in Batman...or any Bond villain, for that matter. :smallcool:

{1} = IMO a better one than in Arcane; I played too much League of Legends to take that story seriously, but I till enjoyed it

Pex
2022-07-22, 05:22 PM
Yep. That seems to be a common theme in SF&F, and Horror, stories that D&D grew out of. (And IIRC it's also that way in Call of Cthulhu).
Another nice example {1} is Heath Ledger's Joker in Batman...or any Bond villain, for that matter. :smallcool:

{1} = IMO a better one than in Arcane; I played too much League of Legends to take that story seriously, but I till enjoyed it

I disagree about Bond villains. They have enormous wealth.

Mechalich
2022-07-22, 07:12 PM
I disagree about Bond villains. They have enormous wealth.

Bond villains tend to have significant resources when measured on a personal scale, but absolutely nothing like the resources of the states they are attempting to overthrow. That's why they rely on doomsday devices and similar McGuffins. Additionally, the heroism of Bond is often not in stopping the villain, but in doing so in such a way that doesn't require England (and occasionally allied forces such as the US) to unleash the fullness of its military might and win the day at the cost of immense collateral damage. In fact Bond very often extracts to the midst of such forces, on standby for a strike if he had failed, at the end of his movies (ex. in Goldeneye where he's caught making out with the girl surrounded by an entire marine company).

This is a common plot, one that shows up in all sorts of things. For example, in the recent The Suicide Squad the squad makes the heroic choice to go and fight Starro after Waller orders them to stand down. Starro is not any sort of planet wide threat - it could be easily destroyed by the Justice League or just a well equipped airborne assault - but tens of thousands of people would die first, and the Suicide Squad, as the group on the spot, can therefore make a heroic stand.

Psyren
2022-07-22, 11:24 PM
Another nice example {1} is Heath Ledger's Joker in Batman...or any Bond villain, for that matter. :smallcool:

The Joker is indeed a great example. There would have been no Batman to fascinate him in the first place without Gotham's criminal element having organized and putting the city under their collective thumb in the first place. Heroes arising in a setting where good already has the upper hand just doesn't make sense.

Similarly, Bond villains needthe ultimate secret agent to take them down because they're rolling in dough, henchmen and tech, and can't be taken down legally any other way.

awa
2022-07-23, 08:46 AM
In regards to the number of evil vs good you need to remember it is not a comment on fictional worlds in general but on shared d&d worlds.

A typical d&d experience is 4 to 6 guys getting into a fight over and over again and leaving a pile of corpses in their wake. Due to the nature of the anti fortresses pcs typically adventure in a single adventure will often see them destroy many times their own combat potential.

Further the original comment was about the forgotten realms where apparently "why isn't elimister dealing with this?" became a common question. with this the answer is because he is constantly fighting other catastrophic threats. As the forgotten realms is stuffed with high level heroes that also slaughter hundreds of villains this is important for forgotten realms in a way that it isn't for bond.

On a related note while two good/ neutral people might fight they are far less likely to kill each other than two evil people. Thus if any evil group can expect to be countered by everyone around them they need to be that much stronger/numerous to still be a threat. The drow are an example of terrible world building but they also serve as a good example of this they are a bunch of chronic back stabbers embroiled in perpetual destructive infighting surrounded by hostile powers who still have enough power left over to make major incursions into a realm innately hostile to their existence and need to be faced by heroes rather than just left to the conventional capacity of the local governments.

These specific factors are not particularly applicable to other types of fiction. If arcane was a d&d game the party would be leaving dozen or even hundreds of corpses in their wake to get to jinxs who in a d&d medium would have had hundreds of henchmen at the very least. But its not a d&d game and jinxs is a protagonist not an npc which warps the entire nature of the story.

A long term investigation in which at the end you fight a single foe can make an excellent book or movie but it would be a pretty atypical d&d campaign.


The Joker is indeed a great example. There would have been no Batman to fascinate him in the first place without Gotham's criminal element having organized and putting the city under their collective thumb in the first place. Heroes arising in a setting where good already has the upper hand just doesn't make sense.

Similarly, Bond villains needthe ultimate secret agent to take them down because they're rolling in dough, henchmen and tech, and can't be taken down legally any other way.

Yes further batman beats joker and then fights bane and so on so while joker may be singular major enemies simply keep coming. Joker also doesn't go it alone he also has an army of suicidal minions, just like bane has an army of minions as will the next major enemy after that.

RandomPeasant
2022-07-23, 11:08 PM
Thus if any evil group can expect to be countered by everyone around them they need to be that much stronger/numerous to still be a threat.

But the only reason this has to be true is because of alignment! If the Cult of Orcus has a cosmic "everybody stab these dudes" tag, they need to be mighty indeed to explain why they have not yet been stabbed. But if they are simply a minority religion in a necromantic state whose extremists sometimes concoct hairbrained schemes to unleash plagues of wights or summon their demonic master, nothing in particular needs to be explained.


These specific factors are not particularly applicable to other types of fiction. If arcane was a d&d game the party would be leaving dozen or even hundreds of corpses in their wake to get to jinxs who in a d&d medium would have had hundreds of henchmen at the very least. But its not a d&d game and jinxs is a protagonist not an npc which warps the entire nature of the story.

There are a decent number of encounters in Arcane. The real reason there aren't "dozens or hundreds" of henchmen is that in a TV show that takes a bunch of time and doesn't really add much, while in a D&D game having a sequence of combat encounters is (yes, not always) the point. That doesn't mean Jinx doesn't work as a D&D villain or that she'd need vastly more resources to do so. It doesn't really change the storyline or the relative disposition of resources if you add some filler encounters with chempunks or baboons who sell grenades or whatever Zaunite stuff you think fits Jinx's idiom.


A long term investigation in which at the end you fight a single foe can make an excellent book or movie but it would be a pretty atypical d&d campaign.

It would be a weird D&D campaign, but it wouldn't be a particularly weird D&D adventure. Lots of intrigue storylines will have much more socialization and investigation than actual combat. Certainly there'd probably be a couple of smaller encounters along the way, but D&D adventures just have more stuff in them than books and movies. A big movie like Avengers: Infinity War or Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two or Top Gun Maverick has maybe a half dozen fight scenes at the high end, a D&D group could plausibly get through that in single session.


Yes further batman beats joker and then fights bane and so on so while joker may be singular major enemies simply keep coming. Joker also doesn't go it alone he also has an army of suicidal minions, just like bane has an army of minions as will the next major enemy after that.

But none of them have resources anywhere near a national government. The villains of the Nolan Batman trilogy are dangerous because destroying is easier than creating, and because they have first-mover advantage which means that if Batman were not present to address them their plans would go off before someone else had a chance to intervene. But they're still pretty small potatoes on the scale of the world. Bane orchestrates a complicated plan to incapacitate a guy, siege a city, and get a nuke. The government of the US (or, indeed, several nations) could simply do that by main force if they for some reason wished to.

Which, of course, is exactly the point. If any of those villains had the resources of even a moderately powerful nation-state, they could simply blow a bunch of stuff up in a way that Batman would be entirely powerless to stop and which would almost certainly cause vast war and destruction, if not outright civilizational collapse.

Mechalich
2022-07-24, 12:03 AM
But the only reason this has to be true is because of alignment! If the Cult of Orcus has a cosmic "everybody stab these dudes" tag, they need to be mighty indeed to explain why they have not yet been stabbed. But if they are simply a minority religion in a necromantic state whose extremists sometimes concoct hairbrained schemes to unleash plagues of wights or summon their demonic master, nothing in particular needs to be explained.

It's not really a matter of alignment at all. Throughout history there have been various groups/cults/bands/etc. that are ideologically opposed to everyone or just hideously horrible in general that have managed to persist for years or decades through various expedients such as getting the local populace on their side, using ill-gotten gains to bribe corrupt officials, or just being located in a place remote enough that the state considers it prohibitively expensive to crush them outright.

The big difference is actually with regard to the nature of magic. In a magic-free world the danger represented by a bunch of bandits organized purely for self-enrichment and a group of cultists who worship the Elder Evils and wish to sacrifice all living humans to their dark gods is purely a matter of numbers and possibly gruesomeness. No matter how many people the cultists sacrifice in horrible blood-soaked rituals nothing will ever actually happen and they are ultimately just another group of violent armed irregulars. In fantasy, by contrast, the cultists might actually be able to summon their dread masters and have them eat the world, which rather obviously bumps them up the threat level.

This is one of the issues with high magic generally - it means that potentially everyone can get their hands on a WMD - all they need is to train a suitably powerful wizard. This also shows up in Wuxia, where random horrible sects of awful are periodically training cataclysmically powerful death assassins and causing hideous horrors. It's primarily a function of how the personal power distribution is changed in fantasy, not the moral one.

RandomPeasant
2022-07-24, 12:24 AM
It's not really a matter of alignment at all. Throughout history there have been various groups/cults/bands/etc. that are ideologically opposed to everyone or just hideously horrible in general that have managed to persist for years or decades through various expedients such as getting the local populace on their side, using ill-gotten gains to bribe corrupt officials, or just being located in a place remote enough that the state considers it prohibitively expensive to crush them outright.

I think you assume too much when you say "ideologically opposed to everyone". After all, if they were really all-opposing, they'd have some trouble getting any locals on their side. If the Cult of Orcus talks a big game about how Orcus will come and usher forth a thousand years of night, but they spend most of their time killing grey renders and raising zombie oxen as plow teams, it's pretty easy to see how they could be locally popular while still getting a lot of flack from people who are far enough away to not really care about those particular grey renders, but nevertheless concerned about the prospect of an epoch of darkness.


This is one of the issues with high magic generally - it means that potentially everyone can get their hands on a WMD - all they need is to train a suitably powerful wizard. This also shows up in Wuxia, where random horrible sects of awful are periodically training cataclysmically powerful death assassins and causing hideous horrors. It's primarily a function of how the personal power distribution is changed in fantasy, not the moral one.

But that's true in the real world too. Anyone who wants one can get their hands on a WMD. All they need to do is build a nuclear bomb. The trouble is building nuclear bombs is hard and there are all sorts of people who are opposed to omnicidal maniacs having nuclear bombs who will use their prodigious resources to ensure whatever omnicidal maniac happens to be enriching uranium gets blown up.

Similarly, it's not that hard to get a mostly stable equilibrium in D&Dland (or Wuxia/Xianxia settings). Civilization is genuinely nice, and unless someone has an alignment of "I would like to destroy civilization", even fairly selfish people aren't going to blow it up. Hell, the high priest of Orcus might not even want to summon Orcus into the world. He got where he is by ruthless temple politics, and he's sober-minded enough to realize that chilling in his temple with his tithed riches and the protection of a state that has a use for Orcusite necromancers is a way better deal than being turned into an undead servant of his god. It's the Orcus fundamentalists out in the boonies who hatch schemes like pouring a whole town's blood into a summoning circle to bootstrap the Orcus process you need to worry about. But if you assert that the high priest of Orcus is not a relatively normal person who happens to lead a religion with some questionable theology and a generally unpleasant set of sacraments, but someone devoted to doing Evil that you run into problems. Because it's much harder to explain why that sort of person isn't dedicating everything in his power to immanentizing his particular eschaton.

Easy e
2022-07-26, 04:07 PM
Unless the game is "argue about it on the Internet".



Isn't that the true "game" of D&D?

Segev
2022-07-27, 10:18 AM
I want to disagree about "Nobody considers themselves evil." In the D&D cosmology, I think you can absolutely have well-written characters who know full well what their alignment is. They have access to the detection spells. They study their gods' philosophies. They understand what "evil" means. They just find "evil" to be superior. They see nothing pejorative about it. In fact, to them, "good" is a word to be said with a sneer, because it's an unrealistic philosophy of weakness for weaklings. Or it's a crutch for those too unintelligent to reason out optimal acts, and who need a shorthand to spell out a baby's first rulebook on how to act, even when nuance would reveal that that only works most of the time.

An evil priest of Mammon certainly knows who and what he worships, what the nature of their relationship is, and what detect evil and detect law are telling him when he directs them at himself. But he views greed as a virtue, not a vice. Or he thinks it a vice that he controls others with, and that he is "in control" of it. He can be perfectly comfortable with the idea that he's wicked. He isn't cartoonish; evil empowers him, and he needs no justification beyond his own avarice for what he does. We tend in the real world to assume that every villain is a hero to his own inner monologue, and that nobody thinks of themselves as evil, I think, because we live in a world where we generally agree that good is desirable and being a bad guy is a bad thing. If you recognize what you're doing is wicked, you should stop, and even the bad guys of our world tend to think along those lines (thus, they justify to themselves what they do as "okay" so they don't have to stop).

If you actually have an objective knowledge that, yes, what you're doing is evil, but you're being told, "That's not just okay, that's excellent behavior," the need to justify what you're doing goes away: it IS justified. Evil is strength! Evil is cunning! Evil is success! Good is weakness and lies and for the pathetic who can't do anything for themselves!

Such people might even feel shame if they can't justify their more empathic, benevolent tendencies in some Evil-approved light. After all, to them, Good behavior is pathetic, shameful, and undesirable.

RandomPeasant
2022-07-27, 08:03 PM
I want to disagree about "Nobody considers themselves evil." In the D&D cosmology, I think you can absolutely have well-written characters who know full well what their alignment is. They have access to the detection spells. They study their gods' philosophies. They understand what "evil" means. They just find "evil" to be superior.

Nobody in the real world does, and as a result dictionaries give definitions of "evil" like "something which is harmful or undesirable". You can postulate that in D&Dland there are people for whom "evil" means "something helpful and desirable", but all you're doing at that point is making terminology confusing. Just stop insisting on objective answers to subjective questions and then moral debates can be only as interminable as they are in the real world, rather than that interminable but with people using words which are antonyms to expressive the same subjective value judgement.

Pauly
2022-07-27, 10:04 PM
There is a big problem with discussing what “alignment” means in D&D compared to other games. Generally speaking in other games the world came first then the rules are designed to fit the world. In D&D the rules came first then various worlds were shoehorned into the rules.

Spells like “Detect Evil” and “Protection from Evil” came into existence because they were cool abilities to have in a game. They were not created from any concrete lore building, they were dragged from real world folk beliefs like hand gestures to ward off the evil eye.

D&D is using post hoc rationalization to justify spells and game mechanics, which is an inadequate basis to discuss something like “what does evil mean in D&D”.

Segev
2022-07-28, 12:15 AM
Nobody in the real world does, and as a result dictionaries give definitions of "evil" like "something which is harmful or undesirable". You can postulate that in D&Dland there are people for whom "evil" means "something helpful and desirable", but all you're doing at that point is making terminology confusing. Just stop insisting on objective answers to subjective questions and then moral debates can be only as interminable as they are in the real world, rather than that interminable but with people using words which are antonyms to expressive the same subjective value judgement.

I think - though I could be wrong - that you're missing my point. Evil is objectively detectable and openly preached in D&D-land by evil priests of evil gods, devils, and demons. I doubt any of them say to themselves, "Actually, I'm a good person." They feel perfectly justified in their evil, but they don't dispute that what they do is evil.

Satinavian
2022-07-28, 12:43 AM
I think - though I could be wrong - that you're missing my point. Evil is objectively detectable and openly preached in D&D-land by evil priests of evil gods, devils, and demons. I doubt any of them say to themselves, "Actually, I'm a good person." They feel perfectly justified in their evil, but they don't dispute that what they do is evil.
I don't think even evil priests of evil gods preach Evil as such. Those evil gods have tenets and either some of those are very much not nice or the god in question is just a terrible person.

Evil priests of specific gods might preach :

"Our lord controls dangerous natural phenomenon X. Pray and sacrifice to stay on their good side so no harm comes to you"

or

"Undead are cool"

or

"Revenge is a viturtue. If you are harmed, don't restrict yourself, act out retribution. It is also ok to escalate while doing so"

or

"Life is short. Enjoy it as best as possible. Don't feel bad for debauchery, revel in it like in a neverending orgy"

or

"Strength is what counts. The weak are to serve the strong "


There is no preching

"Go out and do Evil".



That is the main problem with the great fight beween good and evil. Having good work together for a greater good is easy. But different evil group would not care for the common evil at all. Each of them would probably prefer to work with good groups than with other, unrelated evil groups because they think they share more with those. Everyone wants nice friends, not selfish ones.

Mechalich
2022-07-28, 04:39 AM
I think - though I could be wrong - that you're missing my point. Evil is objectively detectable and openly preached in D&D-land by evil priests of evil gods, devils, and demons. I doubt any of them say to themselves, "Actually, I'm a good person." They feel perfectly justified in their evil, but they don't dispute that what they do is evil.

A lot of them probably believe that the extant construction of the cosmos is BS though. They may understand that they are labeled as evil, but that's because the Great Wheel was established by a bunch of sniveling compromises that conceals the greater truth and eventually, when their side wins things will be rewritten. And Planescape established that as explicitly possible - if the armies of the Lower Planes managed to conquer the Upper Planes the nature of the universe's morality would change to reflect the new Fiend-controlled multiversal order.

There's also the consideration that the structure of the afterlife for evil beings in D&D is itself a powerful incentive to be more evil. Garden variety evil doers - ex. a cruel soldier of a tyrannical regime who indulges in rape and murder while on campaign whenever he can get away with it - become larvae and suffer 10,000 years of endless horrible torment. Meanwhile high priests of dark deities who sacrifice thousands of innocents on bloodstained altars and spread the name of their god far and wide get pulled out of the queue and given special treatment. Humility may be a virtue if your good in D&D, but not if you're evil. If you're going to break bad, break bad spectacularly.

Is this weird and counterintuitive? Oh yeah.

RandomPeasant
2022-07-28, 09:00 AM
I think - though I could be wrong - that you're missing my point. Evil is objectively detectable and openly preached in D&D-land by evil priests of evil gods, devils, and demons. I doubt any of them say to themselves, "Actually, I'm a good person." They feel perfectly justified in their evil, but they don't dispute that what they do is evil.

But if they say to themselves things that we would express as "actually, I'm a good person", what does it benefit us to require them to use a word that is the opposite of "Good" to describe themselves? Isn't that just confusing?


A lot of them probably believe that the extant construction of the cosmos is BS though. They may understand that they are labeled as evil, but that's because the Great Wheel was established by a bunch of sniveling compromises that conceals the greater truth and eventually, when their side wins things will be rewritten. And Planescape established that as explicitly possible - if the armies of the Lower Planes managed to conquer the Upper Planes the nature of the universe's morality would change to reflect the new Fiend-controlled multiversal order.

It should be pointed out that this makes the cosmos's morality not objective. If who's in charge decides the moral system, you don't have "objective morality", you have someone who is extremely powerful telling you how you ought to behave and punishing you if you don't do as they tell you. Rebelling against such a system is the right thing to do in many moral systems, though offering to impose an alternative designed by the gods of Torture, Murder, and Cannibalism makes your cause somewhat less noble.

KorvinStarmast
2022-07-28, 09:45 AM
There is a big problem with discussing what “alignment” means in D&D compared to other games. Generally speaking in other games the world came first then the rules are designed to fit the world. In D&D the rules came first then various worlds were shoehorned into the rules. That's an interesting way to frame it, and I think it fits pretty well...but...Blackmoor (the world and game) came before the D&D game; alignment was in that game a matter of "in play I {DA} found this so I'll make this a piece of game structure" (yes, related to 'whose side are you on' existential Law/Chaos from pulps and Chainmail); Blackmoor's close cousin Tekumel (Empire of the Petal Throne) had a world long before there was a game, and in that game (EPT) the alignments and deities of Good / Evil felt very organic but there was also a lot of room to work with it since. (Won't digress into deities and their cohorts).

If you're going to break bad, break bad spectacularly. Yes. RPG's aren't reality, they are a game that includes a story element; a spectacular villain is desirable, in a story, much more so than a dozen small time hoods.

Is this weird and counterintuitive? No. To the extent that any RPG is simulationist it is only ever partly simulationist. Genre and narrative fit are also factors in whether it is 'intuitive' to any extent. A key tension is between creation and destruction (Order aka Law/Chaos aka Disorder) in the D&D family of games.

In a sharp contrast to that, Blades in the Dark assumes that while there are some forces of Law and Order in the world (there are in Doskvol at the very least) the measure of success isn't measured in how much one can create or how many dangerous or evil forces/organizations one can neutralize or defeat. Success in the story of the PC's adventures as a part of a crew is measured by pulling of a score (with a variety of intentions) to the extent that "crime does pay, sometimes" becomes something like a narrative imperative.

BRC
2022-07-28, 10:34 AM
That is the main problem with the great fight beween good and evil. Having good work together for a greater good is easy. But different evil group would not care for the common evil at all. Each of them would probably prefer to work with good groups than with other, unrelated evil groups because they think they share more with those. Everyone wants nice friends, not selfish ones.

While I don't mind the idea of a cosmic conflict between good and evil, I always dislike that it's as simple as a big scoreboard where Good is trying to make the world a nice place and Evil gets points by making it a bad place to live.

Evil is, I feel, inherently Selfish, and degrees of evil are mostly the degree to which one is willing to make others suffer for ones own benefit. The Guy Who Kills 100 Innocent People Because He Enjoys The Sensation Of Killing is as evil as The Guy Who Kills 100 Innocent People Because Somebody Paid Them To.The first guy is just more likely to go kill more people on his own.

Various Dark Forces Of Evil should be defined by "How much are they willing to ruin the world for everybody else in order to make it good for themselves". One Dark God wants a world of decay and undeath, another wants a dark cabal of priest-kings to rule over a terrified population.

Meanwhile, it's not that the Forces of Good share a unified vision of the world, it's that good must be inherently empathetic, and so even if the LG gods want to see the whole world ruled by benevolent theocracies, you can't be both Good and Willing To Force Your Vision Onto Everybody Else.


I feel like the only way things really work is to have Evil Worship take out the whole Empathy bit, and view the whole thing as a simple power struggle.

Like, okay, three goods
LG: Bob. Bob's vision for the world is an ordered society protected by paladins and led by benevolent philosopher-priests who rule with compassion and wisdom.
CG: Alice. Alice's vision for the world is everybody lives in harmony with nature, and everybody is kind enough to help their neighbors in times of trouble, knowing that their neighbors would do the same.
LE: Chris. Chris's vision for the world is one where all-powerful tyrants rule over the land, and where all people unquestionably obey their superiors or else are punished.
CE: Danny: Danny's vision for the world is a place where might makes right, where the strongest individuals takes what they want and the weak either get strong or suffer.

All four of these gods believe that their vision for the world is Objectively Correct. Danny doesn't think it's "Good" when raiders sack a village, but she thinks it's Correct, it's the way the world should be.
The difference between Good and Evil is that Good has a higher goal, one rooted in empathy. Their vision of "Correct" is just "What is the best way to achieve this goal". The Good Gods all think that if they took turns, each aligning the world according to their vision and judging it according to some objective scale of Goodness, that their vision would win.

The Evil Gods don't have that empathy. They see it all as a big game of football. They don't see a difference between Paladins of Bob protecting innocents and cultists of Danny pillaging the countryside, just two teams following their god's vision. The idea that the various forces of Good are all aligned towards some theoretical goal doesn't really come to mind. It's just teams, and if any team is going to Win, it might as well be theirs.

Of course, one interesting take is to make it so that the Evil Gods Are Right. Good and Evil are mortal concepts, The Gods of Good are not dedicated to any greater ideal of goodness, their visions of the world just happen to involve empathy and compassion. If you cast Commune, Bob will fine Alice's vision of the world just as nightmarish as Chris's. The Cooperation between good is entirely on the part of mortals. The Gods don't have minds like we do, they're incarnations of an ideal.

Segev
2022-07-28, 10:47 AM
I don't think even evil priests of evil gods preach Evil as such. Those evil gods have tenets and either some of those are very much not nice or the god in question is just a terrible person.

Evil priests of specific gods might preach :

"Our lord controls dangerous natural phenomenon X. Pray and sacrifice to stay on their good side so no harm comes to you"

or

"Undead are cool"

or

"Revenge is a viturtue. If you are harmed, don't restrict yourself, act out retribution. It is also ok to escalate while doing so"

or

"Life is short. Enjoy it as best as possible. Don't feel bad for debauchery, revel in it like in a neverending orgy"

or

"Strength is what counts. The weak are to serve the strong "


There is no preching

"Go out and do Evil".



That is the main problem with the great fight beween good and evil. Having good work together for a greater good is easy. But different evil group would not care for the common evil at all. Each of them would probably prefer to work with good groups than with other, unrelated evil groups because they think they share more with those. Everyone wants nice friends, not selfish ones.I think it safe to say that good priests preach their own gods' tenets, not "good for goodness's sake." Good can be united, but it can also fight itself. A goddess all about justice and a god all about love may unite to defeat the invading tyrant-horde, but have an honest-to-goodness holy war against each other when the god of love wants to let a reformed villain rule the kingdom he once tried to conquer "because he's been changed by his true love for the princess" while the goddess of justice will back the princess's cousin who should have inherited and has righteous cause to want the villain laid low (believing that, if he's REALLY repentant, he'd turn himself over for his just punishment).

The gods of justice and love both would correctly call themselves "Good." Their priests would identify themselves as holy.

That Tyrant Horde led by priests of Gruumsh and Yeenoghu is all about ravishing, rampaging, and celebrating destruction as an expression of personal strength and immediate gratification. Seeing your enemies running before you and hearing the lamentations of their women. Gruumsh and Yeenoghu's worshippers would as readily fight each other as anybody else, but as long as there are "anybody else"s to fight, they can also choose to work together because they both enjoy the same general things and get more of it more successfully together.

They, too, correctly identify themselves: as Evil.


But if they say to themselves things that we would express as "actually, I'm a good person", what does it benefit us to require them to use a word that is the opposite of "Good" to describe themselves? Isn't that just confusing?


No, it's not confusing, any more than more cartoonish versions of the same thing (the "masters of evil" in He-Man, or the Council of Doom in Superfriends). It's not cartoonish, here, but it makes perfect sense.

You can be evil and be honest with yourself about it. You just don't care, or even are proud of it. The nature of D&D's cosmology is such that being proud of being evil is doable.

What I think is really being pointed out when someone says that nobody is the bad guy in their own mind is that nobody views their actions as unacceptable in their own mind. Whether it's a double standard of "It's okay when I do it," or it's a worldview of "there is no morality," or it's an outright cultural acceptance that "yeah, evil is awesome," the perpetrators of it view it as acceptable. May even view Goodness as unacceptable in its own right.

(The double standard and the "no morality" worldview is more likely in settings other than D&D, while D&D's objective and known moral alignments make the latter more likely.)

It's a lot clearer to have the evil people openly embracing "evil," and showing they truly understand that they are evil, than it is to have them trying to claim the word doesn't mean what it means. All you have to do is let go of the assumption that "evil" means "unacceptable." You can find evil to be unacceptable - Good people do, pretty much by definition - but once you allow that the disagreement is not over what Good and Evil are, but rather over which is the socially acceptable or personally desirable set of standards, it is perfectly clear and coherent.



Even just examining the story of Drizz't Do'ourden in this light is sensible. Drizz't felt himself to be unacceptable in his society. He was morally wrong for the merciful feelings he felt, for the way he felt empathy for others. His struggle to escape the evil ways of his people was a moral struggle not because he thought evil was good, but because he thought good was unacceptable. It was weakness and disloyalty and failure. He didn't need redemption, necessarily, but he did need to learn to view his nature and his feelings on morality as acceptable.

A half-orc who is raised by good-aligned humans and through his behavior and preferences and choices proves those who say he's a bad seed right will likely have some element of struggle with the notion that his behavior is wrong. You could tell a redemption story where he comes to understand why, and how to master himself and become a good person, but you can also have a start of darkness story where he was always a mean, bullying, cruel individual who resented and feared the judgment of his human neighbors and family. And who, in his resentment, eventually set out on his own, maybe exiled after doing something that would get him executed (murder or perhaps something involving lack of consent by a girl who rejected him) if he didn't flee.

Like Drizz't, he may eventually find a group that more matches his worldview. Who laugh with him when he beats up somebody. Who accept him when he bullys his way into their circle. And that's how the half-orc warchieftan got his start, as they don't mind that he murdered his way to the top. They think that's not only acceptable, but laudible. It's evil, of course, but they say evil is to be sought after. Evil is strength, after all!

Satinavian
2022-07-28, 11:22 AM
Evil is, I feel, inherently Selfish, and degrees of evil are mostly the degree to which one is willing to make others suffer for ones own benefit. The Guy Who Kills 100 Innocent People Because He Enjoys The Sensation Of Killing is as evil as The Guy Who Kills 100 Innocent People Because Somebody Paid Them To.The first guy is just more likely to go kill more people on his own.

Various Dark Forces Of Evil should be defined by "How much are they willing to ruin the world for everybody else in order to make it good for themselves". One Dark God wants a world of decay and undeath, another wants a dark cabal of priest-kings to rule over a terrified population.

Evil is indeed inherently selfish. But that is something i would also apply to the gods themself.

While some evil gods might indeed want to achieve their evil visions for the world, others might instead prefer to just indulge in deprivacy or just following their every whim like some overall quite terrible person without having any great vision. At least not one they are willing to compromise their personal fun for. They might like to be praised and fawned over by ther followers which are basically just a clique of yes-men.


Putting in all the work and use your power to make the world like you think it should be doesn't sound particularly selfish.

Psyren
2022-07-28, 11:23 AM
An Evil person in D&D might think "I am behaving in a way that is eminently sensible given the way the world works. If some spell or faith chooses to label my sensible behavior as being 'Evil' then fine. I'd rather be 'Evil' than a sucker or a fool."

Many others would simply not be scanned/confronted with their "reading" at all.

BRC
2022-07-28, 11:44 AM
Evil is indeed inherently selfish. But that is something i would also apply to the gods themself.

While some evil gods might indeed want to achieve their evil visions for the world, others might instead prefer to just indulge in deprivacy or just following their every whim like some overall quite terrible person without having any great vision. At least not one they are willing to compromise their personal fun for. They might like to be praised and fawned over by ther followers which are basically just a clique of yes-men.


Putting in all the work and use your power to make the world like you think it should be doesn't sound particularly selfish.

It depends on the degree to which you view the gods as very powerful people who just chill in their dimensions watching the material plane, or living concepts that are, in theory, capable of interacting as individuals.

Like, a god of death and slaughter doesn't really get to personally kill people from his throne in whatever chaotic hell he resides in, but he DOES get to see his servants and followers kill in his name, and he enjoys that. His "Vision of the World" is a reflection of himself. Worship is nice because it demonstrates devotion to his vision.

If you summoned an avatar of this god, a physical vessel he could pilot directly, it would go out and start killing, because, given such a powerful vessel, that is the most efficient way for it to do the killing.

But there's a question of if the god would prefer to kill 100 people personally, or have his followers kill 1000 people in his name, and it depends a lot on how you perceive the god in question and the nature of gods in your setting.

Segev
2022-07-28, 12:23 PM
An Evil person in D&D might think "I am behaving in a way that is eminently sensible given the way the world works. If some spell or faith chooses to label my sensible behavior as being 'Evil' then fine. I'd rather be 'Evil' than a sucker or a fool."

Many others would simply not be scanned/confronted with their "reading" at all.

I think that most people who dwell in a society or participate in a subculture (e.g. a religion dedicated to an evil god) would recognize they are engaged in 'evil' without feeling they needed to say, "Well, fine, call it that if you want."

I think the attitude is more likely, "Of course I'm evil. It's the only sensible thing to be! Why would any rational person be good?" They could explain in more detail, perhaps, why they think that, but I'm getting at the base mental foundation: they don't view 'evil' as something to be ashamed of.

Instead, they might even view 'good' as something to be ashamed of. To claim to be 'good' is to claim to be weak, lacking in cleverness or determination, etc. Why would anybody admit to that, without justifying why it's okay in their case to have such weaknesses?

Psyren
2022-07-28, 12:26 PM
I think that most people who dwell in a society or participate in a subculture (e.g. a religion dedicated to an evil god) would recognize they are engaged in 'evil' without feeling they needed to say, "Well, fine, call it that if you want."

I think the attitude is more likely, "Of course I'm evil. It's the only sensible thing to be! Why would any rational person be good?" They could explain in more detail, perhaps, why they think that, but I'm getting at the base mental foundation: they don't view 'evil' as something to be ashamed of.

Instead, they might even view 'good' as something to be ashamed of. To claim to be 'good' is to claim to be weak, lacking in cleverness or determination, etc. Why would anybody admit to that, without justifying why it's okay in their case to have such weaknesses?

I think we're in agreement here.

Satinavian
2022-07-29, 04:25 AM
I think the attitude is more likely, "Of course I'm evil. It's the only sensible thing to be! Why would any rational person be good?" They could explain in more detail, perhaps, why they think that, but I'm getting at the base mental foundation: they don't view 'evil' as something to be ashamed of.
Nah, that sounds way too much like mustache-twirling villain.

I think it is more sensible to have e.g.
"Undead creating shouldn't vount as evil. I mean, it s just corpses for free labor, where is the problem" ?

"Sure, tolerance and equality are nice, but do we really have to apply those values to Kender ? I for one don't really want those thieving bastards in our nighborhood. They should be settled somewhere else, far far away, so that our good, Kenderless community can thrive undesturbed"

"It is not bad to earn easy money and if people are guillable enough to fall for those scams, it is their fault. I mean, only greedy people would do that anyway. I am not bad for wanting a good life"

"Of course i now that rape is bad and i am not proud of it at all. I am actually very ashamed. How did you even find out and what can i do that you don't tell anyone ? It would totally destroy the relations to my good friends and neighbors"

"Enslaving ogres is not evil. They are a menace and threat which is removed this way and instead replaced with a ressource that can be used for the public good. And with some luck, they can even be taught how to behave in civilized society"



Those phrases all represent very evil people. Believable evil people who are not proud to be eil at all. At worst, they disagree with their shtick being labelled as evil at all. And none of them is hostile to good. If a great war between good and evil breaks out, each single one would try to join the side of Good over Evil as if it were the most naturl thing in the world.


It depends on the degree to which you view the gods as very powerful people who just chill in their dimensions watching the material plane, or living concepts that are, in theory, capable of interacting as individuals.

Like, a god of death and slaughter doesn't really get to personally kill people from his throne in whatever chaotic hell he resides in, but he DOES get to see his servants and followers kill in his name, and he enjoys that. His "Vision of the World" is a reflection of himself. Worship is nice because it demonstrates devotion to his vision.
For personal worldbuilding i use gods as manifestations of aspects devoid of any morality. But that is not very useful here. So let us instead look to some fine evil examples from Forgotten Realms : Umberlee and Velsharoon.

Umberlee is just a jealous, nasty and fickle person. Her worshippers just do so out of fear and to be safe when she gets moody. She has no great plan for anything. She is more like an irresposible bratty princess with too much power

Velsharoon is pretty much the opposite. He is a power-hungry opportunist. But he also sucks up to every other greater power who can get him protestion or power, no matter te alignment. He does not have any greater vision or goal for the world and is willing to join any side that gives him benefits. He also doesn't really care what his believers do as long they venerate him, spread his name and thus provide him power. I mean, some of them do like to create undead for funsies and is is thought to like that but it is not particularly central to his cult. Instead, even though he is a death and undeath god, his clerics mostly go around selling healing spells and the churchs signiture spell is a combination of word of recall, raise dead and heal.



Now i won't say that all evil dieties are this way. Some really do have a big evil vision for how the world should be. But the self-serving nature of evil is getting in the way of evil gods being proper agents for the greater Evil as well. At least if dieties have personality.

Tanarii
2022-07-29, 08:55 AM
Nah, that sounds way too much like mustache-twirling villain.Welcome to D&D. Mustache twirling villains are not only what many if not most TTRPGs but especially D&D has to offer, IMX they're also what most players want.

Thrudd
2022-07-29, 09:28 AM
Evil is indeed inherently selfish. But that is something i would also apply to the gods themself.

While some evil gods might indeed want to achieve their evil visions for the world, others might instead prefer to just indulge in deprivacy or just following their every whim like some overall quite terrible person without having any great vision. At least not one they are willing to compromise their personal fun for. They might like to be praised and fawned over by ther followers which are basically just a clique of yes-men.


Putting in all the work and use your power to make the world like you think it should be doesn't sound particularly selfish.

The question is: what does "selfish" mean when applied to an immortal being with cosmic powers, if they can wish anything into existence for themselves? What do gods want or need? Depends on the setting. Maybe they are all ultimately selfish, seeking to make the world such that their own power is increased through worship (or whatever it is that gives them power). Or maybe none of them are selfish, and they do what they do because they are essentially compelled to, as created embodiments of different natural functions and principles.

It would make sense to label a god "evil" who's activity and powers act to perpetuate evil/selfishness in the world, whether or not they themselves can be considered evil/selfish. "Good" gods are those who do the opposite, encourage altruism and kindness. But it's likely the mortal beings giving out the labels and not necessarily the gods themselves.

Also, the game's labels of "Good" and "Evil" need not be adopted by the actual denizens of the world. Even if we, the players, know that one activity or another is evil, it's possible that beings in the world believe that what they are doing what is "right" (usually for themselves, primarily - sociopathy is a thing). "Might makes right" is a common belief, and some societies might not label that philosophy as wrong. It might be seen as "right" for the strongest person to take for themselves anything they can, and this society doesn't label it as "evil", it's just "common sense". They might not understand why a strong person wouldn't take everything they possibly can at the expense of the weak...that's what you're "supposed" to do, after all. If the weak were stronger, they'd do the same thing. Helping people is nice, and all, but it only makes sense once your power is so secure that nobody can possibly challenge you.
Does this society call itself or the gods who encourage this "evil"?

I'd think not...unless we insist on "rules as physics" (which isn't wrong, btw, but it is a deliberate choice).

LibraryOgre
2022-07-29, 11:49 AM
So, something I thought about when writing Corpses and Caches (https://rpgcrank.blogspot.com/2013/07/corpses-and-caches.html)... as mentioned above, "Evil" is not "Bad" to people who are evil. When you get down to it, alignment is a point of view, a spiritual conviction, about how the world REALLY works.

A chaotic evil person may be told the definition of chaotic evil and say "Well, yes, the world works when the strong dominate the weak and take what they want; everything else is just window dressing to make you feel better... until I punch you in the face and take the **** you're too weak to protect." A Lawful Good person thinks that the world is about the greatest good for the greatest number of people, and that may mean the occasional suppression of individual choice in the pursuit of the Greater Good (the greater good).

These are convictions about how the world does or should work (I think the CE person is more likely to see this as how the world DOES work, while the LG is more likely to see it as how the world SHOULD work). They're philosophies, but those are mostly articulations of belief and conviction.

Satinavian
2022-07-29, 02:48 PM
So, something I thought about when writing Corpses and Caches (https://rpgcrank.blogspot.com/2013/07/corpses-and-caches.html)... as mentioned above, "Evil" is not "Bad" to people who are evil. When you get down to it, alignment is a point of view, a spiritual conviction, about how the world REALLY works.
I disagree.

Their very personal brand of evil might not be bad (or might at least be excusable) to evil people. But they probably consider all the countless other varieties of evil as bad as everyone else of their culture does and might even be more willing to fight those evils than a similar good person because they might be less merciful or understanding or tolerant.



Evil is a huge box full of different atrocities and transgressions. But evil people general don't embrace the whole box and find it instead full of utterly distasteful things. It might be cosmic moral realities deciding that all this stuff if similar enough, but that is certainly not a view shared by mortals.


Welcome to D&D. Mustache twirling villains are not only what many if not most TTRPGs but especially D&D has to offer, IMX they're also what most players want.
Most of the players i know don't. Which is why they hardly ever show up.

Segev
2022-07-29, 03:13 PM
Nah, that sounds way too much like mustache-twirling villain.Only if you think "mustache-twirling" is somehow inconsistent. A serious, played straight villain could easily literally twirl his mustache as a character trait. (So could an honest-to-goodness hero, but still.) He could, in a setting based more on a "realistic Earth" notion, have all sorts of justifications for why he's not evil.

Now, what I think you mean is, "cartoonishly evil," as in, "evil for the sake of playing the bad guy so the good guys have a designated punching bag."

That's simply not true. To wit:


I think it is more sensible to have e.g.
"Undead creating shouldn't vount as evil. I mean, it s just corpses for free labor, where is the problem" ?This may or may not be viable as an argument about the way the game rules are set up, but that's more because D&D doesn't do anything but arbitrarily staple "evil" to the act. There are other things that actually meet a real-world definition of evil that are better examples. (For the record, I want the rampant use of undead to be inherently evil in my D&D, but the efforts to figure out how to make it actually fit the definition, rather than having a specific exception that includes it as part of the definition by arbitrary labeling, is several threads' worth of conversation of its own.)


"Sure, tolerance and equality are nice, but do we really have to apply those values to Kender ? I for one don't really want those thieving bastards in our nighborhood. They should be settled somewhere else, far far away, so that our good, Kenderless community can thrive undesturbed"Why does he need to think "tolerance and equality are nice?" He thinks both are stupid ideas promoted by swindlers who want to take what they can't otherwise have. And while he may or may not have any problem with swindling, he does think that it's stupid to fall for it, and he's too smart, clever, and strong to fall for it. Sure, he's evil. Evil means smart. Good means dumb, gullible, and pathetic. It's disgusting to be Good. So why would he want to taint himself with that label, let alone do anything to earn it?


"It is not bad to earn easy money and if people are guillable enough to fall for those scams, it is their fault. I mean, only greedy people would do that anyway. I am not bad for wanting a good life""I'm smart for wanting a good life." Why does he need to object to the label of his actions being 'evil?' He doesn't see anything wrong with being evil.

I mean, sure, he may or may not use language that says "it's not bad." He certainly wouldn't say, "It's not evil to earn easy money..." etc., because it objectively is. And he's fine with that. In fact, he might find foregoing it for anything but highly optimal reasons to be morally repugnant. He might view NOT scamming that widow out of her last penny the same way a good person might feel about reporting a widow to the police for having killed a man when all she wanted was to feed her starving family with the provisions he had. Sure, she did something wrong, but the good-aligned person might feel like there's no winning here: let her off the hook and he condones murder, but punish her and he punishes a victim of circumstance who is highly sympathetic.

The evil man instead views not taking her last bit of coin in a scam as letting this parasite leech more from society, and even if he feels empathy for THIS parasite, he might feel morally icky for such inclinations.

That's only one possible way to look at it, but remember: evil in D&D is a morality. It isn't merely "actively not caring about being good." It is something that has its own positions and moral codes. You can be good or evil to a degree without deliberately signing on to such codes, but those codes exist and people can have moral convictions about them. Without being cartoonish.


"Of course i now that rape is bad and i am not proud of it at all. I am actually very ashamed. How did you even find out and what can i do that you don't tell anyone ? It would totally destroy the relations to my good friends and neighbors"Sure, some evil people might view it as wrong. Others will view it as laudable when done for the right reasons (and fine even if there's no reason at all). They'll still agree it's evil. Why wouldn't they? There's nothing wrong with being evil! In fact, being evil is RIGHT, and being good is wrong. Wrong-headed, wrong morally, wrong in the same way anything disgusting is wrong. This person, in this quote, though, is obviously viewing things from a Good cultural perspective. He may well feel bad about what he's done. He may feel shame. He may view it as evil and think that's a negative thing. But that means he's not embraced evil as a morality. He's evil, certainly, but easier to redeem than somebody who views evil as right. You can at least appeal to his sense of right - which aligns with Good - to convince him to stop his behavior and seek redemption.


"Enslaving ogres is not evil. They are a menace and threat which is removed this way and instead replaced with a ressource that can be used for the public good. And with some luck, they can even be taught how to behave in civilized society"Taking this statement's unspoken premise as fact for the sake of argument, this person would be evil who feels a need to justify his actions and excuse them because he is, again, operating from a culturally Good perspective.

These people can exist. So, too, can the man who says, "Of course enslaving ogres is evil. It's also very profitable! Win-win!" For the same reason that the man who says, "Of course hiring from the poorest to give them a living wage and a warm place to live and eat is good. It's also making me and them quite the tidy profit! Win-win!" can exist. The first can be legitimately evil. The second can be legitimately good. The evil man may not care specifically about "doing evil" by enslaving the ogres, but he certainly isn't bothered by the fact that it's evil. Being evil is culturally comfortable to him.


Those phrases all represent very evil people. Believable evil people who are not proud to be eil at all. At worst, they disagree with their shtick being labelled as evil at all. And none of them is hostile to good. If a great war between good and evil breaks out, each single one would try to join the side of Good over Evil as if it were the most naturl thing in the world.You're looking at it from a culturally Good perspective. In an objective morality setting like D&D, you can have culturally evil people who will not feel a shred of shame for being termed "evil." And no, if a war between good and evil broke out, you wouldn't have every evil person believe himself to be good. Heck, you wouldn't have every good person believe himself to be on the side of good! You'd have people like Drizz't (pre-absconding) who would fight on the side of Lolth and the drow in such a war. He might even rise high and become as valued a warrior as a male can be, fighting competently and well for his homeland. He would view his good impulses as shameful, sinful urges he must resist, his mercies as indulgences he must justify or cover up. "It's not mercy that I let this wood elf amazon warrior live. I'm taking her as my personal servant as a symbol of my power over her, and for my own amusement. It's not because I'm a good person that I haven't forced myself on her; it's because I want to prove my social dominance by making HER fall for ME, first. I don't have a weak-hearted crush; I'm just that confident in my suaveness! I haven't killed her brother because it'll be leverage on her. And, er, he might have useful intel. I'm not torturing him for it because I think buddying up to him will get him to let things slip more easily! Yeah!"


For personal worldbuilding i use gods as manifestations of aspects devoid of any morality. But that is not very useful here. So let us instead look to some fine evil examples from Forgotten Realms : Umberlee and Velsharoon.

Umberlee is just a jealous, nasty and fickle person. Her worshippers just do so out of fear and to be safe when she gets moody. She has no great plan for anything. She is more like an irresposible bratty princess with too much power

Velsharoon is pretty much the opposite. He is a power-hungry opportunist. But he also sucks up to every other greater power who can get him protestion or power, no matter te alignment. He does not have any greater vision or goal for the world and is willing to join any side that gives him benefits. He also doesn't really care what his believers do as long they venerate him, spread his name and thus provide him power. I mean, some of them do like to create undead for funsies and is is thought to like that but it is not particularly central to his cult. Instead, even though he is a death and undeath god, his clerics mostly go around selling healing spells and the churchs signiture spell is a combination of word of recall, raise dead and heal.And both are evil. Unashamedly so. Both view what they do as perfectly right and acceptable. They know it's evil. They also think that it being evil is a plus. Because they're evil, which means they're smart and powerful and unafraid to use their power. Only weaklings feel the need to curtail their power for simpering emotions like :spits: empathy.


Now i won't say that all evil dieties are this way. Some really do have a big evil vision for how the world should be. But the self-serving nature of evil is getting in the way of evil gods being proper agents for the greater Evil as well. At least if dieties have personality.In no way is "a big vision" important to being evil, and being shamelessly so, or even proud of it. All it takes is there being an objective definition of "good" and "evil" that makes you factually wrong if you call one the other, and a moral system that enables you to say, "I think good is icky and evil is the bees' knees."

Which is perfectly doable when everyone agrees that, say, indiscriminate killing is evil, but not everybody agrees that that makes it wrong.

Satinavian
2022-07-30, 03:03 AM
This may or may not be viable as an argument about the way the game rules are set up, but that's more because D&D doesn't do anything but arbitrarily staple "evil" to the act. There are other things that actually meet a real-world definition of evil that are better examples. (For the record, I want the rampant use of undead to be inherently evil in my D&D, but the efforts to figure out how to make it actually fit the definition, rather than having a specific exception that includes it as part of the definition by arbitrary labeling, is several threads' worth of conversation of its own.)
Yes, some elements of what counts as good or evil seem pretty arbitrary with undead and poison being the most obvious. But i don't think that need fxing by attaching unpreasant consequences to necromancy. If you really play with cosmic alignments, it is enough to say those are evil just because. Because cosmic alignment is kinda arbitrary. If it bothers people so much that they need it fixed, i would rather declare it not evil instead of making it harmful.

Why does he need to think "tolerance and equality are nice?" He thinks both are stupid ideas promoted by swindlers who want to take what they can't otherwise have. And while he may or may not have any problem with swindling, he does think that it's stupid to fall for it, and he's too smart, clever, and strong to fall for it. Sure, he's evil. Evil means smart. Good means dumb, gullible, and pathetic. It's disgusting to be Good. So why would he want to taint himself with that label, let alone do anything to earn it?No, he doesnt subscribe to the philosophy of evil. Only to Kender based racism. He genuinely values tolerance and equality between all non-Kender and wants to be a good, reliable, helpful member of the non-Kender community. He probably thinks of himself as tolerant and helpful and even good (if not confronted with alignment detection) because Kender don't really count in his mind. He is still totally evil but you wouldn't know it if you never see him interacting with Kender or talking about them.

"I'm smart for wanting a good life." Why does he need to object to the label of his actions being 'evil?' He doesn't see anything wrong with being evil.He doesn't see anything wrong with swindling people. He might still see lots of things wrong with all other kinds of evil. The grouping of things into evil and non evil is just not particular useful to describe his autlook.


That's only one possible way to look at it, but remember: evil in D&D is a morality. It isn't merely "actively not caring about being good." It is something that has its own positions and moral codes. You can be good or evil to a degree without deliberately signing on to such codes, but those codes exist and people can have moral convictions about them. Without being cartoonish.
Yes, that is the core of it. Being evil is about doing evil things. It is not about subscribing to the moral philosophy of evil at all. Sure, some people do follow some philosophy of evil. But most people, even evil people don't. And most philosophes don't fit particularly neatly into the 9 alignment boxes anyway, so yeah.


Why wouldn't they? There's nothing wrong with being evil! In fact, being evil is RIGHT, and being good is wrong. Because most evil people are not happy about the evil others do and quite comfortable with the good others do. Because evil tends to come at a cost to others or society and good comes with altruism and benefitting others or society. There is no question whatsoever what the typical evil person wants to experience and that is not different from what a good person wants to experience. It is only when it comes to reciprocity, when the difference show themself. That is why you will find very few people believing evil is right, if that includes evil that they have no intent to do themself and might be exposed to.


You're looking at it from a culturally Good perspective.I actually aimed for neutral, but yes, society influences morals and creeds far more than personal alignment. I also rarely use evil cultures as over the top as the Drow because those tend to be utterly unsustainable if one thinks a couple of minutes about them. The evil cultures i do use have usually only one or a few established evil practices or traditions. There might be a tyranny cracking down hard on dissent at the expense of justice, there might be extreme stratification and certain classes treated quite ****ty, there might be widespread corruption, there might be established slavery, there might be a culture accepting of raiding glorifying successful raiders and of course there might be one making heavy use of undead. But i tend to not mix those and am generally carefully with the backstabbbing and other destructive tendencies. If people at the table ask themself "How has this not imploded years ago ?", i have done something wrong.
So even evil cultures don't really have a philosophy of evil. If chosing what fits them more and shown the box with all evil ideals and one with good ideals, they would probably complain a lot about nothing fitting but eventually choosing the good one because the evil one just contains way to much destructive stuff they can't tolerate.


And both are evil. Unashamedly so. Both view what they do as perfectly right and acceptable. They know it's evil. They also think that it being evil is a plus. Because they're evil, which means they're smart and powerful and unafraid to use their power. Only weaklings feel the need to curtail their power for simpering emotions like :spits: empathy.Of course both are very evil. That is why i chose them as examples of evil gods. But both do not champion the cause of cosmic evil at all and both don't care about the conflict of cosmic good and cosmic evil.
And that makes them good examples to the strand of argumentation i responded to here where evil gods were presented as champions of Evil.


Which is perfectly doable when everyone agrees that, say, indiscriminate killing is evil, but not everybody agrees that that makes it wrong.But the vast majority of evil people agree that indiscriminate killing is quite wrong.

Kraynic
2022-07-30, 09:24 AM
No, he doesnt subscribe to the philosophy of evil. Only to Kender based racism. He genuinely values tolerance and equality between all non-Kender and wants to be a good, reliable, helpful member of the non-Kender community. He probably thinks of himself as tolerant and helpful and even good (if not confronted with alignment detection) because Kender don't really count in his mind. He is still totally evil but you wouldn't know it if you never see him interacting with Kender or talking about them.
He doesn't see anything wrong with swindling people. He might still see lots of things wrong with all other kinds of evil. The grouping of things into evil and non evil is just not particular useful to describe his autlook.

I find this an incredibly interesting take. If someone has been victimized throughout their life by kender behavior (especially the "it's what my character would do" variety), it makes them evil that they don't want to be around kender.

You know, the community should include vampires. At least when the vampires show up to steal something from you (your blood, life force, or whatever), they don't pretend to be innocent and sometimes offer eternal life in exchange. Obviously they would be a superior choice for inclusion than kender.

Tanarii
2022-07-30, 11:26 AM
I find this an incredibly interesting take. If someone has been victimized throughout their life by kender behavior (especially the "it's what my character would do" variety), it makes them evil that they don't want to be around kender.

You know, the community should include vampires. At least when the vampires show up to steal something from you (your blood, life force, or whatever), they don't pretend to be innocent and sometimes offer eternal life in exchange. Obviously they would be a superior choice for inclusion than kender.
Personally I was a little shocked the example wasn't Orcs or Drow.

Keltest
2022-07-30, 11:31 AM
Personally I was a little shocked the example wasn't Orcs or Drow.

A good honest brutal war is nothing compared to what PCs are forced to do the moment they write "kender" in the race section of their character sheet.

KorvinStarmast
2022-07-30, 12:14 PM
So, something I thought about when writing Corpses and Caches (https://rpgcrank.blogspot.com/2013/07/corpses-and-caches.html)... as mentioned above, "Evil" is not "Bad" to people who are evil. When you get down to it, alignment is a point of view, a spiritual conviction, about how the world REALLY works.

A chaotic evil person may be told the definition of chaotic evil and say "Well, yes, the world works when the strong dominate the weak and take what they want; everything else is just window dressing to make you feel better... until I punch you in the face and take the **** you're too weak to protect." A Lawful Good person thinks that the world is about the greatest good for the greatest number of people, and that may mean the occasional suppression of individual choice in the pursuit of the Greater Good (the greater good).

These are convictions about how the world does or should work (I think the CE person is more likely to see this as how the world DOES work, while the LG is more likely to see it as how the world SHOULD work). They're philosophies, but those are mostly articulations of belief and conviction. Yes, that's where alignment comes from as described by its creator as a game thing. It's also one of the most useful models of how to describe it for someone coming fresh into the D&D game. I am stealing/borrowing this, thank you. :smallsmile: