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  1. - Top - End - #121
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    NecromancerGuy

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    Default Re: Alignment: Fall 2022

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    -snip-
    Duh conflating axes is a mistake. Which is why the celestial/fiend axis was irrelevant to what I was talking about. You interjected into me replying to someone else.


    I am glad you reached a consensus.


    However, if one of my elementary premises (Don't conflate different axes. Doing so is a mistake. I am talking about this particular axis.) was your "point all along" then I am left feeling you did not engage with me in discussion despite interjecting yourself when I replied to someone else. I am done with this subthread.
    Last edited by OldTrees1; 2022-10-14 at 11:53 PM.

  2. - Top - End - #122
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    BlueWizardGirl

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    Default Re: Alignment: Fall 2022

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

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

    This does touch on something for me specifically with D&Ds alignments, it is sometimes helpful to think of the nine alignments as distinct rather that on two overlapping axis.
    Take:
    Lawful Good
    Lawful Neutral
    Lawful Evil
    These alignments share a half the axis but in the description of these it is clear that the Lawful portion of the alignment means different things for each alignment despite being "on the same team" apparently. With Lawful Evil seeing Law as a shield for their wrongdoing and a tool to exert control over others. While Lawful Good sees Law as a means of cooperation and maximizing public good.
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  3. - Top - End - #123
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    Tanarii's Avatar

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    Default Re: Alignment: Fall 2022

    Quote Originally Posted by Witty Username View Post
    This does touch on something for me specifically with D&Ds alignments, it is sometimes helpful to think of the nine alignments as distinct rather that on two overlapping axis.
    In 5e, this is specifically how alignment works. 9 boxes of associated behaviors. Not 2 axis, each with associated behavior, then combined to 9 combinations.

  4. - Top - End - #124
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    Default Re: Alignment: Fall 2022

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Neither model, not even D, actually necessitates strict prohibition of out-of-alignment or out-of-personality actions. Penalties are not prohibitions, people - the very existence of a penalty suggests there is a scenario where a player can act in a manner that would incur the penalty. I'll use CODA Lord of the Rings as an example: failure to act like a Tolkienian hero (using magic to torture people or directly backing Sauron, for examples) nets you Corruption points, and if you get enough corruption points (10, if I recall correctly) your character falls under the Shadow and becomes an NPC. The first few penalties are therefore only warnings, meaning the player can engage in occasional Corrupt action if they see fit, and they can even redeem the character (lose Corruption points) by returning to fold later. They won't actually lose control of their character unless they significantly and consistently violate spirit and themes of the game.

    And this is what you've failed to address. "Restricting roleplaying" is no big criticism of anything, because restricting players from certain actions and personalities are part and parcel for games that want to aim for specific themes and personality archetypes. Weird subjective opinions about what words mean are not an excuse to play a character outside the bounds of what a game is meant to cover, and agreeing that game master has final say in case of conflict is a solution to your supposed to problem.

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

    That is entirely different from every single person in the game having an alignment that is cosmically tracked and enforced (like D&D does).
    These two things you claim are entirely different are not different at all. The gods are explicitly mentioned in the rules as enforcers of alignment, and the commandments of the gods, get this, align with alignment conducts because those philosophies are what the gods stand for. The conducts are globally tracked because the gods are presumed to be near (or actually) omniscient. All of this is part and parcel for particular type of fantasy about cosmic beings.

    The basic mechanic it all is based on is that a game master, as overseer of the game, is privy to all actions players take in the game, and has final say over ambiguous cases. Whether alignment is nominally based on decree of gods, an abstract cosmic force, or your character's boss at McDonald's, only changes the viewpoint from which the game master makes the decision. The mental process is the same.

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

    So which is it? And again, this doesn't matter if the alignment is just a guide for roleplaying. But the moment it has actual in-game mechanical rules attached to it (like class requirements, class abilities, or just how you show up on detection/protection spells), this becomes an issue.
    The answer to "which is it?" is "ask the game master you are actually playing under". Nobody has to give you an answer in the abstract, outside the bounds of a game actually being played; you are nominating a game master to serve as a referee precisely so that ambiguous cases can be resolved when they occur, instead of someone having to answer every question beforehand. That is, again, the solution to the issue you keep having. The fact that you keep harping on the solution suggests your actual issue is accepting someone else as a referee.

    But let's go back to your example for a moment, because looking at it shows other flaws in your ideas about how alignment works:

    "So whether I worship a deity that falls within the chaotic range, if I'm a bard, and I fail to be sufficiently chaotic (as the GM sees it), I may lose my class abilities. What if my bard is my version of Robin Hood (in the example I gave), and the GM decides that my plans are too well thought out, my objectives too concrete, and I work too well with others, and that I'm not really "chaotic" anymore because of that. I need to create random poorly thought out plans, and intentionally ignore what the group decides in favor of myself, I guess?"

    For one, bards don't actually lose class abilities due to ceasing to be chaotic in any version of D&D I know about. Bad example, right there. But even if they did, changing alignment and losing class abilities does not actually necessitate changing your character's behaviour: you can just choose to live without those abilities and carry on under a new alignment. This is what normal people call a "choice": namely, the choice between retaining personal power versus functioning well as a group.

    And what was definition of Law versus Chaos, again, as based on the rules I cited to Tanarii? That's right, organized groups versus the individual. Sounds like the game master is right on the money on this one.

    Or am I purely chaotic because I'm fighting "against the system", no matter what methods I employ? Ok, but now we've established that chaos is entirely about externalities rather than actual character traits.

    You are working on the assumption that choosing to "fight against the system" is not based on character traits, but no-one has to grant you that, because even in real life we can see that certain personality traits are linked to being habitually contrarian. If the game master is observing those personality traits in your character, using that as basis for the determination is perfectly valid.

    Great. So anyone fighting against tyranny is "chaotic". Um... but that puts us back in the stereotypical "absurd" standard for lawful characters that requires that they "obey the law where they are", which is literally the example given most often of the wrong way to run alignments.

    You are conflating two different arguments here, of only one which is absurd.

    Saying "anyone fighting against tyranny is 'chaotic'" is absurd for several reasons. The first is that it equivocates at least two of many different definitions of tyranny.: that of tyranny as unjust and oppressive governmental power, and that of tyranny as government in which a single ruler is vested with absolute power. It should be obvious that Good characters, including Lawful Good characters have a reason to oppose unjust and oppressive governments as well, because such governments trample on creature rights Good characters find important. The second is that Neutral alignments exist, so someone who opposes an unjust government but considers non-governmental group identities important can just be Neutral instead of Chaotic. The third is that giving absolute power to a single individual doesn't necessarily sit well with Lawful characters - group-motivated people might want decisions to be made, you know, as a group, rather than by selfish whims of a single person.

    But saying "Lawful characters should obey the law where they are" is significantly less absurd. Why? Because, again, Law is about placing organized groups over the individual. Choosing to obey the laws of the nation or group you are actually in is a method of fitting in: conformity, as opposed to contrarianism.

    The reason why it is a "wrong way" to run alignment is not because it is absurd, it is because frequently it's based on naive notions of what the laws are. If laws of a nation say, for example, that the strong are free to abuse the weak, and the only crime is getting caught, any Good character, including Lawful Good ones, would reject such laws, because they are in defiance of creature rights. Or in other words: laws of any given land do not necessarily fall in line with the concern for organized groups that defines the axis of Law, nevermind more specific alignments of Lawful Good, Lawful Neutral and Lawful Evil. The fact that there are three different Lawful alignments alone should hint that different Lawful characters can be in conflict over what laws of a given land should be - different organized groups do not need to be in perfect agreement with each other to count as Lawful.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    To the bolded statement, the characters life history determines their "current alignment". That's why I called it the "Belkar problem". Belkar, from the point of view of Minrah" is a "good" character, right? If we only knew of his behavior since the start of this book (and ignored all dialogue to the contrary), we'd clearly identify him as chaotic good/neutral, right? Yet, his protection from evil amulet affects him. That is the exact opposite of what you claim, and is the "standard" in most games where alignment is tracked and has in-game mechanical effects. Your alignment doesn't change because of a few acts over a relatively shot period of time.
    No, it's not the exact opposite of what I claim. Alignment explicitly can change, and will change if the repentant character keeps acting according to their new desired alignment, which will also influence behaviour of all alignment-related supernatural effects. The only time this "Belkar problem" occurs is when a player has proclaimed their character wants to change alignment, but has yet to actually have their character act according to the new desired alignment for enough time to have their game master believe them. Which, I reiterate, I do not find to be much of a "problem" at all.

    In-character, the situation is as follows: one person is worried whether a second person is Evil. The second person vouches that they wish to do no harm and will act according to principles of Good. A Detect Evil spell is cast on the second person, showing they are Evil. The first person might hence infer the second person has not been Good or Neutral in the recent past, but this only speaks to the current situation: the second person might still be perfectly honest, and another Detect Evil spell cast in the future might prove they have indeed moved away from Evil alignment.

    For a different in-character example, we can propose the second person is a convicted murderer: they were Evil five years ago, killing someone in cold blood, but repented and devoted themselves to making amends to family of their victim(s) and helping the poor. Over time, they have moved to a Neutral alignment. So, again, the first person is worried whether the second person is Evil. A Detect Evil spell is cast on the second person, showing they are not Evil. The first person might hence infer the second person has not been Evil in the recent past, but again, this only speaks to the current situation: it's possible the second person will fall again and commit more murders in the future, and another Detect Evil spell cast in the future might show they have indeed become Evil.

    In neither case does the detection spell give the first person access to lifetime history of the second person. In neither case does the result of a detection spell enforce an outcome: the first person has only gained knowledge of the second person's current alignment, and they will have to weigh this information in context of everything else they know. How to act on the information is on the first person.

    Your OotS example is irrelevant, because OotS is not a game of D&D, and neither Minrah nor comic readers are in a position similar to a game master serving as a referee. Their subjective opinions based on imperfect information have no weight in discussion such as this. The closest person to a game master in context of a webcomic is its author, namely Rich Burlew. So at best, Belkar's case can inform you how Rich Burlew would make decisions as a game master of a D&D game, except Rich Burlew has explicitly told his readers that he doesn't heed D&D rules exactly, breaking them as he sees fit to tell the story and jokes he wants to tell. OotS is, to a relevant degree, a parody or a satire of D&D stereotypes, not a straight guide on how to run alignment. So stop basing your examples on OotS.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    And yes, there's more then just detection. There's the protection from evil effect. And there's the whole "where does he go when he dies" discussion. You may choose not to acknowledge it, but it is a "problem". If for no other reason than we have a game system where your afterlife is literally determined by your alignment. And this has nothing directly to do with deities or the worship of those deities (Belkar doesn't worship any gods, and has made no promises to any divine deity in terms of how he will behave, nor has asked for any corresponding divinely granted powers/spells/etc). But he's still bound to it.
    Belkar not worshipping any gods is irrelevant; his impiety doesn't prevent him from falling under judgement of the gods. Actual rules text, 1st Edition AD&D, page 25, "Changing Alignment":

    "Whether or not the character actively professes some deity, he or she will have an alignment and serve one or more deities of this alignment indirectly and unbeknowst to the character."

    So, in character, the entirety of the supposed problem is that the second person has proclaimed a desire to change their ways, but has not actually acted yet in a manner that would convince the gods or other supernatural forces that the change is genuine.

    What about this is supposed to be a big deal?

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    Sure. But that puts it in the realm of the players playing their characters, and the GM playing the NPCs. I'm specifically speaking to game mechanics that put the GM into the position of telling the player how they must play their character, with in-game rewards or penalties for doing so. And also, specifically outside the realm of "PC has chosen these restrictions by choosing to be a cleric/whatever of X deity".
    Then you're specifically speaking to a strawman, as already explained at the beginning of this post. Having in-game rewards or penalties is not the same as telling how someone must play their character. Under 1st Edition interpretation of biaxial alignment, nothing stops the player from eating the penalty and continuing to play under their new alignment. Majority of class-based penalties specifically relate to Paladins, Clerics, Druids and other supernaturally empowered archetypes, who fall under "PC has chosen these restrictions by choosing to be a cleric/whatever of X deity". Actual rules text, once again, 1st Edition AD&D, page 24, "Graphing alignment":

    "It is of utmost importance to keep rigid control of alignment behaviour with respect to such characters as to serve deities who will only accept certain alignment, those who are paladins, those with evil familiars, and so on. Part of the role they have accepted requires a set behaviour, and its benefits are balanced by this. Therefore, failure to demand strict adherence is to allow game abuse."

    A player only "must" have their character act in a specific way, IF they want to maintain certain in-game benefits. This is, again, what normal people call a "choice". What about this ISN'T in the realm of "players playing their characters, and the GM playing the NPCs"?

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    I'm not complaining that they merely exist. I'm exploring what kinds of alignment systems work well, and which ones do not work so well. And my argument is that alignment systems that attempt to apply alignment as a personality trait tracker *and* a "what side are you on" mechanism, *and* have in-game effects based on whether the character is "played correctly", will tend to run into problems.
    It is curious, then, that majority of your arguments only explore a system that's nowhere in the books, and the only problems you've shown them to run into are neither unique to alignment nor particularly hard to deal with.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    Which supernatural force though? Again. Examine my Orc and Robin Hood examples. Both showcase scenarios where the character's alignment can be judged to be radically different purely based on what point of perspective we choose to use to do so. Do we judge the Orc based on whether he aligns with human societal norms? Or Orc societal norms? Does the universe itself judge Orcs to be wrong and humans to be right? Why? And is Robin Hood's alignment based on how he goes about what he does, or how what he does affects society as a whole? On the former, he's clearly lawful, but on the later, he's clearly chaotic. Which is it? And what "supernatural force" is judging this? And also... why?
    "Which supernatural force though?" Whichever the game master sees fit. This is nothing more than a normal setting building question. Same goes for majority of the other questions. I don't need to give specific answers to them. Again: you are nominating a game master to serve as a referee precisely so that ambiguous cases can be resolved when they occur, instead of someone having to answer every question beforehand. "Why?" So game masters can facilitate games with specific themes and settings. A game where the universe itself deems orcs wrong and humans right, is a different one from a game where the universe itself deems orcs right and humans wrong, is a different one from a game where everyone is wrong except the elves. So on and so forth. I listed multiple different variations of Law versus Chaos in my first post to this thread to showcase how varying the axial definitions can lead to different themes and gameplay dynamics.

    Or, shortly: all these questions can be answered by the person running a game. Your only problem seems to be actually sitting down to play under their terms.

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

    You don't see that being a problem? I certainly do. It's a massive glaring inconsistency. Choosing to ignore those cases doesn't make them actually go away.
    Already dealt with majority of this above, but picking this apart some more is again good at revealing flaws in your ideas of how alignment works:

    "Both the Orc in my example and a human serial killer would detect as "evil" to a human adventurer (in most alignment systems anyway). But they are radically different. "

    So what? A Detect Evil spell only cares about how similar they are according to one axis. For a contrasting example: Two people who both show as Extroverted in a Myers-Briggs test can still be of opposed personality along three other axes the test measures: ENTJ versus ESFP, for example. Similarly, a real personality test rating you for "Dark Triad" traits or other facets known to be common among serial killers doesn't care about your race, origin or taste in weapons or ice cream. You seem to be arguing detection spells enforce a nonsensical outcome based on something they don't proclaim to detect in the first place.

    And let's make it even more interesting. What about an Orc serial killer? So humans can detect "evil" criminals within their societies using detect evil spells, but Orcs can't? Because... why?

    Seems like you didn't understand the comparison; if that's not the case, you're strawmanning detection spells again, complaining about them doing something they don't actually do. To wit: Detect Evil is neither "Detect Criminal" nor "Detect Serial Killer". Neither humans nor orcs can reliably use it for those purposes.

    What Detect Evil actually detects is emanations of Evil, caused by an evilly-aligned creatures, servants of Evil gods and objects with harmful curses on them. It doesn't tell why those creatures are Evil or what they've done, that typically has to be inferred based on additional details. So how to act on the information given by the spell is on the caster.

    All Orcs (or most maybe based on the example of human-centric morality) will detect as such anyway, so those who are "evil" by the context of Orc society just hide away?

    You seem to be complaining that Detect Evil is not "Detect evil-as-defined-by-orcish society", something the spell never proclaims to be.

    To wit: if Orcs insist that Evil is Good, wrong is right, black is white and sun is just the moon at night, the utility of detection spells is partially reversed in contrast to people who actually agree with axial definitions given by the game to the players. For example, if orcs are primarily Lawful Evil, they would use Detect Law and Detect Evil to see who agrees with orcish morals, and Detect Chaos and Detect Good to see who disagrees. The utility is not completely reversed, because Good people don't act in the same in way towards orcish society as Evil orcs would act in a non-orcish society. That is, using Detect Good is even less reliable in finding someone who murders orcs than Detect Evil is at finding an orc who murders humans.

    None of this shows any kind of inconsistency, and the only "problem" is that the character actually using the spell might not get the information they want - which is okay, because "Detect Alignment" is not, and has never purported to be, "Detect exactly the piece of information I need to know in order to do what I subjectively think is right".

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji
    Except that, itself, is constraining. A "side/faction" could very well only care that you are fighting against the enemy "side/faction", and not really care at all how you fight, or what other things you do when you are not. By tying these together, you force players to pick not only "sides", but at the same time and in the same choice also "personality" that goes along with it. And yeah, sometimes (maybe even a lot of times), that works fine. But other times, it does not.
    The only "side" or "faction" that does not care at all how you fight against the enemy is called the side of blind idiots. Real armies have standardized personality tests to gauge whether any given person is fit for service, they demand specific conduct both in and outside of the uniform, and they will kick you out for failing to meet their standards. They do this, because personality influences behaviour, and how you behave determines whether you are actually serving their side at all.

    By admitting it "sometimes works fine", you virtually concede every point that matters. If you have strong preference for games where "sides" don't sort by personality, go for it, but don't pretend it is somehow especially problematic to have a game where they do sort by it.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji
    The character of Cassian Andor in Star Wars (Rogue One, and currently the Andor series) is a great example of this in what is otherwise a very clear cut "good vs evil" story environment. The goody-goody's of the rebellion (main characters in the original series) can conveniently ignore exactly how those Death Star plans were originally obtained, right? But folks on "their side" certainly did some pretty evil things along the way, right?
    If you want to talk about Star Wars, you have your choice of Star Wars roleplaying games to pick to see how they handle Rebels versus the Empire, or Light Side of the Force versus Dark Side of the Force. Once more, the example you have picked is not a game of D&D, or even any tabletop game, and no-one who isn't concerned with replicating exact story beats from the show has to pay attention to it.

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

    More seriously, sure, let me imagine: we are looking to have Star Wars alignment that fits the model of AD&D and tracks both allegiance and personality, right? Well this is easy! The Empire stands for an, oppressive, authoritarian system. So, exemplified by Storm Troopers, we can say that the people who find appeal in being Pro-Empire have authoritarian personalities.

    So, based on the example set by the movies, we can say these kind of people are both weak in the Force and leaning to the Dark Side. That is, they are motivated by negative emotions such as fear, anger and hate, and drawn to subjugate themselves to a strong central authority. Let's call this alignment "Imperial Dark Siders". And, again, based on the primary source of the movies, we can say Imperial Dark Siders seek to ruthlessly oppress and destroy those who are strong in the force, those who oppose the central authority of the Emperor, or those who otherwise don't fit in.

    So the Dark Side Imperials do monitor personality, they do monitor behaviour, and they will crush character who fails to fall in line. That's why there is a rebellion in the first place.

    So what about the rebels? Well, they probably don't want to overthrow an oppressive authoritarian system only for it to be replaced with another of the same kind. We can safely say they value individual freedom, equality and liberty, all the kinds of things the Empire is unlikely to grant them. They are also associated with Light Side of the Force and stress more positive emotions such as hope, joy and love. Let's call this alignment "Light Side Rebels". I'd have zero issues with a game system where the Light Side Rebels will kick your character out for engaging in Dark Side behaviour (such as terror tactics motivated by fear, anger and hate), or where they cease to trust your character because of their authoritarian beliefs signifying they'd be happy little Storm Trooper if the situation would allow for it.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji
    And yes. I call that absurd. But that's effectively what you get when you impose a single "alignment" that includes both "sides" and "personality". And yes, it can work in some game systems. But it will work only very poorly in most. Certainly, it will fail if you and your players want to play anything other than cardboard cutout personalities in the game world. Which, well, most (many?) of us do.
    What you call "absurd" doesn't seem all that absurd to me at all. On the contrary, it seems to me like Star Wars itself is based on sorting people to sides based on what kind of behaviour and personality they have. Heck, I'm about 99% certain, even without checking, that there are actual Star Wars tabletop games that work identically to CODA Lord of the Rings roleplaying game: act in a way that suggests you'd be a happy little Storm Trooper or worse, a Sith, and you will gain Dark Side points; net enough Dark Side points and your character is now an NPC.

    Your claim that "it will work only very poorly in most" systems and "it will fail if you and your players want to play anything other than cardboard cutout personalities" are entirely unsubstantiated and based on strawman accounts of personalities and alignment both.

    ---

    EDIT:

    Missed this the first time around, because I stopped my reply at the point where you started quoting Mark Hall:

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

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

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

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

    "Except this determination is based entirely on which "external group" the character is being loyal to."

    So? You think I can't tell anything about someone's personality based who they choose to associate with?

    "Is it a code of honor instilled by his order? Or to his fellow party members who he's agreed to join on some adventure? Or to the local prince? To the laws of his homeland, or the land he's currently operating in (and perhaps working to assist)?"

    I was responding to specific character in a specific situation as described as Quertus. It is Quertus who would have to answer these questions in order for them to matter for my determination. You are not Quertus, your questions constitute other hypotheticals that I wasn't dealing with, and didn't need to deal with. But since you asked: if a code of honor instilled by your order, that is, an organized group external to yourself, demands that you join a human rights march, chances are they are Lawful Good, and so are you. If it was instead demanded by your party members, who, in the example, fail to even show up, chances are you are more Lawful and more Good than they are. If it is out of loyalty to the local prince, we must ask the question of "what kind of prince would want you to join a human rights march?" How about: someone who is at least Good. If it was demanded by laws of their homeland, this would suggest the human rights situation in their homeland is better, again suggesting at least Good. It's reasonable to deduce they are NOT acting based on loyalty to the laws of the lands where they currently are, because they are marching for human rights; this suggests the human rights situation in the land they are in leaves something to be desired.

    "A Lawful Good paladin and a Chaotic Evil Rogue may both make the same actions (refusing to talk to their captors), but for very different reasons. "

    Only because the choice is binary and there are nine different alignments. Of course some opposing alignments will end up choosing the same action when this is the case. This means the evidence is weak and we can't use these kind of scenarios as sole determinant of alignment. What you fail to consider is that those "different reasons" typically suggest different behaviour projected both to the past and to the future. In the sample scenario, for example, you'd have some explaining to do why a Chaotic Evil rogue, as the sole member of the party, showed up to the human rights march as they promised. Depending on specifics of the situation, it may even be possible to use some form of backward induction or limited backward induction to show that a consistently Chaotic Evil character would never have shown up to the march, and thus, would not have been captured in this scenario.

    "And yes, if the player and the GM are in agreement that the action fits their character, there's no problem. But what if they aren't in agreement?"

    The game master has final say, as usual, for reasons already explained.

    "What if the GM decides that the lawful good character would of course not lie about his plot to overthrow the evil overlord who's minions have captured him? Or even refusing to acknowledge that he is planning such a thing is itself deceitful and therefore not "lawful good"?"

    I made a Kant reference just to remind Quertus that even people who believe lying is always wrong are probably fine with staying silent. Why are you so keen to presume a game master who is even stricter?

    Furthermore, even if a game master was so strict, this is a single instance, and single instances typically do not lead to alignment change; by basic rules, non-supernatural causes also cannot cause a radical shift from one alignment to its opposite, so a Lawful Good person at worst could only move to either Neutral Good or Lawful Neutral (probably the former).

    "And this is before even getting into a scenario where the poor hapless paladin may have been hired/requested to help overthrow said "evil overlord" under false pretenses, and maybe doesn't even realize that the folks who captured him are the "legitimate lawful authority" and are really the "good guys", and by concealing his compatriots while they undertake their part of the plan, he's unwittingly assisting an "evil" and "chaotic" act. Heck. What if he wasn't captured by the minions of the evil overlord, but another faction opposed to said overlord?"

    Quertus wasn't talking about a paladin, specifically. He was talking about a hypothetical character who is both "Most Lawful" and "Most Chaotic" of their party. No-one in the scenario has been established to act under false pretenses, so you are once more suggesting alternate hypotheticals that have nothing to do with what Quertus was talking about and what I was responding to.

    If the character was a paladin and was acting under false information, joining the human rights march and refusing to talk to the authorities would at worst be unintentional evil acts; the paladin would not even undergo alignment change and would be able to atone to restore their supernatural powers upon finding out the truth, with no additional penance. On the plus side, losing their paladin powers would serve as a hint that something is amiss; it could conceivably prompt the paladin to take a closer look at what they were doing.

    "And they want information from the paladin which may be critical to the success of their plans? How much vetting does the paladin have to do to make this determination? And how does he make the decision between helping "his side" win against the overlord, versus helping "any side" win? There may very well be no clear cut "good vs evil" (or even "law vs chaos") dynamic at play, so which ethical rules is the paladin actually bound to?"

    The character joined a human rights march. The amount of vetting they'd have to do is the normal amount to find out that the people he joined are actually marching for human rights, instead of being part of some nefarious conspiracy. Presumably, the side they want to win is the side that supports human rights, and they should reason accordingly. If you think there is no clear cut "good versus evil" or "law versus chaos" dynamic at play, you either did not read or did not understand the alignment definitions I posted in the post you quoted. What do you think the phrase "human rights" means?

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

    This isn't a more realistic scenario, because you haven't explained why this person who doesn't care about keeping promises nor about human rights was the only party member to show up at a human rights march. Who you are suggesting is his friend among the protesters? Why didn't this Chaotic Evil person, say, knock them out to prevent them from going to the march, thus eliminating the chance of either of them being caught for that reason? What about showing up to a human rights march fits with your idea of a selfish and untrustworthy person who dislikes following the rules and is willing to get his hands dirty for the right price?

    Being "absolutely loyal" to another person who is marching to defend human rights is very much NOT in accordance of Chaotic Evil alignment, and saying it shows a level of altruism that is otherwise untypical of such a person is perfectly reasonable. Yet, again, this is a single instance, and single instances typically do not lead to alignment change; by basic rules, non-supernatural causes also cannot cause a radical shift from one alignment to its opposite, so at worst the character would move to either Chaotic Neutral or Neutral Evil (almost certainly the former), incurring only the normal penalty for changing alignment. As a rogue, they would not even lose any class abilities or be prohibited from leveling up in their class. Such horror, such woe. What would be the undesirable consequence of such punishment? That the Chaotic Evil rogue becomes even more Chaotic Evil and forsakes all friendships with people who fight for human rights?

    To me, this sounds like another case of what normal people call a "choice": the choice here being between continuing to be a selfish prick who causes harm and suffering to other people, versus maintaining friendship with people who do not want ANYONE to be the kind of selfish prick you have been behind their back.

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

    What about "these kind of scenarios" strike you as so bad that they need to be avoided? What is supposed to be the great big flaw they reveal? What about them restricts the player so much that it becomes an issue? Because at worst, the player character suffers a minor penalty that they can recover from under the very same rules. And that is under the strictest interpretation - under less strict interpretations, your additional hypotheticals lead to no aligment change and no penalties.
    Last edited by Vahnavoi; 2022-10-15 at 02:23 PM.

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    Default Re: Alignment: Fall 2022

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    The game master has final say because they are a game referee. The determination of alignment rests on them because it is used to decide how game objects behave in response to player actions. As far as the game process is concerned, the game master is correct, as directly stated by rules of the game. That you even bother to ask this question suggests you keep conflating game statements with player's subjective opinion. The game master's statement only covers the former, not the latter - the player and their character are free to keep whatever opinions they have on "chaotic good", it's just that their opinions are not used to decide behaviour of game objects.
    And you could solve the need for the gm to do that by removing all instances where alignment is relevant for game objects. Or simply, by ditching alignment rules.

    No one ever comes to te forum with stories of players/DMs disagreeing about how extraverted a character is. Because there are no rules for it. A disagreement can't do any harm.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Satinavian View Post
    And you could solve the need for the gm to do that by removing all instances where alignment is relevant for game objects.
    Also what 5e (mostly) did. It's best use is as a player RP tool, not as a descriptive scoring system of previous actions.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Satinavian View Post
    And you could solve the need for the gm to do that by removing all instances where alignment is relevant for game objects. Or simply, by ditching alignment rules.
    And by doing so, you also lose all gameplay revolving around such objects. It is a trade-off, not some linear improvement. You can also remove Corruption points for CODA Lord of the Rings, but then you have to accept that sometimes Gandalf kills Frodo, takes the Ring and becomes new a Dark Lord ruling over Middle-Earth.

    Quote Originally Posted by Satinavian View Post
    No one ever comes to te forum with stories of players/DMs disagreeing about how extraverted a character is. Because there are no rules for it. A disagreement can't do any harm.
    That specific example? Maybe not. Personality in general? Do I really need to hunt down examples of people complaining about other players not playing their characters properly? This happens even in freeform games, which is why I asked gbaji to entertain that scenario. It's not about the mechanics, it is about semantic disagreement and the conflict it causes when players have to choose how their characters act in face of conflicting descriptions.

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

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

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

    What introducing a game master into this situation means that A, B and E, which are 99% of the actual "conflict" you describe, are pre-emptively solved: whenever there's confusion about what a term means in the game, the game master settles the matter. This leaves us with C and D.
    The introduction of a GM doesn't solve these conflicts, it just shifts who the conflict is between. The irony is that you say this and then dismiss it, yet in order for this to be true, the very case you assume doesn't happen must happen.

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

    D is what you think D&D has game master enforce, but you are incorrect, or at least you've never cited any actual rule text from any actual D&D edition decreeing it so. There are other games that work this way, and individual game masters can of course choose to play D&D this way, but it's not how the basic system of alignment is actually set up, and consequently criticism of this model is not criticism of the basic alignment system. In any case, in this model a player's behaviour during game is meant to follow their alignment - similar to how in traditional theater an actor is beholden to a script.
    That's completely wrong. Every version of D&D I've ever played has suggestions to DMs as to how to manage alignment, and every single one tells the DM to warn the player if they are playing their character in a way that isn't in their character's chosen alignment. The assumption is that the first step is to try to get the player to play their character "correctly", with the last straw being to change the alignment on the character sheet. You bypass this issue by speculating about a brand new character being played "incorrectly", and suggesting that it's as simple as just changing the value written on the sheet (they were wrong about what this character's alignment really was). But there wouldn't be whole sections devoted to how to atone or regain character alignment if it wasn't something that happened *and* that losing your alignment wasn't assumed to be a punishment in some way.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    And this is what you've failed to address. "Restricting roleplaying" is no big criticism of anything, because restricting players from certain actions and personalities are part and parcel for games that want to aim for specific themes and personality archetypes. Weird subjective opinions about what words mean are not an excuse to play a character outside the bounds of what a game is meant to cover, and agreeing that game master has final say in case of conflict is a solution to your supposed to problem.
    Only if our starting assumption is a strict alignment system. Imagine the same scenario you outlined, but there's no restrictions on behavior in the game other than that you comply with the dictates of your religion (if you worship a deity), and/or fight on your "side" (in the case of side/faction based systems). Whether someone is introverted or extroverted simply would not matter, right? You get to play your character however you want to, and as long as you aren't violating other rules you've agreed to (based on choices made along the way), no one cares.

    See how much easier that is? Or even if "whether you're introverted or extroverted has no bearing on play", it works as well. But if there's a spell in the game called "detect introvert/extrovert", and potential problems if you detected "wrong", then yeah, this suddenly becomes a problem. Or spells that "protect from introvert", and now you are at a measurably disadvantage because you didn't play your character the way the GM thinks an extroverted character should be played, it is, again, a problem.


    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    For one, bards don't actually lose class abilities due to ceasing to be chaotic in any version of D&D I know about. Bad example, right there. But even if they did, changing alignment and losing class abilities does not actually necessitate changing your character's behaviour: you can just choose to live without those abilities and carry on under a new alignment. This is what normal people call a "choice": namely, the choice between retaining personal power versus functioning well as a group.
    Sure. I missed that bards don't lose class abilities, but can't gain new levels if chaotic. It's just a random example. Any case where there are consequences for changing alignment apply here. The point is that as long as those consequences exist (whatever they are), they act as pressure to force players to play their characters a certain way. To suggest otherwise would throw out the entire human concept of incentive/penalty influence on behavior. And in cases where the player and the GM disagree on what exactly constitutes "good/evil" or "law/chaos", this is going to create conflict.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    You are working on the assumption that choosing to "fight against the system" is not based on character traits, but no-one has to grant you that, because even in real life we can see that certain personality traits are linked to being habitually contrarian. If the game master is observing those personality traits in your character, using that as basis for the determination is perfectly valid.
    I literally provided an example of a Robin Hood type character where the external action "fighting against the system" was 100% at odds with the character's internal personality "uses strict rules and methods when making decisions and/or taking actions". You've just completely ignored it.

    It is absolutely possible for someone to be absolutely lawful in how they do things while also "fighting against the system". You assume that only anarchists can do so, but that's simply not true. There are tons of examples (historically and otherwise) of people fighting to overthrow an otherwise legitimate rule, while themselves also exhibiting personality traits we would all absolutely agree are "lawful". The fact that D&D (and many other games) conflate these two into one "law/chaos" alignment trait written on the character sheet is extremely problematic.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    Saying "anyone fighting against tyranny is 'chaotic'" is absurd for several reasons. The first is that it equivocates at least two of many different definitions of tyranny.: that of tyranny as unjust and oppressive governmental power, and that of tyranny as government in which a single ruler is vested with absolute power. It should be obvious that Good characters, including Lawful Good characters have a reason to oppose unjust and oppressive governments as well, because such governments trample on creature rights Good characters find important. The second is that Neutral alignments exist, so someone who opposes an unjust government but considers non-governmental group identities important can just be Neutral instead of Chaotic. The third is that giving absolute power to a single individual doesn't necessarily sit well with Lawful characters - group-motivated people might want decisions to be made, you know, as a group, rather than by selfish whims of a single person.
    Sigh. And now you're just going off on silly tangents over the word "tyranny". Ironic, given that I corrected someone's use of the word in another thread, then did the same here. Bad on me.

    Forget that. In the Robin Hood myth, the prince was not a tyrant, right? He was the rightful ruler at the time (King off to war, leaving him in charge). The Sherriff was the lawful authority in the town, right? So no one can argue that this is a case of lawful folks deciding to oppose an unlawful rule. Unjust? Sure. But not unlawful. And certainly, we can imagine a ton of other scenarios that are similar. Can you, for one moment, stop pretending that only cases in which these things align exist, but examine the cases where they don't?

    What happens when our hypothetical freedom fighter is fighting against a lawful authority (which, by definition makes him "chaotic"), but uses tactics and methods that are decidedly lawful? In a world where alignment either doesn't exist, or only measures one of those things, or where alignment doesn't come with any consequences, it doesn't matter. The moment all three of those things exist in the game, the effect for the character is subject to the whims of the GM in terms of which aspect of law/chaos is chosen to be prominent in that case.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    The reason why it is a "wrong way" to run alignment is not because it is absurd, it is because frequently it's based on naive notions of what the laws are. If laws of a nation say, for example, that the strong are free to abuse the weak, and the only crime is getting caught, any Good character, including Lawful Good ones, would reject such laws, because they are in defiance of creature rights. Or in other words: laws of any given land do not necessarily fall in line with the concern for organized groups that defines the axis of Law, nevermind more specific alignments of Lawful Good, Lawful Neutral and Lawful Evil. The fact that there are three different Lawful alignments alone should hint that different Lawful characters can be in conflict over what laws of a given land should be - different organized groups do not need to be in perfect agreement with each other to count as Lawful.
    Again. Stop trying to only look at cases where there isn't a problem, and look at the ones where there is. I've presented exactly a case for this and you keep ignoring it. You're also injecting considerations on the "good/evil" axis along the way, which just further muddies the waters. And yes, I do consider the fact that some alignment system variations make a distinction in terms of what "law" and "chaos" mean based on whether they are connected to "good/neutral/evil" is also a problem. Because now we're in this weird case where detect/protect law/chaos spells work variably based on whether someone is good/neutral/evil. Um... That's even more of a mess.

    And yes. I totally get that a lawful good character might seek to fight against a lawful evil ruler. But would he form a band of brigands, robbing random wealthy folks wandering down the road, and using that wealth to buy popularity among the peasants and to fund his campaign? Probably not. It's not just that he's opposing the lawful authority that makes one lawful/chaotic, but whether one is "breaking the rules/laws" to do so. I suppose we could argue that this is yet another divergence on what is otherwise presented as a single axis in many alignment systems. Instead of just two aspects, we have three that align with "chaos": "opposing lawful authority", "breaking traditional rules/laws", and "unstructured behavior and methodology". And, just as with the two I was highlighting, all we've done is define yet another aspect of this which can't always be assumed to be in perfect alignment with each other. Which leaves us still wondering "what makes this character lawful or chaotic?".


    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    No, it's not the exact opposite of what I claim. Alignment explicitly can change, and will change if the repentant character keeps acting according to their new desired alignment, which will also influence behaviour of all alignment-related supernatural effects. The only time this "Belkar problem" occurs is when a player has proclaimed their character wants to change alignment, but has yet to actually have their character act according to the new desired alignment for enough time to have their game master believe them. Which, I reiterate, I do not find to be much of a "problem" at all.
    The very fact that you used the bolded language highlights the innate evil/good directional bias of your entire viewpoint on alignment. Also, you've conveniently forgotten your own A-E points earlier. What if it's *not* the players "desired alignment", but the GM feels a different alignment fits the character better based on their actions? That's not the same as a "redemption arc" that you seem to have shifted to. And it also completely misses the whole "fall towards evil" issue I spoke of earlier.

    I'm specifically examining cases where the player thinks his character is following an alignment, but the GM thinks otherwise. What happens in that case? What if the lawful good character things that doing something harmful to one person for a "greater good" is still "good", but the GM thinks that will instantly move him towards evil and require that he now put "neutral" on his character sheet. Should the GM in that case play "gotcha" with the player and wait until he does it and then punish him (assuming the shift is a punishment)? That's bad, right? Or, should the GM warn the player that the action he's considering would result in an alignment shift for his character? That's what we should do, right? Except that's in direct opposition to what you insisted never happened (The "D" case listed above).

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    In neither case does the detection spell give the first person access to lifetime history of the second person. In neither case does the result of a detection spell enforce an outcome: the first person has only gained knowledge of the second person's current alignment, and they will have to weigh this information in context of everything else they know. How to act on the information is on the first person.
    That's a lot of writing to basically say "it detects his current alignment". That current alignment (certainly in the case of Belkar) is "evil". And it's 100% based on his past actions, not his current/recent ones. So yes, you are effectively detecting the entire life history of a character, because alignment is based on the cumulative actions and decisions that character has made, the resulting calculation of which is the current alignment.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    Your OotS example is irrelevant, because OotS is not a game of D&D, and neither Minrah nor comic readers are in a position similar to a game master serving as a referee. Their subjective opinions based on imperfect information have no weight in discussion such as this. The closest person to a game master in context of a webcomic is its author, namely Rich Burlew. So at best, Belkar's case can inform you how Rich Burlew would make decisions as a game master of a D&D game, except Rich Burlew has explicitly told his readers that he doesn't heed D&D rules exactly, breaking them as he sees fit to tell the story and jokes he wants to tell. OotS is, to a relevant degree, a parody or a satire of D&D stereotypes, not a straight guide on how to run alignment. So stop basing your examples on OotS.
    Huh. Belkar detects as evil. Full Stop. He is affected by a protection from evil effect. Full stop. What more is there to consider? You're tap dancing around the core issue here, which is that alignment is based on the sum totality of a character's actions, and that alignment (in D&D and many games) has a direct in-game mechanical effect (how you detect/protect being just one of the easiest to observe).


    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    Then you're specifically speaking to a strawman, as already explained at the beginning of this post. Having in-game rewards or penalties is not the same as telling how someone must play their character. Under 1st Edition interpretation of biaxial alignment, nothing stops the player from eating the penalty and continuing to play under their new alignment. ...

    ...

    A player only "must" have their character act in a specific way, IF they want to maintain certain in-game benefits. This is, again, what normal people call a "choice". What about this ISN'T in the realm of "players playing their characters, and the GM playing the NPCs"?
    What part of "play this way or suffer consequences" do you think wont influence player choices when playing their characters? I'm honestly baffled by your position here. Again, if there were no consequences, you would be correct. The moment that there are, then any threat of those consequences constitutes influence on how players play their characters. Period. It can't not have that effect.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    It is curious, then, that majority of your arguments only explore a system that's nowhere in the books, and the only problems you've shown them to run into are neither unique to alignment nor particularly hard to deal with.
    The Robin Hood example is unique to alignment. That Belkar detects as evil despite having behaved "good" for the entirely of this book is also unique to how the alignment system in D&D works. I'm not sure what conditions you are asking for here. I could literally list off 100 more cases where the alignment system fails. All of them because it tries to simultaneously record very different things on the same axis.


    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    And let's make it even more interesting. What about an Orc serial killer? So humans can detect "evil" criminals within their societies using detect evil spells, but Orcs can't? Because... why?

    Seems like you didn't understand the comparison; if that's not the case, you're strawmanning detection spells again, complaining about them doing something they don't actually do. To wit: Detect Evil is neither "Detect Criminal" nor "Detect Serial Killer". Neither humans nor orcs can reliably use it for those purposes.
    The point is that in a predominantly "good" society, a detect evil spell can detect criminal intent/action. Someone who is evil is someone who actively pursues/enjoys causing harm to others. in a society full of people who avoid this, that person shows up. So the serial killer will be one evil person in a sea of good.

    The same exact serial killer, simply by being an Orc and living in an Orc society in which most of the people are evil (but the "usual" kind of evil, where killing to advance career, torturing your enemies, then sacrificing them and eating their hearts is "normal"), is much harder to detect because even though what he's doing is just as harmful to Orc society as to human (killing people for socially non-beneficial purposes), yet magically, simply because of the culture itself, he can't be detected as easily.

    So a detect evil spell actually functions differently (and is of different utility) among a human society than an orc one (again, making certain assumptions about the orc society in my example). Not in mechanical terms, but in actual utility to the people using it. And what's interesting is that it's not equal in the other direction. The serial killer targeting orcs doesn't detect as "good", so this isn't a case of swapping things in the other direction. He's still "evil". We've just decided that different kinds of evil are all the same as far as the spell is concerned. The opposite case among humans (the lack of being able to distinguish different kinds of "good") doesn't exist. Because if someone detects as "good" is a reasonable bet that they aren't likely to kill me in my sleep and take my stuff.

    One can certainly argue that this is a function of the asymmetrical nature of good and evil, and that the Orcs "deserve" to suffer other types of violence amongst themselves because of their already existing innate "evilness" or something. And that's absolutely fine. But it does run aground when we consider that good and evil are supposed to be at least somewhat cosmically balanced concepts in the game universe. An alignment system with "sides/factions" would work very differently, right? Because then I'd be detecting people "aligned with my side" and "against my side". So a human operating in human society but intending to do harm to that society would detect as "evil" (or an "enemy" perhaps), while an Orc operating in orc society doing the same would also detect as an enemy. They would each detect the same as an group of humans invading said orc lands and vice versa. It's a far more useful way of managing alignment.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    You seem to be complaining that Detect Evil is not "Detect evil-as-defined-by-orcish society", something the spell never proclaims to be.
    I'm not complaining about it. Merely pointing out the problems inherent in an alignment system that does have a "detect evil" spell in the first place. That the spell doesn't proclaim to do this isn't the point. Saying "that's what the rules say, so it's a good rule" kinda defeats the purpose of having a discussion about good/bad rules.


    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    If you want to talk about Star Wars, you have your choice of Star Wars roleplaying games to pick to see how they handle Rebels versus the Empire, or Light Side of the Force versus Dark Side of the Force. Once more, the example you have picked is not a game of D&D, or even any tabletop game, and no-one who isn't concerned with replicating exact story beats from the show has to pay attention to it.
    I'm giving an example of human nature and how it often does not fit into neat little alignment boxes. It's not about the game system.


    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    What, an overall authority such as, say, the Force?
    And Andor is affected by how the force views him... how? This is akin to the whole "clerics of gods" bit, where they are the only one's affected by failing to follow the rules. But that does not preclude other people "on their side" who have personalities and behaviors that a Jedi (for example) would find horrific.

    Imagine if this was in effect though. That "the force" somehow pushed people who didn't comply with the "light side" towards evil. Andor would decide to fight for the Empire, right? He would "fall to the dark side" because of his actions. But he doesn't because real people don't actually behave that way. It's why I brought up this example. He's a refreshing character in the SW universe precisely because he doesn't fall into the "cardboard cutout" characters we've become accustomed to. The whole "dark/light side" conflict only exists for folks who have force powers (and the later episodes thematically suggest that even this is an artificially created conflict). For everyone else? You pick a side and fight for it using whatever tools and abilities you have.

    Andor doesn't fight for the rebellion because he's a "good guy" and the rebellion is "good" ("side" and "personality being the same). He fights for the rebellion because the empire has taken things from him and represents a threat to him personally (they're after him for some choices he made along the way). That does not preclude that he's absolutely on the "side" of the rebellion, only that the "side" isn't as simplistic as alignment boxes might suggest. And his "side" certainly doesn't seem to have a problem with him helping them even if some on the same "side" might find what he does and how he does it morally questionable.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    So what about the rebels? Well, they probably don't want to overthrow an oppressive authoritarian system only for it to be replaced with another of the same kind. We can safely say they value individual freedom, equality and liberty, all the kinds of things the Empire is unlikely to grant them. They are also associated with Light Side of the Force and stress more positive emotions such as hope, joy and love. Let's call this alignment "Light Side Rebels". I'd have zero issues with a game system where the Light Side Rebels will kick your character out for engaging in Dark Side behaviour (such as terror tactics motivated by fear, anger and hate), or where they cease to trust your character because of their authoritarian beliefs signifying they'd be happy little Storm Trooper if the situation would allow for it.
    Which is precisely the cardboard cutout style of play that I find constricting *and* which characters like Andor exist to challenge. Continuing to try to fit that square peg into the round hole of the alignment system is perhaps not the best way forward.


    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    What you call "absurd" doesn't seem all that absurd to me at all. On the contrary, it seems to me like Star Wars itself is based on sorting people to sides based on what kind of behaviour and personality they have. Heck, I'm about 99% certain, even without checking, that there are actual Star Wars tabletop games that work identically to CODA Lord of the Rings roleplaying game: act in a way that suggests you'd be a happy little Storm Trooper or worse, a Sith, and you will gain Dark Side points; net enough Dark Side points and your character is now an NPC.

    Your claim that "it will work only very poorly in most" systems and "it will fail if you and your players want to play anything other than cardboard cutout personalities" are entirely unsubstantiated and based on strawman accounts of personalities and alignment both.
    And yet, the alignment system you just spoke about would do exactly that. It would "kick Andor out" because he's clearly "falling to the dark side". In the gritty reality of what is really required to fight such a rebellion successfully? Folks like Andor are necessary. Might be an ugly truth that the "light side fighters" don't want to think too hard about, but if we were to model real human behavior it would not fit so neatly into the kind of alignment systems you seem to want to use.


    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    "What if the GM decides that the lawful good character would of course not lie about his plot to overthrow the evil overlord who's minions have captured him? Or even refusing to acknowledge that he is planning such a thing is itself deceitful and therefore not "lawful good"?"

    I made a Kant reference just to remind Quertus that even people who believe lying is always wrong are probably fine with staying silent. Why are you so keen to presume a game master who is even stricter?
    Because you said the GM is the final arbiter on this. So if he choses an interpretation of what a lawful good character would/should do in that situation, by your argument, that's what should have happened, and any action to the contrary by the player is "wrong".

    Remember. I'm examining what happens when the GM and player disagree on how an alignment should be played. And also pointing out that some of the inherent inconsistencies in how alignments in the traditional D&D law/chaos;good/evil alignment system increase the probability of those disagreements. You're ignoring the premise if you just assume we start out agreeing. And the fact that we're even having a discussion (and that so many alignment arguments have existed in the past) support my assumption that these disagreements will occur and we maybe should examine why they occur.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    Furthermore, even if a game master was so strict, this is a single instance, and single instances typically do not lead to alignment change; by basic rules, non-supernatural causes also cannot cause a radical shift from one alignment to its opposite, so a Lawful Good person at worst could only move to either Neutral Good or Lawful Neutral (probably the former).
    The very fact that alignment can change as a consequence of character choices/actions means that each choice/action along the way must be significant, or it would never happen. That's like saying that "it's just one concussion and it takes a lot to cause permanent damage, so let's not worry about it figuring out why it happened". Um... No. Each case matters.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    Quertus wasn't talking about a paladin, specifically. He was talking about a hypothetical character who is both "Most Lawful" and "Most Chaotic" of their party. No-one in the scenario has been established to act under false pretenses, so you are once more suggesting alternate hypotheticals that have nothing to do with what Quertus was talking about and what I was responding to.
    Replace "paladin" with "character who cares about retaining his lawful good status". Doesn't matter what the label is. Let's assume that alignment actually matters, else, why bother having it?

    And yeah. I'm examining conditions where we don't know exactly what's going on, and who's on which side, and who has what alignment, etc. That's the point. It's terrifically easy to make alignment choices if the GM tells you "this is good" and "this is evil". Duh. But let's pretend that we're trying to at least somewhat model a real world where choices are not so ridiculously black and white. And in that case, a character can easily find themselves in a situation where there is no good answer. Perhaps telling the guys who captured you allows the "bad guys" to do more horrible bad things, and so it's "evil". But failing to do so prevents those who captured you from stopping the real bad guys, and thus results in more harm. Was it "evil" to stay silent when speaking would save lives?

    What happens when you are playing characters in a game world full of unknowns? Things aren't so clear cut. That's what I'm examining. And the degree to which you keep presenting simplified scenarios and insisting that I'm not allowed to make them more complex also highlights a point I made earlier: That the alignment system may also push GMs into simplifying good/evil and law/chaos choices in their games exactly in order to avoid this conflict. If you don't put moral quandaries in your D&D game, and even a tiny bit of this is because you're trying to help your players play their characters more easily, then this is in effect in your game.

    Refusing to consider cases where the issue is more complex is somewhat the same thing. Of course I'm adding in additional things to the scenarios. Because these are things can can (and perhaps should) come up in real game playing. How about we examine the difficult cases and not just the easy ones?

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    "And they want information from the paladin which may be critical to the success of their plans? How much vetting does the paladin have to do to make this determination? And how does he make the decision between helping "his side" win against the overlord, versus helping "any side" win? There may very well be no clear cut "good vs evil" (or even "law vs chaos") dynamic at play, so which ethical rules is the paladin actually bound to?"

    The character joined a human rights march.
    Why are we assuming this is all about a human rights march? That's a strange scenario to begin with. Let's assume there's a plot afoot to assassinate the king. Let's assume our lawful good character is trying to stop this and is investigating some suspicious characters in town. Let's assume he gets captured and held by them. As it happens, they are also trying to stop the assassination, but don't know who this guy and his friends are who are poking around town either. They want information. Let's assume they have half of the information needed to stop the plot, and the captured character has the other half.

    Should he tell them what he's doing and why? Or stay silent assuming they are the "bad guys" and anything he says will only help them? So him, being a steadfast lawful good character would never under any circumstances "break" and tell his captors anything at all, right? Er... He just got the king killed, half his family killed, and the entire kingdom has now fallen to the evil overlord or whatever. Good job being lawful good there buddy!

    I'm not even saying that there aren't perfectly valid ways of playing this out within the D&D alignment system. Just pointing out that every scenario can be far more complex than it appears, and that actual moral decisions are not as simple as "I fight on the side of good and do good things". Presenting nothing but scenarios where the cardboard cutout LG character can follow his cardboard cutout LG play guide and always come out smelling like roses fails to examine any realistic gaming world where realistic scenarios may actually play out. And using nothing but those sorts of examples when defending alignment system doesn't really allow us to accurately test whether they "work well" or not.

    You test the things that might fail, not the ones you know will work.


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

    This isn't a more realistic scenario, because you haven't explained why this person who doesn't care about keeping promises nor about human rights was the only party member to show up at a human rights march. Who you are suggesting is his friend among the protesters? Why didn't this Chaotic Evil person, say, knock them out to prevent them from going to the march, thus eliminating the chance of either of them being caught for that reason? What about showing up to a human rights march fits with your idea of a selfish and untrustworthy person who dislikes following the rules and is willing to get his hands dirty for the right price?
    You are way too caught up on the specifics of a frankly silly example case (I'm not even sure how we got onto a "human rights march" kick, except that someone mentioned it or something). Again. It doesn't matter why they are captured. It only matters that they were, and that their captors are trying to get them to talk, and that by talking it may A) help their cause or B) hurt their cause. But maybe they have no clue which is which at the time? Or they do, and which choice do they make? And how does the GM judge their choice in the context of their alignment.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    Being "absolutely loyal" to another person who is marching to defend human rights is very much NOT in accordance of Chaotic Evil alignment, and saying it shows a level of altruism that is otherwise untypical of such a person is perfectly reasonable.
    Sigh. Forget the freaking march. It's not about a march. Are you seriously suggesting that a chaotic evil person cannot have any friends, or be completely loyal to them? That's the most incredibly restrictive interpretation of chaos and evil I've ever seen. Again, the complexity comes in how we judge chaos. Is it chaotic if you regularly break the rules to do things (external), or if you just do random actions instead of planning things out. So an assassin might be chaotic evil or lawful evil depending on how we judge the law/chaos side, right? Let's assume "breaks laws all the time" is what the GM in this world has decided makes one chaotic rather than "meticulously plans his assassinations". The character is chaotic evil. He's chaotic due to breaking the law, and evil because he has no problems killing people for money. But does this preclude him having friends that he would protect if they came to be threatened? Absolutely not.

    And if his employers hired him to kill one of his friends, would he do it? Or would it be just as much within his alignment to say "Nope. Not going to do this, I'll kill you instead"? Could play it either way, right? Heck. I'd argue the lawful evil assassin would be more likely to say "a contract is a contract" and go ahead and kill his friend. Neither the "chaos" nor "evil" sides of his nature preclude him having friends and being loyal to them. Not unless you are lumping every single possible personality trait that could be "chaos" and "evil" and assume they must all be present. Which gets us right back to cardboard cutout characters, and restrictive play.

    I maybe want to play a roguish character willing to take on dirty jobs, including killing people if the money is right, but still have the flexibility to say that I'm not going to kill my friends, or take jobs that cause harm to people I care about, or even if I just don't like the person who's hiring me. That's not "neutral" on the alignment scale, because a neutral character would at least make some effort to avoid killing random people along the way and maybe my character doesn't care about that (Heck. Maybe I *like* causing collateral damage, hence the "evil" and "chaotic" bits). But that doesn't mean that I wouldn't use my same "special skills" to cause pain and suffering to anyone trying to hurt someone I actually care about, or that I can't have anyone in the world that I do care about in the first place.



    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    To me, this sounds like another case of what normal people call a "choice": the choice here being between continuing to be a selfish prick who causes harm and suffering to other people, versus maintaining friendship with people who do not want ANYONE to be the kind of selfish prick you have been behind their back.
    And you can't imagine any character personality that can contain both? Also you've added a conditional that doesn't need to exist (the bolded bits). My character can care about his family/friends without them even knowing what I do for a living, right? You're conflating how I feel about them, with how they feel about me. The assumption that if I'm playing a chaotic evil character that I can't care about anyone else is absurd. And honestly, if you think that is true, then you're kinda proving my point about how alignment systems cause restrictive thinking about the range of character personalities. You're literally telling me that I can't play the character i want to play, and that if I put CE on my character sheet it means that I can't have anyone in the world that I care about, or want to help, or are willing to suffer pain to protect.

    If I were looking for proof that my assertion is correct, you just provided it.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    What about "these kind of scenarios" strike you as so bad that they need to be avoided? What is supposed to be the great big flaw they reveal? What about them restricts the player so much that it becomes an issue? Because at worst, the player character suffers a minor penalty that they can recover from under the very same rules. And that is under the strictest interpretation - under less strict interpretations, your additional hypotheticals lead to no aligment change and no penalties.
    It's either sufficient to affect player choices, or it's not. Pick one. If it is, then it suffers from the problems I've been talking about. If it's not, then it falls into the "it doesn't matter and there are no consequences" case and we're fine. Constantly saying "but it's just a minor thing, and it's not that big a deal if your alignment changes", kinda misses the point.

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    Default Re: Alignment: Fall 2022

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    The introduction of a GM doesn't solve these conflicts, it just shifts who the conflict is between. The irony is that you say this and then dismiss it, yet in order for this to be true, the very case you assume doesn't happen must happen.
    You keep orbiting around a point that's already been addressed multiple times. You might as well be saying "introducing a referee to a Judo match doesn't solve who scores a point, it just shifts the conflict from between players to being between players and the referee". Except, by agreeing on the referee, the players agree to abide by the referee's rulings. Nowhere is it assumed a conflict never happens, it is instead posited the players can solve it by agreeing to abide by the referee's ruling.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    That's completely wrong. Every version of D&D I've ever played has suggestions to DMs as to how to manage alignment, and every single one tells the DM to warn the player if they are playing their character in a way that isn't in their character's chosen alignment. The assumption is that the first step is to try to get the player to play their character "correctly", with the last straw being to change the alignment on the character sheet. You bypass this issue by speculating about a brand new character being played "incorrectly", and suggesting that it's as simple as just changing the value written on the sheet (they were wrong about what this character's alignment really was). But there wouldn't be whole sections devoted to how to atone or regain character alignment if it wasn't something that happened *and* that losing your alignment wasn't assumed to be a punishment in some way.
    You say I'm "completely wrong", then describe the same thing I already described in different words. A warning such as "Your proclaimed alignment is X but the action your about to take would be of alignment Y" is the same kind of statement as "Hey, you described your character as Extroverted, but all actual actions you've taken as that character suggests an Introverted personality". The player has the option to do D) "Hot damn, you're right. I admit my character's recent behaviour has been out of character and will change their behaviour to match their description.", but this is not what the game master enforces. A player is allowed to take the out-of-alignment action and, if this leads to a different alignment, continue playing under the new alignment. Hence, what ends up enforced is C) "Hot damn, you're right. I will change my character's description to fit their actual behaviour."

    The player is only playing "incorrectly" in the same sense as freeform player portraying a character they claimed to be Extroverted as an Introvert. The nature of the punishments & penalties you keep harping on about is of game objects reacting to actual behaviour of a player character. In the freeform game, the equivalent happens when one player has to decide whether their character would invite the other player's character to a party: the first player's character would like to invite an Extroverted person, but the second person's character is only Extroverted on paper. Hence, whether the second person's character is "punished" by not being invited to the party depends on how we determine their personality. We're discussing whether to change the" value written on the sheet" and into which direction because other people use that value to make decisions.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    Only if our starting assumption is a strict alignment system. Imagine the same scenario you outlined, but there's no restrictions on behavior in the game other than that you comply with the dictates of your religion (if you worship a deity), and/or fight on your "side" (in the case of side/faction based systems). Whether someone is introverted or extroverted simply would not matter, right? You get to play your character however you want to, and as long as you aren't violating other rules you've agreed to (based on choices made along the way), no one cares.

    See how much easier that is? Or even if "whether you're introverted or extroverted has no bearing on play", it works as well. But if there's a spell in the game called "detect introvert/extrovert", and potential problems if you detected "wrong", then yeah, this suddenly becomes a problem. Or spells that "protect from introvert", and now you are at a measurably disadvantage because you didn't play your character the way the GM thinks an extroverted character should be played, it is, again, a problem.
    The fact that I used a freeform game as an example should've tipped you that I do not assume a strict alignment system. What I actually assume is that personality influences behaviour and that how characters behave matters to other people at the table, and above, I used the freeform scenario to show that yes, whether someone plays their character as they describe actually matters. Imagining a game scenario where "the only restrictions" are based on religion or faction works out 95% similar to AD&D alignment because, as already established, the described alignments align with specific religious and moral philosophies.

    Let's go back to the freeform example, because your treatment of it continues to show you don't even understand why the conflict you yourself keep harping about is a problem. As I already noted earlier, personality influences behaviour, and behaviour is always detectable. A game does not need any specific game construct like a "detect introvert" for other players to spot a contradiction between how a player describes their character versus how they play. The reason why it is a problem is because those other players have to make decisions about what to do in the game, and they now have to decide whether to give priority to proclamation versus actual behaviour. It is in fact possible to put yourself at a measurable disadvantage if you keep basing character behaviour on weird personal definitions of what terms mean: other people won't react the way you want them to.

    As for what is "easier": roleplaying any character that is not identical to your own personality requires skill, the more skill the further the character deviates from your baseline. One of the chief reason people fail to play characters in the way they proclaim is that their own personality and natural inclinations get in the way. Not paying attention or not caring about their lapses will indeed make it easier for them, but it also removes a layer of feedback informing them of when how they are playing seems off to other people.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    Sure. I missed that bards don't lose class abilities, but can't gain new levels if chaotic. It's just a random example. Any case where there are consequences for changing alignment apply here. The point is that as long as those consequences exist (whatever they are), they act as pressure to force players to play their characters a certain way. To suggest otherwise would throw out the entire human concept of incentive/penalty influence on behavior. And in cases where the player and the GM disagree on what exactly constitutes "good/evil" or "law/chaos", this is going to create conflict.
    A random bad example is still a bad example. Have you noticed something during this debate? I have specified which edition of D&D I'm talking about and cited specific rules text to build my case. You, on the other hand, never specify an edition and never give citations. Your idea of how alignment works floats free of any rules, built on top of a layer of stereotypes and internet arguments about non-game media. It's a clear case of you moving the goalposts.

    The rest of the paragraph is immaterial to our disagreement. I've never denied existence of consequences for alignment change, nor have I have argued that they create no pressure on player on how to play their character. The actual point of contention was and remains is your idea that this constitutes some problem or flaw with the system, instead of being part of the point.

    The conflict between a game master and a player I've already dealt with to death.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    I literally provided an example of a Robin Hood type character where the external action "fighting against the system" was 100% at odds with the character's internal personality "uses strict rules and methods when making decisions and/or taking actions". You've just completely ignored it.
    I didn't ignore it - I provided you with a fairly lengthy explanation of why these two are not 100% at odds, yet why habitual "fighting against the system" is still potential signifier of Chaotic behaviour.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji
    It is absolutely possible for someone to be absolutely lawful in how they do things while also "fighting against the system". You assume that only anarchists can do so, but that's simply not true. There are tons of examples (historically and otherwise) of people fighting to overthrow an otherwise legitimate rule, while themselves also exhibiting personality traits we would all absolutely agree are "lawful". The fact that D&D (and many other games) conflate these two into one "law/chaos" alignment trait written on the character sheet is extremely problematic.
    Nice strawman. I didn't even mention anarchists, nevermind assume only they fight can "fight against the system". The paragraph you literally quoted next from has an explanation of why non-Chaotic character types would fight against tyranny. I'm going to quote myself here just to show anyone how unfair you're being:

    Me: "Saying "anyone fighting against tyranny is 'chaotic'" is absurd for several reasons. The first is that it equivocates at least two of many different definitions of tyranny.: that of tyranny as unjust and oppressive governmental power, and that of tyranny as government in which a single ruler is vested with absolute power. It should be obvious that Good characters, including Lawful Good characters have a reason to oppose unjust and oppressive governments as well, because such governments trample on creature rights Good characters find important. The second is that Neutral alignments exist, so someone who opposes an unjust government but considers non-governmental group identities important can just be Neutral instead of Chaotic. The third is that giving absolute power to a single individual doesn't necessarily sit well with Lawful characters - group-motivated people might want decisions to be made, you know, as a group, rather than by selfish whims of a single person."

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji
    Sigh. And now you're just going off on silly tangents over the word "tyranny". Ironic, given that I corrected someone's use of the word in another thread, then did the same here. Bad on me.
    The only thing that's bad here is that you don't seem to be able to spot or admit when we are in agreement over something, even when I explain at length why we're in agreement over something.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    Forget that. In the Robin Hood myth, the prince was not a tyrant, right? He was the rightful ruler at the time (King off to war, leaving him in charge). The Sherriff was the lawful authority in the town, right? So no one can argue that this is a case of lawful folks deciding to oppose an unlawful rule. Unjust? Sure. But not unlawful. And certainly, we can imagine a ton of other scenarios that are similar. Can you, for one moment, stop pretending that only cases in which these things align exist, but examine the cases where they don't?
    And now you're undermining your own case by admitting that the legend of Robin Hood is another moving goal post. You don't seem to understand that when you shift which version of Robin Hood we're talking about, or which scenario we're talking about, you aren't proving a contradiction in the base alignment system. You are simply forcing me to make a new evaluation of the new situation. Also, again, you just quoted ME explaining how even non-Chaotics might choose to oppose an unjust ruler. So you have direct textual proof that I never, in fact, acted under the pretension you now accuse me of.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    What happens when our hypothetical freedom fighter is fighting against a lawful authority (which, by definition makes him "chaotic"), but uses tactics and methods that are decidedly lawful? In a world where alignment either doesn't exist, or only measures one of those things, or where alignment doesn't come with any consequences, it doesn't matter. The moment all three of those things exist in the game, the effect for the character is subject to the whims of the GM in terms of which aspect of law/chaos is chosen to be prominent in that case.
    Direct rule quote, once again: 1st Edition AD&D, Dungeon Master's Guide, page 23, Alignment:

    "The overall behaviour of the character (or creature) is delineated by alignment, or in case of player characters, behaviour determines actual alignment. Therefore, besides defining the general tendencies of creatures, it also groups creatures into mutually acceptable or at least non-hostile divisions. This is not to
    say groups of similarly aligned cannot be opposed or even mortal enemies. Two nations, for example, with rulers of lawful good alignment can be at war. Bands of orcs can hate each other. But the former would possibly cease their war to oppose a massive invasion of orcs, just like the latter would make common cause against lawful good men."


    The issue here is, again, that your argument floats free of any rules text. The thing you put in parentheses is the entirety of the issue: you presume an act you've not sharply defined makes a character Chaotic "by definition", except I already gave you the definition for Chaotic and that does not follow.

    Here it is, again, 1st Edition AD&D, Dungeon Master's Guide, page 23, Alignment:

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

    If your "freedom fighter" fights as part of an organized group, placing greater emphasis on functioning of the group than their individual freedom, they are Lawful, and the scenario is a conflict of one Lawful party against another. It's worth noting that in 1st Edition AD&D, orcs are Lawful Evil, so them banding against LG humans and LG humans banding against them is also a case of two Lawful parties warring, over Good and Evil.

    So what is the actual issue here? Well let me tell you: complaining about the referee. That is: you think subjecting player characters to "whims of the game master" is bad because you imagine a bad game master. And, since you think the game master's rulings will be bad, you think the solution is for them to not make judgments that would impact the game. It's strawmen, all the way down.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    Again. Stop trying to only look at cases where there isn't a problem, and look at the ones where there is. I've presented exactly a case for this and you keep ignoring it. You're also injecting considerations on the "good/evil" axis along the way, which just further muddies the waters. And yes, I do consider the fact that some alignment system variations make a distinction in terms of what "law" and "chaos" mean based on whether they are connected to "good/neutral/evil" is also a problem. Because now we're in this weird case where detect/protect law/chaos spells work variably based on whether someone is good/neutral/evil. Um... That's even more of a mess.
    You are building an unfortunate habit of saying I'm "ignoring" something when I'm writing small essays in reply to your points. I didn't ignore your case: I told you how to resolve it and then tackled it from multiple viewpoints. The actual issue here is that your "cases" are not well-built - every time I give you an answer, you ask another question, relevantly failing to recognize when and where this constitutes moving the goal posts.

    The reason I inject Good and Evil into the discussion is because the alignment system I'm discussing is the traditional biaxial one. In any actual game, all the rules would be in play, and available for both the game master and the players to solve ambiguous cases. It is invalid to complain about how the rules are ambiguous if that ambiguity disappears when the system is considered as a whole. Your argument against variants is ill-founded, because once again, you give no rules citations - how am I supposed to comment on unnamed and unelaborated variants from unknown sources? What is supposed to be wrong about spell effects considering both axes at once, instead of in isolation? Your case for them being "a mess" is entirely unbuilt.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    And yes. I totally get that a lawful good character might seek to fight against a lawful evil ruler. But would he form a band of brigands, robbing random wealthy folks wandering down the road, and using that wealth to buy popularity among the peasants and to fund his campaign? Probably not. It's not just that he's opposing the lawful authority that makes one lawful/chaotic, but whether one is "breaking the rules/laws" to do so. I suppose we could argue that this is yet another divergence on what is otherwise presented as a single axis in many alignment systems. Instead of just two aspects, we have three that align with "chaos": "opposing lawful authority", "breaking traditional rules/laws", and "unstructured behavior and methodology". And, just as with the two I was highlighting, all we've done is define yet another aspect of this which can't always be assumed to be in perfect alignment with each other. Which leaves us still wondering "what makes this character lawful or chaotic?".
    Notably absent from your post: not considering for a moment how the band of brigands is organized and whether they value their group identity more than their ability to function as independent individuals.

    Your problem is relevantly the same as Quertus's: you keep wondering about "aspects" of Law and Chaos without bothering to check why, exactly, those aspects are associated with Law or Chaos. As before, there is a real-life homologue to this in psychometrics. Using Extroversion and Introversion as example yet again, both of these have multiple aspects, and both have variance along a spectrum, so it's possible to sit in the middle (Ambiversion).

    If you're "still left wondering" whether the character is Lawful or Chaotic, it's because you never flesh them out to the degree required to make that determination. You pick one aspect, presume a game master will fixate on it to exclusion of all else, then ask "but what about this other aspect?". In an actual game, I would have more information about your character than you've given to me in all your posts put together. As a game master, I wouldn't need to base any determination on a single aspect or a single incident.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    The very fact that you used the bolded language highlights the innate evil/good directional bias of your entire viewpoint on alignment. Also, you've conveniently forgotten your own A-E points earlier. What if it's *not* the players "desired alignment", but the GM feels a different alignment fits the character better based on their actions? That's not the same as a "redemption arc" that you seem to have shifted to.
    I'm sorry, what? The fact that I stopped presuming the change is happening from Good to Evil to make a more general point proves I have directional bias now?

    And no, I've not forgotten my own A - E points before. You changed the scenario under discussion, and I changed my assumptions to suit. The earlier discussion already covers unwanted alignment change and I fail to see what, if anything, that has to do with Belkar to the point it warrants calling anything of this "the Belkar problem". Remove the player's desires from the equation, and all you have is the observation that a character's alignment will not change until they have behaved in a way that matches a new alignment for some time. That's not a problem. Other people, players or characters, doesn't matter which, having an incorrect opinion of someone's alignment based on imperfect information? Also not a problem (a good chunk of gameplay and great many scenarios are based on a player not having perfect information).

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    And it also completely misses the whole "fall towards evil" issue I spoke of earlier.
    Actual rules text, 1st Edition AD&D, Dungeon Master's Guide, Page 24, Graphing Alignment:

    "However, any major action which is out of alignment character will cause a major shift to the alignment which is directly in line with the action, i.e., if lawful evil character defies law and order to aid the cause of (express or implied) of chaotic good, he or she will either be lawful neutral or chaotic neutral, depending on factors involved in the action."

    I'm pretty sure I quoted this earlier, but it bears repeating. The actual rules text uses the example of an Evil character becoming not Evil when explaining how changing alignment works, and it does it more than once.

    The reason I don't talk about "fall-from-grace" alignment is that in relevant parts, it comes from entirely outside any rules text. Some of it can be attributed to 2nd Edition emphasizing Good over Evil and giving player the impression that playing Evil characters at all is naughty naughty and shouldn't be done. I already talked about real life moralistic beliefs impacting how the game is played, starting with my first post, so it's odd to chew me out on that. More, you and Tanarii, the people who brought it up, yourselves have acknowledged the basic form of the alignment system does not describe "fall-from-grace" alignment. Whenever you criticize "fall-from-grace" alignment, you are talking about a different thing than I am. Indeed, the issue is relevantly created by... not using alignment rules in the way I and 1st Edition AD&D recommend them to be used.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    I'm specifically examining cases where the player thinks his character is following an alignment, but the GM thinks otherwise. What happens in that case? What if the lawful good character things that doing something harmful to one person for a "greater good" is still "good", but the GM thinks that will instantly move him towards evil and require that he now put "neutral" on his character sheet. Should the GM in that case play "gotcha" with the player and wait until he does it and then punish him (assuming the shift is a punishment)? That's bad, right? Or, should the GM warn the player that the action he's considering would result in an alignment shift for his character? That's what we should do, right? Except that's in direct opposition to what you insisted never happened (The "D" case listed above).
    The character is wrong about their alignment, the game master's statement is final, we already covered this a dozen times. Also, actual rules text yet again, 1st Edition AD&D, page 25, changing alignment:

    "A glance at the alignment chart will show that radical alignment change is impossible without magical means. If one is chaotic good, it is possible to change to neutral good or chaotic neutral only, depending upon desire and/or actions. From absolute neutral alignment, one can only move to some neutral-based alignment. This represents the fact that the character must divorce himself or herself from certain precepts and views and wholeheartedly embrace another set of values, and human nature is such that without radical personality alteration (such as caused by insanity or magic in the case of this game) such transition must be gradual."

    A game master who moves a Good character directly to an Evil alignment, or vice versa, is not working within the system I refer to, and have been referring to, all this time.

    Another citation, already given before, but repeated for emphasis. 1st Edition AD&D, Dungeon Master's Guide, page 24, Graphing Alignment:

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

    The rules themselves give a precedent for warning players of when they're about to undergo alignment change.

    Isn't it funny how a lot of your questions would be answered by reading the rules?

    In any case, 1st Edition AD&D model still falls under C, not D, because the player is not prohibited from taking out-of-alignment actions. The player is allowed to eat the penalty and continue playing under a new alignment. This is, again, different from something like CODA Lord of the Rings roleplaying game, where a character becomes an NPC for incurring enough Corruption points. It's also completely different from popular but non-rules-based idea that a character and even their player should be kicked out of a game for committing an Evil act. Your argument for AD&D being D instead of C is entirely built on considering penalties stemming from game objects reacting to the new alignment as prohibitions, something they're not.

    Like, how many cases of the rules directly stating "in case of player characters, behaviour determines actual alignment" do I need to show to you before you actually believe me?

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    That's a lot of writing to basically say "it detects his current alignment". That current alignment (certainly in the case of Belkar) is "evil". And it's 100% based on his past actions, not his current/recent ones. So yes, you are effectively detecting the entire life history of a character, because alignment is based on the cumulative actions and decisions that character has made, the resulting calculation of which is the current alignment.
    So even after me explaining how your argument is a strawman, you still go back to the strawman.

    A game master cannot base a determination on something that has not yet happened. In order for a character to change alignment, they therefore have to change behaviour. If they do change behaviour, their alignment will change, and so will results of all spells on them. Neither detection nor protection track alignment change. They cannot tell if someone who is currently Evil has always been so, nor can they tell if someone who is non-Evil has always been so. They do not tell specific behaviours a character has taken to warrant their alignment.

    What about this strikes you as "detecting the entire life history" of a character?

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    Huh. Belkar detects as evil. Full Stop. He is affected by a protection from evil effect. Full stop. What more is there to consider? You're tap dancing around the core issue here, which is that alignment is based on the sum totality of a character's actions, and that alignment (in D&D and many games) has a direct in-game mechanical effect (how you detect/protect being just one of the easiest to observe).
    You are not Belkar's player, I am not your game master, I have zero reason to care. As noted, at best, Belkar's case can inform you how Rich Burlew would make decisions as a game master of a D&D game, except Rich Burlew has explicitly told his readers that he doesn't heed D&D rules exactly, breaking them as he sees fit to tell the story and jokes he wants to tell. I've already quoted you the actual rules on how alignment changes, based your argument on them, instead of something that is not a game of D&D.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    What part of "play this way or suffer consequences" do you think wont influence player choices when playing their characters? I'm honestly baffled by your position here. Again, if there were no consequences, you would be correct. The moment that there are, then any threat of those consequences constitutes influence on how players play their characters. Period. It can't not have that effect.
    I've never argued the rules don't influence how players play their characters. What I'm rejecting is your argument, both stated and implied, that this some great big problem. Indeed, I've repeatedly pointed out that influencing the players is desirable for variety of game aesthetics.

    For contrast: the rules also state, in no uncertain terms, that if a character fails to defend themselves in combat, either due to bad luck (=die rolls) or poor tactical decisions (player chose the wrong move/spell/equipment for the situation), they will get hurt and can even die. This undoubtedly influences player decisions. It has never stopped players who actually want to play suicidally reckless characters from deliberately taking actions that cause injury or death.

    Why are game penalties for game behaviour so bad in one case, yet completely fine in the other?

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    The Robin Hood example is unique to alignment. That Belkar detects as evil despite having behaved "good" for the entirely of this book is also unique to how the alignment system in D&D works. I'm not sure what conditions you are asking for here. I could literally list off 100 more cases where the alignment system fails. All of them because it tries to simultaneously record very different things on the same axis.
    Neither Robin Hood nor Belkar are game characters in a game of D&D under progress. The former is a legendary figure with multiple different stories about him, with conflicting and occasionally contradictory details; the latter is a character from a webcomic that parodies D&D and where the author has explicitly stated they will ignore the rules in order to tell the story they want to tell.

    If you were to play a character based on either in an actual game of AD&D run by me as the game master, I would have no difficulty pinning down their alignments during the course of a game, using the rules I've already extensively cited. My inability to definitively pin down their alignment outside the context of a game is that moral arguments between strangers on the internet have not agreed on me as a referee.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    The point is that in a predominantly "good" society, a detect evil spell can detect criminal intent/action. Someone who is evil is someone who actively pursues/enjoys causing harm to others. in a society full of people who avoid this, that person shows up. So the serial killer will be one evil person in a sea of good.
    And? What about it?

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    The same exact serial killer, simply by being an Orc and living in an Orc society in which most of the people are evil (but the "usual" kind of evil, where killing to advance career, torturing your enemies, then sacrificing them and eating their hearts is "normal"), is much harder to detect because even though what he's doing is just as harmful to Orc society as to human (killing people for socially non-beneficial purposes), yet magically, simply because of the culture itself, he can't be detected as easily.
    And? What about it? Imagine a culture where criminals are permanently branded with a tattoo on their forehead. Now imagine another where everyone does the same as a fashion statement. Mundanely, simply because of the culture itself, a criminal is harder to detect in the latter society.

    Don't even bother complaining about the comparison. Detect Evil detects curses and it's perfectly possible, in AD&D, for a society to put curse marks on individuals so that they always detect as Evil. The mundane and the fantastic example boil down to the exact same result.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    So a detect evil spell actually functions differently (and is of different utility) among a human society than an orc one (again, making certain assumptions about the orc society in my example). Not in mechanical terms, but in actual utility to the people using it. And what's interesting is that it's not equal in the other direction. The serial killer targeting orcs doesn't detect as "good", so this isn't a case of swapping things in the other direction. He's still "evil". We've just decided that different kinds of evil are all the same as far as the spell is concerned. The opposite case among humans (the lack of being able to distinguish different kinds of "good") doesn't exist. Because if someone detects as "good" is a reasonable bet that they aren't likely to kill me in my sleep and take my stuff.
    First of all, I already noted the inequality. Second, it's not the spell that functions differently, and you even admit so in the underlined part. People reacting differently to the same kind of information because the information has different uses in different contexts proves no inconsistency in the overarching system whatsoever.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    One can certainly argue that this is a function of the asymmetrical nature of good and evil, and that the Orcs "deserve" to suffer other types of violence amongst themselves because of their already existing innate "evilness" or something. And that's absolutely fine. But it does run aground when we consider that good and evil are supposed to be at least somewhat cosmically balanced concepts in the game universe. An alignment system with "sides/factions" would work very differently, right? Because then I'd be detecting people "aligned with my side" and "against my side". So a human operating in human society but intending to do harm to that society would detect as "evil" (or an "enemy" perhaps), while an Orc operating in orc society doing the same would also detect as an enemy. They would each detect the same as an group of humans invading said orc lands and vice versa. It's a far more useful way of managing alignment.
    One could argue that, but it would be a fallacious argument, because what's actually being proven is asymmetry of human and orc societies, which is fully observable even without any spells. All other arguments are founded on the spell doing something it doesn't do. Again: the "sides" we're talking about are those of the overarching system, sorted by behaviour. They are not symmetrical, and do not need to be symmetrical, in order to be balanced. An easy physical experiment that would prove this would be putting one 10 kg steel dumbbell and one 10 kg wood dumbbell on opposing sides of a scale. They are not "evil for humans" or "good for orcs". You can't prove an inconsistency based on a strawman, and you especially cannot prove an inconsistency by arguing a spell that detect something completely different would be more useful. I also reject the idea that it's a more useful way of running alignment - because it completely sidesteps the question of what moral philosophies the sides are supposed to follow or what kinds of behaviours they're supposed to sort for.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    I'm not complaining about it. Merely pointing out the problems inherent in an alignment system that does have a "detect evil" spell in the first place. That the spell doesn't proclaim to do this isn't the point. Saying "that's what the rules say, so it's a good rule" kinda defeats the purpose of having a discussion about good/bad rules.
    You haven't shown any problem, that's the problem. You've shown a detection spell has different utility in different societies, something that in itself can be used as a building block for a game.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    I'm giving an example of human nature and how it often does not fit into neat little alignment boxes. It's not about the game system.
    Your choice of example is Star Wars. Star. Wars. Color me unimpressed.

    If you want to give examples of human nature not fitting in in neat little boxes, give examples from actual history. Also, while you're at it, explain predictive power of the Big Five Model or Kohlberg's stages of moral development. Real theories of personality regularly manage to group people into a relatively small amount of categories. It's not about the game system indeed; people do not have infinite amount of different personalities and they are not infinitely distant from each other.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    And Andor is affected by how the force views him... how? This is akin to the whole "clerics of gods" bit, where they are the only one's affected by failing to follow the rules. But that does not preclude other people "on their side" who have personalities and behaviors that a Jedi (for example) would find horrific.
    People who are sensitive to the Force can detect how strong or weak others are in it, as well as read the emotions of other people. In context of the Star Wars universe, Andor has an alignment in the exact same way an AD&D character has under the Great Wheel Cosmology. Remember also Obi-Wan's point about "luck" in New Hope - it is strongly implied, and occasionally shown, that the Force plays an active part in events. A rebel falling to the Dark Side has ramifications to everyone who associates with them, above and beyond just the subjective opinion of people who'd find them horrific.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    Imagine if this was in effect though. That "the force" somehow pushed people who didn't comply with the "light side" towards evil. Andor would decide to fight for the Empire, right? He would "fall to the dark side" because of his actions. But he doesn't because real people don't actually behave that way. It's why I brought up this example. He's a refreshing character in the SW universe precisely because he doesn't fall into the "cardboard cutout" characters we've become accustomed to. The whole "dark/light side" conflict only exists for folks who have force powers (and the later episodes thematically suggest that even this is an artificially created conflict). For everyone else? You pick a side and fight for it using whatever tools and abilities you have.

    Andor doesn't fight for the rebellion because he's a "good guy" and the rebellion is "good" ("side" and "personality being the same). He fights for the rebellion because the empire has taken things from him and represents a threat to him personally (they're after him for some choices he made along the way). That does not preclude that he's absolutely on the "side" of the rebellion, only that the "side" isn't as simplistic as alignment boxes might suggest. And his "side" certainly doesn't seem to have a problem with him helping them even if some on the same "side" might find what he does and how he does it morally questionable.
    It's actually the reverse, as pointed out by Yoda in the original trilogy: the Dark Side of the Force tempts you by being easier and more seducing than the Light. All of this is somewhat beyond the point, though, because the rest reads to me as follows: "A Disney Stars Wars series has decided to break away from canon to milk money from people who didn't like black-and-white morality of earlier works" and you just happened to fall for it. Andor is not a real person; he does not behave the way he does because of any deep understanding of real human psychology. Like every other fictional character, he works the way he does because the authors of the work decreed so.

    None of the additional details matter, because we've already established your idea of how "sides" work under alignment is built on strawmen. Even in AD&D, you can have a Chaotic Neutral or Evil character briefly join the fight with Chaotic Good against a Lawful Evil regime.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    Which is precisely the cardboard cutout style of play that I find constricting *and* which characters like Andor exist to challenge. Continuing to try to fit that square peg into the round hole of the alignment system is perhaps not the best way forward.
    You can just say you don't like classic Star Wars, you know.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    And yet, the alignment system you just spoke about would do exactly that. It would "kick Andor out" because he's clearly "falling to the dark side". In the gritty reality of what is really required to fight such a rebellion successfully? Folks like Andor are necessary. Might be an ugly truth that the "light side fighters" don't want to think too hard about, but if we were to model real human behavior it would not fit so neatly into the kind of alignment systems you seem to want to use.
    Neither you nor Disney have anything to say about what is "really required" for rebellion in "a gritty reality". Star Wars is not realistic, it's not about "gritty reality", neither the setting nor games based on it have to model real human behaviour to any great degree.

    Meanwhile, under the 1st Edition AD&D system, a character like Andor can have any deluded notions of "ugly truths" they want and if they fall into Evil and get kicked out by more moral rebels, they can just eat the penalty and continue fighting against the Empire with other amoral lunatics if they're so inclined. Alignment doesn't actually prohibit this kind of character as existing. He would fit right in.Why do you think he wouldn't fit when the base rules allow playing a Chaotic Neutral Thief or a Chaotic Evil Assassin? Come on now.

    ---

    I had to cut away part of this post, namely everything having to deal with gbaji's mangling of Quertus's hypothetical, for length. I will post that only if Quertus, specifically, requests it, because most of the parts in it are just rehashes of what's already above.
    Last edited by Vahnavoi; 2022-10-18 at 11:00 AM.

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    Default Re: Alignment: Fall 2022

    Not going to reply to everything. Just this one bit. You are confusing the rule being "enforced" with the consequences for failure to follow the rule.

    If the rule says "characters with X alignment must behave this way in this situation", that's the "rule" the GM is enforcing. That's the "D" scenario you keep insisting isn't GM enforced. But it is. You must comply with "D" (change the way you play the character), or else be punished with the consequence of "C" (have the GM forcibly change your alignment). One does not exist without the other.

    Insisting that this doesn't result in the player being forced to play the character based on how the GM views alignment and not how they view alignment is just plain completely wrong.

    And no. It's not the same as refereeing a judo match or something. There are very very clear rules as to what constitutes a point in a match (not familiar with judo, but I did fence for many years). The only question is whether a referee actually sees the action that occurred (or if they mistake the order of events, which can affect things). There's no question as to which parts of the body constitute a valid hit and which are off target. There's no question as to when a competitor steps off the stip/mat/whatever. It's only a matter of observing what happened accurately.

    Alignment is not the same thing. Alignment is inherently subjective. Worse, in D&D (and many other games) it is inherently inconsistent, and can easily (as I've pointed out multiple times) result in the same action being interpreted as the complete opposite side of an alignment axis depending on which aspect of alignment you are choosing to focus on.

    And for the record, stop obsessing over the word "tyrant". Geez. I used the wrong freaking word. Replace "evil but legitimate ruler" instead. Then assess the Robin Hood character and actions and determine whether they are lawful or chaotic. You literally just spent 3 paragraphs going on about the word "tyranny" (despite me already saying that I shouldn't have used the word and replacing it with a different condition), leaping on that "mistake", instead of addressing the alternative "correct" case present in the Robin Hood stories. The point isn't "OMG. You shouldn't have called it a tyranny!". It should be "yeah, it's not actually a tyranny, so basing your entire counter on the fact that it's not chaotic to oppose a tyranny sorta doesn't hold any water".

    And again. You tap danced around the issue of that example. You spent paragraph after paragraph quoting rules, and playing word games, but you didn't actually answer the question:

    is Robin Hood lawful or chaotic? Answer that question. Then explain why. Can you do this one thing?
    Last edited by gbaji; 2022-10-18 at 05:22 PM.

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    Default Re: Alignment: Fall 2022

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    If the rule says "characters with X alignment must behave this way in this situation",
    First, you need to cite such a rule from an actual role playing game, please, rather than pulling it out of your nether regions. The other poster has done so on multiple occasions.
    Last edited by KorvinStarmast; 2022-10-18 at 08:18 PM.
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    Default Re: Alignment: Fall 2022

    After consulting with Quertus, I've chosen to put the cut part here. It's in spoilers, because a lot of it is rehashing points already made, just in different context.

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    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    Because you said the GM is the final arbiter on this. So if he choses an interpretation of what a lawful good character would/should do in that situation, by your argument, that's what should have happened, and any action to the contrary by the player is "wrong".

    Remember. I'm examining what happens when the GM and player disagree on how an alignment should be played. And also pointing out that some of the inherent inconsistencies in how alignments in the traditional D&D law/chaos;good/evil alignment system increase the probability of those disagreements. You're ignoring the premise if you just assume we start out agreeing. And the fact that we're even having a discussion (and that so many alignment arguments have existed in the past) support my assumption that these disagreements will occur and we maybe should examine why they occur.
    It would make for a better examination if you stopped presuming a strawman game masters. It would also make for a better examination if you stopped with the strawman players. If the player is so out-of-tune with their game master that they refuse to abide by their game master's ruling, why did they sit down to play?

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    The very fact that alignment can change as a consequence of character choices/actions means that each choice/action along the way must be significant, or it would never happen. That's like saying that "it's just one concussion and it takes a lot to cause permanent damage, so let's not worry about it figuring out why it happened". Um... No. Each case matters.
    Already cited the actual rules for this. How about you refer to them.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    Replace "paladin" with "character who cares about retaining his lawful good status". Doesn't matter what the label is. Let's assume that alignment actually matters, else, why bother having it?
    It's not an equivalent substitution. Paladin has a stricter code and additional penalties compared to other Lawful Good characters. Also, again, I was talking about a specific character outline by Quertus. You change the character, you change the situation. The goal post moves far away from what Quertus and me were talking about. By now, you've missed both the point Quertus was trying to make and my refutation of it.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    And yeah. I'm examining conditions where we don't know exactly what's going on, and who's on which side, and who has what alignment, etc. That's the point. It's terrifically easy to make alignment choices if the GM tells you "this is good" and "this is evil". Duh. But let's pretend that we're trying to at least somewhat model a real world where choices are not so ridiculously black and white.
    In an actual game, the game master knows more than anyone else on the table what's going on, and is allowed to fill in details where necessary. You can't criticize a game process by presuming a situation entirely unlike the game process. "Modeling the real world" continues to be neither here nor there. A game doesn't have to do this to uncompromising accuracy, a fantasy game can make allowances for romanticism, and this is par for the course for a wide variety of game genres.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    And in that case, a character can easily find themselves in a situation where there is no good answer. Perhaps telling the guys who captured you allows the "bad guys" to do more horrible bad things, and so it's "evil". But failing to do so prevents those who captured you from stopping the real bad guys, and thus results in more harm. Was it "evil" to stay silent when speaking would save lives?
    You are supposedly aiming for moral complexity, yet you keep using naive concepts such as "the real bad guys" and implying contrived additional details of the scenario. Quertus made no mention of "real bad guys" anywhere. He played no hypotheticals with supposed consequences of telling or not telling.

    In any case, this is a false dilemma. There's a clear correct choice, but whether it is plausible depends on something you did not establish: does the captive KNOW the consequences of remaining silent? If they don't, the situation reduces into a Prisoner's dilemma, more on that below.

    If they DO know: let me quote the definition of Lawful Good alignment again:

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

    Underlines for emphasis.

    If it is, somehow, KNOWN to the captive that blabbing to the authorities will produce the best possible outcome, a Lawful Good character will do just that. This is not rocket science.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    What happens when you are playing characters in a game world full of unknowns? Things aren't so clear cut. That's what I'm examining. And the degree to which you keep presenting simplified scenarios and insisting that I'm not allowed to make them more complex also highlights a point I made earlier: That the alignment system may also push GMs into simplifying good/evil and law/chaos choices in their games exactly in order to avoid this conflict. If you don't put moral quandaries in your D&D game, and even a tiny bit of this is because you're trying to help your players play their characters more easily, then this is in effect in your game.
    Being a player is relevantly different from being a game master. I already described how to run unknown alignment variant of AD&D rules. As a player, that means I don't know what my character's alignment is or how my game master is making such decisions, except via experience. That is, if I want to know my alignment, I will have to pay attention to how game objects (NPCs, spells, magic items etc.) react to my character and how my behaviour influences theirs. In such a game, I will have no idea if the choice to go the human rights march or choosing not to tell anything to the authorities are good, until and unless the time comes that this has some kind of consequence on myself. If I don't seek to know my alignment, it's possible I won't have a clue until my character dies and the game master reveals to me which afterlife they're going to.

    You keep presuming this will be really simple and restraining, except, you premise is that I don't agree with my game master's judgement. That is, if I follow my own moral compass, it will consistently lead to different results compared to if I was the game master myself. This means I will have to work outside my own preconceptions and work on trying to figure out what other people think, or otherwise accept my subjective opinion is not a model for the world works.

    You keep presuming this exercise would be simple and restricting. I think you haven't ever even tried.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    Refusing to consider cases where the issue is more complex is somewhat the same thing. Of course I'm adding in additional things to the scenarios. Because these are things can can (and perhaps should) come up in real game playing. How about we examine the difficult cases and not just the easy ones?
    Your questions aren't difficult to answer. They're just time consuming - took me literal hours to write all this. What you failed to consider that outside of being sick and having way too much free time, no-one has a motive to entertain weird corner case before they happen. It's not conductive trying to answer them all beforehand, which is, again, why you have a real human at the table to do that.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    Why are we assuming this is all about a human rights march?
    Because I was answering a specific scenario pitched by Quertus. Pay attention to things you quote.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    That's a strange scenario to begin with. Let's assume there's a plot afoot to assassinate the king. Let's assume our lawful good character is trying to stop this and is investigating some suspicious characters in town. Let's assume he gets captured and held by them. As it happens, they are also trying to stop the assassination, but don't know who this guy and his friends are who are poking around town either. They want information. Let's assume they have half of the information needed to stop the plot, and the captured character has the other half.

    Should he tell them what he's doing and why? Or stay silent assuming they are the "bad guys" and anything he says will only help them? So him, being a steadfast lawful good character would never under any circumstances "break" and tell his captors anything at all, right? Er... He just got the king killed, half his family killed, and the entire kingdom has now fallen to the evil overlord or whatever. Good job being lawful good there buddy!
    This reduces to Prisoner's dilemma. Specifically, continuous iterated version. If the character does not know his captors have the necessary information to save their king, the correct choice is to not tell them anything. Yes, it will have a bad outcome, but the character cannot be faulted for that, because they cannot be faulted for not being prescient. Unintended outcomes resulting from imperfect information do not weigh heavily in alignment considerations.

    However, backwards induction suggests this never happens, because the other party faces the similar dilemma, but on a higher level. That is: the captive's choice is whether to co-operate or defect with their King's wishes, but for the captors, the choice is whether to co-operate or defect with their captive. For them, the same thought experiment suggests that they ought to co-operate with their captive: explain who they are and what their plans are. So we can reason that even if the captive is reluctant to share any information, their captors will share what they have to win them over, and they will co-operate once it's clear their interests, heh, align.

    In order for us to get the bad outcome, both parties must already have a past reason for thinking the other is a traitor. (Basic pitfall of tit-for-tat strategy, see the article).

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    I'm not even saying that there aren't perfectly valid ways of playing this out within the D&D alignment system. Just pointing out that every scenario can be far more complex than it appears, and that actual moral decisions are not as simple as "I fight on the side of good and do good things". Presenting nothing but scenarios where the cardboard cutout LG character can follow his cardboard cutout LG play guide and always come out smelling like roses fails to examine any realistic gaming world where realistic scenarios may actually play out. And using nothing but those sorts of examples when defending alignment system doesn't really allow us to accurately test whether they "work well" or not.

    You test the things that might fail, not the ones you know will work.
    Forget alignment, your scenario has a fairly explicit solution under basic game theory. It isn't a complex scenario at all. The basic guideline for solving scenarios like this is "do to others what you would want to be done to yourself", that is, if you want co-operation, start with co-operation, followed by "tit-for-tat", or, as it's also known "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth". Shockingly, this works out to the solution that Good people ought to trust other people if they have no evidence of them being untrustworthy.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    You are way too caught up on the specifics of a frankly silly example case (I'm not even sure how we got onto a "human rights march" kick, except that someone mentioned it or something). Again. It doesn't matter why they are captured. It only matters that they were, and that their captors are trying to get them to talk, and that by talking it may A) help their cause or B) hurt their cause. But maybe they have no clue which is which at the time? Or they do, and which choice do they make? And how does the GM judge their choice in the context of their alignment.
    So when I point out I don't have to give you answers, that's me ignoring your cases; but when I pay attention to actual details Quertus gave me, that's too caught up on the specifics and excuses you for answering my questions?

    In fact, what cause is being fought for matters. It matters for both alignment and for deciding how to act. Without such details, the situation resolves to basic version of Prisoner's dilemma.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    Sigh. Forget the freaking march. It's not about a march. Are you seriously suggesting that a chaotic evil person cannot have any friends, or be completely loyal to them? That's the most incredibly restrictive interpretation of chaos and evil I've ever seen. Again, the complexity comes in how we judge chaos. Is it chaotic if you regularly break the rules to do things (external), or if you just do random actions instead of planning things out. So an assassin might be chaotic evil or lawful evil depending on how we judge the law/chaos side, right? Let's assume "breaks laws all the time" is what the GM in this world has decided makes one chaotic rather than "meticulously plans his assassinations". The character is chaotic evil. He's chaotic due to breaking the law, and evil because he has no problems killing people for money. But does this preclude him having friends that he would protect if they came to be threatened? Absolutely not.
    I am in fact perfectly comfortable suggesting that someone who values their individual freedom and desires above those of others cannot be completely loyal to other people. That's because being completely loyal to another person means putting their freedom and desires on par with yours. Real life people of the sort we're talking about are high on Dark Triad personality traits and might not have friends at all in the sense you use the word. What you call restrictive, I call knowing what words mean.

    Seriously. Read the definitions of the alignments. They were right there in the post I made to Quertus. Stop moving the goal posts.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    And if his employers hired him to kill one of his friends, would he do it? Or would it be just as much within his alignment to say "Nope. Not going to do this, I'll kill you instead"? Could play it either way, right? Heck. I'd argue the lawful evil assassin would be more likely to say "a contract is a contract" and go ahead and kill his friend. Neither the "chaos" nor "evil" sides of his nature preclude him having friends and being loyal to them. Not unless you are lumping every single possible personality trait that could be "chaos" and "evil" and assume they must all be present. Which gets us right back to cardboard cutout characters, and restrictive play.
    The actual determination would depend on the amount of money and the actual cost of killing the one offering it. Turning down money and getting into a fight you can't win for the sake of another person is not, in fact, Chaotic Evil. The sense that it could play either way is based on unestablished details of the scenario. Meanwhile, whether the Lawful Evil assassin would accept the contract would depend on details such as who the target is and whether attacking that target would cause negative affects to the Assassin's Guild - weighing the reward against consequences to the assassin's in-group.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    I maybe want to play a roguish character willing to take on dirty jobs, including killing people if the money is right, but still have the flexibility to say that I'm not going to kill my friends, or take jobs that cause harm to people I care about, or even if I just don't like the person who's hiring me. That's not "neutral" on the alignment scale, because a neutral character would at least make some effort to avoid killing random people along the way and maybe my character doesn't care about that (Heck. Maybe I *like* causing collateral damage, hence the "evil" and "chaotic" bits). But that doesn't mean that I wouldn't use my same "special skills" to cause pain and suffering to anyone trying to hurt someone I actually care about, or that I can't have anyone in the world that I do care about in the first place.
    And depending on which of those guidelines a character actually ends up emphasizing in practice, they might end up as any of Chaotic Neutral, Neutral Evil or Lawful Evil. You seem to not understand that as the number of friends you have and the people who you don't want to harm grows, the smaller the space becomes for valid targets to kill for money, until the point where it's functionally zero and the character could just as well be of Neutral or even Good alignment. Similarly, as the number of people whose concerns you place on par with or above your own grows, the weaker your case for Chaotic self-motivation and the stronger the case for Lawful group-mindedness. You blame me for reducing people to cardboard cut-outs, but you yourself only ever consider most superficial aspects of the axes given to you, such as "liking causing collateral damage".

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    And you can't imagine any character personality that can contain both? Also you've added a conditional that doesn't need to exist (the bolded bits). My character can care about his family/friends without them even knowing what I do for a living, right? You're conflating how I feel about them, with how they feel about me. The assumption that if I'm playing a chaotic evil character that I can't care about anyone else is absurd. And honestly, if you think that is true, then you're kinda proving my point about how alignment systems cause restrictive thinking about the range of character personalities. You're literally telling me that I can't play the character i want to play, and that if I put CE on my character sheet it means that I can't have anyone in the world that I care about, or want to help, or are willing to suffer pain to protect.

    If I were looking for proof that my assertion is correct, you just provided it.
    I can imagine it just fine - I don't consider it plausible, which should matter to you more than me, since you are the one insisting on more "realistic" characters. The conditional doesn't "need" to exist, but does, in the context of what Quertus pitched to me. You are suggesting a person who does not recognize people beyond himself as important, having absolute loyalty to someone who is arguing for everyone to have the same rights as themselves. Yes, a thief or a murderer can maintain superficially friendly terms with another person, but this is almost always based on deception. Not telling your family what you do for a living is not "absolute loyalty", it's a very clear case of a person's loyalty ending where inconvenience to themselves would begin. Do not conflate "caring" with "loyalty", and definitely do not conflate loyalty built on convenience with "complete" or "absolute" loyalty.

    Saying I would disallow this character is, again, wrong. You could play this character, in a game run by me, under 1st Edition AD&D rules, just fine. The question isn't about what you can choose to play, it is about whether it counts as Chaotic Evil, and consequently, how *I* choose to play the world your character lives in.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    It's either sufficient to affect player choices, or it's not. Pick one. If it is, then it suffers from the problems I've been talking about. If it's not, then it falls into the "it doesn't matter and there are no consequences" case and we're fine. Constantly saying "but it's just a minor thing, and it's not that big a deal if your alignment changes", kinda misses the point.
    I don't need to pick one. I do not need to assume that the threat of alignment change and penalties associated with it are sufficient motivators to make a player choose otherwise in each and every scenario. I don't need to assume losing class powers or taking a hit to experience gains is a big deal for every player and every character. As noted, the player has a CHOICE in that regard. Penalties are not prohibitions, a player can keep playing their character under a new alignment. In case of a rogue, the penalties ARE minor, especially compared to a Cleric or a Paladin.

    You are the one who is assuming that any influence on player choices, at all, is bad. That is what I've been actually arguing against. That's what you have to answer for to me. So, again. What about "these kind of scenarios" strike you as so bad that they need to be avoided? What is supposed to be the great big flaw they reveal? What about them restricts the player so much that it becomes an issue?


    Now back to the usual:

    ---


    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    Not going to reply to everything. Just this one bit. You are confusing the rule being "enforced" with the consequences for failure to follow the rule.

    If the rule says "characters with X alignment must behave this way in this situation", that's the "rule" the GM is enforcing. That's the "D" scenario you keep insisting isn't GM enforced. But it is. You must comply with "D" (change the way you play the character), or else be punished with the consequence of "C" (have the GM forcibly change your alignment). One does not exist without the other.
    I've shown you, with actual rules citations, multiple times, that the way it works is that "in case of player characters, behaviour determines actual alignment". The correct version is not "character with X alignment must behave this way in this situation", it is "character with this behaviour in this situation must be X alignment". The thing that is forced to change is alignment, not the character's behaviour: the player can, again, eat the penalty and continue as they were under a new alignment.

    You relevantly fail to recognize the difference between this and, say, a model where a game master refuses to entertain out-of-alignment actions. "Your alignment is Lawful Evil but the act you suggest would be Chaotic Good. I'm afraid I cannot allow you to do that, Dave. Pick some other action."<--- THAT would be enforcement of D.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    Insisting that this doesn't result in the player being forced to play the character based on how the GM views alignment and not how they view alignment is just plain completely wrong.
    I've repeatedly stated that the very point of alignment rules is so a game master can enforce particular themes, settings and game aesthetics. I'm not insisting on what you think I am. I'm talking about the player having an actual, at-the-table CHOICE to act differently in the face of a penalty. If a player thinks wrong is right, black is white and the moon is just the sun at night, they are not stopped from playing a character with such beliefs, the game master will simply treat them as having a different alignment than what they would give themselves.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    And no. It's not the same as refereeing a judo match or something. There are very very clear rules as to what constitutes a point in a match (not familiar with judo, but I did fence for many years). The only question is whether a referee actually sees the action that occurred (or if they mistake the order of events, which can affect things). There's no question as to which parts of the body constitute a valid hit and which are off target. There's no question as to when a competitor steps off the stip/mat/whatever. It's only a matter of observing what happened accurately.
    It is very much the same. Rules of Judo are not complete in the way you think they are. There are always ambiguous cases where the referee has to make a subjective judgment based on their understanding of principles of Judo. If you think Judo is bad example, go back to Olympic figure skating, or dance, or pictionary, or any of the others of myriad of games and sports that invest the referee with ability to make authoritative judgments about scoring.

    But more importantly, you missed the point of the comparison. In Judo, the players have direct tactile feedback of who is in control, who is doing the throwing, who is being thrown, etc. The referee, as an outside observer, lacks this information. The referee makes their decisions based on how things look to them. The players may have conflicting opinions because of information they have but the referee doesn't, but as far as the match is concerned, the referee's word is final. If the referee commands you up from the mat because the referee thinks you're being passive, them you get up from the mat. In the exact same way, if the game master in AD&D thinks your character is behaving Evil, then you accept that your character is behaving Evil, regardless of your personal opinion.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    Alignment is not the same thing. Alignment is inherently subjective. Worse, in D&D (and many other games) it is inherently inconsistent, and can easily (as I've pointed out multiple times) result in the same action being interpreted as the complete opposite side of an alignment axis depending on which aspect of alignment you are choosing to focus on.
    Page 24, Dungeon Master's Guide, "Alignment": "Each of these cases for alignment is, of course, stated rather simplistically and ideally, for philosophical and moral reasoning are completely subjective according to acculturation of the individual. You, as a Dungeon Master, must establish the meanings and boundaries of law and order as opposed to chaos and anarchy, as well as the divisions between right and good as opposed to hurtful and evil."

    I quoted this before, you failed to address it. The rules empower the game master to decide on the exact specifics, based on their subjective understanding. This is no different from other areas of the rules that are incomplete, or other games where referee has decisive power over incomplete rules. I linked to the article before, and you failed to address it also. Long story short: the genre of wargames AD&D relevantly takes cues from reduced prominence of complex mechanical rules in favor of human judgment, because using the mechanical rules was too hard, too slow, and lead to odd behaviours in corner cases.

    The lesson here is fairly straightforward: complaining that, say, Judo has "very very clear" rules while "alignment is inherently subjective" misses the actual point by a mile. Olympic Judo Referee's booklet has, if I recall right, 60 pages of rules just for a grappling duel between two persons, and it still doesn't give unambiguous answer to every question (nevermind that during an actual match, a referee cannot reference the entire damned thing; they have to rely on their memory and judgment). Just as well, AD&D alignment could have 60 pages giving exact point values to individual actions, and I have every reason to believe you would still be here complaining. If, say, the rules said "100 Evil points for murder", a player can still have weird subjective opinion about what counts as "murder". So on and so forth. From a game design point of view, there's a point beyond which giving more specific rules makes a game harder to learn and slower to run without improving the end result - while still not giving any better resolution to semantic confusion than "the referee has final say on game events".

    As for "inherent inconsistency"? Since a game master has final say on every alignment determination, the upper bound for consistency of a game run by a human is consistency of said human. I have no trouble admitting few humans are perfectly consistent, but perfect consistency is not a requirement for a playable tabletop game.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    And for the record, stop obsessing over the word "tyrant". Geez. I used the wrong freaking word. Replace "evil but legitimate ruler" instead.
    I'm fairly sure I only referenced the word directly for few paragraphs (in a very long post) explaining why I agreed with a particular point you made. I'm not obsessed, you didn't use the wrong word, reactions like this suggest you can't keep the argument straight anymore.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    Then assess the Robin Hood character and actions and determine whether they are lawful or chaotic. You literally just spent 3 paragraphs going on about the word "tyranny" (despite me already saying that I shouldn't have used the word and replacing it with a different condition), leaping on that "mistake", instead of addressing the alternative "correct" case present in the Robin Hood stories. The point isn't "OMG. You shouldn't have called it a tyranny!". It should be "yeah, it's not actually a tyranny, so basing your entire counter on the fact that it's not chaotic to oppose a tyranny sorta doesn't hold any water".

    And again. You tap danced around the issue of that example. You spent paragraph after paragraph quoting rules, and playing word games, but you didn't actually answer the question:

    is Robin Hood lawful or chaotic? Answer that question. Then explain why. Can you do this one thing?
    Again: Which Robin Hood?

    Robin Hood is not a game character. He is a legendary figure with multiple different versions, sometimes with contradictory details. You have to pick which version you're talking about in order for the determination to be made. You cannot complain about the alignment system being inconsistent if the character it is supposed to be applied to is an inconsistent, moving goal post.

    Traditionally, Robin Hood has been used as an example of a Chaotic Good character. Page 20 of the magazine (22 on the PDF display) explores the issue. Neutral Good would fit just as well, for the version who opposes misrule by King John.

    Why not Lawful? Because Robin Hood is a thief, and thieves cannot be both Lawful and Good under 1st edition AD&D rules. People have expressed confusion over this, but the reason is dead simple: thieves steal. Making a career out of stealing always means one of two things:

    1) the character has decided some group does not deserve creature rights, namely the right to their own property. This would be Evil.
    2) the character has decided to act against social order of the land they live in. This would be Chaotic.

    The classic motivation for Robin Hood is "steals from the rich to give to the poor". Giving to the poor, showing concern to those who are not well off, is the chief justification for Good part of Robin's alignment.

    I have every reason to believe you already knew all of this, because you pitched a Robin Hood-like bard as Chaotic. You knew, from the beginning, that Robin Hood is generally considered Chaotic, you didn't need me to tell you any of this. You're simply clashing against the notion that in an actual game, a game master might find some reason to consider such a character something else. That proves no inconsistency with the alignment system: a player character's alignment is based on actual at-the-table behaviour as judged by their game master, not popular stereotypes about Robin Hood.

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    There are a few comments that present the GM as the referee, but a lot (most?) peoples are only happy with their referee as long as they consider they would have taken the same decision.

    They might accept the need to temporarily accept a decision they disagree with, but long lasting decisions will especially be contested.

    And the "I consider my character is CG but my GM consider it to be LE" is a situation that will cause conflicts at a lot of tables, because there it means there is a fundamental disagreement at the table on how the GM should judge the situation. Not all players will "agree to disagree" on issues like that unless that's the whole point of the campaign (e.g. playing a campaign in which the universal notion of Good is actually twisted and unjust, with the PCs rebelling against it).

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    @MoiMagnus:

    And?

    For any game, there's a subset of people who refuse to play because they think that game's rules are stupid. You're back to a point I addressed near the beginning of this exchange. The supposed problem is not in any way unique or limited to alignment or even conflicts between a player and a game master, a freeform game will fall apart just as well if players are in severe disagreement over what words mean.

    If a player is so out-of-tune with their game master that they refuse to abide by their game master's ruling, why did they sit down to play?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    And by doing so, you also lose all gameplay revolving around such objects. It is a trade-off, not some linear improvement. You can also remove Corruption points for CODA Lord of the Rings, but then you have to accept that sometimes Gandalf kills Frodo, takes the Ring and becomes new a Dark Lord ruling over Middle-Earth.
    Sure, if i cut stuff, i lose the ability to use it.

    However, what of value so i really lose when i cut alignment from D&D ? It is something a lot of other fantasy systems do and i don't really have the feeling there are a lot of worthwile stories that i can do in D&D and not in those systems because of the missing alignment. I can have gods and their opinions and their interaction with believers without any alignment. I can do moral quandaries without any alignment (possibly even better). I can do afterlifes without alignment. I can do angels, devils, demons and undead without alignment. I can also do magical effects based on their type without alignment. And so on. What do i really lose here ? What makes this a tradeoff i really have to think about hard instead of it being a bargain?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    @MoiMagnus:

    And?

    For any game, there's a subset of people who refuse to play because they think that game's rules are stupid. You're back to a point I addressed near the beginning of this exchange. The supposed problem is not in any way unique or limited to alignment or even conflicts between a player and a game master, a freeform game will fall apart just as well if players are in severe disagreement over what words mean.

    If a player is so out-of-tune with their game master that they refuse to abide by their game master's ruling, why did they sit down to play?
    Indeed, it's not unique to alignment. But alignment is particularly placed at the middle of everything that makes those problems worse:
    (1) It's related to the PC's personality, so there is a lot of player entitlement about it.
    (2) In editions where there is mechanical effects for it, it's directly or indirectly locking some "features" under GM arbitration, which again conflict with the general player entitlement to get access to the various options from the books.
    (3) It's linked to moral values / politics so peoples can import strong opinions from out-of-the-game in the game.
    (4) It's very easy for the GM to mess it up (e.g. creating a universe that effectively has "double standards" depending on what the GM wants in some circumstances).

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    Yeah, I feel like that's the difference between "That's an unexpected thing for your character to do" and "Now that your character did that, they have a different alignment".

    Either can cause conflict and neither is guaranteed to do so, but the latter feels quite a bit more likely to.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Satinavian View Post
    What do i really lose here ? What makes this a tradeoff i really have to think about hard instead of it being a bargain?
    I cannot easily tell, because you are not naming any specific game systems for me to use for comparison.

    However, the unknown alignment variant can be used to gauge this. One central puzzle for that variant is figuring out where you stand in relationship to the world, and alignment ties all of the things you mention (gods, angels, demons, undead, magic, spells, afterlives, moral quandaries etc.) to the same thing. This also has the effect that when all of these things are in play at the same time, you can use knowledge of one to make inferences of the others. So, presume one of the mentioned things is no longer tied to alignment (meaning a character's behaviour no longer changes how they react to the character) and check for what kind of inferences become faulty or impossible.

    Another thought experiment to gauge this is asking "what would I need to do to implement this in a computer game?". For example, tracking piety with the gods. We have numerous examples of this from roguelikes etc., and a lot of them end working like the alignment system. Go through your list of gods and see what moral philosophy or mode of behaviour is no longer tracked compared to the Great Wheel cosmology.

    But the real strength of the latter type of experiment is not to show you need AD&D alignment specifically. The real strength is showing that implicit alignment is not the same as no alignment. If you are using gods that demand specific conducts from their followers, afterlives that sort by behaviour, so on and so forth, you are already, as a game master, making the same kind of decisions as a game master using AD&D alignment, and if you ever wanted to codify that into something someone else (or in this case, a computer) could use, it would entail writing instructions equally or more explicit than AD&D alignment.

    ---

    Quote Originally Posted by MoiMagnus View Post
    Indeed, it's not unique to alignment. But alignment is particularly placed at the middle of everything that makes those problems worse:
    (1) It's related to the PC's personality, so there is a lot of player entitlement about it.
    (2) In editions where there is mechanical effects for it, it's directly or indirectly locking some "features" under GM arbitration, which again conflict with the general player entitlement to get access to the various options from the books.
    (3) It's linked to moral values / politics so peoples can import strong opinions from out-of-the-game in the game.
    (4) It's very easy for the GM to mess it up (e.g. creating a universe that effectively has "double standards" depending on what the GM wants in some circumstances).
    1) the rules are explicit that graphing player character alignment is the game master's task, so where does the entitlement come from? Bonus: for non-alignment version of the same question, consider a game where players sit down to play characters with personalities made by their game master. Does the entitlement still exist?

    2) players being sore losers about losing or not getting stuff is their time-honored tradition, but how is this different from any other situation where game master arbitration can make players lose stuff? For example, the same argument from entitlement can be made against character injury, character death, losing magic items etc. things that are crucial building blocks for various game aesthetics.

    3) this is already given. However, consider: I run Lamentations of the Flame Princess scenarios at conventions to complete strangers and have discussions about board-inappropriate things with them all the time, without my games blowing up. I don't find it hard to create a self-selection effect where the people who show up to play are either in agreement with or at least interested in what I'm trying to do. What prevents other from harnessing the same effect?

    4) Very easy compared to what? Loot distribution? Game balance between casters and martials? Combat difficulty? Psionics? I already agree, and have agreed from my first post, that moral philosophy is hard for kids or other people who have not finished their own moral development (or are otherwise entirely unfamiliar with the relevant concept). But on the same grounds, anything involving numbers is easy to screw up for kids and the mathematically inept, combat is easy to screw up for those who have no mind for strategy, narration is easy to screw up for those lacking in verbal skills, etc..

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    Default Re: Alignment: Fall 2022

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    4) Very easy compared to what? Loot distribution? Game balance between casters and martials? Combat difficulty? Psionics? I already agree, and have agreed from my first post, that moral philosophy is hard for kids or other people who have not finished their own moral development (or are otherwise entirely unfamiliar with the relevant concept). But on the same grounds, anything involving numbers is easy to screw up for kids and the mathematically inept, combat is easy to screw up for those who have no mind for strategy, narration is easy to screw up for those lacking in verbal skills, etc..
    I've seen two groups break up over loot distribution. (Granted, they were probably 'straw that broke the camel's back' deals)

    Combat difficulty: had a couple of groups lose people who hated hard combat. But a few stuck around.

    Psionics: heh, a fine can of worms. It can be done well, and it can be done badly.

    moral philosophy is hard for kids or other people who have not finished their own moral development (or are otherwise entirely unfamiliar with the relevant concept).
    I find any number of adults (or alleged adults) who have trouble with it as well

    As to lousy tactics: don't get me started. I have learned how to deal with the tactically inept in games as a player, but sometimes I grit my teeth. As a DM it matters not to me as it can create some unusual outcomes, and as I learn how competent a team, or a sub set of players, is I can if I wish dial the difficulty up and down.

    I have learned how to deal with inept role play as well, and am far more patient with that since it seems to be (IMX) a game skill that can develop if nurtured.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    I cannot easily tell, because you are not naming any specific game systems for me to use for comparison.
    then i'll nominate TDE and Splittermond, both of which i know well, even before reading your examples. Let's see how that works out.

    However, the unknown alignment variant can be used to gauge this. One central puzzle for that variant is figuring out where you stand in relationship to the world, and alignment ties all of the things you mention (gods, angels, demons, undead, magic, spells, afterlives, moral quandaries etc.) to the same thing. This also has the effect that when all of these things are in play at the same time, you can use knowledge of one to make inferences of the others. So, presume one of the mentioned things is no longer tied to alignment (meaning a character's behaviour no longer changes how they react to the character) and check for what kind of inferences become faulty or impossible.
    TDE has gods with aspects and churches with ideals. You would probably know how the herold of the god of truth and law behaves. Or the herald of the god of applied knowledge and enlightenement. The very detailed rules for their priests might give even more hints. It doesn't have devils, but it has arch demons that has aspects as well. You would probably be able to gauge how a servant of the archdemon of revenge behaves or one of the archdemon of treachery and mobility.
    Splittermond does similar things with the gods but is less detailed. As for devils, demons etc, there are some behavioral hints in their description. No alignment needed.

    Another thought experiment to gauge this is asking "what would I need to do to implement this in a computer game?". For example, tracking piety with the gods. We have numerous examples of this from roguelikes etc., and a lot of them end working like the alignment system. Go through your list of gods and see what moral philosophy or mode of behaviour is no longer tracked compared to the Great Wheel cosmology.
    For TDE the "realms of Arcania" games managed to do that in the early/mid 90s well enough. Granted, it was mostly "Throw gold at the temples and pray" and some dialogue options, but i have not felt like the the Great Wheel or anything similar would have contributed anything positive here. Especially as the gods are quite different and and overall piety system would not work.

    But the real strength of the latter type of experiment is not to show you need AD&D alignment specifically. The real strength is showing that implicit alignment is not the same as no alignment. If you are using gods that demand specific conducts from their followers, afterlives that sort by behaviour, so on and so forth, you are already, as a game master, making the same kind of decisions as a game master using AD&D alignment, and if you ever wanted to codify that into something someone else (or in this case, a computer) could use, it would entail writing instructions equally or more explicit than AD&D alignment.
    In TDE and Splittermond there are no mechanical consequences for piety if you are not a priest. Thus i rarely ever have to judge behavior for this as GM. And for priests the player basically commited to engage with certain aspect and (for TDE) even has a written down code of conduct for each god as RAW. Really, it is far more trivial for the GM to adjucate whether a PC has followed rules like "you mustn't eat anything prepared with fire" (one of the gods of the sea has this rule) or "You mustn't kill a living crature (plants don't count)" (a god of peace) than "you must stay in one step from LN".
    And even for priests there are no mechanical effects based on the morals of the dozens of other gods, only their own.
    Sure, arguments about the teachings of the gods still exist. But they tend to be ingame, between the characters. The GM does not have to make any decision about who is right or wrong.
    Last edited by Satinavian; 2022-10-19 at 10:48 AM.

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    Default Re: Alignment: Fall 2022

    @satinavian: I'm not familiar with either The Dark Eye / Das Schwarzen Auge (spelling?) or Splittermond, so I can't comment on their specific rules. From your rough description of the former, there is one thing it doesn't do (and hence cannot meaningfully do better than) AD&D: it doesn't track how a lay or non-worshipper relates to the gods, so there are puzzles and story tropes on that front that you'd lose. Would it be hard to rig that into a game that already has detailed description of its gods? No. But as you described, it seems to be omitted.

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    Yes, it is true, TDE does not track how a lay person relates to the gods. D&D does neither and alignment says nothing about it.

    But TDE has the option to apply special divine curses for e.g. desecrating a temple. Also priest can bless holy vows of laypersons who then get sanctioned if they break them and of course there is nothing keeping one from from tracking how a layperson relates to the ideals of a god, if you really want to for some reason. I would argue that is even easier with the various faiths and their ideals, rules and taboos clearly spelled out. There is even a whole official campaign related to a particular god that does track behavior of all PCs in relation to this particular god (but still not for any of the others). But yes, the system does not care as default and assumes you don't either.

    Could you give an example of a story where you might want it and that you could do with D&D alignment but not or only with difficulties in TDE ?
    Last edited by Satinavian; 2022-10-19 at 11:37 AM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by MoiMagnus View Post
    Indeed, it's not unique to alignment. But alignment is particularly placed at the middle of everything that makes those problems worse:
    (1) It's related to the PC's personality, so there is a lot of player entitlement about it.
    (2) In editions where there is mechanical effects for it, it's directly or indirectly locking some "features" under GM arbitration, which again conflict with the general player entitlement to get access to the various options from the books.
    (3) It's linked to moral values / politics so peoples can import strong opinions from out-of-the-game in the game.
    (4) It's very easy for the GM to mess it up (e.g. creating a universe that effectively has "double standards" depending on what the GM wants in some circumstances).
    Yup. All of which boils down to descriptive alignment judged by the DM is all around a bad thing. The only good use for it is a player RP tool.

    Even Gygax, who had strong moral opinions, regretted introducing it to the game. As I noted earlier, he had reasons, mainly intra-party backstabbing. But his solution wasn't helpful, especially when it was modifying a system for Team / Side. At least not until more modern RPG design thinking on character personality systems finally trickled down into WotC for the latest edition.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Satinavian View Post
    Yes, it is true, TDE does not track how a lay person relates to the gods. D&D does neither and alignment says nothing about it.
    You are wrong about alignment. 1st Edition AD&D, page 25, "Changing Alignment", once again:

    "Whether or not the character actively professes some deity, he or she will have an alignment and serve one or more deities of this alignment indirectly and unbeknowst to the character."

    The rewards and punishments associated with alignment are relevantly presumed to correspond to opinions and reactions of supernatural forces. They track a person's standing in the Great Wheel cosmology, which is built around the biaxial system.

    Quote Originally Posted by Satinavian View Post
    But TDE has the option to apply special divine curses for e.g. desecrating a temple. Also priest can bless holy vows of laypersons who then get sanctioned if they break them and of course there is nothing keeping one from from tracking how a layperson relates to the ideals of a god, if you really want to for some reason. I would argue that is even easier with the various faiths and their ideals, rules and taboos clearly spelled out. There is even a whole official campaign related to a particular god that does track behavior of all PCs in relation to this particular god (but still not for any of the others). But yes, the system does not care as default and assumes you don't either.

    Could you give an example of a story where you might want it and that you could do with D&D alignment but not or only with difficulties in TDE ?
    TDE looks that have majority of the same building blocks in place, so we're left with stories that deal with the Great Wheel cosmology in particular, which I presume is quite different from TDE's.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    You are wrong about alignment. 1st Edition AD&D, page 25, "Changing Alignment", once again:

    "Whether or not the character actively professes some deity, he or she will have an alignment and serve one or more deities of this alignment indirectly and unbeknowst to the character."

    The rewards and punishments associated with alignment are relevantly presumed to correspond to opinions and reactions of supernatural forces. They track a person's standing in the Great Wheel cosmology, which is built around the biaxial system.
    And it got rid of that pretty soon. If you are not a priest, you can totally serve or revere gods of the opposite alignment the most. There is not even a real corellation between your main god(s) and your alignment.

    TDE looks that have majority of the same building blocks in place, so we're left with stories that deal with the Great Wheel cosmology in particular, which I presume is quite different from TDE's.
    Yes, TDE has a different cosmology and thus different stories about the cosmology.


    But the same building blocks ? It does NOT have alignment or anything even remotely similar. If it despite of that manages to have "the same building blocks" for most of the interesting stories, it only shows how superflous alignment really is.
    Last edited by Satinavian; 2022-10-19 at 03:51 PM.

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    I'm talking of specific uses of specific alignment systems, not moving goal posts. 1st Edition AD&D rules didn't vanish from face of the Earth when some subsequent edition decided to do something differently, they remain as useable today as they ever were.

    EDIT: biaxial alignment and the Great Wheel cosmology take their cues from multiple influential genre authors such as Moorcock, Zelazny and Poulson, in addition to stealing liberally from real myth and religion. So "basic building blocks" refers to themes, conflict, gods, religions, magic etc.. that can be traced to the same sources. Some of these are quite pervasive, you'd know better than me how much overlap there is in total.
    Last edited by Vahnavoi; 2022-10-19 at 04:08 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by KorvinStarmast View Post
    First, you need to cite such a rule from an actual role playing game, please, rather than pulling it out of your nether regions. The other poster has done so on multiple occasions.
    You're kidding right? The entire alignment system assumes this case. Each alignment has a list of assumed behavioral patterns associated with it. That's your 'guide" to playing the alignment you have chosen for your character. Failure to comply with that set of guidelines results in alignment shift for the character. You can't have that possibility without also having the exact case I was speaking of. The GM literally judges an action by the character, determines if that action fits into the character's alignment written on the sheet, and if it does not, may punish the character by forcing a change.

    The case "D" mentioned earlier assumes the player says "Oh. I should play differently", but the very need for the rule assumes someone external to the player has to tell them that what they are doing isn't in accordance to their alignment. That "someone" is the GM, right? The GM warns players when they do things (or propose to do things) that don't match up. This creates pressure on the player to "play within their alignment". It literally cannot *not* have this effect on RP in a game.

    And here's just reinforcement of what I'm talking about:

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    You relevantly fail to recognize the difference between this and, say, a model where a game master refuses to entertain out-of-alignment actions. "Your alignment is Lawful Evil but the act you suggest would be Chaotic Good. I'm afraid I cannot allow you to do that, Dave. Pick some other action."<--- THAT would be enforcement of D.
    I just explained this in my previous post. The "rule" is "That action is outside your alignment". The "enforcement" is "if you proceed with that action, you may lose your alignment". You aren't saying 'I can't allow you to do that". You're saying "You can do that, but here's the punishment if you do". You can't do that and expect that this isn't going to influence player choices with regard to their character and alignment. Because that's precisely why you are doing it.

    Your argument is like saying that a law against littering doesn't prevent people from littering, because the police aren't telling them that they *can't* litter, only that if they do, they'll be fined. Er... Yeah. I mean it doesn't literally prevent them from littering, but the entire point of the exercise is to... um... wait for it... prevent them from littering. The method used to do this is to punish them if/when they do.

    The alignment system works in the exact same way. Not sure how there can even be confusion or disagreement on this. It's literally how the system works (again assuming there are in-game mechanical consequences for alignment change).


    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    I quoted this before, you failed to address it. The rules empower the game master to decide on the exact specifics, based on their subjective understanding. This is no different from other areas of the rules that are incomplete, or other games where referee has decisive power over incomplete rules. I linked to the article before, and you failed to address it also. Long story short: the genre of wargames AD&D relevantly takes cues from reduced prominence of complex mechanical rules in favor of human judgment, because using the mechanical rules was too hard, too slow, and lead to odd behaviours in corner cases.
    Yes. I get this. I'm just trying to get you to understand that, by definition, this also means that the GM has subjective power over some character choices/actions with regard to the alignment rules. It's in the rules you keep quoting. But you don't seem to want to acknowledge that this has an impact on how the players play their characters. You keep pretending it's not a big deal if the GM thinks one way and the player the other, because the "GM is always right". Great. I get it.

    But that does mean that the GMs interpretation creates constraints on the players with regard to how they play their characters. Always. And in direct proportion to exactly how strictly you are applying the rules. It can't not have this effect.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    As for "inherent inconsistency"? Since a game master has final say on every alignment determination, the upper bound for consistency of a game run by a human is consistency of said human. I have no trouble admitting few humans are perfectly consistent, but perfect consistency is not a requirement for a playable tabletop game.
    Yup. Final say. Again though, there's a difference between being final say on whether or not your character can physically carry X amount of weight, or can really swing on that chandelier and around the enemy successfully, or can cast that spell, versus whether a given proposed action violates their own personal ethics. Your apparent counter that "nothing violates their own ethics because the ethics/alignment is determined by actions" is a pure dodge once you put in game effects based on the resulting alignment ruling by the GM.



    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    Why not Lawful? Because Robin Hood is a thief, and thieves cannot be both Lawful and Good under 1st edition AD&D rules. People have expressed confusion over this, but the reason is dead simple: thieves steal. Making a career out of stealing always means one of two things:

    1) the character has decided some group does not deserve creature rights, namely the right to their own property. This would be Evil.
    2) the character has decided to act against social order of the land they live in. This would be Chaotic.
    Sure. But let's examine 3.5 edition definition of lawful/chaos:

    Lawful characters tell the truth, keep their word, respect authority, honor tradition, and judge those who fall short of their duties. Chaotic characters follow their consciences, resent being told what to do, favor new ideas over tradition, and do what they promise if they feel like it.

    So if our hypothetical Robin Hood character tells the truth, keeps his word, respects authority, honors tradition, and judges those who fall short of their duties, he's lawful, right? Let's ignore class restrictions for rogues in one edition of one game here and just think about the concept of "what does it mean to be lawful". The Robin Hood example I gave was of one who worked with a team, set firm rules for his band of merry men (complete with perhaps harsh punishments for those who violated the camp rules, endangered the rest, etc), made clear plans and executed them, has made a promise to the people to protect them from the evil sheriff and is committed to keeping that promise, etc. Heck. he can even be completely truthful (doesn't lie about being a brigand). The only one that he even remotely fails at is "respect authority", but even that is questionable. What does it mean to "respect" authority. To respect something means to take it into account when making decisions. It does not mean "blind obedience" to said authority. He clearly knows who the sheriff is. He clearly takes the sheriff and his actions into account. He clearly even recognizes the sheriff authority. He merely chooses to oppose the aspects of the sheriffs actions which he feels fall short of what the sheriff *should* be using that authority for. Respecting authority does not require that you accept (much less follow) uses of authority that violate what you feel is right.

    Does that make him lawful? Why not? And yes, he also fits every single one of the chaotic descriptors. He follows his conscience (but so does a paladin, right?). He resents being told what to do (well, maybe no more than anyone else though). Favors new ideas over tradition? Maybe. Maybe not. Robin hood (at least most versions of the myth) clearly did follow a firm code of honor and conduct. He didn't kill people if he could avoid it, and never put innocents at risk. Heck, most of the stories involve him acting to rescue people from the sheriff. Doesn't sound like someone who's just in it for himself, now does it? Do what they promise "if they feel like it"? Ok. Here's where he's absolutely not chaotic. He's going to act in the good of his group and cause no matter how he personally feels. It's not like he wakes up one day and says "nah. Don't feel like helping the poor today".

    At least my Robin Hood character would behave that way. I think the problem here is that it's terrifically easy to come up with character concepts that fall so completely in between what would otherwise be absolutely diametrically opposed alignments that it's just silly. He's not neutral here. Neutral doesn't mean "sometimes does this, sometimes does that". Neutral typically means a character that doesn't care that much about either "side" and doesn't consider those aspects when making decisions. But my hypothetical Robin Hood absolutely does care. He see's injustice and he cares. So much so that he's willing to put his own life on the line to do something about it. And yet, the method he's chosen to "do something about it" is to steal stuff from the rich and give it to the poor. He feels that the end he's pursuing is absolutely worth the means he's using. That's "chaotic" from one point of view (breaking the law), but every method he uses to perform those thefts, from how he plans them, to how he executes them, to how he trains and manages his band, is absolutely "lawful".

    So why is he chaotic? Your answer is basically "because he is". Which is not a terribly good answer. Doubly so if you are the GM who is empowered to enforce this.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    I have every reason to believe you already knew all of this, because you pitched a Robin Hood-like bard as Chaotic. You knew, from the beginning, that Robin Hood is generally considered Chaotic, you didn't need me to tell you any of this. You're simply clashing against the notion that in an actual game, a game master might find some reason to consider such a character something else. That proves no inconsistency with the alignment system: a player character's alignment is based on actual at-the-table behaviour as judged by their game master, not popular stereotypes about Robin Hood.
    Well. In the real world, we don't have an alignment system, complete with spells that detect them, or spells that provide protections based on them, or other spells that maybe harm people of one, but not another. So the question of whether Robin Hood is lawful or chaotic is an irrelevant and purely philosophical one. Again, the moment you put in game mechanics in there, it becomes relevant.

    Why can't I play a Robin Hood character and say he's lawful good. Heck. Why can't I play a paladin, who fights against the evil sheriff by stealing gold from his men and redistributing it to the poor? Literally, the only thing you can pin on him as "chaotic" is that he's fighting against the lawful authority. But isn't that exactly what a paladin would be expected to do if he found himself in a land where the lawful authority was "evil"? So is it the theft that makes him chaotic? Why? He's only stealing shipments of gold that the sheriff (and other allies of the prince) have taken from the people and are absconding with to use for their evil nefarious purposes.

    So if Robin Hood the paladin instead stood in front of the wagon full of gold, pulled his holy sword out, and declared in a loud voice "Stop this evildoing at once! You are servants of an evil master stealing from the land and it's people", and gave them the opportunity to surrender and hand over the gold, or die defending it (in honorable combat of course), it would be peachy? How is that different? Is it not the theft, but the ambush nature of the attack that makes it "chaotic". So if I drop out in front of the same wagon, bow in hand, with my band also popping out, bows in hand and issue the same demand and threat, it's... what? Chaotic now?

    Or wait! Are you saying that Robin Hood the paladin would have to be open about his opposition to the sheriff, post information about where his stronghold is (instead of hiding in the forest, since that's just not "sporting" I guess), announce his intentions and actions ahead of time (can't engage in surprises of any kind now, can we?), etc? So basically be lawful stupid? I thought that was a bad thing?

    I've literally changed nothing about the behavior of Robin Hood except how we may perceive his personality. The actions are identical. Yet, just by doing so, I can have the exact same character be either lawful good or chaotic good, just by changing how the character himself sees his actions and what motivates him to do them. And that, my friend, lies 100% in the purview of the player roleplaying the character and *not* the GM.

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    Yup. All of which boils down to descriptive alignment judged by the DM is all around a bad thing. The only good use for it is a player RP tool.

    Even Gygax, who had strong moral opinions, regretted introducing it to the game. As I noted earlier, he had reasons, mainly intra-party backstabbing. But his solution wasn't helpful, especially when it was modifying a system for Team / Side. At least not until more modern RPG design thinking on character personality systems finally trickled down into WotC for the latest edition.
    Yup. Exactly this. If it's used as a RP tool, it's fine. The introduction over time, of more and more game features that tie into alignment is what has made it a problematic methodology to use.

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    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    The GM literally judges an action by the character, determines if that action fits into the character's alignment written on the sheet, and if it does not, may punish the character by forcing a change.
    The GM actually punishes the player in this case. The character simply takes actions in-universe. The GM judges, over time, what alignment fits those actions. If that observed alignment differs from the stated alignment far enough, the GM tells the player to change it. And yes, that may have consequences for the character, such as losing powers.

    Now, it's not like characters can't lose access to powers for moral reasons in games without morality systems. For example, in a game where every character is an FBI agent and one player decides to have their character regularly hire prostitutes, that character will get fired if that fact comes out and that will basically end their participation in the game because they'll lose all their FBI-associated 'powers.' Having a set of ethical rules in place in-universe, the violation of which will rebound upon the character, is not unreasonable and is in fact a common source of drama - an amazingly large number of characters in cop shows have drinking problems, drug problems, gambling problems, etc.

    A big problem with alignment is there is often no in-universe actor serving as the enforcer of these rules, which robs the GM of any cover when making such determinations. For example, if the ethical rules are generated by the gods, and the gods take away various bestowed powers when those rules are violated, the view of the player matters less because these rules are not required to make sense for the human perspective: the gods have degree behavior A is lawful and behavior B is chaotic and if you don't like it, too bad, the gods get to decide.

    Alignment, as a shorthand used by the gods, works okay, so long as the GM explains their setup for a given setting at the beginning of a campaign, because then, if a character has moved off their initial alignment through their actions, the GM can say 'well X has decided that you're lawful neutral now' (it also makes it easier for the gods to warn their servants in advance when they're approaching the edge).
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    Default Re: Alignment: Fall 2022

    In editions that really cared about alignment a character's actions could lead to a change in that alignment, ruled by the DM, and a subsequent change to or even loss of mechanical features.

    But a sane DM would only do that in the most extreme of circumstances, or if a pattern of behaviour over time caused it.

    That's not so much the case in modern systems though, mostly because everyone was tired of being bonked on the head by falling Paladins.

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    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji
    The case "D" mentioned earlier assumes the player says "Oh. I should play differently", but the very need for the rule assumes someone external to the player has to tell them that what they are doing isn't in accordance to their alignment. That "someone" is the GM, right? The GM warns players when they do things (or propose to do things) that don't match up. This creates pressure on the player to "play within their alignment". It literally cannot *not* have this effect on RP in a game.
    Nope, still C. You still fail to get that there are two different outcomes that can be enforced, in several different ways. The distinction is based on that.

    It isn't based on whether or not the method of enforcement influences how a player plays the game. Both versions are meant to influence the player, that's the point. Nobody's ever pretended there is no effect, that's a strawman you came up with.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji
    I just explained this in my previous post. The "rule" is "That action is outside your alignment". The "enforcement" is "if you proceed with that action, you may lose your alignment". You aren't saying 'I can't allow you to do that". You're saying "You can do that, but here's the punishment if you do". You can't do that and expect that this isn't going to influence player choices with regard to their character and alignment. Because that's precisely why you are doing it.

    Your argument is like saying that a law against littering doesn't prevent people from littering, because the police aren't telling them that they *can't* litter, only that if they do, they'll be fined. Er... Yeah. I mean it doesn't literally prevent them from littering, but the entire point of the exercise is to... um... wait for it... prevent them from littering. The method used to do this is to punish them if/when they do.

    The alignment system works in the exact same way. Not sure how there can even be confusion or disagreement on this. It's literally how the system works (again assuming there are in-game mechanical consequences for alignment change).
    And what you fail to get is that the distinction between C and D is whether the game master is saying "you can do that, but here's the punishment if you do" versus "I can't allow you to do that". You fail to realize that in the case of constructed reality of the game, the game master can plain refuse the act of littering.

    There are variations, a less strict form of D will work like C until some final warning is issued and a player loses control of their character completely, like under CODA Lord of the Rings. But AD&D does not work like that and no amount of complaining about how it influences or constrains player behaviour will prove that. Show me where, in the actual rule citations, it is suggested a game master ought to flatly disallow out-of-alignment actions.

    You have also completely lost sight of what the point of the example was. Here we go again:

    Hypothetical game dialogue:

    Police: "Hey! Why are you littering?"

    Sally: "Littering? I'm sorry Sir, but I'm not littering."

    Police: "Yes you are. You clearly dropped an empty bag of snacks on the grass there. That is littering."

    Sally: "Dear God no, I'm a clean person, I would never litter. I simply gently put it down for a moment."

    Police: "Lady, you seem to be confused of what words mean. Leaving trash on the grass is not clean and what you did is the very definition of littering. Either pick up your trash and take it to the bin, or I'll have to fine you."

    Sally: "Your idea is entirely unreasonable. Go ahead, fine me then. I won't let a pig like you tell me how to act."


    ^ The above is an example following C. Under D, this doesn't happen. What you get instead is:

    Sally: *throws an empty bag on the grass*

    Voice of God: "THIS IS LITTERING. YOU ARE A CLEAN PERSON, SALLY. PICK UP YOUR TRASH AND TAKE IT TO THE BIN."

    Sally: *obediently picks up their trash and does as told*


    Or, for an example going into the reverse direction:

    Police: "Hey! Why are you littering?"

    Sally: "Dear God no, I'm a clean person, I would never litter."

    Police: "Oh, that's right, my apologies. You are a clean person, so it's not possible you have littered. You have simply gently put a down an empty bag of snacks for a moment. Carry on as you were and have a good day."


    The actual problem you were harping on, and what I'm solving, is semantic confusion between players. We are confronting Sally on their concept of littering and cleanliness because there is a contradiction between what they say and how they act, and we have to decide which takes precedence for how other game objects react to her. The difference, again, is that under C, Sally has a choice: either bring her character closer to what other people agree is clean behaviour, or agree that her character is littering and pay the price. A savvy Sally who knows what words mean can even do this kind of thing deliberately; maybe their civil disobedience will net them points among some crowd, similar to how alignment change can occasionally be beneficial or intentional - something you've not considered during this discussion at all. Alignment change is not in itself a punishment - it has a punishment associated with it (presumed to represent divine disfavor) to prevent game abuse.

    Under D, Sally has no choice, or at least a very different choice. But whichever is in use, the point is to influence Sally. Giving people feedback when their personal opinions are no longer congruent with how the game and other people around the table use words is both normal and necessary for holding games with specific themes and settings. Other people are always the limit for what a person can do in a multiplayer game. Other people are always influencing and constraining how you play a game, and vice versa. You don't, and cannot, prove some unique problem with the alignment system just by chanting "but it influences how you play! It constrains how you play your character!". You don't, and cannot, prove some unique problem with the alignment system just by repeatedly asking "but what if there's conflict, what then?". Games are built around constraints, the rules are meant to influence how you play, and agreeing on model of conflict resolution is part of agreeing to play at all.

    You have to actually move past that and answer the question of "why is a player sitting down to play at all if they're so out-of-tune with their game master that they cannot agree to abide by their game master's rulings?". If you don't do that, your entire argument ends up begging the question.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji
    Yes. I get this. I'm just trying to get you to understand that, by definition, this also means that the GM has subjective power over some character choices/actions with regard to the alignment rules. It's in the rules you keep quoting.
    I keep quoting the rules so that people would get that I've always understood this. It's a non-argument.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji
    But you don't seem to want to acknowledge that this has an impact on how the players play their characters. You keep pretending it's not a big deal if the GM thinks one way and the player the other, because the "GM is always right". Great. I get it.

    But that does mean that the GMs interpretation creates constraints on the players with regard to how they play their characters. Always. And in direct proportion to exactly how strictly you are applying the rules. It can't not have this effect.
    Again: no-one has ever claimed it has no effect. To the contrary, I've noted multiple times that having an effect is the point. You keep accusing me of a pretension that never existed.

    The point which you keep missing is that semantic confusion causes conflict all on its own and a game master is empowered to enforce a particular solution so the game can move on. You never move on to discussing merits of the particular solutions because you fail to acknowledge the distinction I'm making, instead opting to complain about traits shared by all solutions.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji
    Yup. Final say. Again though, there's a difference between being final say on whether or not your character can physically carry X amount of weight, or can really swing on that chandelier and around the enemy successfully, or can cast that spell, versus whether a given proposed action violates their own personal ethics. Your apparent counter that "nothing violates their own ethics because the ethics/alignment is determined by actions" is a pure dodge once you put in game effects based on the resulting alignment ruling by the GM.
    You claim there is a difference, but you've failed to establish it beyond trivialities such as subject matter. What you call a "dodge" is plain fact. A person who understands what the game terms mean & wants to play according to some exotic personal definition of morality, will pick the alignment closest to their personal views and go to town. If, for example, I want to play an existentialist character in AD&D, who doesn't believe in good or evil and argues for radical individual freedom, the proper alignment for that is Chaotic Neutral. Then I can go around smoking pipe, hitting on women and talking about how the only real problem is whether to kill myself now or later. If I want to play a character who believes in might makes right and acknowledges no-one who cannot stop them by personal power, the proper alignment is Chaotic Evil. Then I can go around palling with demons, killing people and taking their money. So what if, in-character, someone calls me evil? Those are just words some slave to the gods came up with.

    The problem you keep harping on is not caused by wanting to play according to personal ethics. The game allows for characters with such ethics just fine. It's caused by semantic confusion: not understanding how a game and a game master are using words, or worse, insisting that they should use the words exactly like you or your character is. If my existentialist keeps attending human rights marches and donating to the poor, maybe their behaviour is not as Neutral as I claim. If my might-makes-right character shows absolute loyalty to a bunch of people weaker than they are, maybe they are not as Chaotic as I claim. Alignment change and the associated penalty exists to remind me that what I said I would play and what I actually ended up playing are not the same. Complaining about the referee doesn't change that. I can just accept it and move on.

    ---

    As far as Robin Hood goes, gbaji, you have finally landed on the same argument Quertus was trying to make, so I direct you to the beginning of my reply to Quertus.

    Long story short: 3rd edition alignment definitions orbit around 1st edition ones without outright saying it. Lawful characters "tell the truth, keep their word, respect authority, honor tradition, and judge those who fall short of their duties", because these are traits that serve organized groups, and fit people who put the group above the individual. Chaotic characters "follow their consciences, resent being told what to do, favor new ideas over tradition, and do what they promise if they feel like it" because these are traits that serve individual interests, and fit people who put the individual above the group.

    The concept of "Lawful Chaotic" hence requires equivocating or failing to consider which traits a character prioritizes in actual decision making. Also, Neutral is still an option. If someone sits in the middle on most of the traits, that's what they are. What you claim neutral isn't, is exactly what it in practice often is: shifting between behaviours based on situation, with no stable trend. As noted, there's a real parallel in Extrovert - Ambivert - Introvert -spectrum.

    The only difference 3rd edition really brings to the table is removing the alignment restriction from rogues. However, this doesn't actually change the reasoning why making a career out of stealing cannot be Lawful and Good. We can just as well presume Lawful Good is reserved for rogues who are not in fact thieves.

    So Robin Hood ends up as Neutral or Chaotic Good yet again, and I believe the latter is what 3rd editions rules use him as example of, grandfathered all the way from 1st edition. If you want to stress the version who runs his merry men as a disciplined military unit, then a case can be made for Lawful.

    A traditional paladin who acts like Robin Hood is unworkable, because stealing from the rich is an act against legitimate authority and thus against the Paladin code. This is independent from deciding whether Robin Hood is Lawful, because Paladins have stricter requirements than other Lawful Good characters. Furthermore, what you claim is "Lawful Stupid" is stupid only in stereotype land. There are versions of that plan that a Paladin could pull off just fine.

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