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Witty Username
2022-10-03, 10:35 PM
👻
Alright,
This will be the time and place we finally solve the alignment system.
Is it good or bad for the game?

What axises should we use?

What are the pros and cons of alignment?

How do we use it in our games?

Should Paladins always be Lawful Good? YES

Rynjin
2022-10-03, 10:55 PM
Is it good or bad for the game?

It's great. Or terrible. Depends on what gets the most arguments.


What axises should we use?

Good and Evil; people have way more opinions on those two than Law and Chaos.


What are the pros and cons of alignment?

Pros:

It's fun to argue about

Cons:

Some people take things too seriously


How do we use it in our games?

To drive conflict between the GM and players, and also players and other players



Should Paladins always be Lawful Good? YES

Since you said YES, I'm honorbound to scream NO

Hytheter
2022-10-03, 11:26 PM
Alignment is utterly crucial.

Without it, buildings would fall and books would be a hassle to read.

Tanarii
2022-10-03, 11:32 PM
Pros: Player's roleplaying tool. If the associated behavior is used by the player as one of the five personality traits to consider when making in character decisions, aka roleplaying, it's a very handy tool. Especially for beginners, but even for experienced players who have gone down the rabbit hole of backstory with no clearly listed motivations to help when making in character decisions. Even if alignment specifically isn't used, a personality category related to social and/or moral motivations and resulting behavior is often but not always worth including, in a game that overall tends to focus on heroes and villains.
The other four motivations being Personality Trait, Ideal, Bond and Flaw. They should impact and even override the overall behavior as appropriate, in the judgement of the player.

Con1: Straight jacket alignment. This is what tends to lead to players feeling they must have their character take certain actions because of their character alignment, despite it very clearly being stated it's an associated an overall behavior and not required to be consistent. That's especially important when you've got four other motivational traits.

Con2: Descriptive alignment. Otherwise known as an alignment 'score', determined as a result of prior character behavior, There's very little use for this in current 5e, and it especially becomes a problem when the DM, player, and even other players disagree if a characters behavior, or worse specific actions, don't match. The ultimate example of this is when a player is being required to change alignment because of someone else's (usually the DMs) judgement on their characters behavior/actions.

Con3: Outside definitions. Many players and DMs bring non-5e definitions to alignment.
Two most common, often combined:
Individual actions have alignment 'weight' or 'value';
Law, Chaos, Good or Evil have meaning separate (personally defined) meaning from the alignments and their associated behaviors.

Pauly
2022-10-04, 12:59 AM
Alignment is a good thing when it is used as intended. i.e. constraint on players to encourage them to have their characters behave in a consistent manner.

Alignment is a bad thing when it is used by GMs as a hammer to whack players for wrongfun. It is a bad thing with players who treat them as loopholes to be exploited (My paladin burns the orphanage to the ground for the greater good, my CE rogue behaves like a saint because it would be inconvenient to show my true nature)

If you are playing D&D then it is a required element of play. Spells like “detect evil” and so on are a core part of the game. Even if you don’t like alignment it is very deeply written into the system, and IMO it is too deeply embedded to be removed.

The 4 axis is as good as any other system I’ve seen. Some tables I’ve gamed at have banned true neutral characters on the basis that they’re too squishy and malleable. The good/evil lawful/chaotic split is easy to understand and apply.

I don’t play much D&D if I can help it. Most of the games I play have motivation, character traits, flaws chosen from a menu. They end up having similar issues with the D&D alignment axes in that their value added to the game depends on how the players approach the system. If they’re seen as a guide to playing a consistent character it’s good, but if they’re seen as a barrier that can be gamed around it’s more hassle than its worth.

Telok
2022-10-04, 01:07 AM
In D&D?

Nice <-> *******
crossed with
Plays well with others <-> Squirrel!

Any game with a designer who wasn't blind & dumb? Something actually useful. Varies by game style & type.

Batcathat
2022-10-04, 01:21 AM
I believe that alignment is at worst actively harmful in one of several ways and at best completely useless. Either it's specific enough to be a straight-jacket or it's too vague to be helpful. I've yet to see any sort of useful middle ground and if people want a two word description of their character's behavior, I'd prefer if that just came up with them themselves. I suppose it's useful for effects that target specific groups (no Smite Evil if there's no Evil, etc.).

(I also find the idea of objective morality inherently absurd, but that's admittedly a subjective opinion that doesn't influence the game one way or the other).


Pros:

It's fun to argue about

Heh. This is very true.

animorte
2022-10-04, 05:00 AM
The important thing to remember is that your PC is not who they are because of their alignment. Their alignment develops because of who they are and what they do. It must represent your past before it can predict your future.

MoiMagnus
2022-10-04, 05:36 AM
Is it good or bad for the game?


Often bad. IMO it's too often given more importance than it should.



What axises should we use?


Having two axes is important in order to affirm that there are more than one way to be Good and more than one way to be Evil, and that there can be infighting even within Good and within Evil.

The current two axes are good enough, even if personally I've added changed the Good/Evil to: Vigilante/Altruiste/Neutral/Egoist/Destructor

(Making it so that the middle 3 alignments are common while the other two are usually considered troublemakers. Note that Lawful Destructor is possible, but in general the Destructor alignment is not a sign of good mental health.)



What are the pros and cons of alignment?

It can help players who struggle to play something else than themself to force themself into another way of seeing the world.

It also contribute to characterise the world (alignment of gods/extraplanar/afterlife) and give to it a D&D vibe.

On the other hand, it's pretty much the equivalent of (explicitly) including politics into your games, it can easily starts conflict between players and GM if they fundamentally disagree on some point.

And it encourages interference of the GM on the players and "how they should play" for reasons that are arbitrary. A player having a CN character but behaving as CE is not a problem by itself, and if the behaviour is actually problematic then changing the alignment to CE won't solve the core of the issue: the player shall not be a jerk witg other players even if their character is a jerk with other characters.



How do we use it in our games?

I use it mostly as a world building tool.



Should Paladins always be Lawful Good? YES

Definitely and absolutely NO. Removing alignment restriction on paladin is one of many reasons why 5e paladin is the best paladin. (And I'm not sure any other class is at its best in 5e).

Admittedly, I don't care particularly for the name, so the class could be renamed to "zealot" (or something else) and the name paladin reserved to "lawful good zealots". But both LE (or LN) and CG (or CN) versions of the paladin are very interesting to have as PCs or NPCs.

Millstone85
2022-10-04, 06:35 AM
I love the Great Wheel and the option to have characters align with the various planes of Law, Good, Chaos and Evil.

Otherwise, I guess alignment is not that important.


Con3: Outside definitions. Many players and DMs bring non-5e definitions to alignment.
Two most common, often combined:
Individual actions have alignment 'weight' or 'value';
Law, Chaos, Good or Evil have meaning separate (personally defined) meaning from the alignments and their associated behaviors.Ha ha, well, I do recommend ditching 5e's definitions of LG, CG, CE and LE in favor of combinations of LN, NG, CN and NE.


Lawful good (LG) creatures can be counted on to do the right thing as expected by society.Useless.


Lawful neutral (LN) individuals act in accordance with law, tradition, or personal codes.

Neutral good (NG) folk do the best they can to help others according to their needs.Much better. And the character may further try to abide by both in all situations (Mount Celestia's way) or typically prioritize one over the other (Arcadia or Bytopia's way).

Vahnavoi
2022-10-04, 06:37 AM
👻
Alright,
This will be the time and place we finally solve the alignment system.
Is it good or bad for the game?

What axises should we use?

What are the pros and cons of alignment?

How do we use it in our games?

Should Paladins always be Lawful Good? YES

You posted this in the general roleplaying game section; this means there's more than one game, and more than one system, to consider. It's not possible to "solve" it, because for any analysis of a system, a new system can be build that acknowledges that analysis and then does something to break it.

"But is it good or bad for the game?"

There are at least eight recognized aesthetics of gameplay. (https://www.google.com/amp/s/gamedevelopertips.com/mechanics-dynamics-aesthetics-game-design-theory-behind-games/amp/) Of these, alignment can be made to serve at least six:

Fantasy: Game as make-believe
Narrative: Game as drama
Challenge: Game as obstacle course
Fellowship: Game as social framework
Discovery: Game as uncharted territory
Expression: Game as self-discovery

Fantasy, in that alignment allows for study of hypothetical moral frameworks, as well as application of existing morals to hypothetical scenarios. Narrative, in that alignment codifies conflicts and roles in conflict familiar from other forms of drama. Challenge, in that you can require strategy or make a puzzle out of acting morally. Fellowship, in that precepts of alignment can be used to explain and enforce pro-sociality & co-operation and to create a shared understanding of why things are done. Discovery, in that a player can use it to find out what other people (both the real ones around the table and fictional ones in the game) think about right and wrong. Expression, in that making moral philosophy an explicit part of the game encourages players to express their own views on game events.

It's not given any system can serve all of these all the time, or in equal amounts. For example, a system build for challenge may dissatisfy players who are mainly interested in expressing their own values, or vice versa.

"What axes should we use?"

Depends on what aesthetics you want to prioritize and what kind of a setting you wish to use.

A single axis system works best when there's a clear-cut dichtomy at the root of the game's primary conflict. Law versus Chaos is an example, but systems that define these differently also work differently. Some examples:

Classic: Law stands for civilization of man. Chaos stands for untamed wildnerness and forces of nature. In other words, man versus nature.

AD&D: Law stands for large, organized groups. Chaos stands for the sovereignty of the individual. In other words, collectivism versus individualism.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Law stands for inevitable and unmoveable perfection of God. Chaos stands for unending change and limitless possibilities. Neutral is for people who have no horse in this supernatural race.

Cosmic horror: Law stands for seeking to destroy or bind the Great Old Ones. Chaos stands for seeking to release and exploit (and be exploited by) them. Neutral doesn't want anything to do with them.

Ancient Domains of Mystery: Law stands for giving to those in need, abiding by laws of community and preserving stability of the world. Chaos stands for taking from the weak by force, acting on your own will and seeking the upheaval of status quo. Neutral stands for striking a balance to maintain ecological balance of the natural world.

In such a system, players are either fighting as a group on one side against the other(s), or fighting against each other. The dichtomy is at the root of the conflict, so different alignments don't mix (and aren't meant to mix) well.

AD&D's biaxial system is an evolution of these. It's still mainly interested in dichtomous relationships, but by allowing gradients (https://images.app.goo.gl/FzANqALDVrrbazNX7) within categories, it allows for more nuanced grouping of characters, as well as conflict within groups. AD&D's system is a fuller image of morality, but to make use of it, people need to be able to distinquish which axis does what, which in practice they often fail.

You can go outside both models to do, say, virtue ethics (https://images.app.goo.gl/Wr23gj3ctvnNJgn16) in style of Ultima, where there are as many axes as there are virtues in play. The main trick is figuring out how to efficiently keep track of a larger number of variables.

"What are the pros and cons of alignment?"

This is the same question as the first one.

"How do we use it in our games?"

I already covered the aesthetics. Here's some specific ideas of what you can do with alignment, that often go under-appreciated:

Spot the Traitor: Players only know alignment of their own character. Some player characters are of radically opposing alignments seeking to undermine each other. Players have to use game tools to figure who is on who's side.

Discovering the Real You: Players don't know their character's alignment - only the game master does (see AD&D and Ultima-style graphs, above). Players do what they will with their characters, if they want to know where their alignment stands, they have to deduce it from reactions of non-player characters or use some game tool.

All aboard the blame train: Alignment is rated openly and by everyone. Every player has a face-up version of their character's alignment graph (again, see above), and every other player can give them points based on their own opinion whenever a character does something noteworthy.

Historical use: the player, upon character selection, pledges to play some alignment. The game master serves as a referee and rates how well the player is doing. Hence, the alignment of a character reflects how the game master and, by extension, every character played by the game master judge that character.

For a game master, alignment is straigtforwardly a guideline for how to play different characters, and how those characters relate to the player characters. That is, a game master decides how non-player characters act based on alignment; for player characters, it's the other way around, with a game master deciding alignment based on how a player plays their character.

In this paradigm, alignment is chiefly about how a player character's action look to the outside. Player characters are held to a standard - with Paladins beholden to the Church, Clerics beholden to their gods, Thieves and Assassins beholden to the Thieves' Guild, Druids beholden to their druidic circle, Monks beholden to monastic order, so on and so forth.

"Should Paladins always be Lawful Good?"

If multi-classing for humans is allowed, Paladin is redundant as a class - mechanically, a Paladin is a Lawful Good Fighter/Cleric. If such combinations are already allowed, there is no need for a Paladin class.

Thematically, the Paladin as pitched in early days of D&D is a very specific creature, with specific fictional precedents. It should always be Lawful Good. Most of the alternate Paladins lack such precedents and are artificially constructed just to fill a corner of the alignment graph. Most alternate Paladins could be comfortably modeled by the actual base class for holy warriors of varying ethos: Cleric.

A question you didn't ask: "Why did post-1st edition takes on D&D alignment suck?"

Because come 2nd edition, TSR had made a conscious decision to market their game to children, with all the corporate (https://shaneplays.com/rpg-history-tsr-code-of-ethics-dd-comics-code-authority-rules/) nonsense (http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2022/01/angry-mothers-from-heck.html?m=1) this entailed.

A lot of the horror stories you've heard of alignment not working in play? They happened because the players were literally 12, with exactly the amount of understanding about moral philosophy as you'd think, trying to use a watered-down version of a system that WAS NOT made with children in mind. AD&D 1st Edition's take on alignment (nevermind the game as a whole) draws from a bunch (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eternal_Champion_(novel)) of (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Hearts_and_Three_Lions) authors (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._Howard) who were not writing for kids.

WotC has not done much better in this regard and there are parallels you can draw with how things were and how they are now. But even if you forget WotC's direct contributions to the mess, a fact is that more people (think they) know alignment from memes (https://images.app.goo.gl/nkRMBdBTbs7pWtT58) and tabletop (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LawfulStupid) stereotypes (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChaoticStupid) than from actually reading the rules or giving them a fair go.

Based on every review I've read, 5th edition alignment system is from people who hated 3rd edition alignment, to people who hated 3rd edition alignment. It primarily exists for product identity reasons - that is, D&D continues to have it because past editions had it, not because the designers know how to make a good game around it. If you want a use case for 5th edition alignment specifically, ask Tanarii or someone else who plays with those rules. I don't.

Anonymouswizard
2022-10-04, 06:43 AM
Whenever I've played in a game without Alignment I've never missed it. D&D's alignment is also very vestigial, even back in the oft-worshiped days of 3e it mostly mattered for certain spells.

I like Alignment when it's more like Victoriana 3e*. One axis with multiple steps and major mechanical effects, specifically in Victoriana it changes how spending Fate Points work (Order gives bonus successes, Chaos gives bonus dice) and difficulty in using magic or technology. Interesting orcs are Order-aligned by default. But the point is that alignment matters, an orc with a revolver is not someone you face lightly (as they're likely slinging three automatic successes).

* Maybe earlier editions as well? I only own 3e.

Vahnavoi
2022-10-04, 07:18 AM
Orcs were Lawful in AD&D 1st edition as well. They got moved to Chaotic somewhere along the way. It's part of a larger trend of re-imagining orcs as whatever fits the theme of day.

GloatingSwine
2022-10-04, 07:39 AM
👻
What axises should we use?


Cheese - Chocolate and Cake - Biscuit.

Only these can truly capture the full breadth of reality.

Also arguments about what a chocolate cheesecake with a biscuit base should count as are a lot tastier than the usual D&D alignment arguments.


Alignment is a hook to hang other mechanics on, it doesn't really do anything by itself. The overwhelming majority of the mechanics that are hanging on alignment can be just as gracefully hung elsewhere.

KorvinStarmast
2022-10-04, 07:50 AM
For the OP: What game system are you referring to? In Empire of the Petal Throne, the evil and good gods and cohorts manifest that aspect of the game differently than the two-axis model (which began as a continuum, a polar plot) that has turned into the nine-idiot-box shorthand that D&D has degraded into.
Pros: Player's roleplaying tool...The other four motivations being Personality Trait, Ideal, Bond and Flaw. They should impact and even override the overall behavior as appropriate, in the judgement of the player. The better answer, however. My only disagreement with you is that alignment can change as a consequence of a player's choices for their character. A key tenet of role playing is that decisions and choices have consequences. The players can grow during play; the question isn't "who are you?" (which is rather static) the question is "who will you become during the course of your adventures?" Discovering "who you are" is a part of the discovery pillar of the game. (Social, combat, and discovery being the three pillars, with exploration as a subset of discovery).

Con3: Outside definitions. Many players and DMs bring non-5e definitions to alignment.
Yeah, that's a problem.

The important thing to remember is that your PC is not who they are because of their alignment. Their alignment develops because of who they are and what they do. It must represent your past before it can predict your future. That's how I have tended to apply it.

{Snip most of a very good answer to a badly phrased question} Nice examples.

Classic: Law stands for civilization of man. Chaos stands for untamed wildnerness and forces of nature. In other words, man versus nature.
AD&D: Law stands for large, organized groups. Chaos stands for the sovereignty of the individual. In other words, collectivism versus individualism.
Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Law stands for inevitable and unmoveable perfection of God. Chaos stands for unending change and limitless possibilities. Neutral is for people who have no horse in this supernatural race.
Cosmic horror: Law stands for seeking to destroy or bind the Great Old Ones. Chaos stands for seeking to release and exploit (and be exploited by) them. Neutral doesn't want anything to do with them.
Ancient Domains of Mystery: Law stands for giving to those in need, abiding by laws of community and preserving stability of the world. Chaos stands for taking from the weak by force, acting on your own will and seeking the upheaval of status quo. Neutral stands for striking a balance to maintain ecological balance of the natural world.
- In such a system, players are either fighting as a group on one side against the other(s), or fighting against each other. The dichtomy is at the root of the conflict, so different alignments don't mix (and aren't meant to mix) well.

AD&D's biaxial system is an evolution of these. It's still mainly interested in dichtomous relationships, but by allowing gradients (https://images.app.goo.gl/FzANqALDVrrbazNX7) within categories, it allows for more nuanced grouping of characters, as well as conflict within groups. AD&D's system is a fuller image of morality, but to make use of it, people need to be able to distinquish which axis does what, which in practice they often fail.
{Emphasis mine}. Too right.

For a game master, alignment is straightforwardly a guideline for how to play different characters, and how those characters relate to the player characters. That is, a game master decides how non-player characters act based on alignment; for player characters, it's the other way around, with a game master deciding alignment based on how a player plays their character. Nice distinction that is frequently missed by the modern player. Also, a lot of folks overlooked the 1e DMG discussion on:smallwink: Atonement. (pg 25 and 42, as well as the spell in the PHB). And as ever, 'use your judgment' is broad guidance that was IMO well placed.

A question you didn't ask: "Why did post-1st edition takes on D&D alignment suck?"

Because come 2nd edition, TSR had made a conscious decision to market their game to children, with all the corporate (https://shaneplays.com/rpg-history-tsr-code-of-ethics-dd-comics-code-authority-rules/) nonsense (http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2022/01/angry-mothers-from-heck.html?m=1) this entailed.

A lot of the horror stories you've heard of alignment not working in play? They happened because the players were literally 12, with exactly the amount of understanding about moral philosophy as you'd think, trying to use a watered-down version of a system that WAS NOT made with children in mind. AD&D 1st Edition's take on alignment (nevermind the game as a whole) draws from a bunch (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eternal_Champion_(novel)) of (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Hearts_and_Three_Lions) authors (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._Howard) who were not writing for kids.
FWIW, the decision to market to children was made about a decade before that, with Basic Set, which was soon followed by B/X, and later what became BECMI, explicitly boxed and distributed in toy stores along side other games in colorful boxes. The book "The Game Wizards" does a nice job of describing that marketing evolution. With AD&D 2e, that was amplified as you describe.

... more people (think they) know alignment from memes (https://images.app.goo.gl/nkRMBdBTbs7pWtT58) and tabletop (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LawfulStupid) stereotypes (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChaoticStupid) than from actually reading the rules or giving them a fair go. Players not bothering to become familiar with the rules is an ongoing problem.

If you want a use case for 5th edition alignment specifically, ask Tanarii or someone else who plays with those rules. I don't. It's usable, but Tanarii does a better job of describing it since what I do is a combination of L/N/C as the baseline with a plot of how characters behave being maintained by the DM.

Orcs were Lawful in AD&D 1st edition as well. They got moved to Chaotic somewhere along the way. It's part of a larger trend of re-imagining orcs as whatever fits the theme of day. FWIW, Orcs were on the side of Chaos in the original game, but they could also be neutral. Goblins and Kobolds were always chaotic. Likewise (C and N) were Giants, Chimerae, Dragons, Ogres, and Lycanthropes). In AD&D 2e they were Lawful Evil. (I just checked, and that checks out with AD&D 1e. The picture in the 2e Monstrous Manual departed from the boar snout picture in 1e MM, but it well fits the description of "a species of aggressive mammalian carnivores that band together in tribes to survive by hunting and raiding." The D&D 5e book has them as Chaotic Evil, so we can blame WoTC for this change. ("Often Chaotic Evil" is what is in the SRD for 3.5e). IMO, one of the few good things 3.5e did was retain/recapture the discomfort with sunlight, being 'dazzled' in bright sunlight or within the radius of the daylight spell, which if we look at how Tolkien used darkness and light as deep motifs since that's where 'orcs don't like the light' comes from, reflects thematically on their alignment description.

Grod_The_Giant
2022-10-04, 09:46 AM
Alignment is only helpful insofar as it helps players describe their characters. Beyond that its utility is basically nil. Mechanics like Fate's aspects or Exalted 3e's intimacies are much more interesting.

If I had to point to a good axis system, I'd probably go with Divinity: Original Sin 1's traits mechanic (https://divinity.fandom.com/wiki/Original_Sin_Traits)--and that's really more like nine different axis for individual aspects of your personality. You have an Altruistic <-> Egotistical alignment, Blunt <-> Considerate, Pragmatic <-> Romantic, and so on; choices you make in the game give you points for one side of an axis or the other, and you get a minor mechanical bonus depending on which side you've committed to more.

Theoboldi
2022-10-04, 11:22 AM
I think Alignment serves a useful purpose in games that have actual supernatural, cosmic forces that represent the opposing ends of the alignment spectrum. Beings of pure good or evil, spells that call upon their power and work differently against beings of varying alignments, and magical items that serve these forces and seek to enforce their power.

It serves as a good framework to illustrate how these forces and their followers behave, how to arbitrate where a given character's allegiance falls and which beings will accept him, and how the mystical powers of these cosmic forces affect an individual. There's a good opportunity for the mechanics to reinforce the setting here, making for a more cohesive world.

Mind, this is mostly true for high-fantasy and very magical worlds, which luckily is what most D&D worlds are.

Conversely, I don't think it's a particularly impressive roleplaying aid, about on par with just being told to establish a few personality traits of your character up front. But then again I am not very much into most explicit roleplaying mechanics, as I prefer to decide what my character does and feels in a more freeform manner. There is utility in using it as a way to get everyone in a party on the same page, however. Saying "I want all characters in this party to be of good alignment." does immediately lay down some clear expectations about what kind of behaviors and personalities are acceptable and which ones are not.

I fully agree on the matter of paladins, though. :smalltongue:

Tanarii
2022-10-04, 11:35 AM
The better answer, however. My only disagreement with you is that alignment can change as a consequence of a player's choices for their character. A key tenet of role playing is that decisions and choices have consequences. The players can grow during play; the question isn't "who are you?" (which is rather static) the question is "who will you become during the course of your adventures?" Discovering "who you are" is a part of the discovery pillar of the game. (Social, combat, and discovery being the three pillars, with exploration as a subset of discovery).Alignment as a player roleplaying tool by providing motivations doesn't mean it can't change. It's actually very easy. The player erases the old alignment, writes in the new one, and starts using the new associated but not constantly required behavior as a motivation moving forward.

This also works fine with forced alignment changes (planar effects, lycanthrope), it just requires player good faith buy-in.

Also, this works fine with the character believing they are a good or evil or lawful or chaotic person, but actually not being, with player good faith buy-in. The player writes down the actual alignment and associated but not constantly required behavior as a motivation, and uses that to base in-character decisions on. But they also have the character espouse that act-chewly they're some other alignment! As long as the player doesn't try to claim they're using another alignment as the basis for their decision making, which would be bad faith use of the alignment system, the disconnect between what the player knows to be the true alignment and what the character believes in-universe isn't an issue. Except possibly for other creatures in-universe, which may feel compelled to call the character on their BS. :smallamused:

KorvinStarmast
2022-10-04, 12:00 PM
Except possibly for other creatures in-universe, which may feel compelled to call the character on their BS. :smallamused:Nice point.
Your points on the good faith buy in, which usually requires a conversation or two between player and GM, get a bit yes out of me.

LibraryOgre
2022-10-04, 12:49 PM
I've often found alignment to be useful to defining general trends of behavior, both for individuals and for groups.

Hobgoblin society tends towards LE. Therefore, that society should be hierarchical and self-interested, if not malevolent. Individual hobgoblins might differ from the societal alignment, but that's because societal alignment is the aggregate of the alignment of individuals, as individual alignment is the aggregate of actions of the character.

It is a shorthand which describes broad strokes. As mentioned above, it requires player buy-in, but also a degree of conscious definition... what is good, what is bad, what is law, what is chaos? Some actions won't neatly plot on that, due to a complex mix of motivations, means taken, and outcomes... if I did a good thing in a bad way, did that actually help? If I am Team Rocket, and I do a bad thing so incompetently that it results in a good outcome, am I good or evil? That some of this is difficult to plot isn't that alignment is necessarily flawed, it's that it's wibbly-wobbly, morally-worally kind of stuff... situations are complex and you can't always see the big picture at the details.

J-H
2022-10-04, 01:47 PM
Varies by campaign

I don't want to see it deleted, and I think it can add some fun dynamics at a table as long as everyone is buying into it and playing the same game.

Empirical observations:
5e, ran an in-person Castlevania game (Castle Dracula to avoid copyright issues, along with a few other name changes). Kill vampire, kill undead, etc. Half the party showed up with neutral alignments. I had one negative effect (Good creatures entering an Unhallow area had to save against something minor) and one alignment-locked item (Mithril Cross, anti-necromancy protective item). The party interrogated an enemy monster and then dropped the fellow into some acid. They also negotiated successfully with a couple of NPCs of questionable morality (if it eats people, it's probably not Good).

Alignment was generally just a mechanical effect, and I hadn't even asked what alignment characters were until like session 15 when it came up.


5e, continuation of some of the same characters, campaign log is around here. They are definitely desecrating bodies to avoid Resurrected enemies. The party Paladin is LG and has prevented a couple of minor warcrimes, and is currently trying to change the alignment of a sword made from a fragment of a dead god that may divinity-drain itself back into godhood. Alignment matters some, dependent on the player's willingness to play to it. No mechanical effects anywhere in the campaign.
Not sure what alignment some of the PCs are even now. Pragmatic good-ish?


Next campaign will be Baldur's Gate II. For those unfamiliar, 1-2 PCs will be children of Bhaal, a CE god of murder (currently deceased), and will carry a bit of him around inside. They will need to choose to indulge in those impulses, or resist them. By late game, this will impact some powers available to them, as well as some permanent self-buffs. The other PCs will have varying backgrounds, which may include "accidentally half a vampire," where snacking on people will lead them down one path, and going all Blade will lead them down another path of power.
Alignment WILL matter for character development.
Properly foreshadowed PC vs PC conflict will be on the table.
There are 2 or 3 possible NPCs (4 PC + 1 NPC of their choice party) who they can cause alignment changes for, including one who wanted to be a LG paladin but doesn't quite have the temperament or maturity for it yet.
Some items will be alignment-locked, although not many.
This will all be discussed in session 0.

Kurt Kurageous
2022-10-04, 04:06 PM
Good and Evil in 5e is totally subjective.

A good elf/dwarf/human does good for elvin/dwarvish/human society, and perhaps for all good-aligned races.

A good orc does good for orcish society...but we call them evil.

Good and Evil in 5e is totally subjective. Imagine what I think of Neutral. It cares not for all organized humanoid life.

Millstone85
2022-10-04, 04:12 PM
Good and Evil in 5e is totally subjective.

A good elf/dwarf/human does good for elvin/dwarvish/human society, and perhaps for all good-aligned races.

A good orc does good for orcish society...but we call them evil.

Good and Evil in 5e is totally subjective. Imagine what I think of Neutral. It cares not for all organized humanoid life.You could just as well say that Neutral cares for neutral humanoid life, such as githzerai, lizardfolk, thri-kreen, etc.

Luccan
2022-10-04, 04:21 PM
Should Paladins always be Lawful Good? YES

As far as Paladins: Yes*. I'm coming around to the idea that if you've got a class based game in the D&D mould then archetypes are important

*You can and maybe should have paladins of any alignment, but they should adhere to their alignment as much as the classic LG pallys

Millstone85
2022-10-04, 05:01 PM
You can and maybe should have paladins of any alignment, but they should adhere to their alignment as much as the classic LG pallysYes, you could have paladins of...




Justice
Mercy
Liberty


Institution
Balance
Volition


Tyranny
Malice
Ferocity



Or someting like that. 5e initially went a bit in that direction, by telling you that the Oath of Devotion usually produces LG paladins, the Oath of the Ancients cares about goodness but not for law or chaos, etc.

J-H
2022-10-04, 06:25 PM
Good and Evil in 5e is totally subjective.

A good elf/dwarf/human does good for elvin/dwarvish/human society, and perhaps for all good-aligned races.

A good orc does good for orcish society...but we call them evil.

Good and Evil in 5e is totally subjective. Imagine what I think of Neutral. It cares not for all organized humanoid life.

Illithid devotion paladin?

KorvinStarmast
2022-10-04, 06:34 PM
Illithid devotion paladin? No. But a Githyanki devotion paladin makes a lot of sense: devoted to destroying illithid. (Wait, is that vengeance paladin? :smallbiggrin: )

Witty Username
2022-10-04, 08:29 PM
To clarify some things:
The idea of "solving" alignment was a joke, as is the title, that this is a continuation of the perpetual discussion of alignment. I don't get blue text on my phone, so I just sotra hoped. That being said if you think you can your welcome to try and tell us about it.

D&D is the system I am personally the most familiar with, but I don't feel the need to limit the discussion to D&D, anything that has an alignment system you have opinions on is welcome to the discussion. Like say, comments to the effect of how the star wars rpg has pros and cons with using instead of good or bad, a dark side point tracker to measure in game terms the corruption of the dark side. Fair game for this.
Or heck, rpgs that work/don't work for you because they distinctly don't have alignment type stuff, talk about it.

gbaji
2022-10-04, 08:31 PM
I'm going to second the notion that alignments work well as some sort of base cosmic/whatever concepts in a game world that affect things like what deities/spirits/whatever are on which side of whatever grand conflicts are present in the game. So being "aligned" with a faction within this sort of conflict works. And can certainly have some influence perhaps on broader concepts associated with said alignment (whatever it is).

I do think the concept of alignment becomes problematic when it becomes about defining character personality traits. I get that some consider this an aide to roleplaying, but in many cases it can become a crutch that in yet more cases can become stifling. Character personalities should be more complex and nuanced than what can fit into a simple (one or two axis) alignment system. And if you have more axis of alignment in a game? Too complex for the game system to manage. Better to let the player decide character personality and leave what alignment may exist more as a "what side are you on in the grand cosmic battle for whatever". Good/evil, law/chaos; if these are just sides in a conflict then you can pick sides, and presumably are somewhat in the region of your "side" personality wise, but otherwise can act as you feel fit.

And historically D&D has really suffered from their alignment system precisely because the game writers have never quite been able to reconcile the inherent differences between alignment as an external association and alignment as an internal personality component. This is seen most strongly on the law/chaos axis, of course. If someone is chaotic, it can mean that they engage in random actions/decisions (internal personality) *or* that they refuse to comply with "rules" set by others (habitual lawbreaker, which is an external factor). This has the same problems that "lawful" characters have in that whether you are acting lawfully or chaotically changes depending on the laws of where you are (which is, frankly, ridiculous). Sadly, despite this being incredibly difficult to manage in any consistent and rational manner, they keep on trying, edition after edition.

Good/evil isn't much better. Is "good" determined by what the character thinks is good, or an external observer? There are many characters who would think what they are doing is "good", but who would be considered "evil" by others. The idea of the lawful good paladin finding nothing wrong with going to a dungeon occupied by monsters and killing them all (even sentient "monsters"), as long as said monsters were assumed to be a hazard to "good folks" is a common example of this problem. If you are conflating being on the "good" side versus the "evil" side, then you can absolutely rationalize objectively "evil" acts being performed in the name of "good".

It's just a mess IMO. I think you can have the "sides" or the "personality traits" in a game, but really shouldn't have both.

Batcathat
2022-10-05, 01:03 AM
Hobgoblin society tends towards LE. Therefore, that society should be hierarchical and self-interested, if not malevolent.

Wouldn't it be easier to just describe Hobgoblin society as "hierarchical and self-interested" instead of having to go through the extra step? That's one of the reasons I find alignment mostly meaningless – if it's not a straight-jacket it means that I still have to figure out how these particular Hobgoblins are LE or how this particular paladin is LG.

Vahnavoi
2022-10-05, 04:42 AM
@gbaji:

Put, say, MBTI personality test in a Google search and open it up. Look at the questions. (Examples: "how often do you make new friends? Does seeing others cry make you want to cry? Do you make backup plans for backup plans?")

Notice something? The questions are about observable behaviour. That is, the answers can be derived from a game situation, based on player character action.

This means an external observer, such as a game master, can track and analyze player character behaviour, in the exact same way the original alignment rules suggest a game master should track and analyze moral decisions. Given enough time and observations, a game master can estimate personality type of a character, whether it is stable or changing, how it is changing and in which direction, and whether the actual behaviour of a character matches what a player claims about the character.

Indeed, it would be possible to do this alongside keeping track of alignment, which would, if anything, prove whether there is correlation between personality and morality. (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://psyarxiv.com/6azqs/download&ved=2ahUKEwi8l7mh5Mj6AhVS_SoKHQtnCnMQFnoECAoQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1w9csnXUyZG2B-Uif6Lh_Y) The idea that personality and morality are distinct is questionable even in real life. (https://psyche.co/ideas/is-improving-your-personality-a-moral-duty-or-a-category-confusion) The corollary to the real observations is that your conclusion doesn't hold. Having both "sides" and "personality traits" is perfectly natural, because the "sides" actually correspond to personality types.

Tanarii
2022-10-05, 11:15 AM
Descriptive alignment as judged by the DM is one of the worst possible uses for Alignment. If it's not going to be Teams, then it's only good use is as part of motivations used by the player as a roleplaying aide.

Even if the DM wants to restrict Alignments during Session 0, they need to be more specific than "No Evil Alignments". At the minimum, they need to say something like "No Evil Alignments, defined as by having your character regularly/frequently behave as one of the 3 Evil alignment associated behaviors, in my personal judgement." That sets the standard for descriptive alignment as judged by the DM well in advance.

Kurt Kurageous
2022-10-05, 01:04 PM
You could just as well say that Neutral cares for neutral humanoid life, such as githzerai, lizardfolk, thri-kreen, etc.

Yes, certainly. Further proof of the point in DnD alignment is subjective.

gbaji
2022-10-05, 02:39 PM
This means an external observer, such as a game master, can track and analyze player character behaviour, in the exact same way the original alignment rules suggest a game master should track and analyze moral decisions. Given enough time and observations, a game master can estimate personality type of a character, whether it is stable or changing, how it is changing and in which direction, and whether the actual behaviour of a character matches what a player claims about the character.

Yup. I agree. Except that we as players of the game have to agree as to what is "good" or "lawful" in any given context for this to work, and which categories those given personality traits fall into. Which, in actual game practice, does not always work. The full range of possible personality quirks can only be distilled into a couple of axis of measurement (really a "morality" axis and a "methodology" axis, in the case of good/evil and law/chaos) in extremely broad ways. Actual people are far more complex than that, but any attempt to capture that complexity will rapidly become complex as well, which you want to avoid in a game system.

I do agree that if constrained to just a small set of action/decision components, alignment can be a useful "guide" for players. So killing helpless opponents is "evil", for example. Most decisions characters make are going to be utilitarian in nature (does this achieve our objective, or move us closer to achieving our objective). Traits can be incredibly varied: "My character has a hatred of Orcs due to childhood trauma" or "My druid loves nature and will do anything to prevent people from harming the environment". Broad alignments can provide some sort of "rails" to the actions we choose our characters to take while pursuing or acting on our traits, but that honestly is about it (or should be IMO).


Indeed, it would be possible to do this alongside keeping track of alignment, which would, if anything, prove whether there is correlation between personality and morality. (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://psyarxiv.com/6azqs/download&ved=2ahUKEwi8l7mh5Mj6AhVS_SoKHQtnCnMQFnoECAoQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1w9csnXUyZG2B-Uif6Lh_Y) The idea that personality and morality are distinct is questionable even in real life. (https://psyche.co/ideas/is-improving-your-personality-a-moral-duty-or-a-category-confusion) The corollary to the real observations is that your conclusion doesn't hold. Having both "sides" and "personality traits" is perfectly natural, because the "sides" actually correspond to personality types.

But it doesn't always align with "sides" in a larger conflict (cosmological or not). The moment we introduce deities who form the "sides", the alignment system begins to have problems. The "good" deities command their followers to fight the followers of the "evil" deities. So while objectively we might consider a home invasion and brutal killing of all inside as "evil", a party of "good" adventurers could certainly be on a mission to assault the temple of <insert evil deity here>, kill all the guards, find the inner sanctum, wipe out the priests before they can finish their ritual to do <something evil>, destroy said temple, and then go have a beer with their friends and celebrate their victory. While playing the game, we actually have to work a bit to make the "bad guys" as bad as possible so as to comport with our own morals as players (they're "really" evil, and were doing something that would cast evil darkness on the world for a thousand years, and they eat babies, and sacrifice people, etc). And, of course, we have their guards on duty so we can avoid the moral implications of just killing them in their sleep or something, and the priests are always right on the cusp of finishing the evil ritual of evilness (possibly complete with human sacrifices just to up the "we have to act with violence" quotient). All so we can rationalize what would otherwise be a clearly "evil" and "non-lawful" act.

Heck. Let's set aside the "worshippers of Cthulhu about to bring ruin to the world" type scenario. Let's just examine two kingdoms. They are enemies for some historical reason. Both sides could absolutely be engaged in espionage efforts against each other. Are those "evil" acts? Ok, maybe not (or maybe)? Perhaps assassination falls into the "evil" category (harming someone helpless, right), but what if you're asked to take out the warlord of the other sides army on the eve of an invasion? Is that "evil" or "good"? Oddly, if you sneak past his guards and get to his chambers and find him awake, with a small group of personal guards you have to get through, we usually have no issues. But what if he's asleep and unguarded at the point you come across him? Same action (killing him). Same effect (taking him out of the war equation). But most of us would find murdering him in his sleep to be "evil", right? But what if he's "really evil". I mean, he regularly tortures captured soldiers on your "side", tosses disease ridden bodies over the walls to infect your citizens while engaged in a siege, and otherwise engages in every "horrible way to fight a war" possible? Is it then ok to kill him when you get the chance? Heck. What if he's also the current ruler of the "evil" kingdom and he has a younger brother who's a really nice guy and wants to reform their recently deceased father's kingdom, but his brother is just so darn evil? What if the brother (who'd be a great ally and bring peace to the entire region) has formed a resistance movement to work against his evil older brother, and has invited your group to assist him? Where does the line between what is "good" versus what is "evil" lie? What if you live in a world where resurrection spells are available (especially to evil overlords). So do you just kill him? Or do you kill him, steal the body, cut it into pieces, dissolve them individually in acid, and spread them to various random locations?

Heck. What if the bad guy is a vampire? You can literally only actually kill him for good by tracking down his coffin during the day and staking him (killing him in his sleep)? How does that fit on the "good/evil" meter?

And this is only considering human morals. We, as human players, tend towards our own modern human interpretation of "good/evil". But do other cultures in your setting follow the same rules? Does that Orc you're killing actually qualify as "evil", or is he a fine upstanding example of the pillar of Orc society? He regularly eats the meat of sentient beings as proscribed in the Book of Orc, he makes sure to beat his children so as to instill in them proper Orc strength of character (weakness hurts all Orckind, right?), has always advanced in his job by properly backstabbing and killing his (previous but obviously too weak) supervisors, always makes sure to torture people before killing (and eating) them, and otherwise acts in all ways to strengthen both himself and his Orc community. He's "good" by the rules of his society, right? If good and evil are based on morals, and morals are (literally) based on social mores, then this becomes a problem if we introduce societies into our game that literally have very different ideas of what makes a "good society" than we as the human players do.

Even Elves and Dwarves (traditional races that we view as being close to us) can present problems. A lawful good Dwarf (like Durkon) might consider it the height of "goodness" to fight against the evil that is trees, but I'm pretty sure an Elven druid (who could also be "good") would have very different opinions on the act. Both are acting for a "greater good", believing the role of trees in the world is very different, yet both would find themselves in opposition. The Elf would certainly consider wanton chopping down of trees to clear the land for use in mining (need the wood to support the tunnels, and clear the land for fill from the mine, right?) an "evil" act, while the dwarf would consider it "good" (somethings got to be burned for fuel to melt all that ore goodness, right?).

Yeah, maybe veering a bit off the areas we typically assign or judge alignment by, but still. And honestly, it's even worse when we lump the law/chaos axis into the mix. There, internal versus external analysis is positively absurd. Robin Hood would often be judged as "chaotic good". But is he? He's "chaotic" because he's fighting against the lawful rule (he's an outlaw). He steals other people's property. But if he has a strict set of rules he applies to his Merry Men, creates very well thought out plans for his thefts (has backup plans for his backup plans), and a strict code of honor he himself follows, doesn't that make him "lawful"? Which is true? Heck. Is he actually even "good"? We only judge him that because the Sherriff is "evil" (again, demonstrated by ensuring that we show him engaged in direct cruelty so we have no confusion). But what if the Sherriff was otherwise a nice guy who everyone liked? What if he's just following the rules set by the prince (lawful), and doing the best he can in otherwise hard times (there's a war going on, so everyone is suffering and someone's got to step up and to the right thing. So "good"). If the problems are just an economic downturn that's hurting everyone, but some people decide to turn to banditry to deal with it, then doesn't that make Robin Hood "evil"? I mean, he could just go get a job or something, right? Instead he's stealing other people's hard earned money (ok, and distributing to the poor). Um. But what if that money was being collected from (presumably at least successful enough to pay taxes) business owners and was actually going to be distributed to the orphanages and poor houses of the kingdom instead of just making the rich folks richer? So Robin Hood now gets to decide that he and his band are "more deserving poor" than the other poor folks in the kingdom? By what rule? No one voted for him (and no lawful authority appointed him, unlike the Sherriff who was). Maybe there's a lot more people suffering a lot more in the big city and will now suffer even more because this small town bumkin from Nottingham decided that his lot suffering by having to catch their own food and cook it in their own pots was soo much worse than folks who didn't even have that much. Yes. I'm aware that the specifics of the stories describe people *not* being allowed to do so, and the money specifically *only* going to the evil rich friends of the Sherriff, but that's kinda my point. We have to contrive those very absolute conditions (in our story/plot/setting) in order to make the "heroic and good" actions of Robin Hood actually be "heroic and good" in the first place. I would even suggest that the fiction surrounding the character was intentionally written by various authors over time to exaggerate those conditions specifically to make the actions taken appear more heroic and "good".

There's a lot more complexity to real world scenarios (or fake world ones) than can easily be fit into the very broad and often inconsistent concept of an alignment system. In a fictional story, where the author gets to decide all the actions and circumstances, it's somewhat easier. In a roleplaying game (well, a good one?. Not so much. And to then reinforce this with many games which have spells that detect such things? Dunno. Problematic most of the time. You basically are forced as a player (and GM) to willfully ignore the problem cases and work around them purely because the alignment system exists in the first place. Which I think makes it more of a hinderance to roleplaying than a help most of the time.

Vahnavoi
2022-10-06, 03:33 AM
Descriptive alignment as judged by the DM is one of the worst possible uses for Alignment.

Worst for what? Compared to what? I described three game modes that hinge on descriptive alignment and you've not made a case against any of those use cases.


If it's not going to be Teams, then it's only good use is as part of motivations used by the player as a roleplaying aide.

Descriptive alignment is not mutually exclusive with teams, because it sorts by behaviour, and teams can be founded on behaviour just as well. Think asymmetric team games like Cops & Robbers rather than symmetric team games like association football. This interacts with roleplaying in a very straightforward manner: "act like robber, get treated like a robber" etc..

Meanwhile, how alignment is supposed to aid roleplaying without a descriptive element is woefully unclear. A player typically does not play alone, so in order for them to portray a role that is not just a copy of themselves, they need to know how other players define and understand whatever motivation they choose to play. For example, playing your personal definition of "coward" probably won't get you the reactions you want if what you see as "cowardice" is actually interpreted as "courage" by the other players. The probability of other people calling you out on this approaches 1 the longer a game goes on even if no-one explicitly keeps score. I'm underlining that, because there's an important corollary: people naturally make judgements of others, descriptive alignment is just a codified version of that.

A related corollary is that, since people tend to naturally group each other by behaviour, lacking explicit teams is not a great argument against descriptive alignment.


Even if the DM wants to restrict Alignments during Session 0, they need to be more specific than "No Evil Alignments". At the minimum, they need to say something like "No Evil Alignments, defined as by having your character regularly/frequently behave as one of the 3 Evil alignment associated behaviors, in my personal judgement." That sets the standard for descriptive alignment as judged by the DM well in advance.

Trying to ban behaviours before play starts is prescriptive, not descriptive. The original biaxial system is not interested with that at all - under it, Evil characters are allowed just fine, and the alignment system exist to check whether they act and stay Evil just as surely as it exist to check whether Good characters act and stay Good. The standard for descriptive alignment as judged by game master is set explicitly as part of the basic rules, independent on any character bans.

Meanwhile, if you want to ban behaviours, you can use the model of play I described as All aboard the blame train. Every player character has a face up alignment graph, every player is allowed to give score to other players for noteworthy character actions based on their judgement. Get enough negative ratings and you're out. This also removes the need for long pre-game negotiations on what is or is not acceptable and makes that negotiation part of the game.

---

@Kurt Kurageous:

None of your points prove what you think they prove. But even if they did, it would not matter. People who get hung up on objective versus subjective morality often forget that it's both possible and easy to use the original alignment system in subjectivist form. The only thing this requires players to accept is that in-game determinations of alignment represent subjective statements by some higher being. At the table level, this is of course known to be the game master, or a panel of players (see the blame train, above). In the game, it can be linked to God or gods.

It's possible to go further and propose all of reality is subjective, which is how you get settings like Planescape, Mage: the Ascension, some versions of Shin Megami Tensei, etc.. The classic tale for such settings is "Rage against the Heavens" rebellion against the ultimate subjective authority.

icefractal
2022-10-06, 05:14 AM
It works reasonably well as a prompt - picture a chaotic good merchant, and then a lawful evil one, and you'll probably get different results. So you can usefully add it to random NPC generation methods.

It works much less well in the other direction - determining what alignment an already-fleshed-out character falls into.

So personally, I would make it an optional thing you can use to describe a character, like 5E's bonds/flaws/ideals. Meaning probably no mechanical usage.

Theoboldi
2022-10-06, 07:00 AM
It works much less well in the other direction - determining what alignment an already-fleshed-out character falls into.


Controversial (and not thought through) opinion:

Most alignment disputes come from people not wanting to admit that by D&D's standards their favorite pet character falls under an alignment they dislike. :smalltongue:

Vahnavoi
2022-10-06, 07:25 AM
Yup. I agree. Except that we as players of the game have to agree as to what is "good" or "lawful" in any given context for this to work, and which categories those given personality traits fall into. Which, in actual game practice, does not always work.

So?

People have to agree what "hit points", "ability scores" or any other game terms mean just the same. All you are saying is that people have to agree on rules of a game to play it - this is neither insurmountable nor unique to alignment.

Alignment doesn't ask, and doesn't need to ask, people to solve real morality. It only asks them to solve who calls the shots - that is, to accept a rule such as "a game master has final say on game events". A player who takes issue with rules like that, will have issues with far more things than mere alignment.


The full range of possible personality quirks can only be distilled into a couple of axis of measurement (really a "morality" axis and a "methodology" axis, in the case of good/evil and law/chaos) in extremely broad ways. Actual people are far more complex than that, but any attempt to capture that complexity will rapidly become complex as well, which you want to avoid in a game system.

I do agree that if constrained to just a small set of action/decision components, alignment can be a useful "guide" for players. So killing helpless opponents is "evil", for example. Most decisions characters make are going to be utilitarian in nature (does this achieve our objective, or move us closer to achieving our objective). Traits can be incredibly varied: "My character has a hatred of Orcs due to childhood trauma" or "My druid loves nature and will do anything to prevent people from harming the environment". Broad alignments can provide some sort of "rails" to the actions we choose our characters to take while pursuing or acting on our traits, but that honestly is about it (or should be IMO).

Alignment doesn't measure full range of possible personalities. It does what you yourself agree is reasonable: measure a subset of game actions that the game is morally interested in. The "actual people are far more complex" argument is both underdeveloped and irrelevant. Underdeveloped, in that it fails to acknowledge all the other measurements a game might make of a character that would impact personality, such as species, ethnicity, class, profession, intelligence, wisdom, charisma, age, mental disorders etc. (all present in 1st edition AD&D). Irrelevant in that no-one is asking games to be perfectly accurate models of real people. I've said it before, I'll say it again: how many variables you track is a question of how many you need to (in order to serve the aesthetics you want) versus how many you practically can.


But it doesn't always align with "sides" in a larger conflict (cosmological or not). The moment we introduce deities who form the "sides", the alignment system begins to have problems. The "good" deities command their followers to fight the followers of the "evil" deities. So while objectively we might consider a home invasion and brutal killing of all inside as "evil", a party of "good" adventurers could certainly be on a mission to assault the temple of <insert evil deity here>, kill all the guards, find the inner sanctum, wipe out the priests before they can finish their ritual to do <something evil>, destroy said temple, and then go have a beer with their friends and celebrate their victory. While playing the game, we actually have to work a bit to make the "bad guys" as bad as possible so as to comport with our own morals as players (they're "really" evil, and were doing something that would cast evil darkness on the world for a thousand years, and they eat babies, and sacrifice people, etc). And, of course, we have their guards on duty so we can avoid the moral implications of just killing them in their sleep or something, and the priests are always right on the cusp of finishing the evil ritual of evilness (possibly complete with human sacrifices just to up the "we have to act with violence" quotient). All so we can rationalize what would otherwise be a clearly "evil" and "non-lawful" act.

You make a number of silly assumptions. The chief reason is that you're working backwards from a stereotype of what the player characters are supposed to do or be, rather than following through on the basic principles under discussion.

Firstly, the presence of a physical evil that must be fought, what you call a "rationalization" of what would be otherwise "clearly" evil or non-lawful, is not a rationalization. It's a premise of the make-believe, one of the hypotheses driving the game scenario. Gygax directly talks about this, I believe, even in 1st Edition Dungeon Master's Guide. It's not necessary for alignment itself, it's necessary for genre of sword & sorcery and for archetypes like the Paladin, that is, a Knight in Shining Armor opposing Evil by force of arms.

Secondly, the reason why Gygax had to make that digression is because a significant amount of people at the time were doing the exact opposite of what you describe. That is, rather than making the "bad guys as bad as possible", they were humanizing the "bad guys" and requiring pacifism from Good player characters, because pacifism is what appealed to their real moral standards. In other words, Gygax was speaking against the idea that game morals have to comport with real morals of players.

It's TSR, come second edition of AD&D, after they'd kicked Gygax out, that made a mandate that the game's portrayal of morality should be tied to contemporary norms. I re-iterate, they did this because they wanted to sell their game to kids and didn't want to be shouted at by someone's angry mom.

It's 2nd edition that introduced the idea that player characters should always be heroes on the side of Good against Evil. 1st edition and the original biaxial alignment system have no such requirement. This has a corollary in that under the original rules, if player characters engage in "objectively evil" acts (as agreed on by everybody at the table), there is no obstacle to acknowledging the game characters as Evil. The sides are not symmetric, the Gods of Good can be strict on how the player characters conduct themselves in their fights against their opponents, and there is no reason to presume characters engaging in home invasion and brutal killing are Good. Heck, there's no reason to assume the opponents are Evil!


Heck. Let's set aside the "worshippers of Cthulhu about to bring ruin to the world" type scenario. Let's just examine two kingdoms. They are enemies for some historical reason.

1st Edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide explicitly states that even two Lawful Good kings can wage war against each other. There are two chief reasons for this: one, there is variation within alignment groups. The cause of war might be a moral dilemma with mutually exclusive solutions, one leaning Law and another leaning Good, so kingdoms emphasizing different aspects may end up at odds (and there is a version of this for every alignment, dilemmas of this sort are not restricted to Good or Lawful people). Two, people with the same values may still act differently if they have different information. Imagine a security guard about to take lick of a tasty icecream cone. Suddenly, Batman appears and knocks the cone off the guard's hand, leaving then without any icecream to eat.

Is Batman acting reasonably?
Does you judgement change if you knew for sure the icecream was poisoned and Batman just saved the guy's life?


Both sides could absolutely be engaged in espionage efforts against each other. Are those "evil" acts? Ok, maybe not (or maybe)? Ok, maybe not (or maybe)? Perhaps assassination falls into the "evil" category (harming someone helpless, right), but what if you're asked to take out the warlord of the other sides army on the eve of an invasion? Is that "evil" or "good"?

The correct answer is "insufficient information", because you are not telling enough details to make that decision. The answers are meant to be given in the context of a game, with a fleshed-out situation, from the position of a game master who is allowed to fill in the gaps (because a game master has final say on game events, per the rules).


Oddly, if you sneak past his guards and get to his chambers and find him awake, with a small group of personal guards you have to get through, we usually have no issues.

As a corollary to what I already said: whether players have issues is irrelevant, because that's not what decides alignment.


But what if he's asleep and unguarded at the point you come across him? Same action (killing him). Same effect (taking him out of the war equation). But most of us would find murdering him in his sleep to be "evil", right??

That's because you changed the situation. Unsurprisingly people have different reactions to different situations. All of this irrelevant because, again, alignment is not simply decided by how players feel about any given thing. Every single question of alignment is subject to game master interpretation, based on their setting and the aesthetics of gameplay they wish to serve.

I could answer every question you made and implied in the rest of your post, but it would just lead to prohibitively long response. The only important point to make about them is that none of them prove what you set out to prove, namely that sorting personalities into sides inherently causes problems. Majority of your questions are just setting building questions that a game master can answer as they see fit.


There's a lot more complexity to real world scenarios (or fake world ones) than can easily be fit into the very broad and often inconsistent concept of an alignment system.

Which continues to be irrelevant, because no-one is asking games to be perfect models of reality.


In a fictional story, where the author gets to decide all the actions and circumstances, it's somewhat easier. In a roleplaying game (well, a good one?. Not so much. And to then reinforce this with many games which have spells that detect such things? Dunno. Problematic most of the time. You basically are forced as a player (and GM) to willfully ignore the problem cases and work around them purely because the alignment system exists in the first place. Which I think makes it more of a hinderance to roleplaying than a help most of the time.

It's a nice conclusion that doesn't follow from anywhere. What forces a player or game master to ignore "problem cases" is merely practical limits of what they can process, not presence of the system; if a game master wants to and has time to spare, they can center entire games around such "problem cases".

LibraryOgre
2022-10-06, 11:55 AM
Wouldn't it be easier to just describe Hobgoblin society as "hierarchical and self-interested" instead of having to go through the extra step? That's one of the reasons I find alignment mostly meaningless – if it's not a straight-jacket it means that I still have to figure out how these particular Hobgoblins are LE or how this particular paladin is LG.

Only if you want to do away with categories as an idea altogether.

Categories exist to group things that are related, and knowing what category something is in can help you draw conclusions about what it is like, in a general sense. Cats, from housecat to puma to tiger, share general traits. It can be useful to talk about cats as a category (pun not intended, but owned), even if you have to caveat that some of the generalizations don't apply to every member. These Hobgoblins (a box) are going to share things with other hobgoblins, because they are both in the hobgoblin box. They are going to share things with other goblinoids because they are all in the goblinoid box, and they're going to share things with other evil people and other lawful people because they are in the lawful and evil boxes. However, hobgoblins of the Smashy Axe tribe are not going be identical to hobgoblins of the Boomerang tribe, because while they might be inside many boxes in common, the differences between Smashy Axe and Boomerang are also present.

For example, that Lawful Good Paladin and a Lawful Evil Hobgoblin have certain things in common; the social and ethical tools they use are similar, even if their particulars are different, and their goals are complete opposite. Both will try to build structures (organizations, ideals, etc) that further their ends, because they are Lawful. The categorical descriptor, Lawful, tells us that. If someone thinks that such structures are useless and should be abolished, then that's Chaotic.... because that's what the Chaotic box is.

In a sense, alignment is a series of Venn diagrams; Lawful Good exists at the confluence of the Law and Good categories, while Chaotic Evil is at the confluence of Chaos and Evil. What boxes things fall into tells us something about their relationships to other things, which may or may not share one or more boxes.

Categories, like all cats, really like boxes. :smallbiggrin:

gbaji
2022-10-06, 03:48 PM
So?

I presented a statement and a conclusion. You seem to have ignored the conclusion that "in actual game practice, does not always work".


People have to agree what "hit points", "ability scores" or any other game terms mean just the same. All you are saying is that people have to agree on rules of a game to play it - this is neither insurmountable nor unique to alignment.

Yes. And those other mechanisms "work well" as game mechanisms. They are very specific. They have very precisely measured effects on the game. We have exact die rolls for damage, which is applied to the hit points of the person hit. It's precise math. We have exact values for abilities, which in turn provide precise bonuses (or minuses) to skill checks, which again, are compared against precise mathematical values that are presented in the game (in a chart, or a DC value, depending on edition in D&D, other methods in other games).

Alignment is not precise. That was the point. It's not objective. That was the point. It's also why it does not work as well in actual gameplay as other things (like hit points and ability scores). My post was a progression of statements, not just one claim/proof after another. Wait for it.


Alignment doesn't ask, and doesn't need to ask, people to solve real morality. It only asks them to solve who calls the shots - that is, to accept a rule such as "a game master has final say on game events". A player who takes issue with rules like that, will have issues with far more things than mere alignment.

And again. If alignment is just a guide, that's fine. But the moment you tie it into other game things (like class, class abilities, etc), you present a problem. It has to be measured in some way. My overall point is that while it's easy to just say "The GM decides" or (as several posters have suggested "The other players decide"), in actual practical gameplay, that assessment can be very different based on who's making the assessment. There's a reason why alignment is probably the most hotly contested issue in gaming. Heck. How many pages and pages of arguments over Hilgya's alignment have their been, with at least two completely intransigent sides unwilling to budge, and each being absolutely certain that they are correct?

When it's just folks discussing minutia over an online strip, that's fine. What if one "side" is the player and the other "side" is the GM? And the consequences of which are losing spells from your deity, or falling outside the alignment requirements for your class? You have a problem.




Alignment doesn't measure full range of possible personalities. It does what you yourself agree is reasonable: measure a subset of game actions that the game is morally interested in. The "actual people are far more complex" argument is both underdeveloped and irrelevant. Underdeveloped, in that it fails to acknowledge all the other measurements a game might make of a character that would impact personality, such as species, ethnicity, class, profession, intelligence, wisdom, charisma, age, mental disorders etc. (all present in 1st edition AD&D). Irrelevant in that no-one is asking games to be perfectly accurate models of real people. I've said it before, I'll say it again: how many variables you track is a question of how many you need to (in order to serve the aesthetics you want) versus how many you practically can.

Or. You can just scrap the entire concept of alignment and just let the players describe their characters personality, quirks, traits, likes, dislikes, etc. Again. If it's just a guide to playing, that's fine. The moment it's has an impact on PC capabilities (which it does in every version of D&D I've played), you have a problem. I made the argument earlier that you need to pick one of those things for alignment to be. Making it both a guide to playing *and* an enforceable and detectable attribute written on the character sheet with punishments for failing to properly follow it, you run into issues.



Firstly, the presence of a physical evil that must be fought, what you call a "rationalization" of what would be otherwise "clearly" evil or non-lawful, is not a rationalization. It's a premise of the make-believe, one of the hypotheses driving the game scenario. Gygax directly talks about this, I believe, even in 1st Edition Dungeon Master's Guide. It's not necessary for alignment itself, it's necessary for genre of sword & sorcery and for archetypes like the Paladin, that is, a Knight in Shining Armor opposing Evil by force of arms.

Secondly, the reason why Gygax had to make that digression is because a significant amount of people at the time were doing the exact opposite of what you describe. That is, rather than making the "bad guys as bad as possible", they were humanizing the "bad guys" and requiring pacifism from Good player characters, because pacifism is what appealed to their real moral standards. In other words, Gygax was speaking against the idea that game morals have to comport with real morals of players.

It's TSR, come second edition of AD&D, after they'd kicked Gygax out, that made a mandate that the game's portrayal of morality should be tied to contemporary norms. I re-iterate, they did this because they wanted to sell their game to kids and didn't want to be shouted at by someone's angry mom.

It's 2nd edition that introduced the idea that player characters should always be heroes on the side of Good against Evil. 1st edition and the original biaxial alignment system have no such requirement. This has a corollary in that under the original rules, if player characters engage in "objectively evil" acts (as agreed on by everybody at the table), there is no obstacle to acknowledging the game characters as Evil. The sides are not symmetric, the Gods of Good can be strict on how the player characters conduct themselves in their fights against their opponents, and there is no reason to presume characters engaging in home invasion and brutal killing are Good. Heck, there's no reason to assume the opponents are Evil!

Yes. I was speaking precisely to this progression happening, and in fact that due to how D&D created alignment, it had to happen. 2nd edition may certainly have been influenced by angry mothers and with an eye towards marketing to a younger audience, but at least some of the impact on the alignment system and the creation of clear "sides" was part of that progression I spoke of. The players of 1e realized the contradiction and problems I spoke of. They realized that they were often placed in morally unclear situations, and realized that the basic murderhobo mentality of early D&D wasn't necessarily "complete". Gygax wrote the game to manage very basic things like "You enter a dungeon, encounter monsters there, kill them, take their stuff". That was about it. A mission to explore, kill what is there, and then return with your loot.

And for that, it worked. But many players and DMs wanted more detailed and complex worlds, so they created them. And this pushed them through the same narrative process that writers do. They realized that in these more complex environments, the "bad guys" had to be clearly "bad" so as to allow the players (at least some of whom would be playing good aligned characters) to feel comfortable actually engaging with the scenario. There's a reason why, in stories, films, and TV shows, the writers will almost always (there are exceptions) create a completely morally unambiguous scenario for the main characters to deal with. The bad guys are "really bad". That's done so that the audience can feel comfortable cheering the heroes when they win. Even if in the process of winning they engage in gruesome violence against the villains.

The rare occasions when most films or shows present us with a moral quandary are notable precisely because they are rare. And they are written precisely because the writers went "hey. Let's show the audience a morally ambiguous scenario just to be different". And they do it. The audience has to think about how they feel about the heroes for one episode. Then we go back to morally unambiguous stuff in the next episode to get the audience back on "our side". It's done all the time. There's a reason for it.

And the players are the audience in this case (well, kinda). If the GM presents too many unclear scenarios, they'll just stop biting on those hooks. They'll decide (rightly) that they are no better than the "bad guy", and go off and do something else. GMs realize this and present fewer of these, or only present them when they specifically want to create a "problem" in the world, but one that the players can't just walk over to and kill. That's not "wrong" or "bad". It's a good thing. I'm just talking about how that progression moves in the game, and also how it can cause problems in a rigid alignment system like D&D. If the PCs suffer no more consequences than how they feel about themselves if they assassinate a bad guy who isn't acting in super overt "bad guy ways", then it becomes more of a utilitarian decision. They may decide that "in this case, it's worth it". But if their characters will suffer directly for "making the wrong choice", they will shy away.



The correct answer is "insufficient information", because you are not telling enough details to make that decision. The answers are meant to be given in the context of a game, with a fleshed-out situation, from the position of a game master who is allowed to fill in the gaps (because a game master has final say on game events, per the rules).

Except the players are expected to act, and the GM is expected to judge whether those actions were in agreement with their alignment. You are correct. There is insufficient information to make an objective determination. That's the problem.



As a corollary to what I already said: whether players have issues is irrelevant, because that's not what decides alignment.

I meant "we have no issues" from the point of view of the players getting into trouble for failing to follow their alignment. The GM is "making the decision easy for them". This is a follow up to the point I was making earlier, that as a consequence of the alignment system itself, GMs will tend to change the nature of encounters specifically to make them fit easily into alignment positions. That's because by doing that it makes it easier for the players and the GM to know whether something is "good" or "evil".

In a game system without a rigid alignment system, you don't have this. The GM is free to present any scenario they want, and there are no consequences to the players (other than roleplayed in the game) to those actions. I recently ran an adventure where the PCs were essentially on a treasure hunt (buried pirate treasure even!). This was a sequence of vaults, each with some traps and guardian things (undead, spirits, etc), some treasure, and a map to the next vault. Yup. Very linear, but also very fun.

On one leg of their travel they were heading from a vault in one city back to their own kingdom and decided to take a shortish line through the southern edge of a kingdom to the north of their starting point (two kingdoms along the east coast, they start in the southern one, and are heading to their home kingdom which is slightly north and west of the kingdom directly north of them along the coast, so they cut a corner going inland). As it happens, the southern kingdom had gone through a difficult time in recent decades and had a Tyrant on the throne for a period of time, during which the northern kingdom had annexed a few of the border noble's lands (the northern guy's no peach either, but he was better than the guy they found themselves suffering under, so a set of nobles along that border chose to leave the southern kingdom and join the northern one). A new ruler has been established in the southern kingdom (with perhaps some help by the PCs), and things are better, so there are some of those nobles who are rethinking their decision. They all want to move as a group, so they are meeting secretly and voting on it, and there's one hold out. A real troublesome baron who no-one likes. His son and heir however, is much better liked and seems to be more willing to make the move (you see where this is going).

So, turns out that the baron goes to his summer home in the mountains to hunt. There's a small village nearby, and a plot to assassinate the old baron is afoot. The plotters have hired (in theory) a group of mercenary types to take out the baron, but it has to be done in a way that looks accidental. They've only ever communicated through intermediaries, never face to face. The mercs are coming from the main city of the southern kingdom. So. Party wanders along. They're just passing through on their way home, but their travel papers (and responses to any questions) show where they crossed the border, and that they came from that same city (cause that's where the last vault was). And they look scruffy, and like a small mercenary band... so... they get mistaken for the folks the plotters hired, and are presented with the "second half" of the money if they finish the work.

Now the funny thing was the players reaction to being greated so "nicely" by the villagers, and then having the Inn closed down early for them, so that "our friends can talk to you". Very ominous. The players have seen this before, and it usually means the villagers are secretly werewolves and want to eat them, have a vampire or two living there that need to be fed (us or you, so... you), or want to sacrifice the party to some horrible demon/spirit/whatever. You know. The usual. So they were quite relieved when they realized what was actually going on. I laid out the scenario and let them choose what to do.

When I wrote this, I had *zero* expectation of what they might choose. They could do anything they wanted. There would be political ramifications over time as a result, but it would have no direct effect on them (well, unless they tried and got caught or something). This particular party was not made up of anywhere near their most powerful characters (it was a minor side thing I ran basically to give a new player's character some play time and experience before a really big adventure I had planned. Hence the pretty contrived pirate treasure scenario in the first place). I wasn't sure what they would do. But that's the point. There's no alignment in the game system I play. Other than some PCs maybe worshiping a deity who places restrictions on such things (and there's only really one in the area that would, and none of them worshipped that one), they have no "rules" telling them they can't assassinate someone. So in this case, it's being run purely on the players roleplaying their characters based on the personalities they have decided that they have. It was purely a combination of utilitarian "Is this something we want" (which, as it happens, the PCs as a general group kinda do, since the guy in the northern kingdom is also a problem, while the new leadership in the southern one is quite friendly now), and "is this something our characters are ok with doing". Eh. And also "is this something we can actually do".

Concepts of "I'm good, so I can't do this" never entered the discussion. It was exactly the much more complex "would my character be willing to do this". Much more nuanced. And it was actually fun to watch the players discuss their decision (and the process they took to make it).

So yeah. Alignment systems can be useful as guides, but should not be used in the rigid way D&D does IMO. You *can* make it work, but it's not so easy much of the time. If there was no expectation that characters would fall out of their alignment, there wouldn't be rules for it, and punishments for it. So, GMs tend to feel a pressure to apply such things. Which, as I stated earlier, tends to act as a constraint to actual roleplaying.



That's because you changed the situation. Unsurprisingly people have different reactions to different situations. All of this irrelevant because, again, alignment is not simply decided by how players feel about any given thing. Every single question of alignment is subject to game master interpretation, based on their setting and the aesthetics of gameplay they wish to serve.

Yes. Because I was specifically detailing two scenarios with only a minor difference and how that dramatically affects whether the act itself "killing the warlord" is "good" or "evil". That was the whole point. It's also presented intentionally as a very clear cut case, to illustrate the kinds of things GMs may feel a need to do in their games in order to make alignment choices more "clear" to the players, so as to avoid argument if he judges their decision differently than they do.


I could answer every question you made and implied in the rest of your post, but it would just lead to prohibitively long response. The only important point to make about them is that none of them prove what you set out to prove, namely that sorting personalities into sides inherently causes problems. Majority of your questions are just setting building questions that a game master can answer as they see fit.

Ok. But you're missing the meat of my argument. I was intentionally moving from the basic and easy cases where determining the alignment effect of an action is relatively simple, to the more complex and more difficult where we can run into serious problems based on massive differences in subjective judgement of the situation and the action itself. You've decided to stop responding the moment I presented the very first "somewhat hard" one. I've basically said "here's where it works ok", and you've responded saying "But in those, it works ok". Now I'm saying "this is where it doesn't work ok", and you've stopped responding.

These are the scenarios where the question of alignment becomes trickier. Maybe you should have focused on these instead? The vampire case is somewhat tongue in check, but intended to follow up on the "kill the warlord while awake and guarded" versus "kill him while unguarded and asleep in his bed" scenario previously mentioned (and identified as 'easy'). In this case, I'm showing a case where you are doing the exact same thing (killing someone while unguarded and asleep in his "bed"), but that may not be so clearly identified as "evil". Get it? I'm challenging the simple moral rules we might want to apply to try to make alignment determinations "objective" by showing that they don't work in all cases.

The Orc example is critical since it shows that social mores affect "morality" and thus determinations of "good" and "evil". And again, that's not a problem if the only effect of those labels is how the character feels about themselves and their actions. But the moment you have game mechanics tied to alignment (detection spells, ability to worship certain deities, class abilities, etc), this inconsistency becomes a real problem.

And you just avoided addressing it entirely.



Which continues to be irrelevant, because no-one is asking games to be perfect models of reality.

No. But in many games (good games), GMs strive to make their game worlds as "reasonably good" models of reality (well, an alternative reality) as possible. But the moment you do that you will run into issues with an alignment system that, as I said at the top, doesn't do that well.



It's a nice conclusion that doesn't follow from anywhere. What forces a player or game master to ignore "problem cases" is merely practical limits of what they can process, not presence of the system; if a game master wants to and has time to spare, they can center entire games around such "problem cases".

Yes. He can. And his players will hate him for it precisely because they are constantly being asked to make decisions in an environment where the alignment effects are completely subjective and unclear, but in which they will suffer if they make the "wrong choice". My argument is that merely having an alignment system like D&D results in one of those two conditions:

1. GM presents "realistic" scenarios to the players. Players struggle to determine which decisions are "good" and which are "evil". They suffer if they pick wrong, but it's not always clear what the "right" choice is. The players end up spending more time trying to figure out what the GM is thinking in terms of alignment effects on the decision than actually roleplaying their character the way they want to and think *they* should do..

2. GM realizes this is a problem, so he dumbs down the scenarios. He makes the moral decisions much more clear cut and easy to determine where they fit in the alignment axis. Players are less stressed about making a mistake, but now they are living in dumb-dumb world.

That's what an alignment system in a game does. I suppose we could add a "2.5. Players stop playing characters with anything other than neutral alignments, or ones that can be played more easily in morally complex scenarios".

All of which act as restraints on player roleplaying. Get it? If you have alignment, but just as a guideline, but with no detection spells, and no punishments for straying, then it works. If you have alignment merely be "side" based (and nothing more), then it works as well (though this might be considered more of a faction system maybe). Trying to both have it apply to personality traits of the character *and* have measurable game effects on/around the character causes problems.

You can do one, or the other, but really shouldn't do both. D&D has attempted to do both for a very very long time, and as a consequence have had to meander back and forth through various editions of the game trying to re-write the rules, re-codify what they mean, etc, and still players have problems with it (not sure about 5e though, since I only played it once or twice in very short single shot adventures so alignment never actually came up). At some point, maybe just scrap the entire idea (or switch to a game system that doesn't have it at all, and be much happier).

Batcathat
2022-10-07, 01:15 AM
Only if you want to do away with categories as an idea altogether.

Categories can be helpful, but they don't have any inherent value. And dividing all of human morality into nine boxes by necessity makes each box so broad and unwieldy it's not much help with anything. At this forum alone there have been threads upon threads upon threads about what constitutes different alignments, so saying that two groups have their alignment or parts of their alignment in common doesn't really tell me much about the groups.

GloatingSwine
2022-10-07, 08:01 AM
Only if you want to do away with categories as an idea altogether.


Not thinking in terms of D&D alignments isn't doing away with categories, it's using a lower level set of categories that are more descriptive and specific.

The D&D alignments are broad and can have completely non-overlapping subcategories contained within them, which means you need to use the subcategories anyway so you might as well call those the categories.

Vahnavoi
2022-10-07, 10:34 AM
Bah. I had a long post written, but then a misclick ate the entire thing. That's what I get for trying to write ten thousand words on a phone.

@gbaji:

You clearly don't know how either games with referees work, nor do you understand how stories work. The purpose of neither is to avoid players using their brains or to hand them morally unambiguous feel-good scenarios. Plenty aim for the opposite. (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YouBastard) For D&D, Planescape is an example of a setting that takes a deep dive into weirder parts of alignment and the Outer Planes as whole, with deliberately increased focus on moral philosophy and ambiguity. By your reasoning, the entire setting shouldn't exist.

As explained in my very first post, there are at least eight widely recognized aesthetics of gameplay. You completely fail to recognize that a game master's ability to enforce alignment and punish characters for faulty action derives from the exact same thing as the game master's ability to enforce any other kind of rule or punish characters for any other reason: the permission to facilitate a game following their desired aesthetic, given to them by the players who want to play. You harp on the players ability to express their ideas about their character, but fail to acknowledge ideas such as making a puzzle out of how to act morally or exploring a moral system that is purposefully foreign to the players.

Rules such as "game master has final say" are not a problem, they literally are the solution to players having different opinions. Again, if a player has trouble with such rules, they are going to chafe with far more than just alignment - because alignment is not unique in being incomplete or subject to arbitration. Tabletop roleplaying games inherit that trait as well as the position of a game master from wargaming. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriegsspiel) And in wargames, human arbitration was emphasized because algorithmic rules proved too slow and cumbersome to play. Your idea that hit points or attack rolls or other "objective", "exact" or "precise" rules serve gameplay better than rules based on human judgement is hence completely detached from practical game design - the purported complexity of morality is a point in favor of allowing a game master use their own reasoning and expertise to fill in the blanks. Nevermind that you obviously missed the reference to age-old arguments over what hitpoints mean or what counts as an attack; those "precise objective" rules are not, in fact, all that precise or objective and are reliant on human judgement just as well. AD&D rules aren't incomplete by accident, they're so by design.

Then we get to the fact that entire genres of games are built on a player or group of players evaluating each other, from children's games such as Mother May I to card games such as Cards Against Humanity to serious referee sports such as Olympic figure skating. It's almost as if what you call "a problem" is in fact one basic schema of game design.

And for the second time, me not answering your questions about hypothetical scenarios isn't because the scenarios you post are hard, it's because answering all of them would take a prohibitively long time.

KorvinStarmast
2022-10-07, 10:57 AM
And dividing all of human morality into nine boxes by necessity makes each box so broad and unwieldy it's not much help with anything. It's counterproductive.

@gbaji:

You clearly don't know how either games with referees work, nor do you understand how stories work. There are no few modern RPG players who dislike that a game master is (or rather, originally was) a referee, or a judge. They have some "dealing with authority" issues.

The world builder provides some 'bounds to the problem' as it were that a courteous gamer will respect. In my experience, that is usually the result of dialogue.
On the brighter side, I have seen some cases where players offer ideas to GMs to aid in the creative process. Works in some cases better than others, but I like it when a group of players, or even just a few of them, are interested enough in doing that to give the world more texture and depth.

Alignment beyond LNC? Over time, I have found that getting too bound to that results in a pointed stick used to jab at others.
As a GM tool, when trying to frame how an NPC or monster will deal with a situation, it's very helpful, but it isn't the only piece of the puzzle.

Quertus
2022-10-07, 11:07 AM
👻
Alright,
This will be the time and place we finally solve the alignment system.
Is it good or bad for the game?

What axises should we use?

What are the pros and cons of alignment?

How do we use it in our games?

Should Paladins always be Lawful Good? YES

My stance continues to be, “Alignment is the worst thing to happen to roleplaying in the history of RPGs”. You’re not playing “Chaotic Evil”, you’re playing Batman. You’re playing an orphaned billionaire, who chooses to dress up like a bat, and scare and punch criminals into submission (or kill them…) in his own one-or-more-man vigilante crusade in a world with super powers.


it's a very handy tool. Especially for beginners, but even for experienced players who have gone down the rabbit hole of backstory with no clearly listed motivations to help when making in character decisions.

This path of broken glass is a useful tool for people to use to roll naked to work on, even wealthy ones who have gone down the rabbit hole of cars with no wheels and no gas.

I mean, sure, you can do just about anything wrong, backstory is no exception. I think that the better answer than making a bad backup would be to get people to be better at the primary path (ie, making useful backstories), or providing good backups.

Anything can be done wrong, but can alignment be done right?


I think Alignment serves a useful purpose in games that have actual supernatural, cosmic forces that represent the opposing ends of the alignment spectrum. Beings of pure good or evil, spells that call upon their power and work differently against beings of varying alignments, and magical items that serve these forces and seek to enforce their power.

It serves as a good framework to illustrate how these forces and their followers behave, how to arbitrate where a given character's allegiance falls and which beings will accept him, and how the mystical powers of these cosmic forces affect an individual. There's a good opportunity for the mechanics to reinforce the setting here, making for a more cohesive world.

The only way I see this working is of the goal of the campaign is for the PCs to kill and replace these cosmic entities with something more sane; ie, the campaign is a conversation about what those things mean (or what they should mean). Or if it’s played for laughs, as a battle between the epic forces of Game, Narrative, and Story. Or the Pokémon elements. Or Chocolate vs Strawberry. Or Cats vs Dogs.


Whenever I've played in a game without Alignment I've never missed it. D&D's alignment is also very vestigial, even back in the oft-worshiped days of 3e it mostly mattered for certain spells.

What’s this about the newfangled days of 3e? Back in my day, alignment was pretty trivial to ignore.


I like Alignment when it's more like Victoriana 3e*. One axis with multiple steps and major mechanical effects, specifically in Victoriana it changes how spending Fate Points work (Order gives bonus successes, Chaos gives bonus dice) and difficulty in using magic or technology. Interesting orcs are Order-aligned by default. But the point is that alignment matters, an orc with a revolver is not someone you face lightly (as they're likely slinging three automatic successes).

* Maybe earlier editions as well? I only own 3e.

So… Chaotic Batman is terrible with his technology, while Lawful Nabu is terrible with his magic? What does Alignment add, that you think you could convince their players that it’s worth sacrificing their character concept for, or worth playing such nerfed characters for?

Vahnavoi
2022-10-07, 11:30 AM
There are no few modern RPG players who dislike that a game master is (or rather, originally was) a referee, or a judge. They have some "dealing with authority" issues.

It's not a modern thing. Again, roleplaying games have been sold to kids, a lot of horror stories have their origins in situations where everyone at the table was literally twelve. Of course kids gonna complain about other kids, kids can get in a fight about who cheated at tag if they're so inclined.

The important thing to grok, once you're no longer twelve, is that there's a difference between complaining about a referee, versus complaining that there is a referee at all. The former may be valid, if there's a problem with the referee. The latter typically means you are the problem.

LibraryOgre
2022-10-07, 12:32 PM
Categories can be helpful, but they don't have any inherent value. And dividing all of human morality into nine boxes by necessity makes each box so broad and unwieldy it's not much help with anything. At this forum alone there have been threads upon threads upon threads about what constitutes different alignments, so saying that two groups have their alignment or parts of their alignment in common doesn't really tell me much about the groups.

I don't agree with you; the divisions are broad, but they're not unwieldy, IME. The boxes can be pretty well defined (I define them more tightly, which is a whole 'nother argument, because people often hold that property is the person, and deprivation of property is inherently harm, as opposed to being a socially defined concept of property), and so long as you accept that each discrete alignment is a box and not a shot glass, you don't wind up in straightjackets.

To crib from Babylon 5, a lawful society asks "Who are you?"... what is your place in this society? A chaotic society asks "What do you want?"... what are your goals and aspirations, because those take precedence over the constraints of society. By extension, a good society asks "What is best for people?"1,2, while an evil society asks "What is best for me?", and a Lawful Good society asks "Who are you, and how can you help people", while a chaotic evil society asks "What do you want, and what can you do to get it?"

Another example that occurs to me: The Dewey Decimal system. While it has its issues (I have whole rants about the 200s and the 800s, and strong feelings about the cataloging of graphic novels), it you know what an item is about, you can often know where it is. Is it a book about animals? 590s; probably 598 or 599 if it's about mammals. Magic and psychic powers? 130s, probably 133. You can GET more specific... Shakespeare is 822.33 (800s = Literature, 820s = Literature by British Authors, 822s = Plays by British Authors, 822.33 = Plays by Willy Shakes himself), and the metastructure of the system can even help direct you to other places... plays by Arthur Miller are likely to be in the 812s, since its 800s, 810s are American authors, and 812s are plays by American authors. American history is 973; American Cuisine is 641.5973... 600s is technology, 640s is cooking, 641 is cookbooks,and 641.5973 is American cuisine. Korean cuisine is 641.5951... and you'll find Korean history in the 951s. It is a system of increasing specificity, but with broad categories that still guide you to the correct places. The broad categories enhance the usefulness of the specificity, instead of umpteen tiny boxes arranged at whim.

I can't speak to everyone's personal experience with the system, and I've seen a lot of takes that I consider just flat wrong. But I find it to be a useful framework for organizing the ethics and morality of characters, without being a straightjacket that makes everyone of a given alignment the same. With smaller, more specific, categorizations you can wind up with a proliferation of categories problem... too many categories, without obvious relationships between them, making it difficult to navigate or place things accurately. If you DO have obvious relationships between them, and arrange them as such, then you just have a new set of boxes making these larger categories, even if you don't draw the box walls. Someone else might see the same arrangement as see different categories and arrangements; that the arrangements are somewhat arbitrary is irrelevant, so long as they are relatively persistent... I can't get too much more into this without discussing Discordian philosophy.

1 I have a persistent hallucination that, at some point in the series, either G'Kar or Sheridan says "The Vorlons ask 'Who are you?' The Shadows ask 'What do you want?' The humans have a question, too, and it's 'What the hell is wrong with you people?'" I have never been able to find that this actually exists.
2 "People", in this case, is pretty much any kind of life. Since most life is, to an extent, consumptive of other living things (photosynthesizers usually being an exception), you're going to have to accept that some degree of harm happens to other life in the course of living, though a good person will seek to minimize it.

Theoboldi
2022-10-07, 12:39 PM
The only way I see this working is of the goal of the campaign is for the PCs to kill and replace these cosmic entities with something more sane; ie, the campaign is a conversation about what those things mean (or what they should mean). Or if it’s played for laughs, as a battle between the epic forces of Game, Narrative, and Story. Or the Pokémon elements. Or Chocolate vs Strawberry. Or Cats vs Dogs.


Honestly, I don't quite see how that follows. It's a bit difficult to make definitive statements on this, as a struggle between good and evil is quite different from one between law and chaos, for instance, but nothing defines these forces as necessarily insane or impossible to ally with.

Sure, some settings do define both sides as ultimately flawed and a threat to humanity, but those are the ones that tend to have keeping the balance or destroying both sides as the true goal anyways.

Other configurations are easily possible, for instance the classic good versus evil conflict where one side winning is objectively better and results in an improved world and a happy ending. You can also have it set up so multiple sides have their benefits, and it's up to the players which one they want to see dominant, or even make it so that it's impossible for any one side to truly prevail forever.

Keep in mind, that just because cosmic forces exist and they have creatures representing them, that this does not also mean there's necessarily some big god that's in charge of either who you can kill and then that's that. That is as far as I am aware how many mainline D&D settings work, where there are angels and demons and gods of any alignment, but they are no more in charge of any of those alignments than a common mortal.

And there's plenty of people who play those settings completely straight. It's simply a matter of not interpreting these alignments and their representatives in the strictest, most brutal manner. It may not be a personally appealing fantasy world to you, but it certainly is a viable one.

Telonius
2022-10-07, 12:44 PM
Three axes. Law/Chaos, Good/Evil, and Funky/Square (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?55828-Negative-Energy-Ha!-OUR-undead-are-fuelled-by-FUNKITUDE!).

Batcathat
2022-10-07, 12:45 PM
Another example that occurs to me: The Dewey Decimal system. While it has its issues (I have whole rants about the 200s and the 800s, and strong feelings about the cataloging of graphic novels), it you know what an item is about, you can often know where it is. Is it a book about animals? 590s; probably 598 or 599 if it's about mammals. Magic and psychic powers? 130s, probably 133. You can GET more specific... Shakespeare is 822.33 (800s = Literature, 820s = Literature by British Authors, 822s = Plays by British Authors, 822.33 = Plays by Willy Shakes himself), and the metastructure of the system can even help direct you to other places... plays by Arthur Miller are likely to be in the 812s, since its 800s, 810s are American authors, and 812s are plays by American authors. American history is 973; American Cuisine is 641.5973... 600s is technology, 640s is cooking, 641 is cookbooks,and 641.5973 is American cuisine. Korean cuisine is 641.5951... and you'll find Korean history in the 951s. It is a system of increasing specificity, but with broad categories that still guide you to the correct places. The broad categories enhance the usefulness of the specificity, instead of umpteen tiny boxes arranged at whim.

But the alignment system isn't like that. An author is American or they aren't, a play is by Shakespeare or it isn't (let's ignore theories about someone else writing them for now). But whether a character or a society fits into a particular alignment can lead to an endless debate, with all sides having reasonable arguments.

Using Babylon 5 in an argument about alignments seems questionable, considering how much they seem to go out of their way to avert labels like that. At first, the Shadows seems rather Chaotic Evil and the Vorlons Lawful Good, but then things get more complicated.

GloatingSwine
2022-10-07, 12:51 PM
The shadows aren't even chaotic from their own high-level perspective. They are generating and managing conflicts which increase the strength of the winner, what they do is ordered progress towards a goal, even if the people it is happening to experience disruption they might call "chaos".

Tanarii
2022-10-07, 01:02 PM
Three axes. Law/Chaos, Good/Evil, and Funky/Square (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?55828-Negative-Energy-Ha!-OUR-undead-are-fuelled-by-FUNKITUDE!).
Write up a Funky Lawful Evil hobgoblin wicca/shaman and a Square Chaotic Evil orc warlord stat! :smallamused:

LibraryOgre
2022-10-07, 02:32 PM
But the alignment system isn't like that. An author is American or they aren't, a play is by Shakespeare or it isn't (let's ignore theories about someone else writing them for now). But whether a character or a society fits into a particular alignment can lead to an endless debate, with all sides having reasonable arguments.

Not if you have solid, agreed upon, definitions... and are dealing with boxes, with space on the floor, instead of shot glasses, where everything is in its small place, with little room to be different. Something is Good... or it might be in between Good an Evil. It is a point on two scales, and "not really" is an option on both scales. D&D alignment is a double trinary state... Good, Evil, and Neutral, and Lawful, Chaotic, and Neutral, and the weight on those two axes provides a point in space. This is part of why I like the Great Wheel cosmology... it illustrates that, especially through the Planes of Conflict... an action that is Good might be slightly lawful (Bytopia), slightly chaotic (Elysium), or more neutral than strictly lawful or chaotic (either, but from the other direction).



Using Babylon 5 in an argument about alignments seems questionable, considering how much they seem to go out of their way to avert labels like that. At first, the Shadows seems rather Chaotic Evil and the Vorlons Lawful Good, but then things get more complicated.

That somewhat gets back to the earlier D&D alignments, and stuff like Moorcock, where the big conflict was between Law and Chaos. Lawful can seem good, in a chaotic world... until you're out of place. Chaos can seem evil as it conflicts with your own desires... until you have to make changes to save yourself. It's pretty explicit, especially towards the end when they're talking with Lorien, that the Vorlons and Shadows are Law and Chaos, not considering Good or Evil.

Law and Chaos, Good and Evil are somewhat arbitrary categories... but they are useful categories if you don't approach them from the position that they're nonsense. You can redraw the categories and make a different picture; you can abjure that there are categories, and try to put everything in its own box... but that doesn't make the categories that are drawn invalid.

Batcathat
2022-10-07, 03:04 PM
Not if you have solid, agreed upon, definitions...

And that's where it falls apart. As seen in roughly every alignment discussion ever, there aren't solid agreed upon definitions. The "solid" part because finding definitions that fit every possible morality yet still end up in nine neat boxes (where the content of each box have enough in common for it to be meaningful and useful) seems nigh-impossible, the "agreed upon" part because finding two people who completely agree on what constitutes every alignment would be hard enough, getting everyone (or even a majority) would probably be literally impossible.

gbaji
2022-10-07, 03:30 PM
Bah. I had a long post written, but then a misclick ate the entire thing. That's what I get for trying to write ten thousand words on a phone.

I manage to do that all the time even while using a keyboard. Gah...


You clearly don't know how either games with referees work, nor do you understand how stories work. The purpose of neither is to avoid players using their brains or to hand them morally unambiguous feel-good scenarios. Plenty aim for the opposite. (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YouBastard) For D&D, Planescape is an example of a setting that takes a deep dive into weirder parts of alignment and the Outer Planes as whole, with deliberately increased focus on moral philosophy and ambiguity. By your reasoning, the entire setting shouldn't exist.

I understand those concepts perfectly well. It is based on my understanding (and pretty significant experience) that I state that game systems with alignments that are both guides to roleplaying *and* external enforceable characteristic attributes that can be detected and have an effect on actual character capabilities in the game, cause problems. They actually reduce the range of roleplaying possibilities, and create conflict and confusion when the player's perception and the GMs don't coincide perfectly (which, based just on the sheer volume of arguments about alignment of characters in this strip, seems to be a fairly likely occurrence).


As explained in my very first post, there are at least eight widely recognized aesthetics of gameplay. You completely fail to recognize that a game master's ability to enforce alignment and punish characters for faulty action derives from the exact same thing as the game master's ability to enforce any other kind of rule or punish characters for any other reason: the permission to facilitate a game following their desired aesthetic, given to them by the players who want to play. You harp on the players ability to express their ideas about their character, but fail to acknowledge ideas such as making a puzzle out of how to act morally or exploring a moral system that is purposefully foreign to the players.

Sure. But when the GM is enforcing such things, it is, somewhat by definition, going to reduce the degree to which the player is free to play their own character how they like. The GM is literally telling the player "You have to choose X because that's what your alignment requires" complete with punishment if the player does not comply.

You can have the exact same dynamic without the punitive/forced bits and it works (better IMO). The GM can tell the player "what you're doing is an evil act", but instead of following with "and that's a violation of your alignment and may result in you losing spells from your deity, potential class abilities, and detecting as evil via spells" the GM presents the real in-game consequences like "the local authorities will put out a warrant for you, your friends wont like you if they find out what you did, you could find yourself being on the receiving end of a group of NPC adventurers hunting you down as the "bad guy".

See how that works? No artificial cosmic alignment. Just actions and consequences within a "normal" game environment. A player can choose to follow a path that leads them to a dark place, and roleplay that if they want to. Their deity wont punish them (unless they violate actual rules of their religion which may or may not be the case). No cosmic power will come along and remove abilities from them due to arbitrary class restrictions. They just have to deal with actual real consequences and play it out. And yeah, they can play a character who decides that he really likes being the local "bad guy", killing people who get in his way, taking out the competition, and possibly even building a rep as someone you don't want to cross. There are consequences for that, but they are more realistic IMO.

Same can happen in reverse. A character can start out "evil", and then choose to do good things. With alignment we have the "Belkar" problem where the degree you have to do to be "good" is based on some external factors. Remove alignment and spells that detect it, and it's just a matter of "what you are doing right here when interacting with these people determines how they view you". Past evil acts may come back to haunt you, in the same way they may in our "real world". And certainly, players should roleplay a struggle for their character to reform, perhaps being tempted by some situations along the way. But there's no spell that someone who's just met you can cast that detects those past "evil" actions. They only know of you what they know.

You can do all of this without the sort of rigid enforced alignment system that D&D has. And IMO, it's much better for a number of reasons. Again, not the least of which is the absence of punishment by a GM if/when the player thinks that the alignment effect of an action is not the same as the GMs. I think the problem is that you (many people) are starting from an assumption that an alignment system like this must exist and then using that as a premise. I'm not.


Rules such as "game master has final say" are not a problem, they literally are the solution to players having different opinions. Again, if a player has trouble with such rules, they are going to chafe with far more than just alignment - because alignment is not unique in being incomplete or subject to arbitration.

Sure. But alignment systems like D&D force the GM to make determinations based on that system. Remove the alignment enforcement mechanisms and it becomes a much easier and more rational determination for the GM to make: Did you get caught/seen doing something evil? What are the ramifications of that? Roleplay the results.

The GM does not have to decide how the cosmic forces view such an act in reference to an alignment system if such forced compliance doesn't exist in the first place. It eliminates a case where differences of opinion alone can have massive impact on things. The GM just roleplays the NPC actions in response to the PCs actions. Period. He doesn't have to think about how an action fits into some bigger picture. That makes things, not just much easier, but much more flexible. People aren't purely defined as "good or evil", but how their actions effect others and how they react to those things. We don't need to determine that Orc's alignment. We just have to decide that he's part of a community that is actively doing harm to people the PCs care about, and is thus an enemy. And if said Orc decides to help us out in some way, in return for some favor, we don't have to think about whether we're "helping an evil person", and what effect that may have on our alignment. We just decide whether the deal is fair and works and make the decision based on that.

It makes more complex and nuanced decisions more likely and more rationally playable.



And for the second time, me not answering your questions about hypothetical scenarios isn't because the scenarios you post are hard, it's because answering all of them would take a prohibitively long time.

I get it. It's just that you could have chosen to respond to the cases where I actually highlighted specific flaws in rigid and enforced alignment systems instead of spending time on what were basically baseline examples where things work "ok".

I have a particular issue with the broad and absolute labeling of characters as "good" or "evil". My Orc example directly addressed this. The primary issue is that if you have a system where good and evil are actual detectable traits (with spells even), it forces some really nonsensical outcomes. And, again, those things are utterly unnecessary to play a RPG successfully.

And BTW. This does not preclude game systems (or worlds) where those alignment factions actually exist on a cosmic level and characters align with "sides" in some bigger conflict. But, the reverse should be the case. Which "side" you are on should be less an examination of character personality traits as it is "which side are you helping out and/or fighting for" and "what actions have you taken on behalf of your side". That may also come with some action based prohibitions or requirements, but those aren't due to a broad "you are good/evil" concept, but "are you following our rules or not". Again, easier to determine and play.

Tectorman
2022-10-07, 04:00 PM
Obviously, the truest and best alignment axes are Pirate/Ninja and Bacon/Vegan (with Pirate/Ninja representing a similar confluence of oppositional traits as Law/Chaos and Bacon/Vegan serving as a stand-in for Good/Evil, where Bacon= good and Vegan= evil, evil, evil, dirty evil).


And that's where it falls apart. As seen in roughly every alignment discussion ever, there aren't solid agreed upon definitions. The "solid" part because finding definitions that fit every possible morality yet still end up in nine neat boxes (where the content of each box have enough in common for it to be meaningful and useful) seems nigh-impossible, the "agreed upon" part because finding two people who completely agree on what constitutes every alignment would be hard enough, getting everyone (or even a majority) would probably be literally impossible.

But seriously, this.

Because while nearly all games have to work according to certain agreed-upon rules, likely adjudicated by a referee figure, alignment differs in that there definitionally must be a moral or ethical judgment against someone in the inevitable case of disagreement.

Say a game has health, damage, and healing as factors. Then we will need to agree to abide by how total health is determined. How healing occurs. Where it can come from. How much it heals. How often it can be applied. What, if anything, happens when your current health is at half or less. What, if anything, happens if a certain amount of damage is sustained in a single instance. Etc, etc.

Okay, fine. These things have to be determined, one way or another, and it might come at the expense of one or more players disagreeing with how the rules came out. But there is no "you are a lesser (less moral/less ethical/etc.) person for disagreeing with me" judgment. Yes, a person could still read a judgment on their character into that disagreement, anyway, but it isn't inherently there.

But it can't NOT be there when it comes to alignment. Any disagreement about "does this qualify as a BLAH act" or "does this many/this frequency of such acts constitute an alignment change from BLAH to BLABBITY-BLAH" (even before the question of rules, spells, or class features comes up) comes with the implicit (or maybe even explicit) judgment on the part of one or both sides of the argument of "your character is lacking in some fashion for even thinking differently than me/the DM/the rules of the game".

Alignment HAS to tear down; it can't not.

Quertus
2022-10-07, 04:21 PM
Honestly, I don't quite see how that follows. It's a bit difficult to make definitive statements on this, as a struggle between good and evil is quite different from one between law and chaos, for instance, but nothing defines these forces as necessarily insane or impossible to ally with.

Sure, some settings do define both sides as ultimately flawed and a threat to humanity, but those are the ones that tend to have keeping the balance or destroying both sides as the true goal anyways.

Other configurations are easily possible, for instance the classic good versus evil conflict where one side winning is objectively better and results in an improved world and a happy ending. You can also have it set up so multiple sides have their benefits, and it's up to the players which one they want to see dominant, or even make it so that it's impossible for any one side to truly prevail forever.

Keep in mind, that just because cosmic forces exist and they have creatures representing them, that this does not also mean there's necessarily some big god that's in charge of either who you can kill and then that's that. That is as far as I am aware how many mainline D&D settings work, where there are angels and demons and gods of any alignment, but they are no more in charge of any of those alignments than a common mortal.

And there's plenty of people who play those settings completely straight. It's simply a matter of not interpreting these alignments and their representatives in the strictest, most brutal manner. It may not be a personally appealing fantasy world to you, but it certainly is a viable one.

Ah, I can see how my post was confusing. But this is a great opportunity to say something I wanted to say anyway.

So, as much as I’m generally opposed to Alignment, there is an X-Axis Alignment system I’d love to see, where X is the number of deities in a polytheistic world.

So, for each deity, there’s a scale, that ranges from, say, +5 to -5, based on how closely you adhere to the deity’s creed. Is Technology better than Magic? Yes gives you +1 to Gond, but -1 to Mystra. Would you cast Mordenkainen’s Disjunction? Yes gives you +1 to Garyx, but -1 to Mystra. Or whatever.

Point is, each Deity should be roughly equally interesting, with roughly an equal number of things they care about. Then again, maybe a character’s alignment with them shouldn’t be based on areas of conflict, but adherence to their religion. Do you wear fine clothes? +1 Tzeentch. Do you burn trees on Arbor Day? +1 Thor (or so his clergy believe).

Shrug. I’d like to see a well-made deity-based Alignment system.

But a polar good/evil system, as viewed by the idiots sitting around the table? Nah, I’ve got a root canal I’d rather handle, thanks. I don’t find “petty tyrant armchair philosophy” or “group of morons armchair philosophy” particularly appealing, and don’t see why anyone else would, either. I don’t want the focus of the game to be analyzing the moral ramifications of burning down the demon-Possessed orphanage, let alone the moral ramifications of shoving the alien-possessed orphans out the airlock. I just don’t see those discussions about how some cosmic being (as filtered through the lenses of the mortal GM’s and/or players’ minds) view these events being discussions worth having at your average table. Or most any table. How the PCs view the events is generally the extent of what I care about, and even then, almost exclusively only in how it differs from how the players see things.

Jorren
2022-10-07, 04:44 PM
As I have stated before, the cardinal sin of any alignment system is putting the referee in the position of judging the in-game morality of character actions. This holds whether the referee is a stand-in for the gods, the cosmic order, the disco ball of evil/good, or whatever it happens to be in that particular setting.

This has the potential for problems even if there is no mechanical benefit or penalty invovled in that determination. Just putting a moral label on a character action from the vantage point of the gamemaster is enough.

Once you get away from that you can start on getting a workable alignment system, assuming that you even need one.

LibraryOgre
2022-10-07, 05:08 PM
And that's where it falls apart. As seen in roughly every alignment discussion ever, there aren't solid agreed upon definitions. The "solid" part because finding definitions that fit every possible morality yet still end up in nine neat boxes (where the content of each box have enough in common for it to be meaningful and useful) seems nigh-impossible, the "agreed upon" part because finding two people who completely agree on what constitutes every alignment would be hard enough, getting everyone (or even a majority) would probably be literally impossible.

Again, it doesn't fall apart if you have solid definitions, and realize that the position one views things from affects your view of them, without affecting the thing itself; it can, as the meme says, be two things. Some of the problems is that the book definitions are seldom solid (3.5 probably had the clearest definitions, and I don't praise 3.x often), and that things are viewed as a binary... it is always necessarily Law or Chaos, or Good and Evil, seldom with the view that it can be Good and Neutral, or Evil and Neutral. It won't be Chaotic and Lawful, nor Good and Evil... those arrive at Neutral. But it can be Neutral and another thing, or even two other things, provided they aren't opposites.

One of my favorite examples is Arcadia, in the Great Wheel. It is Lawful Good, and Lawful Neutral, at the same time, without conflict. If viewed from Mount Celestia, it is Lawful Neutral. If viewed from Mechanus, it is Lawful Good. When you stand in Fortitude in the Outlands, or in Arcadia itself, it can be see as both, because of your perspective; if you stand in the Abyss, the three are indistinguishable. What it is hasn't changed, and it's nature is both, and its nature is itself. If Lawful Good is blue, and Lawful Neutral is Red, then what is their overlap? Their overlap is purple, which is blue, and is red, and is itself.

I think folks who don't like alignment have a tendency to view it as unworkable, rather than working with it. Folks who view it as a workable system work with it, and can manage it just fine. It depends on the filter you're look at it through, and if your filter insists that it doesn't make sense, you won't see the sense. If your filter allows it to make sense, you'll see a form of sense to it. I say that there is a sense to it, and it is understandable. I see it as a useful organizing tool, and have used it successfully as such for many years. If you don't, I don't know what to tell you, but the assertion that it doesn't work is belied by the fact that it works fine for me, and that I can often reach consensus with other people who think it works.

Mechalich
2022-10-07, 05:26 PM
As I have stated before, the cardinal sin of any alignment system is putting the referee in the position of judging the in-game morality of character actions. This holds whether the referee is a stand-in for the gods, the cosmic order, the disco ball of evil/good, or whatever it happens to be in that particular setting.

This has the potential for problems even if there is no mechanical benefit or penalty invovled in that determination. Just putting a moral label on a character action from the vantage point of the gamemaster is enough.

Once you get away from that you can start on getting a workable alignment system, assuming that you even need one.

But isn't that inevitable? If you have in-game morality of any kind, someone has to serve as the morality judge. Players absolutely cannot be trusted to do it themselves. Consider, for example, the old Humanity system from VtM. The GM had to serve as the judge there too. And the GM has to judge light side/dark side orientation in Star Wars and on and on. Generally any morality system that has an in-game mechanical meaning is going to have some kind of in-universe judging entity, even if that entity, as in the case of the Force, lacks a consciousness. It's always going to fall on the GM to enforce that, just as it falls on them to enforce any other mechanic where judgments are required.

It is true that this area can produce problems, mostly because it is very difficult for most tables to accept a game world where the rules of morality are explicitly different from their own personal worldviews, just as it is often very difficult to, in real life, have a discussion about morality with other people who have vastly different worldviews. What this means is that, in campaign design, moral complexity is bad and moral conundrums are best avoided in favor of clear and obvious choices whose contours everyone at the table will agree upon.

Theoboldi
2022-10-07, 05:44 PM
Point is, each Deity should be roughly equally interesting, with roughly an equal number of things they care about. Then again, maybe a character’s alignment with them shouldn’t be based on areas of conflict, but adherence to their religion. Do you wear fine clothes? +1 Tzeentch. Do you burn trees on Arbor Day? +1 Thor (or so his clergy believe).

Shrug. I’d like to see a well-made deity-based Alignment system.

That sounds like a great idea for an alignment system! In fact, I've been meaning to work on something similar for a little homebrew system, though I've not moved that beyond the idea stage for lack of time. I'd encourage you to create something like this, if only so I can steal from it. ;)


But a polar good/evil system, as viewed by the idiots sitting around the table? Nah, I’ve got a root canal I’d rather handle, thanks. I don’t find “petty tyrant armchair philosophy” or “group of morons armchair philosophy” particularly appealing, and don’t see why anyone else would, either. I don’t want the focus of the game to be analyzing the moral ramifications of burning down the demon-Possessed orphanage, let alone the moral ramifications of shoving the alien-possessed orphans out the airlock. I just don’t see those discussions about how some cosmic being (as filtered through the lenses of the mortal GM’s and/or players’ minds) view these events being discussions worth having at your average table. Or most any table. How the PCs view the events is generally the extent of what I care about, and even then, almost exclusively only in how it differs from how the players see things.

I do think you're making a few assumptions here that don't quite track with how I've seen alignment used. There's little moral philosophy involved with a simple good versus evil alignment system, nor are they intended to spark discussion. They are intended to give a range of expected behaviors and attitudes, within which players and npcs can move while eliminating the moral ambiguity that stems from killing sentient beings at the rate of your average adventurer, while also providing guidance to the intended flavor of a good versus evil conflict.

Outside of forum discussions, I have never encountered the kind of gotcha morality quandaries that demon orphanages and monster babies entail. Those are one specific use of alignment, amd one that I think rather misuses the good versus evil axis in a way that it was not intended for, just for somebody's personal power trip. I don't pay them much heed, as such. And at any table I've been at I've never seen anyone debate about what alignment meant, as the people there were willing to play by the rules and expectations that had been established up-front.

I'm also not sure what you mean by cosmic being here. There is no in-game entity that presents some kind of authority here by default, unless you consider the very idea of good or evil beings forces in and of themselves to be a cosmic entity.

Tanarii
2022-10-07, 06:55 PM
But isn't that inevitable? If you have in-game morality of any kind, someone has to serve as the morality judge. No, because no you don't. All you have to do is write it in a way that players can use it as a character motivation to assist in making decisions for their character.

Short hand version of the post you quoted: it's an inevitable situation only if it's descriptive alignment, where it's determined based on character's past activity. In that case someone needs to be the judge, and really that means the game referee. And it's an inevitable problem in that case if there is then some rules situation determined by the descriptive alignment.

But alignment doesn't have to be descriptive alignment, even if it's in-game objective. It can still be player subjective.

Quertus
2022-10-07, 07:22 PM
That sounds like a great idea for an alignment system! In fact, I've been meaning to work on something similar for a little homebrew system, though I've not moved that beyond the idea stage for lack of time. I'd encourage you to create something like this, if only so I can steal from it. ;)

Thanks! I… honestly, I love “Faiths and Avatars” so much, I might just consider doing this some day, senility willing.


I do think you're making a few assumptions here that don't quite track with how I've seen alignment used. There's little moral philosophy involved with a simple good versus evil alignment system, nor are they intended to spark discussion. They are intended to give a range of expected behaviors and attitudes, within which players and npcs can move while eliminating the moral ambiguity that stems from killing sentient beings at the rate of your average adventurer, while also providing guidance to the intended flavor of a good versus evil conflict.

“Why is slavery evil?” Or, alternately, “why did our good artifacts stop working after we made an anti-slavery choice?”

That’s not a discussion I want to sit through at most tables. Regardless of what you replace “slavery” with in those sentences.


Outside of forum discussions, I have never encountered the kind of gotcha morality quandaries that demon orphanages and monster babies entail.

That’s my bras and butter, that’s the kind of thing I enjoy in a game. I’m just not interested in the opinion of Cosmic Law or Divine Funky on the matter.


I'm also not sure what you mean by cosmic being here. There is no in-game entity that presents some kind of authority here by default, unless you consider the very idea of good or evil beings forces in and of themselves to be a cosmic entity.

Um…

I think Alignment serves a useful purpose in games that have actual supernatural, cosmic forces that represent the opposing ends of the alignment spectrum. Beings of pure good or evil, spells that call upon their power and work differently against beings of varying alignments, and magical items that serve these forces and seek to enforce their power.
Those serve as a mouthpiece for the GM’s idiocy. And I’m overdue to agree with these posts:

And that's where it falls apart. As seen in roughly every alignment discussion ever, there aren't solid agreed upon definitions. The "solid" part because finding definitions that fit every possible morality yet still end up in nine neat boxes (where the content of each box have enough in common for it to be meaningful and useful) seems nigh-impossible, the "agreed upon" part because finding two people who completely agree on what constitutes every alignment would be hard enough, getting everyone (or even a majority) would probably be literally impossible.

As I have stated before, the cardinal sin of any alignment system is putting the referee in the position of judging the in-game morality of character actions. This holds whether the referee is a stand-in for the gods, the cosmic order, the disco ball of evil/good, or whatever it happens to be in that particular setting.

This has the potential for problems even if there is no mechanical benefit or penalty invovled in that determination. Just putting a moral label on a character action from the vantage point of the gamemaster is enough.

Once you get away from that you can start on getting a workable alignment system, assuming that you even need one.

gbaji
2022-10-07, 08:37 PM
Generally any morality system that has an in-game mechanical meaning is going to have some kind of in-universe judging entity, even if that entity, as in the case of the Force, lacks a consciousness. It's always going to fall on the GM to enforce that, just as it falls on them to enforce any other mechanic where judgments are required.

Yup. An alignment system can work if it's just a RP mechanism for the players. it can work as a "side/faction" system in which favor with your "side" can have mechanical effects in-game.

Systems that try to do both tends to have serious issues. There's a reason why every single D&D edition has to re-write the descriptions of alignments and how they work and how to use it. And people still argue endlessly about it.


No, because no you don't. All you have to do is write it in a way that players can use it as a character motivation to assist in making decisions for their character.

But alignment doesn't have to be descriptive alignment, even if it's in-game objective. It can still be player subjective.

if you add in the later part which said "has an in-game mechanical meaning" then it does. I think that was the point. The moment you have alignment also have an actual game mechanic effect, it can no longer be player subjective. It requires a GM to determine if you are following the requirements of your alignment, with the consequence of failure being real mechanical in-game negative effects on the character.


What Quertus was talking about is a "side/faction" system which absolutely can work well. What's interesting is that the game I play the most, RuneQuest, actually has this. There's no alignment so much as forces of law and chaos in the world. All deities are aligned with either law or chaos. Thus if you worship a law god, you are on the side of law. If you worship a chaos god you are on the side of chaos. There are some (rarish) abilities which can detect which side you are on (and some other rarish abilities that can allow you to conceal this information from those abilities as well as from your own deity). But other than that, it's just which god you worship, which other gods worshippers are therefore "on your side", and which ones are "enemies". Has very very little effect on your character's personality though.

I just think I've now played a game that doesn't use alignments for so long that it's still a bit jarring when I do play D&D and I'm like: "oh. Alignment. Sheesh. I have to think about this? Why can't I just play my character"? I've been RPing characters for decades without needing an alignment system to tell me what their personalities are. Never once missed it.

Jorren
2022-10-07, 11:21 PM
But isn't that inevitable? If you have in-game morality of any kind, someone has to serve as the morality judge. Players absolutely cannot be trusted to do it themselves. Consider, for example, the old Humanity system from VtM. The GM had to serve as the judge there too. And the GM has to judge light side/dark side orientation in Star Wars and on and on. Generally any morality system that has an in-game mechanical meaning is going to have some kind of in-universe judging entity, even if that entity, as in the case of the Force, lacks a consciousness. It's always going to fall on the GM to enforce that, just as it falls on them to enforce any other mechanic where judgments are required.

Players can trusted to do it themselves if the system is designed to incorporate their choices in a discrete way rather than top-down imposition. And the old humanity system from VtM was awful; I played that game enough to see it person. It conflated generally accepted conventional morality with notions of what it means to be an inhuman predator. The new Requiem system is better in that regard in that it separates inhumanity from immorality a bit more succintly. It still suffers from the notion that inhuman equates to exclusively negative character outcomes.

A game like Urban Shadows does it best in that corruption is exclusively taken voluntarily to get mechanical advantages, with the notion that enough such actions removes the character from play. You could just as easily work that into a Star Wars game; a character takes a dark side point to get a defined game effect, with increasing points having other thematic mechanical results in tune with the setting and story. By removing it from referee adjudication you also get direct player engagement with the system.


]It is true that this area can produce problems, mostly because it is very difficult for most tables to accept a game world where the rules of morality are explicitly different from their own personal worldviews, just as it is often very difficult to, in real life, have a discussion about morality with other people who have vastly different worldviews. What this means is that, in campaign design, moral complexity is bad and moral conundrums are best avoided in favor of clear and obvious choices whose contours everyone at the table will agree upon.

Moral complexity is fine in campaigns as long as you are not fixated on correct vs incorrect moral outcomes. Moral conundrums are best avoided because they are usually so contrived as to either break suspension of disbelief or engender an adversarial table atmosphere.

Vahnavoi
2022-10-08, 04:46 AM
And that's where it falls apart. As seen in roughly every alignment discussion ever, there aren't solid agreed upon definitions. The "solid" part because finding definitions that fit every possible morality yet still end up in nine neat boxes (where the content of each box have enough in common for it to be meaningful and useful) seems nigh-impossible, the "agreed upon" part because finding two people who completely agree on what constitutes every alignment would be hard enough, getting everyone (or even a majority) would probably be literally impossible.

You, like gbaji, give way too much weight to random people on the internet.

If I'm going to referee Olympic figureskating, I don't care about what random people on the internet think. I care about what other Olympic referees thinn. If I'm going to perform in Olympic figureskating, I still don't care about what random people on the internet think. I care about what the referee thinks.

Similarly, if I'm going to referee a game, I don't care about what random people on the internet think. I care about what my setting and my desired aesthetics of gameplay require. If I'm going to play in a game I don't care about what random people on the internet think. I care about what my referee thinks.

It's similar to the tired "philosophers still argue about this" argument. Sure, there are competing philosophies, but for any philosophy you can name, it's virtually granted it will have multiple proponents. For example, if I want to use Scout Law (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scout_Law) as a standard for Lawful Good behaviour in a game, I have a body of millions of scouts to draw from globally. Even locally, I'd have hundreds, dozens of who I've personally instructed. As a bonus, discussing and instructing people in the Scout Law is par for the course in scouting, so it's actually possible to integrate the roleplaying game to the larger hobby.

As a corollary to that: all this "wah wah" about how alignment causes moral arguments? First, good part of such arguments are just discussion; second, deliberately sparking discussion about morals is a perfectly valid goal of game design. If having explicit alignment is likely to get people to express their own opinions about morality and ethics, that in itself is a reason to use alignment.

Avoiding moral arguments is not, in fact, high bar for games or fiction.

---

Gbaji's post is once again so long I'll have to deal with it separately.

Mechalich
2022-10-08, 05:19 AM
As a corollary to that: all this "wah wah" about how alignment causes moral arguments? First, good part of such arguments are just discussion; second, deliberately sparking discussion about morals is a perfectly valid goal of game design. If having explicit alignment is likely to get people to express their own opinions about morality and ethics, that in itself is a reason to use alignment.

Avoiding moral arguments is not, in fact, high bar for games or fiction.


Tabletop gaming is a massively escapist hobby. People don't want to get arguments about ethics and morality mixed up in their escapism. Especially not when playing with their friends, many of whom they know will only remain friends if serious moral arguments are avoided.

Besides, morality systems aren't intended to provoke debate anyway. What they are intended to do is to channel the direction of play by providing an in-universe measure of morality and incentives to stay on one side of the moral pathway. Usually this is the 'good' side, because 'evil' campaigns, in the tabletop environment, are massively more likely to self-destruct through intra-party conflict. There is, especially by 2022, a tremendous amount of very strong evidence that in escapist hobbies a significant fraction of the players will discard all moral restraint entirely. This is why video games have to make plot critical NPCs unkillable, among other things. Morality systems are a means of providing rules to try and get the players to 'play nice' with the setting and not go full-on murderhobo all over everything. This is one of the reasons that morality systems tend to be really bad at handling actual ethical conundrums - that's not really what they are designed to do.

Now, alignment is not particularly well-designed from this perspective. It's not alone in the VtM's humanity was equally horrid, and there's plenty of other awful ones, but it certain has problems. For one, it's basically all measurement and no incentive. There's not really any benefit for being 'good.' At best certain classes are required to maintain certain alignments to retain their powers, but this is basically all stick and no carrot. It doesn't have to be that way, morality systems can have incentives. Bioware's use of light side and dark side scales (and later paragon and renegade in Mass Effect) was tied to additional quest options and rewards. Alignment, though, mostly just sits there.

Batcathat
2022-10-08, 05:25 AM
Again, it doesn't fall apart if you have solid definitions, and realize that the position one views things from affects your view of them, without affecting the thing itself; it can, as the meme says, be two things. Some of the problems is that the book definitions are seldom solid (3.5 probably had the clearest definitions, and I don't praise 3.x often), and that things are viewed as a binary... it is always necessarily Law or Chaos, or Good and Evil, seldom with the view that it can be Good and Neutral, or Evil and Neutral. It won't be Chaotic and Lawful, nor Good and Evil... those arrive at Neutral. But it can be Neutral and another thing, or even two other things, provided they aren't opposites.

One of my favorite examples is Arcadia, in the Great Wheel. It is Lawful Good, and Lawful Neutral, at the same time, without conflict. If viewed from Mount Celestia, it is Lawful Neutral. If viewed from Mechanus, it is Lawful Good. When you stand in Fortitude in the Outlands, or in Arcadia itself, it can be see as both, because of your perspective; if you stand in the Abyss, the three are indistinguishable. What it is hasn't changed, and it's nature is both, and its nature is itself. If Lawful Good is blue, and Lawful Neutral is Red, then what is their overlap? Their overlap is purple, which is blue, and is red, and is itself.

I don't really understand how this solves anything or make the definitions any less vague and unwieldy. The problem isn't just to get people to agree what is Lawful Good, but also what is Lawful and what is Good. The components have the same issues as the system as a whole, in that it's either too vague to be useful or too constraining to allow variation.


I think folks who don't like alignment have a tendency to view it as unworkable, rather than working with it. Folks who view it as a workable system work with it, and can manage it just fine. It depends on the filter you're look at it through, and if your filter insists that it doesn't make sense, you won't see the sense. If your filter allows it to make sense, you'll see a form of sense to it. I say that there is a sense to it, and it is understandable. I see it as a useful organizing tool, and have used it successfully as such for many years. If you don't, I don't know what to tell you, but the assertion that it doesn't work is belied by the fact that it works fine for me, and that I can often reach consensus with other people who think it works.

I think most potential problems with alignment can be avoided if the people involved are reasonable, but that just leaves it as useless rather than actively harmful. A ship full of holes is not necessarily unworkable, if the crew can keep patching the holes as they appear, but I would rather pick a ship without holes.


Similarly, if I'm going to referee a game, I don't care about what random people on the internet think. I care about what my setting and my desired aesthetics of gameplay require. If I'm going to play in a game I don't care about what random people on the internet think. I care about what my referee thinks.

Fair enough, but while the random people on the internet provide plenty of examples of alignment problems, it's not like they disappear in a smaller group. Yes, if you and your group all have the exact same definition of all the alignments (seems unlikely, but I suppose it's possible) I could see how it might be useful (not very useful, but some) in that particular group.


As a corollary to that: all this "wah wah" about how alignment causes moral arguments? First, good part of such arguments are just discussion; second, deliberately sparking discussion about morals is a perfectly valid goal of game design. If having explicit alignment is likely to get people to express their own opinions about morality and ethics, that in itself is a reason to use alignment.

Avoiding moral arguments is not, in fact, high bar for games or fiction.

I agree that moral arguments at the table can be quite fun, but I don't think having an alignment system is necessary for that and can be counterproductive to a good discussion (since some, though admittedly far from all, people seem to think having an alignment for their character is a replacement for the character having a personality and individual ethics).


Tabletop gaming is a massively escapist hobby. People don't want to get arguments about ethics and morality mixed up in their escapism. Especially not when playing with their friends, many of whom they know will only remain friends if serious moral arguments are avoided.

While I'm sure this is true for some, it's not some universal truth. I don't want every gaming session to turn into a philosophical debate, but I don't mind it here and there.

Vahnavoi
2022-10-08, 06:35 AM
Tabletop gaming is a massively escapist hobby. People don't want to get arguments about ethics and morality mixed up in their escapism. Especially not when playing with their friends, many of whom they know will only remain friends if serious moral arguments are avoided.

This kind of argument is entirely irrelevant to people like me who aren't solely interested in escapism. Current common use is not an argument against other uses of a medium - you might as well be arguing that since most popular of comics with anthropomorphic animals are harmless fun aimed at kids, Maus (https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maus_(sarjakuva)) should not exist.

Furthermore, the argument, if taken seriously, leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Of course you will end up with majority of escapist players if you keep making escapist games - to find the players who are interested in things other than escapism, you have to make games that are about those other things.


Besides, morality systems aren't intended to provoke debate anyway.

Another irrelevant argument - I can literally prove you wrong any Tuesday night if I want to, even using D&D alignment.


What they are intended to do is to channel the direction of play by providing an in-universe measure of morality and incentives to stay on one side of the moral pathway. Usually this is the 'good' side, because 'evil' campaigns, in the tabletop environment, are massively more likely to self-destruct through intra-party conflict.

The idea that Evil campaigns are more likely to self-destruct is not well-substantiated at all. The reason why D&D, specifically, started emphasizing Good over Evil so strongly had nothing to do with that, it had to do with corporate decisions. I already linked to an article dealing with this earlier in the thread. As a corollary, the reason "playing evil" is controversial is because the rulesets a lot of players are familiar with explicitly say "playing evil" is naughty naughty. For a non-D&D example, CODA version of Lord of the Rings roleplaying game is explicitly meant for playing heroes in the Tolkienian sense, and failing to do so gets you Corruption points - get enough points, and your character becomes an NPC. So an "evil" campaign is not impossible because the players couldn't keep a game going as in-fighting bunch of orcs, it's impossible because the rules prohibit it.

As repeatedly noted, the original 1st edition AD&D biaxial alignment system does not work this way. It does not mandate every player character be Good, nor does it ban alignment change or remove characters from play because of it. Enforcing co-operation between player characters is a separate concern from alignment and noted as such in the rules text.


There is, especially by 2022, a tremendous amount of very strong evidence that in escapist hobbies a significant fraction of the players will discard all moral restraint entirely. This is why video games have to make plot critical NPCs unkillable, among other things. Morality systems are a means of providing rules to try and get the players to 'play nice' with the setting and not go full-on murderhobo all over everything. This is one of the reasons that morality systems tend to be really bad at handling actual ethical conundrums - that's not really what they are designed to do.

Horse crap. You are ignoring loads of games, such as Undertale and Dark Souls, which specifically make every or nearly every NPC killable and have different game consequences and endings based on morality scores players acrue. Or the arch-example of Ultima 4 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_IV:_Quest_of_the_Avatar), which was all about exploring what it takes to act morally in a specific settings, with some choices specifically set up as dilemmas where two virtues are mutually exclusive. Video games are diverse in how they handle these topics and how they utilize morality systems, and have been diverse from almost the moment that technology allowed for it.


Now, alignment is not particularly well-designed from this perspective. It's not alone in the VtM's humanity was equally horrid, and there's plenty of other awful ones, but it certain has problems. For one, it's basically all measurement and no incentive. There's not really any benefit for being 'good.' At best certain classes are required to maintain certain alignments to retain their powers, but this is basically all stick and no carrot. It doesn't have to be that way, morality systems can have incentives. Bioware's use of light side and dark side scales (and later paragon and renegade in Mass Effect) was tied to additional quest options and rewards. Alignment, though, mostly just sits there.


You think the supernatural powers of being a Paladin or Cleric don't count as benefits? Or how about magic items that depend on alignment? Nevermind that those additional quest lines and rewards you laud Bioware for... those were taken, wholesale, from the tabletop. Those are examples of how alignment can be, and has been used, any game master who understands the system can do that in their own scenario design. Your conclusion is built on a strawman of a game master who has read a system for measuring character behaviour but chooses not to use it.

Theoboldi
2022-10-08, 09:23 AM
Thanks! I… honestly, I love “Faiths and Avatars” so much, I might just consider doing this some day, senility willing.

I'll certainly look forward to it.



“Why is slavery evil?” Or, alternately, “why did our good artifacts stop working after we made an anti-slavery choice?”

That’s not a discussion I want to sit through at most tables. Regardless of what you replace “slavery” with in those sentences.

Well, I agree that I would not want to sit through either of those discussions. But that's mainly because in either case, I am sitting at the table with someone who is either:

- Under the belief that slavery is not a loathsome, cruel practise
- Is such a horrible edgelord they'll create a world where it is arbitrarily not counted as evil, and thus they are not using the system in good faith

In both cases that would be a clear sign that person is not trustworthy enough to play games for entertainment with.



That’s my bras and butter, that’s the kind of thing I enjoy in a game. I’m just not interested in the opinion of Cosmic Law or Divine Funky on the matter.
And that's fair enough. However, this is not some fundamental failing on the part of the system. Rather, it's a sign that this system is not suited for the kinds of worlds and stories you wish to explore. You are completely outside of the beneficial use case of it.



Um…

Those serve as a mouthpiece for the GM’s idiocy. And I’m overdue to agree with these posts:



Ah, I see where we are not quite on the same page. When I talk about cosmic forces, I am talking about pre-picked standards that are more akin to natural forces than divine beings, though they can certainly expressed by the latter. However, you consider either expression of them to be cosmic beings anyways, and do not see a meaningful difference between them.

That being cleared up, however, I will disagree that these necessarily serve as a mouthpiece for the GM. They can certainly be used in such a manner, but so can every powerful NPC, in-universe organisation, roleplaying mechanic, magic system, stat distributions, adventure design, and any given act of worldbuilding. Worrying about this kind of misuse is to me fundamentally just a sign of playing with people that should not be played with.

And while yes, disagreements can arise between how a player and a GM can interpret these alignment definitions, in a worthwhile game I think they'll have a decent amount of guidance by the rules for what should count as what, and will ultimately come to a satisfactory verdict because they knew what kind of morality they signed up for and are mature enough to talk out arising differences without throwing in ideas that are deliberately in bad faith. (The aforementioned non-evil slavery, for instance.)

Of course a system is not going to work when everyone at the table uses it despite not wanting to use it, abuses their power despite this being a petty game for entertainment, or starts out from the position that it's awful anyways and they do not wish to actually adhere to it. But I think arguing about it from that perspective is meaningless. An alignment system need not be perfect and fool-proof, since nobody is forced to adhere to it. It must only provide value for those who wish to use it, and wish to do so in good faith.

RazorChain
2022-10-08, 09:32 AM
I never use it, ever! Not in my DnD games or other games so it must be considered insignificant


It's like barbequeing a sausage with a flamethrower. You might pull it off but it probably will be burnt and you might put your house on fire.

Vahnavoi
2022-10-08, 10:10 AM
I understand those concepts perfectly well. It is based on my understanding (and pretty significant experience) that I state that game systems with alignments that are both guides to roleplaying *and* external enforceable characteristic attributes that can be detected and have an effect on actual character capabilities in the game, cause problems. They actually reduce the range of roleplaying possibilities, and create conflict and confusion when the player's perception and the GMs don't coincide perfectly (which, based just on the sheer volume of arguments about alignment of characters in this strip, seems to be a fairly likely occurrence).

You keep ignoring that the "problems" you outline are neither insurmountable nor unique to alignment. Any enforcement of setting or theme naturally restricts what kind of characters can be played in a game. Any case where a player's idea of a game's rules doesn't perfectly coincide with the game master's can cause conflict or confusion. These are not the killer arguments you think they are. Plus, again, the authority given to game master is a solution to confusion and conflict between players - it ensures there is an end to this kind of debates.

Arguments over comic strips continue to be irrelevant. Pick any work of fiction with a significant fanbase and I guarantee you will find bunch of people arguing over morality of their favorite characters, even if they've never heard of alignment. This is just something people do. Furthermore, the reason why these arguments can go on forever is because these randoms on the internet aren't playing a game and have not agreed for anyone in the argument to serve as a final arbiter. They are NOT following the rules and procedures under discussion, so you cannot use them as an example for why the rules don't work. You might as well say the task of being an ice hockey referee is impossible because some random drunk people in bar keep complaining about the referee even after the game is over and done with.


Sure. But when the GM is enforcing such things, it is, somewhat by definition, going to reduce the degree to which the player is free to play their own character how they like. The GM is literally telling the player "You have to choose X because that's what your alignment requires" complete with punishment if the player does not comply.

You can have the exact same dynamic without the punitive/forced bits and it works (better IMO). The GM can tell the player "what you're doing is an evil act", but instead of following with "and that's a violation of your alignment and may result in you losing spells from your deity, potential class abilities, and detecting as evil via spells" the GM presents the real in-game consequences like "the local authorities will put out a warrant for you, your friends wont like you if they find out what you did, you could find yourself being on the receiving end of a group of NPC adventurers hunting you down as the "bad guy".

This is a line drawn in sand based on a double standard. Supernatural consequences of breaking conduct are just as real in-game consequences as non-supernatural consequences of breaking conduct, and the non-supernatural consequences are just as artificial as the supernatural ones. They are based on the exact same dynamic of a game master choosing how the world reacts to actions of player characters.

Seriously. "You will lose your supernatural powers if you violate commandments of your god" is supernatural equivalent of "you will lose your workplace access if you violate orders from your boss". Detecting as Evil is supernatural equivalent of having a wanted poster put out. So on and so forth. Both kinds of statements are enforced by the game master's decision, both are equally "punitive" in that they are negative in-game consequences based on character action. By saying the first kind is bad but the latter is a-okay, you are simply expressing a preference for the game master to play supernatural forces as silent. That's not "better", it simply leads to a different set of game-able situations.


See how that works? No artificial cosmic alignment. Just actions and consequences within a "normal" game environment. A player can choose to follow a path that leads them to a dark place, and roleplay that if they want to. Their deity wont punish them (unless they violate actual rules of their religion which may or may not be the case). No cosmic power will come along and remove abilities from them due to arbitrary class restrictions. They just have to deal with actual real consequences and play it out. And yeah, they can play a character who decides that he really likes being the local "bad guy", killing people who get in his way, taking out the competition, and possibly even building a rep as someone you don't want to cross. There are consequences for that, but they are more realistic IMO.

You are arbitrarily classifying some in-game consequences as "artificial" and others as "normal" or "realistic" based on nothing other than preference for silent gods. This completely fails to acknowledge why a game master would have active gods and supernatural forces to begin with. The sequence of events where a character loses their powers as consequence of breaking conduct is different from the one where they don't, and hence offers different roleplaying opportunities. You aren't describing something that is universally "better", you are describing a trade-off between aesthetics.


Same can happen in reverse. A character can start out "evil", and then choose to do good things. With alignment we have the "Belkar" problem where the degree you have to do to be "good" is based on some external factors. Remove alignment and spells that detect it, and it's just a matter of "what you are doing right here when interacting with these people determines how they view you". Past evil acts may come back to haunt you, in the same way they may in our "real world". And certainly, players should roleplay a struggle for their character to reform, perhaps being tempted by some situations along the way. But there's no spell that someone who's just met you can cast that detects those past "evil" actions. They only know of you what they know.

I do not acknowledge this "Belkar problem" as any kind or sort of a problem. "Choosing to good things" requires an actual change of behaviour to count, and change of behaviour is always a detectable attribute even in absence of any detection spells. Like many other critics of alignment, you fail to realize detection spells are only a minor component of the overall system. They also do not work in the way you describe - they typically detect current alignment, not a character's life history. Nevermind that access to detection spells is not universal, and they can be fooled. Once again, you are describing a trade-off, not some absolute improvement, because you fail to acknowledge there's an entire layer of gameplay around supernatural information gathering methods and defenses from them.

But more importantly, "what you are doing right here when interacting with these people determines how they view you" is STILL BASED on external judgement by the game master. You aren't, on the game level, removing that element by removing supernatural information gathering. Players can still see this as a punishment if they're so inclined - all negative consequences to characters, for any reason, can always be argued to be punishments in context of a game.


You can do all of this without the sort of rigid enforced alignment system that D&D has. And IMO, it's much better for a number of reasons. Again, not the least of which is the absence of punishment by a GM if/when the player thinks that the alignment effect of an action is not the same as the GMs. I think the problem is that you (many people) are starting from an assumption that an alignment system like this must exist and then using that as a premise. I'm not.

I don't assume an alignment system of any specific sort has to exist. I've literally, in this thread, explained how to set up multiple different and mutually exclusive alignment systems. The difference is that I'm interested in exploring what alignment systems can be used for, rather than simply complaining that they exist.


Sure. But alignment systems like D&D force the GM to make determinations based on that system. Remove the alignment enforcement mechanisms and it becomes a much easier and more rational determination for the GM to make: Did you get caught/seen doing something evil? What are the ramifications of that? Roleplay the results.

Another case of you turning a simple matter on its head. Alignment system does not force a game master, it ALLOWS the game master to make those determinations. The process of determining alignment is simply asking those two questions from the perspective of a supernatural force.


The GM does not have to decide how the cosmic forces view such an act in reference to an alignment system if such forced compliance doesn't exist in the first place. It eliminates a case where differences of opinion alone can have massive impact on things. The GM just roleplays the NPC actions in response to the PCs actions. Period. He doesn't have to think about how an action fits into some bigger picture. That makes things, not just much easier, but much more flexible. People aren't purely defined as "good or evil", but how their actions effect others and how they react to those things. We don't need to determine that Orc's alignment. We just have to decide that he's part of a community that is actively doing harm to people the PCs care about, and is thus an enemy. And if said Orc decides to help us out in some way, in return for some favor, we don't have to think about whether we're "helping an evil person", and what effect that may have on our alignment. We just decide whether the deal is fair and works and make the decision based on that.

It makes more complex and nuanced decisions more likely and more rationally playable.

A large part of the alignment system IS the game master roleplaying as cosmic forces, gods, etc.. You are, again, functionally just saying that the game master roleplaying the natural world's reaction to player character action is valid, but roleplaying the supernatural world's reactions is not. This is none of more "rational" or "complex" or "realistic" way to run a fantasy game. You're just removing one element of fantasy and pretending nothing is lost, and everything is gained.


I get it. It's just that you could have chosen to respond to the cases where I actually highlighted specific flaws in rigid and enforced alignment systems instead of spending time on what were basically baseline examples where things work "ok".

I have a particular issue with the broad and absolute labeling of characters as "good" or "evil". My Orc example directly addressed this. The primary issue is that if you have a system where good and evil are actual detectable traits (with spells even), it forces some really nonsensical outcomes. And, again, those things are utterly unnecessary to play a RPG successfully.

Player characters, even players, worrying about "helping an evil person" is something that can happen even in a game without alignment. Using Detect Evil or other supernatural information gathering method is functional equivalent of checking a real person's ID to see if they are a wanted criminal or mental health patient on the run. Detection spells don't force "nonsensical" outcomes - they give players information. If you had an easy way to gain information about people that you're not usually privy to, it would change your behaviour as well - and once again you neglect the idea that exploring hypotheses like this can be the point of including the fantastic element to begin with.


And BTW. This does not preclude game systems (or worlds) where those alignment factions actually exist on a cosmic level and characters align with "sides" in some bigger conflict. But, the reverse should be the case. Which "side" you are on should be less an examination of character personality traits as it is "which side are you helping out and/or fighting for" and "what actions have you taken on behalf of your side". That may also come with some action based prohibitions or requirements, but those aren't due to a broad "you are good/evil" concept, but "are you following our rules or not". Again, easier to determine and play.

This loops back to the beginning and the shaky basis of your entire line of argument:

Personality influences behaviour.

The "sides" we are discussing are sorted by behaviour.

Therefore, every holistic, rational examination of questions such as "which side are you helping out and/or fighting for?" and "what actions have you taken on behalf of your side?" involves examination of character personality traits.

This applies even when you are not using D&D-style alignment, or any other alignment system. Simply because you're not using specific rules of Good and Evil doesn't suddenly mean personality has nothing to do with "are you following our rules or not". The two things you say shouldn't be done together, naturally go together.

LibraryOgre
2022-10-08, 11:15 AM
I don't really understand how this solves anything or make the definitions any less vague and unwieldy. The problem isn't just to get people to agree what is Lawful Good, but also what is Lawful and what is Good. The components have the same issues as the system as a whole, in that it's either too vague to be useful or too constraining to allow variation.

Which is, again, demonstrably untrue, as many people don't run into that problem. Your experience is not reality, your personal incredulity doesn't make it not work.

Lawful is honor, trustworthiness, obedience to authority, and reliability. On the downside, it can include close-mindedness, reactionary adherence to tradition, judgmentalness, and a lack of adaptability.

Chaos is freedom, adaptability, and flexibility. On the downside, it's recklessness, resentment towards legitimate authority, arbitrary actions, and irresponsibility.

Those are pretty straightforward and workable definitions. Is someone usually following the law because it's the law (as opposed to because it's more convenient to not be hassled)? Do they tend to honor their word, because that's the correct thing to do? That's lawful. Does someone do what they want, because they want it? Do they change their means because it better serves their ends? That's chaotic. They're not arcane. They're descriptors of the aggregate of behavior and general approach to things.

Good does altruism, respect for life, and concern for the dignity of sentient beings (and, IMO, to a lesser extent, non-sentient beings... doesn't have to mean vegan, just means "not gonna kick a puppy").

Evil is hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some kill because it's fun, some kill because the victims are in the way of their goals, but those are the hallmarks of evil.

Again, these are pretty straightforward. They're not arcane definitions. You can often find edge cases, but a lot of those edge cases wind up as "neutral". And lots of folks find it perfectly reasonable and usable. That Neutrality looks Good from the side of Evil and Evil from the side of Good is a matter of placement... to a good person, neutrality is a lack of sufficient care for others. From evil, it's overt concern for the weak. And they are both right, while Neutrality remains its own thing, and sees Good in much the same way Evil does, and Evil in much the same way that Good does. It's not relative morality... Good remains Good, Evil remains Evil, and Neutrality remains Neutrality... but it is a subjective perspective on other alignments and their methods.




I think most potential problems with alignment can be avoided if the people involved are reasonable, but that just leaves it as useless rather than actively harmful. A ship full of holes is not necessarily unworkable, if the crew can keep patching the holes as they appear, but I would rather pick a ship without holes.

Again, not useless. Leaving aside the mechanical aspects (which winds up recursive), it provides a guide for the general behavior of characters and societies. That LE guy is likely going to honor any deals he makes with you, though, since he's evil, he might be a "letter over spirit" sort of guy. The elf, from a chaotic good society, is going to resent you telling him what to do, though he'll still do it if he thinks its a good idea. Chaotic won't necessarily break laws just because they're laws, lawful won't follow laws if they conflict with their goals... but Lawful will try to work with or around the law, rather than saying "**** it" and doing what they want to. Because that's the way they're wired. For NPCs, it's a shorthand, taking up one to six characters (say, LG(NG) to denote someone who is mostly lawful good, but will go good over lawful, as opposed to LG(LN)). For PCs, its a general descriptor.

Saying it's useless is not much different than saying any character description beyond physical is useless. Alignment is useful descriptors of style and character (in the non-D&D sense), without saying "This character cannot do this". Even a paladin, hemmed in with his alignment restrictions, can kick a puppy while cursing out the priest of their own religion... they just choose not to, even when the puppy peed on their shoes and the priest is being a bastard by letting it run around and doesn't teach it not to pee on shoes.

Tanarii
2022-10-08, 11:17 AM
Avoiding moral arguments is not, in fact, high bar for games or fiction.
My orcs, goblin and kobold caverns no longer contain whelps. Know why? Players don't like dealing with it, and are usually horrified by it.

The entire point of 9 axis alignment was to avoid moral arguments. As well as intra party and inter party backstabbings, or at least let people know they were coming when certain characters or parties were in play. Unfortunately that translated into descriptive alignment with DM enforcement, which means more moral arguments, not less. That style of alignment was always a failure, from AD&D onwards.

Luckily we have one that's much better, with teeth involved properly finally. As in it actually gives the player some real utility to bite into, and encourages its use. And as such, if DMs have a desire to restrict certain kinds of moral or social characters, they have both generally willing to use without enforcement players and an effective tool with which to communicate it. Which beats old alignment on both counts.

Batcathat
2022-10-08, 12:05 PM
Which is, again, demonstrably untrue, as many people don't run into that problem. Your experience is not reality, your personal incredulity doesn't make it not work.

Fair enough, but neither is your experience. Yes, alignment obviously has its defenders, regardless of what I think, but as seen in this thread and pretty much any discussion of alignment, many find it just as useless and/or counterproductive as I do. I don't know what the numbers are, but let's say the division between your side and mine is 50/50. Imagine if there was some other part of the rules, like a combat system for example, that half the players not only couldn't see the point of but that actively made their experience worse by creating conflicts and misunderstandings when they don't agree on what goes in each box.


Saying it's useless is not much different than saying any character description beyond physical is useless. Alignment is useful descriptors of style and character (in the non-D&D sense), without saying "This character cannot do this". Even a paladin, hemmed in with his alignment restrictions, can kick a puppy while cursing out the priest of their own religion... they just choose not to, even when the puppy peed on their shoes and the priest is being a bastard by letting it run around and doesn't teach it not to pee on shoes.

Even if everyone involved has the exact same definition of each alignment, each box must still be quite big (in order not to restrict what sort of characters can be portrayed), making it necessary to specify how this particular character is LG or CE or whatever, in order to be useful. Saying "This character is Lawful Good" is a little like saying "This house has four walls and a roof". It's some information, granted, but in order to differentiate the house from other houses, a lot more detail is likely needed (and that's provided that everyone has the same opinion on what constitutes walls and roofs. Yes, the metaphor is kind of falling apart).

Quertus
2022-10-08, 01:22 PM
Lawful is honor, trustworthiness, obedience to authority, and reliability. On the downside, it can include close-mindedness, reactionary adherence to tradition, judgmentalness, and a lack of adaptability.

Chaos is freedom, adaptability, and flexibility. On the downside, it's recklessness, resentment towards legitimate authority, arbitrary actions, and irresponsibility.

Those are pretty straightforward and workable definitions.

Are they? If you’ve got a character who is strongly honorable, trustworthy, reliable, adaptable, flexible, and into individual rights? They could easily, by those definitions, be the most Lawful member of the party, and the most Chaotic member of the party, for most parties I’ve seen.

I’m not touching God and evil. :smalltongue:

hamishspence
2022-10-08, 01:41 PM
That's what Neutral is for - it can be "mix of Chaotic and Lawful traits" - it doesn't have to be "lack of Chaotic and Lawful traits".

Vahnavoi
2022-10-08, 02:20 PM
My orcs, goblin and kobold caverns no longer contain whelps. Know why? Players don't like dealing with it, and are usually horrified by it.

And? Once again supposed criticism of alignment implies use cases for it. If having to deal with camp followers of monstrous humanoids and the moral dilemmas associated with them is horrifying, that makes them prime fodder for horror games. This isn't some utterly bizarre thing to do even in D&D, the game draws from all kinds of horror from gothic to religious to cosmic; it even has a setting dedicated to it in Ravenloft.


The entire point of 9 axis alignment was to avoid moral arguments.

Citation very much needed. The game master having final say over game events means they can put an end to any at-the-table argument over alignment of any given character, but that's not the same as trying to avoid arguments between players or characters. On the contrary, the system deliberately describes and allows characters having and believing in conflicting philosophies.


As well as intra party and inter party backstabbings, or at least let people know they were coming when certain characters or parties were in play.

Meanwhile, actual rules text (1st Edition AD&D, Dungeon Master's Guide, page 24, under "Graphing Alignment":

"Lawful Good characters should not be allowed to ignore unlawful or shady actions by "looking the other way". If, for example, a party that includes a paladin decides to use poison on a monster that is ahead, the DM shouldn't let the paladin be distracted or "led away for a few rounds" when it is patently obvious the paladin heard the plan. If the player does not take appropriate measures to prevent the action, the DM should warn the paladin that his lack of action will constitute a voluntary alignment change and then let the chips fall where they may!"

The intent is clear: alignment system does not exist to avoid party conflicts. It exists to keep player characters accountable for their behaviours, which might as well cause party conflict as solve it. I know, historically, that biaxial alignment was inspired in part by players who kept screwing other players' characters over regardless of what kind of characters they were playing. Yes, alignment allows for punishment and later identification of such players. No, that is not the main use of alignment. The actual advice for handling party conflicts is found on 1st Edition AD&D Player's Handbook, page 109, under "Succesful adventures":

"Co-operation assumes mutual trust and confidence, and this is enhanced when members are certain that the survivors will do their best to see that any slain character is carried forth from the dungeon to be resurrected if at all possible. All members of the expedition should be ready and willing to part with any goods, money and magic items to save lives. Failing that, each should be willing to fight to the death to assure success and survival of the party. This will happen when mutual trust exist. What about Evil alignment? Selfish neutrals? Unco-operative players?

Intelligent players of evil alignment will certainly be ready to help in order to further their own ends. This is not to say they will be chummy with those of good alignment, but on a single expedition basis it is possible to arrange situations where they are very likely to be helpful in order to benefit themselves and their cause. Generally evil characters, particularly chaotic evil ones, are prone to be troublesome and hurtful to the party. They should be accordingly shunned if possible. Selfish neutrals are similar to evil characters, but their price is usually easier to meet, and it is therefore easier to integrate them into an expedition which will depend on co-operation for success. The character of good alignment who is basically unco-operative - often acting as an evil or selfish neutral would - is another matter, for such players usually join under pretense of being helpful and willing to act in the best interest of the party. Undoubtedly the best way to take care of such players is to expel from the group as soon as circumstances permit. Do this as often as is necessary to either change the player's mind about co-operation, or until he or she becomes tired of having their character consigned to oblivion because of their attitude."

This is advice FOR THE PLAYERS. It is the PLAYERS who are meant to self-police and work for their co-operation. The DM and alignment play a bit part in this, as noted by clear explanation of how professed alignment does not serve as surefire indicator of who is worth working with.


Unfortunately that translated into descriptive alignment with DM enforcement, which means more moral arguments, not less.

Descriptive alignment with game master enforcement is not something the biaxial system was "translated into", it's how the edition that codified it outright tells you to use it in plain English. Actual quotes from 1st edition books:

Page 34, Player's Handbook, "Alignment": "The descriptions are generalizations only. A character can be basically good in its "true neutrality", or trend towards evil. It is probable that your campaign referee will keep a graph on the drift of your character on the alignment chart. This is affected by actions (and desires) of your character during course of each adventure, and will be reflected on the graph. You may find these actions are such as to cause the declared alignment to be shifted towards, or actually to, some other."

Page 23, Dungeon Master's Guide, "Alignment": "The overall behaviour of the character (or creature) is delineated by alignment, or in case of player characters, behaviour determines actual alignment."

Page 24, Dungeon Master's Guide, "Alignment: Graphing Alignment": "It is of importance to keep track of player character behaviour with respect to their professed alignment. Actions do speak far more eloquently than professions, and each activity of a player character should reflect his or her alignment. If professed lawful evil character is consistently seeking to be helpful and is respecting lesser creatures, he or she is certainly trending towards good, while if she ignores regulations and consistent behaviour the trend is towards chaotic alignment."

And, I'll add this, just in vain hope people will finally stop arguing about strawmen:

Page 24, Dungeon Master's Guide, "Alignment": "Each of these cases for alignment is, of course, stated rather simplistically and ideally, for philosophical and moral reasoning are completely subjective according to acculturation of the individual. You, as a Dungeon Master, must establish the meanings and boundaries of law and order as opposed to chaos and anarchy, as well as the divisions between right and good as opposed to hurtful and evil."


That style of alignment was always a failure, from AD&D onwards.

I'm not convinced you've ever actually played under the biaxial system as codified in 1st Edition, so forgive me for being skeptical.


Luckily we have one that's much better, with teeth involved properly finally. As in it actually gives the player some real utility to bite into, and encourages its use. And as such, if DMs have a desire to restrict certain kinds of moral or social characters, they have both generally willing to use without enforcement players and an effective tool with which to communicate it. Which beats old alignment on both counts.

You're literally the only one I've seen to argue for 5th edition's version alignment in this way. Nothing you've said so far has managed to explain to me why you even think this. Your case against descriptive alignment for the other use cases I outlined remains entirely unbuilt.

LibraryOgre
2022-10-08, 02:25 PM
Fair enough, but neither is your experience.

My position is "It can work." Your position is, roughly, "It does not work." That it does work for some people invalidates your position; that it doesn't work for others doesn't invalidate mine.



Even if everyone involved has the exact same definition of each alignment, each box must still be quite big (in order not to restrict what sort of characters can be portrayed),

When each box contains roughly 1/9th the population of the multiverse it will, indeed, be quite big.


making it necessary to specify how this particular character is LG or CE or whatever, in order to be useful. Saying "This character is Lawful Good" is a little like saying "This house has four walls and a roof". It's some information, granted, but in order to differentiate the house from other houses, a lot more detail is likely needed (and that's provided that everyone has the same opinion on what constitutes walls and roofs. Yes, the metaphor is kind of falling apart).

That is absolutely not true. Saying "This house has four walls and a roof" says "This house is a building", not what sort of house it is; "This house has four walls and a roof" is "This character has an alignment". You want to describe alignment? How about "This house has two stories and an open floor plan?" "This house has narrow corridors and a disturbing basement."


Are they? If you’ve got a character who is strongly honorable, trustworthy, reliable, adaptable, flexible, and into individual rights? They could easily, by those definitions, be the most Lawful member of the party, and the most Chaotic member of the party, for most parties I’ve seen.


That's perception, not reality, though. That character is Neutral on the Law/Chaos scale, because neutral is a thing. While they might, over time, be the most lawful and the most chaotic person in the group, they're either not doing it at once, or they're the only person in the group.

Tanarii
2022-10-08, 03:09 PM
Citation very much needed.Gygax and his players will suffice.


Your case against descriptive alignment for the other use cases I outlined remains entirely unbuilt.
37 years of spilt ink and internet bytes will suffice.

Vahnavoi
2022-10-08, 03:21 PM
No, there isn't 37 years worth of "spilt ink" of any type against Spot the Traitor, the Blame Train or Finding the Real You. I gave you actual citations, you are appealing to unnamed and unelaborated sources. If that's the way you want to play this, I consider you to have conceded the argument.

Quertus
2022-10-08, 07:08 PM
Lawful is honor, trustworthiness, obedience to authority, and reliability. On the downside, it can include close-mindedness, reactionary adherence to tradition, judgmentalness, and a lack of adaptability.

Chaos is freedom, adaptability, and flexibility. On the downside, it's recklessness, resentment towards legitimate authority, arbitrary actions, and irresponsibility.

Those are pretty straightforward and workable definitions.


Are they? If you’ve got a character who is strongly honorable, trustworthy, reliable, adaptable, flexible, and into individual rights? They could easily, by those definitions, be the most Lawful member of the party, and the most Chaotic member of the party, for most parties I’ve seen.


That's perception, not reality, though. That character is Neutral on the Law/Chaos scale, because neutral is a thing. While they might, over time, be the most lawful and the most chaotic person in the group, they're either not doing it at once, or they're the only person in the group.

To make a silly example, let’s say that they are the only member of the party to honor their word and show up to the human rights match. They are simultaneously the most Lawful and most Chaotic member of the party.

Or another silly example: when interrogated by the police, they refuse to answer questions about what they planned to do, because they have a very flexible concept, and are too honorable to lie about it.

These don’t feel like opposed poles - it feels like it’s perfectly possible to be sticky and green, to be the most honorable, trustworthy, reliable, adaptable, flexible, and into individual rights member of the party.

Vahnavoi
2022-10-09, 04:30 AM
To make a silly example, let’s say that they are the only member of the party to honor their word and show up to the human rights match. They are simultaneously the most Lawful and most Chaotic member of the party.

The example isn't silly, it's just irrelevant. "Most Lawful" and "Most Chaotic" are relative terms and mean nothing for overall alignment. There's space to drift within alignment categories, so even in a group of Paladins it would still be possible to identify "Most Lawful" and "Most Chaotic". In your case, they end up as the same person because you only have a single sample - trickery of language, not an informative statement.


Or another silly example: when interrogated by the police, they refuse to answer questions about what they planned to do, because they have a very flexible concept, and are too honorable to lie about it.

Nothing silly about this. Refusing to answer questions instead of lying is a classic go-to solution for Lawful types who are committed to the truth, but are dealing with hostile opposition. The character could very well be a Paladin in this situation without any conflict!


These don’t feel like opposed poles - it feels like it’s perfectly possible to be sticky and green, to be the most honorable, trustworthy, reliable, adaptable, flexible, and into individual rights member of the party.

For a lark, let's look at what 1st edition AD&D would say. Page 23, Dungeon Master's Guide, "Alignment":

"Law and Chaos: the opposition here is between organized groups and individuals. That is, law dictates order and organization are necessary and chaos holds to the opposite view. Law generally supporta groups as more important than the individual, while chaos promotes individual over the group.

Good and Evil: Basically stated, the tenets of good are human rights, or in case of AD&D, creature rights. Each creature is entitled to life, relative freedom, and prospect of happiness. Cruelty and suffering are undesireable. Evil, on the other hand, does not concern itself with rights or happiness; purpose is determinant."

Furher down the line:

Lawful Good: creatures of lawful good alignment view the cosmos with varying degrees of lawfulness and desire to do good. They are convinced that order and law are necessary to assure good, and that good is besr defined by whatever brings most benefit to greater number of decent, thinking creatures and least woe to the rest.

Neutral Good: the creatures of this alignment see the cosmos as a place where law and chaos are mere tools to use in bringing life, happiness and prosperity to all deserving creatures. Order is not good unless it brings this to all; neither is randomness and total freedom desireable if it does not bring such good.

Chaotic Good: To the chaotic good individual, freedom and independence are as important as life and happiness. The ethos views this freedom as only means by which each creature can achieve true satisfaction and happiness. Law, order, social forms and anything else which tends to restrict or abridge individual freedom is wrong, and each individual is capable of achieving self-realization and prosperity through himself, herself, or itself.

So lets review what your character is actually doing: unlike other members of the party, they keep their word to an external group, placing their own interest at risk for the sake of rights of all humans. When caught and questioned, rather than lie to preserve their individual freedom, they refuse to speak in a way that puts them under suspect, but upholds the maxim that if everyone was to lie, society would fall apart.

In summary: based on this small pool of evidence, the character is Lawful Good, or Neutral Good leaning towards Law. Not some odd corner case that somehow challenges the system.

As for how the 3rd Edition definitions used by Mark Hall relate to these 1st Edition ones? Post-1st Edition definitions of alignments orbit around the 1st Edition ones, listing character traits associated with 1st edition poles, but always with some changes for various reasons (such as marketing reasons during 2nd edition). Your idea of "sticky green" character comes from slapping a bunch of these traits on a character without asking which of them dominate in actual decision making or what purposes they serve. For example, as already explained above, you fail to consider that placing one's honor and reputation as a person who never lies above concerns of one's own freedom and well-being is a lawful trait, because maintaining such honor exist for the purpose of working with groups of other people.

Telok
2022-10-09, 01:18 PM
Point is, each Deity should be roughly equally interesting, with roughly an equal number of things they care about. Then again, maybe a character’s alignment with them shouldn’t be based on areas of conflict, but adherence to their religion. Do you wear fine clothes? +1 Tzeentch. Do you burn trees on Arbor Day? +1 Thor (or so his clergy believe).

Shrug. I’d like to see a well-made deity-based Alignment system.

Oh, yeah. Did one of those years ago. Used the Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup gods as they had nice gameable likes & dislikes & rewards. Worked pretty well, popular with players.

animorte
2022-10-09, 02:18 PM
In one campaign I had a sort of pantheon. It was a neutral territory in which each deity was resembled by a statue depicting them. The statues were basically the pillars of a large gazebo type thing. Everyone would go in the middle of the massive circle and, based on their alignment, they would see each statue a different way. Some deities would be holding their hands out to you if your alignment was directly with theirs. Some would looked half-turned with a hand out, some with no hands out. Others were turned away entirely, some possibly looking back over their shoulders.

It didn’t matter where or how you walked, they would always be facing the same way in relation to you specifically. Each person might something different. If you had a big alignment shift for some reason and went back, it would look entirely different to you.

Vahnavoi
2022-10-10, 05:34 AM
The irony of this discussion is that 1st Edition biaxial alignment doubles as deity-based alignment, and clearly served as prototype for deity-based alignment in some other games (Dungeon Crawl is rather obviously in this category), what with each of the nine alignments being tied to their own gods and afterlifes.

Witty Username
2022-10-10, 11:28 AM
Or another silly example: when interrogated by the police, they refuse to answer questions about what they planned to do, because they have a very flexible concept, and are too honorable to lie about it.

Stuff like this is why two axis get used instead of one, Lawful Good and Lawful Evil will respond very differently to the same kinds of problems. And the opposition will provide similar context. And further context by how these are weighted, a Lawful evil character and a lawful Evil even if they arrive at the same conclusion will have different priorities.

Which of course, if you have a good sense of your character's overall personality, most of this will be useless to you and you can just respond as your character would. After all alignment is just a quick short hand for your character's general leanings.
This is, I think, the intention of descriptive alignment. If a player doesn't have strong feelings on their character's alignment, and there is no punishment for shifting around, then and aside after the session, "hey, you haven't done anything evil the last 4 sessions, you want to change to neutral" and they say, "hm, yeah I thought this character would be more vindictive" or "Just wait, this is gonna be great!" and adjust accordingly.

For example, when I am using alignment, it is usually a goal as an effort to prove/practice a point, so I will ask the DM for a temp check to see if I am still roughly the alignment I am going for, paired with some other trait.

Noted observations that are character ideas in the works:
Lawful = unfun, Lawful + hedonism
Good = dumb, Good + mastermind
Evil = murder hobo, Evil + literally any character traits

Recent success: as a player in a Ravnica game I was Lawful Good bard in service to the Cult of Rakdos. It helps in the Ravnica setting that all the Guilds have a stated function in the city with Rakdos being essentially the entire entertainment industry.

Most of the time though I don't directly use alignment, I see it as a role play aid that I usually don't need.

Telok
2022-10-10, 11:29 AM
The irony of this discussion is that 1st Edition biaxial alignment doubles as deity-based alignment, and clearly served as prototype for deity-based alignment in some other games (Dungeon Crawl is rather obviously in this category), what with each of the nine alignments being tied to their own gods and afterlifes.

Just being clear here, since similar names are similar, the DCSS that I mentioned is a rogue-like computer game with the nice gameable piety mechanics here: http://crawl.chaosforge.org/God

Tanarii
2022-10-10, 04:34 PM
This is, I think, the intention of descriptive alignment.
Originally per the guys who wrote it and played it, the intention of the good/evil portion of descriptive alignment was to avoid moral arguments and intra party and inter party backstabbings.

The intention may have changed over time of course.

gbaji
2022-10-10, 05:11 PM
Any case where a player's idea of a game's rules doesn't perfectly coincide with the game master's can cause conflict or confusion.

Yes. You are correct. The difference (and this is a concept I point out all the time about GMing) is that in every other case where there is conflict, the GM is the "creator" of the world. If there's a difference of opinion about how climbable that wall is, or how difficult it will be to jump heroically through that window, or whether the local prince really will buy the crazy story you just used to manipulate him, the GM is the automatic officiator, because he literally plays everything in the world that isn't the PCs. If the player and the GM disagree on those things, the player is always wrong and the GM is always right.

But the player gets to decide the personality of his player, not the GM. It's the one area where if the player says "but to my character, this is a good act because he views things this way", and the GM thinks otherwise, there is a legitimate conflict and it's much less absolute in terms of who is right. See my Robin Hood example. The player may think "my rogue is chaotic good", but the GM says "No. You're lawful evil". Who is correct?



This is a line drawn in sand based on a double standard. Supernatural consequences of breaking conduct are just as real in-game consequences as non-supernatural consequences of breaking conduct, and the non-supernatural consequences are just as artificial as the supernatural ones. They are based on the exact same dynamic of a game master choosing how the world reacts to actions of player characters.

Seriously. "You will lose your supernatural powers if you violate commandments of your god" is supernatural equivalent of "you will lose your workplace access if you violate orders from your boss". Detecting as Evil is supernatural equivalent of having a wanted poster put out. So on and so forth. Both kinds of statements are enforced by the game master's decision, both are equally "punitive" in that they are negative in-game consequences based on character action. By saying the first kind is bad but the latter is a-okay, you are simply expressing a preference for the game master to play supernatural forces as silent. That's not "better", it simply leads to a different set of game-able situations.

Except you are conflating two very different things (the very ones I was talking about). "Violat(ing the) commandments of your god" is what I describe as "side/faction" alignment. That's perfectly fine and works well. You joined the church of <whoever> and chose to commit yourself to the rules of that deity, and thus may be bound by it, especially if you hold a position in that church that grants you supernatural abilities as a result.

That is entirely different from every single person in the game having an alignment that is cosmically tracked and enforced (like D&D does). So whether I worship a deity that falls within the chaotic range, if I'm a bard, and I fail to be sufficiently chaotic (as the GM sees it), I may lose my class abilities. What if my bard is my version of Robin Hood (in the example I gave), and the GM decides that my plans are too well thought out, my objectives too concrete, and I work too well with others, and that I'm not really "chaotic" anymore because of that. I need to create random poorly thought out plans, and intentionally ignore what the group decides in favor of myself, I guess? Or am I purely chaotic because I'm fighting "against the system", no matter what methods I employ? Ok, but now we've established that chaos is entirely about externalities rather than actual character traits. Great. So anyone fighting against tyranny is "chaotic". Um... but that puts us back in the stereotypical "absurd" standard for lawful characters that requires that they "obey the law where they are", which is literally the example given most often of the wrong way to run alignments.

So which is it? And again, this doesn't matter if the alignment is just a guide for roleplaying. But the moment it has actual in-game mechanical rules attached to it (like class requirements, class abilities, or just how you show up on detection/protection spells), this becomes an issue.



I do not acknowledge this "Belkar problem" as any kind or sort of a problem. "Choosing to good things" requires an actual change of behaviour to count, and change of behaviour is always a detectable attribute even in absence of any detection spells. Like many other critics of alignment, you fail to realize detection spells are only a minor component of the overall system. They also do not work in the way you describe - they typically detect current alignment, not a character's life history. Nevermind that access to detection spells is not universal, and they can be fooled. Once again, you are describing a trade-off, not some absolute improvement, because you fail to acknowledge there's an entire layer of gameplay around supernatural information gathering methods and defenses from them.

To the bolded statement, the characters life history determines their "current alignment". That's why I called it the "Belkar problem". Belkar, from the point of view of Minrah" is a "good" character, right? If we only knew of his behavior since the start of this book (and ignored all dialogue to the contrary), we'd clearly identify him as chaotic good/neutral, right? Yet, his protection from evil amulet affects him. That is the exact opposite of what you claim, and is the "standard" in most games where alignment is tracked and has in-game mechanical effects. Your alignment doesn't change because of a few acts over a relatively shot period of time.

And yes, there's more then just detection. There's the protection from evil effect. And there's the whole "where does he go when he dies" discussion. You may choose not to acknowledge it, but it is a "problem". If for no other reason than we have a game system where your afterlife is literally determined by your alignment. And this has nothing directly to do with deities or the worship of those deities (Belkar doesn't worship any gods, and has made no promises to any divine deity in terms of how he will behave, nor has asked for any corresponding divinely granted powers/spells/etc). But he's still bound to it.


But more importantly, "what you are doing right here when interacting with these people determines how they view you" is STILL BASED on external judgement by the game master. You aren't, on the game level, removing that element by removing supernatural information gathering. Players can still see this as a punishment if they're so inclined - all negative consequences to characters, for any reason, can always be argued to be punishments in context of a game.

Sure. But that puts it in the realm of the players playing their characters, and the GM playing the NPCs. I'm specifically speaking to game mechanics that put the GM into the position of telling the player how they must play their character, with in-game rewards or penalties for doing so. And also, specifically outside the realm of "PC has chosen these restrictions by choosing to be a cleric/whatever of X deity".



The difference is that I'm interested in exploring what alignment systems can be used for, rather than simply complaining that they exist.

I'm not complaining that they merely exist. I'm exploring what kinds of alignment systems work well, and which ones do not work so well. And my argument is that alignment systems that attempt to apply alignment as a personality trait tracker *and* a "what side are you on" mechanism, *and* have in-game effects based on whether the character is "played correctly", will tend to run into problems.



Another case of you turning a simple matter on its head. Alignment system does not force a game master, it ALLOWS the game master to make those determinations. The process of determining alignment is simply asking those two questions from the perspective of a supernatural force.

Which supernatural force though? Again. Examine my Orc and Robin Hood examples. Both showcase scenarios where the character's alignment can be judged to be radically different purely based on what point of perspective we choose to use to do so. Do we judge the Orc based on whether he aligns with human societal norms? Or Orc societal norms? Does the universe itself judge Orcs to be wrong and humans to be right? Why? And is Robin Hood's alignment based on how he goes about what he does, or how what he does affects society as a whole? On the former, he's clearly lawful, but on the later, he's clearly chaotic. Which is it? And what "supernatural force" is judging this? And also... why?



Player characters, even players, worrying about "helping an evil person" is something that can happen even in a game without alignment. Using Detect Evil or other supernatural information gathering method is functional equivalent of checking a real person's ID to see if they are a wanted criminal or mental health patient on the run. Detection spells don't force "nonsensical" outcomes - they give players information. If you had an easy way to gain information about people that you're not usually privy to, it would change your behaviour as well - and once again you neglect the idea that exploring hypotheses like this can be the point of including the fantastic element to begin with.

Again, responding to the bold. Don't they? Both the Orc in my example and a human serial killer would detect as "evil" to a human adventurer (in most alignment systems anyway). But they are radically different. And let's make it even more interesting. What about an Orc serial killer? So humans can detect "evil" criminals within their societies using detect evil spells, but Orcs can't? Because... why? All Orcs (or most maybe based on the example of human-centric morality) will detect as such anyway, so those who are "evil" by the context of Orc society just hide away?

You don't see that being a problem? I certainly do. It's a massive glaring inconsistency. Choosing to ignore those cases doesn't make them actually go away.



Therefore, every holistic, rational examination of questions such as "which side are you helping out and/or fighting for?" and "what actions have you taken on behalf of your side?" involves examination of character personality traits.

Except that, itself, is constraining. A "side/faction" could very well only care that you are fighting against the enemy "side/faction", and not really care at all how you fight, or what other things you do when you are not. By tying these together, you force players to pick not only "sides", but at the same time and in the same choice also "personality" that goes along with it. And yeah, sometimes (maybe even a lot of times), that works fine. But other times, it does not.

The character of Cassian Andor in Star Wars (Rogue One, and currently the Andor series) is a great example of this in what is otherwise a very clear cut "good vs evil" story environment. The goody-goody's of the rebellion (main characters in the original series) can conveniently ignore exactly how those Death Star plans were originally obtained, right? But folks on "their side" certainly did some pretty evil things along the way, right?

Imagine if there was some overall authority in the universe that said that the "rebels" were on the side of "good", and "the empire" was on the side of "evil", and therefore all rebels had to be of good alignment and all imperials of evil alignment (conflating "sides" with personality traits, right?). Then add in actual punishments to people who fail to follow those alignment rules, or even game rules that say that if you do too many "evil" things you'll start siding with the empire, cause that's now "your side". You've just run into problems and have removed exploration of an entire sub-set of stories about the rebels fighting against the empire. All because you chose to have such a rigid alignment system in place.

And yes. I call that absurd. But that's effectively what you get when you impose a single "alignment" that includes both "sides" and "personality". And yes, it can work in some game systems. But it will work only very poorly in most. Certainly, it will fail if you and your players want to play anything other than cardboard cutout personalities in the game world. Which, well, most (many?) of us do.



Lawful is honor, trustworthiness, obedience to authority, and reliability. On the downside, it can include close-mindedness, reactionary adherence to tradition, judgmentalness, and a lack of adaptability.

Chaos is freedom, adaptability, and flexibility. On the downside, it's recklessness, resentment towards legitimate authority, arbitrary actions, and irresponsibility.

Those are pretty straightforward and workable definitions. Is someone usually following the law because it's the law (as opposed to because it's more convenient to not be hassled)? Do they tend to honor their word, because that's the correct thing to do? That's lawful. Does someone do what they want, because they want it? Do they change their means because it better serves their ends? That's chaotic. They're not arcane. They're descriptors of the aggregate of behavior and general approach to things.

They're not though (law and chaos is particularly difficult in this case). Half of those things are "internal" assessments (how does the character make choices), and the other half are "external" (how does a larger society view the characters actions). We can certainly imagine a character who is honorable, trustworthy, and reliable, while also resenting/opposing legitimate authority and openly refusing to follow the law "because it is the law", but rather judges bad laws to be "bad" and therefore not worth following.


Good does altruism, respect for life, and concern for the dignity of sentient beings (and, IMO, to a lesser extent, non-sentient beings... doesn't have to mean vegan, just means "not gonna kick a puppy").

Evil is hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some kill because it's fun, some kill because the victims are in the way of their goals, but those are the hallmarks of evil.

Good and evil are a little easier to be honest. But where they fall apart is when we examine different cultures with different societal norms. What may be "evil" in one, would be viewed as "good" in another. Again though, the issue is our determination of good/evil is entirely based on current/modern human value judgements. That's not a bad starting point, but is problematic if you really want to run a game world with non-human cultures within it (which most fantasy RPG settings do have).


My position is "It can work." Your position is, roughly, "It does not work." That it does work for some people invalidates your position; that it doesn't work for others doesn't invalidate mine.

That's a bit of a false dilemma. I can't speak for others, but I'm certainly not saying "It does not work". I'm saying "it does not always work well". Which is not at all in conflict with "it can work". Something can work some times, but not other times. But that's the point. And if a game system (like alignment) consistently fails in specific very consistent cases, then it's not a bad idea to consider scrapping it (or making changes to it), when running games where those cases are likely to come up.

And yes, as a result of many years (decades?) of examining where alignment systems work well, and where they don't, I've come to the conclusion I've stated in this thread:

1. There tends to be inconsistency when judging alignment based on internal personality traits alone versus broader societal norms. Law/Chaos tends to most often deviate when judging actions within a society based on personal traits versus society norms/rules. Good/Evil tends to most often deviate when judging actions between different societies as a whole.

2. If alignments are also a measure of "side" in a broader cosmic conflict (which could be defined in a number of different ways), it's often even more incompatible with the first method of measurement.

3. Enforcement of in-game mechanical rules should be avoided to a great degree in case 1, and really only allowed in case 2 if case 1 is not also present *and* if the "sides" are things to be chosen by the players running the characters (and again, restricted to actions for/against your "side").



So lets review what your character is actually doing: unlike other members of the party, they keep their word to an external group, placing their own interest at risk for the sake of rights of all humans. When caught and questioned, rather than lie to preserve their individual freedom, they refuse to speak in a way that puts them under suspect, but upholds the maxim that if everyone was to lie, society would fall apart.

In summary: based on this small pool of evidence, the character is Lawful Good, or Neutral Good leaning towards Law. Not some odd corner case that somehow challenges the system.

Except this determination is based entirely on which "external group" the character is being loyal to. Is it a code of honor instilled by his order? Or to his fellow party members who he's agreed to join on some adventure? Or to the local prince? To the laws of his homeland, or the land he's currently operating in (and perhaps working to assist)?

A Lawful Good paladin and a Chaotic Evil Rogue may both make the same actions (refusing to talk to their captors), but for very different reasons. And yes, if the player and the GM are in agreement that the action fits their character, there's no problem. But what if they aren't in agreement? What if the GM decides that the lawful good character would of course not lie about his plot to overthrow the evil overlord who's minions have captured him? Or even refusing to acknowledge that he is planning such a thing is itself deceitful and therefore not "lawful good"? And this is before even getting into a scenario where the poor hapless paladin may have been hired/requested to help overthrow said "evil overlord" under false pretenses, and maybe doesn't even realize that the folks who captured him are the "legitimate lawful authority" and are really the "good guys", and by concealing his compatriots while they undertake their part of the plan, he's unwittingly assisting an "evil" and "chaotic" act. Heck. What if he wasn't captured by the minions of the evil overlord, but another faction opposed to said overlord? And they want information from the paladin which may be critical to the success of their plans? How much vetting does the paladin have to do to make this determination? And how does he make the decision between helping "his side" win against the overlord, versus helping "any side" win? There may very well be no clear cut "good vs evil" (or even "law vs chaos") dynamic at play, so which ethical rules is the paladin actually bound to?

And perhaps an even more realistic scenario. Is the chaotic evil rogue required to turn on his companions in such a situation? After all, he's supposed to be selfish and untrustworthy, right? What if the player picked that alignment because he wants to play a character that doesn't like to follow the rules, and is willing to get his hands dirty for the right price, but is still absolutely loyal to anyone who has earned the right to be called "friend" (a completely reasonable set of personality traits for an otherwise "chaotic evil" rogue, right)? The GM might decide to punish his character for failing to "follow his alignment" in that situation, judging that the chaotic evil rogue should have put his own needs ahead of his companions, and by failing to do so, he's showing a level of altruism that isn't in accordance with his alignment.

Again. If alignment is just a guideline, then that's fine. But the moment there actually are in-game effects as a result, you can run into these sorts of scenarios. And in my experience, they tend to occur (or should occur) more often than most people here seem to be thinking. Or, put the other way around, it's possible that many GMs are avoiding (perhaps even subconsciously) these sorts of situations precisely because they know that they will encounter flaws in the system and they want to avoid them. Which, of course, puts us right back into the case of the alignment system itself acting as a restraint on free roleplaying.

Witty Username
2022-10-11, 07:25 PM
That is another one to add to my list:
Lawful and Trustworthy
And it's cousin
Chaotic and Untrustworthy
Adhering to established societies and and believing in ordered groups over individuals has little to do with the honesty of the character. People saying and repeating lies to maintain the status quo as well as creating grand deceptions to establish societal order.

Take that trope in detective media where the police or detective lies to a suspect to deceive them into incriminating themselves. Most would describe these as Lawful characters, but being untrustworthy is arguably fundamental to their character at times. See also characters from spy movie and superhero media.

KorvinStarmast
2022-10-11, 07:40 PM
That is another one to add to my list:
Lawful and Trustworthy
And it's cousin
Chaotic and Untrustworthy
Works well in some games and at some tables.

Witty Username
2022-10-11, 08:33 PM
Works well in some games and at some tables.

I want to unpack a bit further, to make sure I am understood.

I find a lot of traits get used in alignment that aren't actually associated with the alignment but feel intuitive.
Say Lawful Good and anti-vice (gambling, drinking, etc.)
I personally get fascinated by this design space because it will cause characters to feel strange but not in a way that actually conflicts with their alignment.

Take for example a Lawful Good untrustworthy person, they can benefit society and benefit other people, but it feels weird, to the point where things like Lawful Good Thief were restricted in D&D in the beginning.

Also, insert moral quandary here, such as lying/concealing information to avoid panic or not to allow others to make informed decisions, that doesn't actually have a correct answer corresponding to the alignment system which is freeing on the DM and blood boiling for players when using DM adjudicated alignments.

KorvinStarmast
2022-10-11, 08:46 PM
Also, insert moral quandary here, I you want to impress me, lay a moral quandry on a Neutral Evil or Lawful Evil player. Playing Gotcha DM with LG players is lame to the tenth power.

Witty Username
2022-10-11, 09:32 PM
I you want to impress me, lay a moral quandry on a Neutral Evil or Lawful Evil player. Playing Gotcha DM with LG players is lame to the tenth power.

I don't like playing gotcha DM at all, personally, hence the value of stuff that doesn't interact with alignment systems, at least when I played 3.5. As of 5e, I tend to just leave it to the players to figure it out.

As for the Evil alignments, the simplest one is put altruism between them and getting paid. Or a situation where pushing their own agenda would cause them to lose something else (like face, safety or stuff). Do you shakedown the person the party just rescued for a reward, or let it go for the moment to see if you can get it without damaging your appearances?

Tanarii
2022-10-11, 09:47 PM
As for the Evil alignments, the simplest one is put altruism between them and getting paid.
One of the problems is most people think that Evil activities have more 'points' towards being Evil Alignment than Good ones towards being Good Alignment. So it's hard to put moral quandaries on Evil Alignment folks. They can do lots of Good stuff and just a few big ticket Evil things, and be considered Good characters by folks that think this way. Its often part and parcel of action-carries-Alignment systems, especially ones where actions have literally posts for tracking it. But more generally, it's Fall-From-Grace Alignment.

This doesn't apply when Alignment is overall but not constantly required typical behavior, with defined different typical behaviors for each type of Alignment. Especially when it's motivational instead of descriptive.

gbaji
2022-10-12, 01:38 PM
I you want to impress me, lay a moral quandry on a Neutral Evil or Lawful Evil player. Playing Gotcha DM with LG players is lame to the tenth power.


Tanarii's response touches on this well. There is a tendency in many game systems to treat "good" as something that is difficult to achieve, difficult to maintain, and easy to lose, while "evil" is the fallback case if you "fail to be good". So yeah, it's trickier to create quandaries for evil alignments, but we might also ask "is that how things should be"? More to the point, in the D&D alignment grid, it's presented as though this is all a balanced scale, yet in actual game practices, it's not. Evil characters can pretty much do all the "good" things they want, but as long as they also do evil things, they are evil. That's clearly not the same for good characters though, is it?

If we were really going to present this graphically, it should not be a square representing a couple of axis, but a well with evil at the bottom and good at the top, where the natural inclination is to pull the character to the bottom, and some sort of gravitational force that requires far more effort to "cliimb" upwards to good, but merely slipping up on doing "ok" things can cause you to fall a bit. And yeah, I suppose we could give it some breadth by putting law and chaos off to each side. Don't get me wrong, that's a perfectly valid way of looking at alignments, but again, it's *not* how D&D presents things.

It should be though, based on the descriptions of how alignment should be played in game. So yeah, in that model, "evil" never runs into a quandary. They just "are". If we were actually using a balanced scale, then yes, GMs should be penalizing characters with "evil" on their sheet if they aren't consistently doing things that are "evil". Merely traveling with a mostly good aligned group helping villagers with Orc raids, stopping bandits, hunting down the evil necromancer, etc, should cause them to slip their alignment towards good. The GM would (arguably) require that the player attempt to thwart the PC party's activities, or at the very least, should be attempting to manipulate every act of "good" in some way that benefits themselves or their own "evil plan". If good characters can lose their alignment by doing evil acts, then evil characters should lose their alignment for doing good acts. Period.

So yeah. There should be equal quandaries for evil aligned characters. The fact that there rarely are, or they are minor at best, is a problem.

MoiMagnus
2022-10-12, 04:54 PM
I you want to impress me, lay a moral quandry on a Neutral Evil or Lawful Evil player. Playing Gotcha DM with LG players is lame to the tenth power.

The usual moral quandry for Evil peoples is the "leap of faith".

One basic staple of fiction (and arguably real world too) is that doing good deeds and being part of "the good guys" is actually beneficial to you... as long as you don't get backstabbed by peoples you though were good guys.

So in the same way that moral challenge for good peoples have inherently a possibility for falling to evil, moral challenge for evil peoples have inherently a possibility for starting a path to redemption.

OldTrees1
2022-10-12, 07:33 PM
I you want to impress me, lay a moral quandry on a Neutral Evil or Lawful Evil player. Playing Gotcha DM with LG players is lame to the tenth power.

Disclaimer/Agreement: Gotcha DMs can go away.


A good moral quandary requires knowledge about the character.

Type 1:
Consider the Evil character that, incorrectly, believes they are doing the right thing. Next consider a moral quandary that has them choose between how much they risk the limited good they are doing vs how much they risk someone they care about.

Evil character: I am doing this for the greater good. I needed to bring order to to cease the petty wars. My iron fist is a necessary evil to herald peace. I am doing this so my family can live in a peaceful world.

Quandary: You have a BBEG rival that also seeks world conquest but they do not desire peace (war is fun/profitable maybe). The rival double booked a coup and a death threat against your family on the same day. You have resources that can fan out to multiple places. How much do you send to your 2 houses and how many to the 2 government centers?

What? A moral quandary for an evil character is not about "which good to avoid?", it is still about "which evil to avoid?".

Type 2:
The Evil character has their own moral beliefs. They might be incorrect, but they do have them. Momentarily assume those beliefs are correct and write a quandary based on them.

Evil has no "quandary" about "falling" to what is actually moral. They have a quandary about avoiding what they consider immoral. When those are the same thing, then they will worry about it.


The usual moral quandry for Evil peoples is the "leap of faith".

One basic staple of fiction (and arguably real world too) is that doing good deeds and being part of "the good guys" is actually beneficial to you... as long as you don't get backstabbed by peoples you though were good guys.

So in the same way that moral challenge for good peoples have inherently a possibility for falling to evil, moral challenge for evil peoples have inherently a possibility for starting a path to redemption.

I recognize that staple of fiction. I have an Illithid getting free meals while riding with a crew that is trying to save the universe.

Does this really count as a moral challenge though? Unless the character has a completely inverted moral compass with respect to the challenge (Altruism is evil because it is self destructive), then they have no challenge when presented with a tempting opportunity to do good.

gbaji
2022-10-12, 07:58 PM
Evil has no "quandary" about "falling" to what is actually moral. They have a quandary about avoiding what they consider immoral. When those are the same thing, then they will worry about it.

Except I think that's exactly the "problem" that the question was designed to highlight (perhaps unintentionally, but there you have it). An evil character (in most alignment systems, and certainly in D&D) does not face any in-game consequences for not being "correctly/sufficiently evil". It's more or less impossible to "fall to goodness" for characters with an evil alignment in the way that good characters can fall and lose their alignment in the opposite direction.

Absent that potential punishment for failure to play their alignment, there really is no quandary (outside of pure RP). I suppose they have to deal with concealing their nature from the other PCs, but again, that puts it into the RP category. There's no real threat of a game mechanic coming down on them from on high if they don't play their character correctly. I suppose we could also argue that D&D's afterlife rules offer punishments for evil characters and rewards for good, but then that strongly suggests that players are *supposed* to be trying to be playing good characters, and that being evil is "wrong", and a "failure" in some way.

So the "quandary" case isn't scaled evenly, it's purely directional. Which, I suppose, is yet another aspect of alignment that limits roleplaying. It's *easier* to roleplay the character you want to play the farther you get away from the "good" side of the spectrum. Um... which ought to be a problem, right?

OldTrees1
2022-10-12, 08:40 PM
Except I think that's exactly the "problem" that the question was designed to highlight (perhaps unintentionally, but there you have it). An evil character (in most alignment systems, and certainly in D&D) does not face any in-game consequences for not being "correctly/sufficiently evil". It's more or less impossible to "fall to goodness" for characters with an evil alignment in the way that good characters can fall and lose their alignment in the opposite direction.

Absent that potential punishment for failure to play their alignment, there really is no quandary (outside of pure RP). I suppose they have to deal with concealing their nature from the other PCs, but again, that puts it into the RP category. There's no real threat of a game mechanic coming down on them from on high if they don't play their character correctly. I suppose we could also argue that D&D's afterlife rules offer punishments for evil characters and rewards for good, but then that strongly suggests that players are *supposed* to be trying to be playing good characters, and that being evil is "wrong", and a "failure" in some way.

I see no reason to avoid symmetrical treatment here. The GM controls how NPCs respond to the PC's behavior. I think it makes sense for the Player to drive any mechanical consequences. Where the two areas overlap, the GM and Player can/should work together.

Consider a cleric is falling out of favor with their deity. The GM might start mentioning the changing opinion of the fellow clerics. The GM and Player might discuss the cleric & deity's relationship and what that drift might mean. The GM might ask the player, "if your cleric falls out of favor with Bane, are there mechanical effects that make sense?". Maybe the cleric becomes a heretical cleric powered by the blissful belief/conviction that they are still doing Bane's work. Maybe the cleric reconsiders their philosophy and seeks out another patron. Maybe the Player even suggests temporarily losing/hindering their divine magic during this time of turmoil. This is the model I apply to Paladins of all alignments (although they are a bit less likely to have deity patrons).


So the "quandary" case isn't scaled evenly, it's purely directional. Which, I suppose, is yet another aspect of alignment that limits roleplaying. It's *easier* to roleplay the character you want to play the farther you get away from the "good" side of the spectrum. Um... which ought to be a problem, right?

Given my above response, I would say the quandary is scaled evenly but is still mostly directional. (Sidenote: Although the further from good you go the more likely the character has a skewed moral compass and thus can face things they perceive as quandaries that are not quandaries to an accurate compass).

Is it easier to roleplay the character you want the father you get from moral? No, or at least not in general. Either there is some moral characterization you want the character to have, or you don't care about their good/evil alignment. Either way I don't see being evil as easier to play your character.

HumanFighter
2022-10-12, 10:46 PM
I agree that Paladins should always be Lawful Good. That's the one drawback of the class. They have to be Lawful and Good, otherwise they lose their powers, cuz Paladin is an Overpowered Class, compared to others. Still, in my games, I ignore alignment almost entirely. Instead i use a "morality" meter which is 0-100, the higher the good, the lower the evil. Paladins have to be 70 or higher on the scale otherwise they are disqualified from the class. Morality shifts aren't common in the game, but I appreciate them being there. Now if ur planning on playing a complete Psychopath character who tortures and murders and rapes thru the universe (i'm looking at you, anonymous person A), there's no point in having the morality meter at all, but no system for gaming is perfect.
And it's hard to even use a morality meter such as this, cuz who decides what is good or bad? Sure, u murdered a drug dealer outside of the law, but he was selling to kids, so should u rly lose morality score for that? There's gotta be room for nuance here, and i just dont think an alignment system or morality meter system is appropriate for some campaigns.

Mordante
2022-10-13, 02:00 AM
I believe that alignment is at worst actively harmful in one of several ways and at best completely useless. Either it's specific enough to be a straight-jacket or it's too vague to be helpful. I've yet to see any sort of useful middle ground and if people want a two word description of their character's behavior, I'd prefer if that just came up with them themselves. I suppose it's useful for effects that target specific groups (no Smite Evil if there's no Evil, etc.).

(I also find the idea of objective morality inherently absurd, but that's admittedly a subjective opinion that doesn't influence the game one way or the other).

Heh. This is very true.

I agree with you fully. That is why spells like detect evil and similar spells are bad design. I don't think anyone ever uses detect alignment. You are fully correct that there is no such thing as objective morality.

I use the alignment system more as a character concept idea, what kind of character do I want to play? But sometimes I don't write down an exact alignment, but more of a description.

I think World of Darkness did it better with nature and demeanor of a character.

Batcathat
2022-10-13, 05:35 AM
My position is "It can work." Your position is, roughly, "It does not work." That it does work for some people invalidates your position; that it doesn't work for others doesn't invalidate mine.

Fair enough. It can clearly work for some people ("some people" being short for "people who belong to a group where everyone agrees on the definition of each alignment and manages to avoid all the potential pitfalls"). Still, I feel like a subsystem that is unusable for a decently sized portion of the player base can't really be called "working" in a general sense.


When each box contains roughly 1/9th the population of the multiverse it will, indeed, be quite big.

On that we agree. I just find that that makes it too big to be useful in this context.


That is absolutely not true. Saying "This house has four walls and a roof" says "This house is a building", not what sort of house it is; "This house has four walls and a roof" is "This character has an alignment". You want to describe alignment? How about "This house has two stories and an open floor plan?" "This house has narrow corridors and a disturbing basement."

We probably shouldn't get bogged down by my metaphor that admittedly wasn't great to start. But the last example is kind of my point. The house has a disturbing basement – that's not really very helpful unless you explain to me how it's disturbing (Monsters? Creepy furniture? Sex dungeon?) and in a similar way, being told someone's alignment isn't really that helpful without the specifics (at which point, why bother with the alignment).

MoiMagnus
2022-10-13, 07:34 AM
Does this really count as a moral challenge though? Unless the character has a completely inverted moral compass with respect to the challenge (Altruism is evil because it is self destructive), then they have no challenge when presented with a tempting opportunity to do good.

Realistically, the challenge is easier if the evil character consider that a redemption would be good for them (either good for their soul, or because they want to be part of a group that do good), and the moral challenge is on whether they should actually walk the path of redemption (difficult path, with high rate of failure, but with big reward) or continue to fall to the temptation of easy evil (for immediate rewards).

OldTrees1
2022-10-13, 10:31 AM
We probably shouldn't get bogged down by my metaphor that admittedly wasn't great to start. But the last example is kind of my point. The house has a disturbing basement – that's not really very helpful unless you explain to me how it's disturbing (Monsters? Creepy furniture? Sex dungeon?) and in a similar way, being told someone's alignment isn't really that helpful without the specifics (at which point, why bother with the alignment).

The house having a disturbing basement is helpful, and a further explanation is more helpful. "The basement has a disturbing basement with creepy furniture" is helpful to a point, but if more detail is requested you can then elaborate on why the furniture is creepy in the same manner you asked for elaboration on why the basement was disturbing.

In a current campaign I am playing an Illithid. The characters know the common lore about the infamy of Mind Flayer. They also know in the setting there are Illithids that don't match the infamy. The players know my Illithid character is (orderly) evil. This is akin to a reader knowing the narrator is an unreliable narrator. As the campaign continues the description of my character's characterization is elaborated though word and deed. The other characters started off wary and with reservations. As time passed they remained wary but what they are wary about has shifted with the growing context. Still there are times when the benefits of the high level description (orderly evil) has helped contextualize recently revealed characterization.

Why do I bother with alignment for my non unaligned characters? Because summarization is useful for different reasons than elaboration is useful. Both are tools in my toolbox.


Realistically, the challenge is easier if the evil character consider that a redemption would be good for them (either good for their soul, or because they want to be part of a group that do good), and the moral challenge is on whether they should actually walk the path of redemption (difficult path, with high rate of failure, but with big reward) or continue to fall to the temptation of easy evil (for immediate rewards).

Yes, that kind of moral challenge works well.

NovenFromTheSun
2022-10-13, 02:49 PM
Tanarii's response touches on this well. There is a tendency in many game systems to treat "good" as something that is difficult to achieve, difficult to maintain, and easy to lose, while "evil" is the fallback case if you "fail to be good". So yeah, it's trickier to create quandaries for evil alignments, but we might also ask "is that how things should be"? More to the point, in the D&D alignment grid, it's presented as though this is all a balanced scale, yet in actual game practices, it's not. Evil characters can pretty much do all the "good" things they want, but as long as they also do evil things, they are evil. That's clearly not the same for good characters though, is it?

If we were really going to present this graphically, it should not be a square representing a couple of axis, but a well with evil at the bottom and good at the top, where the natural inclination is to pull the character to the bottom, and some sort of gravitational force that requires far more effort to "cliimb" upwards to good, but merely slipping up on doing "ok" things can cause you to fall a bit. And yeah, I suppose we could give it some breadth by putting law and chaos off to each side. Don't get me wrong, that's a perfectly valid way of looking at alignments, but again, it's *not* how D&D presents things.

It should be though, based on the descriptions of how alignment should be played in game. So yeah, in that model, "evil" never runs into a quandary. They just "are". If we were actually using a balanced scale, then yes, GMs should be penalizing characters with "evil" on their sheet if they aren't consistently doing things that are "evil". Merely traveling with a mostly good aligned group helping villagers with Orc raids, stopping bandits, hunting down the evil necromancer, etc, should cause them to slip their alignment towards good. The GM would (arguably) require that the player attempt to thwart the PC party's activities, or at the very least, should be attempting to manipulate every act of "good" in some way that benefits themselves or their own "evil plan". If good characters can lose their alignment by doing evil acts, then evil characters should lose their alignment for doing good acts. Period.

So yeah. There should be equal quandaries for evil aligned characters. The fact that there rarely are, or they are minor at best, is a problem.

The balancing factor for Good in favor of Evil should be that good beings (including gods and spirits) are supposed to help each other carry the burden; while evil beings are basically on their own. I can’t say that’s what’s shown in most of the lore though, and definitely not the case of gotcha scenarios.

gbaji
2022-10-13, 03:53 PM
I see no reason to avoid symmetrical treatment here. The GM controls how NPCs respond to the PC's behavior. I think it makes sense for the Player to drive any mechanical consequences. Where the two areas overlap, the GM and Player can/should work together.

Correct. If the only consequences are roleplayed, this is true. I'm specifically talking about the flaws of such an alignment system when there are in-game mechanical consequences as well (detect/protect spells, smite vulnerability, potential to lose class and/or class abilities, etc).


Consider a cleric is falling out of favor with their deity. The GM might start mentioning the changing opinion of the fellow clerics. The GM and Player might discuss the cleric & deity's relationship and what that drift might mean. The GM might ask the player, "if your cleric falls out of favor with Bane, are there mechanical effects that make sense?". Maybe the cleric becomes a heretical cleric powered by the blissful belief/conviction that they are still doing Bane's work. Maybe the cleric reconsiders their philosophy and seeks out another patron. Maybe the Player even suggests temporarily losing/hindering their divine magic during this time of turmoil. This is the model I apply to Paladins of all alignments (although they are a bit less likely to have deity patrons).

We're discussing the alignment system as a whole. Alignment in many systems (D&D in particular) affect everyone, not just clerics (or other characters who gain some powers from a deity). Every single thing you just talked about can be handled without having an alignment system in he game at all. Every deity can have a set of behavior that is expected from their followers, with consequences (just for their followers) for failure to follow those rules, and also directly related to how close that character's relationship to the deity is. So a lay worshipper may fail to follow their god's dictates and the worst that happens is maybe their priest has a talk with them or something (if it's even noticed). A cleric may suffer loss of spells/abilities from their deity for sufficient infractions. In fact, D&D (at least a couple editions) have specific additional requirements for clerics to remain in favor of their deities that is completely above and beyond the normal requirements of the alignment system.

This has nothing at all to do with what I was talking about.


Given my above response, I would say the quandary is scaled evenly but is still mostly directional. (Sidenote: Although the further from good you go the more likely the character has a skewed moral compass and thus can face things they perceive as quandaries that are not quandaries to an accurate compass).

Is it easier to roleplay the character you want the father you get from moral? No, or at least not in general. Either there is some moral characterization you want the character to have, or you don't care about their good/evil alignment. Either way I don't see being evil as easier to play your character.

I think you are still just talking about RP though. And I completely agree. I was, however, specifically talking about the fact that it's generally "hard" to maintain a good alignment, while it's very "easy" to maintain an evil one when we think about the mechanics of the alignment system itself. That's asymmetrical. The very fact that we speak regularly of characters "falling" in alignment (always towards evil), but that there's a "struggle for redemption" for a character to move in the direction of good shows how utterly ingrained this basic concept is within most alignment systems.

A character is "evil" if they do evil things. Period. It does not matter if they also do good. A character is good only if they do good things *and* avoid doing evil things. Neutral is a bit trickier, but most will define it not so much as a balance of good/evil (although it could be, and certainly is if it's a transition one is going through between good and evil alignments), but someone who is either not intending specifically to cause positive or negative outcomes for others, but may do actions which have that effect from time to time *or* someone who is trying to achieve good outcomes but is ok with using means which could be considered "evil" (sort of an "ends justifies the means" approach). A character will not long maintain a neutral alignment if they are intentionally causing harm to others (the "end" is to do harm), no matter how many good things they may also do. Again, the "gravity" of alignment here is towards evil.


Realistically, the challenge is easier if the evil character consider that a redemption would be good for them (either good for their soul, or because they want to be part of a group that do good), and the moral challenge is on whether they should actually walk the path of redemption (difficult path, with high rate of failure, but with big reward) or continue to fall to the temptation of easy evil (for immediate rewards).

But that's somewhat the point. It takes conscious effort and time to work towards redemption (become good). It takes a just few really bad/careless decisions for a good character to lose that alignment. So evil and good are not balanced alignments in most systems. Evil is "down" (the direction you are pulled towards), and you must constantly struggle against it or fall. I'm not even saying that this is wrong, just that it makes symmetrical assessments of the alignment system incorrect. The rules for good are not the same as they are for evil, yet the game system (for the most part) treats them as though they are. Um... And you didn't actually state *why* "redemption would be good for them". There is literally nothing in the game system that makes that true (unless they are regaining a class the previously lost). It's purely a RP thing.

And certainly, from a RP perspective the introduction of game mechanics that punish characters for failing to follow their alignment automatically make that RP more difficult if you are playing a good character versus an evil (or arguably even neutral) one. A player playing an evil character has the freedom to RP the precise personality of that character with virtually zero fear or concern that they may lose their alignment as a consequence of their actions. We literally bake into our concept of alignment that unless an evil character is consciously trying to become good, they can't change (ok, or subconsciously perhaps in the case of Belkar), and even then it will take a very long time for a series of "good acts" to ever make up for all the evil they have done and result in an alignment change. And it's not enough to just do good things. They have to also avoid doing evil things while this whole process is going on.


The same player playing a good character must moderate what they may think is within their characters personality to do and limit the actual actions of the character based on what the game rules and GM will rule that action *is* within the context of the alignment system. It's not enough for a good character to just do good. They must also constantly avoid anything that is "evil" as well. This automatically creates constraints for the good aligned character in terms or roleplaying because they are more likely to be affected by the in-game mechanical rules inherent in the alignment system.

And we could even say that's ok. Maybe we want players to strive to play "good" characters within the game we've designed, right? Except that other than feeling good about ourselves as players perhaps, there is no in-game reward for playing a good character. The alignment system itself actually pushes players towards more neutral alignments as a result of this, with evil avoided only at tables where it's a problem either because of the other PCs or NPCs who may react negatively as a result.

Even this would all be ok, except that there have been many efforts over the decades to "balance" good and evil in terms of power/abilities/class/etc so that playing an evil character is just as valid an option as playing a good one. You can't have an alignment system that assumes "good==hard, evil==easy", without having some benefits to remaining good versus falling to evil (again, I'm speaking game mechanics here, not RP). If there are just as many fun and interesting classes to play on the evil side of things as the good, and just as many "anti-good" spells out there are "anti-evil", you have more problems with alignment inherent in the very game rules you are using.

You kinda can't throw a stick without hitting a problem in the D&D alignment system. And, unfortunately, many other games just use the same basic concepts and spackle them into their games as well.

gbaji
2022-10-13, 04:20 PM
The balancing factor for Good in favor of Evil should be that good beings (including gods and spirits) are supposed to help each other carry the burden; while evil beings are basically on their own. I can’t say that’s what’s shown in most of the lore though, and definitely not the case of gotcha scenarios.

Yeah. That's heavily dependent on setting and GM though.

I think that this is a concept/bias that we get from reading fantasy novels and watching fantasy shows/films, and that works well in those genres because the author will make a point of showing how evil fails because of this. But in actual gameplay at an actual table in an actual RPG? Much much harder to make those factors very relevant. At the end of the day the PCs don't really care, nor are they directly affected, by the fact that that evil cabal, or orc tribe, or whole kingdom, has nasty internal politics that create constant strife and conflict and that they are constantly fighting/backstabbing each other when the PCs aren't there. They still are generally going to face a group of said evildoers who are balanced within the scenario to be a challenge for them, right? The rest is just color commentary.

Having the players show up at the bad guys lair only to discover that one of their evil plots against the other resulted in massive destruction and casualties, and they're all dead, isn't a terribly satisfying outcome for the players, right? About the only way to actually use this in a game setting is if the players are clever enough (and have just the right circumstances) to somehow manipulate the evil folks into turning on each other as part of their plan of attack. Doable. But extremely tricky. And not a lot of tables are going to be able to pull this sort of thing off.

And that's forgetting that there is an opposite factor. Evil can also result in a "survival of the fittest" scenario. So the fact that said Orc tribes constantly fight among each other externally, and even within the tribes, there is constant conflict and backstabbing used to advance in status, with the weak (both physically and mentally) being culled quickly as they succumb to a tougher/smarter Orc looking to move up, this means that any band of Orcs they encounter will be the toughest ones possible. Same can be said for the evil kingdom's politics. Only the most clever, best schemers, who utilize the best intelligence gathering techniques, have the most loyal followers (but know exactly when to *not* trust them) manage to worm their way to the highest positions of power and stay there for any length of time. So that evil guy at the top? He's going to have the kinds of layers of protections from everything you could think to throw at him that no "good king" would ever have.

So yeah. It's a great concept, and it can work. It's just a lot harder to put into practice, and IME very rarely is a significant enough factor. To be honest, from the PCs perspective, the biggest and only thing typically keeping them from evil from a pure game perspective is the concern about operating within and with "good" organizations/people. One detect evil spell can cause ruin. Again though, one can argue that this is the game mechanics of alignment actually imposing itself against what the players might otherwise wish. Take away the detect spells (and the inherent penalties for alignment), and players can play their characters as they wish. Which, IME, is not remotely to the kinds of extremes or cardboard cutouts that most alignment systems tend towards. You get nuance of behavior that is very situational, and absolutely considers factors like "who might find out about this" and "what would people think", and quite possibly "is this in accordance with my gods teachings", but never "is this going to cause my alignment to shift, and what are the consequences of that"?

NovenFromTheSun
2022-10-13, 06:34 PM
Yeah. That's heavily dependent on setting and GM though.

I think that this is a concept/bias that we get from reading fantasy novels and watching fantasy shows/films, and that works well in those genres because the author will make a point of showing how evil fails because of this. But in actual gameplay at an actual table in an actual RPG? Much much harder to make those factors very relevant. At the end of the day the PCs don't really care, nor are they directly affected, by the fact that that evil cabal, or orc tribe, or whole kingdom, has nasty internal politics that create constant strife and conflict and that they are constantly fighting/backstabbing each other when the PCs aren't there. They still are generally going to face a group of said evildoers who are balanced within the scenario to be a challenge for them, right? The rest is just color commentary.


I didn’t mean in terms of completing a goal or beating the other side, though the comment of “evil beings are basically on their own” probably made it seem that way. In fact I probably shouldn’t have put it there in the first place, it just makes things less clear. I meant that they help each other achieve and maintain a good alignment, as what was being discussed in the text I quoted. Sometimes I get a sense in some works, D&D included, of an attitude of “if you need help doing the right thing and resisting temptations, you don’t deserve it.” That’s what I was referring to when I mentioned what’s told about alignment in the lore and DMing.


And that's forgetting that there is an opposite factor. Evil can also result in a "survival of the fittest" scenario. So the fact that said Orc tribes constantly fight among each other externally, and even within the tribes, there is constant conflict and backstabbing used to advance in status, with the weak (both physically and mentally) being culled quickly as they succumb to a tougher/smarter Orc looking to move up, this means that any band of Orcs they encounter will be the toughest ones possible. Same can be said for the evil kingdom's politics. Only the most clever, best schemers, who utilize the best intelligence gathering techniques, have the most loyal followers (but know exactly when to *not* trust them) manage to worm their way to the highest positions of power and stay there for any length of time. So that evil guy at the top? He's going to have the kinds of layers of protections from everything you could think to throw at him that no "good king" would ever have.

The band of orcs would be powerful in individual battles, but as a society their logistics and economics would suffer. Soldiers still need equipment, food, and shelter. Smiths, farmers, and architects killing each other to assert dominance won’t give much advancement in those fields.

Same deal with the king, the physical and mental resources to protect him will have to come out of somewhere.


So yeah. It's a great concept, and it can work. It's just a lot harder to put into practice, and IME very rarely is a significant enough factor. To be honest, from the PCs perspective, the biggest and only thing typically keeping them from evil from a pure game perspective is the concern about operating within and with "good" organizations/people. One detect evil spell can cause ruin. Again though, one can argue that this is the game mechanics of alignment actually imposing itself against what the players might otherwise wish. Take away the detect spells (and the inherent penalties for alignment), and players can play their characters as they wish. Which, IME, is not remotely to the kinds of extremes or cardboard cutouts that most alignment systems tend towards. You get nuance of behavior that is very situational, and absolutely considers factors like "who might find out about this" and "what would people think", and quite possibly "is this in accordance with my gods teachings", but never "is this going to cause my alignment to shift, and what are the consequences of that"?

I wasn’t a fan of detection spells either. If brought back I’d prefer if they only worked on the most extreme examples when it came to mortals, if at all.

OldTrees1
2022-10-13, 06:50 PM
Correct. If the only consequences are roleplayed, this is true. I'm specifically talking about the flaws of such an alignment system when there are in-game mechanical consequences as well (detect/protect spells, smite vulnerability, potential to lose class and/or class abilities, etc).
All of those mechanical consequences seem fine as long as the player drives the ones they should be in control of. I gave an example of a good way to handle the player driving "lose class abilities" while using a cleric as the example.

The protection/smite effects are not a huge concern (they are just unreliable buffs), but I do appreciate when they are not based on alignment (see 5E).

I don't find the detect spells to be credible in universe. As a result, in universe, they boil down to "detect person the caster strongly disagrees with, but not enough to necessarily be an enemy". So they are best removed.


I think you are still just talking about RP though. And I completely agree. I was, however, specifically talking about the fact that it's generally "hard" to maintain a good alignment, while it's very "easy" to maintain an evil one when we think about the mechanics of the alignment system itself. That's asymmetrical.

Huh? How is it hard to maintain a good alignment? I know you are worried about "maintain" due to mechanical consequences (see above) however I don't see it as hard to maintain a good alignment. I would say it is trivial to maintain a good alignment and it is beyond trivial to maintain an evil alignment. The moral character of a character is useful for characters whose player cares about their character's moral character. There is no need to play gotcha with it.


A character is "evil" if they do evil things. Period. It does not matter if they also do good. A character is good only if they do good things *and* avoid doing evil things. Neutral is a bit trickier, but most will define it not so much as a balance of good/evil (although it could be, and certainly is if it's a transition one is going through between good and evil alignments), but someone who is either not intending specifically to cause positive or negative outcomes for others, but may do actions which have that effect from time to time *or* someone who is trying to achieve good outcomes but is ok with using means which could be considered "evil" (sort of an "ends justifies the means" approach). A character will not long maintain a neutral alignment if they are intentionally causing harm to others (the "end" is to do harm), no matter how many good things they may also do. Again, the "gravity" of alignment here is towards evil.

Based on how you are worried about it being hard to maintain a good alignment, I suspect you have a low rather than high threshold for "evil things". Combined with this perfectionist stance, this sounds like a gotcha GM. Characters can make mistakes, even mistakes of moral character, without it defining them entirely.

Have you considered not being so strict? Yes, there is asymmetry/gravity, but you don't need to be so perfectionist.


That's asymmetrical.

The very fact that we speak regularly of characters "falling" in alignment (always towards evil), but that there's a "struggle for redemption" for a character to move in the direction of good shows how utterly ingrained this basic concept is within most alignment systems.
The asymmetry is ingrained in the root topic, not in alignment systems. Ancient philosophers were not asking "what is the right wrong way to live?", the entire topic of morality/ethics (and thus good/evil) is about how to be better. So it is natural that improvement is viewed as harder than messing up.

If you want to avoid the asymmetry consider the celestial vs fiendish alignment axis (completely divorced from morality) instead of the good vs evil alignment axis. (Or maybe not use an alignment axis at all. It works for some, it does not work for all)

Satinavian
2022-10-14, 01:21 AM
Hobgoblin society tends towards LE. Therefore, that society should be hierarchical and self-interested, if not malevolent. Individual hobgoblins might differ from the societal alignment, but that's because societal alignment is the aggregate of the alignment of individuals, as individual alignment is the aggregate of actions of the character.
Does lawful evil society really mean "hierarchical and self-centered" society ? I don't really think so.
As the LE box for individuals is pretty big, so is the box for societies. A society might be evil because it is really into slavery or practices a lot of necromancy or does regular sentient sacrifices or whatever without promoting or glorifying personal selfishness. And a society might be lawful because it heavily relies on tradition and the (supposed) wisdom of the ancestors. Or generally has a thing for following laws. Or is all about conformity, shunning everyone who does things differently, even if that is not actually illegal. All withaout being particularly hierarchical.

Combine that alone and you get so many very different possible lawful evil societies that "lawful evil society" stops being a very useful shorthand here as well.

Tanarii
2022-10-14, 09:18 AM
As the LE box for individuals is pretty big, so is the box for societies. A society might be evil because it is really into slavery or practices a lot of necromancy or does regular sentient sacrifices or whatever without promoting or glorifying personal selfishness.
I'm reminded of the Fire Plane Sartan in Wies's Death-gate cycle. They had learned how to raise zombie dead, and had an entire society based around it. Alfred, a Sartan from the times before the breaking into planes, was absolutely horrified, finding it an evil greater than anything their ancestral foes currently being punished in a prison plane had tried to do.

Mainly because every soul raised as a zombie in the fire plane killed a Sartan somewhere in one of the other planes. They didn't even realize what they'd done. They were a society of fairly good-hearted people (with a few power mongers in the courts) ... who had murdered countless millions of their own race. 😂

LibraryOgre
2022-10-14, 11:13 AM
Does lawful evil society really mean "hierarchical and self-centered" society ? I don't really think so.
As the LE box for individuals is pretty big, so is the box for societies. A society might be evil because it is really into slavery or practices a lot of necromancy or does regular sentient sacrifices or whatever without promoting or glorifying personal selfishness. And a society might be lawful because it heavily relies on tradition and the (supposed) wisdom of the ancestors. Or generally has a thing for following laws. Or is all about conformity, shunning everyone who does things differently, even if that is not actually illegal. All withaout being particularly hierarchical.

Combine that alone and you get so many very different possible lawful evil societies that "lawful evil society" stops being a very useful shorthand here as well.

Slavery isn't a hierarchical practice?
Intentional blood sacrifice of others isn't putting the interests of the group ahead of individuals in a way that directly harms others?
Relying on tradition and the wisdom of the ancestors is a hierarchy, still... it places the ancestors, and the interpreters of their thoughts, ahead of personal concerns. "A thing for following laws" is lawful... and if the laws regularly promote evil (qv slavery, the killing of others, etc.), then, yeah, it's lawful evil.

"Self-centeredness" does not necessarily have to be only the individual self; the self is part of the group, and advancing the goals of the group at the expense of others (often, including members of the group) is self-centeredness... slightly more "enlightened", as it goes beyond the individual, but "I want what is best for me and my people, and screw everyone else" is just as evil as "I want what is best for me, and screw everyone else."

A Chaotic Evil person can be kind to his kids and love his wife... but if his response to his kids being hungry is to break the shopkeeper's arms until he gets money, it's still an evil.

Wintermoot
2022-10-14, 12:11 PM
Slavery isn't a hierarchical practice?
Intentional blood sacrifice of others isn't putting the interests of the group ahead of individuals in a way that directly harms others?
Relying on tradition and the wisdom of the ancestors is a hierarchy, still... it places the ancestors, and the interpreters of their thoughts, ahead of personal concerns. "A thing for following laws" is lawful... and if the laws regularly promote evil (qv slavery, the killing of others, etc.), then, yeah, it's lawful evil.

"Self-centeredness" does not necessarily have to be only the individual self; the self is part of the group, and advancing the goals of the group at the expense of others (often, including members of the group) is self-centeredness... slightly more "enlightened", as it goes beyond the individual, but "I want what is best for me and my people, and screw everyone else" is just as evil as "I want what is best for me, and screw everyone else."

A Chaotic Evil person can be kind to his kids and love his wife... but if his response to his kids being hungry is to break the shopkeeper's arms until he gets money, it's still an evil.

I don't know. I kind of feel like if you look at the true motivation of that Chaotic Evil person for why they are being kind to their kids and "love" their wife, that the motivation is self-centered, self-interested reasoning rather than actual unselfish non-self-interested sort of love you are envisioning. I think once you've progressed to that end of the spectrum you aren't capable of loving someone for themselves and not for what you get out of the deal. Motivation is an important factor in how two people can appear to do the same thing but for fundamentally different reasons.

Anymage
2022-10-14, 12:43 PM
I don't know. I kind of feel like if you look at the true motivation of that Chaotic Evil person for why they are being kind to their kids and "love" their wife, that the motivation is self-centered, self-interested reasoning rather than actual unselfish non-self-interested sort of love you are envisioning. I think once you've progressed to that end of the spectrum you aren't capable of loving someone for themselves and not for what you get out of the deal. Motivation is an important factor in how two people can appear to do the same thing but for fundamentally different reasons.

Nale and Sabine seemed to genuinely love each other, despite one being a very damaged person and the other being literally made out of evil.

If you have to be extreme in order to fall into any category but neutrality, that works but it produces very few nonneutral beings. And unless you have some reason for wanting to keep the great wheel around, you can replace it with any other cosmic allegiance mechanic you like.

If good-neutral-evil and law-neutral-chaos are set up such that 1/3 of the population falls into any of the camps, or even if you go for a 25/50/25 split, you'll still have a lot of people who can still have normal human experiences and interactions. The evil group won't be nice people by definition and won't tend to be healthy, but positive interactions are not totally beyond the pale.

gbaji
2022-10-14, 02:10 PM
The band of orcs would be powerful in individual battles, but as a society their logistics and economics would suffer. Soldiers still need equipment, food, and shelter. Smiths, farmers, and architects killing each other to assert dominance won’t give much advancement in those fields.

Same deal with the king, the physical and mental resources to protect him will have to come out of somewhere.

Sure. And from a game world writing/maintaining pov, this is all important for a GM to consider (how big a threat are those Orc tribes living up in the hills really?). But from the pov of the players on an adventure, this rarely really matters. There will be X orcs defending the evil temple, of Y level, with Z clerics/shamans/whatever classes, and the rest being fighters/whatever. In actual practice, it's a cold consolation to the PCs to say "well, but they had to really struggle and are the exceptions who managed to survive their evil culture to be there for you to fight". Them being "evil" and coming from an evil culture/kingdom/whatever didn't really make any difference at the encounter level of the game.

Now yes, it absolutely does in the broader world building portions. So when playing a longer running campaign (or series of campaigns) in a persistent game world, it does matter and will affect decisions and changes to that world over time. I actually play/GM in such a game (been running since like 1983, and covered over 140 years of in-game time), so I do know what I'm talking about with this. And it absolutely affects decisions I make like "what resources would the evil king over there actually have?", and that in turn can affect some encounter specifics on any given scenario/adventure. And it does affect/create RP choices for players to make that can have impacts on the wider game world. But at the adventure encounter level, that's not really much of a balance issue.


All of those mechanical consequences seem fine as long as the player drives the ones they should be in control of. I gave an example of a good way to handle the player driving "lose class abilities" while using a cleric as the example.

Yes. And a cleric being punished by their god for failing to follow church dictates was one of the specific cases I said I was not talking about. That can happen without any alignment system in place at all. I'm talking about having an alignment system that affects everyone, not just folks who actively worship gods and gain some sort of powers/spells/whatever from them as a result.


Huh? How is it hard to maintain a good alignment? I know you are worried about "maintain" due to mechanical consequences (see above) however I don't see it as hard to maintain a good alignment. I would say it is trivial to maintain a good alignment and it is beyond trivial to maintain an evil alignment. The moral character of a character is useful for characters whose player cares about their character's moral character. There is no need to play gotcha with it.

I'm responding to a number of posts (just in this thread, but it's a common theme whenever alignment is brought up anywhere), in which good people becoming evil is referred to as "falling", while evil people becoming good is a "path to redemption". Just in OoTS, we see the Deva telling Roy that she could chuck his file into the neutral file simply because of a couple acts (and some personality bits) that he did. Roy didn't decide to be "evil" that day, it just happened. He lied to his party members to get them to help him get some star metal. And he left Elan to the bandits in the forest. That was enough to put his "good" alignment in jeopardy. So a lifetime of being good, actively identifying as good, and doing good things can be offset by basically a couple of off days. On the flip side, we have Belkar, who has been chaotic evil his whole life, with a long list of evil things he's done. He's been as consistently evil in his past as Roy has been good. Yet, no one blinks at the argument that he can't "fall to good" just by having a couple of good days, and mistakenly deciding to help people and do nice things for them, right? Oh no. He has to do lots of good. Refrain from any evil, and work very very hard, and maybe if he strictly adheres to this for a few years or more, he might just get himself out of being evil.

That's an absolutely massive difficulty difference.



Based on how you are worried about it being hard to maintain a good alignment, I suspect you have a low rather than high threshold for "evil things". Combined with this perfectionist stance, this sounds like a gotcha GM. Characters can make mistakes, even mistakes of moral character, without it defining them entirely.

Have you considered not being so strict? Yes, there is asymmetry/gravity, but you don't need to be so perfectionist.

Huh? I don't play this way at all. I'm just pointing out the effects of the alignment system on play. it doesn't take a strict or perfectionist GM for this to happen. Just one following the rules as written. Unless you avoid putting anything into the path of the players other than incredibly simplistic "we're good. they're bad. we kill them while they are doing bad things" scenarios, there will be situations where good players will have to make difficult choices.

I'm just responding to how other people describe alignments and what is required to be "good" versus what is required to be "evil". Again: Falling vs redemption. The very words being used tell us which most people consider more difficult and that there is an assumed possibility of going in one direction unintentionally, while it's almost impossible to go in the other without deliberate conscious effort.



The asymmetry is ingrained in the root topic, not in alignment systems. Ancient philosophers were not asking "what is the right wrong way to live?", the entire topic of morality/ethics (and thus good/evil) is about how to be better. So it is natural that improvement is viewed as harder than messing up.

Sure. But those philosophers did not live in a world with alignment detection spells, protection spells, etc. And they certainly were not creating a game system where both good and evil "sides" in a conflict were intended to be balanced in some cosmic way. And they certainly were not considering entire races with "mostly evil" alignments in their stat blocks.

The concepts work just fine. But the moment you try to codify them into a set of rules where alignment is written on the character sheet, and the character is expected to play a specific way so as to stay within that alignment's boundaries, with potential punishments for failure, there are a host of problems which can arise.


If you want to avoid the asymmetry consider the celestial vs fiendish alignment axis (completely divorced from morality) instead of the good vs evil alignment axis. (Or maybe not use an alignment axis at all. It works for some, it does not work for all)

Er. I play primarily in RuneQuest. Which does have "sides" identified as law/chaos, where for the most part worship of a god on one side aligns you in some way with that side (which can include detection abilities even). There are no other alignment considerations at all. I'm not telling you the problems I run into in my game, I'm explaining why I made the choice to avoid games with alignment systems like D&D over 30 years ago. And yeah, when I do play a D&D game (or one with alignments), I'm always a bit shocked at how constraining it is.

I've seen this topic from both sides, and have drawn conclusions as a result. And I've concluded that alignments systems work when they represent "sides" *or* if they are guides to RP. They tend to fall apart when they try to do both, especially if they have some in-game mechanical reward/punishment system involved to enforce alignment requirements on the characters.

OldTrees1
2022-10-14, 04:37 PM
Yes. And a cleric being punished by their god for failing to follow church dictates was one of the specific cases I said I was not talking about. That can happen without any alignment system in place at all. I'm talking about having an alignment system that affects everyone, not just folks who actively worship gods and gain some sort of powers/spells/whatever from them as a result.
Are you aware that the reason I keep pointing back to that example, is NOT because it is a cleric. I point back to that example to highlight the example relationship between GM and Player. Notice what parts the Player drives in my example. Notice what parts the GM drives in my example. Notice which parts both work together on in my example. That example is not about clerics. Continuing to tell me you are not talking about Clerics is missing the point.

You are talking about an alignment system that affects everyone. I gave you an example showing the player driving the parts the player should be in control of.


I'm responding to a number of posts (just in this thread, but it's a common theme whenever alignment is brought up anywhere), in which good people becoming evil is referred to as "falling", while evil people becoming good is a "path to redemption".

That's an absolutely massive difficulty difference.
Yes, but that does not mean it is hard to maintain a good alignment. Describing self improvement as harder than becoming worse does not imply maintaining is hard. I challenge your premise that "maintaining" is "hard". The moral axis is based on an asymmetric topic (improvement is harder than becoming worse) but that does not imply maintaining is hard. In contrast, I find maintaining to be trivial.



Huh? I don't play this way at all. I'm just pointing out the effects of the alignment system on play. it doesn't take a strict or perfectionist GM for this to happen. Just one following the rules as written. Unless you avoid putting anything into the path of the players other than incredibly simplistic "we're good. they're bad. we kill them while they are doing bad things" scenarios, there will be situations where good players will have to make difficult choices.

I'm just responding to how other people describe alignments and what is required to be "good" versus what is required to be "evil". Again: Falling vs redemption. The very words being used tell us which most people consider more difficult and that there is an assumed possibility of going in one direction unintentionally, while it's almost impossible to go in the other without deliberate conscious effort.
Your interpretation is very strict and perfectionist. Characters can face difficult choices but a single moral failure does not redefine their moral character. Additionally you are constantly focusing on how improving is harder than getting worse but then assuming that maintaining is hard. It would be equally valid to assume maintain was easy or assume maintaining was easier than falling.

Your argument summarized:
Premise: A > B
Conclusion: C is large

Actual possibility space (your conclusion is true in only 50% of the possibility space):
Large{} > Not Large {A > B > C}
Large{} > Not Large {A > B = C}
Large{} > Not Large {A > C > B}
Large{} > Not Large {A = C > B}
Large{} > Not Large {C > A > B}
Large{A} > Not Large {B > C}
Large{A} > Not Large {B = C}
Large{A} > Not Large {C > B}
Large{A = C} > Not Large {B}
Large{C > A} > Not Large {B}
Large{A > B} > Not Large {C}
Large{A > B = C} > Not Large {}
Large{A > C} > Not Large {B}
Large{A = C > B} > Not Large {}
Large{C > A} > Not Large {B}
Large{A > B > C} > Not Large {}
Large{A > C > B} > Not Large {}
Large{C > A > B} > Not Large {}

Sure. But those philosophers did not live in a world with alignment detection spells, protection spells, etc. And they certainly were not creating a game system where both good and evil "sides" in a conflict were intended to be balanced in some cosmic way. And they certainly were not considering entire races with "mostly evil" alignments in their stat blocks.
Oh you and I are not talking about the same alignment axis. You meant to be talking about the balanced symmetric celestial vs fiendish axis. I was talking about the asymmetric axis with origins in the philosophic branch Ethics. They are not the same thing and don't have the same intent nor utility.

PS: Even if detection spells existed, it would not impact the philosophers. They would discount the detection spells as not being credible. Detect Blue does not help a philosopher answer "what is the right way to live? what ought one do? etc"


The concepts work just fine. But the moment you try to codify them into a set of rules where alignment is written on the character sheet, and the character is expected to play a specific way so as to stay within that alignment's boundaries, with potential punishments for failure, there are a host of problems which can arise.
Remember my Cleric example?


I'm always a bit shocked at how constraining it is.
Friendly observation: Your depiction of an alignment system you don't use is more constraining than the alignment system I do use. Maybe that is significant.


I've seen this topic from both sides, and have drawn conclusions as a result. And I've concluded that alignments systems work when they represent "sides" *or* if they are guides to RP. They tend to fall apart when they try to do both, especially if they have some in-game mechanical reward/punishment system involved to enforce alignment requirements on the characters.
Well, yes. If you try to pretend 2 different axes are the same axis then you are going to have problems. Take Law vs Chaos as an example. It is actually 2 different axes that are conflated with each other. Conflating Lawful and Orderly will cause issues, just like conflating a moral axis and an allegiance axis.

Tanarii
2022-10-14, 05:34 PM
Fall from grace is exactly single or few actions causing an otherwise overall good character to change alignment to neutral or evil. And it's a common way to think about good and evil, so lots of people bring it in to Alignments. Even when they're explicitly defined otherwise.

gbaji
2022-10-14, 07:45 PM
Are you aware that the reason I keep pointing back to that example, is NOT because it is a cleric. I point back to that example to highlight the example relationship between GM and Player. Notice what parts the Player drives in my example. Notice what parts the GM drives in my example. Notice which parts both work together on in my example. That example is not about clerics. Continuing to tell me you are not talking about Clerics is missing the point.

Then why do you keep using an example of a cleric? You're going off on a strange tangent about different ways to mechanically play out the alignment effects, but the point I made and to which you were responding was about how good and evil alignments are not balanced. I don't care *how* the mechanics are enforced. I'm talking about the fact that in many games with alignments (and specifically having a good/evil axis), it's much harder to obtain and maintain a "good" alignment than an "evil" one.

Talking about clerics being punished by gods for not following their rules is completely outside the entire point I was raising.


You are talking about an alignment system that affects everyone. I gave you an example showing the player driving the parts the player should be in control of.

No. You gave me an example of a cleric being punished by their god (and then went off about how the players could participate in deciding how the god should punish the cleric, which is nice but also irrelevant). How about you provide an example of someone who isn't a cleric or any class that directly worships any deity and/or gains any powers/spells/abilities as a result of aligning with any deity, but is just "regular people" who exist in a game in which every single person has an alignment listed on their character sheeet.

Give me an example of Roy the fighter and show that it's not more difficult for him to retain "good" alignment than "Rob the goblin" to retain his "evil" alignment. Cause that's the point I was making.



Yes, but that does not mean it is hard to maintain a good alignment. Describing self improvement as harder than becoming worse does not imply maintaining is hard. I challenge your premise that "maintaining" is "hard". The moral axis is based on an asymmetric topic (improvement is harder than becoming worse) but that does not imply maintaining is hard. In contrast, I find maintaining to be trivial.

The very fact that you label them directionally as "self improvement" versus "becoming worse" shows a bias towards "good is what you should be, and evil is what happens when you fail". Which is exactly the sort of attitude towards alignment that I was saying existed, and that is incompatible with any alignment system that also purports to have alignment represent "sides" in some sort of presumably balanced cosmic conflict. I've literally been trying to get across that any attempt to have a single alignment system represent both of those concepts at the same time is pretty much doomed to fail.

I've also said (repeatedly) that this is exactly how D&D's alignment system works. That's why it has so many problems.



Your interpretation is very strict and perfectionist. Characters can face difficult choices but a single moral failure does not redefine their moral character. Additionally you are constantly focusing on how improving is harder than getting worse but then assuming that maintaining is hard. It would be equally valid to assume maintain was easy or assume maintaining was easier than falling.

And follows more of you not understanding that I completely get the difference between symmetric and asymmetric alignment systems, but that I'm saying D&D (and other games with similar alignment rules) try to do both with the same measuring stick. And that's why they fail.


Oh you and I are not talking about the same alignment axis. You meant to be talking about the balanced symmetric celestial vs fiendish axis. I was talking about the asymmetric axis with origins in the philosophic branch Ethics. They are not the same thing and don't have the same intent nor utility.

Sigh. Maybe a light at the end of the tunnel, but understanding is still not happening.

I'm saying that D&D presents good vs evil as an asymmetric concept in practice (like the philosophical branch Ethics you speak of). But it *also* attempts to present those alignments as representations of larger balanced forces in the cosmos, complete with outer planes representing each one, and deities that fall within the realm (more or less) of each of those alignments, and people who also fall within them as well.

You can't have both. That's what I've been saying all along. Pick one. Trying to do both *and* having a system that enforces rewards or punishments for failing to follow the alignment rules is a problem. It's the reason why 40+ years later we still have massive arguments about what exactly is required to play a lawful good character in scenario A, or chaotic evil in scenario B, or (in OoTS discussions) whether Hilgya is evil or neutral, or <insert a billion other arguments over time on this subject>.



Friendly observation: Your depiction of an alignment system you don't use is more constraining than the alignment system I do use. Maybe that is significant.

I have used it. Do occasionally still use it. And run into the same problems with it every time. I'm also responding directly to statements made in this thread, in which the very problems I'm talking about have been reflected in the posts of many of those responding to the subject of discussion. So yeah, if people keep arguing "alignment should be this way" and other's go "No, it should be interpreted this way", and so on, it's not wrong for me to point out that the reason they are having so many arguments is precisely because they are arguing over something that is inherently inconsistent and frankly, by design, can never be consistently reconciled.



Well, yes. If you try to pretend 2 different axes are the same axis then you are going to have problems. Take Law vs Chaos as an example. It is actually 2 different axes that are conflated with each other. Conflating Lawful and Orderly will cause issues, just like conflating a moral axis and an allegiance axis.

And OMG! we've reached consensus. This has been my point all along. The law/chaos axis in D&D (and others that use the same concepts) are trying to use it both as meaning "I follow the rules" vs "I ignore rules" (external view of actions) and "I use order/logic when making decisions" vs "I roll a die roll every time I decide to do something" (internal personality traits). The good/evil axis in D&D, similarly, is trying to use it both as the "I follow the side of good" vs "I follow the side of evil" (sides/factions in this case) and also "I am moral" and "I am immoral" (internal personality traits again).

There are even more divergencies involved, but just those are enough to cause massive problems in the system, and have caused massive confusion among players. And again, at the risk of repeating myself, if there are no significant in-game consequences for any of this, then it kinda doesn't matter. And if we want, we can put those punishments/rewards in for followers of deities/powers/whatever who are closely aligned with the "side/faction" alignment bits if we want and it still works. But if we enforce both, we get into serious trouble.

OldTrees1
2022-10-14, 11:21 PM
-snip-
Duh conflating axes is a mistake. Which is why the celestial/fiend axis was irrelevant to what I was talking about. You interjected into me replying to someone else.


I am glad you reached a consensus.


However, if one of my elementary premises (Don't conflate different axes. Doing so is a mistake. I am talking about this particular axis.) was your "point all along" then I am left feeling you did not engage with me in discussion despite interjecting yourself when I replied to someone else. I am done with this subthread.

Witty Username
2022-10-15, 02:46 AM
Lawful and orderly may not be the same thing but they do play into eachother, how I would describe it is how a character interacts with negative space.
A Lawful character or Chaotic character may bend/break rules, laws or social norms but benefit of the doubt will tend to dictate a Lawful character will not if they do not have a good reason to do so.
A Chaotic character will similarly obey rules and laws that fit with their goals, or are needed for basic life functions. But this tension doesn't exist where the character doesn't know the intent of the rules or how they are impacted by it.

So the base instincts of a Lawful or Chaotic character will trend towards order or disorder. But this will trend towards the middle if the character is well learned or informed. Furthermore, Chaotic characters are more likely to have the additional motive of threat, after all punishments are meant to coerce individuals that would otherwise break laws into falling in line.

This does touch on something for me specifically with D&Ds alignments, it is sometimes helpful to think of the nine alignments as distinct rather that on two overlapping axis.
Take:
Lawful Good
Lawful Neutral
Lawful Evil
These alignments share a half the axis but in the description of these it is clear that the Lawful portion of the alignment means different things for each alignment despite being "on the same team" apparently. With Lawful Evil seeing Law as a shield for their wrongdoing and a tool to exert control over others. While Lawful Good sees Law as a means of cooperation and maximizing public good.

Tanarii
2022-10-15, 09:17 AM
This does touch on something for me specifically with D&Ds alignments, it is sometimes helpful to think of the nine alignments as distinct rather that on two overlapping axis.
In 5e, this is specifically how alignment works. 9 boxes of associated behaviors. Not 2 axis, each with associated behavior, then combined to 9 combinations.

Vahnavoi
2022-10-15, 11:43 AM
Yes. You are correct. The difference (and this is a concept I point out all the time about GMing) is that in every other case where there is conflict, the GM is the "creator" of the world. If there's a difference of opinion about how climbable that wall is, or how difficult it will be to jump heroically through that window, or whether the local prince really will buy the crazy story you just used to manipulate him, the GM is the automatic officiator, because he literally plays everything in the world that isn't the PCs. If the player and the GM disagree on those things, the player is always wrong and the GM is always right.

But the player gets to decide the personality of his player, not the GM. It's the one area where if the player says "but to my character, this is a good act because he views things this way", and the GM thinks otherwise, there is a legitimate conflict and it's much less absolute in terms of who is right. See my Robin Hood example. The player may think "my rogue is chaotic good", but the GM says "No. You're lawful evil". Who is correct?

You are, bluntly, wrong about where the game master's authority comes from, and consequently wrong about the distribution of labor between game master and player.

The game master has final say because they are a game referee. The determination of alignment rests on them because it is used to decide how game objects behave in response to player actions. As far as the game process is concerned, the game master is correct, as directly stated by rules of the game. That you even bother to ask this question suggests you keep conflating game statements with player's subjective opinion. The game master's statement only covers the former, not the latter - the player and their character are free to keep whatever opinions they have on "chaotic good", it's just that their opinions are not used to decide behaviour of game objects.

And this applies to all personality traits, even those that are not explicitly mechanized. Forget, for a moment, everything you think you know about alignment or D&D and imagine a freeform game with no game master. Suppose a player comes to the table, proclaiming to play an Extroverted character. However, in actual play, they consistently play their character as withdrawn, focused more on their own thoughts than external game events. Any other player who knows what the terms mean is capable of making the observation: "Hey, you described your character as Extroverted, but all actual actions you've taken as that character suggests an Introverted personality."

The first player can react to this in a number of ways:

A) "What do you mean, my character talked to other people last week, that's totally Extrovert behaviour."
B) "It's my character, if I say they are extroverted, that's what they are."
C) "Hot damn, you're right. I will change my character's description to fit their actual behaviour."
D) "Hot damn, you're right. I admit my character's recent behaviour has been out of character and will change their behaviour to match their description."
E) "The description is how my character sees themselves. Your opinion of what "extroverted" and "introverted" mean may differ."

What introducing a game master into this situation means that A, B and E, which are 99% of the actual "conflict" you describe, are pre-emptively solved: whenever there's confusion about what a term means in the game, the game master settles the matter. This leaves us with C and D.

C is what the actual alignment rules, as described in 1st Edition AD&D, have a game master enforce: I already cited most of the relevant rules text in my earlier reply to Tanarii. The alignment and personality of a character, and consequently how the game master has the world react, are determined by actual play behaviour.

D is what you think D&D has game master enforce, but you are incorrect, or at least you've never cited any actual rule text from any actual D&D edition decreeing it so. There are other games that work this way, and individual game masters can of course choose to play D&D this way, but it's not how the basic system of alignment is actually set up, and consequently criticism of this model is not criticism of the basic alignment system. In any case, in this model a player's behaviour during game is meant to follow their alignment - similar to how in traditional theater an actor is beholden to a script.

Neither model, not even D, actually necessitates strict prohibition of out-of-alignment or out-of-personality actions. Penalties are not prohibitions, people - the very existence of a penalty suggests there is a scenario where a player can act in a manner that would incur the penalty. I'll use CODA Lord of the Rings as an example: failure to act like a Tolkienian hero (using magic to torture people or directly backing Sauron, for examples) nets you Corruption points, and if you get enough corruption points (10, if I recall correctly) your character falls under the Shadow and becomes an NPC. The first few penalties are therefore only warnings, meaning the player can engage in occasional Corrupt action if they see fit, and they can even redeem the character (lose Corruption points) by returning to fold later. They won't actually lose control of their character unless they significantly and consistently violate spirit and themes of the game.

And this is what you've failed to address. "Restricting roleplaying" is no big criticism of anything, because restricting players from certain actions and personalities are part and parcel for games that want to aim for specific themes and personality archetypes. Weird subjective opinions about what words mean are not an excuse to play a character outside the bounds of what a game is meant to cover, and agreeing that game master has final say in case of conflict is a solution to your supposed to problem.


Except you are conflating two very different things (the very ones I was talking about). "Violat(ing the) commandments of your god" is what I describe as "side/faction" alignment. That's perfectly fine and works well. You joined the church of <whoever> and chose to commit yourself to the rules of that deity, and thus may be bound by it, especially if you hold a position in that church that grants you supernatural abilities as a result.

That is entirely different from every single person in the game having an alignment that is cosmically tracked and enforced (like D&D does).

These two things you claim are entirely different are not different at all. The gods are explicitly mentioned in the rules as enforcers of alignment, and the commandments of the gods, get this, align with alignment conducts because those philosophies are what the gods stand for. The conducts are globally tracked because the gods are presumed to be near (or actually) omniscient. All of this is part and parcel for particular type of fantasy about cosmic beings.

The basic mechanic it all is based on is that a game master, as overseer of the game, is privy to all actions players take in the game, and has final say over ambiguous cases. Whether alignment is nominally based on decree of gods, an abstract cosmic force, or your character's boss at McDonald's, only changes the viewpoint from which the game master makes the decision. The mental process is the same.


So whether I worship a deity that falls within the chaotic range, if I'm a bard, and I fail to be sufficiently chaotic (as the GM sees it), I may lose my class abilities. What if my bard is my version of Robin Hood (in the example I gave), and the GM decides that my plans are too well thought out, my objectives too concrete, and I work too well with others, and that I'm not really "chaotic" anymore because of that. I need to create random poorly thought out plans, and intentionally ignore what the group decides in favor of myself, I guess? Or am I purely chaotic because I'm fighting "against the system", no matter what methods I employ? Ok, but now we've established that chaos is entirely about externalities rather than actual character traits. Great. So anyone fighting against tyranny is "chaotic". Um... but that puts us back in the stereotypical "absurd" standard for lawful characters that requires that they "obey the law where they are", which is literally the example given most often of the wrong way to run alignments.

So which is it? And again, this doesn't matter if the alignment is just a guide for roleplaying. But the moment it has actual in-game mechanical rules attached to it (like class requirements, class abilities, or just how you show up on detection/protection spells), this becomes an issue.

The answer to "which is it?" is "ask the game master you are actually playing under". Nobody has to give you an answer in the abstract, outside the bounds of a game actually being played; you are nominating a game master to serve as a referee precisely so that ambiguous cases can be resolved when they occur, instead of someone having to answer every question beforehand. That is, again, the solution to the issue you keep having. The fact that you keep harping on the solution suggests your actual issue is accepting someone else as a referee.

But let's go back to your example for a moment, because looking at it shows other flaws in your ideas about how alignment works:

"So whether I worship a deity that falls within the chaotic range, if I'm a bard, and I fail to be sufficiently chaotic (as the GM sees it), I may lose my class abilities. What if my bard is my version of Robin Hood (in the example I gave), and the GM decides that my plans are too well thought out, my objectives too concrete, and I work too well with others, and that I'm not really "chaotic" anymore because of that. I need to create random poorly thought out plans, and intentionally ignore what the group decides in favor of myself, I guess?"

For one, bards don't actually lose class abilities due to ceasing to be chaotic in any version of D&D I know about. Bad example, right there. But even if they did, changing alignment and losing class abilities does not actually necessitate changing your character's behaviour: you can just choose to live without those abilities and carry on under a new alignment. This is what normal people call a "choice": namely, the choice between retaining personal power versus functioning well as a group.

And what was definition of Law versus Chaos, again, as based on the rules I cited to Tanarii? That's right, organized groups versus the individual. Sounds like the game master is right on the money on this one.

Or am I purely chaotic because I'm fighting "against the system", no matter what methods I employ? Ok, but now we've established that chaos is entirely about externalities rather than actual character traits.

You are working on the assumption that choosing to "fight against the system" is not based on character traits, but no-one has to grant you that, because even in real life we can see that certain personality traits are linked to being habitually contrarian. (https://psychology.fandom.com/wiki/Contrarian) If the game master is observing those personality traits in your character, using that as basis for the determination is perfectly valid.

Great. So anyone fighting against tyranny is "chaotic". Um... but that puts us back in the stereotypical "absurd" standard for lawful characters that requires that they "obey the law where they are", which is literally the example given most often of the wrong way to run alignments.

You are conflating two different arguments here, of only one which is absurd.

Saying "anyone fighting against tyranny is 'chaotic'" is absurd for several reasons. The first is that it equivocates at least two of many different definitions of tyranny. (https://www.thefreedictionary.com/tyranny): that of tyranny as unjust and oppressive governmental power, and that of tyranny as government in which a single ruler is vested with absolute power. It should be obvious that Good characters, including Lawful Good characters have a reason to oppose unjust and oppressive governments as well, because such governments trample on creature rights Good characters find important. The second is that Neutral alignments exist, so someone who opposes an unjust government but considers non-governmental group identities important can just be Neutral instead of Chaotic. The third is that giving absolute power to a single individual doesn't necessarily sit well with Lawful characters - group-motivated people might want decisions to be made, you know, as a group, rather than by selfish whims of a single person.

But saying "Lawful characters should obey the law where they are" is significantly less absurd. Why? Because, again, Law is about placing organized groups over the individual. Choosing to obey the laws of the nation or group you are actually in is a method of fitting in: conformity, as opposed to contrarianism. (http://changingminds.org/explanations/preferences/contrarian_conformist.htm)

The reason why it is a "wrong way" to run alignment is not because it is absurd, it is because frequently it's based on naive notions of what the laws are. If laws of a nation say, for example, that the strong are free to abuse the weak, and the only crime is getting caught, any Good character, including Lawful Good ones, would reject such laws, because they are in defiance of creature rights. Or in other words: laws of any given land do not necessarily fall in line with the concern for organized groups that defines the axis of Law, nevermind more specific alignments of Lawful Good, Lawful Neutral and Lawful Evil. The fact that there are three different Lawful alignments alone should hint that different Lawful characters can be in conflict over what laws of a given land should be - different organized groups do not need to be in perfect agreement with each other to count as Lawful.


To the bolded statement, the characters life history determines their "current alignment". That's why I called it the "Belkar problem". Belkar, from the point of view of Minrah" is a "good" character, right? If we only knew of his behavior since the start of this book (and ignored all dialogue to the contrary), we'd clearly identify him as chaotic good/neutral, right? Yet, his protection from evil amulet affects him. That is the exact opposite of what you claim, and is the "standard" in most games where alignment is tracked and has in-game mechanical effects. Your alignment doesn't change because of a few acts over a relatively shot period of time.

No, it's not the exact opposite of what I claim. Alignment explicitly can change, and will change if the repentant character keeps acting according to their new desired alignment, which will also influence behaviour of all alignment-related supernatural effects. The only time this "Belkar problem" occurs is when a player has proclaimed their character wants to change alignment, but has yet to actually have their character act according to the new desired alignment for enough time to have their game master believe them. Which, I reiterate, I do not find to be much of a "problem" at all.

In-character, the situation is as follows: one person is worried whether a second person is Evil. The second person vouches that they wish to do no harm and will act according to principles of Good. A Detect Evil spell is cast on the second person, showing they are Evil. The first person might hence infer the second person has not been Good or Neutral in the recent past, but this only speaks to the current situation: the second person might still be perfectly honest, and another Detect Evil spell cast in the future might prove they have indeed moved away from Evil alignment.

For a different in-character example, we can propose the second person is a convicted murderer: they were Evil five years ago, killing someone in cold blood, but repented and devoted themselves to making amends to family of their victim(s) and helping the poor. Over time, they have moved to a Neutral alignment. So, again, the first person is worried whether the second person is Evil. A Detect Evil spell is cast on the second person, showing they are not Evil. The first person might hence infer the second person has not been Evil in the recent past, but again, this only speaks to the current situation: it's possible the second person will fall again and commit more murders in the future, and another Detect Evil spell cast in the future might show they have indeed become Evil.

In neither case does the detection spell give the first person access to lifetime history of the second person. In neither case does the result of a detection spell enforce an outcome: the first person has only gained knowledge of the second person's current alignment, and they will have to weigh this information in context of everything else they know. How to act on the information is on the first person.

Your OotS example is irrelevant, because OotS is not a game of D&D, and neither Minrah nor comic readers are in a position similar to a game master serving as a referee. Their subjective opinions based on imperfect information have no weight in discussion such as this. The closest person to a game master in context of a webcomic is its author, namely Rich Burlew. So at best, Belkar's case can inform you how Rich Burlew would make decisions as a game master of a D&D game, except Rich Burlew has explicitly told his readers that he doesn't heed D&D rules exactly, breaking them as he sees fit to tell the story and jokes he wants to tell. OotS is, to a relevant degree, a parody or a satire of D&D stereotypes, not a straight guide on how to run alignment. So stop basing your examples on OotS.


And yes, there's more then just detection. There's the protection from evil effect. And there's the whole "where does he go when he dies" discussion. You may choose not to acknowledge it, but it is a "problem". If for no other reason than we have a game system where your afterlife is literally determined by your alignment. And this has nothing directly to do with deities or the worship of those deities (Belkar doesn't worship any gods, and has made no promises to any divine deity in terms of how he will behave, nor has asked for any corresponding divinely granted powers/spells/etc). But he's still bound to it.

Belkar not worshipping any gods is irrelevant; his impiety doesn't prevent him from falling under judgement of the gods. Actual rules text, 1st Edition AD&D, page 25, "Changing Alignment":

"Whether or not the character actively professes some deity, he or she will have an alignment and serve one or more deities of this alignment indirectly and unbeknowst to the character."

So, in character, the entirety of the supposed problem is that the second person has proclaimed a desire to change their ways, but has not actually acted yet in a manner that would convince the gods or other supernatural forces that the change is genuine.

What about this is supposed to be a big deal?


Sure. But that puts it in the realm of the players playing their characters, and the GM playing the NPCs. I'm specifically speaking to game mechanics that put the GM into the position of telling the player how they must play their character, with in-game rewards or penalties for doing so. And also, specifically outside the realm of "PC has chosen these restrictions by choosing to be a cleric/whatever of X deity".

Then you're specifically speaking to a strawman, as already explained at the beginning of this post. Having in-game rewards or penalties is not the same as telling how someone must play their character. Under 1st Edition interpretation of biaxial alignment, nothing stops the player from eating the penalty and continuing to play under their new alignment. Majority of class-based penalties specifically relate to Paladins, Clerics, Druids and other supernaturally empowered archetypes, who fall under "PC has chosen these restrictions by choosing to be a cleric/whatever of X deity". Actual rules text, once again, 1st Edition AD&D, page 24, "Graphing alignment":

"It is of utmost importance to keep rigid control of alignment behaviour with respect to such characters as to serve deities who will only accept certain alignment, those who are paladins, those with evil familiars, and so on. Part of the role they have accepted requires a set behaviour, and its benefits are balanced by this. Therefore, failure to demand strict adherence is to allow game abuse."

A player only "must" have their character act in a specific way, IF they want to maintain certain in-game benefits. This is, again, what normal people call a "choice". What about this ISN'T in the realm of "players playing their characters, and the GM playing the NPCs"?


I'm not complaining that they merely exist. I'm exploring what kinds of alignment systems work well, and which ones do not work so well. And my argument is that alignment systems that attempt to apply alignment as a personality trait tracker *and* a "what side are you on" mechanism, *and* have in-game effects based on whether the character is "played correctly", will tend to run into problems.

It is curious, then, that majority of your arguments only explore a system that's nowhere in the books, and the only problems you've shown them to run into are neither unique to alignment nor particularly hard to deal with.


Which supernatural force though? Again. Examine my Orc and Robin Hood examples. Both showcase scenarios where the character's alignment can be judged to be radically different purely based on what point of perspective we choose to use to do so. Do we judge the Orc based on whether he aligns with human societal norms? Or Orc societal norms? Does the universe itself judge Orcs to be wrong and humans to be right? Why? And is Robin Hood's alignment based on how he goes about what he does, or how what he does affects society as a whole? On the former, he's clearly lawful, but on the later, he's clearly chaotic. Which is it? And what "supernatural force" is judging this? And also... why?

"Which supernatural force though?" Whichever the game master sees fit. This is nothing more than a normal setting building question. Same goes for majority of the other questions. I don't need to give specific answers to them. Again: you are nominating a game master to serve as a referee precisely so that ambiguous cases can be resolved when they occur, instead of someone having to answer every question beforehand. "Why?" So game masters can facilitate games with specific themes and settings. A game where the universe itself deems orcs wrong and humans right, is a different one from a game where the universe itself deems orcs right and humans wrong, is a different one from a game where everyone is wrong except the elves. So on and so forth. I listed multiple different variations of Law versus Chaos in my first post to this thread to showcase how varying the axial definitions can lead to different themes and gameplay dynamics.

Or, shortly: all these questions can be answered by the person running a game. Your only problem seems to be actually sitting down to play under their terms.


Again, responding to the bold. Don't they? Both the Orc in my example and a human serial killer would detect as "evil" to a human adventurer (in most alignment systems anyway). But they are radically different. And let's make it even more interesting. What about an Orc serial killer? So humans can detect "evil" criminals within their societies using detect evil spells, but Orcs can't? Because... why? All Orcs (or most maybe based on the example of human-centric morality) will detect as such anyway, so those who are "evil" by the context of Orc society just hide away?

You don't see that being a problem? I certainly do. It's a massive glaring inconsistency. Choosing to ignore those cases doesn't make them actually go away.

Already dealt with majority of this above, but picking this apart some more is again good at revealing flaws in your ideas of how alignment works:

"Both the Orc in my example and a human serial killer would detect as "evil" to a human adventurer (in most alignment systems anyway). But they are radically different. "

So what? A Detect Evil spell only cares about how similar they are according to one axis. For a contrasting example: Two people who both show as Extroverted in a Myers-Briggs test can still be of opposed personality along three other axes the test measures: ENTJ versus ESFP, for example. Similarly, a real personality test rating you for "Dark Triad" traits (https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/SD3/) or other facets known to be common among serial killers doesn't care about your race, origin or taste in weapons or ice cream. You seem to be arguing detection spells enforce a nonsensical outcome based on something they don't proclaim to detect in the first place.

And let's make it even more interesting. What about an Orc serial killer? So humans can detect "evil" criminals within their societies using detect evil spells, but Orcs can't? Because... why?

Seems like you didn't understand the comparison; if that's not the case, you're strawmanning detection spells again, complaining about them doing something they don't actually do. To wit: Detect Evil is neither "Detect Criminal" nor "Detect Serial Killer". Neither humans nor orcs can reliably use it for those purposes.

What Detect Evil actually detects is emanations of Evil, caused by an evilly-aligned creatures, servants of Evil gods and objects with harmful curses on them. It doesn't tell why those creatures are Evil or what they've done, that typically has to be inferred based on additional details. So how to act on the information given by the spell is on the caster.

All Orcs (or most maybe based on the example of human-centric morality) will detect as such anyway, so those who are "evil" by the context of Orc society just hide away?

You seem to be complaining that Detect Evil is not "Detect evil-as-defined-by-orcish society", something the spell never proclaims to be.

To wit: if Orcs insist that Evil is Good, wrong is right, black is white and sun is just the moon at night, the utility of detection spells is partially reversed in contrast to people who actually agree with axial definitions given by the game to the players. For example, if orcs are primarily Lawful Evil, they would use Detect Law and Detect Evil to see who agrees with orcish morals, and Detect Chaos and Detect Good to see who disagrees. The utility is not completely reversed, because Good people don't act in the same in way towards orcish society as Evil orcs would act in a non-orcish society. That is, using Detect Good is even less reliable in finding someone who murders orcs than Detect Evil is at finding an orc who murders humans.

None of this shows any kind of inconsistency, and the only "problem" is that the character actually using the spell might not get the information they want - which is okay, because "Detect Alignment" is not, and has never purported to be, "Detect exactly the piece of information I need to know in order to do what I subjectively think is right".


Except that, itself, is constraining. A "side/faction" could very well only care that you are fighting against the enemy "side/faction", and not really care at all how you fight, or what other things you do when you are not. By tying these together, you force players to pick not only "sides", but at the same time and in the same choice also "personality" that goes along with it. And yeah, sometimes (maybe even a lot of times), that works fine. But other times, it does not.

The only "side" or "faction" that does not care at all how you fight against the enemy is called the side of blind idiots. Real armies have standardized personality tests to gauge whether any given person is fit for service, they demand specific conduct both in and outside of the uniform, and they will kick you out for failing to meet their standards. They do this, because personality influences behaviour, and how you behave determines whether you are actually serving their side at all.

By admitting it "sometimes works fine", you virtually concede every point that matters. If you have strong preference for games where "sides" don't sort by personality, go for it, but don't pretend it is somehow especially problematic to have a game where they do sort by it.


The character of Cassian Andor in Star Wars (Rogue One, and currently the Andor series) is a great example of this in what is otherwise a very clear cut "good vs evil" story environment. The goody-goody's of the rebellion (main characters in the original series) can conveniently ignore exactly how those Death Star plans were originally obtained, right? But folks on "their side" certainly did some pretty evil things along the way, right?

If you want to talk about Star Wars, you have your choice of Star Wars roleplaying games to pick to see how they handle Rebels versus the Empire, or Light Side of the Force versus Dark Side of the Force. Once more, the example you have picked is not a game of D&D, or even any tabletop game, and no-one who isn't concerned with replicating exact story beats from the show has to pay attention to it.


Imagine if there was some overall authority in the universe that said that the "rebels" were on the side of "good", and "the empire" was on the side of "evil", and therefore all rebels had to be of good alignment and all imperials of evil alignment (conflating "sides" with personality traits, right?). Then add in actual punishments to people who fail to follow those alignment rules, or even game rules that say that if you do too many "evil" things you'll start siding with the empire, cause that's now "your side". You've just run into problems and have removed exploration of an entire sub-set of stories about the rebels fighting against the empire. All because you chose to have such a rigid alignment system in place.

What, an overall authority such as, say, the Force? :smalltongue:

More seriously, sure, let me imagine: we are looking to have Star Wars alignment that fits the model of AD&D and tracks both allegiance and personality, right? Well this is easy! The Empire stands for an, oppressive, authoritarian system. So, exemplified by Storm Troopers, we can say that the people who find appeal in being Pro-Empire have authoritarian personalities. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian_personality)

So, based on the example set by the movies, we can say these kind of people are both weak in the Force and leaning to the Dark Side. That is, they are motivated by negative emotions such as fear, anger and hate, and drawn to subjugate themselves to a strong central authority. Let's call this alignment "Imperial Dark Siders". And, again, based on the primary source of the movies, we can say Imperial Dark Siders seek to ruthlessly oppress and destroy those who are strong in the force, those who oppose the central authority of the Emperor, or those who otherwise don't fit in.

So the Dark Side Imperials do monitor personality, they do monitor behaviour, and they will crush character who fails to fall in line. That's why there is a rebellion in the first place.

So what about the rebels? Well, they probably don't want to overthrow an oppressive authoritarian system only for it to be replaced with another of the same kind. We can safely say they value individual freedom, equality and liberty, all the kinds of things the Empire is unlikely to grant them. They are also associated with Light Side of the Force and stress more positive emotions such as hope, joy and love. Let's call this alignment "Light Side Rebels". I'd have zero issues with a game system where the Light Side Rebels will kick your character out for engaging in Dark Side behaviour (such as terror tactics motivated by fear, anger and hate), or where they cease to trust your character because of their authoritarian beliefs signifying they'd be happy little Storm Trooper if the situation would allow for it.


And yes. I call that absurd. But that's effectively what you get when you impose a single "alignment" that includes both "sides" and "personality". And yes, it can work in some game systems. But it will work only very poorly in most. Certainly, it will fail if you and your players want to play anything other than cardboard cutout personalities in the game world. Which, well, most (many?) of us do.

What you call "absurd" doesn't seem all that absurd to me at all. On the contrary, it seems to me like Star Wars itself is based on sorting people to sides based on what kind of behaviour and personality they have. Heck, I'm about 99% certain, even without checking, that there are actual Star Wars tabletop games that work identically to CODA Lord of the Rings roleplaying game: act in a way that suggests you'd be a happy little Storm Trooper or worse, a Sith, and you will gain Dark Side points; net enough Dark Side points and your character is now an NPC.

Your claim that "it will work only very poorly in most" systems and "it will fail if you and your players want to play anything other than cardboard cutout personalities" are entirely unsubstantiated and based on strawman accounts of personalities and alignment both.

---

EDIT:

Missed this the first time around, because I stopped my reply at the point where you started quoting Mark Hall:


Except this determination is based entirely on which "external group" the character is being loyal to. Is it a code of honor instilled by his order? Or to his fellow party members who he's agreed to join on some adventure? Or to the local prince? To the laws of his homeland, or the land he's currently operating in (and perhaps working to assist)?

A Lawful Good paladin and a Chaotic Evil Rogue may both make the same actions (refusing to talk to their captors), but for very different reasons. And yes, if the player and the GM are in agreement that the action fits their character, there's no problem. But what if they aren't in agreement? What if the GM decides that the lawful good character would of course not lie about his plot to overthrow the evil overlord who's minions have captured him? Or even refusing to acknowledge that he is planning such a thing is itself deceitful and therefore not "lawful good"? And this is before even getting into a scenario where the poor hapless paladin may have been hired/requested to help overthrow said "evil overlord" under false pretenses, and maybe doesn't even realize that the folks who captured him are the "legitimate lawful authority" and are really the "good guys", and by concealing his compatriots while they undertake their part of the plan, he's unwittingly assisting an "evil" and "chaotic" act. Heck. What if he wasn't captured by the minions of the evil overlord, but another faction opposed to said overlord? And they want information from the paladin which may be critical to the success of their plans? How much vetting does the paladin have to do to make this determination? And how does he make the decision between helping "his side" win against the overlord, versus helping "any side" win? There may very well be no clear cut "good vs evil" (or even "law vs chaos") dynamic at play, so which ethical rules is the paladin actually bound to?

And perhaps an even more realistic scenario. Is the chaotic evil rogue required to turn on his companions in such a situation? After all, he's supposed to be selfish and untrustworthy, right? What if the player picked that alignment because he wants to play a character that doesn't like to follow the rules, and is willing to get his hands dirty for the right price, but is still absolutely loyal to anyone who has earned the right to be called "friend" (a completely reasonable set of personality traits for an otherwise "chaotic evil" rogue, right)? The GM might decide to punish his character for failing to "follow his alignment" in that situation, judging that the chaotic evil rogue should have put his own needs ahead of his companions, and by failing to do so, he's showing a level of altruism that isn't in accordance with his alignment.

Again. If alignment is just a guideline, then that's fine. But the moment there actually are in-game effects as a result, you can run into these sorts of scenarios. And in my experience, they tend to occur (or should occur) more often than most people here seem to be thinking. Or, put the other way around, it's possible that many GMs are avoiding (perhaps even subconsciously) these sorts of situations precisely because they know that they will encounter flaws in the system and they want to avoid them. Which, of course, puts us right back into the case of the alignment system itself acting as a restraint on free roleplaying.

I'm confident most of the issues with this part are already dealt with in my reply to rest of your arguments, but let's go through this nonetheless:

"Except this determination is based entirely on which "external group" the character is being loyal to."

So? You think I can't tell anything about someone's personality based who they choose to associate with? (https://www.bustle.com/articles/193733-what-your-friendships-say-about-you-according-to-science)

"Is it a code of honor instilled by his order? Or to his fellow party members who he's agreed to join on some adventure? Or to the local prince? To the laws of his homeland, or the land he's currently operating in (and perhaps working to assist)?"

I was responding to specific character in a specific situation as described as Quertus. It is Quertus who would have to answer these questions in order for them to matter for my determination. You are not Quertus, your questions constitute other hypotheticals that I wasn't dealing with, and didn't need to deal with. But since you asked: if a code of honor instilled by your order, that is, an organized group external to yourself, demands that you join a human rights march, chances are they are Lawful Good, and so are you. If it was instead demanded by your party members, who, in the example, fail to even show up, chances are you are more Lawful and more Good than they are. If it is out of loyalty to the local prince, we must ask the question of "what kind of prince would want you to join a human rights march?" How about: someone who is at least Good. If it was demanded by laws of their homeland, this would suggest the human rights situation in their homeland is better, again suggesting at least Good. It's reasonable to deduce they are NOT acting based on loyalty to the laws of the lands where they currently are, because they are marching for human rights; this suggests the human rights situation in the land they are in leaves something to be desired.

"A Lawful Good paladin and a Chaotic Evil Rogue may both make the same actions (refusing to talk to their captors), but for very different reasons. "

Only because the choice is binary and there are nine different alignments. Of course some opposing alignments will end up choosing the same action when this is the case. This means the evidence is weak and we can't use these kind of scenarios as sole determinant of alignment. What you fail to consider is that those "different reasons" typically suggest different behaviour projected both to the past and to the future. In the sample scenario, for example, you'd have some explaining to do why a Chaotic Evil rogue, as the sole member of the party, showed up to the human rights march as they promised. Depending on specifics of the situation, it may even be possible to use some form of backward induction or limited backward induction (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backward_induction) to show that a consistently Chaotic Evil character would never have shown up to the march, and thus, would not have been captured in this scenario.

"And yes, if the player and the GM are in agreement that the action fits their character, there's no problem. But what if they aren't in agreement?"

The game master has final say, as usual, for reasons already explained.

"What if the GM decides that the lawful good character would of course not lie about his plot to overthrow the evil overlord who's minions have captured him? Or even refusing to acknowledge that he is planning such a thing is itself deceitful and therefore not "lawful good"?"

I made a Kant reference just to remind Quertus that even people who believe lying is always wrong are probably fine with staying silent. Why are you so keen to presume a game master who is even stricter?

Furthermore, even if a game master was so strict, this is a single instance, and single instances typically do not lead to alignment change; by basic rules, non-supernatural causes also cannot cause a radical shift from one alignment to its opposite, so a Lawful Good person at worst could only move to either Neutral Good or Lawful Neutral (probably the former).

"And this is before even getting into a scenario where the poor hapless paladin may have been hired/requested to help overthrow said "evil overlord" under false pretenses, and maybe doesn't even realize that the folks who captured him are the "legitimate lawful authority" and are really the "good guys", and by concealing his compatriots while they undertake their part of the plan, he's unwittingly assisting an "evil" and "chaotic" act. Heck. What if he wasn't captured by the minions of the evil overlord, but another faction opposed to said overlord?"

Quertus wasn't talking about a paladin, specifically. He was talking about a hypothetical character who is both "Most Lawful" and "Most Chaotic" of their party. No-one in the scenario has been established to act under false pretenses, so you are once more suggesting alternate hypotheticals that have nothing to do with what Quertus was talking about and what I was responding to.

If the character was a paladin and was acting under false information, joining the human rights march and refusing to talk to the authorities would at worst be unintentional evil acts; the paladin would not even undergo alignment change and would be able to atone to restore their supernatural powers upon finding out the truth, with no additional penance. On the plus side, losing their paladin powers would serve as a hint that something is amiss; it could conceivably prompt the paladin to take a closer look at what they were doing.

"And they want information from the paladin which may be critical to the success of their plans? How much vetting does the paladin have to do to make this determination? And how does he make the decision between helping "his side" win against the overlord, versus helping "any side" win? There may very well be no clear cut "good vs evil" (or even "law vs chaos") dynamic at play, so which ethical rules is the paladin actually bound to?"

The character joined a human rights march. The amount of vetting they'd have to do is the normal amount to find out that the people he joined are actually marching for human rights, instead of being part of some nefarious conspiracy. :smalltongue: Presumably, the side they want to win is the side that supports human rights, and they should reason accordingly. If you think there is no clear cut "good versus evil" or "law versus chaos" dynamic at play, you either did not read or did not understand the alignment definitions I posted in the post you quoted. What do you think the phrase "human rights" means?

"And perhaps an even more realistic scenario. Is the chaotic evil rogue required to turn on his companions in such a situation? After all, he's supposed to be selfish and untrustworthy, right? What if the player picked that alignment because he wants to play a character that doesn't like to follow the rules, and is willing to get his hands dirty for the right price, but is still absolutely loyal to anyone who has earned the right to be called "friend" (a completely reasonable set of personality traits for an otherwise "chaotic evil" rogue, right)? The GM might decide to punish his character for failing to "follow his alignment" in that situation, judging that the chaotic evil rogue should have put his own needs ahead of his companions, and by failing to do so, he's showing a level of altruism that isn't in accordance with his alignment."

This isn't a more realistic scenario, because you haven't explained why this person who doesn't care about keeping promises nor about human rights was the only party member to show up at a human rights march. Who you are suggesting is his friend among the protesters? Why didn't this Chaotic Evil person, say, knock them out to prevent them from going to the march, thus eliminating the chance of either of them being caught for that reason? What about showing up to a human rights march fits with your idea of a selfish and untrustworthy person who dislikes following the rules and is willing to get his hands dirty for the right price?

Being "absolutely loyal" to another person who is marching to defend human rights is very much NOT in accordance of Chaotic Evil alignment, and saying it shows a level of altruism that is otherwise untypical of such a person is perfectly reasonable. Yet, again, this is a single instance, and single instances typically do not lead to alignment change; by basic rules, non-supernatural causes also cannot cause a radical shift from one alignment to its opposite, so at worst the character would move to either Chaotic Neutral or Neutral Evil (almost certainly the former), incurring only the normal penalty for changing alignment. As a rogue, they would not even lose any class abilities or be prohibited from leveling up in their class. Such horror, such woe. What would be the undesirable consequence of such punishment? That the Chaotic Evil rogue becomes even more Chaotic Evil and forsakes all friendships with people who fight for human rights?

To me, this sounds like another case of what normal people call a "choice": the choice here being between continuing to be a selfish prick who causes harm and suffering to other people, versus maintaining friendship with people who do not want ANYONE to be the kind of selfish prick you have been behind their back.

"Again. If alignment is just a guideline, then that's fine. But the moment there actually are in-game effects as a result, you can run into these sorts of scenarios. And in my experience, they tend to occur (or should occur) more often than most people here seem to be thinking. Or, put the other way around, it's possible that many GMs are avoiding (perhaps even subconsciously) these sorts of situations precisely because they know that they will encounter flaws in the system and they want to avoid them. Which, of course, puts us right back into the case of the alignment system itself acting as a restraint on free roleplaying."

What about "these kind of scenarios" strike you as so bad that they need to be avoided? What is supposed to be the great big flaw they reveal? What about them restricts the player so much that it becomes an issue? Because at worst, the player character suffers a minor penalty that they can recover from under the very same rules. And that is under the strictest interpretation - under less strict interpretations, your additional hypotheticals lead to no aligment change and no penalties.

Satinavian
2022-10-15, 01:21 PM
The game master has final say because they are a game referee. The determination of alignment rests on them because it is used to decide how game objects behave in response to player actions. As far as the game process is concerned, the game master is correct, as directly stated by rules of the game. That you even bother to ask this question suggests you keep conflating game statements with player's subjective opinion. The game master's statement only covers the former, not the latter - the player and their character are free to keep whatever opinions they have on "chaotic good", it's just that their opinions are not used to decide behaviour of game objects.
And you could solve the need for the gm to do that by removing all instances where alignment is relevant for game objects. Or simply, by ditching alignment rules.

No one ever comes to te forum with stories of players/DMs disagreeing about how extraverted a character is. Because there are no rules for it. A disagreement can't do any harm.

Tanarii
2022-10-15, 02:10 PM
And you could solve the need for the gm to do that by removing all instances where alignment is relevant for game objects.
Also what 5e (mostly) did. It's best use is as a player RP tool, not as a descriptive scoring system of previous actions.

Vahnavoi
2022-10-15, 02:33 PM
And you could solve the need for the gm to do that by removing all instances where alignment is relevant for game objects. Or simply, by ditching alignment rules.

And by doing so, you also lose all gameplay revolving around such objects. It is a trade-off, not some linear improvement. You can also remove Corruption points for CODA Lord of the Rings, but then you have to accept that sometimes Gandalf kills Frodo, takes the Ring and becomes new a Dark Lord ruling over Middle-Earth.


No one ever comes to te forum with stories of players/DMs disagreeing about how extraverted a character is. Because there are no rules for it. A disagreement can't do any harm.

That specific example? Maybe not. Personality in general? Do I really need to hunt down examples of people complaining about other players not playing their characters properly? This happens even in freeform games, which is why I asked gbaji to entertain that scenario. It's not about the mechanics, it is about semantic disagreement and the conflict it causes when players have to choose how their characters act in face of conflicting descriptions. (https://existentialcomics.com/comic/26)

gbaji
2022-10-17, 07:35 PM
And this applies to all personality traits, even those that are not explicitly mechanized. Forget, for a moment, everything you think you know about alignment or D&D and imagine a freeform game with no game master. Suppose a player comes to the table, proclaiming to play an Extroverted character. However, in actual play, they consistently play their character as withdrawn, focused more on their own thoughts than external game events. Any other player who knows what the terms mean is capable of making the observation: "Hey, you described your character as Extroverted, but all actual actions you've taken as that character suggests an Introverted personality."

The first player can react to this in a number of ways:

A) "What do you mean, my character talked to other people last week, that's totally Extrovert behaviour."
B) "It's my character, if I say they are extroverted, that's what they are."
C) "Hot damn, you're right. I will change my character's description to fit their actual behaviour."
D) "Hot damn, you're right. I admit my character's recent behaviour has been out of character and will change their behaviour to match their description."
E) "The description is how my character sees themselves. Your opinion of what "extroverted" and "introverted" mean may differ."

What introducing a game master into this situation means that A, B and E, which are 99% of the actual "conflict" you describe, are pre-emptively solved: whenever there's confusion about what a term means in the game, the game master settles the matter. This leaves us with C and D.

The introduction of a GM doesn't solve these conflicts, it just shifts who the conflict is between. The irony is that you say this and then dismiss it, yet in order for this to be true, the very case you assume doesn't happen must happen.


C is what the actual alignment rules, as described in 1st Edition AD&D, have a game master enforce: I already cited most of the relevant rules text in my earlier reply to Tanarii. The alignment and personality of a character, and consequently how the game master has the world react, are determined by actual play behaviour.

D is what you think D&D has game master enforce, but you are incorrect, or at least you've never cited any actual rule text from any actual D&D edition decreeing it so. There are other games that work this way, and individual game masters can of course choose to play D&D this way, but it's not how the basic system of alignment is actually set up, and consequently criticism of this model is not criticism of the basic alignment system. In any case, in this model a player's behaviour during game is meant to follow their alignment - similar to how in traditional theater an actor is beholden to a script.

That's completely wrong. Every version of D&D I've ever played has suggestions to DMs as to how to manage alignment, and every single one tells the DM to warn the player if they are playing their character in a way that isn't in their character's chosen alignment. The assumption is that the first step is to try to get the player to play their character "correctly", with the last straw being to change the alignment on the character sheet. You bypass this issue by speculating about a brand new character being played "incorrectly", and suggesting that it's as simple as just changing the value written on the sheet (they were wrong about what this character's alignment really was). But there wouldn't be whole sections devoted to how to atone or regain character alignment if it wasn't something that happened *and* that losing your alignment wasn't assumed to be a punishment in some way.


And this is what you've failed to address. "Restricting roleplaying" is no big criticism of anything, because restricting players from certain actions and personalities are part and parcel for games that want to aim for specific themes and personality archetypes. Weird subjective opinions about what words mean are not an excuse to play a character outside the bounds of what a game is meant to cover, and agreeing that game master has final say in case of conflict is a solution to your supposed to problem.

Only if our starting assumption is a strict alignment system. Imagine the same scenario you outlined, but there's no restrictions on behavior in the game other than that you comply with the dictates of your religion (if you worship a deity), and/or fight on your "side" (in the case of side/faction based systems). Whether someone is introverted or extroverted simply would not matter, right? You get to play your character however you want to, and as long as you aren't violating other rules you've agreed to (based on choices made along the way), no one cares.

See how much easier that is? Or even if "whether you're introverted or extroverted has no bearing on play", it works as well. But if there's a spell in the game called "detect introvert/extrovert", and potential problems if you detected "wrong", then yeah, this suddenly becomes a problem. Or spells that "protect from introvert", and now you are at a measurably disadvantage because you didn't play your character the way the GM thinks an extroverted character should be played, it is, again, a problem.



For one, bards don't actually lose class abilities due to ceasing to be chaotic in any version of D&D I know about. Bad example, right there. But even if they did, changing alignment and losing class abilities does not actually necessitate changing your character's behaviour: you can just choose to live without those abilities and carry on under a new alignment. This is what normal people call a "choice": namely, the choice between retaining personal power versus functioning well as a group.

Sure. I missed that bards don't lose class abilities, but can't gain new levels if chaotic. It's just a random example. Any case where there are consequences for changing alignment apply here. The point is that as long as those consequences exist (whatever they are), they act as pressure to force players to play their characters a certain way. To suggest otherwise would throw out the entire human concept of incentive/penalty influence on behavior. And in cases where the player and the GM disagree on what exactly constitutes "good/evil" or "law/chaos", this is going to create conflict.


You are working on the assumption that choosing to "fight against the system" is not based on character traits, but no-one has to grant you that, because even in real life we can see that certain personality traits are linked to being habitually contrarian. (https://psychology.fandom.com/wiki/Contrarian) If the game master is observing those personality traits in your character, using that as basis for the determination is perfectly valid.

I literally provided an example of a Robin Hood type character where the external action "fighting against the system" was 100% at odds with the character's internal personality "uses strict rules and methods when making decisions and/or taking actions". You've just completely ignored it.

It is absolutely possible for someone to be absolutely lawful in how they do things while also "fighting against the system". You assume that only anarchists can do so, but that's simply not true. There are tons of examples (historically and otherwise) of people fighting to overthrow an otherwise legitimate rule, while themselves also exhibiting personality traits we would all absolutely agree are "lawful". The fact that D&D (and many other games) conflate these two into one "law/chaos" alignment trait written on the character sheet is extremely problematic.


Saying "anyone fighting against tyranny is 'chaotic'" is absurd for several reasons. The first is that it equivocates at least two of many different definitions of tyranny. (https://www.thefreedictionary.com/tyranny): that of tyranny as unjust and oppressive governmental power, and that of tyranny as government in which a single ruler is vested with absolute power. It should be obvious that Good characters, including Lawful Good characters have a reason to oppose unjust and oppressive governments as well, because such governments trample on creature rights Good characters find important. The second is that Neutral alignments exist, so someone who opposes an unjust government but considers non-governmental group identities important can just be Neutral instead of Chaotic. The third is that giving absolute power to a single individual doesn't necessarily sit well with Lawful characters - group-motivated people might want decisions to be made, you know, as a group, rather than by selfish whims of a single person.

Sigh. And now you're just going off on silly tangents over the word "tyranny". Ironic, given that I corrected someone's use of the word in another thread, then did the same here. Bad on me.

Forget that. In the Robin Hood myth, the prince was not a tyrant, right? He was the rightful ruler at the time (King off to war, leaving him in charge). The Sherriff was the lawful authority in the town, right? So no one can argue that this is a case of lawful folks deciding to oppose an unlawful rule. Unjust? Sure. But not unlawful. And certainly, we can imagine a ton of other scenarios that are similar. Can you, for one moment, stop pretending that only cases in which these things align exist, but examine the cases where they don't?

What happens when our hypothetical freedom fighter is fighting against a lawful authority (which, by definition makes him "chaotic"), but uses tactics and methods that are decidedly lawful? In a world where alignment either doesn't exist, or only measures one of those things, or where alignment doesn't come with any consequences, it doesn't matter. The moment all three of those things exist in the game, the effect for the character is subject to the whims of the GM in terms of which aspect of law/chaos is chosen to be prominent in that case.


The reason why it is a "wrong way" to run alignment is not because it is absurd, it is because frequently it's based on naive notions of what the laws are. If laws of a nation say, for example, that the strong are free to abuse the weak, and the only crime is getting caught, any Good character, including Lawful Good ones, would reject such laws, because they are in defiance of creature rights. Or in other words: laws of any given land do not necessarily fall in line with the concern for organized groups that defines the axis of Law, nevermind more specific alignments of Lawful Good, Lawful Neutral and Lawful Evil. The fact that there are three different Lawful alignments alone should hint that different Lawful characters can be in conflict over what laws of a given land should be - different organized groups do not need to be in perfect agreement with each other to count as Lawful.

Again. Stop trying to only look at cases where there isn't a problem, and look at the ones where there is. I've presented exactly a case for this and you keep ignoring it. You're also injecting considerations on the "good/evil" axis along the way, which just further muddies the waters. And yes, I do consider the fact that some alignment system variations make a distinction in terms of what "law" and "chaos" mean based on whether they are connected to "good/neutral/evil" is also a problem. Because now we're in this weird case where detect/protect law/chaos spells work variably based on whether someone is good/neutral/evil. Um... That's even more of a mess.

And yes. I totally get that a lawful good character might seek to fight against a lawful evil ruler. But would he form a band of brigands, robbing random wealthy folks wandering down the road, and using that wealth to buy popularity among the peasants and to fund his campaign? Probably not. It's not just that he's opposing the lawful authority that makes one lawful/chaotic, but whether one is "breaking the rules/laws" to do so. I suppose we could argue that this is yet another divergence on what is otherwise presented as a single axis in many alignment systems. Instead of just two aspects, we have three that align with "chaos": "opposing lawful authority", "breaking traditional rules/laws", and "unstructured behavior and methodology". And, just as with the two I was highlighting, all we've done is define yet another aspect of this which can't always be assumed to be in perfect alignment with each other. Which leaves us still wondering "what makes this character lawful or chaotic?".



No, it's not the exact opposite of what I claim. Alignment explicitly can change, and will change if the repentant character keeps acting according to their new desired alignment, which will also influence behaviour of all alignment-related supernatural effects. The only time this "Belkar problem" occurs is when a player has proclaimed their character wants to change alignment, but has yet to actually have their character act according to the new desired alignment for enough time to have their game master believe them. Which, I reiterate, I do not find to be much of a "problem" at all.

The very fact that you used the bolded language highlights the innate evil/good directional bias of your entire viewpoint on alignment. Also, you've conveniently forgotten your own A-E points earlier. What if it's *not* the players "desired alignment", but the GM feels a different alignment fits the character better based on their actions? That's not the same as a "redemption arc" that you seem to have shifted to. And it also completely misses the whole "fall towards evil" issue I spoke of earlier.

I'm specifically examining cases where the player thinks his character is following an alignment, but the GM thinks otherwise. What happens in that case? What if the lawful good character things that doing something harmful to one person for a "greater good" is still "good", but the GM thinks that will instantly move him towards evil and require that he now put "neutral" on his character sheet. Should the GM in that case play "gotcha" with the player and wait until he does it and then punish him (assuming the shift is a punishment)? That's bad, right? Or, should the GM warn the player that the action he's considering would result in an alignment shift for his character? That's what we should do, right? Except that's in direct opposition to what you insisted never happened (The "D" case listed above).


In neither case does the detection spell give the first person access to lifetime history of the second person. In neither case does the result of a detection spell enforce an outcome: the first person has only gained knowledge of the second person's current alignment, and they will have to weigh this information in context of everything else they know. How to act on the information is on the first person.

That's a lot of writing to basically say "it detects his current alignment". That current alignment (certainly in the case of Belkar) is "evil". And it's 100% based on his past actions, not his current/recent ones. So yes, you are effectively detecting the entire life history of a character, because alignment is based on the cumulative actions and decisions that character has made, the resulting calculation of which is the current alignment.


Your OotS example is irrelevant, because OotS is not a game of D&D, and neither Minrah nor comic readers are in a position similar to a game master serving as a referee. Their subjective opinions based on imperfect information have no weight in discussion such as this. The closest person to a game master in context of a webcomic is its author, namely Rich Burlew. So at best, Belkar's case can inform you how Rich Burlew would make decisions as a game master of a D&D game, except Rich Burlew has explicitly told his readers that he doesn't heed D&D rules exactly, breaking them as he sees fit to tell the story and jokes he wants to tell. OotS is, to a relevant degree, a parody or a satire of D&D stereotypes, not a straight guide on how to run alignment. So stop basing your examples on OotS.

Huh. Belkar detects as evil. Full Stop. He is affected by a protection from evil effect. Full stop. What more is there to consider? You're tap dancing around the core issue here, which is that alignment is based on the sum totality of a character's actions, and that alignment (in D&D and many games) has a direct in-game mechanical effect (how you detect/protect being just one of the easiest to observe).



Then you're specifically speaking to a strawman, as already explained at the beginning of this post. Having in-game rewards or penalties is not the same as telling how someone must play their character. Under 1st Edition interpretation of biaxial alignment, nothing stops the player from eating the penalty and continuing to play under their new alignment. ...

...

A player only "must" have their character act in a specific way, IF they want to maintain certain in-game benefits. This is, again, what normal people call a "choice". What about this ISN'T in the realm of "players playing their characters, and the GM playing the NPCs"?

What part of "play this way or suffer consequences" do you think wont influence player choices when playing their characters? I'm honestly baffled by your position here. Again, if there were no consequences, you would be correct. The moment that there are, then any threat of those consequences constitutes influence on how players play their characters. Period. It can't not have that effect.


It is curious, then, that majority of your arguments only explore a system that's nowhere in the books, and the only problems you've shown them to run into are neither unique to alignment nor particularly hard to deal with.

The Robin Hood example is unique to alignment. That Belkar detects as evil despite having behaved "good" for the entirely of this book is also unique to how the alignment system in D&D works. I'm not sure what conditions you are asking for here. I could literally list off 100 more cases where the alignment system fails. All of them because it tries to simultaneously record very different things on the same axis.



And let's make it even more interesting. What about an Orc serial killer? So humans can detect "evil" criminals within their societies using detect evil spells, but Orcs can't? Because... why?

Seems like you didn't understand the comparison; if that's not the case, you're strawmanning detection spells again, complaining about them doing something they don't actually do. To wit: Detect Evil is neither "Detect Criminal" nor "Detect Serial Killer". Neither humans nor orcs can reliably use it for those purposes.

The point is that in a predominantly "good" society, a detect evil spell can detect criminal intent/action. Someone who is evil is someone who actively pursues/enjoys causing harm to others. in a society full of people who avoid this, that person shows up. So the serial killer will be one evil person in a sea of good.

The same exact serial killer, simply by being an Orc and living in an Orc society in which most of the people are evil (but the "usual" kind of evil, where killing to advance career, torturing your enemies, then sacrificing them and eating their hearts is "normal"), is much harder to detect because even though what he's doing is just as harmful to Orc society as to human (killing people for socially non-beneficial purposes), yet magically, simply because of the culture itself, he can't be detected as easily.

So a detect evil spell actually functions differently (and is of different utility) among a human society than an orc one (again, making certain assumptions about the orc society in my example). Not in mechanical terms, but in actual utility to the people using it. And what's interesting is that it's not equal in the other direction. The serial killer targeting orcs doesn't detect as "good", so this isn't a case of swapping things in the other direction. He's still "evil". We've just decided that different kinds of evil are all the same as far as the spell is concerned. The opposite case among humans (the lack of being able to distinguish different kinds of "good") doesn't exist. Because if someone detects as "good" is a reasonable bet that they aren't likely to kill me in my sleep and take my stuff.

One can certainly argue that this is a function of the asymmetrical nature of good and evil, and that the Orcs "deserve" to suffer other types of violence amongst themselves because of their already existing innate "evilness" or something. And that's absolutely fine. But it does run aground when we consider that good and evil are supposed to be at least somewhat cosmically balanced concepts in the game universe. An alignment system with "sides/factions" would work very differently, right? Because then I'd be detecting people "aligned with my side" and "against my side". So a human operating in human society but intending to do harm to that society would detect as "evil" (or an "enemy" perhaps), while an Orc operating in orc society doing the same would also detect as an enemy. They would each detect the same as an group of humans invading said orc lands and vice versa. It's a far more useful way of managing alignment.


You seem to be complaining that Detect Evil is not "Detect evil-as-defined-by-orcish society", something the spell never proclaims to be.

I'm not complaining about it. Merely pointing out the problems inherent in an alignment system that does have a "detect evil" spell in the first place. That the spell doesn't proclaim to do this isn't the point. Saying "that's what the rules say, so it's a good rule" kinda defeats the purpose of having a discussion about good/bad rules.



If you want to talk about Star Wars, you have your choice of Star Wars roleplaying games to pick to see how they handle Rebels versus the Empire, or Light Side of the Force versus Dark Side of the Force. Once more, the example you have picked is not a game of D&D, or even any tabletop game, and no-one who isn't concerned with replicating exact story beats from the show has to pay attention to it.

I'm giving an example of human nature and how it often does not fit into neat little alignment boxes. It's not about the game system.



What, an overall authority such as, say, the Force? :smalltongue:

And Andor is affected by how the force views him... how? This is akin to the whole "clerics of gods" bit, where they are the only one's affected by failing to follow the rules. But that does not preclude other people "on their side" who have personalities and behaviors that a Jedi (for example) would find horrific.

Imagine if this was in effect though. That "the force" somehow pushed people who didn't comply with the "light side" towards evil. Andor would decide to fight for the Empire, right? He would "fall to the dark side" because of his actions. But he doesn't because real people don't actually behave that way. It's why I brought up this example. He's a refreshing character in the SW universe precisely because he doesn't fall into the "cardboard cutout" characters we've become accustomed to. The whole "dark/light side" conflict only exists for folks who have force powers (and the later episodes thematically suggest that even this is an artificially created conflict). For everyone else? You pick a side and fight for it using whatever tools and abilities you have.

Andor doesn't fight for the rebellion because he's a "good guy" and the rebellion is "good" ("side" and "personality being the same). He fights for the rebellion because the empire has taken things from him and represents a threat to him personally (they're after him for some choices he made along the way). That does not preclude that he's absolutely on the "side" of the rebellion, only that the "side" isn't as simplistic as alignment boxes might suggest. And his "side" certainly doesn't seem to have a problem with him helping them even if some on the same "side" might find what he does and how he does it morally questionable.


So what about the rebels? Well, they probably don't want to overthrow an oppressive authoritarian system only for it to be replaced with another of the same kind. We can safely say they value individual freedom, equality and liberty, all the kinds of things the Empire is unlikely to grant them. They are also associated with Light Side of the Force and stress more positive emotions such as hope, joy and love. Let's call this alignment "Light Side Rebels". I'd have zero issues with a game system where the Light Side Rebels will kick your character out for engaging in Dark Side behaviour (such as terror tactics motivated by fear, anger and hate), or where they cease to trust your character because of their authoritarian beliefs signifying they'd be happy little Storm Trooper if the situation would allow for it.

Which is precisely the cardboard cutout style of play that I find constricting *and* which characters like Andor exist to challenge. Continuing to try to fit that square peg into the round hole of the alignment system is perhaps not the best way forward.



What you call "absurd" doesn't seem all that absurd to me at all. On the contrary, it seems to me like Star Wars itself is based on sorting people to sides based on what kind of behaviour and personality they have. Heck, I'm about 99% certain, even without checking, that there are actual Star Wars tabletop games that work identically to CODA Lord of the Rings roleplaying game: act in a way that suggests you'd be a happy little Storm Trooper or worse, a Sith, and you will gain Dark Side points; net enough Dark Side points and your character is now an NPC.

Your claim that "it will work only very poorly in most" systems and "it will fail if you and your players want to play anything other than cardboard cutout personalities" are entirely unsubstantiated and based on strawman accounts of personalities and alignment both.

And yet, the alignment system you just spoke about would do exactly that. It would "kick Andor out" because he's clearly "falling to the dark side". In the gritty reality of what is really required to fight such a rebellion successfully? Folks like Andor are necessary. Might be an ugly truth that the "light side fighters" don't want to think too hard about, but if we were to model real human behavior it would not fit so neatly into the kind of alignment systems you seem to want to use.



"What if the GM decides that the lawful good character would of course not lie about his plot to overthrow the evil overlord who's minions have captured him? Or even refusing to acknowledge that he is planning such a thing is itself deceitful and therefore not "lawful good"?"

I made a Kant reference just to remind Quertus that even people who believe lying is always wrong are probably fine with staying silent. Why are you so keen to presume a game master who is even stricter?

Because you said the GM is the final arbiter on this. So if he choses an interpretation of what a lawful good character would/should do in that situation, by your argument, that's what should have happened, and any action to the contrary by the player is "wrong".

Remember. I'm examining what happens when the GM and player disagree on how an alignment should be played. And also pointing out that some of the inherent inconsistencies in how alignments in the traditional D&D law/chaos;good/evil alignment system increase the probability of those disagreements. You're ignoring the premise if you just assume we start out agreeing. And the fact that we're even having a discussion (and that so many alignment arguments have existed in the past) support my assumption that these disagreements will occur and we maybe should examine why they occur.


Furthermore, even if a game master was so strict, this is a single instance, and single instances typically do not lead to alignment change; by basic rules, non-supernatural causes also cannot cause a radical shift from one alignment to its opposite, so a Lawful Good person at worst could only move to either Neutral Good or Lawful Neutral (probably the former).

The very fact that alignment can change as a consequence of character choices/actions means that each choice/action along the way must be significant, or it would never happen. That's like saying that "it's just one concussion and it takes a lot to cause permanent damage, so let's not worry about it figuring out why it happened". Um... No. Each case matters.


Quertus wasn't talking about a paladin, specifically. He was talking about a hypothetical character who is both "Most Lawful" and "Most Chaotic" of their party. No-one in the scenario has been established to act under false pretenses, so you are once more suggesting alternate hypotheticals that have nothing to do with what Quertus was talking about and what I was responding to.

Replace "paladin" with "character who cares about retaining his lawful good status". Doesn't matter what the label is. Let's assume that alignment actually matters, else, why bother having it?

And yeah. I'm examining conditions where we don't know exactly what's going on, and who's on which side, and who has what alignment, etc. That's the point. It's terrifically easy to make alignment choices if the GM tells you "this is good" and "this is evil". Duh. But let's pretend that we're trying to at least somewhat model a real world where choices are not so ridiculously black and white. And in that case, a character can easily find themselves in a situation where there is no good answer. Perhaps telling the guys who captured you allows the "bad guys" to do more horrible bad things, and so it's "evil". But failing to do so prevents those who captured you from stopping the real bad guys, and thus results in more harm. Was it "evil" to stay silent when speaking would save lives?

What happens when you are playing characters in a game world full of unknowns? Things aren't so clear cut. That's what I'm examining. And the degree to which you keep presenting simplified scenarios and insisting that I'm not allowed to make them more complex also highlights a point I made earlier: That the alignment system may also push GMs into simplifying good/evil and law/chaos choices in their games exactly in order to avoid this conflict. If you don't put moral quandaries in your D&D game, and even a tiny bit of this is because you're trying to help your players play their characters more easily, then this is in effect in your game.

Refusing to consider cases where the issue is more complex is somewhat the same thing. Of course I'm adding in additional things to the scenarios. Because these are things can can (and perhaps should) come up in real game playing. How about we examine the difficult cases and not just the easy ones?


"And they want information from the paladin which may be critical to the success of their plans? How much vetting does the paladin have to do to make this determination? And how does he make the decision between helping "his side" win against the overlord, versus helping "any side" win? There may very well be no clear cut "good vs evil" (or even "law vs chaos") dynamic at play, so which ethical rules is the paladin actually bound to?"

The character joined a human rights march.

Why are we assuming this is all about a human rights march? That's a strange scenario to begin with. Let's assume there's a plot afoot to assassinate the king. Let's assume our lawful good character is trying to stop this and is investigating some suspicious characters in town. Let's assume he gets captured and held by them. As it happens, they are also trying to stop the assassination, but don't know who this guy and his friends are who are poking around town either. They want information. Let's assume they have half of the information needed to stop the plot, and the captured character has the other half.

Should he tell them what he's doing and why? Or stay silent assuming they are the "bad guys" and anything he says will only help them? So him, being a steadfast lawful good character would never under any circumstances "break" and tell his captors anything at all, right? Er... He just got the king killed, half his family killed, and the entire kingdom has now fallen to the evil overlord or whatever. Good job being lawful good there buddy!

I'm not even saying that there aren't perfectly valid ways of playing this out within the D&D alignment system. Just pointing out that every scenario can be far more complex than it appears, and that actual moral decisions are not as simple as "I fight on the side of good and do good things". Presenting nothing but scenarios where the cardboard cutout LG character can follow his cardboard cutout LG play guide and always come out smelling like roses fails to examine any realistic gaming world where realistic scenarios may actually play out. And using nothing but those sorts of examples when defending alignment system doesn't really allow us to accurately test whether they "work well" or not.

You test the things that might fail, not the ones you know will work.



"And perhaps an even more realistic scenario. Is the chaotic evil rogue required to turn on his companions in such a situation? After all, he's supposed to be selfish and untrustworthy, right? What if the player picked that alignment because he wants to play a character that doesn't like to follow the rules, and is willing to get his hands dirty for the right price, but is still absolutely loyal to anyone who has earned the right to be called "friend" (a completely reasonable set of personality traits for an otherwise "chaotic evil" rogue, right)? The GM might decide to punish his character for failing to "follow his alignment" in that situation, judging that the chaotic evil rogue should have put his own needs ahead of his companions, and by failing to do so, he's showing a level of altruism that isn't in accordance with his alignment."

This isn't a more realistic scenario, because you haven't explained why this person who doesn't care about keeping promises nor about human rights was the only party member to show up at a human rights march. Who you are suggesting is his friend among the protesters? Why didn't this Chaotic Evil person, say, knock them out to prevent them from going to the march, thus eliminating the chance of either of them being caught for that reason? What about showing up to a human rights march fits with your idea of a selfish and untrustworthy person who dislikes following the rules and is willing to get his hands dirty for the right price?

You are way too caught up on the specifics of a frankly silly example case (I'm not even sure how we got onto a "human rights march" kick, except that someone mentioned it or something). Again. It doesn't matter why they are captured. It only matters that they were, and that their captors are trying to get them to talk, and that by talking it may A) help their cause or B) hurt their cause. But maybe they have no clue which is which at the time? Or they do, and which choice do they make? And how does the GM judge their choice in the context of their alignment.


Being "absolutely loyal" to another person who is marching to defend human rights is very much NOT in accordance of Chaotic Evil alignment, and saying it shows a level of altruism that is otherwise untypical of such a person is perfectly reasonable.

Sigh. Forget the freaking march. It's not about a march. Are you seriously suggesting that a chaotic evil person cannot have any friends, or be completely loyal to them? That's the most incredibly restrictive interpretation of chaos and evil I've ever seen. Again, the complexity comes in how we judge chaos. Is it chaotic if you regularly break the rules to do things (external), or if you just do random actions instead of planning things out. So an assassin might be chaotic evil or lawful evil depending on how we judge the law/chaos side, right? Let's assume "breaks laws all the time" is what the GM in this world has decided makes one chaotic rather than "meticulously plans his assassinations". The character is chaotic evil. He's chaotic due to breaking the law, and evil because he has no problems killing people for money. But does this preclude him having friends that he would protect if they came to be threatened? Absolutely not.

And if his employers hired him to kill one of his friends, would he do it? Or would it be just as much within his alignment to say "Nope. Not going to do this, I'll kill you instead"? Could play it either way, right? Heck. I'd argue the lawful evil assassin would be more likely to say "a contract is a contract" and go ahead and kill his friend. Neither the "chaos" nor "evil" sides of his nature preclude him having friends and being loyal to them. Not unless you are lumping every single possible personality trait that could be "chaos" and "evil" and assume they must all be present. Which gets us right back to cardboard cutout characters, and restrictive play.

I maybe want to play a roguish character willing to take on dirty jobs, including killing people if the money is right, but still have the flexibility to say that I'm not going to kill my friends, or take jobs that cause harm to people I care about, or even if I just don't like the person who's hiring me. That's not "neutral" on the alignment scale, because a neutral character would at least make some effort to avoid killing random people along the way and maybe my character doesn't care about that (Heck. Maybe I *like* causing collateral damage, hence the "evil" and "chaotic" bits). But that doesn't mean that I wouldn't use my same "special skills" to cause pain and suffering to anyone trying to hurt someone I actually care about, or that I can't have anyone in the world that I do care about in the first place.




To me, this sounds like another case of what normal people call a "choice": the choice here being between continuing to be a selfish prick who causes harm and suffering to other people, versus maintaining friendship with people who do not want ANYONE to be the kind of selfish prick you have been behind their back.

And you can't imagine any character personality that can contain both? Also you've added a conditional that doesn't need to exist (the bolded bits). My character can care about his family/friends without them even knowing what I do for a living, right? You're conflating how I feel about them, with how they feel about me. The assumption that if I'm playing a chaotic evil character that I can't care about anyone else is absurd. And honestly, if you think that is true, then you're kinda proving my point about how alignment systems cause restrictive thinking about the range of character personalities. You're literally telling me that I can't play the character i want to play, and that if I put CE on my character sheet it means that I can't have anyone in the world that I care about, or want to help, or are willing to suffer pain to protect.

If I were looking for proof that my assertion is correct, you just provided it.


What about "these kind of scenarios" strike you as so bad that they need to be avoided? What is supposed to be the great big flaw they reveal? What about them restricts the player so much that it becomes an issue? Because at worst, the player character suffers a minor penalty that they can recover from under the very same rules. And that is under the strictest interpretation - under less strict interpretations, your additional hypotheticals lead to no aligment change and no penalties.

It's either sufficient to affect player choices, or it's not. Pick one. If it is, then it suffers from the problems I've been talking about. If it's not, then it falls into the "it doesn't matter and there are no consequences" case and we're fine. Constantly saying "but it's just a minor thing, and it's not that big a deal if your alignment changes", kinda misses the point.

Vahnavoi
2022-10-18, 10:52 AM
The introduction of a GM doesn't solve these conflicts, it just shifts who the conflict is between. The irony is that you say this and then dismiss it, yet in order for this to be true, the very case you assume doesn't happen must happen.

You keep orbiting around a point that's already been addressed multiple times. You might as well be saying "introducing a referee to a Judo match doesn't solve who scores a point, it just shifts the conflict from between players to being between players and the referee". Except, by agreeing on the referee, the players agree to abide by the referee's rulings. Nowhere is it assumed a conflict never happens, it is instead posited the players can solve it by agreeing to abide by the referee's ruling.


That's completely wrong. Every version of D&D I've ever played has suggestions to DMs as to how to manage alignment, and every single one tells the DM to warn the player if they are playing their character in a way that isn't in their character's chosen alignment. The assumption is that the first step is to try to get the player to play their character "correctly", with the last straw being to change the alignment on the character sheet. You bypass this issue by speculating about a brand new character being played "incorrectly", and suggesting that it's as simple as just changing the value written on the sheet (they were wrong about what this character's alignment really was). But there wouldn't be whole sections devoted to how to atone or regain character alignment if it wasn't something that happened *and* that losing your alignment wasn't assumed to be a punishment in some way.

You say I'm "completely wrong", then describe the same thing I already described in different words. A warning such as "Your proclaimed alignment is X but the action your about to take would be of alignment Y" is the same kind of statement as "Hey, you described your character as Extroverted, but all actual actions you've taken as that character suggests an Introverted personality". The player has the option to do D) "Hot damn, you're right. I admit my character's recent behaviour has been out of character and will change their behaviour to match their description.", but this is not what the game master enforces. A player is allowed to take the out-of-alignment action and, if this leads to a different alignment, continue playing under the new alignment. Hence, what ends up enforced is C) "Hot damn, you're right. I will change my character's description to fit their actual behaviour."

The player is only playing "incorrectly" in the same sense as freeform player portraying a character they claimed to be Extroverted as an Introvert. The nature of the punishments & penalties you keep harping on about is of game objects reacting to actual behaviour of a player character. In the freeform game, the equivalent happens when one player has to decide whether their character would invite the other player's character to a party: the first player's character would like to invite an Extroverted person, but the second person's character is only Extroverted on paper. Hence, whether the second person's character is "punished" by not being invited to the party depends on how we determine their personality. We're discussing whether to change the" value written on the sheet" and into which direction because other people use that value to make decisions.


Only if our starting assumption is a strict alignment system. Imagine the same scenario you outlined, but there's no restrictions on behavior in the game other than that you comply with the dictates of your religion (if you worship a deity), and/or fight on your "side" (in the case of side/faction based systems). Whether someone is introverted or extroverted simply would not matter, right? You get to play your character however you want to, and as long as you aren't violating other rules you've agreed to (based on choices made along the way), no one cares.

See how much easier that is? Or even if "whether you're introverted or extroverted has no bearing on play", it works as well. But if there's a spell in the game called "detect introvert/extrovert", and potential problems if you detected "wrong", then yeah, this suddenly becomes a problem. Or spells that "protect from introvert", and now you are at a measurably disadvantage because you didn't play your character the way the GM thinks an extroverted character should be played, it is, again, a problem.

The fact that I used a freeform game as an example should've tipped you that I do not assume a strict alignment system. What I actually assume is that personality influences behaviour and that how characters behave matters to other people at the table, and above, I used the freeform scenario to show that yes, whether someone plays their character as they describe actually matters. Imagining a game scenario where "the only restrictions" are based on religion or faction works out 95% similar to AD&D alignment because, as already established, the described alignments align with specific religious and moral philosophies.

Let's go back to the freeform example, because your treatment of it continues to show you don't even understand why the conflict you yourself keep harping about is a problem. As I already noted earlier, personality influences behaviour, and behaviour is always detectable. A game does not need any specific game construct like a "detect introvert" for other players to spot a contradiction between how a player describes their character versus how they play. The reason why it is a problem is because those other players have to make decisions about what to do in the game, and they now have to decide whether to give priority to proclamation versus actual behaviour. It is in fact possible to put yourself at a measurable disadvantage if you keep basing character behaviour on weird personal definitions of what terms mean: other people won't react the way you want them to.

As for what is "easier": roleplaying any character that is not identical to your own personality requires skill, the more skill the further the character deviates from your baseline. One of the chief reason people fail to play characters in the way they proclaim is that their own personality and natural inclinations get in the way. Not paying attention or not caring about their lapses will indeed make it easier for them, but it also removes a layer of feedback informing them of when how they are playing seems off to other people.


Sure. I missed that bards don't lose class abilities, but can't gain new levels if chaotic. It's just a random example. Any case where there are consequences for changing alignment apply here. The point is that as long as those consequences exist (whatever they are), they act as pressure to force players to play their characters a certain way. To suggest otherwise would throw out the entire human concept of incentive/penalty influence on behavior. And in cases where the player and the GM disagree on what exactly constitutes "good/evil" or "law/chaos", this is going to create conflict.

A random bad example is still a bad example. Have you noticed something during this debate? I have specified which edition of D&D I'm talking about and cited specific rules text to build my case. You, on the other hand, never specify an edition and never give citations. Your idea of how alignment works floats free of any rules, built on top of a layer of stereotypes and internet arguments about non-game media. It's a clear case of you moving the goalposts.

The rest of the paragraph is immaterial to our disagreement. I've never denied existence of consequences for alignment change, nor have I have argued that they create no pressure on player on how to play their character. The actual point of contention was and remains is your idea that this constitutes some problem or flaw with the system, instead of being part of the point.

The conflict between a game master and a player I've already dealt with to death.


I literally provided an example of a Robin Hood type character where the external action "fighting against the system" was 100% at odds with the character's internal personality "uses strict rules and methods when making decisions and/or taking actions". You've just completely ignored it.

I didn't ignore it - I provided you with a fairly lengthy explanation of why these two are not 100% at odds, yet why habitual "fighting against the system" is still potential signifier of Chaotic behaviour.


It is absolutely possible for someone to be absolutely lawful in how they do things while also "fighting against the system". You assume that only anarchists can do so, but that's simply not true. There are tons of examples (historically and otherwise) of people fighting to overthrow an otherwise legitimate rule, while themselves also exhibiting personality traits we would all absolutely agree are "lawful". The fact that D&D (and many other games) conflate these two into one "law/chaos" alignment trait written on the character sheet is extremely problematic.

Nice strawman. I didn't even mention anarchists, nevermind assume only they fight can "fight against the system". The paragraph you literally quoted next from has an explanation of why non-Chaotic character types would fight against tyranny. I'm going to quote myself here just to show anyone how unfair you're being:

Me: "Saying "anyone fighting against tyranny is 'chaotic'" is absurd for several reasons. The first is that it equivocates at least two of many different definitions of tyranny.: that of tyranny as unjust and oppressive governmental power, and that of tyranny as government in which a single ruler is vested with absolute power. It should be obvious that Good characters, including Lawful Good characters have a reason to oppose unjust and oppressive governments as well, because such governments trample on creature rights Good characters find important. The second is that Neutral alignments exist, so someone who opposes an unjust government but considers non-governmental group identities important can just be Neutral instead of Chaotic. The third is that giving absolute power to a single individual doesn't necessarily sit well with Lawful characters - group-motivated people might want decisions to be made, you know, as a group, rather than by selfish whims of a single person."


Sigh. And now you're just going off on silly tangents over the word "tyranny". Ironic, given that I corrected someone's use of the word in another thread, then did the same here. Bad on me.

The only thing that's bad here is that you don't seem to be able to spot or admit when we are in agreement over something, even when I explain at length why we're in agreement over something.


Forget that. In the Robin Hood myth, the prince was not a tyrant, right? He was the rightful ruler at the time (King off to war, leaving him in charge). The Sherriff was the lawful authority in the town, right? So no one can argue that this is a case of lawful folks deciding to oppose an unlawful rule. Unjust? Sure. But not unlawful. And certainly, we can imagine a ton of other scenarios that are similar. Can you, for one moment, stop pretending that only cases in which these things align exist, but examine the cases where they don't?

And now you're undermining your own case by admitting that the legend of Robin Hood is another moving goal post. You don't seem to understand that when you shift which version of Robin Hood we're talking about, or which scenario we're talking about, you aren't proving a contradiction in the base alignment system. You are simply forcing me to make a new evaluation of the new situation. Also, again, you just quoted ME explaining how even non-Chaotics might choose to oppose an unjust ruler. So you have direct textual proof that I never, in fact, acted under the pretension you now accuse me of.


What happens when our hypothetical freedom fighter is fighting against a lawful authority (which, by definition makes him "chaotic"), but uses tactics and methods that are decidedly lawful? In a world where alignment either doesn't exist, or only measures one of those things, or where alignment doesn't come with any consequences, it doesn't matter. The moment all three of those things exist in the game, the effect for the character is subject to the whims of the GM in terms of which aspect of law/chaos is chosen to be prominent in that case.

Direct rule quote, once again: 1st Edition AD&D, Dungeon Master's Guide, page 23, Alignment:

"The overall behaviour of the character (or creature) is delineated by alignment, or in case of player characters, behaviour determines actual alignment. Therefore, besides defining the general tendencies of creatures, it also groups creatures into mutually acceptable or at least non-hostile divisions. This is not to
say groups of similarly aligned cannot be opposed or even mortal enemies. Two nations, for example, with rulers of lawful good alignment can be at war. Bands of orcs can hate each other. But the former would possibly cease their war to oppose a massive invasion of orcs, just like the latter would make common cause against lawful good men."

The issue here is, again, that your argument floats free of any rules text. The thing you put in parentheses is the entirety of the issue: you presume an act you've not sharply defined makes a character Chaotic "by definition", except I already gave you the definition for Chaotic and that does not follow.

Here it is, again, 1st Edition AD&D, Dungeon Master's Guide, page 23, Alignment:

"Law and Chaos: the opposition here is between organized groups and individuals. That is, law dictates that order and organization is necessary and desirable, while chaos hold the opposite view. Law generally supports the group as more important than the individual, while chaos promotes individual over the group."

If your "freedom fighter" fights as part of an organized group, placing greater emphasis on functioning of the group than their individual freedom, they are Lawful, and the scenario is a conflict of one Lawful party against another. It's worth noting that in 1st Edition AD&D, orcs are Lawful Evil, so them banding against LG humans and LG humans banding against them is also a case of two Lawful parties warring, over Good and Evil.

So what is the actual issue here? Well let me tell you: complaining about the referee. That is: you think subjecting player characters to "whims of the game master" is bad because you imagine a bad game master. And, since you think the game master's rulings will be bad, you think the solution is for them to not make judgments that would impact the game. It's strawmen, all the way down.


Again. Stop trying to only look at cases where there isn't a problem, and look at the ones where there is. I've presented exactly a case for this and you keep ignoring it. You're also injecting considerations on the "good/evil" axis along the way, which just further muddies the waters. And yes, I do consider the fact that some alignment system variations make a distinction in terms of what "law" and "chaos" mean based on whether they are connected to "good/neutral/evil" is also a problem. Because now we're in this weird case where detect/protect law/chaos spells work variably based on whether someone is good/neutral/evil. Um... That's even more of a mess.

You are building an unfortunate habit of saying I'm "ignoring" something when I'm writing small essays in reply to your points. I didn't ignore your case: I told you how to resolve it and then tackled it from multiple viewpoints. The actual issue here is that your "cases" are not well-built - every time I give you an answer, you ask another question, relevantly failing to recognize when and where this constitutes moving the goal posts.

The reason I inject Good and Evil into the discussion is because the alignment system I'm discussing is the traditional biaxial one. In any actual game, all the rules would be in play, and available for both the game master and the players to solve ambiguous cases. It is invalid to complain about how the rules are ambiguous if that ambiguity disappears when the system is considered as a whole. Your argument against variants is ill-founded, because once again, you give no rules citations - how am I supposed to comment on unnamed and unelaborated variants from unknown sources? What is supposed to be wrong about spell effects considering both axes at once, instead of in isolation? Your case for them being "a mess" is entirely unbuilt.


And yes. I totally get that a lawful good character might seek to fight against a lawful evil ruler. But would he form a band of brigands, robbing random wealthy folks wandering down the road, and using that wealth to buy popularity among the peasants and to fund his campaign? Probably not. It's not just that he's opposing the lawful authority that makes one lawful/chaotic, but whether one is "breaking the rules/laws" to do so. I suppose we could argue that this is yet another divergence on what is otherwise presented as a single axis in many alignment systems. Instead of just two aspects, we have three that align with "chaos": "opposing lawful authority", "breaking traditional rules/laws", and "unstructured behavior and methodology". And, just as with the two I was highlighting, all we've done is define yet another aspect of this which can't always be assumed to be in perfect alignment with each other. Which leaves us still wondering "what makes this character lawful or chaotic?".

Notably absent from your post: not considering for a moment how the band of brigands is organized and whether they value their group identity more than their ability to function as independent individuals.

Your problem is relevantly the same as Quertus's: you keep wondering about "aspects" of Law and Chaos without bothering to check why, exactly, those aspects are associated with Law or Chaos. As before, there is a real-life homologue to this in psychometrics. Using Extroversion (https://www.verywellmind.com/signs-you-are-an-extrovert-2795426) and Introversion (https://www.verywellmind.com/signs-you-are-an-introvert-2795427)as example yet again, both of these have multiple aspects, and both have variance along a spectrum, so it's possible to sit in the middle (Ambiversion) (https://www.scienceofpeople.com/ambivert/).

If you're "still left wondering" whether the character is Lawful or Chaotic, it's because you never flesh them out to the degree required to make that determination. You pick one aspect, presume a game master will fixate on it to exclusion of all else, then ask "but what about this other aspect?". In an actual game, I would have more information about your character than you've given to me in all your posts put together. As a game master, I wouldn't need to base any determination on a single aspect or a single incident.


The very fact that you used the bolded language highlights the innate evil/good directional bias of your entire viewpoint on alignment. Also, you've conveniently forgotten your own A-E points earlier. What if it's *not* the players "desired alignment", but the GM feels a different alignment fits the character better based on their actions? That's not the same as a "redemption arc" that you seem to have shifted to.

I'm sorry, what? The fact that I stopped presuming the change is happening from Good to Evil to make a more general point proves I have directional bias now?

And no, I've not forgotten my own A - E points before. You changed the scenario under discussion, and I changed my assumptions to suit. The earlier discussion already covers unwanted alignment change and I fail to see what, if anything, that has to do with Belkar to the point it warrants calling anything of this "the Belkar problem". Remove the player's desires from the equation, and all you have is the observation that a character's alignment will not change until they have behaved in a way that matches a new alignment for some time. That's not a problem. Other people, players or characters, doesn't matter which, having an incorrect opinion of someone's alignment based on imperfect information? Also not a problem (a good chunk of gameplay and great many scenarios are based on a player not having perfect information).


And it also completely misses the whole "fall towards evil" issue I spoke of earlier.

Actual rules text, 1st Edition AD&D, Dungeon Master's Guide, Page 24, Graphing Alignment:

"However, any major action which is out of alignment character will cause a major shift to the alignment which is directly in line with the action, i.e., if lawful evil character defies law and order to aid the cause of (express or implied) of chaotic good, he or she will either be lawful neutral or chaotic neutral, depending on factors involved in the action."

I'm pretty sure I quoted this earlier, but it bears repeating. The actual rules text uses the example of an Evil character becoming not Evil when explaining how changing alignment works, and it does it more than once.

The reason I don't talk about "fall-from-grace" alignment is that in relevant parts, it comes from entirely outside any rules text. Some of it can be attributed to 2nd Edition emphasizing Good over Evil and giving player the impression that playing Evil characters at all is naughty naughty and shouldn't be done. I already talked about real life moralistic beliefs impacting how the game is played, starting with my first post, so it's odd to chew me out on that. More, you and Tanarii, the people who brought it up, yourselves have acknowledged the basic form of the alignment system does not describe "fall-from-grace" alignment. Whenever you criticize "fall-from-grace" alignment, you are talking about a different thing than I am. Indeed, the issue is relevantly created by... not using alignment rules in the way I and 1st Edition AD&D recommend them to be used.


I'm specifically examining cases where the player thinks his character is following an alignment, but the GM thinks otherwise. What happens in that case? What if the lawful good character things that doing something harmful to one person for a "greater good" is still "good", but the GM thinks that will instantly move him towards evil and require that he now put "neutral" on his character sheet. Should the GM in that case play "gotcha" with the player and wait until he does it and then punish him (assuming the shift is a punishment)? That's bad, right? Or, should the GM warn the player that the action he's considering would result in an alignment shift for his character? That's what we should do, right? Except that's in direct opposition to what you insisted never happened (The "D" case listed above).

The character is wrong about their alignment, the game master's statement is final, we already covered this a dozen times. Also, actual rules text yet again, 1st Edition AD&D, page 25, changing alignment:

"A glance at the alignment chart (https://images.app.goo.gl/KEWMr4LrvVNiCCGz5) will show that radical alignment change is impossible without magical means. If one is chaotic good, it is possible to change to neutral good or chaotic neutral only, depending upon desire and/or actions. From absolute neutral alignment, one can only move to some neutral-based alignment. This represents the fact that the character must divorce himself or herself from certain precepts and views and wholeheartedly embrace another set of values, and human nature is such that without radical personality alteration (such as caused by insanity or magic in the case of this game) such transition must be gradual."

A game master who moves a Good character directly to an Evil alignment, or vice versa, is not working within the system I refer to, and have been referring to, all this time.

Another citation, already given before, but repeated for emphasis. 1st Edition AD&D, Dungeon Master's Guide, page 24, Graphing Alignment:

"If, for example, a party that includes a paladin decides to use poison on a monster that they know is ahead, the DM shouldn't let the paladin be distracted or "led away for a few rounds" when it's patently obvious the paladin heard the plan. If the player does not take appropriate measures to prevent the action, the DM should warn the paladin that his lack of action will constitute a voluntary alignment change and the let the chips fall where they may!"

The rules themselves give a precedent for warning players of when they're about to undergo alignment change.

Isn't it funny how a lot of your questions would be answered by reading the rules?

In any case, 1st Edition AD&D model still falls under C, not D, because the player is not prohibited from taking out-of-alignment actions. The player is allowed to eat the penalty and continue playing under a new alignment. This is, again, different from something like CODA Lord of the Rings roleplaying game, where a character becomes an NPC for incurring enough Corruption points. It's also completely different from popular but non-rules-based idea that a character and even their player should be kicked out of a game for committing an Evil act. Your argument for AD&D being D instead of C is entirely built on considering penalties stemming from game objects reacting to the new alignment as prohibitions, something they're not.

Like, how many cases of the rules directly stating "in case of player characters, behaviour determines actual alignment" do I need to show to you before you actually believe me?


That's a lot of writing to basically say "it detects his current alignment". That current alignment (certainly in the case of Belkar) is "evil". And it's 100% based on his past actions, not his current/recent ones. So yes, you are effectively detecting the entire life history of a character, because alignment is based on the cumulative actions and decisions that character has made, the resulting calculation of which is the current alignment.

So even after me explaining how your argument is a strawman, you still go back to the strawman.

A game master cannot base a determination on something that has not yet happened. In order for a character to change alignment, they therefore have to change behaviour. If they do change behaviour, their alignment will change, and so will results of all spells on them. Neither detection nor protection track alignment change. They cannot tell if someone who is currently Evil has always been so, nor can they tell if someone who is non-Evil has always been so. They do not tell specific behaviours a character has taken to warrant their alignment.

What about this strikes you as "detecting the entire life history" of a character?


Huh. Belkar detects as evil. Full Stop. He is affected by a protection from evil effect. Full stop. What more is there to consider? You're tap dancing around the core issue here, which is that alignment is based on the sum totality of a character's actions, and that alignment (in D&D and many games) has a direct in-game mechanical effect (how you detect/protect being just one of the easiest to observe).

You are not Belkar's player, I am not your game master, I have zero reason to care. As noted, at best, Belkar's case can inform you how Rich Burlew would make decisions as a game master of a D&D game, except Rich Burlew has explicitly told his readers that he doesn't heed D&D rules exactly, breaking them as he sees fit to tell the story and jokes he wants to tell. I've already quoted you the actual rules on how alignment changes, based your argument on them, instead of something that is not a game of D&D.


What part of "play this way or suffer consequences" do you think wont influence player choices when playing their characters? I'm honestly baffled by your position here. Again, if there were no consequences, you would be correct. The moment that there are, then any threat of those consequences constitutes influence on how players play their characters. Period. It can't not have that effect.

I've never argued the rules don't influence how players play their characters. What I'm rejecting is your argument, both stated and implied, that this some great big problem. Indeed, I've repeatedly pointed out that influencing the players is desirable for variety of game aesthetics.

For contrast: the rules also state, in no uncertain terms, that if a character fails to defend themselves in combat, either due to bad luck (=die rolls) or poor tactical decisions (player chose the wrong move/spell/equipment for the situation), they will get hurt and can even die. This undoubtedly influences player decisions. It has never stopped players who actually want to play suicidally reckless characters from deliberately taking actions that cause injury or death.

Why are game penalties for game behaviour so bad in one case, yet completely fine in the other?


The Robin Hood example is unique to alignment. That Belkar detects as evil despite having behaved "good" for the entirely of this book is also unique to how the alignment system in D&D works. I'm not sure what conditions you are asking for here. I could literally list off 100 more cases where the alignment system fails. All of them because it tries to simultaneously record very different things on the same axis.

Neither Robin Hood nor Belkar are game characters in a game of D&D under progress. The former is a legendary figure with multiple different stories about him, with conflicting and occasionally contradictory details; the latter is a character from a webcomic that parodies D&D and where the author has explicitly stated they will ignore the rules in order to tell the story they want to tell.

If you were to play a character based on either in an actual game of AD&D run by me as the game master, I would have no difficulty pinning down their alignments during the course of a game, using the rules I've already extensively cited. My inability to definitively pin down their alignment outside the context of a game is that moral arguments between strangers on the internet have not agreed on me as a referee.


The point is that in a predominantly "good" society, a detect evil spell can detect criminal intent/action. Someone who is evil is someone who actively pursues/enjoys causing harm to others. in a society full of people who avoid this, that person shows up. So the serial killer will be one evil person in a sea of good.

And? What about it?


The same exact serial killer, simply by being an Orc and living in an Orc society in which most of the people are evil (but the "usual" kind of evil, where killing to advance career, torturing your enemies, then sacrificing them and eating their hearts is "normal"), is much harder to detect because even though what he's doing is just as harmful to Orc society as to human (killing people for socially non-beneficial purposes), yet magically, simply because of the culture itself, he can't be detected as easily.

And? What about it? Imagine a culture where criminals are permanently branded with a tattoo on their forehead. Now imagine another where everyone does the same as a fashion statement. Mundanely, simply because of the culture itself, a criminal is harder to detect in the latter society.

Don't even bother complaining about the comparison. Detect Evil detects curses and it's perfectly possible, in AD&D, for a society to put curse marks on individuals so that they always detect as Evil. The mundane and the fantastic example boil down to the exact same result.


So a detect evil spell actually functions differently (and is of different utility) among a human society than an orc one (again, making certain assumptions about the orc society in my example). Not in mechanical terms, but in actual utility to the people using it. And what's interesting is that it's not equal in the other direction. The serial killer targeting orcs doesn't detect as "good", so this isn't a case of swapping things in the other direction. He's still "evil". We've just decided that different kinds of evil are all the same as far as the spell is concerned. The opposite case among humans (the lack of being able to distinguish different kinds of "good") doesn't exist. Because if someone detects as "good" is a reasonable bet that they aren't likely to kill me in my sleep and take my stuff.

First of all, I already noted the inequality. Second, it's not the spell that functions differently, and you even admit so in the underlined part. People reacting differently to the same kind of information because the information has different uses in different contexts proves no inconsistency in the overarching system whatsoever.


One can certainly argue that this is a function of the asymmetrical nature of good and evil, and that the Orcs "deserve" to suffer other types of violence amongst themselves because of their already existing innate "evilness" or something. And that's absolutely fine. But it does run aground when we consider that good and evil are supposed to be at least somewhat cosmically balanced concepts in the game universe. An alignment system with "sides/factions" would work very differently, right? Because then I'd be detecting people "aligned with my side" and "against my side". So a human operating in human society but intending to do harm to that society would detect as "evil" (or an "enemy" perhaps), while an Orc operating in orc society doing the same would also detect as an enemy. They would each detect the same as an group of humans invading said orc lands and vice versa. It's a far more useful way of managing alignment.

One could argue that, but it would be a fallacious argument, because what's actually being proven is asymmetry of human and orc societies, which is fully observable even without any spells. All other arguments are founded on the spell doing something it doesn't do. Again: the "sides" we're talking about are those of the overarching system, sorted by behaviour. They are not symmetrical, and do not need to be symmetrical, in order to be balanced. An easy physical experiment that would prove this would be putting one 10 kg steel dumbbell and one 10 kg wood dumbbell on opposing sides of a scale. They are not "evil for humans" or "good for orcs". You can't prove an inconsistency based on a strawman, and you especially cannot prove an inconsistency by arguing a spell that detect something completely different would be more useful. I also reject the idea that it's a more useful way of running alignment - because it completely sidesteps the question of what moral philosophies the sides are supposed to follow or what kinds of behaviours they're supposed to sort for.


I'm not complaining about it. Merely pointing out the problems inherent in an alignment system that does have a "detect evil" spell in the first place. That the spell doesn't proclaim to do this isn't the point. Saying "that's what the rules say, so it's a good rule" kinda defeats the purpose of having a discussion about good/bad rules.

You haven't shown any problem, that's the problem. You've shown a detection spell has different utility in different societies, something that in itself can be used as a building block for a game.


I'm giving an example of human nature and how it often does not fit into neat little alignment boxes. It's not about the game system.

Your choice of example is Star Wars. Star. Wars. Color me unimpressed.

If you want to give examples of human nature not fitting in in neat little boxes, give examples from actual history. Also, while you're at it, explain predictive power of the Big Five Model (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits) or Kohlberg's stages of moral development (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg%27s_stages_of_moral_development# Continued_relevance). Real theories of personality regularly manage to group people into a relatively small amount of categories. It's not about the game system indeed; people do not have infinite amount of different personalities and they are not infinitely distant from each other.


And Andor is affected by how the force views him... how? This is akin to the whole "clerics of gods" bit, where they are the only one's affected by failing to follow the rules. But that does not preclude other people "on their side" who have personalities and behaviors that a Jedi (for example) would find horrific.

People who are sensitive to the Force can detect how strong or weak others are in it, as well as read the emotions of other people. In context of the Star Wars universe, Andor has an alignment in the exact same way an AD&D character has under the Great Wheel Cosmology. Remember also Obi-Wan's point about "luck" in New Hope - it is strongly implied, and occasionally shown, that the Force plays an active part in events. A rebel falling to the Dark Side has ramifications to everyone who associates with them, above and beyond just the subjective opinion of people who'd find them horrific.


Imagine if this was in effect though. That "the force" somehow pushed people who didn't comply with the "light side" towards evil. Andor would decide to fight for the Empire, right? He would "fall to the dark side" because of his actions. But he doesn't because real people don't actually behave that way. It's why I brought up this example. He's a refreshing character in the SW universe precisely because he doesn't fall into the "cardboard cutout" characters we've become accustomed to. The whole "dark/light side" conflict only exists for folks who have force powers (and the later episodes thematically suggest that even this is an artificially created conflict). For everyone else? You pick a side and fight for it using whatever tools and abilities you have.

Andor doesn't fight for the rebellion because he's a "good guy" and the rebellion is "good" ("side" and "personality being the same). He fights for the rebellion because the empire has taken things from him and represents a threat to him personally (they're after him for some choices he made along the way). That does not preclude that he's absolutely on the "side" of the rebellion, only that the "side" isn't as simplistic as alignment boxes might suggest. And his "side" certainly doesn't seem to have a problem with him helping them even if some on the same "side" might find what he does and how he does it morally questionable.

It's actually the reverse, as pointed out by Yoda in the original trilogy: the Dark Side of the Force tempts you by being easier and more seducing than the Light. All of this is somewhat beyond the point, though, because the rest reads to me as follows: "A Disney Stars Wars series has decided to break away from canon to milk money from people who didn't like black-and-white morality of earlier works" and you just happened to fall for it. Andor is not a real person; he does not behave the way he does because of any deep understanding of real human psychology. Like every other fictional character, he works the way he does because the authors of the work decreed so.

None of the additional details matter, because we've already established your idea of how "sides" work under alignment is built on strawmen. Even in AD&D, you can have a Chaotic Neutral or Evil character briefly join the fight with Chaotic Good against a Lawful Evil regime.


Which is precisely the cardboard cutout style of play that I find constricting *and* which characters like Andor exist to challenge. Continuing to try to fit that square peg into the round hole of the alignment system is perhaps not the best way forward.

You can just say you don't like classic Star Wars, you know.


And yet, the alignment system you just spoke about would do exactly that. It would "kick Andor out" because he's clearly "falling to the dark side". In the gritty reality of what is really required to fight such a rebellion successfully? Folks like Andor are necessary. Might be an ugly truth that the "light side fighters" don't want to think too hard about, but if we were to model real human behavior it would not fit so neatly into the kind of alignment systems you seem to want to use.

Neither you nor Disney have anything to say about what is "really required" for rebellion in "a gritty reality". Star Wars is not realistic, it's not about "gritty reality", neither the setting nor games based on it have to model real human behaviour to any great degree.

Meanwhile, under the 1st Edition AD&D system, a character like Andor can have any deluded notions of "ugly truths" they want and if they fall into Evil and get kicked out by more moral rebels, they can just eat the penalty and continue fighting against the Empire with other amoral lunatics if they're so inclined. Alignment doesn't actually prohibit this kind of character as existing. He would fit right in.Why do you think he wouldn't fit when the base rules allow playing a Chaotic Neutral Thief or a Chaotic Evil Assassin? Come on now.

---

I had to cut away part of this post, namely everything having to deal with gbaji's mangling of Quertus's hypothetical, for length. I will post that only if Quertus, specifically, requests it, because most of the parts in it are just rehashes of what's already above.

gbaji
2022-10-18, 05:15 PM
Not going to reply to everything. Just this one bit. You are confusing the rule being "enforced" with the consequences for failure to follow the rule.

If the rule says "characters with X alignment must behave this way in this situation", that's the "rule" the GM is enforcing. That's the "D" scenario you keep insisting isn't GM enforced. But it is. You must comply with "D" (change the way you play the character), or else be punished with the consequence of "C" (have the GM forcibly change your alignment). One does not exist without the other.

Insisting that this doesn't result in the player being forced to play the character based on how the GM views alignment and not how they view alignment is just plain completely wrong.

And no. It's not the same as refereeing a judo match or something. There are very very clear rules as to what constitutes a point in a match (not familiar with judo, but I did fence for many years). The only question is whether a referee actually sees the action that occurred (or if they mistake the order of events, which can affect things). There's no question as to which parts of the body constitute a valid hit and which are off target. There's no question as to when a competitor steps off the stip/mat/whatever. It's only a matter of observing what happened accurately.

Alignment is not the same thing. Alignment is inherently subjective. Worse, in D&D (and many other games) it is inherently inconsistent, and can easily (as I've pointed out multiple times) result in the same action being interpreted as the complete opposite side of an alignment axis depending on which aspect of alignment you are choosing to focus on.

And for the record, stop obsessing over the word "tyrant". Geez. I used the wrong freaking word. Replace "evil but legitimate ruler" instead. Then assess the Robin Hood character and actions and determine whether they are lawful or chaotic. You literally just spent 3 paragraphs going on about the word "tyranny" (despite me already saying that I shouldn't have used the word and replacing it with a different condition), leaping on that "mistake", instead of addressing the alternative "correct" case present in the Robin Hood stories. The point isn't "OMG. You shouldn't have called it a tyranny!". It should be "yeah, it's not actually a tyranny, so basing your entire counter on the fact that it's not chaotic to oppose a tyranny sorta doesn't hold any water".

And again. You tap danced around the issue of that example. You spent paragraph after paragraph quoting rules, and playing word games, but you didn't actually answer the question:

is Robin Hood lawful or chaotic? Answer that question. Then explain why. Can you do this one thing?

KorvinStarmast
2022-10-18, 08:17 PM
If the rule says "characters with X alignment must behave this way in this situation",

First, you need to cite such a rule from an actual role playing game, please, rather than pulling it out of your nether regions. The other poster has done so on multiple occasions.

Vahnavoi
2022-10-19, 05:21 AM
After consulting with Quertus, I've chosen to put the cut part here. It's in spoilers, because a lot of it is rehashing points already made, just in different context.


Because you said the GM is the final arbiter on this. So if he choses an interpretation of what a lawful good character would/should do in that situation, by your argument, that's what should have happened, and any action to the contrary by the player is "wrong".

Remember. I'm examining what happens when the GM and player disagree on how an alignment should be played. And also pointing out that some of the inherent inconsistencies in how alignments in the traditional D&D law/chaos;good/evil alignment system increase the probability of those disagreements. You're ignoring the premise if you just assume we start out agreeing. And the fact that we're even having a discussion (and that so many alignment arguments have existed in the past) support my assumption that these disagreements will occur and we maybe should examine why they occur.

It would make for a better examination if you stopped presuming a strawman game masters. It would also make for a better examination if you stopped with the strawman players. If the player is so out-of-tune with their game master that they refuse to abide by their game master's ruling, why did they sit down to play?


The very fact that alignment can change as a consequence of character choices/actions means that each choice/action along the way must be significant, or it would never happen. That's like saying that "it's just one concussion and it takes a lot to cause permanent damage, so let's not worry about it figuring out why it happened". Um... No. Each case matters.

Already cited the actual rules for this. How about you refer to them.


Replace "paladin" with "character who cares about retaining his lawful good status". Doesn't matter what the label is. Let's assume that alignment actually matters, else, why bother having it?

It's not an equivalent substitution. Paladin has a stricter code and additional penalties compared to other Lawful Good characters. Also, again, I was talking about a specific character outline by Quertus. You change the character, you change the situation. The goal post moves far away from what Quertus and me were talking about. By now, you've missed both the point Quertus was trying to make and my refutation of it.


And yeah. I'm examining conditions where we don't know exactly what's going on, and who's on which side, and who has what alignment, etc. That's the point. It's terrifically easy to make alignment choices if the GM tells you "this is good" and "this is evil". Duh. But let's pretend that we're trying to at least somewhat model a real world where choices are not so ridiculously black and white.

In an actual game, the game master knows more than anyone else on the table what's going on, and is allowed to fill in details where necessary. You can't criticize a game process by presuming a situation entirely unlike the game process. "Modeling the real world" continues to be neither here nor there. A game doesn't have to do this to uncompromising accuracy, a fantasy game can make allowances for romanticism, and this is par for the course for a wide variety of game genres.


And in that case, a character can easily find themselves in a situation where there is no good answer. Perhaps telling the guys who captured you allows the "bad guys" to do more horrible bad things, and so it's "evil". But failing to do so prevents those who captured you from stopping the real bad guys, and thus results in more harm. Was it "evil" to stay silent when speaking would save lives?

You are supposedly aiming for moral complexity, yet you keep using naive concepts such as "the real bad guys" and implying contrived additional details of the scenario. Quertus made no mention of "real bad guys" anywhere. He played no hypotheticals with supposed consequences of telling or not telling.

In any case, this is a false dilemma. There's a clear correct choice, but whether it is plausible depends on something you did not establish: does the captive KNOW the consequences of remaining silent? If they don't, the situation reduces into a Prisoner's dilemma, more on that below.

If they DO know: let me quote the definition of Lawful Good alignment again:

"Lawful Good: creatures of lawful good alignment view the cosmos with varying degrees of lawfulness and desire to do good. They are convinced that order and law are necessary to assure good, and that good is best defined by whatever brings most benefit to greater number of decent, thinking creatures and least woe to the rest."

Underlines for emphasis.

If it is, somehow, KNOWN to the captive that blabbing to the authorities will produce the best possible outcome, a Lawful Good character will do just that. This is not rocket science.


What happens when you are playing characters in a game world full of unknowns? Things aren't so clear cut. That's what I'm examining. And the degree to which you keep presenting simplified scenarios and insisting that I'm not allowed to make them more complex also highlights a point I made earlier: That the alignment system may also push GMs into simplifying good/evil and law/chaos choices in their games exactly in order to avoid this conflict. If you don't put moral quandaries in your D&D game, and even a tiny bit of this is because you're trying to help your players play their characters more easily, then this is in effect in your game.

Being a player is relevantly different from being a game master. I already described how to run unknown alignment variant of AD&D rules. As a player, that means I don't know what my character's alignment is or how my game master is making such decisions, except via experience. That is, if I want to know my alignment, I will have to pay attention to how game objects (NPCs, spells, magic items etc.) react to my character and how my behaviour influences theirs. In such a game, I will have no idea if the choice to go the human rights march or choosing not to tell anything to the authorities are good, until and unless the time comes that this has some kind of consequence on myself. If I don't seek to know my alignment, it's possible I won't have a clue until my character dies and the game master reveals to me which afterlife they're going to.

You keep presuming this will be really simple and restraining, except, you premise is that I don't agree with my game master's judgement. That is, if I follow my own moral compass, it will consistently lead to different results compared to if I was the game master myself. This means I will have to work outside my own preconceptions and work on trying to figure out what other people think, or otherwise accept my subjective opinion is not a model for the world works.

You keep presuming this exercise would be simple and restricting. I think you haven't ever even tried.


Refusing to consider cases where the issue is more complex is somewhat the same thing. Of course I'm adding in additional things to the scenarios. Because these are things can can (and perhaps should) come up in real game playing. How about we examine the difficult cases and not just the easy ones?

Your questions aren't difficult to answer. They're just time consuming - took me literal hours to write all this. What you failed to consider that outside of being sick and having way too much free time, no-one has a motive to entertain weird corner case before they happen. It's not conductive trying to answer them all beforehand, which is, again, why you have a real human at the table to do that.


Why are we assuming this is all about a human rights march?

Because I was answering a specific scenario pitched by Quertus. Pay attention to things you quote.


That's a strange scenario to begin with. Let's assume there's a plot afoot to assassinate the king. Let's assume our lawful good character is trying to stop this and is investigating some suspicious characters in town. Let's assume he gets captured and held by them. As it happens, they are also trying to stop the assassination, but don't know who this guy and his friends are who are poking around town either. They want information. Let's assume they have half of the information needed to stop the plot, and the captured character has the other half.

Should he tell them what he's doing and why? Or stay silent assuming they are the "bad guys" and anything he says will only help them? So him, being a steadfast lawful good character would never under any circumstances "break" and tell his captors anything at all, right? Er... He just got the king killed, half his family killed, and the entire kingdom has now fallen to the evil overlord or whatever. Good job being lawful good there buddy!
This reduces to Prisoner's dilemma (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#Continuous_iterated_prisoner' s_dilemma). Specifically, continuous iterated version. If the character does not know his captors have the necessary information to save their king, the correct choice is to not tell them anything. Yes, it will have a bad outcome, but the character cannot be faulted for that, because they cannot be faulted for not being prescient. Unintended outcomes resulting from imperfect information do not weigh heavily in alignment considerations.

However, backwards induction suggests this never happens, because the other party faces the similar dilemma, but on a higher level. That is: the captive's choice is whether to co-operate or defect with their King's wishes, but for the captors, the choice is whether to co-operate or defect with their captive. For them, the same thought experiment suggests that they ought to co-operate with their captive: explain who they are and what their plans are. So we can reason that even if the captive is reluctant to share any information, their captors will share what they have to win them over, and they will co-operate once it's clear their interests, heh, align.

In order for us to get the bad outcome, both parties must already have a past reason for thinking the other is a traitor. (Basic pitfall of tit-for-tat strategy, see the article).


I'm not even saying that there aren't perfectly valid ways of playing this out within the D&D alignment system. Just pointing out that every scenario can be far more complex than it appears, and that actual moral decisions are not as simple as "I fight on the side of good and do good things". Presenting nothing but scenarios where the cardboard cutout LG character can follow his cardboard cutout LG play guide and always come out smelling like roses fails to examine any realistic gaming world where realistic scenarios may actually play out. And using nothing but those sorts of examples when defending alignment system doesn't really allow us to accurately test whether they "work well" or not.

You test the things that might fail, not the ones you know will work.

Forget alignment, your scenario has a fairly explicit solution under basic game theory. It isn't a complex scenario at all. The basic guideline for solving scenarios like this is "do to others what you would want to be done to yourself", that is, if you want co-operation, start with co-operation, followed by "tit-for-tat", or, as it's also known "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth". Shockingly, this works out to the solution that Good people ought to trust other people if they have no evidence of them being untrustworthy.


You are way too caught up on the specifics of a frankly silly example case (I'm not even sure how we got onto a "human rights march" kick, except that someone mentioned it or something). Again. It doesn't matter why they are captured. It only matters that they were, and that their captors are trying to get them to talk, and that by talking it may A) help their cause or B) hurt their cause. But maybe they have no clue which is which at the time? Or they do, and which choice do they make? And how does the GM judge their choice in the context of their alignment.

So when I point out I don't have to give you answers, that's me ignoring your cases; but when I pay attention to actual details Quertus gave me, that's too caught up on the specifics and excuses you for answering my questions?

In fact, what cause is being fought for matters. It matters for both alignment and for deciding how to act. Without such details, the situation resolves to basic version of Prisoner's dilemma.


Sigh. Forget the freaking march. It's not about a march. Are you seriously suggesting that a chaotic evil person cannot have any friends, or be completely loyal to them? That's the most incredibly restrictive interpretation of chaos and evil I've ever seen. Again, the complexity comes in how we judge chaos. Is it chaotic if you regularly break the rules to do things (external), or if you just do random actions instead of planning things out. So an assassin might be chaotic evil or lawful evil depending on how we judge the law/chaos side, right? Let's assume "breaks laws all the time" is what the GM in this world has decided makes one chaotic rather than "meticulously plans his assassinations". The character is chaotic evil. He's chaotic due to breaking the law, and evil because he has no problems killing people for money. But does this preclude him having friends that he would protect if they came to be threatened? Absolutely not.

I am in fact perfectly comfortable suggesting that someone who values their individual freedom and desires above those of others cannot be completely loyal to other people. That's because being completely loyal to another person means putting their freedom and desires on par with yours. Real life people of the sort we're talking about are high on Dark Triad personality traits and might not have friends at all in the sense you use the word. What you call restrictive, I call knowing what words mean.

Seriously. Read the definitions of the alignments. They were right there in the post I made to Quertus. Stop moving the goal posts.


And if his employers hired him to kill one of his friends, would he do it? Or would it be just as much within his alignment to say "Nope. Not going to do this, I'll kill you instead"? Could play it either way, right? Heck. I'd argue the lawful evil assassin would be more likely to say "a contract is a contract" and go ahead and kill his friend. Neither the "chaos" nor "evil" sides of his nature preclude him having friends and being loyal to them. Not unless you are lumping every single possible personality trait that could be "chaos" and "evil" and assume they must all be present. Which gets us right back to cardboard cutout characters, and restrictive play.

The actual determination would depend on the amount of money and the actual cost of killing the one offering it. Turning down money and getting into a fight you can't win for the sake of another person is not, in fact, Chaotic Evil. The sense that it could play either way is based on unestablished details of the scenario. Meanwhile, whether the Lawful Evil assassin would accept the contract would depend on details such as who the target is and whether attacking that target would cause negative affects to the Assassin's Guild - weighing the reward against consequences to the assassin's in-group.


I maybe want to play a roguish character willing to take on dirty jobs, including killing people if the money is right, but still have the flexibility to say that I'm not going to kill my friends, or take jobs that cause harm to people I care about, or even if I just don't like the person who's hiring me. That's not "neutral" on the alignment scale, because a neutral character would at least make some effort to avoid killing random people along the way and maybe my character doesn't care about that (Heck. Maybe I *like* causing collateral damage, hence the "evil" and "chaotic" bits). But that doesn't mean that I wouldn't use my same "special skills" to cause pain and suffering to anyone trying to hurt someone I actually care about, or that I can't have anyone in the world that I do care about in the first place.

And depending on which of those guidelines a character actually ends up emphasizing in practice, they might end up as any of Chaotic Neutral, Neutral Evil or Lawful Evil. You seem to not understand that as the number of friends you have and the people who you don't want to harm grows, the smaller the space becomes for valid targets to kill for money, until the point where it's functionally zero and the character could just as well be of Neutral or even Good alignment. Similarly, as the number of people whose concerns you place on par with or above your own grows, the weaker your case for Chaotic self-motivation and the stronger the case for Lawful group-mindedness. You blame me for reducing people to cardboard cut-outs, but you yourself only ever consider most superficial aspects of the axes given to you, such as "liking causing collateral damage".


And you can't imagine any character personality that can contain both? Also you've added a conditional that doesn't need to exist (the bolded bits). My character can care about his family/friends without them even knowing what I do for a living, right? You're conflating how I feel about them, with how they feel about me. The assumption that if I'm playing a chaotic evil character that I can't care about anyone else is absurd. And honestly, if you think that is true, then you're kinda proving my point about how alignment systems cause restrictive thinking about the range of character personalities. You're literally telling me that I can't play the character i want to play, and that if I put CE on my character sheet it means that I can't have anyone in the world that I care about, or want to help, or are willing to suffer pain to protect.

If I were looking for proof that my assertion is correct, you just provided it.

I can imagine it just fine - I don't consider it plausible, which should matter to you more than me, since you are the one insisting on more "realistic" characters. The conditional doesn't "need" to exist, but does, in the context of what Quertus pitched to me. You are suggesting a person who does not recognize people beyond himself as important, having absolute loyalty to someone who is arguing for everyone to have the same rights as themselves. Yes, a thief or a murderer can maintain superficially friendly terms with another person, but this is almost always based on deception. Not telling your family what you do for a living is not "absolute loyalty", it's a very clear case of a person's loyalty ending where inconvenience to themselves would begin. Do not conflate "caring" with "loyalty", and definitely do not conflate loyalty built on convenience with "complete" or "absolute" loyalty.

Saying I would disallow this character is, again, wrong. You could play this character, in a game run by me, under 1st Edition AD&D rules, just fine. The question isn't about what you can choose to play, it is about whether it counts as Chaotic Evil, and consequently, how *I* choose to play the world your character lives in.


It's either sufficient to affect player choices, or it's not. Pick one. If it is, then it suffers from the problems I've been talking about. If it's not, then it falls into the "it doesn't matter and there are no consequences" case and we're fine. Constantly saying "but it's just a minor thing, and it's not that big a deal if your alignment changes", kinda misses the point.

I don't need to pick one. I do not need to assume that the threat of alignment change and penalties associated with it are sufficient motivators to make a player choose otherwise in each and every scenario. I don't need to assume losing class powers or taking a hit to experience gains is a big deal for every player and every character. As noted, the player has a CHOICE in that regard. Penalties are not prohibitions, a player can keep playing their character under a new alignment. In case of a rogue, the penalties ARE minor, especially compared to a Cleric or a Paladin.

You are the one who is assuming that any influence on player choices, at all, is bad. That is what I've been actually arguing against. That's what you have to answer for to me. So, again. What about "these kind of scenarios" strike you as so bad that they need to be avoided? What is supposed to be the great big flaw they reveal? What about them restricts the player so much that it becomes an issue?

Now back to the usual:

---



Not going to reply to everything. Just this one bit. You are confusing the rule being "enforced" with the consequences for failure to follow the rule.

If the rule says "characters with X alignment must behave this way in this situation", that's the "rule" the GM is enforcing. That's the "D" scenario you keep insisting isn't GM enforced. But it is. You must comply with "D" (change the way you play the character), or else be punished with the consequence of "C" (have the GM forcibly change your alignment). One does not exist without the other.

I've shown you, with actual rules citations, multiple times, that the way it works is that "in case of player characters, behaviour determines actual alignment". The correct version is not "character with X alignment must behave this way in this situation", it is "character with this behaviour in this situation must be X alignment". The thing that is forced to change is alignment, not the character's behaviour: the player can, again, eat the penalty and continue as they were under a new alignment.

You relevantly fail to recognize the difference between this and, say, a model where a game master refuses to entertain out-of-alignment actions. "Your alignment is Lawful Evil but the act you suggest would be Chaotic Good. I'm afraid I cannot allow you to do that, Dave. Pick some other action."<--- THAT would be enforcement of D.


Insisting that this doesn't result in the player being forced to play the character based on how the GM views alignment and not how they view alignment is just plain completely wrong.

I've repeatedly stated that the very point of alignment rules is so a game master can enforce particular themes, settings and game aesthetics. I'm not insisting on what you think I am. I'm talking about the player having an actual, at-the-table CHOICE to act differently (https://existentialcomics.com/comic/23) in the face of a penalty. If a player thinks wrong is right, black is white and the moon is just the sun at night, they are not stopped from playing a character with such beliefs, the game master will simply treat them as having a different alignment than what they would give themselves.


And no. It's not the same as refereeing a judo match or something. There are very very clear rules as to what constitutes a point in a match (not familiar with judo, but I did fence for many years). The only question is whether a referee actually sees the action that occurred (or if they mistake the order of events, which can affect things). There's no question as to which parts of the body constitute a valid hit and which are off target. There's no question as to when a competitor steps off the stip/mat/whatever. It's only a matter of observing what happened accurately.

It is very much the same. Rules of Judo are not complete in the way you think they are. There are always ambiguous cases where the referee has to make a subjective judgment based on their understanding of principles of Judo. If you think Judo is bad example, go back to Olympic figure skating, or dance, or pictionary, or any of the others of myriad of games and sports that invest the referee with ability to make authoritative judgments about scoring.

But more importantly, you missed the point of the comparison. In Judo, the players have direct tactile feedback of who is in control, who is doing the throwing, who is being thrown, etc. The referee, as an outside observer, lacks this information. The referee makes their decisions based on how things look to them. The players may have conflicting opinions because of information they have but the referee doesn't, but as far as the match is concerned, the referee's word is final. If the referee commands you up from the mat because the referee thinks you're being passive, them you get up from the mat. In the exact same way, if the game master in AD&D thinks your character is behaving Evil, then you accept that your character is behaving Evil, regardless of your personal opinion.


Alignment is not the same thing. Alignment is inherently subjective. Worse, in D&D (and many other games) it is inherently inconsistent, and can easily (as I've pointed out multiple times) result in the same action being interpreted as the complete opposite side of an alignment axis depending on which aspect of alignment you are choosing to focus on.

Page 24, Dungeon Master's Guide, "Alignment": "Each of these cases for alignment is, of course, stated rather simplistically and ideally, for philosophical and moral reasoning are completely subjective according to acculturation of the individual. You, as a Dungeon Master, must establish the meanings and boundaries of law and order as opposed to chaos and anarchy, as well as the divisions between right and good as opposed to hurtful and evil."

I quoted this before, you failed to address it. The rules empower the game master to decide on the exact specifics, based on their subjective understanding. This is no different from other areas of the rules that are incomplete, or other games (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriegsspiel) where referee has decisive power over incomplete rules. I linked to the article before, and you failed to address it also. Long story short: the genre of wargames AD&D relevantly takes cues from reduced prominence of complex mechanical rules in favor of human judgment, because using the mechanical rules was too hard, too slow, and lead to odd behaviours in corner cases.

The lesson here is fairly straightforward: complaining that, say, Judo has "very very clear" rules while "alignment is inherently subjective" misses the actual point by a mile. Olympic Judo Referee's booklet has, if I recall right, 60 pages of rules just for a grappling duel between two persons, and it still doesn't give unambiguous answer to every question (nevermind that during an actual match, a referee cannot reference the entire damned thing; they have to rely on their memory and judgment). Just as well, AD&D alignment could have 60 pages giving exact point values to individual actions, and I have every reason to believe you would still be here complaining. If, say, the rules said "100 Evil points for murder", a player can still have weird subjective opinion about what counts as "murder". So on and so forth. From a game design point of view, there's a point beyond which giving more specific rules makes a game harder to learn and slower to run without improving the end result - while still not giving any better resolution to semantic confusion than "the referee has final say on game events".

As for "inherent inconsistency"? Since a game master has final say on every alignment determination, the upper bound for consistency of a game run by a human is consistency of said human. I have no trouble admitting few humans are perfectly consistent, but perfect consistency is not a requirement for a playable tabletop game.


And for the record, stop obsessing over the word "tyrant". Geez. I used the wrong freaking word. Replace "evil but legitimate ruler" instead.

I'm fairly sure I only referenced the word directly for few paragraphs (in a very long post) explaining why I agreed with a particular point you made. I'm not obsessed, you didn't use the wrong word, reactions like this suggest you can't keep the argument straight anymore.


Then assess the Robin Hood character and actions and determine whether they are lawful or chaotic. You literally just spent 3 paragraphs going on about the word "tyranny" (despite me already saying that I shouldn't have used the word and replacing it with a different condition), leaping on that "mistake", instead of addressing the alternative "correct" case present in the Robin Hood stories. The point isn't "OMG. You shouldn't have called it a tyranny!". It should be "yeah, it's not actually a tyranny, so basing your entire counter on the fact that it's not chaotic to oppose a tyranny sorta doesn't hold any water".

And again. You tap danced around the issue of that example. You spent paragraph after paragraph quoting rules, and playing word games, but you didn't actually answer the question:

is Robin Hood lawful or chaotic? Answer that question. Then explain why. Can you do this one thing?

Again: Which Robin Hood? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Hood)

Robin Hood is not a game character. He is a legendary figure with multiple different versions, sometimes with contradictory details. You have to pick which version you're talking about in order for the determination to be made. You cannot complain about the alignment system being inconsistent if the character it is supposed to be applied to is an inconsistent, moving goal post.

Traditionally, Robin Hood has been used as an example of a Chaotic Good (https://annarchive.com/files/Drmg055.pdf) character. Page 20 of the magazine (22 on the PDF display) explores the issue. Neutral Good would fit just as well, for the version who opposes misrule by King John.

Why not Lawful? Because Robin Hood is a thief, and thieves cannot be both Lawful and Good under 1st edition AD&D rules. People have expressed confusion over this, but the reason is dead simple: thieves steal. Making a career out of stealing always means one of two things:

1) the character has decided some group does not deserve creature rights, namely the right to their own property. This would be Evil.
2) the character has decided to act against social order of the land they live in. This would be Chaotic.

The classic motivation for Robin Hood is "steals from the rich to give to the poor". Giving to the poor, showing concern to those who are not well off, is the chief justification for Good part of Robin's alignment.

I have every reason to believe you already knew all of this, because you pitched a Robin Hood-like bard as Chaotic. You knew, from the beginning, that Robin Hood is generally considered Chaotic, you didn't need me to tell you any of this. You're simply clashing against the notion that in an actual game, a game master might find some reason to consider such a character something else. That proves no inconsistency with the alignment system: a player character's alignment is based on actual at-the-table behaviour as judged by their game master, not popular stereotypes about Robin Hood.

MoiMagnus
2022-10-19, 05:41 AM
There are a few comments that present the GM as the referee, but a lot (most?) peoples are only happy with their referee as long as they consider they would have taken the same decision.

They might accept the need to temporarily accept a decision they disagree with, but long lasting decisions will especially be contested.

And the "I consider my character is CG but my GM consider it to be LE" is a situation that will cause conflicts at a lot of tables, because there it means there is a fundamental disagreement at the table on how the GM should judge the situation. Not all players will "agree to disagree" on issues like that unless that's the whole point of the campaign (e.g. playing a campaign in which the universal notion of Good is actually twisted and unjust, with the PCs rebelling against it).

Vahnavoi
2022-10-19, 06:18 AM
@MoiMagnus:

And?

For any game, there's a subset of people who refuse to play because they think that game's rules are stupid. You're back to a point I addressed near the beginning of this exchange. The supposed problem is not in any way unique or limited to alignment or even conflicts between a player and a game master, a freeform game will fall apart just as well if players are in severe disagreement over what words mean.

If a player is so out-of-tune with their game master that they refuse to abide by their game master's ruling, why did they sit down to play?

Satinavian
2022-10-19, 06:50 AM
And by doing so, you also lose all gameplay revolving around such objects. It is a trade-off, not some linear improvement. You can also remove Corruption points for CODA Lord of the Rings, but then you have to accept that sometimes Gandalf kills Frodo, takes the Ring and becomes new a Dark Lord ruling over Middle-Earth.
Sure, if i cut stuff, i lose the ability to use it.

However, what of value so i really lose when i cut alignment from D&D ? It is something a lot of other fantasy systems do and i don't really have the feeling there are a lot of worthwile stories that i can do in D&D and not in those systems because of the missing alignment. I can have gods and their opinions and their interaction with believers without any alignment. I can do moral quandaries without any alignment (possibly even better). I can do afterlifes without alignment. I can do angels, devils, demons and undead without alignment. I can also do magical effects based on their type without alignment. And so on. What do i really lose here ? What makes this a tradeoff i really have to think about hard instead of it being a bargain?

MoiMagnus
2022-10-19, 07:21 AM
@MoiMagnus:

And?

For any game, there's a subset of people who refuse to play because they think that game's rules are stupid. You're back to a point I addressed near the beginning of this exchange. The supposed problem is not in any way unique or limited to alignment or even conflicts between a player and a game master, a freeform game will fall apart just as well if players are in severe disagreement over what words mean.

If a player is so out-of-tune with their game master that they refuse to abide by their game master's ruling, why did they sit down to play?

Indeed, it's not unique to alignment. But alignment is particularly placed at the middle of everything that makes those problems worse:
(1) It's related to the PC's personality, so there is a lot of player entitlement about it.
(2) In editions where there is mechanical effects for it, it's directly or indirectly locking some "features" under GM arbitration, which again conflict with the general player entitlement to get access to the various options from the books.
(3) It's linked to moral values / politics so peoples can import strong opinions from out-of-the-game in the game.
(4) It's very easy for the GM to mess it up (e.g. creating a universe that effectively has "double standards" depending on what the GM wants in some circumstances).

Batcathat
2022-10-19, 07:58 AM
Yeah, I feel like that's the difference between "That's an unexpected thing for your character to do" and "Now that your character did that, they have a different alignment".

Either can cause conflict and neither is guaranteed to do so, but the latter feels quite a bit more likely to.

Vahnavoi
2022-10-19, 08:53 AM
What do i really lose here ? What makes this a tradeoff i really have to think about hard instead of it being a bargain?

I cannot easily tell, because you are not naming any specific game systems for me to use for comparison.

However, the unknown alignment variant can be used to gauge this. One central puzzle for that variant is figuring out where you stand in relationship to the world, and alignment ties all of the things you mention (gods, angels, demons, undead, magic, spells, afterlives, moral quandaries etc.) to the same thing. This also has the effect that when all of these things are in play at the same time, you can use knowledge of one to make inferences of the others. So, presume one of the mentioned things is no longer tied to alignment (meaning a character's behaviour no longer changes how they react to the character) and check for what kind of inferences become faulty or impossible.

Another thought experiment to gauge this is asking "what would I need to do to implement this in a computer game?". For example, tracking piety with the gods. We have numerous examples of this from roguelikes etc., and a lot of them end working like the alignment system. Go through your list of gods and see what moral philosophy or mode of behaviour is no longer tracked compared to the Great Wheel cosmology.

But the real strength of the latter type of experiment is not to show you need AD&D alignment specifically. The real strength is showing that implicit alignment is not the same as no alignment. If you are using gods that demand specific conducts from their followers, afterlives that sort by behaviour, so on and so forth, you are already, as a game master, making the same kind of decisions as a game master using AD&D alignment, and if you ever wanted to codify that into something someone else (or in this case, a computer) could use, it would entail writing instructions equally or more explicit than AD&D alignment.

---


Indeed, it's not unique to alignment. But alignment is particularly placed at the middle of everything that makes those problems worse:
(1) It's related to the PC's personality, so there is a lot of player entitlement about it.
(2) In editions where there is mechanical effects for it, it's directly or indirectly locking some "features" under GM arbitration, which again conflict with the general player entitlement to get access to the various options from the books.
(3) It's linked to moral values / politics so peoples can import strong opinions from out-of-the-game in the game.
(4) It's very easy for the GM to mess it up (e.g. creating a universe that effectively has "double standards" depending on what the GM wants in some circumstances).

1) the rules are explicit that graphing player character alignment is the game master's task, so where does the entitlement come from? Bonus: for non-alignment version of the same question, consider a game where players sit down to play characters with personalities made by their game master. Does the entitlement still exist?

2) players being sore losers about losing or not getting stuff is their time-honored tradition, but how is this different from any other situation where game master arbitration can make players lose stuff? For example, the same argument from entitlement can be made against character injury, character death, losing magic items etc. things that are crucial building blocks for various game aesthetics.

3) this is already given. However, consider: I run Lamentations of the Flame Princess scenarios at conventions to complete strangers and have discussions about board-inappropriate things with them all the time, without my games blowing up. I don't find it hard to create a self-selection effect where the people who show up to play are either in agreement with or at least interested in what I'm trying to do. What prevents other from harnessing the same effect?

4) Very easy compared to what? Loot distribution? Game balance between casters and martials? Combat difficulty? Psionics? I already agree, and have agreed from my first post, that moral philosophy is hard for kids or other people who have not finished their own moral development (or are otherwise entirely unfamiliar with the relevant concept). But on the same grounds, anything involving numbers is easy to screw up for kids and the mathematically inept, combat is easy to screw up for those who have no mind for strategy, narration is easy to screw up for those lacking in verbal skills, etc..

KorvinStarmast
2022-10-19, 10:21 AM
4) Very easy compared to what? Loot distribution? Game balance between casters and martials? Combat difficulty? Psionics? I already agree, and have agreed from my first post, that moral philosophy is hard for kids or other people who have not finished their own moral development (or are otherwise entirely unfamiliar with the relevant concept). But on the same grounds, anything involving numbers is easy to screw up for kids and the mathematically inept, combat is easy to screw up for those who have no mind for strategy, narration is easy to screw up for those lacking in verbal skills, etc..
I've seen two groups break up over loot distribution. (Granted, they were probably 'straw that broke the camel's back' deals)

Combat difficulty: had a couple of groups lose people who hated hard combat. But a few stuck around.

Psionics: heh, a fine can of worms. It can be done well, and it can be done badly.


moral philosophy is hard for kids or other people who have not finished their own moral development (or are otherwise entirely unfamiliar with the relevant concept). I find any number of adults (or alleged adults) who have trouble with it as well

As to lousy tactics: don't get me started. I have learned how to deal with the tactically inept in games as a player, but sometimes I grit my teeth. As a DM it matters not to me as it can create some unusual outcomes, and as I learn how competent a team, or a sub set of players, is I can if I wish dial the difficulty up and down.

I have learned how to deal with inept role play as well, and am far more patient with that since it seems to be (IMX) a game skill that can develop if nurtured.

Satinavian
2022-10-19, 10:25 AM
I cannot easily tell, because you are not naming any specific game systems for me to use for comparison.then i'll nominate TDE and Splittermond, both of which i know well, even before reading your examples. Let's see how that works out.


However, the unknown alignment variant can be used to gauge this. One central puzzle for that variant is figuring out where you stand in relationship to the world, and alignment ties all of the things you mention (gods, angels, demons, undead, magic, spells, afterlives, moral quandaries etc.) to the same thing. This also has the effect that when all of these things are in play at the same time, you can use knowledge of one to make inferences of the others. So, presume one of the mentioned things is no longer tied to alignment (meaning a character's behaviour no longer changes how they react to the character) and check for what kind of inferences become faulty or impossible.TDE has gods with aspects and churches with ideals. You would probably know how the herold of the god of truth and law behaves. Or the herald of the god of applied knowledge and enlightenement. The very detailed rules for their priests might give even more hints. It doesn't have devils, but it has arch demons that has aspects as well. You would probably be able to gauge how a servant of the archdemon of revenge behaves or one of the archdemon of treachery and mobility.
Splittermond does similar things with the gods but is less detailed. As for devils, demons etc, there are some behavioral hints in their description. No alignment needed.


Another thought experiment to gauge this is asking "what would I need to do to implement this in a computer game?". For example, tracking piety with the gods. We have numerous examples of this from roguelikes etc., and a lot of them end working like the alignment system. Go through your list of gods and see what moral philosophy or mode of behaviour is no longer tracked compared to the Great Wheel cosmology.For TDE the "realms of Arcania" games managed to do that in the early/mid 90s well enough. Granted, it was mostly "Throw gold at the temples and pray" and some dialogue options, but i have not felt like the the Great Wheel or anything similar would have contributed anything positive here. Especially as the gods are quite different and and overall piety system would not work.


But the real strength of the latter type of experiment is not to show you need AD&D alignment specifically. The real strength is showing that implicit alignment is not the same as no alignment. If you are using gods that demand specific conducts from their followers, afterlives that sort by behaviour, so on and so forth, you are already, as a game master, making the same kind of decisions as a game master using AD&D alignment, and if you ever wanted to codify that into something someone else (or in this case, a computer) could use, it would entail writing instructions equally or more explicit than AD&D alignment.In TDE and Splittermond there are no mechanical consequences for piety if you are not a priest. Thus i rarely ever have to judge behavior for this as GM. And for priests the player basically commited to engage with certain aspect and (for TDE) even has a written down code of conduct for each god as RAW. Really, it is far more trivial for the GM to adjucate whether a PC has followed rules like "you mustn't eat anything prepared with fire" (one of the gods of the sea has this rule) or "You mustn't kill a living crature (plants don't count)" (a god of peace) than "you must stay in one step from LN".
And even for priests there are no mechanical effects based on the morals of the dozens of other gods, only their own.
Sure, arguments about the teachings of the gods still exist. But they tend to be ingame, between the characters. The GM does not have to make any decision about who is right or wrong.

Vahnavoi
2022-10-19, 10:55 AM
@satinavian: I'm not familiar with either The Dark Eye / Das Schwarzen Auge (spelling?) or Splittermond, so I can't comment on their specific rules. From your rough description of the former, there is one thing it doesn't do (and hence cannot meaningfully do better than) AD&D: it doesn't track how a lay or non-worshipper relates to the gods, so there are puzzles and story tropes on that front that you'd lose. Would it be hard to rig that into a game that already has detailed description of its gods? No. But as you described, it seems to be omitted.

Satinavian
2022-10-19, 11:22 AM
Yes, it is true, TDE does not track how a lay person relates to the gods. D&D does neither and alignment says nothing about it.

But TDE has the option to apply special divine curses for e.g. desecrating a temple. Also priest can bless holy vows of laypersons who then get sanctioned if they break them and of course there is nothing keeping one from from tracking how a layperson relates to the ideals of a god, if you really want to for some reason. I would argue that is even easier with the various faiths and their ideals, rules and taboos clearly spelled out. There is even a whole official campaign related to a particular god that does track behavior of all PCs in relation to this particular god (but still not for any of the others). But yes, the system does not care as default and assumes you don't either.

Could you give an example of a story where you might want it and that you could do with D&D alignment but not or only with difficulties in TDE ?

Tanarii
2022-10-19, 11:52 AM
Indeed, it's not unique to alignment. But alignment is particularly placed at the middle of everything that makes those problems worse:
(1) It's related to the PC's personality, so there is a lot of player entitlement about it.
(2) In editions where there is mechanical effects for it, it's directly or indirectly locking some "features" under GM arbitration, which again conflict with the general player entitlement to get access to the various options from the books.
(3) It's linked to moral values / politics so peoples can import strong opinions from out-of-the-game in the game.
(4) It's very easy for the GM to mess it up (e.g. creating a universe that effectively has "double standards" depending on what the GM wants in some circumstances).
Yup. All of which boils down to descriptive alignment judged by the DM is all around a bad thing. The only good use for it is a player RP tool.

Even Gygax, who had strong moral opinions, regretted introducing it to the game. As I noted earlier, he had reasons, mainly intra-party backstabbing. But his solution wasn't helpful, especially when it was modifying a system for Team / Side. At least not until more modern RPG design thinking on character personality systems finally trickled down into WotC for the latest edition.

Vahnavoi
2022-10-19, 03:37 PM
Yes, it is true, TDE does not track how a lay person relates to the gods. D&D does neither and alignment says nothing about it.

You are wrong about alignment. 1st Edition AD&D, page 25, "Changing Alignment", once again:

"Whether or not the character actively professes some deity, he or she will have an alignment and serve one or more deities of this alignment indirectly and unbeknowst to the character."

The rewards and punishments associated with alignment are relevantly presumed to correspond to opinions and reactions of supernatural forces. They track a person's standing in the Great Wheel cosmology, which is built around the biaxial system.


But TDE has the option to apply special divine curses for e.g. desecrating a temple. Also priest can bless holy vows of laypersons who then get sanctioned if they break them and of course there is nothing keeping one from from tracking how a layperson relates to the ideals of a god, if you really want to for some reason. I would argue that is even easier with the various faiths and their ideals, rules and taboos clearly spelled out. There is even a whole official campaign related to a particular god that does track behavior of all PCs in relation to this particular god (but still not for any of the others). But yes, the system does not care as default and assumes you don't either.

Could you give an example of a story where you might want it and that you could do with D&D alignment but not or only with difficulties in TDE ?

TDE looks that have majority of the same building blocks in place, so we're left with stories that deal with the Great Wheel cosmology in particular, which I presume is quite different from TDE's.

Satinavian
2022-10-19, 03:45 PM
You are wrong about alignment. 1st Edition AD&D, page 25, "Changing Alignment", once again:

"Whether or not the character actively professes some deity, he or she will have an alignment and serve one or more deities of this alignment indirectly and unbeknowst to the character."

The rewards and punishments associated with alignment are relevantly presumed to correspond to opinions and reactions of supernatural forces. They track a person's standing in the Great Wheel cosmology, which is built around the biaxial system.
And it got rid of that pretty soon. If you are not a priest, you can totally serve or revere gods of the opposite alignment the most. There is not even a real corellation between your main god(s) and your alignment.


TDE looks that have majority of the same building blocks in place, so we're left with stories that deal with the Great Wheel cosmology in particular, which I presume is quite different from TDE's. Yes, TDE has a different cosmology and thus different stories about the cosmology.


But the same building blocks ? It does NOT have alignment or anything even remotely similar. If it despite of that manages to have "the same building blocks" for most of the interesting stories, it only shows how superflous alignment really is.

Vahnavoi
2022-10-19, 03:58 PM
I'm talking of specific uses of specific alignment systems, not moving goal posts. 1st Edition AD&D rules didn't vanish from face of the Earth when some subsequent edition decided to do something differently, they remain as useable today as they ever were.

EDIT: biaxial alignment and the Great Wheel cosmology take their cues from multiple influential genre authors such as Moorcock, Zelazny and Poulson, in addition to stealing liberally from real myth and religion. So "basic building blocks" refers to themes, conflict, gods, religions, magic etc.. that can be traced to the same sources. Some of these are quite pervasive, you'd know better than me how much overlap there is in total.

gbaji
2022-10-19, 07:02 PM
First, you need to cite such a rule from an actual role playing game, please, rather than pulling it out of your nether regions. The other poster has done so on multiple occasions.

You're kidding right? The entire alignment system assumes this case. Each alignment has a list of assumed behavioral patterns associated with it. That's your 'guide" to playing the alignment you have chosen for your character. Failure to comply with that set of guidelines results in alignment shift for the character. You can't have that possibility without also having the exact case I was speaking of. The GM literally judges an action by the character, determines if that action fits into the character's alignment written on the sheet, and if it does not, may punish the character by forcing a change.

The case "D" mentioned earlier assumes the player says "Oh. I should play differently", but the very need for the rule assumes someone external to the player has to tell them that what they are doing isn't in accordance to their alignment. That "someone" is the GM, right? The GM warns players when they do things (or propose to do things) that don't match up. This creates pressure on the player to "play within their alignment". It literally cannot *not* have this effect on RP in a game.

And here's just reinforcement of what I'm talking about:


You relevantly fail to recognize the difference between this and, say, a model where a game master refuses to entertain out-of-alignment actions. "Your alignment is Lawful Evil but the act you suggest would be Chaotic Good. I'm afraid I cannot allow you to do that, Dave. Pick some other action."<--- THAT would be enforcement of D.

I just explained this in my previous post. The "rule" is "That action is outside your alignment". The "enforcement" is "if you proceed with that action, you may lose your alignment". You aren't saying 'I can't allow you to do that". You're saying "You can do that, but here's the punishment if you do". You can't do that and expect that this isn't going to influence player choices with regard to their character and alignment. Because that's precisely why you are doing it.

Your argument is like saying that a law against littering doesn't prevent people from littering, because the police aren't telling them that they *can't* litter, only that if they do, they'll be fined. Er... Yeah. I mean it doesn't literally prevent them from littering, but the entire point of the exercise is to... um... wait for it... prevent them from littering. The method used to do this is to punish them if/when they do.

The alignment system works in the exact same way. Not sure how there can even be confusion or disagreement on this. It's literally how the system works (again assuming there are in-game mechanical consequences for alignment change).



I quoted this before, you failed to address it. The rules empower the game master to decide on the exact specifics, based on their subjective understanding. This is no different from other areas of the rules that are incomplete, or other games (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriegsspiel) where referee has decisive power over incomplete rules. I linked to the article before, and you failed to address it also. Long story short: the genre of wargames AD&D relevantly takes cues from reduced prominence of complex mechanical rules in favor of human judgment, because using the mechanical rules was too hard, too slow, and lead to odd behaviours in corner cases.

Yes. I get this. I'm just trying to get you to understand that, by definition, this also means that the GM has subjective power over some character choices/actions with regard to the alignment rules. It's in the rules you keep quoting. But you don't seem to want to acknowledge that this has an impact on how the players play their characters. You keep pretending it's not a big deal if the GM thinks one way and the player the other, because the "GM is always right". Great. I get it.

But that does mean that the GMs interpretation creates constraints on the players with regard to how they play their characters. Always. And in direct proportion to exactly how strictly you are applying the rules. It can't not have this effect.


As for "inherent inconsistency"? Since a game master has final say on every alignment determination, the upper bound for consistency of a game run by a human is consistency of said human. I have no trouble admitting few humans are perfectly consistent, but perfect consistency is not a requirement for a playable tabletop game.

Yup. Final say. Again though, there's a difference between being final say on whether or not your character can physically carry X amount of weight, or can really swing on that chandelier and around the enemy successfully, or can cast that spell, versus whether a given proposed action violates their own personal ethics. Your apparent counter that "nothing violates their own ethics because the ethics/alignment is determined by actions" is a pure dodge once you put in game effects based on the resulting alignment ruling by the GM.




Why not Lawful? Because Robin Hood is a thief, and thieves cannot be both Lawful and Good under 1st edition AD&D rules. People have expressed confusion over this, but the reason is dead simple: thieves steal. Making a career out of stealing always means one of two things:

1) the character has decided some group does not deserve creature rights, namely the right to their own property. This would be Evil.
2) the character has decided to act against social order of the land they live in. This would be Chaotic.

Sure. But let's examine 3.5 edition definition of lawful/chaos:

Lawful characters tell the truth, keep their word, respect authority, honor tradition, and judge those who fall short of their duties. Chaotic characters follow their consciences, resent being told what to do, favor new ideas over tradition, and do what they promise if they feel like it.

So if our hypothetical Robin Hood character tells the truth, keeps his word, respects authority, honors tradition, and judges those who fall short of their duties, he's lawful, right? Let's ignore class restrictions for rogues in one edition of one game here and just think about the concept of "what does it mean to be lawful". The Robin Hood example I gave was of one who worked with a team, set firm rules for his band of merry men (complete with perhaps harsh punishments for those who violated the camp rules, endangered the rest, etc), made clear plans and executed them, has made a promise to the people to protect them from the evil sheriff and is committed to keeping that promise, etc. Heck. he can even be completely truthful (doesn't lie about being a brigand). The only one that he even remotely fails at is "respect authority", but even that is questionable. What does it mean to "respect" authority. To respect something means to take it into account when making decisions. It does not mean "blind obedience" to said authority. He clearly knows who the sheriff is. He clearly takes the sheriff and his actions into account. He clearly even recognizes the sheriff authority. He merely chooses to oppose the aspects of the sheriffs actions which he feels fall short of what the sheriff *should* be using that authority for. Respecting authority does not require that you accept (much less follow) uses of authority that violate what you feel is right.

Does that make him lawful? Why not? And yes, he also fits every single one of the chaotic descriptors. He follows his conscience (but so does a paladin, right?). He resents being told what to do (well, maybe no more than anyone else though). Favors new ideas over tradition? Maybe. Maybe not. Robin hood (at least most versions of the myth) clearly did follow a firm code of honor and conduct. He didn't kill people if he could avoid it, and never put innocents at risk. Heck, most of the stories involve him acting to rescue people from the sheriff. Doesn't sound like someone who's just in it for himself, now does it? Do what they promise "if they feel like it"? Ok. Here's where he's absolutely not chaotic. He's going to act in the good of his group and cause no matter how he personally feels. It's not like he wakes up one day and says "nah. Don't feel like helping the poor today".

At least my Robin Hood character would behave that way. I think the problem here is that it's terrifically easy to come up with character concepts that fall so completely in between what would otherwise be absolutely diametrically opposed alignments that it's just silly. He's not neutral here. Neutral doesn't mean "sometimes does this, sometimes does that". Neutral typically means a character that doesn't care that much about either "side" and doesn't consider those aspects when making decisions. But my hypothetical Robin Hood absolutely does care. He see's injustice and he cares. So much so that he's willing to put his own life on the line to do something about it. And yet, the method he's chosen to "do something about it" is to steal stuff from the rich and give it to the poor. He feels that the end he's pursuing is absolutely worth the means he's using. That's "chaotic" from one point of view (breaking the law), but every method he uses to perform those thefts, from how he plans them, to how he executes them, to how he trains and manages his band, is absolutely "lawful".

So why is he chaotic? Your answer is basically "because he is". Which is not a terribly good answer. Doubly so if you are the GM who is empowered to enforce this.


I have every reason to believe you already knew all of this, because you pitched a Robin Hood-like bard as Chaotic. You knew, from the beginning, that Robin Hood is generally considered Chaotic, you didn't need me to tell you any of this. You're simply clashing against the notion that in an actual game, a game master might find some reason to consider such a character something else. That proves no inconsistency with the alignment system: a player character's alignment is based on actual at-the-table behaviour as judged by their game master, not popular stereotypes about Robin Hood.

Well. In the real world, we don't have an alignment system, complete with spells that detect them, or spells that provide protections based on them, or other spells that maybe harm people of one, but not another. So the question of whether Robin Hood is lawful or chaotic is an irrelevant and purely philosophical one. Again, the moment you put in game mechanics in there, it becomes relevant.

Why can't I play a Robin Hood character and say he's lawful good. Heck. Why can't I play a paladin, who fights against the evil sheriff by stealing gold from his men and redistributing it to the poor? Literally, the only thing you can pin on him as "chaotic" is that he's fighting against the lawful authority. But isn't that exactly what a paladin would be expected to do if he found himself in a land where the lawful authority was "evil"? So is it the theft that makes him chaotic? Why? He's only stealing shipments of gold that the sheriff (and other allies of the prince) have taken from the people and are absconding with to use for their evil nefarious purposes.

So if Robin Hood the paladin instead stood in front of the wagon full of gold, pulled his holy sword out, and declared in a loud voice "Stop this evildoing at once! You are servants of an evil master stealing from the land and it's people", and gave them the opportunity to surrender and hand over the gold, or die defending it (in honorable combat of course), it would be peachy? How is that different? Is it not the theft, but the ambush nature of the attack that makes it "chaotic". So if I drop out in front of the same wagon, bow in hand, with my band also popping out, bows in hand and issue the same demand and threat, it's... what? Chaotic now?

Or wait! Are you saying that Robin Hood the paladin would have to be open about his opposition to the sheriff, post information about where his stronghold is (instead of hiding in the forest, since that's just not "sporting" I guess), announce his intentions and actions ahead of time (can't engage in surprises of any kind now, can we?), etc? So basically be lawful stupid? I thought that was a bad thing?

I've literally changed nothing about the behavior of Robin Hood except how we may perceive his personality. The actions are identical. Yet, just by doing so, I can have the exact same character be either lawful good or chaotic good, just by changing how the character himself sees his actions and what motivates him to do them. And that, my friend, lies 100% in the purview of the player roleplaying the character and *not* the GM.


Yup. All of which boils down to descriptive alignment judged by the DM is all around a bad thing. The only good use for it is a player RP tool.

Even Gygax, who had strong moral opinions, regretted introducing it to the game. As I noted earlier, he had reasons, mainly intra-party backstabbing. But his solution wasn't helpful, especially when it was modifying a system for Team / Side. At least not until more modern RPG design thinking on character personality systems finally trickled down into WotC for the latest edition.

Yup. Exactly this. If it's used as a RP tool, it's fine. The introduction over time, of more and more game features that tie into alignment is what has made it a problematic methodology to use.

Mechalich
2022-10-19, 10:25 PM
The GM literally judges an action by the character, determines if that action fits into the character's alignment written on the sheet, and if it does not, may punish the character by forcing a change.

The GM actually punishes the player in this case. The character simply takes actions in-universe. The GM judges, over time, what alignment fits those actions. If that observed alignment differs from the stated alignment far enough, the GM tells the player to change it. And yes, that may have consequences for the character, such as losing powers.

Now, it's not like characters can't lose access to powers for moral reasons in games without morality systems. For example, in a game where every character is an FBI agent and one player decides to have their character regularly hire prostitutes, that character will get fired if that fact comes out and that will basically end their participation in the game because they'll lose all their FBI-associated 'powers.' Having a set of ethical rules in place in-universe, the violation of which will rebound upon the character, is not unreasonable and is in fact a common source of drama - an amazingly large number of characters in cop shows have drinking problems, drug problems, gambling problems, etc.

A big problem with alignment is there is often no in-universe actor serving as the enforcer of these rules, which robs the GM of any cover when making such determinations. For example, if the ethical rules are generated by the gods, and the gods take away various bestowed powers when those rules are violated, the view of the player matters less because these rules are not required to make sense for the human perspective: the gods have degree behavior A is lawful and behavior B is chaotic and if you don't like it, too bad, the gods get to decide.

Alignment, as a shorthand used by the gods, works okay, so long as the GM explains their setup for a given setting at the beginning of a campaign, because then, if a character has moved off their initial alignment through their actions, the GM can say 'well X has decided that you're lawful neutral now' (it also makes it easier for the gods to warn their servants in advance when they're approaching the edge).

GloatingSwine
2022-10-20, 07:33 AM
In editions that really cared about alignment a character's actions could lead to a change in that alignment, ruled by the DM, and a subsequent change to or even loss of mechanical features.

But a sane DM would only do that in the most extreme of circumstances, or if a pattern of behaviour over time caused it.

That's not so much the case in modern systems though, mostly because everyone was tired of being bonked on the head by falling Paladins.

Vahnavoi
2022-10-20, 08:12 AM
The case "D" mentioned earlier assumes the player says "Oh. I should play differently", but the very need for the rule assumes someone external to the player has to tell them that what they are doing isn't in accordance to their alignment. That "someone" is the GM, right? The GM warns players when they do things (or propose to do things) that don't match up. This creates pressure on the player to "play within their alignment". It literally cannot *not* have this effect on RP in a game.

Nope, still C. You still fail to get that there are two different outcomes that can be enforced, in several different ways. The distinction is based on that.

It isn't based on whether or not the method of enforcement influences how a player plays the game. Both versions are meant to influence the player, that's the point. Nobody's ever pretended there is no effect, that's a strawman you came up with.


I just explained this in my previous post. The "rule" is "That action is outside your alignment". The "enforcement" is "if you proceed with that action, you may lose your alignment". You aren't saying 'I can't allow you to do that". You're saying "You can do that, but here's the punishment if you do". You can't do that and expect that this isn't going to influence player choices with regard to their character and alignment. Because that's precisely why you are doing it.

Your argument is like saying that a law against littering doesn't prevent people from littering, because the police aren't telling them that they *can't* litter, only that if they do, they'll be fined. Er... Yeah. I mean it doesn't literally prevent them from littering, but the entire point of the exercise is to... um... wait for it... prevent them from littering. The method used to do this is to punish them if/when they do.

The alignment system works in the exact same way. Not sure how there can even be confusion or disagreement on this. It's literally how the system works (again assuming there are in-game mechanical consequences for alignment change).

And what you fail to get is that the distinction between C and D is whether the game master is saying "you can do that, but here's the punishment if you do" versus "I can't allow you to do that". You fail to realize that in the case of constructed reality of the game, the game master can plain refuse the act of littering.

There are variations, a less strict form of D will work like C until some final warning is issued and a player loses control of their character completely, like under CODA Lord of the Rings. But AD&D does not work like that and no amount of complaining about how it influences or constrains player behaviour will prove that. Show me where, in the actual rule citations, it is suggested a game master ought to flatly disallow out-of-alignment actions.

You have also completely lost sight of what the point of the example was. Here we go again:

Hypothetical game dialogue:

Police: "Hey! Why are you littering?"

Sally: "Littering? I'm sorry Sir, but I'm not littering."

Police: "Yes you are. You clearly dropped an empty bag of snacks on the grass there. That is littering."

Sally: "Dear God no, I'm a clean person, I would never litter. I simply gently put it down for a moment."

Police: "Lady, you seem to be confused of what words mean. Leaving trash on the grass is not clean and what you did is the very definition of littering. Either pick up your trash and take it to the bin, or I'll have to fine you."

Sally: "Your idea is entirely unreasonable. Go ahead, fine me then. I won't let a pig like you tell me how to act."

^ The above is an example following C. Under D, this doesn't happen. What you get instead is:

Sally: *throws an empty bag on the grass*

Voice of God: "THIS IS LITTERING. YOU ARE A CLEAN PERSON, SALLY. PICK UP YOUR TRASH AND TAKE IT TO THE BIN."

Sally: *obediently picks up their trash and does as told*

Or, for an example going into the reverse direction:

Police: "Hey! Why are you littering?"

Sally: "Dear God no, I'm a clean person, I would never litter."

Police: "Oh, that's right, my apologies. You are a clean person, so it's not possible you have littered. You have simply gently put a down an empty bag of snacks for a moment. Carry on as you were and have a good day."

The actual problem you were harping on, and what I'm solving, is semantic confusion between players. We are confronting Sally on their concept of littering and cleanliness because there is a contradiction between what they say and how they act, and we have to decide which takes precedence for how other game objects react to her. The difference, again, is that under C, Sally has a choice: either bring her character closer to what other people agree is clean behaviour, or agree that her character is littering and pay the price. A savvy Sally who knows what words mean can even do this kind of thing deliberately; maybe their civil disobedience will net them points among some crowd, similar to how alignment change can occasionally be beneficial or intentional - something you've not considered during this discussion at all. Alignment change is not in itself a punishment - it has a punishment associated with it (presumed to represent divine disfavor) to prevent game abuse.

Under D, Sally has no choice, or at least a very different choice. But whichever is in use, the point is to influence Sally. Giving people feedback when their personal opinions are no longer congruent with how the game and other people around the table use words is both normal and necessary for holding games with specific themes and settings. Other people are always the limit for what a person can do in a multiplayer game. Other people are always influencing and constraining how you play a game, and vice versa. You don't, and cannot, prove some unique problem with the alignment system just by chanting "but it influences how you play! It constrains how you play your character!". You don't, and cannot, prove some unique problem with the alignment system just by repeatedly asking "but what if there's conflict, what then?". Games are built around constraints, the rules are meant to influence how you play, and agreeing on model of conflict resolution is part of agreeing to play at all.

You have to actually move past that and answer the question of "why is a player sitting down to play at all if they're so out-of-tune with their game master that they cannot agree to abide by their game master's rulings?". If you don't do that, your entire argument ends up begging the question.


Yes. I get this. I'm just trying to get you to understand that, by definition, this also means that the GM has subjective power over some character choices/actions with regard to the alignment rules. It's in the rules you keep quoting.

I keep quoting the rules so that people would get that I've always understood this. It's a non-argument.


But you don't seem to want to acknowledge that this has an impact on how the players play their characters. You keep pretending it's not a big deal if the GM thinks one way and the player the other, because the "GM is always right". Great. I get it.

But that does mean that the GMs interpretation creates constraints on the players with regard to how they play their characters. Always. And in direct proportion to exactly how strictly you are applying the rules. It can't not have this effect.

Again: no-one has ever claimed it has no effect. To the contrary, I've noted multiple times that having an effect is the point. You keep accusing me of a pretension that never existed.

The point which you keep missing is that semantic confusion causes conflict all on its own and a game master is empowered to enforce a particular solution so the game can move on. You never move on to discussing merits of the particular solutions because you fail to acknowledge the distinction I'm making, instead opting to complain about traits shared by all solutions.


Yup. Final say. Again though, there's a difference between being final say on whether or not your character can physically carry X amount of weight, or can really swing on that chandelier and around the enemy successfully, or can cast that spell, versus whether a given proposed action violates their own personal ethics. Your apparent counter that "nothing violates their own ethics because the ethics/alignment is determined by actions" is a pure dodge once you put in game effects based on the resulting alignment ruling by the GM.

You claim there is a difference, but you've failed to establish it beyond trivialities such as subject matter. What you call a "dodge" is plain fact. A person who understands what the game terms mean & wants to play according to some exotic personal definition of morality, will pick the alignment closest to their personal views and go to town. If, for example, I want to play an existentialist character in AD&D, who doesn't believe in good or evil and argues for radical individual freedom, the proper alignment for that is Chaotic Neutral. Then I can go around smoking pipe, hitting on women and talking about how the only real problem is whether to kill myself now or later. If I want to play a character who believes in might makes right and acknowledges no-one who cannot stop them by personal power, the proper alignment is Chaotic Evil. Then I can go around palling with demons, killing people and taking their money. So what if, in-character, someone calls me evil? Those are just words some slave to the gods came up with.

The problem you keep harping on is not caused by wanting to play according to personal ethics. The game allows for characters with such ethics just fine. It's caused by semantic confusion: not understanding how a game and a game master are using words, or worse, insisting that they should use the words exactly like you or your character is. If my existentialist keeps attending human rights marches and donating to the poor, maybe their behaviour is not as Neutral as I claim. If my might-makes-right character shows absolute loyalty to a bunch of people weaker than they are, maybe they are not as Chaotic as I claim. Alignment change and the associated penalty exists to remind me that what I said I would play and what I actually ended up playing (https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/8rqz8i/lets_play_what_i_madewhat_my_gm_sawwhat_i_played/) are not the same. Complaining about the referee doesn't change that. I can just accept it and move on.

---

As far as Robin Hood goes, gbaji, you have finally landed on the same argument Quertus was trying to make, so I direct you to the beginning of my reply to Quertus.

Long story short: 3rd edition alignment definitions orbit around 1st edition ones without outright saying it. Lawful characters "tell the truth, keep their word, respect authority, honor tradition, and judge those who fall short of their duties", because these are traits that serve organized groups, and fit people who put the group above the individual. Chaotic characters "follow their consciences, resent being told what to do, favor new ideas over tradition, and do what they promise if they feel like it" because these are traits that serve individual interests, and fit people who put the individual above the group.

The concept of "Lawful Chaotic" hence requires equivocating or failing to consider which traits a character prioritizes in actual decision making. Also, Neutral is still an option. If someone sits in the middle on most of the traits, that's what they are. What you claim neutral isn't, is exactly what it in practice often is: shifting between behaviours based on situation, with no stable trend. As noted, there's a real parallel in Extrovert - Ambivert - Introvert -spectrum.

The only difference 3rd edition really brings to the table is removing the alignment restriction from rogues. However, this doesn't actually change the reasoning why making a career out of stealing cannot be Lawful and Good. We can just as well presume Lawful Good is reserved for rogues who are not in fact thieves.

So Robin Hood ends up as Neutral or Chaotic Good yet again, and I believe the latter is what 3rd editions rules use him as example of, grandfathered all the way from 1st edition. If you want to stress the version who runs his merry men as a disciplined military unit, then a case can be made for Lawful.

A traditional paladin who acts like Robin Hood is unworkable, because stealing from the rich is an act against legitimate authority and thus against the Paladin code. This is independent from deciding whether Robin Hood is Lawful, because Paladins have stricter requirements than other Lawful Good characters. Furthermore, what you claim is "Lawful Stupid" is stupid only in stereotype land. There are versions of that plan that a Paladin could pull off just fine.

KorvinStarmast
2022-10-20, 06:39 PM
You're kidding right? The entire alignment system assumes this case. .
You are, quite simply, wrong.
The alignments in Empire of the Petal Throne has a different take on alignment than D&D (any editions) does. And that's just for starters.
In each edition of D&D, alignment has been handled a bit differently, to include the Original Game where the single axis model was Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic.

Therefore, until you define what game and system you are referring to you, what you have to say is built on a foundation of swamp mud.

gbaji
2022-10-20, 07:46 PM
Nope, still C. You still fail to get that there are two different outcomes that can be enforced, in several different ways. The distinction is based on that.

It isn't based on whether or not the method of enforcement influences how a player plays the game. Both versions are meant to influence the player, that's the point. Nobody's ever pretended there is no effect, that's a strawman you came up with.

When you say "both versions", are you saying C and D? Or two versions of C? It's not clear from your response. My point is that D cannot happen without some outside agent telling the player "you are not playing your alignment correctly". D was stated as "the player changes how they play to conform with the alignment", in contrast to C: "The character changes alignment to match how the player is playing it". Right? You remember this. Two different directions. One the character changes alignment to match the play, and in the other the play changes to match the character's alignment. Just making sure you haven't drifted off or something and we're still talking about the same thing.

Here's the problem. If the player thinks he's playing the character in accordance with it's chosen alignment (or doesn't care, or doesn't notice), the only way he's every going to have an "ah ha! I'm playing incorrectly" if if someone else tells him. He wouldn't be playing "incorrectly" if he both was aware of it *and* cared about it, right? It's pretty much the assumed case. So someone (could be another player, more likely the GM) tells the player "Hey. What you just did (or are planning to do) doesn't really match with your character's alignment". That may result in the player going "Oh yeah. I should do that differently", or it may result in the player going "I don't care", or "I don't agree". In any case though, the only way that results in a change in player behavior is if the player decides to change. And in many cases (again assuming this may be the way he wanted to play the character), the only thing that may possibly get him to change is if there is a threat of some kind. That "threat" is condition C.


And what you fail to get is that the distinction between C and D is whether the game master is saying "you can do that, but here's the punishment if you do" versus "I can't allow you to do that". You fail to realize that in the case of constructed reality of the game, the game master can plain refuse the act of littering.

No. That's what you keep claiming, but I completely disagree. The distinction between C and D is that D is what the player is told when they are playing incorrectly as viewed by someone other than that player. C is what happens to the player's character if they don't change how they play to comply with that "someone other than me" viewpoint. Always. Again. D would never come up if someone doesn't point it out. Otherwise, you'd have a player perfectly playing their character's alignment, with no confusion of conflict with anyone else's viewpoint, and "C" would never actually need to come up either. It can *only* come up if the player is not playing "correctly", and the player is only going to be aware of it if someone else tells him.

I just don't understand why this is remotely in question. It's very basic human behavior stuff. If someone is doing something wrong, they either don't know or don't care that it's wrong. Only someone else telling them will change that behavior. And, again, if there's a disagreement, only if there is a punishment for failing to correct the wrong behavior will that behavior change. Hence why I keep saying that D is the rule (you must play within your alignment) and C is the enforcement of the rule (if you don't, the GM will change your character's alignment).

And based on that, it's correct to state that the "rule" is something that is enforced. "Do this, or <consequence>". Now, obviously, if the player doesn't care about the consequence of an alignment change, then it doesn't matter. But then the player is playing his character how he wishes anyway. My entire point is about the cases where the player, for some reason, wants or needs a specific alignment (for the class, abilities, deity worship, doesn't want to be affected by alignment specific spells, whatever), and a change will cause some sort of harm to the character in some way. If that's not the case, then it doesn't matter, and it falls into "alignment is just a guide to playing, but there's no penalty for not following the rules". Again. I'm assuming that's not the case here (cause otherwise there's really nothing to discuss).


There are variations, a less strict form of D will work like C until some final warning is issued and a player loses control of their character completely, like under CODA Lord of the Rings. But AD&D does not work like that and no amount of complaining about how it influences or constrains player behaviour will prove that.

You're excluding the middle there. It's not about "completely take over the character". if alignment changes have any in-game effects on the character (and they do), then that is the "threat". It may not be as absolute in D&D as in LoTR, but it's still a threat, with consequences. It's just a matter of degrees. Also, this is where I get confused by your position. You say something like this, which clearly indicates that you understand that "D" requires someone kind of "warning is issued" scenario, but then insist that these warnings, what? Don't constitute pressure by whomever is giving the warnings to play a specific way? Of course they do, or why bother telling the player that "continuing to do this may result in alignment shift".



Show me where, in the actual rule citations, it is suggested a game master ought to flatly disallow out-of-alignment actions.

I don't have to, because that's not what I'm arguing. That's an actual strawman you have invented all on your own. I have *never* said that the GM can disallow out of alignment actions (you have brought this up, but I never have). All I am saying is that the threat of having an alignment shift occur if a player doesn't play within alignment will act as pressure for that player to play his character within the alignment requirements. Period. Again, how much this actually causes players to conform with the alignment definitions is dependent on how negative the alignment shift is to the character. But to the degree that there are any in-game mechanical effects, it's going to be something the player will want to avoid.

Heck. 1e D&D actually imposed a level loss punishment for alignment shift as well. That's pretty darn "severe", right? So not as simple as "this was really your alignment all along, you just wrote the wrong one down" as you suggested.

And, at the risk of repeating myself, this becomes a huge problem if//when there are disagreements on what any given action actually means in terms of alignment. And while we can debate all sorts of conditions (can Robin Hood be a paladin/lawful? Can a Chaotic Evil assassin/serial killer have friends he cares about enough to sacrifice for?), the very fact that we've been having these disagreements show that disagreements can and will occur. And if the GM's determination "wins" (which is typically the case, right?), then this, in conjunction with the previously established ability of the GM to enforce his opinion via alignment shift imposed on the player's character results in a case of the alignment system acting as an impediment to the player trying to just play his character the way he wants.

As I've said repeatedly, the problem with actions potentially fitting into multiple alignment's depending on pretty much arbitrary subjective opinions causes problems. The limit of only being able to have "one" alignment on any axis also causes problems (what if my character is extremely chaotic in some cases, but very lawful in others?). All result in a limitation on players being able to play their character personalities and actions the way they think they should be played.



You have also completely lost sight of what the point of the example was. Here we go again:

I don't think I have at all.


Hypothetical game dialogue:

Police: "Hey! Why are you littering?"

Sally: "Littering? I'm sorry Sir, but I'm not littering."

Police: "Yes you are. You clearly dropped an empty bag of snacks on the grass there. That is littering."

Sally: "Dear God no, I'm a clean person, I would never litter. I simply gently put it down for a moment."

Police: "Lady, you seem to be confused of what words mean. Leaving trash on the grass is not clean and what you did is the very definition of littering. Either pick up your trash and take it to the bin, or I'll have to fine you."

Sally: "Your idea is entirely unreasonable. Go ahead, fine me then. I won't let a pig like you tell me how to act."

^ The above is an example following C. Under D, this doesn't happen.

Er. No. This is both. That's what you keep missing. The police officer is employing "D" when he tells Sally that she has littered and littering is not legal. Your example further includes the threat of "C" if she does not comply (exactly what I said happens, and which you keep pretending doesn't, despite actually including exactly that in your example.

It only becomes case C when Sally refuses to pick up the trash. But the threat of C is there the entire time.



What you get instead is:

Sally: *throws an empty bag on the grass*

Voice of God: "THIS IS LITTERING. YOU ARE A CLEAN PERSON, SALLY. PICK UP YOUR TRASH AND TAKE IT TO THE BIN."

Sally: *obediently picks up their trash and does as told*

Who is the "Voice of God" here? The GM? You do get that the police officer is the "GM" in my example (the person who tells the player that they have littered and littering is against the law, and they will be fined if they do it). Ask yourself: Why did Sally pick up the litter in this case, but not when the cop told her to do so? You aren't actually examining different cases, you're examining different reactions by the player being told that something they are doing is wrong and should be corrected.

This is exactly the same as your first example if sally were instead to respond to the cop by apologizing and picking up the litter. You've just changed who tells her to behave differently, and then muddled things by having her also respond differently (with no inherent reason for her to have done that). Protip: When examining cases for differences/similarities, only change *one* thing between caseA and caseB. When you change more than one thing, we can't actually learn anything as far what may have lead to the changes.


Or, for an example going into the reverse direction:

Police: "Hey! Why are you littering?"

Sally: "Dear God no, I'm a clean person, I would never litter."

Police: "Oh, that's right, my apologies. You are a clean person, so it's not possible you have littered. You have simply gently put a down an empty bag of snacks for a moment. Carry on as you were and have a good day."

That's not a reverse situation either (very strange muddled thinking going on here). That's the player telling the cop/god/GM that what they did didn't violate the alignment rules (didn't litter). Which is "different", but not "the reverse". There's no actual logical reverse condition to a rule->consequence condition. I mean, I guess we could speculate that God just tells Sally that she's a dirty person and punishes her for *not* littering or something, but that's odd too.


The actual problem you were harping on, and what I'm solving, is semantic confusion between players. We are confronting Sally on their concept of littering and cleanliness because there is a contradiction between what they say and how they act, and we have to decide which takes precedence for how other game objects react to her. The difference, again, is that under C, Sally has a choice: either bring her character closer to what other people agree is clean behaviour, or agree that her character is littering and pay the price. A savvy Sally who knows what words mean can even do this kind of thing deliberately; maybe their civil disobedience will net them points among some crowd, similar to how alignment change can occasionally be beneficial or intentional - something you've not considered during this discussion at all. Alignment change is not in itself a punishment - it has a punishment associated with it (presumed to represent divine disfavor) to prevent game abuse.

Under D, Sally has no choice, or at least a very different choice. But whichever is in use, the point is to influence Sally. Giving people feedback when their personal opinions are no longer congruent with how the game and other people around the table use words is both normal and necessary for holding games with specific themes and settings. Other people are always the limit for what a person can do in a multiplayer game. Other people are always influencing and constraining how you play a game, and vice versa. You don't, and cannot, prove some unique problem with the alignment system just by chanting "but it influences how you play! It constrains how you play your character!". You don't, and cannot, prove some unique problem with the alignment system just by repeatedly asking "but what if there's conflict, what then?". Games are built around constraints, the rules are meant to influence how you play, and agreeing on model of conflict resolution is part of agreeing to play at all.

And this is you just repeating the same wrong thing again. C and D are two parts of the same rule->consequence equation. In both, the player is told the rule they must follow and the consequences for not following it. C is the player refusing to comply with the rule and suffering the consequences. D is the player changing their behavior and avoiding the consequences. But the assumption here is that the player chose D in order to avoid those consequences. Otherwise, there would be no reason to warn them, or inform them, or whatever, when they are perceived to have violated the rule.


You have to actually move past that and answer the question of "why is a player sitting down to play at all if they're so out-of-tune with their game master that they cannot agree to abide by their game master's rulings?". If you don't do that, your entire argument ends up begging the question.

It's not always about being out of tune. The problem is that in many cases, for a player to be "in tune" with the GM, it requires really really dumbing down the way they play their character. At least, I find myself doing this anytime I play in an alignment system heavy(ish) game like D&D.




I keep quoting the rules so that people would get that I've always understood this. It's a non-argument.

It's not about what the rules physically say. It's how those rules affect player and GM actions and decisions. The rules aren't going to say something like "We want create a dynamic in which the GM's interpretation of how characters actions fall within alignment definitions have a significant impact on player choices with regards to their roleplaying options". Said no rule ever. But that is the effect of the alignment rules in games like D&D. The very fact that my attempt to play a paladin who realizes that direct force of arms wont work, and so chooses to use economic attrition as a means to defeat an evil Sheriff is simply not allowed because "the GM says so" is pretty much proof of my point.

Or say I want to play Dexter. Clearly a chaotic evil serial killer, right (is it possible for a serial killer to not be CE?). Oh, but in this game, it's apparently not possible for him to actually have friends that he might care about and put himself at risk for (you know, like he actually does on the show). Or, another popular serial killer, Hannibal Lecter. Also CE, right (cause, serial killer). But that means there's simply no way he'd ever saw his own hand off instead of Clarice's (in the admittedly terrible first sequel film). Cause, anyone who's actions in their life so clearly make them both chaotic and evil could never possibly care about someone else that much.

There are a host of character personality possibilities that are simply "impossible" because one must always be either "chaotic" or "lawful". You can't be both. Yet, most people, even if 99% of their behavior always goes in one direction, will not even just occasionally, but regularly take actions that are the exact opposite. Because these are not actually absolute personality traits. Most people are consistently chaotic in some ways, and consistently lawful in others (and that's ignoring the different scope points of law/chaos concepts in the first place). But the alignment system in D&D would count every single "off alignment" action as a ding against their alignment, when in reality it should not.



The point which you keep missing is that semantic confusion causes conflict all on its own and a game master is empowered to enforce a particular solution so the game can move on. You never move on to discussing merits of the particular solutions because you fail to acknowledge the distinction I'm making, instead opting to complain about traits shared by all solutions.

If the GM thinks an action is out of alignment for a character, and the player disagrees, that's not a "semantic confusion". No one's confused about what words mean here. We disagree on application, is all. And that's a very different, and very subjective, animal.



If, for example, I want to play an existentialist character in AD&D, who doesn't believe in good or evil and argues for radical individual freedom, the proper alignment for that is Chaotic Neutral. Then I can go around smoking pipe, hitting on women and talking about how the only real problem is whether to kill myself now or later. If I want to play a character who believes in might makes right and acknowledges no-one who cannot stop them by personal power, the proper alignment is Chaotic Evil. Then I can go around palling with demons, killing people and taking their money. So what if, in-character, someone calls me evil? Those are just words some slave to the gods came up with.

You are coming up with counters that clearly fit into a specific alignment though. I mean, that's like textbook cardboard cutout neutral there. The second is textbook chaotic evil. How about actually trying to come up with a character type that doesn't fit neatly into pre-defined categories. I've done several of them.

Create Hannibal Lecter in D&D alignment terms. Then explain some of his actions in the films and books. You literally can't. I guess his player was getting a lot of warnings from the GM about him playing his character wrong or something. And bizarrely because he's at the "bad" end of both alignment axis (We tend to fall to chaos, and fall to evil), there's actually little harm for him doing so. Because no GM is going to take a serial killer character who decides that there's like 2 or 3 people in the world he wont kill but will actually protect at great cost to himself, and "punish" that character by making him become neutral or something. Cause "randomly kills people for fun" just doesn't allow for anything other than CE. Again. That's an inherent flaw in the system itself.


A traditional paladin who acts like Robin Hood is unworkable, because stealing from the rich is an act against legitimate authority and thus against the Paladin code. This is independent from deciding whether Robin Hood is Lawful, because Paladins have stricter requirements than other Lawful Good characters. Furthermore, what you claim is "Lawful Stupid" is stupid only in stereotype land. There are versions of that plan that a Paladin could pull off just fine.

Is it? Why? Why is fighting an economic attrition war somehow less "lawful good", than fighting by actually *gasp* killing people? With weapons even? I'm not kidding. Give me an ethical analysis of the two methods of fighting the Sheriff and explain why one is more lawful and good than the other.

Are you actually making decisions based on a rational assessment of what law/chaos and good/evil are? Or are you just repeating stereotypes (Paladins would just never do *that*). Oh really? Why not? What measurement are you using here?

Witty Username
2022-10-20, 10:44 PM
Chaos and Evil being the 'bad' alignment is something I think is an interesting thing to unpack, since it is undeniably a thing in D&D (1st edition used law and chaos in place of good and evil on a narrative level, 4th edition eliminated the law/chaos axis but kept Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil specificly and the classic hero archetype class Paladin has been restricted to Lawful Good most editions) but I am not sure where it came from originally, as it seems to be a concept baked into fantasy on a fundamental level that good and evil, and law and chaos are two separate axis but Lawful Good is more good and Chaotic Evil is more evil.

Mechalich
2022-10-20, 11:35 PM
Chaos and Evil being the 'bad' alignment is something I think is an interesting thing to unpack, since it is undeniably a thing in D&D (1st edition used law and chaos in place of good and evil on a narrative level, 4th edition eliminated the law/chaos axis but kept Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil specificly and the classic hero archetype class Paladin has been restricted to Lawful Good most editions) but I am not sure where it came from originally, as it seems to be a concept baked into fantasy on a fundamental level that good and evil, and law and chaos are two separate axis but Lawful Good is more good and Chaotic Evil is more evil.

Essentially every human society that has ever existed has been some degree of lawful. Chaos, and by extension people of chaotic alignment, as therefore opposed to society. This is true even when those people would clearly ping as 'good' as in the case of morally driven counterculture movements. Societies will therefore always find it easier to deal with Lawful Good champions than Chaotic Good ones. Similarly, society opposes Chaotic Evil individuals for being evil and for being chaotic, because both of those traits are in opposition to society. By contrast a Lawful Evil villain may actually seek to make society stronger, since if they are in control of that society this benefits them, and has to be opposed on ethical, not practical, grounds. This is the source of various 'made the trains run on time' aphorisms, whether or not actually true in any given case.

OldTrees1
2022-10-21, 12:09 AM
Chaos and Evil being the 'bad' alignment is something I think is an interesting thing to unpack, since it is undeniably a thing in D&D (1st edition used law and chaos in place of good and evil on a narrative level, 4th edition eliminated the law/chaos axis but kept Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil specifically and the classic hero archetype class Paladin has been restricted to Lawful Good most editions) but I am not sure where it came from originally, as it seems to be a concept baked into fantasy on a fundamental level that good and evil, and law and chaos are two separate axis but Lawful Good is more good and Chaotic Evil is more evil.

Evil being the 'bad' alignment makes sense if we are using the Moral axis (rather than the Celestial-Fiend allegiance axis). So I assume that is the axis in question.

It is possible for any pair of axes to have some correlation. For example despite the Celestial-Field allegiance axis being independent from the Moral axis, many GMs will choose to have celestials be generally moral and fiends generally immoral. Likewise it is possible for a pair of axes to be perfectly orthagonal when there is no relationship between them.

While TSR and WotC have argued/assumed that LG was more good, I struggle to find that to be true under any of the possible Law-Chaos axes.

1) Lawful vs Anarchic (Obey legitimate authority vs disregard authority)
Laws and social norms can vary in their moral character. There are plenty of examples of that IRL and even more examples when we brainstorm about fantasy worlds. Although obeying authority is a lower stage in Kohlberg's moral development model (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg%27s_stages_of_moral_development) . With this axis I would conclude LG is only 'more good' until examined closer (with more moral development).
2) Communalism/collectivism vs Individualism (Group needs over Individual needs vs Individual needs over Group needs)
Different people disagree on the moral character of this axis. While this disagreement starts with cultural social norms in stage 3 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg%27s_stages_of_moral_development) , this disagreement continues even into stage 6. If Vahnavoi is right that this is the axis TSR & WotC envision, then their assumption that 'LG is more good' is part of an ongoing debate.
3) Orderly vs Chaotic
Yeah, no. This one is completely orthagonal to the moral axis.

Based on that analysis and relying on Vahnavoi's greater knowledge about TSR, I would assume that the author's occasional presumption that 'LG is more good' is rooted in their position in an ongoing debate about the needs of the individual and the needs of the group.

Personally I just treat Law-Chaos (pick an axis) as completely independent from the moral axis.
Sidenote: The stereotypical Paladin ends up as LG but it has a CG counterpart under each of the 3 Law-Chaos axes. What the counterpart looks like varies based on the axis chosen.

Tanarii
2022-10-21, 12:34 AM
1) Lawful vs Anarchic (Obey legitimate authority vs disregard authority)
Laws and social norms can vary in their moral character. There are plenty of examples of that IRL and even more examples when we brainstorm about fantasy worlds. Although obeying authority is a lower stage in Kohlberg's moral development model (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg%27s_stages_of_moral_development) . With this axis I would conclude LG is only 'more good' until examined closer (with more moral development).
2) Communalism/collectivism vs Individualism (Group needs over Individual needs vs Individual needs over Group needs)
Different people disagree on the moral character of this axis. While this disagreement starts with cultural social norms in stage 3 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg%27s_stages_of_moral_development) , this disagreement continues even into stage 6. If Vahnavoi is right that this is the axis TSR & WotC envision, then their assumption that 'LG is more good' is part of an ongoing debate.
3) Orderly vs Chaotic
Yeah, no. This one is completely orthagonal to the moral axis.
The original was closest to Civilization vs Natural Balance vs Destruction/Dissolution.
IMO it wasn't so much an axis as a triangle of opposition.

Adding a morality axis was a mistake in many ways.

KorvinStarmast
2022-10-21, 01:04 PM
IMO it wasn't so much an axis as a triangle of opposition. Nicely put.

Adding a morality axis was a mistake in many ways. You are awarded the understatement of the week prize. :smallsmile:
You may now be eligible for the Gygax Overthinking It fellowship at WMU.
WatsaMattaYou? :smallbiggrin:

gbaji
2022-10-21, 06:52 PM
You are, quite simply, wrong.
The alignments in Empire of the Petal Throne has a different take on alignment than D&D (any editions) does. And that's just for starters.
In each edition of D&D, alignment has been handled a bit differently, to include the Original Game where the single axis model was Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic.

Therefore, until you define what game and system you are referring to you, what you have to say is built on a foundation of swamp mud.

I've been very clear (although admittedly not in the last couple posts, since it was an ongoing back and forth with one poster), that I was specifically speaking of alignment systems in which the axis themselves are "overloaded".

1. They use any given axis as a both a "side/faction" measurement *and* a personality measurement.

2. The personality measurements themselves may additionally have multiple different "angles" (not sure what to even call this, sub axis, "forks"?).

3. Alignment itself is used in the game system as a detectable trait of the character itself, and the system includes spells/abilities which interact with said alignment and may have class/skill/ability restrictions which may be tied to alignment as well. Basically, any system in which there is a "rule" which may cause alignment shift to occur for a character without the player actively seeking it to happen *and* where this alignment shift may be undesired (and, per above, will cause changes in said spells/ability interactions and/or class/skill/ability restrictions).

Absent number 3, then it's just a guide to RP. No problem. If you have number 3, but have just 1, then not really a problem either (people choose a deity/side/faction/whatever, and are expected to act in ways that maintain high standard with them, and may lose that and/or suffer penalties if they don't). If all three are present (and in many systems, just 2 and 3 will do), you run into problems.

This has been my stated position through this entire thread. So yes, there absolutely are game systems with alignment rules that don't match my critiques. But odds are they don't contain the combination of conditions that I'm criticizing


While TSR and WotC have argued/assumed that LG was more good, I struggle to find that to be true under any of the possible Law-Chaos axes.

1) Lawful vs Anarchic (Obey legitimate authority vs disregard authority)
Laws and social norms can vary in their moral character. There are plenty of examples of that IRL and even more examples when we brainstorm about fantasy worlds. Although obeying authority is a lower stage in Kohlberg's moral development model (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg%27s_stages_of_moral_development) . With this axis I would conclude LG is only 'more good' until examined closer (with more moral development).
2) Communalism/collectivism vs Individualism (Group needs over Individual needs vs Individual needs over Group needs)
Different people disagree on the moral character of this axis. While this disagreement starts with cultural social norms in stage 3 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg%27s_stages_of_moral_development) , this disagreement continues even into stage 6. If Vahnavoi is right that this is the axis TSR & WotC envision, then their assumption that 'LG is more good' is part of an ongoing debate.
3) Orderly vs Chaotic


Yeah. That's a good list, and more or less illustrates what I've been talking about with how problematic law/chaos is, especially if you try to firmly (and singularly) define it based on personality traits. It is entirely possible to have someone who absolutely disregards authority (legitimate or not), but will still fight to the death for the "good of the whole" (ie: not selfish). And then we add in the "do you do this by flipping a coin every time you choose to do something, or do you make exhaustive plans" (orderly/chaotic). I can easily come up with dozens of different character personality types, every single one of which is completely consistent and logical, and yet which would be strongly lawful in by some measures and strongly chaotic in others.

The idea that you can *ever* simply label a character as lawful or chaotic within that system is nonsense. Hence my point about how disagreements are the real problem here. It's not really about "what is law" or "what is chaos", it's "which aspect of law/chaos is the GM going to decide is relevant in this particular situation?". And either we just happen to have a table full of players who basically share a brain with the GM, or there will be disagreements. Which, when we add in the alignment shift rules, means that players will either have to suffer with their character being re-labeled as something they didn't think was correct (with potential consequences as well) *or* they will have to adjust their play to avoid this (and perhaps not be happy about it).

Or, and I've pointed this out several times now, they will avoid this quandary entirely by avoiding playing characters that cross those axis "forks/angles/sub-alignments". If they pick a character who respects authority, they will also act based on the effect on the whole rather than the individual, and will be very structured in how they do everything. Or, if they are chaotic, they will be the opposite on all three of those. No mixing and matching, because that could cause conflict and conflict could result in disagreement and unhappy play.

Which, at the risk of repeating myself, means that it acts as a restriction on the breadth of roleplaying options that a player could have chosen. There are a host of possible character personality types that you could play, but cannot, not because they are illogical or "impossible" character types to imagine and play (consistently even, cause I've done it), but purely because you will run afoul of the alignment system itself. And yeah. I think that's a problem. It's why I don't tend to play D&D (or games with similar alignment systems) for anything other than short term, one shot(ish), scenarios/campaigns. I don't have any desire to build up character personalities, much less think hard about how to integrate them into a larger, persistent game world, with the equivalent of training wheels on the bike or arm floaties on my arms. It's just too restrictive and for no real benefit either.

OldTrees1
2022-10-21, 10:33 PM
Yeah. That's a good list, and more or less illustrates what I've been talking about with how problematic law/chaos is, especially if you try to firmly (and singularly) define it based on personality traits.

If you conflate multiple alignment axes, then you are making a mistake. However assuming someone must make an unforced error is a fallacious position. As an trivial side effect, my post pointed out there are individual axes you can use that don't make the same unforced error you are presuming must be made.

If a playgroup is using the Lawful/Anarchic axis, then your point is irrelevant. If my list illustrates your point, then your point might be a strawman.

Tevo77777
2022-10-23, 09:50 PM
You are, bluntly, wrong about where the game master's authority comes from, and consequently wrong about the distribution of labor between game master and player.

The game master has final say because they are a game referee. The determination of alignment rests on them because it is used to decide how game objects behave in response to player actions. As far as the game process is concerned, the game master is correct, as directly stated by rules of the game. That you even bother to ask this question suggests you keep conflating game statements with player's subjective opinion. The game master's statement only

This post is so long that despite I've read a good chunk of it, I have no idea if my position on it will change six times or not as I read it.

EDIT:


So whether I worship a deity that falls within the chaotic range, if I'm a bard, and I fail to be sufficiently chaotic (as the GM sees it), I may lose my class abilities. What if my bard is my version of Robin Hood (in the example I gave), and the GM decides that my plans are too well thought out, my objectives too concrete, and I work too well with others, and that I'm not really "chaotic" anymore because of that. I need to create random poorly thought out plans, and intentionally ignore what the group decides in favor of myself, I guess?

I have to agree with Vah, this example doesn't make any sense. This is an example of a GM strawman.

Where does it say in any description of Chaotic Good that you can't have plans or listen to advice?

Why would you have a character who plans and worships a god/goddess that hates planning?

My thoughts on actions not matching alignment.

I'm going to use an example that I am very familiar with, which is professional wrestling.

Lets say you have a babyface wrestler, lets say his name is "Paladin Lightbringer".

Now, one day, Paladin Lightbringer sneaks in a set of brass knuckles and uses them when the referee isn't looking, to use a match.

The announcers are going to comment that this is strange? Is Paladin a different person? People on the internet are going to be speculating and arguing about what is going to happen next, and some will be changing how they feel about the concept of this Paladin character.

At this point one of several things can happen.

1. Redemption
Lightbringer does some promo or some act during a match or something, where he seems to regret what he did, and he says his decision was not a good one. He then wins a similar or harder match without the brass knuckles.

2. Justification
Lightbringer states or implies that he had wrestled very recently before the match and had a bad shoulder, while his opponent had no such thing. It was a one time thing, and he's likely not going to do it again.

3. Crutch
After doing 1 or 2, Lightbringer loses matches without his brass knuckles and finds himself having to keep using them to win or he goes down the leaderboard. He's likely going to lose fans unless he's hilarious or good at promos, and none of the fans are going to think he's a Babyface.

4. The Ends
Lightbringer fuels with specifically people who insult whatever town the promotion is in and/or have their own sets of brass knuckles. Lightbringer is likely still viewed as a Babyface.

5. Texas Streetfight
Lightbringer now exclusively does matches where brass knuckles are fair game and hits people with chairs.

As you can see, a lot of these outcomes result in Lightbringer either remaining a Babyface, becoming a Heel, or possibly becoming some kind of anti-hero.

However, let's examine what happens if the "stated alignment" of Lightbringer doesn't change, but his behavior seems to.

6. What?
Lightbringer does all the things heels do and doesn't claim to be a heel. He even feuds with Faces and appears to seriously hurt them, while also giving up on half his friends while surrounding himself with "lackies".

Even if he keeps claiming he's the hero and the announcers keep saying that, the fans will boo him (Unless he's funny or good at promos) and all the fans will agree he's a Heel.

5. Cody Rhodes / Homelander
Lightbringer has this long overly dramatic entrance where tons of music plays and he is raised up into the arena like he's the biggest thing sliced bread. He gives dramatic speeches that few people understand or like. Lightbringer keeps coming out dressed like he's a villain who has no idea he's not a hero, and he keeps feuding with heels. He's booed everywhere he goes, and when he throws gifts to the crowd, they throw them back at them. It terms of character arc, nothing happens. He has this one feud with this darker-skinned UK guy who insults Americans and Lightbringer comes out waving an American flag around, but it's really weird and young fans roll their eyes.

Tons of the fans will keep thinking that something cool is happening, that Lightbringer is doing some 5D chess thing slow burn character act thing. If that's not really happening, lots of people will just be bored or annoyed. They will think that Lightbringer (The person playing him) is out of touch and lives in a bubble.

If this was D&D, the person who played Lightbringer would quit the campaign and play at another table. If this was pro wrestling, he would quit and go work for another promotion.

----

TLDR: If your character takes shortcuts, poisons people, steals, murders, insults peasants, fights good people, ect ect.... The other players and the GM are going to be very confused if you insist your character is still "Lawful Good".

Also, maybe you want your character to be having an arc or "going somewhere" with their character, even if it takes a year IRL.

One of my favorite wrestlers IRL came back from rehab (Alcohol), and it's really made his character very interesting and fun to watch.

Palladium Alignment System

I know this conversation has likely happened a million times, and I don't want to be converted or to argue, but I am curious about the specific people here right now.

Specifically, do you think the Palladium Alignment system is better in how it spells out what is what, or do you think that is worse? Do you think this makes it easier for the players to predict the rulings of the GM? What about making it easier to assess if someone has changed alignments or not?

I know that alignment is described a bit differently in each edition, but there is only one version Palladium Alignment. I doubt people are going to confuse one version with another.

KorvinStarmast
2022-10-24, 04:01 PM
Palladium Alignment System

Specifically, do you think the Palladium Alignment system is better in how it spells out what is what, or do you think that is worse? Do you think this makes it easier for the players to predict the rulings of the GM? What about making it easier to assess if someone has changed alignments or not?

I know that alignment is described a bit differently in each edition, but there is only one version Palladium Alignment. I doubt people are going to confuse one version with another. Is this pretty much up to date? (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=3401634&postcount=1) (circa 2007)

Tevo77777
2022-10-24, 04:34 PM
Is this pretty much up to date? (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=3401634&postcount=1) (circa 2007)

The great, powerful, and utterly insane Kevin Siembieda... So the story goes.... Locked himself in a dungeon around the time between 2nd AD&D and 3.0 D&D.

Out of the many many systems he's published, almost all of them have rules copy-pasted to each other. A book might be on it's 7th edition and it's 20th printing, and it will still be full of typos and out of order. If something existed after 1990, he's completely unaware of that new feature or mechanic in RPGs.

TLDR: Kevin Siembieda hasn't changed much of anything since like 1990, especially the alignment charts.

-
EDIT: I ripped a few pages from the PDF book I use. I've heard nothing about any deviation from this over the years.

Ignore anything about Honor, that's a problematic thing that was in one system.

Link (https://imgur.com/gallery/iZXM48i)

Anymage
2022-10-24, 05:10 PM
Palladium alignment feels like RPG MBTI (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers–Briggs_Type_Indicator). But then again, so does D&D alignment. It's popular because of its simplicity, but it breaks down if you try doing anything serious with it.

Personally I'm a fan of more freeform prompts for what drives your character and what makes them stand out. But I can see the point of simple and broad handles for new players and simply for legacy. I do like how 5e is removing mechanical hooks and adding other personality hooks so that people who don't like alignment can easily excise it.

Tevo77777
2022-10-24, 06:18 PM
Palladium alignment feels like RPG MBTI (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers–Briggs_Type_Indicator). But then again, so does D&D alignment. It's popular because of its simplicity, but it breaks down if you try doing anything serious with it.

Personally I'm a fan of more freeform prompts for what drives your character and what makes them stand out. But I can see the point of simple and broad handles for new players and simply for legacy. I do like how 5e is removing mechanical hooks and adding other personality hooks so that people who don't like alignment can easily excise it.

I'm confused about your take, because I get completely different results every single time I take MBTI, but when it comes to the dos and don'ts of each section of the alignment chart... I as a person have never really changed.

Tanarii
2022-10-24, 07:03 PM
Not a fan of Palladium Alignment

They cover far too many things each
The things associated together don't make any sense to be associated together
The names don't match the things within them, by any moral philosophy
They're far too specific, making it really only useful for straight-jacket alignment. Or unless the DM assigns pt values to them somehow and turns them into a descriptive 'scoring' system, in which care being very specific is also good.
They strongly reflect the authors moral philosophy, which I strongly disagree with.

Like most things done by Siembieda, he took something Gygax did which was already a mess (in this case for many of the same reasons I just listed above), and made the worst possible modifications to it., turning the mess up to 11. What's utterly amazing is how much we all loved playing his impossibly kludgy systems anyway. Gygax on steroids in a lot of ways, terrible rules systems, fun as heck to play in spite of them. :smallamused:

Tevo77777
2022-10-24, 09:10 PM
Not a fan of Palladium Alignment

They cover far too many things each
The things associated together don't make any sense to be associated together
The names don't match the things within them, by any moral philosophy
They're far too specific, making it really only useful for straight-jacket alignment. Or unless the DM assigns pt values to them somehow and turns them into a descriptive 'scoring' system, in which care being very specific is also good.
They strongly reflect the authors moral philosophy, which I strongly disagree with.

Like most things done by Siembieda, he took something Gygax did which was already a mess (in this case for many of the same reasons I just listed above), and made the worst possible modifications to it., turning the mess up to 11. What's utterly amazing is how much we all loved playing his impossibly kludgy systems anyway. Gygax on steroids in a lot of ways, terrible rules systems, fun as heck to play in spite of them. :smallamused:

>"Far too many things in them"
>"Far too specific"

Que? Legit confused by what you mean right now.

I don't find the 11 commandments of the Principled character to be that confusing honestly. They also don't seem too specific.

I mean not torturing people doesn't seem like too much of a demand.

-

One thing I like, is you can't have those people who have evil characters but insist they are "Chaotic Neutral". However, it's very obvious if someone is an "Anarchist" or evil.

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Another thing I like, is it seems to be pretty obvious where Robin Hood would go. He has room to steal and not harm innocents over at Scrupulous.

Satinavian
2022-10-25, 01:23 AM
>"Far too many things in them"
>"Far too specific"

Que? Legit confused by what you mean right now.

I don't find the 11 commandments of the Principled character to be that confusing honestly. They also don't seem too specific.

I mean not torturing people doesn't seem like too much of a demand.I am not a big fan either.
For a test how well those work, i just used a dozen characters i play from a system without alignment and checked where they would end up. And the answer was that none of the Paladium alignments really fit. Not the good ones, but neither the selfish or evil ones. I would always have to mix ad match.

I mean you could take a Paladium alignment and play this. But it obviously does not work to take an existing concept and say "one of the´se six should be a good fit".

Mainly the problem is that Paladium is more precise about what their alignment means, but they still fuse altruism, honesty, honor(able combat), conformity and trust in authority into some strange combination.


One thing I like, is you can't have those people who have evil characters but insist they are "Chaotic Neutral". However, it's very obvious if someone is an "Anarchist" or evil.
Never seen that. And i think that mostly happens in groups that forbid evil characters.

Tevo77777
2022-10-25, 02:06 AM
So this position doesn't cause any negative emotional reaction, as I understand this position.

Assuming I have any ranks in (Listen), is part of what you are saying having to do with the issue of how characters who break the law in Palladium systems.... will not keep their word to a neutral person?


Never seen that. And i think that mostly happens in groups that forbid evil characters.

I don't forbid evil characters, because they end up with some kind of fight with the other characters and then likewise end up dead, but in a dramatic way I find funny. Or they undermine their fellow players covertly and it's great as a mystery.

However, I am totally not up for anymore "Half the party are war criminals and borderline political terrorists (And I mean like accelerationists)"

Satinavian
2022-10-25, 03:31 AM
So this position doesn't cause any negative emotional reaction, as I understand this position.

Assuming I have any ranks in (Listen), is part of what you are saying having to do with the issue of how characters who break the law in Palladium systems.... will not keep their word to a neutral person?I have not actually played any Palladium, i only have the alignment description and a list of rules for each out of the internet. Because it occasionally gets mentioned as a better alternative and that caught my interest.

But for example, i have a character who always keeps their word and literally never lies. Is totally willing to kill unarmed foes, or sleeping ones or poison them. Upholds law and trusts authority, takes dirty money but usually helps those in need.

I have another character who keeps their words but tends to otherwise lie regularly. Kills for pleasure but would not kill people in their sleep. Bends the law but generally prefers to work with authorities if it is not too much hassle, works well with groups but is not really into the "helping innocent" thing. Unless as a pretense to dish out violence in a pleasurably way and be even treated like a hero for it. Would never betray a friend, ally or family member, but is prone to cruel revenge if ever betrayed herself. (yes, this is one of my characters i would consider quite evil)

I have another Character who literally lies constantly (as comes with living false identities), mistrusts authorities, would not kill anyone (not even armed foes) or hurt innocents, takes dirty money, usually helps those in need, would use torture (ok, more likely more reliable methods), constantly breaks the law


And i could go on.



I don't forbid evil characters, because they end up with some kind of fight with the other characters and then likewise end up dead, but in a dramatic way I find funny. Or they undermine their fellow players covertly and it's great as a mystery.The longest longest running D&D campaign i ever was part in had both good and evil character that lasted from start to finish. While there certainly player and character fluctuation, some were present all the way. And it worked. No infighting between those. Actually the whole campaign had only one instace of infighting and that was not along alignment lines. A group can easily find common goals that are not centered around some alignment description.
That was in 3.5. And the only instance the mixed alignments in the party ever caused an issue was when some player wanted his LG character to multiclass into Paladin and couldn't because of the "don't associate with evil" clause in the CoC.

But most players only rarely play evil character and "Evil as theme" groups tend to run out of steam quite soon. I think if you really want to play a character for a longer time, you must at least somewhat like the character and also the other characters in the group. If you as player despise of of them, it gets really hard to care for their continued success. So the best way to make evil characters work is to not go overboard with the Evilness and create someone multifaceted instead.

icefractal
2022-10-25, 05:18 AM
But most players only rarely play evil character and "Evil as theme" groups tend to run out of steam quite soon. I think if you really want to play a character for a longer time, you must at least somewhat like the character and also the other characters in the group. If you as player despise of of them, it gets really hard to care for their continued success. So the best way to make evil characters work is to not go overboard with the Evilness and create someone multifaceted instead.Certainly my experience as well. I can come up with a real bastard of a character easily enough, get enough into their headspace to make IC decisions, but after not long I'm going to get sick of it, because this is not a character I want to see succeed. And while players trying to succeed isn't essential to a TTRPG (Fiasco, for example), it's pretty much assumed for D&D or the like. And for that matter, if they're that bad I'm probably going to get sick of focusing on them at all, regardless of their luck.

And being the neutral character along with them ... might be worse actually. Because "evil's helper" is both bad and kinda pathetic feeling. And I've heard the "you're manipulating them to your own ends" concept, but - are you really? And the other players are ok with that? Because if it's just them doing what they want but you say "just as keikaku" to everything, it feels more like being delusional than a mastermind.

But since evil is a pretty broad category, it's possible to have a character who's not a ****bag, maybe even has a lot of good qualities, but some aspect is enough to put them in the evil category. And that'd probably work for me, depending how it was executed.

Tevo77777
2022-10-25, 05:33 AM
I have not actually played any Palladium, i only have the alignment description and a list of rules for each out of the internet. Because it occasionally gets mentioned as a better alternative and that caught my interest.

But for example, i have a character who always keeps their word and literally never lies. Is totally willing to kill unarmed foes, or sleeping ones or poison them. Upholds law and trusts authority, takes dirty money but usually helps those in need.

Such a person would IRL be condemned as a war criminal or murderer, and either executed or put in front of a firing squad. If you go to time periods before the UN and conventions, then they're still labeled as an ununiformed combatant and executed. You go further back, and they run into the cultures of the Shogun Japan and Middle Ages Europe... They they would again... Be declared as dishonorable, unnoble people and executed. Romans and Chinese Empire.... Likely would be executed, but it depends on who is in power and if you killed the previous Emperor/Imperor and helped the new guy take power.

You're literally describing someone who wouldn't be considered lawful in so many different cultures, going back possibly 2000 years. The character wouldn't fit any of these culture's definition of "Good" except the cultures you totally IRL would think as "Evil".

Sure people might justify or agree with it, but it wouldn't match any public widely adopted definition of moral or lawful.

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The second one is just the Palladium version of Neutral Evil, the last one would be shunned like 66-80% of the public in the modern Western World, and anyone who would consistently popular moral standards.

It doesn't help that IRL torture doesn't work and there is mountains of evidence that you get better information by guessing, as information obtained under torture is so wrong and so misleading, it often gets friendly people killed.

The fact that so many people testified that others were witches, under torture, is extremely good proof of how unhelpful torture is.

So, logically, any person who tortures is not only... not good, but they're not even neutral...because torture doesn't work.... So it's remaining purpose is to hurt others.
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I'm already on board that people really don't like alignments and think of them as "straightjackets" or whatever, so people thinking of something with lists of dos and don'ts, would obviously be this, but more so.

At the same time, I feel like people are making up characters deliberately designed to break all alignment charts or specifically the ones being discussed.

Batcathat
2022-10-25, 05:45 AM
At the same time, I feel like people are making up characters deliberately designed to break all alignment charts or specifically the ones being discussed.

Isn't the fact that an alignment chart can be broken kind of an argument against it in itself? Since that means that any character can't be accurately portrayed within that alignment system.

Satinavian
2022-10-25, 06:42 AM
Such a person would IRL be condemned as a war criminal or murderer, and either executed or put in front of a firing squad. If you go to time periods before the UN and conventions, then they're still labeled as an ununiformed combatant and executed. You go further back, and they run into the cultures of the Shogun Japan and Middle Ages Europe... They they would again... Be declared as dishonorable, unnoble people and executed. Romans and Chinese Empire.... Likely would be executed, but it depends on who is in power and if you killed the previous Emperor/Imperor and helped the new guy take power.

You're literally describing someone who wouldn't be considered lawful in so many different cultures, going back possibly 2000 years. The character wouldn't fit any of these culture's definition of "Good" except the cultures you totally IRL would think as "Evil".

Sure people might justify or agree with it, but it wouldn't match any public widely adopted definition of moral or lawful.That first person is mostly just a noncombatant. If the situation/conflicts still deteriorates to the point she would be forced/thinks she is justified to use deadly violence, she is not particularly picky about the methods. If a person really must die, then unarmed or sleeping does not matter anymore. Which is not surprising, considering as a member of usually not fighting social strata she is is not beholden to any code of honor about fighting. As for the poison, as it is her natural poison as some snake person, her people thinks that totally fine anyway.

Aside from that, killing unarmed or sleeping enemy soldiers certainly does not fall under warcrime IRL. They would need to actually have surrendered, not just being caught unprepared. Palladium draws on some strange ideas of chivalry, not from modern rules of war.


The second one is just the Palladium version of Neutral Evil, the last one would be shunned like 66-80% of the public in the modern Western World, and anyone who would consistently popular moral standards. Oh, i get that the second person would be evil in D&D. But in Palladium ? Let's go through the lists for the three evil alignments

Aberrant says
- Always keeps his word of honor (at least to those he deems worthy of it) -> yes
- Lie and cheat to those not worthy of his respect -> No. Lies depend on necessity, not on worthyness
- May or may not kill an unarmed foe -> yes.
- Never kill an innocent, particularly a child, but may harm, harrassor kidnap -> wrong
- Never torture for pleasure but may use it to extract information or intimidate -> wrong
- Never kill for pleasure, always have a reason -> wrong
- May or may not help someone in need -> right
- Rarely attempt to work within the law -> wrong. Nothing is better to be the tyrants enforcer.
- Break the law without hesitation -> wrong
- Have no use of the law or bureaucracy but respects honor, self-discipline and the concept of laws and order -> mostly wrong
- Works with others to attain his goals -> right
- Usually takes dirty money although his twisted code f ethics might prevent him in some instances -> right
- Never betray a friend, never -> right

So 6 yes, 7 no. Not really convincing

Diabolic says
- rarely keeps his word and has no honor -> wrong
- lie to and cheat anyone -> wrong
- most certainly attacks and kills an unarmed foe -> right
- hurt and kill an innocent without a second thought and for pleasure -> the for pleasure is right, "without a second thought" is wrong. The person is very careful to hide their unpleasantness.
- use torture for pleasure and information, regularly -> actually no.
- kill for sheer pleasure -> Yes
- Be likely to help someone only on a whim -> right
- Rarely attempt to work within the law -> wrong. Bending laws and loophole abuse is fine and a lot of choosing acceptable targets. But there is usually an attempt to work within the law.
- Blatantly breaks the law and mocks authority -> utterly wrong .Works gladly and well with authorities. Especially authorities in violent conflicts or with bandit/deserter problems or who need people to "vanish".
- Despises Honor, Authority and self discipline -> very wrong. Values both self-discipline and authority a lot. Further tries to display honorable behavior fitting their station and hide everything else.
- Always takes "dirty" money, drugs, stolen goods etc as well as steal from others -> wrong
- Betray a friend without hesitation -> wrong.
- Associate mostly with other evil alignments -> diffucult to decide a not played in a system with alignment, but i would say wrong. That is why she tries to be discrete.

That is 4 yes and 9 no ? Doesn't seem like a good fit at all. And that is even meant to be the alignment for bloodthirsty psychopaths like her.

Miscreant ?

- Not necesarily keep his word for anyone -> wrong
- Lie and cheat indiscriminately -> true. There are secrets to be kept even from allies
- Kill an unarmed foe as readily as he would a potential threat or competition -> true, but only in secret.
- use or harm an innocent-> true
- Use torture for extracting information or pleasure -> wrong
- May kill for sheer pleasure -> true
- Feel no compulsion to help someone without tangible reward -> wrong. Totally does that on occasion and on a whim.
- Have no deference to the law but will work within the law if he must -> That is difficult. Actually prefers to work within the law but has no real deference. Ok, right.
- Blatantly break the law for own goals and pleasure -> No.
- Dislike and distrust authority and the law -> empathically no.
- Work with others if it will help attain his personal goals -> yes
- Betray a friend if it serves his needs -> no
- Have no respect or concern for the lives or welfare of others -> true

Makes 7 yes, 6 no. That is not really a good fit either.

And i will get a couple of yes- results for the neutral and even the good alignments as well. Less of them, but not none.


It doesn't help that IRL torture doesn't work and there is mountains of evidence that you get better information by guessing, as information obtained under torture is so wrong and so misleading, it often gets friendly people killed.The torture stuff was part of the third character. The on who would not kill. And i know the limitation of torture which is why i wrote "more likely more reliable methods" which basically means truth drugs and mind control. That person has no moral problem with torture, only an efficiency problem with it.



At the same time, I feel like people are making up characters deliberately designed to break all alignment charts or specifically the ones being discussed.That is why i specifically use existing, played character from other systems (that don't have alignment). I wanted to avoid my own potential bias as well.

LibraryOgre
2022-10-25, 01:02 PM
Palladium Alignment System

I know this conversation has likely happened a million times, and I don't want to be converted or to argue, but I am curious about the specific people here right now.

Specifically, do you think the Palladium Alignment system is better in how it spells out what is what, or do you think that is worse? Do you think this makes it easier for the players to predict the rulings of the GM? What about making it easier to assess if someone has changed alignments or not?

I know that alignment is described a bit differently in each edition, but there is only one version Palladium Alignment. I doubt people are going to confuse one version with another.

The Palladium Alignment system is pretty much the D&D alignment system.

Principled is LG
Scrupulous is NG
Unprincipled is CG
Anarchist is CN, sometimes TN
Aberrant is LE/LN
Miscreant is NE
Diabolic is CE

If you took the Palladium alignment definitions, and slapped them into a D&D book as descriptions of those alignments? I don't think anyone except Palladium alumni would notice.

Tevo77777
2022-10-25, 02:59 PM
The Palladium Alignment system is pretty much the D&D alignment system.

Principled is LG
Scrupulous is NG
Unprincipled is CG
Anarchist is CN, sometimes TN
Aberrant is LE/LN
Miscreant is NE
Diabolic is CE

If you took the Palladium alignment definitions, and slapped them into a D&D book as descriptions of those alignments? I don't think anyone except Palladium alumni would notice.

Unprinipled is not Robin Hood, as the books say, its Han Solo.... Before the end of Episode 4. While the list describes something like CG, the apprehension towards not wanting to be a hero seems between Good and Neutral. Selfish, Greedy, Personal Welfare first.

Scrupulous is weird, because it allows for stealing, and thus Robin Hood.

The rest is as you say.

gbaji
2022-10-25, 05:39 PM
I have to agree with Vah, this example doesn't make any sense. This is an example of a GM strawman.

Where does it say in any description of Chaotic Good that you can't have plans or listen to advice?

Chaotic characters follow their consciences, resent being told what to do, favor new ideas over tradition, and do what they promise if they feel like it.

"Chaos" implies freedom, adaptability, and flexibility. On the downside, chaos can include recklessness, resentment toward legitimate authority, arbitrary actions, and irresponsibility. Those who promote chaotic behavior say that only unfettered personal freedom allows people to express themselves fully and lets society benefit from the potential that its individuals have within them.

It's a very very common interpretation of any character who has "chaotic" in their alignment, that they tend not to plan ahead, tend not to work well with others, tend not to follow other people's plans/advice, tend to go off and "do their own thing", etc.

Xykon is an example of a chaotic character. He's not chaotic just because he likes to kill people in amusing way (that's the "evil" part of his alignment). He's chaotic because he randomly conducts a job interview in the middle of battle, and decides to head straight for the gate instead of waiting for his army, and he is only willing to discuss battle plans if there's pies with acid spitting beetles involved.

What part of those personality traits make you think of someone who is a trusted responsible leader, who comes up with good solid battle plans, makes sure to follow those plans, takes other's input and acts on it even if it's not what he wants to do himself, etc? It's not a stretch to say that if he did that kind of stuff, a properly running GM *should* penalize him for not being chaotic enough.

Again. The problem is the two axis thing. Those personality traits are present *and* the whole "opposing legitimate authority" stuff. When you lump those in, you are going to get conflicts. Or, more correctly, you end up forcing all characters who are "chaotic" to comply with all of the descriptors for "chaotic", which seriously restricts the range of characters you can actually roleplay.

It's not a strawman to point out very simple, completely reasonable and playable, example character personalities that will read as exact opposite alignments depending purely on which parts of the character personality you choose to focus on. That's an actual flaw in the alignment system. And yes, most players avoid this by just not playing those kinds of characters so as to avoid the potential conflict. Er. Which is "restrictive", as I've said all along.

Tevo77777
2022-10-26, 12:14 AM
EDIT FROM THE FUTURE: "Chaotic Good, "Rebel":
A chaotic good character acts as his conscience directs him with little regard for what others expect of him. He makes his own way, but he's kind and benevolent. He believes in goodness and right but has little use for laws and regulations. He hates it when people try to intimidate others and tell them what to do. He follows his own moral compass, which, although good, may not agree with that of society.

"Chaotic good is the best alignment you can be because it combines a good heart with a free spirit."

Nowhere does this say they don't work well with others, nowhere does this say they aren't traditional. It literally says he is kind and good to others.

It says nothing about doing things for no reason, it says they have a very strong moral compass, that is their reasoning.

It says they are very responsible, quite the opposite of irresponsible.

-

It looks like you quoted a D20 SRD or 3rd edition, but completely twisted everything out of place and ignored the actual description of Chaotic Good.... which still matches Robin Hood perfectly.


Chaotic characters follow their consciences, resent being told what to do, favor new ideas over tradition, and do what they promise if they feel like it.

"Chaos" implies freedom, adaptability, and flexibility. On the downside, chaos can include recklessness, resentment toward legitimate authority, arbitrary actions, and irresponsibility. Those who promote chaotic behavior say that only unfettered personal freedom allows people to express themselves fully and lets society benefit from the potential that its individuals have within them.

It's a very very common interpretation of any character who has "chaotic" in their alignment, that they tend not to plan ahead, tend not to work well with others, tend not to follow other people's plans/advice, tend to go off and "do their own thing", etc.

Xykon is an example of a chaotic character. He's not chaotic just because he likes to kill people in amusing way (that's the "evil" part of his alignment). He's chaotic because he randomly conducts a job interview in the middle of battle, and decides to head straight for the gate instead of waiting for his army, and he is only willing to discuss battle plans if there's pies with acid spitting beetles involved.

That's not inside the definition or the cultural expectations of any version of Chaotic besides Evil. CE is called the "Joker" alignment for a reason, it's just destruction and suffering for the sake of it. There is a reason why the alignment is commonly associated with serial killers and the insane.

The link that first details how Robin Hood is Chaotic Good, details a lot of planning and working with others.

Not listening or working with others is neither adaptability or flexibility.

Literally screen-cap a description from a rulebook where any of this stuff your pushing is stated or even implied!


What part of those personality traits make you think of someone who is a trusted responsible leader, who comes up with good solid battle plans, makes sure to follow those plans, takes other's input and acts on it even if it's not what he wants to do himself, etc? It's not a stretch to say that if he did that kind of stuff, a properly running GM *should* penalize him for not being chaotic enough.

This position is so out of nowhere, I'm starting to wonder if it is satire or something.

I'm looking at the AD&D description of CG and CN, and CG sounds nothing like what you said, while CN just sounds like randomness over everything else.

The later doesn't fit with what you said, and is just a product of Gygax being Lawful Neutral to the 11th degree.


Again. The problem is the two axis thing. Those personality traits are present *and* the whole "opposing legitimate authority" stuff. When you lump those in, you are going to get conflicts. Or, more correctly, you end up forcing all characters who are "chaotic" to comply with all of the descriptors for "chaotic", which seriously restricts the range of characters you can actually roleplay.

I am not seeing anything about planning or not working well with others in any of the Good alignments. Neither am I seeing anything about being very good at planning.

Also, every single alignment is described completely separately from the others, with no section on what chaos or law mean or what good or evil mean. There are only descriptions of what each of the 9 specific alignments mean.


It's not a strawman to point out very simple, completely reasonable and playable

It is a strawman, because you've never quoted an image or even a D&D Reddit meme. Not only that, but everything you've said so far is contradicted by any book I've looked at, along with basically any person I've talked to.

EDIT: You quoted a D20 SRD or D&D 3.0/3.5 and didn't make this clear, bad citation.

You also twisted the source and ignored the rest of the SRD / D&D 3.0/3.5 that would set you straight.


"Chaos" implies freedom, adaptability, and flexibility. On the downside, chaos can include recklessness, resentment toward legitimate authority, arbitrary actions, and irresponsibility. Those who promote chaotic behavior say that only unfettered personal freedom allows people to express themselves fully and lets society benefit from the potential that its individuals have within them.

Can include. Can include. Can. Can. Not must. Can.

Again, it doesn't say you have to never plan anything and it says nothing about never working with people or never taking advice.

Taking advice is not being told what to do. Being told what to do is something your parents or the police do to you. Your advisor is not telling you what to do, they are advising you.

It is not against your freedom to take advice or ask it, nor is it against your freedom to plan.

Also, it mentions the benefits to society, implying that some chaotic people want society to exist and benefit from things.


"A chaotic neutral character may be unpredictable, but his behavior is not totally random.

Even the "pure chaos" alignment is described as being possible to predict, implying he can plan things. It says nothing about not planning. Such not planning was implied in a previous edition.


example character personalities that will read as exact opposite alignments depending purely on which parts of the character personality you choose to focus on. That's an actual flaw in the alignment system. And yes, most players avoid this by just not playing those kinds of characters so as to avoid the potential conflict. Er. Which is "restrictive", as I've said all along.

That's never happened though. We've never had someone who was Lawful Good (Superman) and Chaotic Evil, in the exact same movie, tv show, comic book.... with no transition.

When people assign different alignments to the same character, they're either using radically different version of the same character or they're not actually reading the alignment charts.

There are at least three different Jokers, if not four or five, personality wise. A lot of them have different alignments, because they are radically different.

LibraryOgre
2022-10-27, 12:35 PM
Here's the thing about a chaotic's "resentment of being told what to do"... it doesn't necessarily apply if

1) They respect the person who is telling them what to do. Robin Hood does what King Richard says because he respects King Richard. He doesn't do what Prince John says to do because he doesn't respect Prince John.*

2) If it's what they want to do. A chaotic person doesn't* resent being told "Get out of the fire"... they're not going to say "Well, now I'm going to burn to death, just because you told me not to." They don't resent "Don't pee on the electric fence, you will get a horrible shock." That's someone looking out for them. And an orc horde doesn't resent being told to sack a village, because they want to sack the village, anyway. They might resent being told to stand guard instead of taking part in the pillaging... but that's because they don't want to.

*necessarily resent. Some people are just pig-headed.

gbaji
2022-10-27, 08:10 PM
Tevo7777. Not going to respond per line. Just going to point out that a lot of the deep dive alignment descriptions that various D&D editions have published over the years are exactly an attempt to avoid the inherent inconsistencies I'm speaking about. So we ascribe some aspects of the "chaotic" alignment to only those who are "chaotic *and* evil". Um... Why bother having two different axis then?

And frankly, that still falls apart the moment we want to build a character that doesn't "align" with those descriptions either. Heck. Just consider Elan. How many times did he just randomly do things that caused serious problems for his party members (or even just drive Roy batty)? Let's also consider that Elan is a character in a scripted story, as is Roy, and as are all the other characters. It's easy to ensure that the random stuff Elan does just happens to work out for the story, because... it's a scripted story, so of course it does.

In actual play? By real players. In a real game? Elan's antics would cause serious problems. And yes, his actions are random actions, and not a function of him being "evil" (cause he isn't). And yet, there they are. What would you think playing as a player in a game with an Elan character in it? You'd certainly assume he was chaotic and it would be entirely due to his personality and decision making fitting the sections I bolded above (which you claim is only present if one is chaotic evil). Which is it?

And then let's consider Haley. He's also CG, and yet is decidedly *not* random about how she goes about doing things. We literally have two extremely different personality types, both with the same alignment. In her case, her chaotic alignment is purely because of her willingness to operate outside the law and has nothing at all to do with how she approaches decision making. Both are chaotic, but for completely different reasons. But could we also have Hayley be lawful? Why not? If Elan's chaos is due to his decision making process and not his disrespect for the law/rules (isn't he the one who insisted on leaving notes for shopkeepers he took stuff from in cliffport, and was waiting for the instrument shop keeper to come back because there was a sign posted telling him to?) then why shouldn't Haley be lawful on that measurement? Clearly in the case of Elan, we've decided that chaos is based on decision making and *not* following the law/rules, so Haley should be lawful (or at least neutral, right). Or, if we flip it around, why isn't Elan lawful and Haley chaotic? If we apply the things that make Haley chaotic to Elan, we would have to conclude he's lawful (he tends to follow laws and rules, almost to a silly degree).

You could literally go either direction with either character, based entirely on which aspect of law/chaos we decide to focus on. And that's just allowing for both of them also being "good".

Tevo77777
2022-10-28, 12:06 AM
Tevo7777. Not going to respond per line. Just going to point out that a lot of the deep dive alignment descriptions that various D&D editions have published over the years are exactly an attempt to avoid the inherent inconsistencies I'm speaking about. So we ascribe some aspects of the "chaotic" alignment to only those who are "chaotic *and* evil". Um... Why bother having two different axis then?

Because Chaotic doesn't mean "LOL random", being drunk, never sleeping, having memory loss, being my insane grandpa, intellectually disabled, being a child with an underdeveloped child brain, ADHD, ect ect or anything else that prevents a person from forming plans, concentrating for an hour, or behaving rationally.

It also doesn't mean anti-social personality disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, or any other problem that keeps people from working with others.


And frankly, that still falls apart the moment we want to build a character that doesn't "align" with those descriptions either. Heck. Just consider Elan. How many times did he just randomly do things that caused serious problems for his party members (or even just drive Roy batty)? Let's also consider that Elan is a character in a scripted story, as is Roy, and as are all the other characters. It's easy to ensure that the random stuff Elan does just happens to work out for the story, because... it's a scripted story, so of course it does.

Elan has the intellect and attention span of a child. He's literally so dumb he thinks that stripping naked will make him invisible.

He's also not a real character, not being played in a real D&D game, and he's in a comedy setting where mechanics are changed or added or removed based on what is funny.

Despite this, the author admitted that Elan has Intelligence as a dump-stat.

Also tons of stuff that happens in games actually fits the story, because the story is molded around whatever seemingly random stuff people do.

EDIT: I just remembered that joke about how Elan got hit on the soft spot on his skull and wow... dark, Elan might actually have brain damage or something serious.


In actual play? By real players. In a real game? Elan's antics would cause serious problems. And yes, his actions are random actions, and not a function of him being "evil" (cause he isn't). And yet, there they are. What would you think playing as a player in a game with an Elan character in it? You'd certainly assume he was chaotic and it would be entirely due to his personality and decision making fitting the sections I bolded above (which you claim is only present if one is chaotic evil). Which is it?

I have literally played with players that ran their characters like Elan. They were literally young, stupid people playing even dumber characters.

They couldn't remember any of the rules and they got banned for being really annoying, or they got their characters killed somehow.

One player's character literally made hundreds upon hundreds of pounds of explosives and then didn't seriously think about putting it in wet storage. It went kaboom later, the whole base went up.

Kid was a squeaker, and this was the third time he ****ed the whole party. (Granted, it was funny and somehow was useful to the plot)

He was so dumb, he literally assumed that six people in an airport were trying to kill him and made this hyper insane mess that involved blowing up part of an airport and killing three security guards.


And then let's consider Haley. He's also CG, and yet is decidedly *not* random about how she goes about doing things. We literally have two extremely different personality types, both with the same alignment.

Because she's not an idiot, and she's not as dumb and short-sighted as a child. Are you ****ing me/trolling me right now? This is a weird take you've got.


In her case, her chaotic alignment is purely because of her willingness to operate outside the law and has nothing at all to do with how she approaches decision making. Both are chaotic, but for completely different reasons. But could we also have Hayley be lawful? Why not? If Elan's chaos is due to his decision making process and not his disrespect for the law/rules (isn't he the one who insisted on leaving notes for shopkeepers he took stuff from in cliffport, and was waiting for the instrument shop keeper to come back because there was a sign posted telling him to?) then why shouldn't Haley be lawful on that measurement?

She's chaotic because she literally was raised by a freedom fighter in a place where the law didn't exist. Her father then spent years raging against a tyrant, which is going to make her even more anti-state than before.

Also, Elan did those things again, because he is basically a child.

She also doesn't trust people, but hundreds of strips were devoted to how she just has trauma and personality flaws.


Clearly in the case of Elan, we've decided that chaos is based on decision making and *not* following the law/rules, so Haley should be lawful (or at least neutral, right). Or, if we flip it around, why isn't Elan lawful and Haley chaotic? If we apply the things that make Haley chaotic to Elan, we would have to conclude he's lawful (he tends to follow laws and rules, almost to a silly degree).

You could literally go either direction with either character, based entirely on which aspect of law/chaos we decide to focus on. And that's just allowing for both of them also being "good".

Elan is still an idiot. He likely could be Lawful if he wasn't so dumb.

Tanarii
2022-10-28, 12:50 AM
2) If it's what they want to do. A chaotic person doesn't* resent being told "Get out of the fire"... they're not going to say "Well, now I'm going to burn to death, just because you told me not to."I don't know about chaotic people, but I sure resent folks telling me something that. I won't (usually) burn myself to death to spite them, but I'll resent it.


*necessarily resent. Some people are just pig-headed.Oh, right. :smallamused:

KorvinStarmast
2022-10-28, 07:30 AM
Because Chaotic doesn't mean "LOL random", being drunk, never sleeping, having memory loss, being my insane grandpa, intellectually disabled, being a child with an underdeveloped child brain, ADHD, ect ect or anything else that prevents a person from forming plans, concentrating for an hour, or behaving rationally.

It also doesn't mean anti-social personality disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, or any other problem that keeps people from working with others. While I agree with you, quite a bit of gamer cultural assumptions seem to include the LOLrandom with chaotic, and that got captured by the the Real Men, Role Players, Loonies, Munchkins article from about 40 years ago.

The Real Man
The tough macho type who walks up to the attacking dragon and orders it to leave before he gets hurt.
The Real Roleplayer
The intelligent cunning guy who tricks the constable into letting you all out of prison.
The Loonie
The guy who will do anything for a cheap laugh, including casting a fireball at ground zero.
The Munchkin
Need we say more?
=== Player Relationships ===
REAL MEN:
*Real Men* think they're brothers in arms.
*Real Roleplayers* hide behind them.
*Loonies* harass them with stupid suggestions.
*Munchkins* say ``I'm a Real Man, too!''
REAL ROLEPLAYERS:
*Real Men* protect them, on the off chance they may come up with something useful.
*Real Roleplayers* sigh with relief to know they're not alone, and then get their characters involved in love affairs and death feuds.
*Loonies* harass them with stupid suggestions.
*Munchkins* say ``I'm a Real Roleplayer, too!''
LOONIES:
*Real Men* ignore them.
*Real Roleplayers* sometimes harass them back by taking a stupid suggestion and making it work.
*Loonies* declare a pie fight at 20 paces . . . and cheat.
*Munchkins* try to imitate the jokes, and fall flat.
MUNCHKINS:
*Real Men* attack them on sight.
*Real Roleplayers* trick them into being cannon fodder.
*Loonies* make reasonable-sounding suggestions that will get the Munchkin killed in an amusing way.
*Munchkins* query, ``What's a Munchkin?'' You might find this to be a description of player alignment, but I think it was more capturing player styles that had emerged as role playing grew in popularity.


Despite this, the author admitted that Elan has Intelligence as a dump-stat. I have literally played with players that ran their characters like Elan. They were literally young, stupid people playing even dumber characters. I no longer play with people who do that. It ruins my fun. At some tables, this works very well and creates fun. If someone played Elan as he's written, he'd be in the Loonie category.


She's chaotic because she literally was raised by a freedom fighter in a place where the law didn't exist. Her father then spent years raging against a tyrant, which is going to make her even more anti-state than before. She also doesn't trust people, but hundreds of strips were devoted to how she just has trauma and personality flaws. And like Elan, she's good looking.

Elan is still an idiot. He likely could be Lawful if he wasn't so dumb. I am not sure he'd be lawful if he were smarter. He could still be as carefree without being so stupid.

gbaji
2022-10-31, 05:59 PM
Because Chaotic doesn't mean "LOL random", being drunk, never sleeping, having memory loss, being my insane grandpa, intellectually disabled, being a child with an underdeveloped child brain, ADHD, ect ect or anything else that prevents a person from forming plans, concentrating for an hour, or behaving rationally.

It also doesn't mean anti-social personality disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, or any other problem that keeps people from working with others.

It Doesn't? Are you sure?



Elan has the intellect and attention span of a child. He's literally so dumb he thinks that stripping naked will make him invisible.

He's also not a real character, not being played in a real D&D game, and he's in a comedy setting where mechanics are changed or added or removed based on what is funny.

Despite this, the author admitted that Elan has Intelligence as a dump-stat.

Also tons of stuff that happens in games actually fits the story, because the story is molded around whatever seemingly random stuff people do.

Ok. Great. Tell me what else other than those traits makes Elan have a Chaotic alignment then?



Because she's not an idiot, and she's not as dumb and short-sighted as a child. Are you ****ing me/trolling me right now? This is a weird take you've got.

No. I'm pointing out that we have two characters in OotS, both are Chaotic Good alignment, yet both characters are "chaotic" for completely different reasons. More to the point, one character has one aspect (the whole "doesn't follow rules/authority" bit) and absolutely none of the other ("engages in random acts, doesn't plan well, doesn't work well with others"). And the other has the exact opposite character traits.

It's not a "weird take". It's a valid take, that is difficult to examine because it challenges the very foundation of what many people *think* alignment should be. It's a big giant glaring blind spot in the system. I'm just trying to get you to see it.



She's chaotic because she literally was raised by a freedom fighter in a place where the law didn't exist. Her father then spent years raging against a tyrant, which is going to make her even more anti-state than before.

Great. And Elan was not, so he's not chaotic, right?


Also, Elan did those things again, because he is basically a child.

So... .Wait for it. Either Elan is not actually chaotic *or* "acting like a child" also qualifies one for the chaotic alignment.

This is not a complex thought process. Elan has *zero* of the traits that makes Haley have a chaotic alignment and Haley has *zero* of the traits that makes Elan have a chaotic alignment.

So we either have to conclude that completely different sets of things can both cause one to arrive at the chaotic alignment *or* there's some other inconsistency going on here.



Elan is still an idiot. He likely could be Lawful if he wasn't so dumb.


Do you get that by saying this, you're are simply confirming the exact opposite of what you started out saying:


Because Chaotic doesn't mean "LOL random", being drunk, never sleeping, having memory loss, being my insane grandpa, intellectually disabled, being a child with an underdeveloped child brain, ADHD, ect ect or anything else that prevents a person from forming plans, concentrating for an hour, or behaving rationally.

Which is it? If it's Elans "dumbness" (ie: random actions, failure to think things through, failure to consider others, etc) that make him chaotic, then those are the personality traits of a chaotic person. And anyone who has those traits is chaotic in alignment. Even if that person otherwise obeys rules, and is otherwise "lawful".

It's shocking that I have to spend this much effort just to get you to the first step of the logic I'm following here, but there you go. And for the record, I could make a similar argument with Redcloak and Xykon, and comparing what makes one lawful and one chaotic (and which make both of them "evil"). I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader, specifically to see how much of the second line in your first statement actually aligns perfectly with Xykon's personality (and arguably are what make him "chaotic" in the first place).

Now it's step two:

If both of those make someone chaotic, then why is it *not* penalized if you fail to exhibit some or all of those traits? This ties back to an earlier point I made in this thread: That there seems to be a "gravity" of alignment. I was specifically speaking of the good/evil axis, but it also applies to law/chaos. The alignment grid in D&D is not really a square. It's more properly displayed as a diamond, with LG at the top, CG and LE at the far left and right and CE at the "bottom", with an assumed "pull" downwards away from Good and away from Lawful. It's not a balanced proposition, but the game cosmology assumes it somewhat is. To be good, you have to not only do good things, but refrain from doing evil things. To be lawful you must not only do lawful things, but refrain from doing chaotic things. But to be evil, one must only do evil things (intentionally, of course). Doesn't matter if you also do occasional good acts, as long as you are actively intentionally doing evil things, you are "evil". Same thing with law/chaos. To be chaos, all one must do is engaged in chaotic behavior (with a pretty broad set of things qualifying as it happens). Even if you occasionally do things which are lawful, you're still chaotic if you do chaotic things. Heck. In the case of both Elan and Haley, even if you consistently do "lawful" things, you are still chaotic as long as you consistently do "chaotic" things (even consistently *different* lawful and chaotic behaviors in fact).

Elan, despite seeming to have quite a respect for the rules and authority, can't help but be chaos because he acts in such random and disorganized ways. If the alignment system were balanced, we should be able to say that he's really lawful because he obeys rules and follows orders (or, well tries/wants to). But it's not, so the fact that his silly nature causes him to do random things from time to time (ok, quite often), he can't be anything other than chaotic. Haley, on the other hand, despite being very well organized in her planning and thinking, can't be lawful because for her, despite her very "lawful" way of doing things, because she doesn't respect laws and rules, she must be chaotic as well.

A lawful person has to avoid *all* of the chaotic traits. Elan proves this. That was the point. A chaotic person, on the other hand, only needs to exhibit some of the traits. That's not a balanced system at all. If it were, then my hypothetical lawful good Robin Hood character would be viable. But it's not, is it?

And yes, as I've said all along, if this is just a matter of RP guidelines or something, it doesn't matter. But the moment this becomes a restriction on deities which can be worshipped, or classes which can be taken, how spells affect/detect your character, etc, this becomes a real problem. It's what causes many character personality types not possible to actually play in D&D. Merely trying to will result in your character being "punished" by loss of alignment (again, to the point it is a punishment). And yes, I firmly believe that the result of this is that most players will simply avoid playing character personality types that don't "align" with the alignment system.

And I think that's a bad thing. And if you disagree, then let me propose that I'm playing a character in your game that is Elan. What alignment would you have me assign to my Elan clone? Why? Would that be a consistent ruling across all games I might want to play this character in?

Witty Username
2022-11-01, 09:47 PM
Ok. Great. Tell me what else other than those traits makes Elan have a Chaotic alignment then?


There is that pattern of casual robbery. Leaving an apology note it naive, disregard of laws for a "really" good cause, is how Chaotic do.

I could see an argument for neutral as opposed to chaotic, but that is not as strong a claim as no chaotic traits.

KorvinStarmast
2022-11-01, 10:08 PM
As a general critique of about 80% of the discussion in this thread, and D&D alignment since 2e, pigeonholing isn't a good look.

Tevo77777
2022-11-02, 03:32 PM
It Doesn't? Are you sure?

There is a whole Matt Colville video where he defines the alignments using his own lived experience with multiple different editions and their descriptions.

The quintessential example of CE, the Joker in the the second Christen Bale Batman movie, is not only a literal "Agent of Chaos" but also a master planner who is one step of the PC/PCs.


No. I'm pointing out that we have two characters in OotS, both are Chaotic Good alignment, yet both characters are "chaotic" for completely different reasons. More to the point, one character has one aspect (the whole "doesn't follow rules/authority" bit) and absolutely none of the other ("engages in random acts, doesn't plan well, doesn't work well with others"). And the other has the exact opposite character traits.

It's not a "weird take". It's a valid take, that is difficult to examine because it challenges the very foundation of what many people *think* alignment should be. It's a big giant glaring blind spot in the system. I'm just trying to get you to see it.

One of them is extremely similar to behavior to Robinhood, and the other one very easily could be talked into or would behave like Robinhood.

Robinhood is written and statted as CG.

Both characters don't like authority, and both of them are very good at working with others. They are literally so similar to one another that they're dating and likely going to married, have children, all of that.

Why would anyone think they are opposites?



Which is it? If it's Elans "dumbness" (ie: random actions, failure to think things through, failure to consider others, etc) that make him chaotic, then those are the personality traits of a chaotic person. And anyone who has those traits is chaotic in alignment. Even if that person otherwise obeys rules, and is otherwise "lawful".

It's shocking that I have to spend this much effort just to get you to the first step of the logic I'm following here, but there you go. And for the record, I could make a similar argument with Redcloak and Xykon, and comparing what makes one lawful and one chaotic (and which make both of them "evil"). I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader, specifically to see how much of the second line in your first statement actually aligns perfectly with Xykon's personality (and arguably are what make him "chaotic" in the first place).

Being dumb isn't a personality trait. Being uneducated is also not a personality trait.

From the beginning "Law" really just meant "Order" and "Civilization", while Chaos meant living in the woods, disorder, and decentralized authority or no authority. This is literally what Gygax wrote. You are getting way to fixated on laws, when you should be fixated on order, centralization, civilization, and urbanization (Which is a byproduct of centralization and civilization).

Elan is effectively a child, as such he is impatient and does not understand complex things, like the highly complex rule systems that exist.

However, this is not exactly related to the fact that he's effectively very similar to Robinhood, or that his typical course of action is just..... "What would be the most heroic or dramatic thing to do?"

In other words, Elan breaks laws and has poorly thought out plans, because he's not very smart. This is a separate thing from his alignment, because CG does not means bad at plans or mean doesn't obey/understand laws.

Elan's Intelligence - Elan breaks laws, is impulsive, and doesn't plan well.
Elan wants to be the heroic hero - Elan is good and does things spontaneously for dramatic effect.
Elan favors decentralization of power, less rules and regulations, freedom, people doing what they wish, and so forth. He is not the opposite of Haley, he is in many ways, a dumber, male version of Haley.

These things are sometimes parallel, sometimes intersecting, but are generally separate but similar things.


If both of those make someone chaotic, then why is it *not* penalized if you fail to exhibit some or all of those traits? This ties back to an earlier point I made in this thread: That there seems to be a "gravity" of alignment. I was specifically speaking of the good/evil axis, but it also applies to law/chaos. The alignment grid in D&D is not really a square. It's more properly displayed as a diamond, with LG at the top, CG and LE at the far left and right and CE at the "bottom", with an assumed "pull" downwards away from Good and away from Lawful. It's not a balanced proposition, but the game cosmology assumes it somewhat is. To be good, you have to not only do good things, but refrain from doing evil things. To be lawful you must not only do lawful things, but refrain from doing chaotic things. But to be evil, one must only do evil things (intentionally, of course). Doesn't matter if you also do occasional good acts, as long as you are actively intentionally doing evil things, you are "evil". Same thing with law/chaos. To be chaos, all one must do is engaged in chaotic behavior (with a pretty broad set of things qualifying as it happens). Even if you occasionally do things which are lawful, you're still chaotic if you do chaotic things. Heck. In the case of both Elan and Haley, even if you consistently do "lawful" things, you are still chaotic as long as you consistently do "chaotic" things (even consistently *different* lawful and chaotic behaviors in fact).

If this is remotely true at all, it's only true during the years that Gygax, the Lawful partisan, was part of the rulewriting process.

The reality is that a lot of the older players hint and indicate that the older books indicated that many "neutral" characters had a preference or slight tilt to good or evil.

If someone consistently does orderly things, and freedom/disorderly things, they are neutral Good/Evil/Neutral. This is what all the editions that have this option say.


Elan, despite seeming to have quite a respect for the rules and authority, can't help but be chaos because he acts in such random and disorganized ways. If the alignment system were balanced, we should be able to say that he's really lawful because he obeys rules and follows orders (or, well tries/wants to). But it's not, so the fact that his silly nature causes him to do random things from time to time (ok, quite often), he can't be anything other than chaotic. Haley, on the other hand, despite being very well organized in her planning and thinking, can't be lawful because for her, despite her very "lawful" way of doing things, because she doesn't respect laws and rules, she must be chaotic as well.

A lawful person has to avoid *all* of the chaotic traits. Elan proves this. That was the point. A chaotic person, on the other hand, only needs to exhibit some of the traits. That's not a balanced system at all. If it were, then my hypothetical lawful good Robin Hood character would be viable. But it's not, is it?

Elan is not an actual player character in an actual game. The comic strip makes up and breaks a lot of rules.

Elan also constantly sticks his tongue out, sometimes literally, at order, centralization and strict rules. He opposes tradition, he opposes strict hierarchies, and he refers to Paladins as "meanies".

When Elan complies with the rules, it's either by accident, or because he feels they don't restrict him in anyway or because he thinks it is heroic good to follow these rules.

When he respects a person of authority, it is someone he thinks is his "best friend" or someone who is very nice to him. For the most part, he avoids complying with rules that he doesn't want to follow, and are that are enforced by people he doesn't personally know.

Small clans living in the hills, the very image of decentralization and what existed before civilization, were perfectly organized. They also had leaders and hierarchies. However, there was very little wealth or power disparity.

This is literally how Robinhood lived and where he was happiest, in the woods, in a small community, where everyone knew each other, and no one outside the community could make anyone do anything.

I seriously doubt that Elan wouldn't prefer this way of life, to say... living in an empire with hundreds of rules, where tradition is everything, he gets arrested for public nudity, and there are taxes.

gbaji
2022-11-02, 08:28 PM
Both characters don't like authority, and both of them are very good at working with others. They are literally so similar to one another that they're dating and likely going to married, have children, all of that.

I disagree. Elan very much respects authority and seems to try to follow rules whenever possible. He took his role as bodyguard very seriously. He felt bad about stealing (it was for a really good cause though). He obeyed a sign, even when it was absurd to do so, to the point that the (presumably lawful) soldiers with him had to tell him to break the window to steal the lute. Those are all examples of extremely lawful behavior. I mean, bordering on "lawful stupid", even.


From the beginning "Law" really just meant "Order" and "Civilization", while Chaos meant living in the woods, disorder, and decentralized authority or no authority. This is literally what Gygax wrote. You are getting way to fixated on laws, when you should be fixated on order, centralization, civilization, and urbanization (Which is a byproduct of centralization and civilization).

I'm not. I'm pointing out that as we've lumped more and more things into the law/chaos axis, it's become even less useful as a measurement of character alignment than it was in Gygax's day.


Elan is effectively a child, as such he is impatient and does not understand complex things, like the highly complex rule systems that exist.

But if, as you just said, intelligence isn't a personality trait, then Elans inability to understand the law isn't relevant, only his innate intent. That he fails isn't as important as that he tries, right? And it's pretty clear that, on the question of "following rules systems", Elan seems to clearly try to comply with them. He just fails a lot. And he uses methodologies that are incredibly random and poorly thought out, and that often produce unintended consequences.

It's that methodology that makes him chaos, but not his desire to "follow the rules". He certainly looks up to Roy and wants to do right by him. Just fails at it pretty epically most of the time.


In other words, Elan breaks laws and has poorly thought out plans, because he's not very smart. This is a separate thing from his alignment, because CG does not means bad at plans or mean doesn't obey/understand laws.

If that's true, then he should not have a chaotic alignment at all. Yet, he does. And not only does he, but virtually anyone reading the comic, with any past experience playing D&D would identify him as being that alignment, even in the absence of anyone telling them what it was supposed to be. And my question is: Why?


Elan favors decentralization of power, less rules and regulations, freedom, people doing what they wish, and so forth. He is not the opposite of Haley, he is in many ways, a dumber, male version of Haley.

Does he? He seems to follow rules even within his own... idiom, pretty consistently. As you said "what's the most dramatic/heroic way to do something"? That's not "lawful"? Why not?

He clearly does not like to see people suffering and in pain, and I'm reasonably certain would love to see his father's rule replaced with a "better kinder" rule. But he'd still want "rule". I'm reasonably certain he's not happy at all with the way things are in Greysky, and would seek to change that city if he could as well. Both motivated, not by removing power centralization, or eliminating rules and regulations, but putting ones in place that produce good/happy results. That's him being "good". He certainly doesn't like people "doing what they wish", if those things cause harm, right?

Haley, on the other hand, was perfectly ok with the way the rogues guild ran things, as long as she got her cut (ok, she wasn't happy about that arrangement once she realized how impossible it would be to bail out her father at those rates). She certainly never thought about going off on a crusade to make the streets safer or anything. I'm reasonably certain that Elan would. If he could.

So yeah, they are very very different on that regard.




If this is remotely true at all, it's only true during the years that Gygax, the Lawful partisan, was part of the rulewriting process.

The reality is that a lot of the older players hint and indicate that the older books indicated that many "neutral" characters had a preference or slight tilt to good or evil.

If someone consistently does orderly things, and freedom/disorderly things, they are neutral Good/Evil/Neutral. This is what all the editions that have this option say.

Yeah, the positions were somewhat shifted, but the same basic flaw remained. He assumed a "normal" person preferred to live in orderly, structured societies, with consistent (and fair) rule of law, and enforcement of that law, and that was "neutral". Shifting towards "lawful" required someone who is focused on improving things, or even dogmatically adherent to strict rules (for themselves and sometimes for others as well). Chaos was for those who desired to break down such systems.

Again though, where on that scale would Elan, with his "plan" to bring down his father, fall?



Small clans living in the hills, the very image of decentralization and what existed before civilization, were perfectly organized. They also had leaders and hierarchies. However, there was very little wealth or power disparity.

This is literally how Robinhood lived and where he was happiest, in the woods, in a small community, where everyone knew each other, and no one outside the community could make anyone do anything.

Ok. So I'll ask again: Why can't my Robin Hood be lawful good? Please tell me we're not pinning "lawful" to "obeys the laws of the society he's in dogmatically" anymore. So that leaves us with "follows a strict personal code" and "uses consistent methods and means to achieve goals". Which can absolutely be applied to someone fighting to oppose an evil ruler via economic attrition methods. Why not?

Heck. Let's put a classic D&D paladin in Elan's place. You're in the middle of a war, and a find yourself weaponless, and there's a weapon store that closed up, but has a weapon you can use to save many lives. Do you refuse to take it because that would "break the law"? Of course not. What if it was late at night, and you had a limited time to get somewhere and save the day from an evildoer, and the only way to get there was to break into a store and steal something needed to get there on time? Would you just not try to save the day? Or steal just what was needed and leave a note promising to come back and pay them back? You'd do the latter, right? The most upright paladin, unless we're literally playing him as lawful stupid, would have done exactly what Elan did in those situations, and for more or less the exact same reasons (to be fair though, the "pay with my movement rate" bit is a counter argument here, so there is that).

But I guess that's also part of my point. How consistently does one have to follow any given "side" of one of the alignment axis to be considered "on that side"? If our consideration of Elan's alignment is based on his willingness to break the law, or refusal to follow rules rather than his methods, then we'd have to conclude that he falls far more on the "lawful" side than the "chaotic". So either he should be lawful, or we have some serious imbalance in the system, where a small number of "break the rules" actions totally counteracts the majority in the opposing direction. Again. Consider the paladin version of Elan, he's ok if he steals the weapon, and the supplies to get him to where he needs to rescue Haley from his evil brother, but if he steals a soda because he has no money, what? He falls? Heck. Ignore the paladin (cause that comes with some assumed divine commandments or something). Let's replace Elan (CG) with Roy (LG). Would Roy lose his lawful alignment just for stealing the soda? Should he? If he does, then that represents an extremely tilted scale of measurement (one chaotic act cancels out a whole lot of lawful ones). Er, but then Roy doesn't lose his lawful alignment when he "steals" the treatment at the inn (when he was mistaken for the King of nowhere), right? Why not? He took far more than a soda's worth of free stuff from the Inn, yet suffered no ill affects alignment wise.

So why is Elan Chaotic, but Roy is lawful? I would submit that it's entirely because Roy is organized, plans things out, etc. It's the personality bits that matter here. Er. But then that brings us to Haley. Why is she chaotic then? She's just as organized and about planning and executing as Roy, but she doesn't respect rules/authorities/laws. So we're back to a jumbled mess. Sometimes, it's about obeying laws/rules, sometimes it's not. Sometimes, it's about personality and methodology, and sometimes it's not. Gah! Horrible.


I seriously doubt that Elan wouldn't prefer this way of life, to say... living in an empire with hundreds of rules, where tradition is everything, he gets arrested for public nudity, and there are taxes.

Yeah. Which is somewhat part of my point. Elan clearly fits into "civilized society" very well. He loves going to "the big city". So yeah, again, where do we put the emphasis on "law/chaos" here? It's why I keep putting it more into the personality trait side. For Elan, it's clearly not about the rules and kind of society he prefers, since that seems to lean "lawful" (but against "evil" obviously). As you said, he'd much prefer to live in Azure City (pre invasion) than in some barbarian tribes camp. So it must be the same "engages in random and out of the box methods" bit that makes him chaotic.

But if that makes *him* chaos, then what makes Haley chaos?

Yeah. Sorry. The whole thing is just a cluttered mess IMO. It's completely inconsistent and almost unworkable. And again, the only way to make it work is to cardboard cutout your character types to make it work. Which, as I've said all along, tends to put limits on the range of PCs you can play. Well, that or just handwave things away when it's inconvenient or inconsistent (which it will be a lot of the time if *not* playing cardboard cutout characters). Bleh.

I think maybe we're getting too caught up in specifics though. My broader point is that I prefer alignment systems that represents clear "sides" in some form of cosmic conflict. Leave the personality bits out of it. If you are fighting for side A, you are "alignment A", if you are fighting for side B, you are "alignment B". Alternatively, the "sides" could be more segmented into specific requirements and traits "aligned" with the worship of different deities. That method works as well. If you worship the god of money and trade, you like money, and you like to trade, especially if you can trade in ways that make you more money. If you worship the god of war and death, you like killing people, especially if you are fighting (better yet winning) a battle/war.

Heck. If you really want to do personality traits, then some systems have the concept of "virtue/vice". Have a set of those things, and play them out. The point being you can mix and match them as you wish. You have the virtue of "honesty", then you strive to tell the truth at all times. You have the vice "avarice", then you are always looking for ways to get ahead or more or whatever (usually money or power here). There are a ton of ways to do this and do it well.

But the incredibly broad "good/evil" and "law/chaos" alignment system that D&D introduced? Absolute garbage IMO. It's both too broad *and* too restrictive at the same time. Too many things lumped into these broad categories and too many (often silly) restrictions and rules associated with the resulting alignments to make it work well. And yeah, far far too many inconsistencies even just in terms of which actions fall into which alignment categories based on frankly incredibly subjective rulings.

Tevo77777
2022-11-02, 10:20 PM
I have said this three or four times, compliance with the law is a red herring and is not important for judging if a character if Chaotic or not. This is a very common point made by older people and those who actually have read the different alignment descriptions in the different editions.

I have literally quoted and cited alignment descriptions that make this clear.

You literally keep bringing up stuff that I said over and over, has nothing to do with figuring out his alignment, or information that is misleading, unhelpful.

Planning again, nothing to do with alignment. Intelligence, nothing to do with alignment. Following laws or not, red herring, ignore it.


Would Roy lose his lawful alignment just for stealing the soda? Should he? If he does, then that represents an extremely tilted scale of measurement (one chaotic act cancels out a whole lot of lawful ones). Er, but then Roy doesn't lose his lawful alignment when he "steals" the treatment at the inn (when he was mistaken for the King of nowhere), right? Why not? He took far more than a soda's worth of free stuff from the Inn, yet suffered no ill affects alignment wise.

Because the law again, is a red herring and should be ignored. He also suffered no effects because the bill was literally paid by the current King, in return for saving the King's life.

By your logic, if I buy 200 dollars worth of drinks at the bar, but have an empty wallet, I am stealing. Nevermind that later on a friend runs into me and pays me back 200 he owes me, hours before the bar tab needs to be paid.


Does he? He seems to follow rules even within his own... idiom, pretty consistently. As you said "what's the most dramatic/heroic way to do something"? That's not "lawful"? Why not?

He clearly does not like to see people suffering and in pain, and I'm reasonably certain would love to see his father's rule replaced with a "better kinder" rule.

Congrats, you're describing what it means to be Good AND you're describing Robinhood. Robinhood, who is literally the example given by the designers for a CG character, is someone who helped put a good king on a throne in retelling after retelling.

This is like saying someone isn't Christian, and then describing a bunch of traits that make them sound increasingly like Jesus.



Haley, on the other hand, was perfectly ok with the way the rogues guild ran things, as long as she got her cut (ok, she wasn't happy about that arrangement once she realized how impossible it would be to bail out her father at those rates). She certainly never thought about going off on a crusade to make the streets safer or anything. I'm reasonably certain that Elan would. If he could.

So yeah, they are very very different on that regard.

"Haley can also be described as a loose "Robin Hood" sort of rogue. While staying in Bleedingham, Haley snuck out with Vaarsuvius to free slaves (although later on these same slaves were the ones burned alive to make a flaming sign for Elan). Her father, Ian Starshine, described the Thieves Guild under his leadership as a "steal from the rich, give 40% minus-compensation-costs to the poor" organization."

Oh look, it's Robinhood, again and then again.


Ok. So I'll ask again: Why can't my Robin Hood be lawful good?

If you are trying to argue that Robin Hood is lawful good, you don't understand the alignment system.

Let me make it simple for you.

Robin Hood is Chaotic Good, he is the perfect example given for Chaotic Good. Anything he does, statistically, is Chaotic Good.

If you ever get confused what Chaotic Good means, it's whatever Robinhood would do.

Think of WWJD, but make it WWRhD.


Heck. Let's put a classic D&D paladin in Elan's place. You're in the middle of a war, and a find yourself weaponless, and there's a weapon store that closed up, but has a weapon you can use to save many lives. Do you refuse to take it because that would "break the law"? Of course not.

Robinhood would steal the weapon without thinking, Superman/a 1e Paladin would spend the maximum time agonizing over the decision, and then end up having to pick one or the other.

Neutral Good is someone who spends some amount of time (Likely more than Elan) between zero seconds and the maximum amount of time.

To quote a veteran player. "Chaotic good characters will never consider the law in any of their decisions. If they happen to work within the law, it isn't because they made a decision to do so".

Elan didn't consider the law, he considered if it was Nice or Mean or Good.


But I guess that's also part of my point. How consistently does one have to follow any given "side" of one of the alignment axis to be considered "on that side"?

Enough that the GM and the other players don't get insanely confused. Again, literally that simple. If you claim to be CN and the GM, plus half the players think you're CE, you're almost definitely CE.

The US Supreme Court has an identical solution to the one I just purposed, and so does the vast majority of political systems that predate the current system of the current United States.

In any event where it's not clear how the law or rules should be interpreted, it's up to a certain number of judges (The other people at the table).

When it's time to decide if you should go free or be executed, who decides your fate? A certain number of jury members (Again, the other people at the table).

Why is this? Because the purpose of alignment is for the benefit of everyone else at the table besides you.

If we threw out any system of rules or expectations that ever was unclear, we would literally have no rules. Every single legal and political system has someone who interprets the rules. Sports have referees and/or judges for a reason.

Remember that one person (In this thread) who said that all the problems you mentioned are solved by having the GM be the referee or judge? That's true in basically almost all sports and almost all political or legal systems.


Yeah. Sorry. The whole thing is just a cluttered mess IMO. It's completely inconsistent and almost unworkable. And again, the only way to make it work is to cardboard cutout your character types to make it work. Which, as I've said all along, tends to put limits on the range of PCs you can play. Well, that or just handwave things away when it's inconvenient or inconsistent (which it will be a lot of the time if *not* playing cardboard cutout characters). Bleh.

Elan is still not a real character at a real table. Everything anyone says about his alignment is likely pointless, because again, he is not a real character at a real table.

Elan is completely broken and unworkable, he is deliberately designed as a joke character. He's not supposed to make sense.


Yeah. Sorry. The whole thing is just a cluttered mess IMO. It's completely inconsistent and almost unworkable. And again, the only way to make it work is to cardboard cutout your character types to make it work. Which, as I've said all along, tends to put limits on the range of PCs you can play. Well, that or just handwave things away when it's inconvenient or inconsistent (which it will be a lot of the time if *not* playing cardboard cutout characters). Bleh.

This is not even remotely true.

If you can't make a character that doesn't make more than half the table angry and frustrated trying to figure out who the hell your character is as a person... You're a bad player with a bad character and/or you're sitting at a very flawed table.

A character should be consistent day to day, and when they change, they should do so gradually in a way that can be understood and watched.

If a character can't be understood or they change too quickly, they are basically mentally insane, or they're lacking in agency or a defined idea who they are.

This is exactly how it works in professional wrestling and most fiction in general.


But the incredibly broad "good/evil" and "law/chaos" alignment system that D&D introduced? Absolute garbage IMO. It's both too broad *and* too restrictive at the same time. Too many things lumped into these broad categories and too many (often silly) restrictions and rules associated with the resulting alignments to make it work well. And yeah, far far too many inconsistencies even just in terms of which actions fall into which alignment categories based on frankly incredibly subjective rulings.

Bogart is my character. I have played him at table after table, and he has been very obviously someone with a highly highly complex set of moral behavior. He's literally a Paladin who used to be in his version of the Mafia. He has four babymomma's from when he was young and stupid. He has absolutely no respect for the law, and only trusts people he knows extremely well. Bogart looks down upon the rich and heavily favors the poor and dirty. If he follows the law, it is entirely by accident (Which actually fits the description of CG in 3.5)

Bogart literally picked his patron in Pathfinder 2e, based on which goddess or god would let him keep his favorite weapon, and continue his lifestyle. He literally picked the Identity/LGBT supernatural being for these reasons.

Not a single player or GM has had any problem with his alignment whatsoever. He's Neutral Good, and there are charts of things he has to do as a Good person, charts of what he has to do as a Neutral Champion/Paladin.

The Good chart overrides the Neutral requirements (Forgiveness, Redemption), and so does the requirements from his patron (Accept people for their sexuality, ect ect).

Not a single requirement on any of the tables listed say he has to respect the law, or be bad/good at planning, or any number of things you will likely use as proof that the alignment system doesn't fit him.

Lawful Good, Champion
You must act with honor, never taking advantage
of others, lying, or cheating.
• You must respect the lawful authority of legitimate
leadership wherever you go, and follow its laws.

Previously Bogart didn't lie, this version of Bogart can, he just can't be bothered to. Bogart does fit some of the descriptions for CG and NG.

However, Bogart always puts the Good part of his requirements first, and anything that would define him as CG or NG or LG is something he never thinks about whatsoever, nor does he care.

Every single requirement or description or clue that he would be LG or CG is something he either completely ignores, or doesn't care about. This is despite him knowing the legal system really well, and the criminal underworld really well. He knows the law better than lawyers, and yet doesn't care if something he does is legal or illegal.

The laws are still, a red herring. They are maybe a clue to an alignment, but a misleading one.

Witty Username
2022-11-04, 11:52 PM
Recall that Lawful respects Order, not the laws of anywhere in particular nessasarily. This is how Lawful Good and Lawful Evil exist, as they believe Order is the way to accomplish things effectively.
Paladins would look weird if they had to obey every despotic warlord.
Legitimate authority is a concept for Lawful characters. Because while Order is good, there are kinds and degrees, Lawful Good sees Evil as Chaotic by destruction, and Lawful Evil sees Good as Chaotic by serving the unnecessary( i.e other people).

Chaotic characters do not have a concept of Legitimate authority, there are no legitimate authorities as authority is inherently flawed. This is because Order itself is unnecessary at best and detrimental at worst. This does not mean breaking every law, it does mean not considering it when it comes between the character and their goals.

This does mean chaos is less compromising than law, when paired with another alignment. Chaotic Good will suffer no evil within their locas of control. Chaotic Evil will pursue personal gain and pleasure to the infinite. Law demands adherence, or
Order collapses. This means Lawful Good and Lawful Evil are obligated to cooperate, at least some of the time. This primarily matters for the micro more than macro though, Empires can fight with impunity, not so much citizens unless the greater chaos is served by the conflict.

Satinavian
2022-11-05, 01:40 AM
Recall that Lawful respects Order, not the laws of anywhere in particular nessasarily. This is how Lawful Good and Lawful Evil exist, as they believe Order is the way to accomplish things effectively.
Paladins would look weird if they had to obey every despotic warlord.
Legitimate authority is a concept for Lawful characters. Because while Order is good, there are kinds and degrees, Lawful Good sees Evil as Chaotic by destruction, and Lawful Evil sees Good as Chaotic by serving the unnecessary( i.e other people).While lawful characters tend to care for legitimacy, legitimacy is not dependend on alignment.

If the rightful heir that ascends to the throne happens to be evil, he is still the rightful, legitimate ruler for his paladin subject. And vice versa. And illegitimate rulers are also seen as illegitimate not because of their alignment, but because they lack legitimacy.

hamishspence
2022-11-05, 01:45 AM
Legitimacy can be forfeited though - as BoED puts it:


Divided Loyalties

For better of for worse, a paladin is not just good: she is lawful good, sworn not just to uphold the principles of good but also bound by a code of conduct, and subject to local law as well. Many paladins are also members of a specific deity's church, a knightly order of some sort, or both. At the best of times, these various loyalties - her code of conduct, her church's laws, her order's demands, the laws of her nation, and the abstraction of her alignment - are all in harmony, and her path is clear before her. When circumstances are not so ideal, she finds herself torn between conflicting demands: her superior in her knightly order commands her to kill a brutal murderer who has escaped punishment in court on a legal technicality, for example. Her personal code requires that she punish those that harm innocents, and this killer certainly falls in that category. However, her personal code also instructs her to respect legitimate authority, which includes both her knightly superior and the local law that has let the killer go free. The demands of her good alignment suggest she should punish the wrongdoer, but the demands of her lawful alignment insist that she obey the judgement of the court. It is entirely possible that either her superior or the magistrate in the case is corrupt or even possessed. Whom does she obey? How does she sort out the conflicting demands of her loyalties?

Paladins are by no means alone in this situation. Any character who tries consistently to do good eventually finds himself in a situation where different loyalties are in conflict. Chaotic Good characters might care far less about a potentially corrupt or at least ineffectual court system, but they might have other personal standards or obligations that cause conflict in similar or different situations. In the end, however, many such conflicts boil down to a question of priorities, and for a character who aspires to exalted deeds, good is the highest priority. In the example above, the murderer must at least be captured, if not killed, before he can kill again. If she has reason to suspect corruption, either in the court or in her own order, the paladin must attempt to uncover it, though it might mean being cast out of her order, punished under local law, or both. Her paladinhood and her exalted status remain intact, since she acted in the cause of good even when that required questioning the legitimacy of authority. Magistrates or knightly superiors who serve the cause of evil while posing as agents of good are not legitimate authority, and the paladin is right for exposing their corruption.

Satinavian
2022-11-05, 02:06 AM
Legitimacy can be forfeited though
Well yes.

But that tends to be a complicated process. Legitimacy usually comes with bounds and obligations and you can only lose it by ignoring them. Admittedly that is what the iconic tyrannic ruler who must be desposed by revolution does, so the paladin can depose him.

But the thing is, rulers are polititions and losing their legitimacy is really bad for them. Because losing it means losing it for everyone, not just for the lawful good guys. It is also lost for LN, LE, NG, N and NE and possibly the chaotics if those cared. That is why they don't tend to lose their legitimacy if they are not completely unhinged or idiots. Or at least keep the stuff they really should not do as legitimate rulers a secret.

And that is why the paragraph talks about questioning the legitimacy and exposing corruption. It is not a given that they find anything worth forfeighting legitimacy.

Witty Username
2022-11-05, 09:36 AM
While lawful characters tend to care for legitimacy, legitimacy is not dependend on alignment.


Fair enough, my line of reasoning was how it can alow for good and evil, not that it was the only way to frame the problem.

gbaji
2022-11-07, 06:35 PM
I have said this three or four times, compliance with the law is a red herring and is not important for judging if a character if Chaotic or not. This is a very common point made by older people and those who actually have read the different alignment descriptions in the different editions.

Then why is Haley Chaotic?

Seriously. I'm not trying to troll here. Just trying to get a straight answer. If it's not compliance with the law, and it's not "random" personality/methodology (like Elan, but the opposite of Haley) then what is it?

And in your answer, show the actions Haley has taken in the strip that match that "chaotic" nature, but that Roy has not done, possibly worse.

And yeah, we can fall back to the "OotS isn't supposed to represent a real game" bit. But the character types are fairly well set. I'm reasonably certain that most readers would not make note of the fact that Roy is actually more chaotic by any objective measurement than Haley has been. Most would just nod along and agree that Roy is LG, and Haley is CG because that's what they "seem to be". Which, again, isn't a problem if it's just a descriptor or RP guide. But the moment you have actual afterlives, detection, and protection spells that behave differently based on alignment, it becomes an issue if we can't really distinguish between one or the other based on much more than "what did you write on your character sheet when you created the character".

Silly me. if we're going to have objective game mechanics that are affected by alignment, I want an absolutely clear and objective means of determining that alignment. D&D does not do that. Not even close.

KorvinStarmast
2022-11-07, 07:23 PM
Then why is Haley Chaotic? Her dad was an A&D 1e thief. He raised her that way. How hard is this to grasp?

gbaji
2022-11-07, 07:30 PM
Her dad was an A&D 1e thief. He raised her that way. How hard is this to grasp?

Lol. So it really was just written on her character sheet and not really a measurement of her personality/actions. Check.

Tevo77777
2022-11-07, 09:57 PM
Silly me. if we're going to have objective game mechanics that are affected by alignment, I want an absolutely clear and objective means of determining that alignment. D&D does not do that. Not even close.

Neither Football nor the United States Constitution have absolutely clear and objective means of determination what happened and if should be allowed (Without using referees or someone to intercept the rules).

You're still asking D&D to do something that barely any sports or things with complicated rules can do.


Lol. So it really was just written on her character sheet and not really a measurement of her personality/actions. Check.

This is a Critical Failure on a Listen Check.

It is totally a measurement of her personality, the person is just saying that she's setup that way as a joke OR because she was raised to have a certain world view.

I had also earlier said she was raised Chaotic Good.
-
I also want to point out that you seem to be the only person who thinks Roy has ever been anything besides Lawful or Neutral Good, the entire time he's been in any of the comics.

Witty Username
2022-11-08, 09:23 PM
Wasn't Roy judged as Lawful Good by the celestial bureaucracy? The argument is hashed out there so it is more if you agree with it or not.

Hailey is chaotic due to operating outside of any established order, and has no interest in adhering to one.

Elan is chaotic due to operating outside of any established order, and has no interest in adhering to one. "And he is a Bard, he literally can't be Lawful."

They both tend towards "harmlessly chaotic" because they are good, and good requires the character to generally be a positive influence on others and the world at large. Hailey is less this than Elan, due to her greed and the thievery that comes with it "I'm Chaotic Good! -ish..."

I am not a fan of enforced alignment, but it wouldn't be much of a problem for any of these characters.

Mechalich
2022-11-08, 11:26 PM
They both tend towards "harmlessly chaotic" because they are good, and good requires the character to generally be a positive influence on others and the world at large. Hailey is less this than Elan, due to her greed and the thievery that comes with it "I'm Chaotic Good! -ish..."


They are also 'harmlessly chaotic' because, as adventurers, they've already largely abandoned the operational structures of lawful society and reside only on its edges. Neither Elan nor Haley would function effectively in any sort of highly regimented role. Haley would be terrible at serving in a typical archer regiment, while Elan would be monstrously disruptive if placed in a 50-piece orchestra.

Most humans are lawful and obey the overwhelming majority of societal rules by default. A smaller number are neutral and obey those rules begrudgingly because they either can't think of a better option or don't think it's worth the effort. Chaotic characters always find themselves at odds with those rules, even when they agree with their moral stance. In order to survive they have to move to areas where the rules hold loosely.

Tevo77777
2022-11-08, 11:33 PM
https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=3246640&postcount=23

I found a post where someone goes a good job making the case for Roy being Lawful Good, like the strips suggest.


Wasn't Roy judged as Lawful Good by the celestial bureaucracy? The argument is hashed out there so it is more if you agree with it or not.

Hailey is chaotic due to operating outside of any established order, and has no interest in adhering to one.

Elan is chaotic due to operating outside of any established order, and has no interest in adhering to one. "And he is a Bard, he literally can't be Lawful."

They both tend towards "harmlessly chaotic" because they are good, and good requires the character to generally be a positive influence on others and the world at large. Hailey is less this than Elan, due to her greed and the thievery that comes with it "I'm Chaotic Good! -ish..."

I am not a fan of enforced alignment, but it wouldn't be much of a problem for any of these characters.

Yeah, I found the strips and am reading it now.

https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0488.html

https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0490.html

This last strip seems to pretty much make it clear why he is Lawful Good.

hamishspence
2022-11-09, 02:19 AM
Most humans are lawful and obey the overwhelming majority of societal rules by default. A smaller number are neutral and obey those rules begrudgingly because they either can't think of a better option or don't think it's worth the effort. Chaotic characters always find themselves at odds with those rules, even when they agree with their moral stance. In order to survive they have to move to areas where the rules hold loosely.

That was more a "Gygax-era" thing - his "Most humans as Lawful, not Neutral, and Chaotic is rare" ideas were moved away from by 3.0, which portrays TN as the normal alignment for humans.

Satinavian
2022-11-09, 03:29 AM
Chaotic Good will suffer no evil within their locas of control.Now that is another thing i very much disagree with.

"Being good" is not the same thing as being some kind of holy warrior. Most good beings are far more concerned with doing good than with fighting evil. Things are a bit different for Paladins who literally are holy warriors, but in general good has a lot of space for "live and let live" attitude and peaceful coexistence.

What is more, all those guys actually fighting against evil have a way harder time to really stay good. Because all the death and destruction the fighting produces must be compensated and some more. Hurting evil beings is not good at all in itself. Even punishing evil is not a good act, that whole punishment theme belongs firmly into the law/chaos axis. Only if you actually protect and save someone, the fight against evil can be a good deed.

Far easier to be good by helping others in a different, more constructive way.

Mechalich
2022-11-09, 03:52 AM
That was more a "Gygax-era" thing - his "Most humans as Lawful, not Neutral, and Chaotic is rare" ideas were moved away from by 3.0, which portrays TN as the normal alignment for humans.

Yes, 3.0 does say that, but it's wrong. The majority of humans don't behave the way 3.0 describes TN, they behave in either a LG or LN fashion, and, significantly, basically all characters and all societies written during that edition reflect this. I mean, this is the home of OOTS. V is a 3e TN character and they are nowhere near normal human moral behavior.

hamishspence
2022-11-09, 04:17 AM
Yes, 3.0 does say that, but it's wrong. The majority of humans don't behave the way 3.0 describes TN, they behave in either a LG or LN fashion, and, significantly, basically all characters and all societies written during that edition reflect this. I mean, this is the home of OOTS. V is a 3e TN character and they are nowhere near normal human moral behavior.

In 3.0-3.5, ordinary TN people tend to go along with things, with the "devoted to Neutrality" version being a rare exception. Foreshadowing 4e's "Unaligned" title and description.

It's true that the top of society tends to be dominated by the Lawful (as well as really large communities - cities, large towns, etc) - but that doesn't mean that the ordinary citizenry are. Most people don't live in a city, they live in smallish communities in the country. It's the fact that cities and their rulers tend to be the movers and shakers, that creates the illusion of humanity being on average Lawful.

It's worth remembering that TN isn't most people - it's just the most common alignment. It can be just slightly more common than the next most common alignments are.


People who are neutral with respect to good and evil have compunctions against killing the innocent but lack the commitment to make sacrifices to protect or help others. Neutral people are committed to others by personal relationships.

Someone who is neutral with respect to law and chaos has a normal respect for authority and feels neither a compulsion to obey nor a compulsion to rebel. She is honest but can be tempted into lying or deceiving others.

Neutral, "Undecided"

A neutral character does what seems to be a good idea. She doesn’t feel strongly one way or the other when it comes to good vs. evil or law vs. chaos. Most neutral characters exhibit a lack of conviction or bias rather than a commitment to neutrality. Such a character thinks of good as better than evil—after all, she would rather have good neighbors and rulers than evil ones. Still, she’s not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or universal way.

KorvinStarmast
2022-11-09, 10:26 AM
That was more a "Gygax-era" thing - his "Most humans as Lawful, not Neutral, and Chaotic is rare" ideas were moved away from by 3.0, which portrays TN as the normal alignment for humans. One of a number of things they got wrong. (My rant on sorcerers / cha casters will not be indulged in)

Yes, 3.0 does say that, but it's wrong. The majority of humans don't behave the way 3.0 describes TN, they behave in either a LG or LN fashion, and, significantly, basically all characters and all societies written during that edition reflect this. I mean, this is the home of OOTS. V is a 3e TN character and they are nowhere near normal human moral behavior. Good point.

OldTrees1
2022-11-09, 12:28 PM
It's worth remembering that ____ isn't most people - it's just the most common alignment. It can be just slightly more common than the next most common alignments are.

For example in a 2 axis alignment system with each axis given 3 labels (so 9 labels describing large regions), if 11.2% were alignment ___ and the other alignments were 11.1% each, then alignment _____ would be the most common alignment despite being a minority of individuals and only a 0.1% difference compared to the other alignments.

icefractal
2022-11-09, 12:59 PM
Personally (when I've used alignment, which is not currently) I used an uneven split where neutral is more common, but still not a majority. 25/50/25 on each axis puts TN at 25% of people, for example. Even with a 15/70/15 split it would only be 49%.

That said, I'm not going with a "balance" version of neutral primarily. More often it's just not being sufficiently good/evil to fall into those categories. So you could have someone who's nice, fairly helpful, but would never stick their neck out for someone else, and they're neutral. Or someone who's a jerk, cheats people in small ways, but nothing too heinous - also neutral. I find it more useful when a good/evil alignment means something significant.

Tevo77777
2022-11-09, 01:11 PM
In 3.0-3.5, ordinary TN people tend to go along with things, with the "devoted to Neutrality" version being a rare exception. Foreshadowing 4e's "Unaligned" title and description.

It's true that the top of society tends to be dominated by the Lawful (as well as really large communities - cities, large towns, etc) - but that doesn't mean that the ordinary citizenry are. Most people don't live in a city, they live in smallish communities in the country. It's the fact that cities and their rulers tend to be the movers and shakers, that creates the illusion of humanity being on average Lawful.

It's worth remembering that TN isn't most people - it's just the most common alignment. It can be just slightly more common than the next most common alignments are.


Why is it not letting me quote your quote? It alone seems to clear up so much about Alignment.

Tanarii
2022-11-09, 02:58 PM
Yes, 3.0 does say that, but it's wrong. The majority of humans don't behave the way 3.0 describes TN, they behave in either a LG or LN fashion, and, significantly, basically all characters and all societies written during that edition reflect this. I mean, this is the home of OOTS. V is a 3e TN character and they are nowhere near normal human moral behavior.
5e Neutral is probably a better version for many humans by the sounds of it. (I don't recall 3e version)

Neutral (N) is the alignment of those who prefer to steer clear of moral questions and don't take sides, doing what seems best at the time.

Personal opinion only, that fairly accurately captures the typical behavior of more people than any other single 5e alignment's typical-but-not-constantly-required behaviors do ... it also captures the majority of people.

Otoh I may just be a cynic when it comes to social and moral attitudes. :smallamused:

hamishspence
2022-11-09, 03:16 PM
5e Neutral is probably a better version for many humans by the sounds of it. (I don't recall 3e version)

Neutral (N) is the alignment of those who prefer to steer clear of moral questions and don't take sides, doing what seems best at the time.

Personal opinion only, that fairly accurately captures the typical behavior of more people than any other single 5e alignment's typical-but-not-constantly-required behaviors do ... it also captures the majority of people.

I did quote from the 3.0-3.5 version.

Relevant part:


Neutral, "Undecided"

A neutral character does what seems to be a good idea. She doesn’t feel strongly one way or the other when it comes to good vs. evil or law vs. chaos. Most neutral characters exhibit a lack of conviction or bias rather than a commitment to neutrality. Such a character thinks of good as better than evil—after all, she would rather have good neighbors and rulers than evil ones. Still, she’s not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or universal way.

4e "unaligned" had an element of "don't take sides" but that was more for deities and a few unaligned people.


Unaligned

If you’re unaligned, you don’t actively seek to harm others or wish them ill. But you also don’t go out of your way to put yourself at risk without some hope for reward. You support law and order when doing so benefits you. You value your own freedom, without worrying too much about protecting the freedom of others.

A few unaligned people, and most unaligned deities, aren’t undecided about alignment. Rather, they’ve chosen not to choose, either because they see the benefits of both good and evil or because they see themselves as above the concerns of morality.

OldTrees1
2022-11-09, 05:33 PM
People who are neutral with respect to good and evil have compunctions against killing the innocent but lack the commitment to make sacrifices to protect or help others. Neutral people are committed to others by personal relationships.

Someone who is neutral with respect to law and chaos has a normal respect for authority and feels neither a compulsion to obey nor a compulsion to rebel. She is honest but can be tempted into lying or deceiving others.

Neutral, "Undecided"

A neutral character does what seems to be a good idea. She doesn’t feel strongly one way or the other when it comes to good vs. evil or law vs. chaos. Most neutral characters exhibit a lack of conviction or bias rather than a commitment to neutrality. Such a character thinks of good as better than evil—after all, she would rather have good neighbors and rulers than evil ones. Still, she’s not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or universal way.
Why is it not letting me quote your quote? It alone seems to clear up so much about Alignment.

Since you did quote their post, I assume you are asking why you can't quote the quote they included (edited in above). Giantitp excludes nesting quotes by default when you reply to a post by quoting them. You have to manually create them by writing the "[/quote]" tags and copy pasting the quote inside.

Mechalich
2022-11-09, 05:48 PM
Neutral (N) is the alignment of those who prefer to steer clear of moral questions and don't take sides, doing what seems best at the time.

Personal opinion only, that fairly accurately captures the typical behavior of more people than any other single 5e alignment's typical-but-not-constantly-required behaviors do ... it also captures the majority of people.


See, I feel quite strongly that it hardly describes the behavior of anyone. Almost all humans have extremely deep-seated ideology that includes many moral questions. They may not raise those opinions in mixed company, because of an aversion to moral debate, but they still possess them.

Almost all human beings want to live in a society with rules rather than one controlled by the capricious whims of those with a monopoly on the use of force. This makes them lawful. Now, they are generally weakly lawful, which it important.

The alignment chart (https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/pathfinderkingmaker/images/f/fa/Character_Alignment_image1.png/revision/latest?cb=20180824222427) is a pie with a ring in the middle. Most humans are clustered in the lawful neutral and lawful good zones at least 2/3rds of the way into the ring, with the same thing true of most NG and CG characters as well in their respective sections. Very few people are moral paragons of anything, and in D&D even those that are aren't all the way to the edge, that's reserved for frightfully inhuman alignment exemplar outsiders. The most paladin-y paladin who ever went a paladin-ing is still significantly further inward than a garden variety Hound Archon.

hamishspence
2022-11-09, 06:04 PM
Neutral isn't just "perfectly in the centre" though - there's a broad zone around the centre for "Neutral with LG tendencies", "Neutral with LN tendencies" and so forth - both of which still count as TN for rules mechanics purposes - "you have lawful tendencies" doesn't mean you are Lawful.

"Most humans have lawful tendencies" and "Most humans have good tendencies" can be true, without invoking "Most humans are LG".

"Being LG" is not that easy, nor is "Being LN" - it requires a bit more commitment than just "tendencies".

As The Giant points out:




In my personal interpretation of Lawfulness in D&D, I believe that yes, it is possible to be Lawful using a personal code rather than the societal definitions of law and order. However, I believe that the burden of upholding that code has to be much stricter than that of the average person in order to actually qualify as Lawful. You must be willing to suffer personal detriment through adhesion to your code, without wavering, if you want to wear the Lawful hat.

Because almost everyone has a personal code of some sort; Robin Hood had a personal code, and he's the poster child for Chaotic Good. The reason his code doesn't rise to the level of Lawful is that he would be willing to bend it in a pinch. And since he's already bucking all the societal traditions of his civilization, there are no additional penalties or punishments for him breaking his own code. He's unlikely to beat himself up if he needs to violate his own principles for the Greater Good; he'll justify it to himself as doing what needed to be done, maybe sigh wistfully once, and then get on with his next adventure.

Conversely, a Lawful character who obeys society's traditions has a ready-made source of punishment should he break those standards. If such a character does stray, she can maintain her Lawfulness by submitting to the proper authorities for judgment. Turning yourself in effectively atones for the breaking of the code, undoing (or at least mitigating) the non-Lawful act.

A Lawful character who operates strictly by a personal code, on the other hand, is responsible for punishing herself in the event of a breach of that code. If she waves it off as doing what needed to be done, then she is not Lawful, she's Neutral at the least. If she does it enough, she may even become Chaotic. A truly Lawful character operating on a personal code will suffer through deeply unpleasant situations in order to uphold it, and will take steps to punish themselves if they don't (possibly going as far as to commit honorable suicide).

People think that using the "personal code" option makes life as a Lawful character easier. It shouldn't. It should be harder to maintain an entirely self-directed personal code than it is to subscribe to the code of an existing country or organization. This is one of the reasons that most Lawful characters follow an external code. It is not required, no, but it is much, much easier. Exceptions should be unusual and noteworthy. It should be an exceptional roleplaying challenge to take on the burden of holding yourself to a strict code even when there are no external penalties for failing.

If you're "Lawful through following society's laws" you need to be the kind of person who will turn themselves in for breaking them. If you're lawful through following a personal code - you need to be the kind of person who punishes themselves when they break it.

Tevo77777
2022-11-09, 06:12 PM
See, I feel quite strongly that it hardly describes the behavior of anyone. Almost all humans have extremely deep-seated ideology that includes many moral questions. They may not raise those opinions in mixed company, because of an aversion to moral debate, but they still possess them.

If this was true, we wouldn't see such absolute trash numbers for percentage of voters voting. At the same time we would see more governments being overthrown, more resistance/devotion to various religions or organized churches, and so on.

I can't count how many times I've read a well cited historical source or book about a period of history, where they make it abundantly clear that the largest position of people, is to care as little as possible about everything that happens outside their neighborhood or the space around their local village.

There are massive, highly oppressive nations, with paper thin systems keeping them in power. There is almost no dispute that's a pure lack of caring from the population and a general "well the economy is good, so I'm completely fine with having zero rights and incredibly high corruption" mindset.

There is so many statistics that show that most people, not the largest group, most people... Do not understand the ideologies of themselves, let alone others. If people actually cared, they would try to understand whatever position they are taking.



Almost all human beings want to live in a society with rules rather than one controlled by the capricious whims of those with a monopoly on the use of force. This makes them lawful. Now, they are generally weakly lawful, which it important.

By this logic, the concept of a "Lawful" society didn't start till..... I want to say after 1650-1800s. Civilization has been around about 12,000 years, and the vast majority of nations do not have "Rule of Law".

In fact the legal systems of most civilizations, throughout history, period, was de facto "Whatever the guy with the biggest army feels like this month, or week, or morning".

The Greeks started writing down the laws around 650 BC, but most of those were just cementing the power of the people with all the spears and chariots.



The alignment chart (https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/pathfinderkingmaker/images/f/fa/Character_Alignment_image1.png/revision/latest?cb=20180824222427) is a pie with a ring in the middle. Most humans are clustered in the lawful neutral and lawful good zones at least 2/3rds of the way into the ring, with the same thing true of most NG and CG characters as well in their respective sections. Very few people are moral paragons of anything, and in D&D even those that are aren't all the way to the edge, that's reserved for frightfully inhuman alignment exemplar outsiders. The most paladin-y paladin who ever went a paladin-ing is still significantly further inward than a garden variety Hound Archon.

If this was remotely truly, we wouldn't be in a situation where leadership almost universally consists of murderers, thieves, war-criminals, and slavers; if we consider all of human civilization and the whole planet.

Also, according to a lot of psychological studies and experiments, (that statistically, the bulk of people) if people spend just a few minutes thinking about a time they had the slightest amount of power (Like leading a board game or leader of a school project in 7th grade), they almost immediately don't think the rules apply to them.

It's like a switch is flipped. People from go "The boss shouldn't freak out if I'm two minutes late, traffic happens", to "I'm the boss, I can be a whole hour late, but GOD HELP YOU if you're 5 seconds late!".

There is a lot of evidence that humans, generally, are extremely flimsy about moral decisions. They'll be sticklers for the rules if it's to punish someone they don't like, but the instant the rules apply to them, they get mad. There are whole nations where this is the default position and it's blatantly the public, default position.

The Bystander Effect however, is nonsense and journalists traced that back to an event that didn't happen the way people think. Tons of people called the cops, the cops were just really late and they lied to the press that no one called them.

TLDR: Blah blah blah, at least 20-60% of people do not take a strong position or flip between strong positions easily. The bulk of the world right now is literally run by Warlords and their personal armies, this is how the Middle Ages was, this is how the Classical World was, and the last time this wasn't how the world worked was..... Like when people were nomadic...

Seriously, nomadic cultures are generally, hyper egalitarian.

This honestly explains why anyone would be Chaotic, Anti-Civilization, Libertarian or Anarchist. Women and men were more equal back then, there wasn't a lot of wealth disparity, and we were not ruled by Warlords. The Female sphere of power was very anti-war for many many cultures and tribes.