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  1. - Top - End - #121
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    Default Re: Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

    Quote Originally Posted by Saint-Just View Post
    The point is:
    Um, that quote was a reply to Nifft's reply to you.
    Last edited by OldTrees1; 2021-02-17 at 08:02 PM.

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    Default Re: Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

    Quote Originally Posted by Mastikator View Post
    If that is what alignment is for then you'd be better off with the real thing: religions, pantheons, deities and the rules that followers must obey. Most official D&D settings already have reasonably detailed stuff for that already. In Eberron for example you could simply write down "vassal of the sovereign host (Dol Dorn)" and that would more accurately describe your characters allegiance to cosmic forces, your characters rules of conduct, their values, etc than "chaotic good" ever could.
    Right, but a lot of D&D takes place in homebrew settings.

    The idea of morally-mediated powers is a fairly strong fantasy trope. This takes any number of forms, from being evil causing physical corruption to the power of love directly boosting stats to fairly mundane things like 'Smite Evil.' If a setting is going to have powers with moral mediation, then it needs to have a moral framework in place. 'Smite Evil' is predicated on defining certain things as 'evil.'

    In single-author fiction the author sets up the moral framework and the audience has to accept whatever justifications they provide for such decisions. This is almost certainly never going to match up perfectly and many authors present moral quandaries in the clearest and most generalized way possible to avoid large portions of the audience rejecting their work (reading works from with cultural origins other than your own is a good way to expose yourself to differences in moral judgments of this nature).

    D&D has the problem that the system demands the enforcement of moral systems in order for morality-mediated abilities to function, but the only arbiter is the GM and the players may not agree with the GM's judgment. A system like alignment can be helpful to provide context for how decisions of this nature work - if its clear. Unfortunately alignment isn't clear and tends to just spawn arguments. This isn't unique. Star Wars has this problem in spades. It has a morally mediated power system but everyone is trying to work out light v dark based on a bare handful of examples from the movies to the point that even book length philosophical treatises on the subject often contradict each other.

    Cooperative morality is hard, especially among non-homogenous groups (it's probably worth noting that D&D's original 1970s audience was considerably more homogenous on this subject than the current one, though forum rules prohibit going into why this is so). There is therefore a strong argument that it would probably just be better to not have morally mediated abilities at all, though that does mean giving up on a bunch of traditionally important fantasy story elements.
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    Default Re: Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

    Quote Originally Posted by Mechalich View Post
    There is therefore a strong argument that it would probably just be better to not have morally mediated abilities at all, though that does mean giving up on a bunch of traditionally important fantasy story elements.
    I'd argue that this is the best possible outcome actually.

    the traditionally important fantasy story elements all come from single author fiction, which doesn't work like improvised fantasy roleplay. in single author fiction or SAF, everything is pre-determined and nothing is left up to chance. they have the effects on this or that because the writer writes it that way. There is no need to argue about the morality of it, because the writer just decides it, and it is done. SAF does not have the luxury of not knowing what will happen and rolling for the outcome. it furthermore means the magic is as rare as you need to be, since there is no chance of it not being used, therefore SAF can determine how many times its used and how common it is and such. There the author can achieve the proper effect that such tropes are going for: rare uses of moral magic that shine against the darkness that make it feel special and moral since everything was set it up to make the use feel right in the story.

    improvised fantasy roleplay on the other hand? can't do that. you can't set up a story to that degree, players will ruin it. you can't control how many times its used or anything, therefore to give the players the ability to use such a thing must be carefully considered how. especially since these morally mediated powers are often written as trump cards over evil that basically win you the fight instantly. In SAF, this can be done as a symbol of the characters friendship or of hope or whatever as long as you write it well enough that its believable that got that power within them. in improvised roleplay this wouldn't work, because it would be the GM handing you a "you win" card which wouldn't make the victory feel earned.

    thus the thing has to give you an advantage, but not enough of one to insta-win. Thus you get DnD alignment system where the effects are made relatively commonplace, the classes who use it as just dealing more damage and such, but it still doesn't feel quite the same, and the morality is all over the place. and sure you'll probably never get a 100% replication of the feel of SAF and thus the closest you can get is the next best thing, but at the same time you have to acknowledge when something is too much of a hassle to be worth the trouble of systematizing it: morality can be ambiguous, murky and mysterious and only in certain times does it become stark black and white. the times it does in SAF are often dramatic, epic moments, it is when the sword of evils bane is used on the final villain or when the big holy beam is fired, and not much sooner. often lesser evils are dispatched through more normal means. sure you can use the holy energy to defeat the minions but you don't often see it in SAF.

    I mean there is an example of holy energy being used regularly in say, Jojo's bizarre adventure. in the first two seasons, the protagonists weapon of choice was Hamon to kill the evil vampires. the protagonists could come up with quite a few tricks with it, its usage was explored as much one could reasonably expect, probably one the best examples of holy energy being used in fiction especially in a way PCs could use it tactically and.....then it was mostly dropped in the third saga for Stands, a much more flexible power open to more plots and ways of depicting villainy as well as more ways of depicting the abilities of the hero. because lets face it: Hamon was real specialized. Sure it can kill the undead real good, but it wasn't really good for anything else other than enhancing your own body with a few tricks.

    so if you continue to insist upon using holy energy....well don't be surprised if all your enemies end up being demons or undead without much variation or potential for expansion beyond that. and there is only so many times you can play Violent Exorcist before it gets old. assuming one even wants to play that in the first place.
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  4. - Top - End - #124
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    Default Re: Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Raziere View Post
    I'd argue that this is the best possible outcome actually.
    I broadly agree, but I would say there is a downside in terms of flavor, especially with regard to powers.

    For example, take The Force, from Star Wars versus Biotics, from Mass Effect. This is a particularly useful example because Mass Effect is a blatant Star Wars rip-off and game mechanically Biotics do all the same things Star Wars Force Power do just stripped of the moral component.

    Thing is, Biotics are boring. The games tried to talk about biotic oppression and implant-associated difficulty and element zero and stuff and no one cared. No biotic plotline had any of the staying power of Quarians/Geth or the Genophage or the Rachni or anything. It was just a flavor of powers that some characters had.

    The Force is many things, and its morality is controversial as it gets, but the very fact that the fandom wars over it so hard it a testament to how much people are interested and care.

    So it's a matter of trade-offs. Are the additional hooks and flavors worth it despite the arguments that will almost inevitably accrue? In the context of D&D, which is basically a dungeon-crawler engine, I'd argue that no, it definitely isn't, especially as the mechanics mostly induce players to try and keep their characters some specific alignment in order to avoid losing powers rather than actually play their characters organically. But I can also see a game where it would make sense to have. As mentioned, 'holy' powers make sense if there's explicitly unholy enemies, and if all the common enemies are like that, then there probably should be some kind of morality based abilities.
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    Default Re: Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

    "It is for the best that we tell players they cannot play iconic archetypes of high fantasy in a high fantasy game because..." ...what, again?
    Last edited by Segev; 2021-02-18 at 12:54 AM.

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    Default Re: Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    "It is for the best that we tell players they cannot play iconic archetypes of high fantasy in a high fantasy game because..." ...what, again?
    What not?

    Archetypes are there to be deviated from so that real characters can be made. if every character was the same, we wouldn't be playing people with different names, but constantly just playing Lancelot, Merlin, Robin Hood, Legolas, Frodo and Gimli.

    I am not to repeat that which has already been made. Why should I?
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  7. - Top - End - #127
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    Default Re: Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    "It is for the best that we tell players they cannot play iconic archetypes of high fantasy in a high fantasy game because..." ...what, again?
    I think they are suggesting moving those mechanics from the books into the homebrew. That is not quite the same as telling the players they cannot. If the morally mediated abilities were removed from the base game (5E did a lot of that) then groups could still homebrew extra mechanics and add them. So it is not "they cannot play" and more "some assembly and innovation required".

    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Raziere View Post
    What not?

    Archetypes are there to be deviated from so that real characters can be made. if every character was the same, we wouldn't be playing people with different names, but constantly just playing Lancelot, Merlin, Robin Hood, Legolas, Frodo and Gimli.

    I am not to repeat that which has already been made. Why should I?
    I believe Segev is using archetype to describe a broader category than you are using it. For scale in an amoral context consider the archer archetype rather than the Robin Hood archetype.



    I apologize if I misread either post, I just thought I saw something that could be clairified.
    Last edited by OldTrees1; 2021-02-18 at 01:29 AM.

  8. - Top - End - #128
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    Default Re: Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    "It is for the best that we tell players they cannot play iconic archetypes of high fantasy in a high fantasy game because..." ...what, again?
    Relatively few iconic high fantasy archetypes actually have morally mediated powers actually, especially in modern series. They are rare even among D&D classes. Out of all the major classes only the Cleric and the Paladin have explicit moral components (the Ranger and Druid have 'adherence to nature' as a requirement, but this need not contain an ethical association). Cleric and Paladin type characters in high fantasy are actually quite rare. Explicitly channeling divine power is actually very unusual and generally confined to series that are ruminating heavily on the concept of divinity itself. Most of D&D's major inspiration sources don't have anything resembling clerical magic at all.

    Iconic paladins are mostly limited to a handful of characters appearing in Arthurian romance or The Song of Roland. Iconic clerics - not iconic healers, which can be entirely non-religious in derivation - are particularly thin on the ground, especially ones who are actually channeling legitimate divine power and authority and not just some sort of ambient energy source that has in-universe religious connotations but is revealed by the author to be nothing of the sort.

    Replacing 'cleric' with 'white mage' is a super-easy change that removes a whole lot of troubling moral-mediation with functionally no archetypical cost. Approximately a zillion MMOs already do this with no trouble. Paladin's a little trickier, but that's partly because there's overlap with the Monk class in the 'Ki-empowered' warrior department.

    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1
    I think they are suggesting moving those mechanics from the books into the homebrew. That is not quite the same as telling the players they cannot. If the morally mediated abilities were removed from the base game (5E did a lot of that) then groups could still homebrew extra mechanics and add them. So it is not "they cannot play" and more "some assembly and innovation required".
    Not necessarily into the homebrew, but into setting-specific mechanics (so yes homebrew when the setting is homebrew). It's a lot easier to add associations to a barren chassis than to try and strip them away and retain the functionality and flavor.

    This applies to alignment too. D&D alignment, in order to work at all properly, means bringing the whole Great Wheel cosmology along for the ride. Good example - Pathfinder had to basically reinvent its own Great Wheel for their setting with new alignment exemplar concepts and everything when product identity got in the way (Proteans instead of Slaadi, etc.). You can't have a moral system in a vacuum, so if you're using alignment you're implicitly accepting a whole lot of stuff about how a given setting functions.
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  9. - Top - End - #129
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    Default Re: Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

    If you want morality based powers, then link the powers themself to specific moral ideals. A bit more like the exalted vow feats work. You don't need some all encompassing alignment system for that. You only have to consider specific behavior when deciding whether a specific power works. Same benefit much less arguments and hassle.

    @Megalich

    As for the cleric archetype i kind of disagree. Sure, in western tradition priests don't use magic because all magic comes from the devil so that is missing from most of the stories and inspirations. But considering anime influences with their quite strong miko archetype and the tendency to interpret all other priests in a similar way there is really no lack of archetypes channeling divine power in contemporary fantasy.


    As for the necessity of the Great Wheel or something similar, Eberron does quite well without it.
    Last edited by Satinavian; 2021-02-18 at 02:23 AM.

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    Default Re: Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

    Quote Originally Posted by Mechalich View Post
    I broadly agree, but I would say there is a downside in terms of flavor, especially with regard to powers.

    For example, take The Force, from Star Wars versus Biotics, from Mass Effect. This is a particularly useful example because Mass Effect is a blatant Star Wars rip-off and game mechanically Biotics do all the same things Star Wars Force Power do just stripped of the moral component.
    Mass Effect is not a particularly original work, but I would disagree that it's a "blatant Star Wars rip-off"; it has certain superficial similarities, of course, by virtue of the broad genre, but also significant differences in tone, philosophy, and worldbuilding. It's relatively harder than Star Wars, though not especially hard in sci-fi overall, and less so as the series went on. Star Wars has a moral conflict intrinsically tied with its physical ones; Mass Effect's physical conflict is essentially amoral, and its ethical dilemmas A) are mostly about an action's effects on others, and B) do not alter the course of the story or what side the protagonist is on. Mass Effect is also a much more familiar universe (at least to the modern American audience) than Star Wars; not only is it set both nearer in space and time to the here and now, but its society is more akin to ours (and explicitly descends from ours).

    Quote Originally Posted by Satinavian View Post
    @Megalich

    As for the cleric archetype i kind of disagree. Sure, in western tradition priests don't use magic because all magic comes from the devil so that is missing from most of the stories and inspirations.
    Touching very lightly on the subject so as to avoid transgressing forum rules, while modern Western literature generally lacks priests with supernatural powers, Western religion is replete with them, and they seem to have been the inspiration for much of the clerical magic.

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    Default Re: Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    1) Miko underwent character development.
    Miko started out as a caricature of bad LG role-playing, and she stayed true to that failure-to-LG until she disqualified herself from the LG afterlife.

    It's true that she underwent character development, but it's not a valid argument in this context because she started out on-screen exhibiting marginal behavior, and she continued with marginal behavior until she ended up crossing a line (or several).

    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    In one very long page Miko tried to solve a complicated ethical dilemma after her world was flipped upside down. She concluded she should do a dramatic change in behavior which makes sense
    That's not a drastic change in her behavior though.

    Her intro was her trying to Smite Evil on Roy.

    She has always "solved" problems by applying violence in dumb ways.

    She was never an actual paragon of Lawful Goodness.

    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    Her wisdom failed her when she tried to find the right response to the situation.
    Her wisdom fails in the same direction with remarkable consistency.

    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    The god's reaction to the change in behavior. I think most would describe early Miko as a moral individual. Not a moral exemplar, but still a moral individual.
    She was one crit away from murdering Roy, at which point she might have Fallen during her intro scene.

    It could be argued that she's been lucky about how her consistently bad behavior hasn't had sufficiently awful consequences until ... well, until it did.


    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    2) It is a large leap to go from "There is a non black non raven" to "Perhaps all ravens are black". If Miko was not LG and did backstab, that is very very weak evidence about whether LG is or is not compatible with backstabbing.
    Miko is absolutely terrible as an example of LG behavior.

    She starts as a satire of LG being played badly, and she ends up falling when her consistently bad behavior lands her sufficiently far down the slippery slope that she's been on for her entire tenure.


    My point is that Miko's actions -- including but not limited to backstabbing -- cannot be used to justify anything about proper LG behavior, because her character absolutely sucked at LG behavior. She started out as a parody of badly done LG, and she ended up far enough over the line that twelve gods showed up to give her twelve middle fingers, and most of those gods don't even have fingers.

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    Default Re: Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

    Quote Originally Posted by Mastikator View Post
    If that is what alignment is for then you'd be better off with the real thing: religions, pantheons, deities and the rules that followers must obey. Most official D&D settings already have reasonably detailed stuff for that already. In Eberron for example you could simply write down "vassal of the sovereign host (Dol Dorn)" and that would more accurately describe your characters allegiance to cosmic forces, your characters rules of conduct, their values, etc than "chaotic good" ever could.
    Yes, of course it's better than alignment. I was refuting the point that it's wrong for a GM to dictate a character's alignment. Or rather, it is wrong for a GM to do it, but it's a logical conclusion of how alignment supposedly works.

    As far as clerics and paladins go, the argument feels academic, because they don't require alignment. 4E and 5E both demonstrate that rather clearly. Clerics have deities, paladins have oaths. Both can define what is expected of them much better than alignment.
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    Default Re: Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

    Quote Originally Posted by Nifft View Post
    Miko started out as a caricature of bad LG role-playing,
    Miko is mostly an example of bad roleplaying. Or more preciely how a particular, far too common way to play LG is extremely disruptive and annoying and should be avoided in a party based game. But there is little to nothing about how this is not LG.

    Other alignments have quite disruptive and annoying ways to be played as well.

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    Default Re: Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

    Quote Originally Posted by Satinavian View Post
    Miko is mostly an example of bad roleplaying. Or more preciely how a particular, far too common way to play LG is extremely disruptive and annoying and should be avoided in a party based game. But there is little to nothing about how this is not LG.

    Other alignments have quite disruptive and annoying ways to be played as well.
    Which you achieve by making those behaviors something to aspire to by pemphasizing them in this way. You place these narrow set of behaviors on pedestals, say that a character can only be this or that category or if they do bad MUST be this or that category, and your surprised when the common response is not balanced healthy behavior, but a caricature?

    That is not how you present or teach morality. morality requires a lot of fine balancing, flexibility and moderation, not exaggeration of singular or narrow traits. No matter black and white the setting is or how grey, a good person must be well-rounded or they are not good.
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    Default Re: Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

    Quote Originally Posted by Mechalich View Post
    Right, but a lot of D&D takes place in homebrew settings.

    The idea of morally-mediated powers is a fairly strong fantasy trope. This takes any number of forms, from being evil causing physical corruption to the power of love directly boosting stats to fairly mundane things like 'Smite Evil.' If a setting is going to have powers with moral mediation, then it needs to have a moral framework in place. 'Smite Evil' is predicated on defining certain things as 'evil.'

    In single-author fiction the author sets up the moral framework and the audience has to accept whatever justifications they provide for such decisions. This is almost certainly never going to match up perfectly and many authors present moral quandaries in the clearest and most generalized way possible to avoid large portions of the audience rejecting their work (reading works from with cultural origins other than your own is a good way to expose yourself to differences in moral judgments of this nature).

    D&D has the problem that the system demands the enforcement of moral systems in order for morality-mediated abilities to function, but the only arbiter is the GM and the players may not agree with the GM's judgment. A system like alignment can be helpful to provide context for how decisions of this nature work - if its clear. Unfortunately alignment isn't clear and tends to just spawn arguments. This isn't unique. Star Wars has this problem in spades. It has a morally mediated power system but everyone is trying to work out light v dark based on a bare handful of examples from the movies to the point that even book length philosophical treatises on the subject often contradict each other.

    Cooperative morality is hard, especially among non-homogenous groups (it's probably worth noting that D&D's original 1970s audience was considerably more homogenous on this subject than the current one, though forum rules prohibit going into why this is so). There is therefore a strong argument that it would probably just be better to not have morally mediated abilities at all, though that does mean giving up on a bunch of traditionally important fantasy story elements.
    They got rid of "smite evil" and all that junk in 5e. That is a 3.5e specific problem and does not present in other editions.
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    Default Re: Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

    It's not in 4e and 5e. It is, however, present in 2e and 1e.
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    Default Re: Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

    Quote Originally Posted by Satinavian View Post
    But there is little to nothing about how this is not LG.
    You cut off the half of the sentence where that was brought up, and the rest of the post where it's discussed a bit more.

    To re-iterate: she started out paranoid and violent. Her first unmasked action on-screen was an attempt to murder an innocent (Roy). Her violence and paranoia became more disruptive, and finally she succeeded in murdering an innocent (Lord Shojo). That's her character arc: escalation of violent paranoia until she succeeds in performing the sort of [Evil] action which she had been attempting since her introduction.

    "Miko did X" is never a justification for X being LG, because Miko was bad at LG.

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    Default Re: Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

    Quote Originally Posted by Nifft View Post
    "Miko did X" is never a justification for X being LG, because Miko was bad at LG.
    This is literally No True Scots(wo)man.

    When people say that certain behaviour is something that you can trust LG not to perform, then we have example of LG performing them and then it gets dismissed as "she was bad at LG". That even goes back to the earlier point of discussion: bashing people for roleplaying X alignment wrong. I do not mean the eventual fall in-story, but outside discussion of her behaviour well before the fall. Even presuming that people who say it about the character would not have said it to real player who played similarly it still shows the problem of clashing expectations, which is bad between players and worse between a player and DM
    Last edited by Saint-Just; 2021-02-18 at 02:49 PM.

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    Default Re: Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

    Quote Originally Posted by Saint-Just View Post
    This is literally No True Scots(wo)man.
    No, it's really not. The action itself might or might not be compatible with LG -- that's not my objection.

    As an example, there is a 3.5e prestige class which give both Sneak Attack and require you to be Lawful Good -- that edition's version of backstabbing can be LG, and you can support this by showing the class requirements and mechanics.

    But Miko can't be used to justify anything about LG behavior, because Miko was not a good example of LG behavior, and we know this because her behavior resulted in her not being LG.

    Quote Originally Posted by Saint-Just View Post
    When people say that certain behaviour is something that you can trust LG not to perform, then we have example of LG performing them and then it gets dismissed as "she was bad at LG".
    If the sum of your actions disqualify you from a category, then you cannot be used as an exemplar for including those actions in that category.

    Her actions got her kicked out of the Lawful Goodness club.

    Quote Originally Posted by Saint-Just View Post
    That even goes back to the earlier point of discussion: bashing people for roleplaying X alignment wrong. I do not mean the eventual fall in-story, but outside discussion of her behaviour well before the fall.
    Her eventual Fall was in-character given her previous behavior.

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    Default Re: Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

    One of the things with many D&D settings is that Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos are cosmic forces that affects the world in one way or another. The Prime (the world adventurers usually live and go on adventures in) is like a center of the cosmology, and all the major planes are trying to influence it for their own agendas (some which are more benign than others).

    While it's not nescessary for all D&D stories and adventures, Alignment is a representation of where a character falls within the scope of the cosmos. In settings like Planescape, alignment becomes a more important trait.

    Of course it's silly to try to apply Alignment to real world philosophies and thoughts, because our world (as far as we know) aren't part of a cosmos with actual manifestations and planes of existence defining Law/Chaos/Good/Evil. Many D&D settings on the other hand takes place in a world that *does* have that.

    Alignment also touches on representations of a character's "wickedness" or "goodness" in the vein that many myths, fairytales, folklores, and fantasy stories do. Many of those have ideas like "only those of pure heart may open this door", "only the wicked will be burned by these sacred flames", etc. Alignment is an easy representation of where a character falls on the scale there for such stories, and I don't think D&D is wrong for trying to give an easy method to cut to the heart of the matter for these kind of stories. And I think it's wrong to say that people who enjoy this are dumb/wrong/simple/lacking in creativity/other derogatory words. To me it's like saying that people who like to read comics are dumb compared to those who read novels.


    Other systems have touched on similar ideas. Someone mentioned Pendragon's characteristics, which I think works really well for the Arthurian stories and the virtues/flaws of the characters in those kind of stories. Numenera has Tides, which is "totally not Alignment but actually is", but with some differences. L5R has Honor which defines how well your character upholds the ideals of the society.

    I think the most important thing is to find the system you like the best for the stories you and your group wants to play with. Or just don't have any Morality system at all. FFG's Star Wars went the easy way of mostly making it self-policing for the players by letting them choose their own Strength and Weakness that defines their character, and it mostly has no effect on whether they're Dark Side or Light Side.
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    Default Re: Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

    Quote Originally Posted by Saint-Just View Post
    This is literally No True Scots(wo)man.

    When people say that certain behaviour is something that you can trust LG not to perform, then we have example of LG performing them and then it gets dismissed as "she was bad at LG". That even goes back to the earlier point of discussion: bashing people for roleplaying X alignment wrong. I do not mean the eventual fall in-story, but outside discussion of her behaviour well before the fall. Even presuming that people who say it about the character would not have said it to real player who played similarly it still shows the problem of clashing expectations, which is bad between players and worse between a player and DM
    Unfortunately that was specifically an issue with Paladins in the past, because it was the worst possible combination: both proscriptive & descriptive alignment. You had to maintain a LG alignment by choosing the right action, with each action being judged through the lens of "is it LG?" And the DM was the arbiter of if you'd done it right. Unsurprisingly, a huge point of contention.

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    Default Re: Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

    Okay cool but.....

    what if I LIKE playing characters that don't conform to a world's morality system?

    or what if there was a person born into a world that hated its cosmic morality system? Such as Kreia? or someone like her, but not evil if you think she is?

    like say I have a rogue character in DnD who doesn't believe in DnD's morality, who finds a load of nonsense spouted by clerics and paladins or their evil counterparts, seeing them as nothing but nonsensical philosophies put in place to keep them under control, who rejects every label applied to them, who if they are presented with proof that the morality does indeed exist, will do nothing but seek its eradication on both sides of the spectrum so that they can't be controlled by forces they never wanted any part of?

    whose entire character concept is that they have a massive disagreement with the cosmos and isn't willing to accept it as unbreakable?

    like I imagine that kind of person would occur eventually, no matter how improbable the circumstances. I'm not interested in answers like "oh that doesn't happen/the system works anyways" or whatever. I like to see what happens when something is questioned, when something is broken, or goes off the rails. I'm not in this to make people fit into boxes, I'm here to show how people are beyond boxes.
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  23. - Top - End - #143
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    Default Re: Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Raziere View Post
    Okay cool but.....

    what if I LIKE playing characters that don't conform to a world's morality system?

    or what if there was a person born into a world that hated its cosmic morality system? Such as Kreia? or someone like her, but not evil if you think she is?

    like say I have a rogue character in DnD who doesn't believe in DnD's morality, who finds a load of nonsense spouted by clerics and paladins or their evil counterparts, seeing them as nothing but nonsensical philosophies put in place to keep them under control, who rejects every label applied to them, who if they are presented with proof that the morality does indeed exist, will do nothing but seek its eradication on both sides of the spectrum so that they can't be controlled by forces they never wanted any part of?

    whose entire character concept is that they have a massive disagreement with the cosmos and isn't willing to accept it as unbreakable?

    like I imagine that kind of person would occur eventually, no matter how improbable the circumstances. I'm not interested in answers like "oh that doesn't happen/the system works anyways" or whatever. I like to see what happens when something is questioned, when something is broken, or goes off the rails. I'm not in this to make people fit into boxes, I'm here to show how people are beyond boxes.
    That sounds like an interesting and common character trait.

    1) Someone that knowingly (or unknowingly) believes in Moral Error Theory.
    2) Someone that believes morality exists but believes in a different moral theory than is true in that campaign setting.
    3) Someone that believes morality exists when actually Moral Error Theory is correct in that campaign setting.

    Those kind of characters do happen. They effortlessly fit into campaigns and systems. What is your question about them?

    For example, my Lich character mentioned above was using a blue/orange morality (life and death should be balanced and population should be constant). They would similarly disbelieve both the popular moral beliefs about morality and the actual moral theory the campaign setting used.

    Another example is anytime a villain says "good and evil are just fictions".

    Kreia believed will of The Force was not equivalent to, and was conflicting with what she believed was moral in the Star Wars universe. We the readers never learn whether she is right that The Force is not equivalent to moral truth, so I will split it to the 3 possibilities:
    1) The DM chose to have will of the force map 1:1 with moral truth. In this case Kreia is wrong but an interesting character to play as they explore a counter argument despite being ultimately incorrect.
    2) The DM is amazed that Kreia guessed correctly. They had set it up where The Will of the Force was not the moral truth despite popular belief.
    3) The DM chose to have them both be wrong. Kreia guessed correctly that The Will of the Force was not the moral truth, but does not arrive at an accurate answer.
    Last edited by OldTrees1; 2021-02-18 at 06:52 PM.

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    Default Re: Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    That sounds like an interesting and common character trait.

    1) Someone that knowingly (or unknowingly) believes in Moral Error Theory.
    2) Someone that believes morality exists but believes in a different moral theory than is true in that campaign setting.
    3) Someone that believes morality exists when actually Moral Error Theory is correct in that campaign setting.

    Those kind of characters do happen. They effortlessly fit into campaigns and systems. What is your question about them?

    For example, my Lich character mentioned above was using a blue/orange morality (life and death should be balanced and population should be constant). They would similarly disbelieve both the popular moral beliefs about morality and the actual moral theory the campaign setting used.

    Another example is anytime a villain says "good and evil are just fictions".

    Kreia believed will of The Force was not equivalent to, and was conflicting with what she believed was moral in the Star Wars universe. We the readers never learn whether she is right that The Force is not equivalent to moral truth, so I will split it to the 3 possibilities:
    1) The DM chose to have will of the force map 1:1 with moral truth. In this case Kreia is wrong but an interesting character to play as they explore a counter argument despite being ultimately incorrect.
    2) The DM is amazed that Kreia guessed correctly. They had set it up where The Will of the Force was not the moral truth despite popular belief.
    3) The DM chose to have them both be wrong. Kreia guessed correctly that The Will of the Force was not the moral truth, but does not arrive at an accurate answer.
    Yes but how do people handle such a concept? I'd assume that if people really want the moral system to apply so much they'd disallow such a concept as a matter of course from an archetypical story about good and evil and see such a concept as only detracting or interfering with it by questioning the morality beneath, which I'm all about, so I don't see why anyone would see it as worth the inclusion.
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    Default Re: Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Raziere View Post
    Okay cool but.....

    what if I LIKE playing characters that don't conform to a world's morality system?

    or what if there was a person born into a world that hated its cosmic morality system? Such as Kreia? or someone like her, but not evil if you think she is?

    like say I have a rogue character in DnD who doesn't believe in DnD's morality, who finds a load of nonsense spouted by clerics and paladins or their evil counterparts, seeing them as nothing but nonsensical philosophies put in place to keep them under control, who rejects every label applied to them, who if they are presented with proof that the morality does indeed exist, will do nothing but seek its eradication on both sides of the spectrum so that they can't be controlled by forces they never wanted any part of?

    whose entire character concept is that they have a massive disagreement with the cosmos and isn't willing to accept it as unbreakable?

    like I imagine that kind of person would occur eventually, no matter how improbable the circumstances. I'm not interested in answers like "oh that doesn't happen/the system works anyways" or whatever. I like to see what happens when something is questioned, when something is broken, or goes off the rails. I'm not in this to make people fit into boxes, I'm here to show how people are beyond boxes.
    I don't think anyone has said that such a character can't exist, and I agree with OldTrees1 that it is a very interesting (and common) character trait.

    But I think it's important to keep separate IC and OOC points of view for a moment.

    A character can *absolutely* be what you described in any given D&D setting, thinking that the cosmos is a big hoax and refuses to consider themselves defined by the cosmos' rules. In some settings that could be an incredibly interesting path to explore as well, such as Planescape. IC, that is what the character believes. OOC, the setting or the DM has explained that "this is how the cosmos works". If that is something that makes you uncomfortable that is also something that can be approached with speaking with the group if Alignment is something you want to have in your games (people play with and without alignment and manage to have fun, but it's important to find the fun that works for your group). A group or a DM doesn't have to follow the established rules of the setting if it doesn't contribute to the fun of the game. The different groups I've played with through my years of gaming have always used alignment and it's been fun for us. Doesn't mean I need alignment for every type of game I play though outside of D&D, but I like engaging with that concept for D&D.

    Few characters actually think they are Evil, or consider themselves defined by their "alignment". There are those who do of course, and they are usually considered to be agents of those cosmic forces on the prime plane (Clerics, Paladins are some more easy examples, moreso in editions where they things like Aura of Good, but anyone really can be an agent of Chaos/Law/Good/Evil).
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    Default Re: Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

    Alignment had pretty much always been a solution in need of a problem.

    Dave Arneson had a post on his website (might still be up) how they tried to introduce alignment to make players stop being jerks. The players immediately said "then our characters are chaotic" and that was the end of that failed experiment. Nobody really knows why it appeared in the released product anyway.
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    Default Re: Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Raziere View Post
    -snip-
    While you were replying I reread your previous post and have an addendum, but I want to focus on your current post (below the addendum)
    Edit:
    On a reread, maybe you are only interested in the "cosmic"* part?
    *an overloaded overused word with multiple meanings in this context
    For instance Kreia wanted to destroy the Force. That might be similar to someone on Faerun wanting to destroy the Wall_of_the_Faithless. That is not really necessarily going against the setting's moral truth but it is going against some of the mechanics that reference morality. Redirecting which evil souls to celestial would be changing the mechanism of afterlives, but it is not refuting the moral truth of the campaign setting.

    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Raziere View Post
    Yes but how do people handle such a concept? I'd assume that if people really want the moral system to apply so much they'd disallow such a concept as a matter of course from an archetypical story about good and evil and see such a concept as only detracting or interfering with it by questioning the morality beneath, which I'm all about, so I don't see why anyone would see it as worth the inclusion.
    Wait, why would someone disallow such a concept? I mentioned how common it is for a character's moral beliefs to not match the moral truth of the campaign setting. Some of those characters are at their most interesting while the audience (the players) know the characters are mistaken. Part of the point of my Lich character was that I knew they were wrong about the necessity of culling the population.

    Imagine, you have a character with enough of a fleshed out moral belief that they are disagreeing with the moral truth the campaign setting was based on. That means you already have lots of depth and detail into the moral character of the character, if the DM were going to be using alignment, I would expect them to welcome such an interesting character. Sure the character's beliefs are wrong, but that is a common trait among moral agents.

    Now what if we are not focusing on the difference between moral belief and moral truth (despite that being such an interesting topic). What if instead we are focusing on the character making moral judgements (using their moral beliefs) about the mechanisms of the campaign setting that reference morality? Imagine the Wall_of_the_Faithless (not exactly cosmic alignment, but it is close), did you know the source material did not say whether the wall is a good thing or whether saving souls from the wall and destroying the wall was a good thing? The DM has to decide that. But more interestingly, characters that learn about the wall also have to decide their beliefs about that. They too might conclude "tear down that wall". They might even conclude that no soul should go to the lower planes. If the campaign can handle that amount of self motivation in the PCs (maybe it is a sandbox) then the party might go on a quest to save those souls.

    Sure someone in some campaign might not allow such interesting characters for some reason, but I would welcome those characters in the same context.
    Last edited by OldTrees1; 2021-02-18 at 07:12 PM.

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    Default Re: Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

    Kreia was pretty much envisioned as a deconstruction and refutation of the established philosophy regarding the Force, to a greater extent than the undertones of the same conversation in KotOR 1 with Jolee and such.
    The same sort of twist was present in a lot of early Bioware/Obsidian writing, come to think of it. Jade Empire had some fun ethical theory before the second half of the game kinda ruined it.

    Anyways, I can see that being a thing in D&D. If there is an established authority, especially morally or ethically, pressed upon the players some are bound to attempt to subvert and/or dismantle it. That would be some fun RP to me.
    Such a character refusing the labels doesn't stop the labels being placed on them of course, they would probably be strongly associated as being Chaotic in some form but that's sort of the point isn't it? They don't want to be stuck with a big magical footnote on their soul that says "Individual thought detected, send to Limbo upon death"
    Last edited by Kane0; 2021-02-18 at 07:11 PM.
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    Default Re: Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

    I dunno why someone would disallow such a concept, I just assume that they would, because if its all about archetypes, then something that goes against the settings moral assumptions isn't archetypical at all. an archetypical moral character in a setting typically means that the falls into the settings view of morality: for example Jedi are good because they are passionless, sith are evil because they are full of passion, therefore any good force user full of passion or evil force user suppressing their emotions are not archetypical and thus don't fit into the setting and people would disallow it because it wouldn't make sense.

    similarly I would love to destroy the Wall of the Faithless. but the assumption is that its somehow accepted as a needed thing for arcane preservation of existence reasons supposedly, and therefore any GM who wants to run a game in FR probably wants the setting intact and not some person like me going around being a snarky/sarcastic a foil to the entire setting thinking the whole cosmic set up is bull because to some people that probably looks like the player just hating the setting and thus not wanting me in the game, especially if they want to keep things "light and fun". And to be fair, Forgotten Realms isn't really a setting I particularly like so there would be some truth to that assumption.

    so its like.

    I am skeptical that my entire thing would ever be looked upon as desirable in such games?
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    Default Re: Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Raziere View Post
    I dunno why someone would disallow such a concept, I just assume that they would, because if its all about archetypes, then something that goes against the settings moral assumptions isn't archetypical at all. an archetypical moral character in a setting typically means that the falls into the settings view of morality: for example Jedi are good because they are passionless, sith are evil because they are full of passion, therefore any good force user full of passion or evil force user suppressing their emotions are not archetypical and thus don't fit into the setting and people would disallow it because it wouldn't make sense.
    From your description it sounds like, Light side magic is disrupted by emotion (Qui Gon Jinn might disagree, that sounds more like Jedi doctrine than Light side) and Dark side is powered by emotion. I could easily see a very passionate jedi having to fight their passions in a fight as they try to evoke Light side force techniques. It is even easier to see a Sith suppressing their emotions when not in mid combat. Maybe they are disguised. Maybe they value control. Maybe they want the element of surprise when they suddenly stop suppressing their emotions and they explode. Or maybe you are describing a Jedi and a Sith that are willingly forgoing a power boost because it is not worth how it effects them mentally. This Sith fights with suppressed emotions because they would rather be weak than lose control. This Jedi refuses to ignore their compassion because understanding why these actions are good is more important than mere power.

    Yeah, lets see those characters!

    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Raziere View Post
    I am skeptical that my entire thing would ever be looked upon as desirable in such games?
    I cannot speak for the hypothetical group / campaign you next approach, but I view it as desirable.

    (Although I don't know why you assume "its all about archetypes". Was that in reference to Segev saying some mechanics that reference morality are important to specific character archetypes? Some characters that resemble those archetypes exist in my campaigns and I still find your "entire thing" to be desirable in those games)
    Last edited by OldTrees1; 2021-02-18 at 07:46 PM.

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