No more Detect Good. Detect Holy instead.

[RedMage125]

No, I don't. Different sources claim alignment means different things.

What are considering "sources"? Because people on the internet sharing stories about what they think alignment means shouldn't really count.

Rules As Written from most editions of D&D that I have ever seen are fairly consistent, however.

They can be collectively paraphrased as "Alignment is an oversimplified summary of a given character or creature's general outlooks and beliefs. It is shaped by -and stems FROM- said creature's actions (intent and context matter here). It is not an absolute barometer of action nor affiliation."

I don't "know" what alignment means any more than I "know" what the hacking rules for Shadowrun are, or the the Polymorph rules for 3e D&D are, or the Skill Challenge rules for 4e D&D.

I look forward to quoting this the next time you argue about alignment OR 4e Skill Challenges.

There are a lot of possible answers, and that's before you get into the glosses individual players have produced to try to make things work in their games.

I mean, I know what I do to make it work. I set aside my own personal perspective on what Good/Evil/Law/Chaos mean, and use what the RAW says they mean. Why? Because it means my players can look to the same source material I will be using to make my adjudications.

This because I believe that any and ALL deviations from what is in the rule books should be made clear to the players up front.

Good/Evil and Law/Chaos are absolutely binaries. "Neutral" does not make them not binary, because "Neutral" is not a side people are on unless you're watching Futurama. Not making a binary choice does not make it not a binary choice.

The prefix "bi" means "two". Since there is a wide, and more importantly, distinct area of result between Good and Evil, or between Law and Chaos, the choice is not "binary", it is therefore "ternary".

So this is more of a linguistic nitpick, but you are wrong.

Sure. You could also say that they were "Choleric" or "Fire" or "Green". You could describe them in terms of a nearly infinite number of sets of categories. You could group them by favorite food or astrological sign. The question is whether any particular grouping is worth the effort necessary to include it.

It is when there are mechanics tied to those things. It's not as arbitrary as "choleric" or "green", those designations have mechanical impact. Your snide derision of alignment, and your lack of any kind of open mind on the topic, shows in the way you talk about it. You consider alignment an ineffective or even useless tool. Which is a fine opinion to have. But you couch your statements as if it were somehow "already a proven fact" that alignment is "useless and arbitrary".

But that is not a FACT. You're trying to say "given that alignment is useless, they could have used any old words instead of 'good/evil/etc'". But what you're not accepting, and what others are trying to tell you is that thing you're trying to act like is a "given"...isn't.

[Xgya]

I was wondering how Detect Law and Chaos would work in your instance.

Also, your interpretation of alignments entirely leaves out alignment-based spells, or is a direct and rather significant nerf to spells like Holy Smite, that deal damage based on their targets' alignments.

After all, if Detect Holy works because a target is Holy, that would mean that Holy Smite only works better because the target is UNholy.

Else, it means that there's something the magic can identify when you cast Holy Smite, and some clever spellcaster (or deity) could create some form of magic to know in advance who the spell will be most effective against. And then call that spell Detect Evil.

[ImNotTrevor]

You have odd standard for "brief".

I did say "might" be brief, not I "will" be brief.

Dismissive bad faith analogy aside, that'd mean my job here is done, if you'd actually stopped here.

More seriously, I'm fine with someone admitting Alignment has utility, just not enough for them to personally use. Anything past this point is no longer me arguing for something, it's about me arguing about how you argue.

Fair enough. I tend to come across as abrasive.

You can feel however you like about those things, point was to make you stop harping about compulsions and necessity when I wasn't using those as goalposts to begin with.

Since you're referencing others here, I'll point you to where I was arguing with someone who declared that alignment is NECESSARY for high fantasy games. Hence why my contention is with the idea is a necessity or better than any given option.

Oh, you mean like someone (not you, someone) repeatedly claiming Alignment is binary in places it is explicitly not? Now you know what it feels like!

But, snark aside, credit where it's due: the examples you gave me now are good demonstrations of what you're talking about. They aren't "sadly lacking".

well thank you. It helps when I actually put specific examples.

1 & 3. Compare and contrast:

GM: most characters in this setting are Good.
Player: okay, but my character is Evil.
GM: please change that, I don't want Evil player characters in my game.

This is a brief tone conversation,

It's still not a tone conversation. It IS an alignment preference conversation, but implies nothing about tone.

my original dialogue was a brief tone conversation, a GM "just allowing the players to do what they want" is a statement about tone of a campaign. The only way you can think no statements of tone are being made is if you are presuming Good and Evil have no meaning.

Good and Evil have little to nothing to do with tone. This coming as an English teacher. They can be themes, or character descriptions, but they aren't tone.

2. I will abstain from making much comment about "Session 0", because it's not clear to me there is any exact methodology behind that term, and I routinely find I can do all the things that are supposedly part of "Session 0" in less than a session, at the start of the first session.

A Session 0 is generally where the campaign is laid out, discussed, and characters are made together so that bonds between characters can be firmly established, and any important setting info can be defined, and for me that is often done together with the players. If I don't have much to discuss, it could be half of a Session 1, but if I'm doing a long-term campaign there's stuff to hammer out.

Again, I'll note that maybe this all about you having an odd standard for "brief", because if we omit brevity, I can just have my players read through AD&D books and it will inform them of tone just fine. Again, the system makes its own statements on tone.

Often, the less time I have to prepare, the longer my writing is. I value specificity and clearness in my communication, so it can mean I run long so that I am well understood.

"Exploration-focused hex-crawl campaign. Characters begin as Imperial agents in a periphery. Mostly dramatic with pinch of comedy. PG-13."

This gives a very vague overview, but little workable information. My tone discussion needs to be workable and detailed info, not an elevator pitch. This is more or less how I pitched the idea.

That's about how much I'd need to tell of this campaign pitch to my players. And it wouldn't be an opening of conversation, it would pretty much entirety of it, before actual start of the game.

Again, as a pitch goes it's fine. This isn't a tone discussion, though.

It's not that yours is a bad pitch for tone - it's good. But as criticism of alignment? I could tag "System used is 1st Edition AD&D. No. Evil characters" and it would communicate a lot of information to my players, more than words like "Ahmbra" and "Trovian" because setting familiarity is its own kerfuffle aside from tone.

I'm building a lot of this setting in real time and giving information as we go. The campaign won't start for a few months, so we get to talk and build some simmering hype. They know the outline of those terms, and most of the specifics don't exist. We'll define them during our session 0.

Do I need to dig up my AD&D books up again and quote entire rule sections to you? Because the rules are perfectly clear that for PCs, actual behaviour is what determines alignment. Stated alignment is a pledge a player makes, that they then either succeed or fail to follow... with the consequence of changing Alignment if they fail, with possible associated mechanical penalty, before the game moves on.

Ah yes "figure out how your DM interprets alignment and fit that bill or suffer the consequences. Paladins? Walk on those eggshells."

I think we have enough horror stories on the ways that alignment is seriously abused to question its place.

A prescriptive element for NPCs does exist, but that's because the NPCs don't exist before being defined. They don't have any actual behaviour nor guidelines for behaviour before the GM sets something up.

Why not set up something substantial, then? Even the way Apocalypse World has NPCs constructed takes about 3 seconds in my head and gives me way more info than alignment does.

There aren't only nine types of personality, because Alignment isn't be-all-end-all of personality. There are nine basic moral characteristics and when we look at Alignment reactions towards each other, we get... how do I calculate this? 9x9=81 reaction sets? That's a decent amount to play through. However you choose to count it, it is a multiplicative, combinational exercise which nets you a large number of games.

I mean, I'm partial to Infinity as my lower limit. Just me.

Beyond that, we'll have to go back to counting how many real sets of basic moral characteristic there are, before deciding whether 9 is a small number. Because real factorial analysis regularly sorts real people into a fairly small number of groups. There likely isn't an unlimited amount of basic moralities and it's highly likely real people do skew towards just a few.

Depends on how broad the categories are.

It doesn't; "Lawful" gives you most of the first paragraph in a condensed form.

If condensed = vague, then sure. "Lawful" doesn't inform WHO she is loyal to, nor to what degree. (Most Lawful people aren't so much so that it intrudes into their personal life by definition.)

What you've given me is... is there a single English word for this...? uncondensed description of what being Lawful means for this single character. The rest is additional description the sort of which, again, D&D has always used alongside Alignment.

Isn't it objectively more useful to play this character, based on what Lawful means *specifically for them?* in which case, "Lawful" as a tag becomes little more than, at best, a pointer towards the rest of things.

If you paid attention, you'd have noticed CE isn't there to give you any information about those. It's there to inform you that this creature relishes suffering (Evil) and targets other for its individual benefit (Chaotic).

And the players are probably much less interested in its moral stance than the fact that it's trying to eat them.

So now if you add a term such as "predatory" after CE, you know now they are not preying on others for the sake of making the world better.

With sadness if the Paladin was part of the same group, because that group has now suffered; with indifference or glee if the Paladin was not, because there's now one less of inferior people in the world.

Wait, groups only ever feel sympathy for members of their own group? You had it NICE in highschool, my guy.

Goals do help in determining reactions, but why are you bringing goals into discussion about a system that was never meant to describe totality of goals?

Because goals accomplish the job alignment CLAIMS to be for, and more.

People play 1st Edition (and 2nd Edition, and 3rd Edition...) today. You can play them today. They influence how 5th Edition is played today, because a lot of setting material predates 5th Edition and a lot of GMs were players of earlier editions. You can backport mechanics to a 5th edition game today.

Wait, the plurality of games being D&D 5e counts when it supports your point, but suddenly it doesn't? Let's be consistent, here. Continue to play very old D&D editions is super niche and becoming MORE niche over time.

Aligment didn't become obsolete with the advent of 5th Edition, anymore than Go has become obsolete by advent of videogaming.

I mean, Go is still played, sure. But it's now a fairly niche game by comparison to videogames.

You seem to think "Obsolete" means it's never used anywhere. Well, records are widely considered an obsolete format, even though they are still produced.

D&D and Pathfinder are top two most popular tabletop systems locally, perhaps globally, so what rules they use affects plurality, perhaps majority, of games actually being held. Counting by systems gives a wrong impression of how exposed people are to alignment and how much it is actually used.

The most popular system right now is D&D 5e which has stripped alignment of most of its importance. Most players entering the hobby are doing so with alignment as a tertiary concern at best, and with more and more DMs ignoring it, possibly skipping it entirely. I don't think this helps your point as much as you'd like.

Did you forget that Alignment was inpired and copied over from literature? Or that a huge amount of contemporary fantasy fiction was directly inspired or even derived from D&D?

Please find me a fantasy novel that describes a character as Lawful Evil within its prose before you make the claim it was COPIED OVER from literature.

If you're referring to alignment paying reference to the common opposed sides of "Order vs Chaos" and "Good vs Evil," {Scrubbed} That doesn't mean Feist, Weiss, Hickman, and their contemporaries were busting out 3x3 charts.

I somehow doubt that even D&D licensed books make consistent reference to the alignment ends as anything other than mystical forces, rather than descriptive tags.

Raymond E. Feist, Margaret Weiss, Tracy Hickman, whoever made Records of Lodoss War, Nasuverse (seriously, FATE characters have or at least used to have D&D Alignments)... those are just the few well-known examples that immediately come to mind, without doing any serious research on this.

I can't help but feel like D&D alignment probably didn't come into the equation for any of these people. I'm not a PROFESSIONAL writer, but I somehow can't help but feel like pulling out the old 3x3 grid won't push me towards publication.

---

Apologies if I omitted something; at this point it's as likely to be because I botched editing this, as because I didn't have anything to say. I doubt anyone is going to get more use out of me dissecting posts like this, so this will be my last comment in this thread. If y'all consider attrition an acceptable debate tactic, consider ImNotTrevor the victor here.

WEEEEEEE.

Nah, I get it. People have busy lives. But I will state that I still remain unconvinced that Alignment has enough utility that I'd ever use or recommend it over other options.

That's obviously an opinion, and I'm open about that being the case. But the value proposition of Alignment simply does not hold enough value to outweigh its potential and definite costs.

[ImNotTrevor]

What are considering "sources"? Because people on the internet sharing stories about what they think alignment means shouldn't really count.

Rules As Written from most editions of D&D that I have ever seen are fairly consistent, however.

Do you....
Do you not know why lawyers exist?
Do you not know why judges exist?
If something as vitally important as LAWS don't always have crystal clear interpretations, what on Earth makes you think the way you read the (very vague) RAW on alignment is *the objectively correct interpretation?*

That's some incredible confidence, my guy.

They can be collectively paraphrased as "Alignment is an oversimplified summary of a given character or creature's general outlooks and beliefs. It is shaped by -and stems FROM- said creature's actions (intent and context matter here). It is not an absolute barometer of action nor affiliation."

Remember that here you're claiming alignment is DESCRIPTIVE and NOT PRESCRIPTIVE.
Remember this sword, because you kill your own point with it below.

I mean, I know what I do to make it work. I set aside my own personal perspective on what Good/Evil/Law/Chaos mean, and use what the RAW says they mean. Why? Because it means my players can look to the same source material I will be using to make my adjudications.

I just toss the whole thing out the window and save my players on the reading.

This because I believe that any and ALL deviations from what is in the rule books should be made clear to the players up front.

I do agree with this. Hence why I always say "Alignment is for Lame-O's and I don't care about it" when talking to my players about it.

It is when there are mechanics tied to those things. It's not as arbitrary as "choleric" or "green", those designations have mechanical impact.

Remember that sword? Note that A SIGNIFICANT PORTION of Alignment mechanics are DEEPLY PRESCRIPTIVE. Your character MUST behave this way or they are WRONG and GET PUNISHED.

Alignment is descriptive... until it isn't. You can't have it both ways. You cannot say "Alignment only describes your character" on one hand and on the other say "and if you do something I consider out-of-alignment you will get punished."

Alignment is very much prescriptive. It might be prescriptive in a way you agree with, but it's still prescriptive.

ALSO, to a point made below:
You do realize this argument is basically "alignment is useful when you use a system that forces it to be useful." {Scrubbed}Would putting Alignment into another system improve that system? 99% of the time, no.

Does putting Apocalypse World's Fronts into a system improve it? It has every time I've done it. It's just a flat-out useful GMing tool.

That's the key difference we're talking about.

Your snide derision of alignment, and your lack of any kind of open mind on the topic, shows in the way you talk about it. You consider alignment an ineffective or even useless tool. Which is a fine opinion to have. But you couch your statements as if it were somehow "already a proven fact" that alignment is "useless and arbitrary".

I'm hella snide by default so you can't really take it personal in my case.

I wouldn't say that alignment is USELESS. Just... not as good at accomplishing its own goals as most other alternatives to it.

But that is not a FACT. You're trying to say "given that alignment is useless, they could have used any old words instead of 'good/evil/etc'". But what you're not accepting, and what others are trying to tell you is that thing you're trying to act like is a "given"...isn't.

I mean, your counterargument, as I said, is "in systems where alignment is forced to be important, it's important."

Yes. I agree. Because of course that would be true.

But if I sit down to play a game of 5e D&D, the question nobody can answer is:
WHAT GOES SO HORRIBLY WRONG IF I ENTIRELY IGNORE THE EXISTENCE OF ALIGNMENT AS A FORMAL SYSTEM?

Nobody can give me a half decent answer. Because the FACT is that... nothing changes, except one Pixie ability stops working. [Quick change: it now detects hostile intent instead of alignment. Done.]

Oh no. Please. Help. Save me.

So yeah, alignment is useful when the system demands that it be very important. But then again Jellybeans could be important if your system demands they be important. You'd not see me arguing that knowing where every character lies on a 1-20 scale of Bravery-Cowardice is useful because the Pendragon RPG exists. That would be... super weird.

[Lord Raziere]

Decided to come back.

Very well, I shall stop tearing down another system, and try to demonstrate why I consider Divine Sense and Divine strike to be better models of objective morality. In my opinion as of course, is if it needed to be pointed out.

A mortal or humanoid, that is any being from the prime material plane shouldn't be anything like an extraplanar being or outsider whatever you want to call them. They are fundamentally physical beings bound by the same laws humanity is. This makes them morally the same as humans. Thus free to choose their path and thus their morality is bound by choices, good and evil are acts they do, not something they are. The moral state of their soul is a private matter, strictly between them and the universe/god/whatever and no one else. They are free to do acts to demonstrate what their state of soul is like giving to charity or kicking a puppy, but fundamentally having the ability to check on someone's soul would be an invasion of privacy. Much like reading minds, if a persons innermost thoughts and makeup aren't safe from scrutiny, what is? Therefore every mortals soul is a private matter.

Outsiders like celestials and fiends are a different case. They are fundamentally different beings embodying certain metaphysical/abstract concepts. These abstract beings of ideas therefore are not bound by physical laws and are therefore not humanoid. Their entire being is a concept, what they are thinking and deciding is inextricable and indistinguishable from their identity: an angel doesn't decide to be kind or just, they ARE kindness and justice. They have a fundamental nature that makes them different from a person free to be who they are. Once a demon is made, they will always be a demon, the mortal moral state of moral flux able to change and thus determine the fate of the universe settles into a pattern that can no longer be altered. Thus this reveals what they will be like for all eternity. This fits with their new place in the universe as mortal concerns are no longer theirs, but the concerns of the planes are instead for they now live among them, whether as angel, devil or whatever else.

Thus the mortal state has a certain sanctity and importance, it alone holding the power to change the universes direction one way or another but its moral state kept hidden and secret. This makes mortals cosmic wild cards compared to outsiders. They are not meant to make decisions based upon reasons like "it will get me into this heaven" or "if I do this my soul will turn a different color" but because the actual reasons around them to do this or that. Someone doesn't be good because it will make some soul thingy turn shiny, one does it so that people are helped and the world is improved. Labels are a distraction from what is truly important in doing good. and thus Divine Sense can't pick up on anything mortal because they are fundamentally free and important in a way that other beings are not. instead of knowing the distributions of alignment for sure, you are left with room for doubt and uncertainty (and its one less thing the DM has to track for NPC's). uncertainty that can destroyed with a single stabbing of an innocent if need be.

Thus Divine Sense, senses what is truly important: the beings you know are morally set in stone not the unreliable flux of mortals. It also allows one to sense undead which are weapons of evil and the lower planes, thus it relies on far more reliable indicators of big evil afoot, as undead are often made by necromancers of great power and demons are often summoned through magic, as well as find the angelic beings you know are good in a way that no mortal is. what a mortal chooses to to become morality-wise is their decision and their decision alone anyways, and what importance do things like modrons or slaads even have in the cosmic battle? none, they are basically meaningless, so they aren't even considered. Divine Sense is simply incredibly efficient and multi-purpose. So why would I, some Oath of Ancients or Devotion or Redemption paladin even need to know such a thing about someone's soul? Whether or not I knew it, it would still be evil to force my values onto them and thus I can only act as inspiration and hope for them, thus there is no point to knowing it as what their alignment is unneeded as the most important thing is that they are a person first and foremost and I thus engage them as person first and foremost, which is fundamentally good.

While Divine Smite makes sense, because its radiant energy not really good or holy its just light. why would goodness want a specific energy to harm anything anyways? Its Good. It wants people safe, healed, redeemed. Causing more suffering is just counterproductive. Radiant energy is really just all divine energy in general, so it makes sense for a divine class to wield without morality attached to it with mortals being able to wield it on anyone. any Angel that actually tries to play out the old "holy wrath" kind of thing isn't Good at all anyways, an extremist form of Lawful Evil that makes them a fallen angel who embodies the fact that Light is Not Good. Besides something like a vampire is weak to getting stabbed in the heart by wooden stake does that make all wooden stakes fundamentally good? just because a creature is evil and has a weakness to a certain form of energy doesn't necessarily mean that the energy itself has to be goodness itself, just that somehow it has weakness in its design that good people can use to get rid of it, which requires more smarts and knowledge, thus playing into DnD's tendency for proper preparation and knowledge of the foes you face.

As for WHY divine classes get light as such an attack type even though it has nothing to do with morality? Its simple: belief. While not always associated with goodness, light is associated with power and the divine, whether it be the sun, fire or lightning. Therefore divine classes get radiant damage because people believe that is what the gods should be able to grant. Nothing more. you can still be the smiting crusader for good, only killing evil with it but the onus in you to make sure of that, as it should be. These features of 5e, make it so that you have to earn the knowledge of evil for you to use them on. After all, evil will use any means to hide, why make it easy? Justice is a pursuit, and a meaningful pursuit is one that requires you to figure things out, not the universe. Its Judgment is reserved until after you die, so until you do so its not your concern. The best most just protagonists are Detectives like Batman and whatnot, who need to investigate and figure out what the right thing to do with the pursuit of knowledge instead of being given knowledge just because.

and if I wanted to kill evil on sight instead without any room for doubt? I would simply play an angel and adventure on the outer planes. Its not as if any demons or devils I find there would be hidden or anything. I'll know my allies and enemies by sight. No mortal uncertainties. Not that I feel any particular desire to play that way, mortals are generally more interesting for not being certain.

[NigelWalmsley]

Which is one of the reasons there is a DM. Don't know if what you're about to do is evil? Ask the DM. His answer is what goes in his game.

Yes, I understand that you would like the DM to enforce a single "correct" ethics. The question is why do you want that. What's the benefit to insisting that people dedicated to the righteous cause of "a code of ethics slightly different from their DM's" can't be Paladins? If you want to hold to a strong moral code, it seems to me that it is entirely adequate for that to simply be some defined moral code that does not rely on the whim of the DM at all. Indeed, such a thing would seem to make things easier both for players (as they would not periodically get told that the thing that their Righteous Code of Goodness says to do makes them lose the powers they nominally got for having a Righteous Code of Goodness) and for DMs (as they would not have to make moral judgements about every action Paladins take). I understand the position you're taking, but you don't seem willing or able to explain why that position is substantively useful.

Neutral is a choice. It's basically "the middle ground between the other two options" or "moderate" or "the refusal to consistently chose one side of the axis" whether law/chaos or good/evil, or both.

Neutral is a choice, but it's not a side. If you're not proposing some actionable alternative to "Law v Chaos" or "Good v Evil", it's still a binary. But as soon as you do propose an alternative, the system collapses. At best, alignment shoves every option that isn't "whatever you think Chaos means" or "whatever you think Law means" into a single bucket it treats as interchangeable. At worst, it ignores those distinctions entirely.

Also, your interpretation of alignments entirely leaves out alignment-based spells, or is a direct and rather significant nerf to spells like Holy Smite, that deal damage based on their targets' alignments.

I don't think anyone is proposing "ditch alignment, keep Holy Smite". That said, you don't need to bring ethics into the equation to have spells with variable effectiveness. Consider Fireball. It deals more damage to you if you are vulnerable to Fire (perhaps because you are a White Dragon). It deals less damage to you if you are resistant or immune to Fire (perhaps because you are a Salamander). If you are neither of those things -- you might say "Neutral on the Fire Axis of Alignment" if you were using the same stupid terminology for everything -- you take normal damage. Substantively, that's the exact same thing Holy Smite does, just for "Fire" rather than "Good".

I mean, your counterargument, as I said, is "in systems where alignment is forced to be important, it's important."

{Scrubbed}

Outsiders like celestials and fiends are a different case. They are fundamentally different beings embodying certain metaphysical/abstract concepts. These abstract beings of ideas therefore are not bound by physical laws and are therefore not humanoid. Their entire being is a concept, what they are thinking and deciding is inextricable and indistinguishable from their identity: an angel doesn't decide to be kind or just, they ARE kindness and justice.

I think alignment is a lot more justifiable as a thing for outsiders to be than it is as a thing that everyone has. You can imagine how an angel could be created as an "embodiment of mercy" or a demon as an "embodiment of carnage" where it might make sense to talk about those things as "fundamentally Evil". But at the same time, you've got things like the Elementals, which are "made of Earth" or "made of Fire" in the same way you'd claim demons are "made of Evil". Which suggests that whatever "Evil" means in this context is rather different from what it means in ethical arguments, or perhaps that the alignment system as presented is incomplete. The elementals are neutral on the "Good/Evil" and "Law/Chaos" axes, but they're definitely not neutral on the "Water/Fire" and "Earth/Air" axes. But then, that also undermines the argument for equating whatever the difference between eladrin and demons is with morality in the abstract.

[Jason]

Yes, I understand that you would like the DM to enforce a single "correct" ethics. The question is why do you want that.

Well, its kind of necessary in any RPG that players and GMs have an agreement on the types of stories they want to tell. If you have a group that thinks playing a group of amoral criminals is great escapist fun when it's all just pretend people being hurt but the GM thought he was telling stories about altruistic heroes then there will be problems. A basic understanding of what will be considered right or wrong in the game is therefore necessary, and alignment can be useful shorthand for that.

If you want to hold to a strong moral code, it seems to me that it is entirely adequate for that to simply be some defined moral code that does not rely on the whim of the DM at all.

The GM has to have some say in whether he thinks you are following your moral code or not because the GM is the world and everyone in it except the other PCs. You can't play a character with a moral code that isn't more than backstory fluff without involving the GM and having him present you with situations that allow you to use it or question it..

Neutral is a choice, but it's not a side. If you're not proposing some actionable alternative to "Law v Chaos" or "Good v Evil", it's still a binary. But as soon as you do propose an alternative, the system collapses. At best, alignment shoves every option that isn't "whatever you think Chaos means" or "whatever you think Law means" into a single bucket it treats as interchangeable. At worst, it ignores those distinctions entirely.

They are all broad categories, even good and evil. In D&D neutral is a side. A very inclusive side covering a lot of ground and in some ways not very well defined and overlapping the other sides, but all the alignments are like that. They have to be to fit everything into nine categories. It's still useful and more simple to have nine broad categories.

[Morty]

For the record, the morality system in The One Ring, the most modern LotR RPG I'm familiar with works like this:
1. Each player Calling (sort of their character class) has a Shadow Weakness which represents the path they would follow if they fail to resist the Shadow's influence. Scholars have the Lure of Secrets, Slayers have the Curse of Vengeance, Treasure Hunters have Dragon-sickness, Wanderers have Wandering-madness, and Wardens and Leaders have the Lure of Power.
2. Players gain Shadow Points from several potential sources: experiencing distressing events, directly confronting more powerful beings of the shadow (like Ringwraiths), crossing or dwelling in areas tainted by the Shadow, committing despicable or dishonorable actions ("regardless of the end they sought to achieve"), or taking possession of a cursed or tainted item or treasure.
3. Players regularly use Hope points to power their abilities and make difficult rolls. Players become Miserable when they have more Shadow Points than their current Hope score. If they roll an Eye of Sauron on their feat die (a 1 in 12 chance with every roll) while Miserable then they are subject to a Bout of Madness where the Loremaster (GM) takes control of their character for a limited time and makes them do something they will regret later. Like trying to take the Ring from Frodo.
4. A Bout of Madness resets the player's Shadow Points to 0 but also gives them a permanent Shadow Point and a Flaw that the Loremaster may invoke at appropriate times in the future to force a player to roll two Feat dice and take the lower result (Disadvantage, basically).
5. A character who already has all four Flaws for his Calling and succumbs to another Bout of Madness becomes an NPC permanently. Elves lose interest in Middle-Earth and return to Valinor, while Men, Hobbits, or Dwarves either kill themselves in despair, threaten others to the point they have to be killed, or "starves to death in some solitary place, forsaken by men and animals."
6. Temporary Shadow Points may be removed in a limited fashion by downtime activities between adventure phases, usually by practicing some creative craft. Permanent Shadow Points are, as the name implies, permanent.

The alignment system in The One Ring therefore doubles as a sort of Sanity system, since you can get corruption for misdeeds but also take corruption hits for confronting powerful enemies or witnessing distressing events. Misdeeds that earn Shadow Points include (in escalating order) violent threats, lying purposefully or subtly manipulating the will of others, cowardice, theft and plunder, unprovoked aggression, abusing own authority to influence or dominate, torment and torture, or murder.

The system is very different from D&D in many aspects. Aside from the game mechanics there are no PC spellcasters in Middle-Earth. PCs can gain some abilities that are obviously magical, but there is no spell casting system, and Gandalf, Saruman and Radagast are all powerful NPCs with abilities that are mostly up to the Loremaster to define. Combat tends to be short and rather deadly, with players only able to take a few hits. Travel rules are also a big part of the system, and all the printed adventures involve traveling extensively.

I ran a whole year-long campaign in the game and my group and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Cubicle 7 also, sadly, lost the license, so its now out of print. A second edition from a different publisher is planned.

Thanks for detailing it. It is indeed a different "alignment" system than D&D's and superior in all ways, in my opinion. It actually serves the purpose of the game: there's some kind of supernatural evil that can corrupt you. And for all LotR is brought up as an example of people fighting against Morgoth/Sauron but facing temptation and corruption.

[ImNotTrevor]

Well, its kind of necessary in any RPG that players and GMs have an agreement on the types of stories they want to tell. If you have a group that thinks playing a group of amoral criminals is great escapist fun when it's all just pretend people being hurt but the GM thought he was telling stories about altruistic heroes then there will be problems. A basic understanding of what will be considered right or wrong in the game is therefore necessary, and alignment can be useful shorthand for that.

Why can't I just, as a GM, explain what tone I'm trying to have and make sure players make their characters together and have backstories and personalities in line with the tone?

Having alignment doesn't prevent what you're talking about in any way. I know this because when I had alignment without that conversation, this problem still happened. Alignment made no difference.

The GM has to have some say in whether he thinks you are following your moral code or not because the GM is the world and everyone in it except the other PCs. You can't play a character with a moral code that isn't more than backstory fluff without involving the GM and having him present you with situations that allow you to use it or question it.

I will generally agree that the moral code needs to be a subject open to discussion as it comes up. But there is a fine line between "presenting opportunities to question one's code" and "trying to set up GOTCHA moments because the only interesting thing I can think of to do with Paladins is make them fall."

They are all broad categories, even good and evil. In D&D neutral is a side. A very inclusive side covering a lot of ground and in some ways not very well defined and overlapping the other sides, but all the alignments are like that. They have to be to fit everything into nine categories. It's still useful and more simple to have nine broad categories.

It's even more useful to have NO categories and have each PC and NPC considered individually, since alignment almost never makes up for its cost.

[Lord Raziere]

Well, its kind of necessary in any RPG that players and GMs have an agreement on the types of stories they want to tell. If you have a group that thinks playing a group of amoral criminals is great escapist fun when it's all just pretend people being hurt but the GM thought he was telling stories about altruistic heroes then there will be problems. A basic understanding of what will be considered right or wrong in the game is therefore necessary, and alignment can be useful shorthand for that.

Very well, if shorthand is so useful, then tell me do you know what tone I'm thinking about when I say: Chaotic Good?

After all you don't need any more information as you claim right? That should be all you need to know.

[NigelWalmsley]

Well, its kind of necessary in any RPG that players and GMs have an agreement on the types of stories they want to tell.

In that case, why is "Good" a decision coming down from the DM, rather than a consensus coming from the group? If the goal is to get everyone to agree to something, giving one person the power to dictate terms isn't helpful. Moreover, while it is true that you want to agree to a broad tone for a campaign, there's generally plenty of room for there to be multiple notions of "Good" while telling the same type of story. If you go read half a dozen Epic Fantasy stories (or whatever genre), you'll see a range of different ethical stances from protagonists, antagonists, and supporting characters.

A basic understanding of what will be considered right or wrong in the game is therefore necessary, and alignment can be useful shorthand for that.

No, they aren't. "Good" isn't a "useful shorthand", because it's too vague. "Good" just means "things that are right". It doesn't represent any particular set of things that could be considered right, and as such is not useful as shorthand. You can define it, and then use it as shorthand, but at that point it's no better than any other term.

The GM has to have some say in whether he thinks you are following your moral code or not because the GM is the world and everyone in it except the other PCs. You can't play a character with a moral code that isn't more than backstory fluff without involving the GM and having him present you with situations that allow you to use it or question it..

First: what's wrong with just having your code be backstory fluff? Lots of classes have elements that are backstory fluff. A Sorcerer could have his draconic heritage be a big issue on which the campaign turns, or he could have it be a fluff detail about his magic. There's nothing wrong with having a campaign where you play a righteous warrior who does righteous stuff and does not have to make hard moral choices.

Second: that doesn't require that your GM have any say in what your code is. Your GM can create situations where your code is challenged without having to be able to say "ha!, you fell because the Good thing to do was to let the villagers stand on their own against Evil, rather than helping them relocate". In fact, I would say that the first thing is what people who play characters with moral codes want, and the second thing is the cause of roughly every bad experience people had with Paladins.

They have to be to fit everything into nine categories. It's still useful and more simple to have nine broad categories.

Why nine categories? Why not six categories or fifteen categories? Why "Good/Evil" and "Law/Chaos"? Why not "Fire/Water" and "Earth/Air"? You're performing a slight of hand here. You're saying "it's good to have categories that provide guides to behavior", then claiming that this makes D&D's alignment system desirable. But it doesn't. It just means that some system for doing that is useful. What you have to do is demonstrate why Good/Evil and Law/Chaos makes a better alignment system than Planar Alignment or Philosophical Alignment or Organizational Alignment or Color Wheel Alignment.

It's even more useful to have NO categories and have each PC and NPC considered individually, since alignment almost never makes up for its cost.

I don't think that's the case. I think having categories is a useful tool. D&D alignment falls apart in three ways. First, it's universal. The reality is that some, even many, characters should simply not have an alignment. The average peasant doesn't need to fit into a particular side of a generalized moral conflict. Second, it's finite. Alignments are factions, and there's no particular reason to insist that your world has exactly nine factions (or exactly four factions or exactly sixty seven factions). Just write up some factions, and let people align with them if they want. Then when you add new stuff, you can just add additional factions. Third, the terminology is broken. "Good" is simply not a useful name for a faction, because every faction is going to declare itself to be "Good", since that's how people use the word. But in principle, having sets of principles that people in the world have, and factions that they align with is fine, and that's something that you could reasonably call "alignment". You genuinely don't want to have to think about the individual moral perspectives of every character the PCs interact with.

[Jason]

Very well, if shorthand is so useful, then tell me do you know what tone I'm thinking about when I say: Chaotic Good?

After all you don't need any more information as you claim right? That should be all you need to know.

People who are basically good but willing to challenge authority and will probably approach each situation as if it is unique rather than using the same methods each time. Stuff like torture will be off limits, but unorthodox solutions will be fine.

It's not an all-inclusive "now I know everything that will be in this campaign" shorthand, more like a genre category, "you're rebels fighting against an oppressive Empire. I'm thinking chaotic good alignments."

Genre is in fact a pretty good comparison. Genres can be very broad, but do have limits. If you're in a genre western you can be reasonably sure aliens aren't going to show up. Same idea.

[Lord Raziere]

People who are basically good but willing to challenge authority and will probably approach each situation as if it is unique rather than using the same methods each time. Stuff like torture will be off limits, but unorthodox solutions will be fine.

It's not an all-inclusive "now I know everything that will be in this campaign" shorthand, more like a genre category, "you're rebels fighting against an oppressive Empire. I'm thinking chaotic good alignments."

Genre is in fact a pretty good comparison. Genres can be very broad, but do have limits. If you're in a genre western you can be reasonably sure aliens aren't going to show up. Same idea.

Wrong.

I wasn't thinking of any tone. You just brought your own subjective assumptions into it. A person can be any alignment in any situation, the only difference is how that alignment is treated in that situation, nothing more. Choice of alignment implies nothing about the "genre" as I can find reasons why "rebels against oppressive empire" can be Lawful Good, Neutral Good, Chaotic Neutral, Neutral Evil and Chaotic Evil as well, and how all these people can work together despite their disagreements to overthrow it. Its not as if they have the luxury of choosing their allies. And why would the universe make them coincidentally Chaotic Good for no reason? its far more realistic and interesting that people are varied, because the clash of moralities and ideas is a more interesting story than any agreement. tone is not needed, whatever is made is made, arising naturally from the interactions people want to have rather than the interactions you try to make them have.

[Jason]

In that case, why is "Good" a decision coming down from the DM, rather than a consensus coming from the group?

To some degree it is both, but it is primarily up to the GM to enforce the rules.

If the goal is to get everyone to agree to something, giving one person the power to dictate terms isn't helpful.

It's how RPGs work. One person is the world and everyone except the PCs. One person generally decides what plot points will be used next and preps the adventures that involve them. Multiple GMs can work, but it's usually still really one person acting as GM at a time. If a person gets their abilities from following a code, it will be primarily the GM who decides when they go away because of a broken code.

Moreover, while it is true that you want to agree to a broad tone for a campaign, there's generally plenty of room for there to be multiple notions of "Good" while telling the same type of story.

Of course. I've already said many times that alignments are broad categories. D&D has at least three flavors of good built into the rules.

No, they aren't. "Good" isn't a "useful shorthand", because it's too vague. "Good" just means "things that are right". It doesn't represent any particular set of things that could be considered right, and as such is not useful as shorthand. You can define it, and then use it as shorthand, but at that point it's no better than any other term.

It's distinct enough to be useful but vague enough to not be a straightjacket, and there are lists of what is considered good and evil in many versions of D&D. It works better than labelling them after primary colors or something, something that wouldn't be descriptive at all.

First: what's wrong with just having your code be backstory fluff?

A code of behavior isn't actually a code of behavior if you don't attempt to follow it. If it never comes up in game and is just part of your backstory ("fluff") it isn't really something that guides your character's behavior, is it?

Second: that doesn't require that your GM have any say in what your code is.

No, I meant more that you have to have a mutual understanding of what it is, which requires GM input. It's not so the GM can have gotcha moments, it is so the GM can engage with the player and make meaningful conflicts and stories for him to encounter. Players tend to like it when their backstory becomes important.

Why nine categories? Why not six categories or fifteen categories? Why "Good/Evil" and "Law/Chaos"? Why not "Fire/Water" and "Earth/Air"? You're performing a slight of hand here. You're saying "it's good to have categories that provide guides to behavior", then claiming that this makes D&D's alignment system desirable. But it doesn't. It just means that some system for doing that is useful. What you have to do is demonstrate why Good/Evil and Law/Chaos makes a better alignment system than Planar Alignment or Philosophical Alignment or Organizational Alignment or Color Wheel Alignment.

No slight of hand intended. Yes, you may indeed say that my arguments merely say that some alignment system is desirable or at least useful for the sorts of stories that we often tell with RPGs, and that it doesn't have to be the nine alignment system used by D&D. But it is the system we've mostly been talking about.
If I argued at length about the system used in The One Ring most people wouldn't a) know what I'm talking about, and b) it is a system that is intended for a much more narrow application than D&D's, being designed with a specific campaign world in mind.
Using moral terms also makes more sense than something like Air/Earth/Fire/Water, because you can draw real-world associations to help guide what should go in each alignment. Legend of the Five Rings uses the Five elemental Rings as groups for character traits, and it can take some time for new players to remember that for instance Strength goes under Water while Intelligence goes under Fire.
Also, as I said earlier, it's product identity for D&D. Different systems have been tried, especially in 4th edition, and the fans seem to like the nine alignment version best.

Alignments are factions, and there's no particular reason to insist that your world has exactly nine factions (or exactly four factions or exactly sixty seven factions).

Alignments are not factions.

This is not to say that groups of similarly aligned creatures 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 as the latter would make common cause against the lawful good men.

Compatible moral philosophies <> natural allies, except when faced with a greater threat that is less compatible.

"Good" is simply not a useful name for a faction, because every faction is going to declare itself to be "Good", since that's how people use the word.

You're right, if alignments were just faction names it would not be useful to label one "good". Witness all the "democratic republics" in the world that are anything but.
But alignments in D&D are not merely factions. They are game terms describing the game reality and allowing other bits of game rules to key off of them, and not merely in-game opinions or names. They are as real as hit points or armor class.

[NigelWalmsley]

If a person gets their abilities from following a code, it will be primarily the GM who decides when they go away because of a broken code.

And why does this require the DM to define "Good"? How much adjudication does a restriction like "don't use poison" actually need? It's not like there's some deep philosophical debate about what things count as poisons.

It's distinct enough to be useful but vague enough to not be a straightjacket, and there are lists of what is considered good and evil in many versions of D&D. It works better than labelling them after primary colors or something, something that wouldn't be descriptive at all.

Neither is alignment. "Good" just means "things we like". "Red" is better precisely because it has no inherent meaning. When you talk about "Good", people make assumptions, and those assumptions lead to conflict. When you talk about "Red", people don't make any assumptions, because no one in the real world identifies as "morally Red". An alignment system should either be entirely made up so you can define things as convenient (e.g. Color Wheel Alignment, Planar Alignment) or should use terms with definitions that can be generally agreed upon as having specific meaning (e.g. Philosophical Alignment). D&D's current system lives in an awkward middle ground where it evokes general assumptions without providing enough specific information to avoid conflicts.

A code of behavior isn't actually a code of behavior if you don't attempt to follow it. If it never comes up in game and is just part of your backstory ("fluff") it isn't really something that guides your character's behavior, is it?

Sure it is. You probably think that murder is bad. This view guides your behavior. But you've probably never been in a situation where you were tempted to violate your "don't murder people" code of behavior. You certainly can have a game where the Paladin has to make difficult moral choices and grapple with her code. But you can also have a game where the Paladin just kicks demon butt and takes demon names. Both of those are acceptable games, just as both the game where the demon the Warlock made a pact with for power tries to collect and the game where that demon never shows up are acceptable games.

No slight of hand intended. Yes, you may indeed say that my arguments merely say that some alignment system is desirable or at least useful for the sorts of stories that we often tell with RPGs, and that it doesn't have to be the nine alignment system used by D&D. But it is the system we've mostly been talking about.

Yes, that is the system you have been defending and other people have been criticizing. The notion that it is not ideal and should be replaced by something else is what we have been talking about.

Also, as I said earlier, it's product identity for D&D. Different systems have been tried, especially in 4th edition, and the fans seem to like the nine alignment version best.

Which is why 5e has one of the strongest and most mechanically-relevant versions of alignment ever released. Wait, no, opposite. To say nothing of the suspect logic of looking at the massive changes between editions and asserting that this thing you really like is super definitely the reason why those editions did well or poorly. That's a bad argument when people make it about balance, and it's a bad argument when you make it about alignment.

Alignments are not factions.

Distinction without a difference. A shared moral philosophy may not be a political alliance, but it is substantively similar in that it is expected to predict behavior. Moreover, the degree to which you claim that hairs are split within alignments instead of between them is the degree to which you implicitly accept that alignment is not actually sufficient for solving the problems you are using it for, and should therefore be removed to make room for a system that is.

They are game terms describing the game reality and allowing other bits of game rules to key off of them, and not merely in-game opinions or names. They are as real as hit points or armor class.

Again, Anal Circumference. Your argument is, fundamentally, circular. Alignment is important because it has mechanics associated with it, so we should have mechanics that key off alignment because it is important. But what if alignment wasn't important? What if Paladins swore to uphold personal ideals, rather than the abstract notion of Goodness? What if things hurt demons more because they were anti-demon, rather than because they were anti-"everyone who isn't whatever moral system your DM likes"?

[sdevdutt41]

I've never yet had anyone give me a unique and meaningful reason for alignment to exist beyond "it's part of the brand." In an old interview I watched shortly after the 5e release even the developers of 5e admitted that the only thing keeping Alignment in the system was its association with the D&D brand making it obligatory. Hence why alignment has NO mechanical effect in 5e.

[Democratus]

My argument isn't that alignment gets used poorly sometimes. It's that the BEST examples of alignment use are 0% better than what I achieve without using it at all, and it's worst examples are infinitely worse. So with that spread, what on earth would compel me to use it?

Wow.

This presumes that:
1) You know every use of alignment that has ever existed at any table.
2) Your games are somehow better than every other game on earth that uses alignment

Forgive me if the grain of salt needed with your "argument" exceeds my encumbrance rating.

[Xervous]

____ can be used to frame a game. Some people enjoy it, I personally don’t, I wouldn’t run it because it doesn’t let me deliver the sort of experience I typically aim for but I’m not going to liken it to FATAL or RaHoWa.

I can place alignment in there, among other things, niche but not necessary. If D&D continues striving to be fast food gaming for the masses I don’t see a path forward that brings alignment back to higher importance.

[Jason]

I must admit that I am a bit surprised by the vehemence of the arguments I'm seeing against the alignment system. I begin to wonder if it's simply an insistence that to label any behavior good or evil, even in a role-playing game involving entirely fictional people, is itself (somewhat paradoxically) evil?

It seems similar to the idea I find equally baffling that to say entirely fictional orcs in this game I play are "usually evil" will somehow lead an increase in real-life racism.


I have yet to see any good argument for why alignment should be ditched.

"It would be simpler" doesn't cut it. It is already simpler to have only nine categories rather than one for each and every NPC encountered by the players. I suppose you could make an argument for reducing the number of alignments to seven or five or even three, but nobody seems to be arguing that.

"It wouldn't give players another excuse to play murder hobos" doesn't make the grade either. The type of players who play murder-hobos don't screen everyone they meet with detect evil before killing them. Alignment is largely irrelevant to such players.

"The labels are imprecise" is kind of missing the point of having broad categories, and I have no problem labelling things like murder and slavery "evil" in the real world, let alone in an RPG.

"I don't want the DM deciding what is good and evil" seems like another way of saying "I don't want the DM to restrict my character's behavior." Obviously there are DMs who restrict player character behavior too much, but that's not due to the alignment system. Removing the alignment system will not make such people into good DMs. And saying "remove alignment so no DM can use it to abuse a player," is like saying "hammers can be used to hit people on the head, so no one should be allowed to have hammers in their toolbox."

"You can do fine without it." Well, you can play fine games without character classes, attributes that go from 3-18, armor classes, pseudo-Vancian magic, hit points, etc. But then you won't really be playing D&D anymore, will you? People often play D&D because they like those things, and it's remained if not the then one of the most popular RPGs since its creation in part because of them.

Did I miss any other arguments?

[NigelWalmsley]

"Fast food gaming" doesn't really have much to do with it. 4e was trying to move away from alignment too. The reality is that it's been over a decade since D&D made alignment a major party of the game. With all the MTG crossovers they're doing, I wouldn't be surprised if 6e just goes straight to Color Wheel Alignment.

1) You know every use of alignment that has ever existed at any table.

It seems fairly obvious he's talking about the examples he's seen. Rather than expressing incredulity, could you try to provide an example you think rebuts his point?

[ImNotTrevor]

Wow.

This presumes that:
1) You know every use of alignment that has ever existed at any table.
2) Your games are somehow better than every other game on earth that uses alignment

Forgive me if the grain of salt needed with your "argument" exceeds my encumbrance rating.

If you read more into it than what I'm saying, it sure would seem that way. I might be hyperbolic in my presentation (slightly) but the most ideal situation for alignment I've ever seen DESCRIBED that was within realistic bounds has never sounded any better than what I ACTUALLY achieve without it.

And the worst that I've seen and experienced of the ways alignment can chuck a wrench in the works are much worse than what I achieve without it.

So, again, if I've never had an advantage of alignment described to me that sounded like something I don't already achieve without it, and I have seen and heard the ways alignment can make stuff worse in a game, why would I use it?

The value proposition is "alignment does what you already do without it, and has a chance of creating messes you don't currently deal with" vs. "Playing without alignment does exactly what you're already doing with no new problems."

HMMMMM.
I WONDER WHICH ONE I'LL TAKE.

Would you rather cook your food in a Microwave, or a Microwave with a 5% chance of turning your food rancid, which would you choose to use?

That's the basic value proposition.

NOTE:
None of this is a statement on overall campaign quality unless you're obviously trying to paint me as a hyper-arrogant spanner. I'm only talking about the things ALIGNMENT SPECIFICALLY ACHIEVES. If you really think Alignment is THE SOLE DIFFERENCE between a poorly run alignment-free campaign and a well-run alignment-using campaign, I can't help you.

[ImNotTrevor]

Did I miss any other arguments?

"Alignment is an active stumbling block for new players trying to get a grip on roleplaying."
In my experience with introducing new players I find that they do much better in systems/campaigns where alignment is minimized or removed. They stop worrying about Alignment's OBVIOUSLY PRESCRIPTIVE NATURE as found in 3.5 and just come up with a character they find interesting without needing to either:
1. Do as 3.5 demands and make a personality for their character that fits the nebulous and unclear alignment boundaries as required for their class. (A very common concern for my new players back in 3.5, barely a concern at all in 5e, not a concern EVER when I just skip it.)

2. Retroactively interpret their character into a box that they're not certain how important it is unless the DM tells them, and does so accurately. (This is more common in 5e, but now I just skip it entirely and none of my newbies notice and if they do I just say "I don't use that, it's not needed.")


"You can't have alignment arguments or alignment drama if there is no alignment."
Self-explanatory.

"Alignment rarely achieves its own goals and often hinders itself in achieving them."

Alignment is meant to be a sort of "unifying moral compass" for the system and setting, but it is inconsistent and often contradictory. Alignment paradoxes are common, and since part of declaring one side as "good guys" is that the audience (players) need to buy into that, alignment can sometimes shoot itself in a foot and destroy its own verisimilitude and buy-in.

"On top of the above, Alignment doesn't bring anything genuinely unique to the table that offsets its downsides."
Kinda what it says on the tin.

"Deleting alignment from the books would save a LOT of paper, and its effect on the game would be negligible. It's very eco-friendly."
Hurr hurr.

These are the reasons why I don't use it, based on experiencing it both ways.
I'm not gonna come to your house and rip out the pages from your book, nor will I call the Fun Police and have you locked up. But I don't have to do either of those things to be convinced that most games would be, at best, improved by alignment's removal or, at worst, largely unaffected by alignment's removal.

I think the D&D guys picked the best available middle ground:
D&D still *technically* has alignment. It's iconic, so it's there...
But it's as relevant to the mechanics as hair color.

I think that's an acceptable state. I just choose to take that next step and pretend it doesn't exist at all.

[Jason]

"Alignment is an active stumbling block for new players trying to get a grip on roleplaying."

Mmmm, maybe some people would object to it. But I would think that there are plenty of other stumbling blocks for new players in D&D. Understanding player jargon is probably the biggest one. I don't see a reason to single out alignment as a particularly significant stumbling block compared to other parts of D&D. I've had more people object to how the magic system works ("why do I forget my spells when I cast them?"). To me, archetypical things like classes and alignment ("we're the good guys - it says so right on our character sheet") seem more helpful than harmful in acclimating new players.

"You can't have alignment arguments or alignment drama if there is no alignment."
Self-explanatory.

A possible point. But won't the people who like to argue about alignment just argue about whatever replaces it, or some other game mechanic they have a problem with? Players spending their time getting into arguments seems the problem there, not alignment specifically.

"Alignment rarely achieves its own goals and often hinders itself in achieving them."
Alignment is meant to be a sort of "unifying moral compass" for the system and setting, but it is inconsistent and often contradictory. Alignment paradoxes are common, and since part of declaring one side as "good guys" is that the audience (players) need to buy into that, alignment can sometimes shoot itself in a foot and destroy its own verisimilitude and buy-in.

I don't think alignment is meant to be a "unifying moral compass". It's meant to be a set of nine drawers you can organize things like creatures in for easy reference. They give you something to go on when the PCs unexpectedly decide to talk to the monster you thought they were just going to kill out of hand.
I don't find alignment paradoxes to be at all common in my games either. If what you mean by "alignment paradox" is what I think you mean, that is.

"On top of the above, Alignment doesn't bring anything genuinely unique to the table that offsets its downsides."

That seems to be your personal judgement, not an argument.

"Deleting alignment from the books would save a LOT of paper, and its effect on the game would be negligible. It's very eco-friendly."
Hurr hurr.

Yeah, okay. To take the idea seriously for a moment, you might save 3-4 pages in the PHB and DMG. You wouldn't save many pages anywhere else, because alignment is only one shared line in most monster entries.

These are the reasons why I don't use it, based on experiencing it both ways.
I'm not gonna come to your house and rip out the pages from your book, nor will I call the Fun Police and have you locked up. But I don't have to do either of those things to be convinced that most games would be, at best, improved by alignment's removal or, at worst, largely unaffected by alignment's removal.

Fair enough. You game your way and I'll game mine. The way 5th edition treats it you certainly can just ignore it with little problem, especially if you're only playing your own home-brew adventures.

[Xervous]

"Fast food gaming" doesn't really have much to do with it. 4e was trying to move away from alignment too. The reality is that it's been over a decade since D&D made alignment a major party of the game. With all the MTG crossovers they're doing, I wouldn't be surprised if 6e just goes straight to Color Wheel Alignment.



It seems fairly obvious he's talking about the examples he's seen. Rather than expressing incredulity, could you try to provide an example you think rebuts his point?

4e was an adjustment driven by imperfect market analysis. They asked what the product should do rather than inquiring about the problem that needed solving. 4e’s alignment implementation was strangely more choked and rigid. I wonder what writing prompts the developers worked off of to produce that single axis.

5e on the other hand clearly did its research and struck broad, general appeal and mass consumption. Less rules and rigidity everywhere, be it alignment, skills, or the upcoming race customization. For a game that wants to sell itself, committing to niche functionality like alignment or Shadowrun essence loss writes your system into a smaller box. Can’t very well claim to be a broad, versatile system if you’re baking in such lore assumptions.

[Lord Raziere]

"Fast food gaming" doesn't really have much to do with it. 4e was trying to move away from alignment too. The reality is that it's been over a decade since D&D made alignment a major party of the game. With all the MTG crossovers they're doing, I wouldn't be surprised if 6e just goes straight to Color Wheel Alignment.

And if it does, I wouldn't mind it all that much.

the color wheel isn't linear, it provides more interesting conflicts than just two things and given how people tend to naturally think they will gravitate towards White being good and Black being evil anyways. even though none of the colors are actually technically any alignment. Red, Blue and Green make for more interesting sides than Neutral anyways, because you actually know what those three value and thus what they are likely to set as goals, rather than being this weird category that is "I'm meh on everything" "I'm meh but I like things orderly" or "I'm unpredictable".

like if someone is Neutral? who cares, they're a null. but someone is Red color? oh boy you got SPICE! That means this person is emotional, impulsive. it means they got enemies in Blue and White that have nothing to do with morality. there is potential to tell a story from that, in more ways than one. it means that they can make mistakes from not thinking things through, it means they got two enemies that could disagree on how to deal with them due to their own philosophies, things like that. best of all, White isn't actually good and Black isn't actually evil-there is potential for both of those colors to have internal conflicts over expressing their respective philosophies in a moderate sane way that everyone can live with or in extreme ways that no one can.

[RedMage125]

ImNotTrevor, you seem to have taken a lot of what I was saying to NigelWalmsley, and acted liek I was responding to YOU. And you're real quick to get all defensive.

Do you....
Do you not know why lawyers exist?
Do you not know why judges exist?
If something as vitally important as LAWS don't always have crystal clear interpretations, what on Earth makes you think the way you read the (very vague) RAW on alignment is *the objectively correct interpretation?*

That's some incredible confidence, my guy.

Again, I was talking to nigel, and his claim that "different sources claim alignment mean different things". When the RAW are actually all pretty consistent. There's been some changes as far as what a few specific alignments mean over the years*, but what Alignment itself is hasn't changed all that much.

*2e, for example, True Neutral had to "always side with the underdog, even if it means switching sides in the middle of a battle". And Chaotic Neutral was "literally crazy. Just as likely to jump off a bridge as cross is". These have now changed drastically.

Remember that here you're claiming alignment is DESCRIPTIVE and NOT PRESCRIPTIVE.
Remember this sword, because you kill your own point with it below.

No, I am quite consistent, as I will illustrate below.

I just toss the whole thing out the window and save my players on the reading.

What you do based on your preferences is fine for your group. But that's entirely non-sequitur to the point, which was about what Nigel said about "the glosses individual players have produced to try to make things work in their games."

You don't like alignment. Your opinion has been noted. Do you have anything of substance to SAY about it?

I do agree with this. Hence why I always say "Alignment is for Lame-O's and I don't care about it" when talking to my players about it.

Again, your opinion has been noted.

Remember that sword? Note that A SIGNIFICANT PORTION of Alignment mechanics are DEEPLY PRESCRIPTIVE. Your character MUST behave this way or they are WRONG and GET PUNISHED.

Alignment is descriptive... until it isn't. You can't have it both ways. You cannot say "Alignment only describes your character" on one hand and on the other say "and if you do something I consider out-of-alignment you will get punished."

Alignment is very much prescriptive. It might be prescriptive in a way you agree with, but it's still prescriptive.

LMAO.

Literally NOTHING you have said has anything to do with alignment being "prescriptive".

For alignment to be "prescriptive" it would mean: "Your alignment is X, therefore you cannot take Y action". That is what is means for something to PRESCRIBE.

Saying "there is a consequence for taking Y action" does not mean you cannot take it. Ergo, your entire claim is null and void.

FURTHERMORE, you are WAY off-base in regards to what I was even saying with the quote you responded to. A being with an Evil alignment takes more damage from a Holy sword (and would have 2 negative levels when trying to wield it). They can be detected with spells. They are affected differently by the various X Word spells, and so on. Those are mechanics that have impact, and why the appellations of "good/evil/etc" are not so arbitrary and interchangeable that they could be exchanged for "choleric" or "green".

ALSO, to a point made below:
You do realize this argument is basically "alignment is useful when you use a system that forces it to be useful." Like... DUH. We're talking in general, my guy.

No, the point is "alignment is neither as restrictive nor as arbitrary as [Nigel's] points claim it is".

Would putting Alignment into another system improve that system? 99% of the time, no.

What does that have to do with anything? I haven't made any claim to that extent, {Scrubbed}

That's the key difference we're talking about.

WE weren't talking about anything.

I'm hella snide by default so you can't really take it personal in my case.

Once again, I was responding to Nigel, not you.

{Scrubbed}


[QUOTE=ImNotTrevor;24791223]
I wouldn't say that alignment is USELESS. Just... not as good at accomplishing its own goals as most other alternatives to it.

I mean, your counterargument, as I said, is "in systems where alignment is forced to be important, it's important."

No, you actually completely missed the thrust of my argument, namely because you took everything I was saying to Nigel about his claims as if I had said it to you.

But if I sit down to play a game of 5e D&D, the question nobody can answer is:
WHAT GOES SO HORRIBLY WRONG IF I ENTIRELY IGNORE THE EXISTENCE OF ALIGNMENT AS A FORMAL SYSTEM?

Nobody can give me a half decent answer. Because the FACT is that... nothing changes, except one Pixie ability stops working. [Quick change: it now detects hostile intent instead of alignment. Done.]

Nothing. And I quite like 5e. They delivered on their promise that alignment mechanics would be be musch less deeply-ingrained and impactful than they were in 3e.

My point has never been "you need to change your OPINION on alignment", and if you think it was, it's because the chip on your shoulder is too deeply embedded that any time you face a counter argument, your only response is to assume I am tell you "you're playing wrong".

Fact is, I believe D&D thrives on house rules and customization. The only "wrong way to play" is a manner in which the people at your table are not having fun.

HOWEVER, when discussing the rules on the forum, all house rules are impossible to account for. Ergo, none of them are accounted for (excepting threads specifically for addressing such). Therefore for the purposes of discussion only what is in the RAW is "true" or "fact". Any of us can verify cited sources to double-check the validity of any argument couched as "fact".

And Nigel frequently couches his statements as "fact". Like I closed my post with, his post could be paraphrased as "given that alignment is useless, they could have used any old words instead of 'good/evil/etc'". But will not accept that his "given" is just his opinion, and believes he is stating facts, ones with a value judgement, no less. Because while you seem to accept that some people like alignment and derive value from it, Nigel actually insists his way is better for everyone.

Neutral is a choice, but it's not a side. If you're not proposing some actionable alternative to "Law v Chaos" or "Good v Evil", it's still a binary. But as soon as you do propose an alternative, the system collapses.

For your benefit, I have bolded your incorrect statements.

There are alignments which are Neutral on both "Good/Evil" axis and "Law/Chaos" axis. There are entire PLANES on the Great Wheel that are Neutral with respect to those. There's even one Outer Plane that is Neutral with respect to ALL of them.

So, once again, since you refused to respond:
The prefix "bi" means "two". Since there is a wide, and more importantly, distinct area of result between Good and Evil, or between Law and Chaos, the choice is not "binary", it is therefore "ternary".

So this is more of a linguistic nitpick, but you are wrong.

At best, alignment shoves every option that isn't "whatever you think Chaos means" or "whatever you think Law means" into a single bucket it treats as interchangeable. At worst, it ignores those distinctions entirely.

Or, you know...third option...you're wrong.

Neutral isn't "interchangeable"...it is neither Lawful nor Chaotic.

RedMage does that a lot. He seems to think "your argument is not a fact" is a rebuttal to an argument, instead of something that is obvious to everyone having the argument. As a result, he gets angry and splutters about "not understanding the difference between your opinion and objective law" and "straw man", but doesn't actually say anything that substantively rebuts the arguments presented.

When you present your opinions as if they were facts, and especially when you either imply or explicitly say that your preference is somehow "superior", or that anyone who uses alignment is somehow "playing on a lower level" than you, you're incredibly offensive. And you take n accountability for how you come across.

And I actually DO "substantially rebut the arguments presented". In our last thread, I even cited RAW sources that explicitly say your statements were incorrect. Furthermore, showcasing that everything you said was just a statement of preference, and is not fact is, in fact a rebuttal.

Your failure to present a well-supported case with facts and citations is not you being "persecuted" by me. And my continual highlighting OF that failure is not a "failure to rebut" what you call "arguments".

{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

{Scrubbed}

[ImNotTrevor]

Mmmm, maybe some people would object to it. But I would think that there are plenty of other stumbling blocks for new players in D&D. Understanding player jargon is probably the biggest one. I don't see a reason to single out alignment as a particularly significant stumbling block compared to other parts of D&D. I've had more people object to how the magic system works ("why do I forget my spells when I cast them?"). To me, archetypical things like classes and alignment ("we're the good guys - it says so right on our character sheet") seem more helpful than harmful in acclimating new players.

Except you have to explain what alignment is and what it means, and when you describe what it is and what it means they take it prescriptively (most things in D&D are, so I can't blame them, and if you're still playing 3.5 it absolutely IS prescriptive.) And now they feel a need to BE CHAOTIC GOOD rather than BE ILDAR GREENLEAF. If I skip alignment, they have no problems. And I have seen no increased benefit to having NG on a sheet above and beyond saying "You guys will be playing as heroic adventurers." That usually sets that up for everyone at once.

A possible point. But won't the people who like to argue about alignment just argue about whatever replaces it, or some other game mechanic they have a problem with? Players spending their time getting into arguments seems the problem there, not alignment specifically.

Who said I replace alignment? I just get rid of it.

And in my experience, the ones arguing about alignment stuff are perfectly fine once I remove it.

I don't think alignment is meant to be a "unifying moral compass". It's meant to be a set of nine drawers you can organize things like creatures in for easy reference. They give you something to go on when the PCs unexpectedly decide to talk to the monster you thought they were just going to kill out of hand.

Organized based on their morals.

Alignment is supposed to say "this is what Good is." It's used to help navigate D&D's morality, like... like one of those... oh, what are they, they point north?

I don't find alignment paradoxes to be at all common in my games either. If what you mean by "alignment paradox" is what I think you mean, that is.

Alignment Paradoxes, Alignment Disagreements, Miscommunications about alignment, stick it all in there.
"Technically, killing a surrendering demon is still Good because Demons are Evil."
"Technically, killing a baby red dragon is still good because it's born evil."

That seems to be your personal judgement, not an argument.

It is certainly a claim no one has ever satifactorily debunked for me.

Yeah, okay. To take the idea seriously for a moment, you might save 3-4 pages in the PHB and DMG. You wouldn't save many pages anywhere else, because alignment is only one shared line in most monster entries.

Assuming we save 3 pages per PHB, and the WOTC report of 12 million new players so far is accurate and let's say 80% of them purchased a PHB, so 9.6 million sold. 3 pages per book is 28,800,00 sheets of paper. In terms of trees, one tree produces around 8,33p sheets of paper. So removing alignment would save 3,456 trees, or 57 acres of healthy forest.

Fair enough. You game your way and I'll game mine. The way 5th edition treats it you certainly can just ignore it with little problem, especially if you're only playing your own home-brew adventures.

I used to ignore it in 3.5, too. Never really made much difference at the table.

But yeah, ULTIMATELY it's a preference thing.

My opinion is still objectively correct tho. :D

[NigelWalmsley]

4e was an adjustment driven by imperfect market analysis. They asked what the product should do rather than inquiring about the problem that needed solving. 4e’s alignment implementation was strangely more choked and rigid. I wonder what writing prompts the developers worked off of to produce that single axis.

4e's linear alignment system was a reaction to the fact that, in practice, people treat Lawful Good as "more Good" than the other Goods and Chaotic Evil as "more Evil" than the other Evils.

[Morty]

4e's linear alignment system was a reaction to the fact that, in practice, people treat Lawful Good as "more Good" than the other Goods and Chaotic Evil as "more Evil" than the other Evils.

Also that the ultimate purpose of alignment is to slap an "EVIL" label on things that it's okay to fight and kill; everything else is just window dressing. It was refreshingly honest in a way, but I'd still rather just not have it.

[Jason]

Except you have to explain what alignment is and what it means, and when you describe what it is and what it means they take it prescriptively (most things in D&D are, so I can't blame them, and if you're still playing 3.5 it absolutely IS prescriptive.) And now they feel a need to BE CHAOTIC GOOD rather than BE ILDAR GREENLEAF. If I skip alignment, they have no problems. And I have seen no increased benefit to having NG on a sheet above and beyond saying "You guys will be playing as heroic adventurers." That usually sets that up for everyone at once.

You have to describe what "fighter" means too, and the same players are just as likely to say "I'm a fighter, I have to fight everything now" as to say "I have to be Chaotic Good rather than be Ildar Greenleaf." I don't really see it as much of an issue.

Alignment Paradoxes, Alignment Disagreements, Miscommunications about alignment, stick it all in there.
"Technically, killing a surrendering demon is still Good because Demons are Evil."
"Technically, killing a baby red dragon is still good because it's born evil."

My solution to such things is pretty simple. "I the DM says killing that surrendering demon while it's helpless is evil, because killing an enemy while they are helpless and trying to surrender is evil. I the DM says that killing a baby dragon is an evil action because it's evil to kill babies (at least the ones that will grow up to be sentient beings)." It's the alignments of the action and the person that is contemplating the action that are important, not the alignment of the target of the action.

Really, I don't see arguments like that very often at all. Much more on internet forums than in actual play. My players leave the orc babies with their mothers, who they have also spared, and accept the surrender of a demon while watching carefully for treachery.

Assuming we save 3 pages per PHB, and the WOTC report of 12 million new players so far is accurate and let's say 80% of them purchased a PHB, so 9.6 million sold. 3 pages per book is 28,800,00 sheets of paper. In terms of trees, one tree produces around 8,33p sheets of paper. So removing alignment would save 3,456 trees, or 57 acres of healthy forest.

80% of the players purchase a PHB? I don't think so. Not in this digital age. I'm old-school, so I loves me some real books, but my players hardly ever pull out a hardcopy. It's all D&D Beyond on their tablets, laptops, and phones. Not a paper character sheet to be found. They're starting to not even bring real dice to their games, the heretics.

Plus how much of those books is recycled paper?