When The Moral Compass Goes Haywire
When I first began playing Dungeons & Dragons at the tender age of eight, I was fascinated by the alignment chart in the blue Basic Set rulebook. I did not understand it. I asked my father to explain it to me, but not being a gamer, he was unable to shed much illumination on the subject. Now, a little over twenty-four years later, I find I still have not received an explanation of the D&D alignment system to entirely satisfy my curiosity.
The Trouble With D&D Alignments
When I first began playing Dungeons & Dragons at the tender age of eight, I was fascinated by the alignment chart in the blue Basic Set rulebook. I did not understand it. I asked my father to explain it to me, but not being a gamer, he was unable to shed much illumination on the subject. Now, a little over twenty-four years later, I find I still have not received an explanation of the D&D alignment system to entirely satisfy my curiosity.
I have spoken to many people and have had many discussions and arguments on the subject. What frustrates me most about the D&D alignment system is that experienced gamers seem to have no better handle on it than the greenest newbies.
I read Scorpio's "Alignment Refinement" article, and I found myself shaking my head in disagreement. The same thing happened when I read the alignment archetypes in Aeon Michaels' "Which Star Wars Character Do You Role-Play?" article. Now, both of these guys have been playing D&D about as long as I have. They both seem to be intelligent and educated individuals. Is it possible the three of us have come to three different conclusions about the nature of D&D alignments because we're forcing misguided interpretations on the source material? Is the problem they're both wrong somehow and I've got the "most legitimate" interpretation of the system? Or that one of them is right and the other two of us are wildly off base? I don't think any of these interpretations is accurate. I think the problem is that the source material is fundamentally flawed.
I hate the D&D alignment system. I don't think it works very well, and I'm amazed it has survived with relatively few changes through edition after edition of D&D. It is maddeningly ambiguous, and is conducive to certain very mindless forms of role-play. The d20 system managed to streamline D&D's saving throws, classes, spells, and initiative rolls. These are important mechanics, and they should be interpretable in the same way by different observers, so two people who have never met before might sit down at a table and play an enjoyable game with the same understanding of the rules. That I have yet to meet two D&D gamers with exactly the same perception of a mechanic as fundamental as character alignment says to me that the system has a serious problem.
The Rules Understate The Importance Of Alignment
Part of the problem seems to be the 3rd Edition designers undervalued the importance of alignment as a core mechanic. Both the 3rd Edition and 3.5 Player's Handbooks contain the following passage: "Alignment is a tool for developing your character's identity. It is not a straitjacket for restricting your character."
This attitude is short-sighted, and the statement is misleading. Barbarians, Bards, Clerics, Druids, Monks, and Paladins all suffer some kind of penalty for switching to prohibited alignments. That's over half the classes in the game! In some cases, such as the Cleric and the Paladin, alignment changes can result in the loss of all class-related skills. Clearly, alignment as a game mechanic is more important than just "a tool for developing your character's identity." In a very explicit sense, your character's alignment determines what he can or cannot do.
The creators of AD&D acknowledged this. The AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide penalized alignment-changing characters with the loss of a full level of experience. In addition, involuntary alignment changes required massive atonements to rectify, whereas the negative effects of voluntary alignment changes could not be mitigated at all. Gygax writes, "Although it is possible for a character to allow himself or herself to be blown by the winds as far as alignment is concerned, he or she will pay a penalty which will effectively damn the character to oblivion."
That's strong language. Even though the d20 rules have toned down the penalties associated with switching alignment, such penalties still exist for the majority of all character classes. Strangely, the two-page description of alignment in the most recent versions of the Player's Handbook makes no mention of these penalties at all, nor does the passage on changing alignments in the most recent Dungeon Master's Guides.
Furthermore, there are a slew of alignment-specific spells and magic items that target specific alignments. Powerful spells such as Shield of Law and Dictum can make a player's choice of alignment very significant indeed. Being told alignment is not a straitjacket is cold comfort when your character could be killed without a saving throw.
Alignment is not a minor mechanic to be shunted to the Description chapter with eye-color and favored food. No matter what your choice of alignment, the decision is likely to affect your character in some important way.
Alignments Aren't Tied to Specific Behaviors
In the section titled "Changing Alignment," both of the recent (3rd Edition and 3.5) versions of the Dungeon Master's Guide contain this passage: "If a player says, 'My neutral good character becomes chaotic good,' the appropriate answer is 'prove it.'" In my opinion, the appropriate player response to such a question is, "how?" There are no hard and fast guidelines for D&D alignments.
This is the crux of the problem with D&D alignments: the system gives us insufficient data with regard to what behaviors are associated with specific alignments. "Good," the Player's Handbook tells us, "implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others." But it doesn't tell us what kind of sacrifices, or how often they should be made. Where does a DM draw the line between a good character and a neutral one? The choice is arbitrary.
On the other hand, "Evil implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others." But good characters can certainly hurt, oppress, and kill evil ones. Or can they? Perhaps the difference is, as the Player's Handbook continues, that "Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms. . . others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master." But when you consider a paladin is often expected to kill evil creatures out of duty to some good deity or master, the moral lines start to become muddied. How far can a holy warrior's holy war go? A paladin cannot resort to evil means, or she will no longer be a paladin. We need a strict definition of what makes evil creatures evil, and we just don't have one.
To cite an example that has plagued me in numerous D&D campaigns, can good creatures torture evil ones? The Player's Handbook is ominously silent on this matter. Or let's say a paladin slays the warriors of an evil tribe of goblins guarding an unholy shrine, and then discovers the goblin women and children cowering behind a tapestry. These creatures detect evil (because the Monster Manual says they do!), but are unarmed and helpless. What does the paladin do in this situation? Does he slaughter them all because they're evil, or must he let them go because they're helpless non-combatants? D&D has led us into the Bermuda Triangle of moral behavior, and our compass has gone haywire.
Furthermore, the Player's Handbook tells us neutral characters have compunctions against the killing of innocents. Leaving the problematic definition of "an innocent" to one side, what about harming innocents? The Player's Handbook doesn't say anything about that. How often, and how severely, can a neutral character harm innocents before she becomes evil?
In AD&D, only evil characters were allowed to use poison. Though 3rd Edition has dropped this prohibition, it illustrates my point: what one observer sees as evil by definition may not be evil at all to another. Though I wonder why AD&D forbade good and neutral characters to use poison (it's ok to hack someone to death with a sword but not ok to poison him?), I am not amused that 3rd Edition removed one of the only specific definitions of evil behavior from the game and did not bother to replace it.
In the movie Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood's character William Munny walks into a saloon where his dead friend Ned Logan lies on display outside the door. Munny asks to know the owner of the bar. When Skinny, the proprietor, identifies himself, Munny shoots him dead. Gene Hackman's character, the Sheriff Little Bill, calls Munny a coward and observes, "You've just shot an unarmed man." Munny replies: "He should've armed himself if he's gonna go decorating his saloon with my friend." Here's a question for all you DMs out there: was Munny's action evil (Skinny was arguably an 'innocent' because he had no weapon and never harmed anyone directly), neutral (Munny is avenging the desecration of his friend's body), or even good (Skinny treats the prostitutes who work for him as his property, and arguably represents the forces of corruption in the town that led to the un-avenged disfigurement of one of the prostitutes and the death by torture of Ned Logan)? My crystal ball tells me different DMs will judge the same action in different ways.
The designers' double use of the word "implies" is significant. The D&D alignment system relies so heavily on implicit information that the arbiter of alignment change can only be the DM. Players have no chance of governing this change unless they know exactly what the DM's interpretation of each alignment is. If the players have merely read the rules, and have never discussed alignment with their DM, they're likely to encounter a difference of opinion when it comes time to judge their characters on the basis of their actions. In any such difference of opinion, it's usually the DM whose interpretation prevails.
Ambiguity Causes Confusion and Dissent
As a player, the ambiguity of the alignment system can be maddening. If one DM allows good characters to torture evil creatures for information and another DM interprets the act of torture as evil enough to cause a change in alignment, players moving between the two are bound to feel frustrated and confused.
In an example from my recent experience, I have a player who prefers to play Chaotic Neutrals. I told her a Chaotic Neutral character was pretty much free to do as she chose. She asked me, "Can I attack other party members if they annoy me?" I said, "Yes, but don't make a habit of it. If you kill another party member without a good reason, I'll shift you over to Chaotic Evil." She accepted this interpretation and played with the group without any disruptive incidents, excepting one time when she threw a fireball at a highly fire-resistant character because he was annoying her. He took no damage, and everybody laughed about it and moved on. Recently, this player and I have joined another campaign as players. The DM has told her flat-out his interpretation of Chaotic Neutral does not allow her to attack another party member under any but the most justified of circumstances (they're under enemy control, they attack her first, etc). The consequence is that she thinks his interpretation of alignment is limp-wristed, and she feels she is not being allowed to play the character she wants to play.
I've encountered similar problems myself. As a DM with a very strict interpretation of what constitutes Good behavior, I take good alignments very seriously when I am a player. Once I joined a game of hack'n'slashers as a Chaotic Good rogue. When I constantly wanted to rescue the prisoners we found and nearly came to blows with a "neutral good" character over whether or not to torture a captive goblin for information, the other players accused me of being more of a goody-two-shoes than the party paladin. The sad thing is that they were right: my rogue was by far the most scrupulous member of the group. Their DM was used to letting them get away with murder (literally!), so they couldn't understand my character's motivations at all.
When Detected Alignment Replaces Moral Choice
In the comments section of my own "How Typical is Stereotypical?" article, Memehunter reminded me of a very annoying and silly phenomenon that arises from the D&D alignment system: the "radar gamer." In her example, good-aligned characters used the Detect Evil spell and paladin ability as a moral litmus test. Whenever an NPC tested positive for evil, they killed him on the spot.
This is the worst kind of systemic exploitation I can imagine, and I'm sad to say it is quite common in my experience. Rather than think about how their characters should behave, many players default to character powers and alignment preconceptions to do their thinking for them.
Does every evil person deserve to die? Clearly, our society doesn't think so, or the concepts of criminal rehabilitation and "not guilty by reason of insanity" would not exist. Moreover, is the honorable but ruthless assassin of the slayer's guild deserving of the same fate as the psychopathic, serial killer priest of the god of murder? D&D characters don't tend to think in these terms. We can attribute part of their mentality to the quasi-medieval setting of high fantasy, but the Player's Handbook must share the blame. I quote from the description of Lawful Good: "A lawful good character hates to see the guilty go unpunished. Alhandra, a paladin who fights evil without mercy and who protects the innocent without hesitation, is lawful good." When players read phrases such as "hates to see the guilty go unpunished" and "fights evil without mercy," what are they supposed to think? The Player's Handbook doesn't supply any specifics or clarification of these phrases, so many players feel quite justified in pursuing a high fantasy brand of instant justice.
What Can Be Done?
If you agree the D&D alignment system is too ambiguous to be useful, you need not despair. After all, the concept of fantasy role-play as made popular by D&D has brought many hours of entertainment to me and countless others over the decades. There are a number of possible solutions to the problem.
Use a different system. This is a painful thing for me to suggest, and many fans of d20 and dyed-in-the-wool D&D players will not seriously consider it. But if D&D is all you know, I encourage you to explore systems that describe behavior in different ways. Some systems, such as the admittedly flawed Palladium system, attempt to solve the problem by providing specific guidelines for each alignment. Other systems, such as GURPS and Call of Cthulhu, ignore the question of player character alignment entirely. GURPS compensates by using character disadvantages that can be assembled in many ways to represent such diverse human characteristics such as truthfulness, codes of honor, intolerance, sadism, and insanity.
Abolish alignments. Why not? If alignment is truly a tool for developing character identity, and not a straitjacket, as the Player's Handbook claims, then it is not necessary to enjoyment of the game. If you abolish alignments, however, you will need to revise the spell and magic items lists and do a little preparation for paladins and clerics. For paladins, take fifteen minutes to write out a "paladin's oath" that specifically outlines the behavioral requirements of the class. For clerics, you must communicate to any cleric PC what her sect expects of her. Where the spell list is concerned, you can simply remove all alignment-specific spells. However, you might want to modify certain spells such as Protection from Evil to become Protection from Outsiders, so they will still function against demons and the like. Alignment-specific magic items can similarly be altered to "bane"-type items affecting specific races or classes.
Use a different alignment system or associate alignments with specific behavior. I have always preferred the Palladium alignment system to the D&D alignment system, for the simple reason that Palladium explicitly states what kinds of behavior are appropriate to each alignment. Though it is not entirely consistent, the Palladium system at least seems headed in the right direction, and is far less prone to abuse and disparate interpretation. To provide a basis of comparison, let me quote the entirety of the Lawful Good entry from the Player's Handbook as well as the Principled alignment from Palladium. These two alignments are more or less equivalent in spirit, but have different applications to actual game mechanics because one is vague and the other specific.
D&D: "Lawful Good, 'Crusader': A lawful good character acts as a good person is expected or required to act. She combines a commitment to oppose evil with the discipline to fight relentlessly. She tells the truth, keeps her word, helps those in need, and speaks out against injustice. A lawful good character hates to see the guilty go unpunished. Alhandra, a paladin who fights evil without mercy and who protects the innocent without hesitation, is lawful good. Lawful good is the best alignment you can be because it combines honor and compassion."
Palladium: "Principled (good). Principled characters are generally the strong moral character[s]. Superman is of a principled alignment with the highest regard for others' lives, well being, truth, and honor. Principled characters will...
1. Always keep [their] word.
2. Avoid lies.
3. Never kill or attack an unarmed foe.
4. Never harm an innocent.
5. Never torture for any reason.
6. Never kill for pleasure.
7. Always help others.
8. Work well in a group.
9. Respect authority, law, self-discipline, and honor.
10. Never betray a friend."
If you don't want to adopt another alignment system wholesale (possibly because of the changes you might have to make to the spell and magic items lists), try using the Palladium example to draw up specific lists of behavior for each of the nine D&D alignments. It would only take an hour or two all told, and would be a small investment to keep your campaign free of ambiguity and frustration.
Limit the use of alignment detection. If your campaign is plagued by "radar gamers" who are using player powers in conjunction with alignment archetypes instead of using their brains, you can interdict the player powers in several ways. First, try increasing the number of alignment concealing devices used by NPCs. There are several items in the Dungeon Master's Guide to suit this purpose, and the Spymaster prestige class actually specializes in it. Second, try having detection-happy players encounter overwhelming signals. For example, if the paladin in your group is driving you mad by detecting evil every sixty feet, have him detect evil so strongly that he becomes ill. If his own power renders him incapacitated a time or two, he won't be so prone to abusing it. Third, enforce the law. The chances are good that the characters are inflicting frontier justice on inhabitants of civilized realms. As a GURPS supplement points out, the King may not understand why you killed the Necromancer in his basement if the Necromancer was a loyal, tax-paying subject. Clap your PCs in irons, and see if that doesn't inform them not everyone shares their interpretation of "justice."
In conclusion, I realize not everyone will share my perspectives on D&D alignments. However, I believe a reduction in the ambiguity level of the Player's Handbook can only have the result of improving the quality of your games and the moods of your players.
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In his book Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett wrote that the world is full of evil people. . . but some of them are on different sides. This is the philosophy I go by; a priest of a good god whose attitude is akin to that of the Spanish Inquisition would register as "good" in regard to alignment-based magic, although as anybody can see, that priest probably should be taken out. Also, on the "killing unarmed people" problem: This is where it gets tricky. A lawful good character may view such a killing as a lawful execution, but only if he has irrefutable evidence.
Some people spend their entire lives trying to answer questions like this. The best I could do was use a simple solution: It's the thought that counts. The priest in the above situation is doing his work, misguided as it is, in the name of a good god. Not very good, but it works.
This has always been a problem of mine, which has more or less led me to abolish alignment from my game. It's always seemed to me that a single guiding principle that runs through every facet of a person's character seems like an incredibly rare thing.
Real people often shift up and down the scale of alignment in a given day. I've always considered it better roleplaying to actually THINK about your character's various traits and various responses than to stick to a single rule. Even laws aren't necessarily a good line to follow. A law may be unjust...in a society where it's legal to violate women, is a paladin being lawful if they sit by and watch it happen, or evil for letting a person suffer? There's such a variety of twists you can make to the concepts of law, chaos, good, and evil that the terms are practically meaningless when they're thought about.
I'm all for removing the alignment specific spells, and giving protections from outsiders...or it's possible to just take a looser view on it. Good and evil, for example, or lawful and chaotic.
Why don't you let the gods decide what is proper behaviour? Instead of focusing on the general (alignment), focus on the individual's devotion to their particular god and the behaviour that would be expected from His/Her/Its followers. You could craft your own "10 commandments" for each god if you wanted to (like what you did above with the list of what "principled" characters do), thereby creating unique role-playing opportunities for characters that are ostensibly of the same alignment (maybe one lawful good god wants his paladins to kill all evil on sight, maybe another cautions reflection and studied judgement).
I saw this problem back with second edition and was one of the many reasons I gave up on D&D for quite a while. When 3rd Ed. came out I refused to play it for some time but did eventually get into it and other d20 games. When I came to play 3rd I had been playing games that had no equivilent to alignment, like Shadowrun and White Wolf, so I practiaclly ignored allignment.
My point is that it is very possible to use allignment as it is described in the PHB. The only problem is that everyone needs to view allignment from a metagaming point of view, as in the players need to look at the allignment on the character sheet as th DM would, regardless of how the charater may interpret their actions.
i plan on bringing up this point at some time in my game. maybe the DM will do something about it.
Alignment in D&D, IMO, isn't the best played or designed aspect of it. It's too difficult to simply remove it from the game because it is tightly woven into the game mechanics - especially through spell effects.
By the same token, using Detect Evil, as it is written in the 3rd ed book, is hardly a very practical way to cheat the rules very well (it's not a very good "radar" when the lights go out). Also, the ethical "code" is helpful as a counterbalance to the advantages of some classes (ie Paladins).
When introducing the setting, I lay it out much like the Star Wars and LOTR universes - without a lot of moral relativism, and I ask my players to play within those bounds. It's not without problems, but it isn't that bad either if players are cooperative.
I love the subtle use of alignment. f'rinstance, I'm running a game where a true neutral ranger just had the opportunity to get an amazing weapon (a keen vorpal scimitar, evil in and of itself) and he did it by killing an unarmed, sleeping goblin, who he had no direct beef with, to aid a pack of worgs being forced to be mounts against their will by a shaman. He also, let the worgs loose on the village, and burned the rest of it, leaving no goblin alive. MWAHAHA! EVIL! (this'll definitely be a major issue for this guy. heh.) I didn't give him any sort of encouragement, but I definitely mentioned that he was not an evil character to him before hand, and I did tell him that there were women and children present. Oh, and this was a village that had just been attacked by another goblin tribe, leaving them decimated, and relatively defenseless.
it was his choice, but he's COMING OVER TO THE DARK SIDE.
I was playing on Neverwinter Nights the other day, and my character's alignment changed from Chaotic Neutral to Chaotic Evil. I was outraged. All he did was rob a couple of families!
Doursalmon, I just read your post. Veeeery interestink, Mr. Bond.
I DM a group with a ranger in it, and this ranger has goblins as his Favoured Enemy, since they killed his wife and son way back. Anyway, I had set up this adventure with loadsa goblins in it, and, naturally, he went about killin' them. Just when he'd finished cleaning out their burrows, he heard a cry. It was a baby goblin which had slept through the massacre, and now awoke to see the man who killed its parents and family standing over it, bow in hand. The baby goblin gurgled and blinked twice. It was not inherently evil, you see, it was practically a newborn (we call them whelps in our campaign) and thus, was born without concepts of good and evil. The ranger, who had hated goblins ever since they killed his wife and son, took pity on the newborn and decided it was not an evil creature, and took it upon himself to raise the orphaned creature as his own son. I naturally gave 'im extra XP for being a good guy, as well as getting me to NPC a goblin for longer than simply saying "Who you? Now you die!"
I tend not to create scenarios like that. Maybe my goblins are pod born, fully grown, or something.
Basically, I do it that way because I think the idea of killing goblins in a game of D&D is far more interesting than dinner table Oscar performances about the anguish that results from killing goblin babies. I'm not there to teach my players a lesson about killing. By the same token, my players are not more bloodthirsty than is required by the conventions of the game.
There is an interesting and funny discussion in Clerks, about the ethics of blowing up the independent contractors and contruction workers who were working on the Death Star 2 in "Return of the Jedi" when the Rebel Fleet attacked. If the premise was taken that seriously and realistically, then this was certainly a reasonable question, though it's hard to argue that it would have been a more exciting movie if these kinds of things were taken into account.
Yeah, I avoid that too. Not because I think it would detract from the fun, but probably because of my personal morals.
In real life, I would have a hard time killing someone, even if they were very evil. I'd want to find another way to imprison them, or to capture them without killing them.
One of the benefits of a fantasy game is that there are enemies in it which can be presumed to be truly evil, and truly deserving of their grisly fate at the edge of your sword. Orcs = completely evil. This is useful because now we don't have to fret about whether its ok to fight them. We can just have a fun time romping about combatting the forces of evil.
Basically, what I'm saying is, I'd have a hard time playing a game in which I killed people who might be innocents. Its largely the reason I abandoned vampire the masquerade so fast. Too many people in that game want to role play killing innocent people, and it makes me feel... queasy. Like I shouldn't be having fun.
Orcs don't exist in real life. They're automatically dehumanized. I don't have to feel bad because I enjoyed killing imaginary orcs. Likewise, fantasy bad guys are truly bad- they come pre dehumanized as well. Which is good in a fantasy game.
I don't want every battle to come with moral difficulties. I want to have fun.
I've never come across the 'goblin baby' problem. I've battle many-a-goblin troop. I've actually raided a few goblin camps, and almost died more than once. When it came to the women and children, well, they were considered non-combatants.
And should my GM get morally evil and decide to make one of the goblin-ettes attack me. I'll just have to make like a pimp and slap the gobbie-ho down...beeyatch.
I just started playing D&D again after 15 or so years. We haven't had to deal with the situation of detections and the like much, but it seems to me that magic defined by law/chaos or good/evil would only respond to a 'cosmic' source of the alignment energy. Only high-level divine characters dedicated to an aligned diety, extraplanar creatures, and the like would be affected. So an assassin wouldn't detect as evil, or be able to use evil-aligned items, unless he or she was a devotee of an evil god, had some demonic influence, or was truly epic in his or her crimes.
In this interpretation, I'd allow characters (and NPCs) to somehow know when they've crossed over from simply having a particular behavioral or moral code to being a living exemplar of that force in the world. Paladins and clerics of aligned gods would be this way from the start, while characters might never become that extreme. A LG cleric of a god of law would read as lawful, but normally not as good, because his or her connection to the divine is lawful. A NE druid would not detect as evil, since his or her connection to the divine is not evil (unless you're running a game where evil druids get their power from an evil source).
Orcs might be CE, but only their shamans or extreme non-clergy would detect as such.
As always, thanks to everyone for posting comments.
Marc: interesting suggestion. I'm still chewing it over.
Nephandus (post 1): it is a rant, after all. I recognize that the game can be played and thoroughly enjoyed as written. This article expresses my personal distaste for the alignment system, and tries to state the reasons for that distaste.
I just looked over the 3d Ed description of Detect Evil, and I still think it can be prone to abuse. Overwhelming signals, as written, will be rare (and often beyond the party's Encounter Level, unless I mistake).
Olly, Nephandus (post 2), Cadfan, MA:
It's ironic to me that I wrote this article because of issues raised in the "How Typical is Stereotypical" comments, and now the discussion here is going back to issues touched on there.
There is a playing style issue with respect to the "goblin baby" scenario. Personally, I enjoy situations like that. I don't like to reduce humanoid NPCs to cannon fodder; my longest-term fantasy setting treats humanoids as playable races of varying alignment, much as humans are.
If you enjoy slaughtering orcs and never having to regret it, I won't stand in your way. If you were to play in the above-mentioned setting, you'd fight orcs, just as you'd fight humans and elves. The difference would be that you wouldn't know the orcs were bad guys, necessarily, *just because they were orcs*. There would be something else to tip you off: they are wearing the livery of the cult of the evil god of love, they shout "kill the infidels" and charge to attack, and so on.
In the "How Typical is Stereotypical" thread, I expressed my opinion that there are numerous monsters available for those situations when the characters want to fight something that is thoroughly, thoroughly evil. I make use of these creatures often enough that the PCs are never confused about their role in the scheme of things.
The _Clerks_ Death Star issue is both humorous and pertinent to the discussion. I could go the "wanky sci-fi nerd" route and try to address it ("well, you see, there are no independent contractors in the Empire..."), but what I'd rather say is that the DM needs to maintain a proper sense of climax. You throw moral dilemmas at the players when it's time for thoughtful role-play, not when it's time for them to stand up and be counted among the heroes of the realm.
I tend to present such situations after the big fight against the bad guy, while loot is being apportioned and the characters are cleaning up the mess caused by the bad guy's fiendish plot: an orcish prisoner found in the bad guy's torture chamber sparked a heated debate among the players, who ultimately decided to let him go. It was a variation of the "frog prince" scenario, as he turned out to be a truly honorable individual who was able to help them far down the line. He also helped develop their place in the overall setting/plot, and provided material for diplomacy and discussion for months of real time. As I said, I get a kick out of stuff like that. If you don't, the tolkienish always-evil orc is just fine as a fantasy villain.
Yo Cocytus !
Your initial mail has so many points , some of which I agree with. Let me answer the main thrust of your argument, which I disagree with. Pay attention ! Master DM at work !
(1) My main point would be 'Chill baby!' Alignment is just meant to be a useful tool to help the player and DM agree on what is reasonable behaviour for a player or npc. Obviously, the real world is much more complicated and to deal with moral ambiguities you need an INTELLIGENT and SOPHISTICATED DM who can adjudicate Solomon-wise on a case by case basis! There is no possible HARD AND FAST RULE that you could devise to cover moral ambiguities or you would be a worthy successor to mahatma ghandi. In the absence of a hard and fast rule, the D&D alignment system is simple, easy to use, and adequate without being comprehensive.
(2) You say that the designers of D&D underestimate the importance of alignment in in the game. There are severe penalties for alignment change and and there are spells which work according to alignment.
To this I say... 'It depends how rigidly you play alignment'. I have generally played alignment fairly loosely. ie it applies most strongly to those character types that are strongly alignment based, Paladins, Monks, priests to a lesser extent. These guys will suffer most if they act out of alignment, but even there moral ambiguity exists and the DM can be flexible if he thinks it justified.
About spells... I have always played thayt alignment based spells only function on people and objects that are strongly alignment typed. In general this means people or objects of high power/level strongly tied to a particular alignment. For example, an Evil temple, or a paladin, or a neutral shrine. Most persons or objects will not register with or be affected by such spells.
(3) You say 'Alignments Aren't Tied to Specific Behaviors'. I say 'oh yes they are !' Just because a case is ambiguous or difficult, doesn't mean the DM cant reach a verdict. Where a case is debateable then the DM must use his concience as a guide. There is no substitute for a moral compass, as they say in the film Jose Wells ' no signed paper can hold the iron, it must come from men '.
(4) You say 'Ambiguity Causes Confusion and Dissent'. I say 'so what' . Styles will always differ. There is no cure for this ! Its up to the DM to adjudicate and decide what alignments mean in his/her cvampaign.
(5) You say 'When Detected Alignment Replaces Moral Choice' . I say 'Only if your DM is a dingbat !' Proof of character is not justification for any action. The guy needs to be proven guilty of some act. Detect evil cannot even detect 'INTENTION' never mind 'ACTION'. It gives only an indication of character. If your DM can't work that one out then youre in the deep with no paddle.
Now, I know youre a sensible fellow, because you give your own reasonable alternatives at the end of your post, but what I say is that any more prescriptive alignment system that you might devise will inevitably be more time consuming to set up and maintain. The great strength of the D&D system is that it gives a simple shorthand indicator of behaviour, and relies on the DM to sort interpret and adjudicate. I really can't think of a better way.
Thanks, Mohammed. My reply:
1) When people can't agree, it isn't a very useful tool.
2 & 3) These speak to #4. If it varies from DM to DM, play will be inconsistent. It's not inconsistent with respect to attacks of opportunity; why should it be so with respect to alignment?
4) So what? When people at the table can't agree, it's not much fun. My personal experiences, some of which I reported in the article, have been that this is a divisive issue. When people argue back and forth about alignment archetypes that really ought to be straightforward, as on the "Alignment Refinement" thread, I'm not inclined to believe that this is a small matter.
5) Agreement, but this problem is one that I rarely face directly; it's more often something I hear other gamers complain about. My point is that the system seems to permit it, and that other DMs seem to have been frustrated by it.
Inevitably more time consuming to set up and maintain? Nay, sir. As I say, I've played in other systems where this particular problem never becomes an issue. For the moment, my personal solution has been choice 1: choose a different system. A lot of my long-term players are disappointed, but I'm fed up with so many aspects of the D&D system right now that I'm ready for a radical change. Thank you, Steve Jackson! I am saved!
There is a better way, Mohammed. For me, if not for you.
Doursalmon:
Let me analyse your ruling that the ranger committed evil acts and was in for an align change:
(1) gets evil sword by killing goblin - marginally evil action, mitigated if you believe all goblins evil.
(2) Aiding worgs against shaman - neutral action.
(3) Let worgs loose in village, killed all goblns including women and children - evil action, mitigated if you believe all goblins. are evil.
So in the end it comes down to 'does the ranger think all goblins are evil' If he does then his decisions are justifiable despite strong elements of self interest. And remember he is neutral not good. I would probably rule harder against a good character.
So, in short, I only agree with your ruling if, in your campaign, goblins are not irredeemably evil.
Cocytus,
Ok I hear you view, but I still think that the system you described PALLADIUM is more complex by the very fact of having a list, and also is just as full of discrepancies. For example I disagree immediately with bits of that list. I know plenty of principled people who are not good at working in a group, who would attack an unarmed foe if that foe was guilty of some crime, who would readily defy authority if they thought a law unjust. They would do these things as a matter of principle.
My view is that morality is all a matter of opinion and in the end it will come down to the DMs ruling. There will always be disagreements because the ambiguities are REAL and not due to the system used to describe them. In that circumstance, I go for a simple system. If you find the Palladium system simple to manage and useful, then thats great also. It might even be better.
Mo the sage =)
Mohammed -
The term 'principled' with respect to that particular alignment is just a name. There are other alignments in the system that fit other behaviors. The types of people you describe would be called 'scrupulous' in Palladium - they have principles, but they are also committed to a personal sense of honor.
And disagreeing with the rules is one thing - not being able to agree on what they say is another. Maybe not all of my players agreed with Palladium's rules of alignment, but no one ever argued that a character of Principled alignment could engage in torture. It's right there in the rules: Principled characters do not torture people.
In D&D, it's not that simple. The rules don't say anything about torture at all. When I play D&D, people frequently either argue about alignment, ask for DM clarification, or seem confused. When I play Palladium, none of those things happens. That's why I say it's a better system - in that respect alone, perhaps, but still better.
My grain of salt folks.
The Books of Vile Darkness and Exalted Deeds have clarified alignments somewhat. Actually, they've gone along the lines I was following but now I can slap the books in the face of rule lawyers to shut em up. There are paragraphs about torture, executions, etc.
Unlike Nephandus, I like throwing a monkey wrench in the players' holy crusades. I find it personnaly unhealthy to entertain fantasies about comiting genocides for the people who play the game and for the image of the hobby in general.
Purging non-intelligent monsters, undead, demons from the face of the realm I can deal with. Purging goblins or drow who are free willed creatures, I will not allow or participate in, unless I play in an evil campaign.
Book of exalted deeds has a few paragraphs about redeeming the wicked (just as there is a part on temptation in vile darkness). I find these elements to be excellent storytelling tools, I've often tried to roleplay them, now I have rules that allow me to do it as a GM and as a player.
The reason why alignment hasn't been too refined in D&D is because most GM's are lazy bums who play rpg's like it was Diablo. I mean I've seen Jedi fight lesser foes without offering the chance of surrender, paladins willing to burn down whole forests to kill goblins and lawfull clerics not administering the last rites to clerics of the same congregation (all that without any reaction from the GM).
What can I say. They are the same people who never even try to charge PC's with murder in modern RPG's.
And I beg to differ about alignment detection, an assassin registers as evil (since it is a pre-requisite of the class). So would a Red Wizard, a Thayan Knight, etc. Just as a purple dragon would and a monk would radiate law and a harper would for chaos and goodness.
I read some good points up there, and then there are some points that are...well...not pointy. So, alignment works with the game if it works with the players, right?
A group of pro-alignment players? Great, use alignments.
A group of anti-alignment players? Super, toss the alignments.
A mixed group of players? Just peachy, keep alignments AND add a new one called "non-denominational" ...or somehting like that.
Of course there will be some situations where the players and GM will need to apply the "common sense" skill...plus bonuses.
I've run into these issues myself, and even though we simply played out the game (the issues weren't severe) I've thought about alignment for a while. In Star Wars, alignment (as a function of dark side points) is very important. A fair amount of space in the rulebook is dedicated to exactly what constitutes a dark side act.
In D&D, though, you're right about alignment being very much a game mechanic. I've considered simply dropping the "evil creature" lines from the detect evil spell. In other words, you could detect clerics of evil gods, evil outsiders, undead, and the like, but not just a wicked brigand or a grouchy shopkeeper. Evil gods ARE pretty well defined, after all... moral ambiguity seems to be the domain of mortals.
The problem is complicated by the fact that, since it IS a game, players are more likely to act in bizarre and immoral ways. Chopping peoples' heads off in response to insults is typically not considered couth in reality, but I've seen it happen and the player attempt to justify it. (Given, said player is one that we all agree is, in reality, Chaotic Evil--or would be if he could get away with it.)
Speaking of getting away with things, since the players don't feel a sense of moral responsibility in game, they also tend to feel that they can't be stopped. After all, a fair fight would require a team of four equally powerful foes, with about equal losses expected on each side. So your group of 10th level wizards and fighters don't have much to keep them from robbing the town blind and riding away; most places don't have four 10th level sheriffs sitting around. Given, the DM can work things out (say, a crack squad of trackers sent by the local potentate) but the sense that the party is a law unto itself magnifies the moral issues greatly!
Perhaps your next rant could focus on the use of XP in magic item creation. I always hated that... particularly since the fighters of the party don't have an equivalent XP sink (except maybe getting chewed on by a red wyrm). I can understand for permanent items like swords, but a simple spell storage device like a potion or wand seems too expensive in terms of personal power to be worth it! (Yeah, "power components" are one way to offset that, but still...)
Interesting comments all around, but I suspect that I oversimplified my position when I said I rarely bring up the "goblin babies" scenario. This doesn't mean my games are without moral questions or conundrums. Nor does it mean, Sam, that my characters go on genocidal rampages - out to wipe out a race from the earth.
I simply arrange it so that when the characters encounter such beings, that these beings are up to no good. I would never deign to waste my player's time by indulging a story where they meet a tribe of goblins that has turned to agrarian communism, growing granola and fashioning Birkenstocks for orphans. No, in my games, if they meet goblins, chances are the goblins are up to something interesting in which the players may wish to intervene. I'm not much for "static worlds" where players just venture around looking for stuff to kill. We play stories - with a beginning, middle, and end.
As for players that start chopping heads randomly and looting townspeople, that's the point where I stop the game and we have a chat about what we want out of our game experience. The scenarios I design, use, or adapt, are intended as stories of heroic fantasy. If the players are not going to act as heroes - either through indifference or through active sabotage of the setting and spotlight hogging in this way, then they can play their own game. It's much, much harder to compose credible "evil" motivations and rewards than it is to compose the good motivations. The story logic gets all screwed up when players start behaving like psychopaths. So, one of my groundrules in agreeing to DM is - no evil or crazy PC's.
Excellent ground rules Neph.
Mind you I had no gripe against what you were saying per say, I was just pointing out that... Olly's example (I think) was a good one of the kind of heroïc dilema which I find nice to throw at the PC's. Kinda like the one Peter Parker faces in the Spiderman movie: Mary Jane vs the (wtf is a telepheric in english? is it Wire car?). It is these moments that define the heroes and the vilains of the collective hallucinations we call RPG's.
By the way, I'm not saying all my goblinoids are freespirited peace loving vegetarians, I'm just saying that they are usually just pawns in someone else's scheme and make excellent "usual suspects".
Very nicely done Cocytus.
Thanks, Sam! We may not all agree, but at least we have something to talk about, eh?
The English word is "tram", I think, but can sometimes be called a "cable car". Somebody feel free to jump in and correct me if I'm wrong or omitting a synonym.=
I'd like to throw a question out there-
If you interpret detect evil as I do, you interpret it such that one simply CANNOT get an evil aura of a certain strength of higher without doing terrible, terrible things. Why is it inherently wrong to judge someone or something with such an aura guilty without immediate provable cause?
The rule that you cannot punish until proven guilty of a specific crime is intrinsic to OUR world. Arguably, we have it because you can't just use an evil detector to magically determine whether someone needs to be put in prison. Given that in D&D you actually CAN do this, why would the moral weight of "innocent until proven guilty of a specific crime" still exist? Wouldn't it be replaced with "innocent until proven guilty of having committed some sort of truly evil act, although we can't tell for sure what it was?"
I mean, sure, Joe Schmo the greedy lecherous neighbor might have a faint evil aura. But if you want to rachet that aura up to strong, you have to be at least as evil as a Hezrou, and for an overwhelming evil aura, a Balor.
If I meet someone as evil as a Balor, the axe is coming out. :-)
But I thought I'd throw that moral quandary out for you all- are you sure you aren't transferring a moral rule that was created for specific reasons into a situation where those specific reasons do not exist? Or are you somehow claiming that the rule itself is intrinsically good? If so, why?
Actually, I messed up which demons get which auras. But I think you guys get my point.
Mo (and all who say beings are unequivically evil),
while the idea that there is such thing as true, unequivical evil in a D&D campaign, and all beings of a certain race could be killed on sight without remorse, is a certainly viable campaign choice, and makes for good hack n' slash gameplay (which, when I was primarily a PC I enjoyed as well) the moral implications of a game can really inspire some unique responses from PC's, as well as some unique opportunities for all kinds of plot devices, including elements such as faction or religious devotion. It really offers an opportunity for character development, and allows for deeper game play. and it's easy. and it's more fun when PC's die if the players feel an emotional connection to them. MWAHAHA!
Cadfan said:
"If you interpret detect evil as I do, you interpret it such that one simply CANNOT get an evil aura of a certain strength of higher without doing terrible, terrible things."
Well, that's true enough - the key phrase being "a certain strength or higher". Any creature of evil alignment will register as evil when the spell is cast, but the strength of the aura depends on the type and HD of the creature in question (see PHB:192-193 in 3d Ed, PHB:218-219 in 3.5). By this standard, however, the vast majority of evil, non-clerical mortals will register as "Dim" (in 3d Ed) or "faint" (in 3.5). The spell descriptions do not provide a case where evil, non-clerical mortals could register as evil as, say, a Balor. But even assuming your interpretation is a good one, which I am happy to do for the sake of argument, the vast majority of evil humans will *still* register near the low end of the evil scale. There's no way to distinguish between petty evil and not-so-petty evil, as far as most mortals are concerned.
Cadfan continued:
"Why is it inherently wrong to judge someone or something with such an aura guilty without immediate provable cause?"
It's not wrong to judge them, but it may be wrong to execute them. It depends strongly on the setting. If the paladin in question is the only mortal claiming authority for hundreds of miles around, then he's probably justified in acting as judge, jury, and executioner if he wants to. But in the presence of any existing authority, he must defer to that authority unless it is so monstrously unjust that his desire for the preservation of good overwhelms his respect for law.
"The rule that you cannot punish until proven guilty of a specific crime is intrinsic to OUR world...why would the moral weight of 'innocent until proven guilty of a specific crime' still exist? Wouldn't it be replaced with 'innocent until proven guilty of having committed some sort of truly evil act, although we can't tell for sure what it was?'"
I understand your point, but I never meant to be talking about due process. What I was talking about was the dispensation of justice. In most medieval and pre-medieval societies, the right to dispense justice was just as jealously guarded as it is today. People who attempt to dispense justice without the authority to do so are vigilantes, and in most law-abiding societies, vigilantes are outlaws. My interpretation of the Lawful Good alignment says to me that paladins cannot become outlaws under any but the direst of circumstances, and may not declare open rebellion against any but the most unjust of tyrannies. If you are a paladin in a foreign city, which adventurers often are, then the proper thing to do upon detecting evil in a certain person is to inform the proper authorities, be it the City Watch, the Palace Guard, Burne's Badgers, or whomever.
I do like your thinking, in that I think the implications of the existence of a spell such as Detect Evil are poorly considered in most fantasy settings. Why don't all law enforcement agencies employ paladins, or clerics at the very least? It's a question worth pondering...and the protests of J.W. Howard notwithstanding, I think a fantasy world constructed from first principles, with careful thought to the implications of all the magical 'technology' available, would be an interesting setting indeed.
"If I meet someone as evil as a Balor, the axe is coming out. :-)"
Most of the time, I'd say: good call. But what if the person in question has a position of legitimate authority? If you're a paladin, you can't just murder him on the spot...that would be unlawful, as I said. Not necessarily immoral, but unlawful.
Cadfan said:
"...are you sure you aren't transferring a moral rule that was created for specific reasons into a situation where those specific reasons do not exist?"
Pretty sure. Remember that morals have two axes in D&D, not just one. ;)
I distinctly recall an incident where I joined a party consisting of a Lawful Good, Neutral Good, Chaotic Good and Chaotic Neutral characters. I was a Neutral Evil cleric. Some kobolds attacked and as I finished slaying them, I sacrificed the bodies and muttered an oath to my deity in infernal. The neutral good ranger understood infernal(even though it was quite out of character for him to) and translated for the party. The group, then, decided that the only viable solution was to draw their weapons and kill me. I stated that I had done nothing wrong, and they followed up by saying that the worship of an evil deity alone gives them the right to kill me.
Alas, it was my first and last session with that group and involved a very long game where I kept trying everything I could to avoid them, yet the Ranger was metagaming solutions to all of my attempts to thwart his tracking. GOOD alignment indeed...
In my own games, alignment is there, but it's not really enforced at all unless things get ridiculous. (No paladins going on rampant killing sprees though once the group decided to kill some unarmed kobolds back in 1st edition and the paladin shouted "No! Spare the innocent ratmen!")
My own gaming group can't explain alignment to anyone, yet they seem to have a good grasp of it. The Neutral Good guys are pretty much devoted to good and are neither as anti-authority as a Chaotic or as strictly law abiding as a Lawful person. Most of my players, though, prefer to play Chaotic Good and Chaotic Neutrals, although, there are a few paladins thrown in there who always stick out like sore thumbs trying to convince a party that the laws exist for a reason.
Personally, I think one of my players who was playing a True Neutral druid when informed of a tragic death can sum up his alignment best:
His response was "People die all the time."
Is it evil to kill? Is it evil to kill evil? Is it evil to kill in self-defense, or to defend another? Is it evil to kill someone who wishes to die? Which is more evil: to kill someone, or to imprison them forever? These (and countless others) aren't just questions in a game; they're questions in real life that no one in human history has been able to answer to everyone's satisfaction.
The problem with alignment, then, is essentially this: No one knows what "good" and "evil" are. This confusion is compounded by the addition of neutrality; how good does "good" have to be to really qualify as "good", and not merely the good side of "neutral"? How evil can a "neutral" character be without violating his alignment? For instance, it's easy to say that someone who goes around boiling live babies is evil, but is it "evil" to steal candy from them? Or does simple candy theft pale to neutrality next to senseless torture and murder?
No one knows, you see. And even if someone thought they did, someone else might disagree. And if one of those people is a DM, and another is a player, and they're fighting over whether a PC should suffer from alignment-based penalties or magical effects, chances are the game's just been ruined. Why? Because in a very real sense, the rules are impossible to understand.
There are workarounds, of course. One is to run a morally unambiguous game where the good guys are always obviously good (and dumb, in the Spaceballs sense), the bad guys are unquestionably (and probably unredeemably) bad, good guys can vanquish evil without ethical dilemmas, and so forth. There's really nothing wrong with this approach except that it eliminates some opportunity for roleplaying, and could become trite very quickly.
The other is to all but eliminate alignment, as has been suggested here; assume that most people/things in the game world are simply too morally insignificant to be considered good/evil/chaotic/whatever for the purposes of game mechanics (and where the mechanics require a character to be a certain alignment, such as to cast a spell or use an item, remove that requirement, or interpret it as loosely as possible). The end result is that you have a game where a neutral evil assassin, no matter how despicable, would be unaffected by a "Smite Evil"-type effect, whereas a neutral evil demon, being a creature that isn't merely evil in thought and deed, but is an inherently evil being, would be affected; likewise, the paladin should be able to use a Holy Avenger as long as he's generally a decent, honest guy, instead of having to agonize over what the true nature of goodness is lest he stray from it. The problem here is that the DM needs to make sure that players know that alignment is being treated this way, including the changes to game mechanics where applicable, to avoid future arguments and misunderstandings; also, one might find themself wondering what purpose there is to having explicit alignments at all, if they rarely have any effect on the game...
I have to admit, I laughed when Cocytus said "Thank you, Steve Jackson!" I too fled to GURPS when I couldn't stand D&D's quirks anymore, and while that system is not without its flaws, it certainly was a refreshing change. ;)
To go back to Sam and Nephandus goblin baby bit, (because I belong there...) most of the time, in my campaign, goblins ARE up to no good. They're backstabbing thieves and murderers, who poison drinking water, murder infants and mutilate the beautiful. But they only get that way from how they're brought up, in a bullying, scheming, almost Byzantinial society, where the strong enslave the weak, but are constantly watchful for challengers. A goblin whelp, however, is not evil, because it has not been educated that way yet. The goblin whelp considered the ranger that raised it to be it's 'dad' and had the same alignment as him, from how he'd raised it.
You've probably guessed I'm a nurture over nature kinda guy.
::grabs popcorn and watches the debate with morbid interest::
You guys are like George W and Al Gore. All rabidly defending your positions while making little stabs at the other person.
So is there, like, gonna be bloodshed or what?
::leans closer to witness all the gory details::
Hah Eater !
I am not like Bush or Gore. I have no position to defend. I seek the truth. At least thats what I tell my therapist.
Anyway to get back to Cocytus' last point to me. I quote:
'And disagreeing with the rules is one thing - not being able to agree on what they say is another. Maybe not all of my players agreed with Palladium's rules of alignment, but no one ever argued that a character of Principled alignment could engage in torture. It's right there in the rules: Principled characters do not torture people.'
I dislike this system very much. It is the antithesis of my playing style. It is exactly what D&D tries to avoid, that is to say, a straitjacket tightly constricting player action. I understand that you get certainty and agreement by using this method, but you also get rid of moral choice, and that is exactly what I value.
Think of the great characters in fiction. Many of them are not capable of being constrained by a simple list. Elric, abeing dedicated to worshipping evil yet striving for good. Conan, a savage killer a mercenary taking part in wars where many innocents die, yet capable of risking his life to save a stranger. These are extreme cases, but on a lesser level each character has to decide whether or not an action is within their alignment. If you take away the ambiguity, then you take away the very free will that makes roleplaying fun.
I suppose that the core of my method is that the D&D world should be a mirror of the real world. The moral dilemmas we face here should have their counterparts in the fantasy world. This makes the world truly interesting rather than a cardboard cutout.
sam from quebec says
"And I beg to differ about alignment detection, an assassin registers as evil (since it is a pre-requisite of the class). "
In my game, there's evil and there's Evil. Some assassins might become so extreme as to become Evil, but for the most part, they're just evil. (Or maybe not even evil. Robin Hobbs' "Assassin" trilogy paints an intriguing picture of a hero who's an assassin in service to a king. He has an ugly job, but like any soldier, he works for he percieves to be the greater good.)
Mo, if they're isn't bloodshed I'm in the wrong place!
I agree with Sam. I mean, if a Fighter kills a group of people that doesn't make him evil. But an assassin stabs someone and there's suposedly no other alignment for him than Chaotic Good.
Chaotic Evil I mean
Not neccesarily, Chief. An assassin can be of any evil alignment. And technically, I see them as being more of a lawful evil.
Mohammed, in all fairness you're reacting to the most constrained, most goody-two-shoes alignment Palladium uses. Conan and Elric could probably be described in terms of the Palladium Selfish alignments (Palladium uses Selfish instead of Neutral).
I only included the description of Principled because it's roughly analogous to Lawful Good, and because the issue of paladins is never far from any discussion about alignment and its constraints.
Before you go calling the Palladium system 'a straitjacket tightly constricting player action,' I do wish you'd take the trouble to learn more about it. You never know...you might like it.
I don't see how listing alignment guidelines eliminates moral choice. You've still got the choice to act against your alignment; it's just that if you do it enough, you're going to change alignment and should be prepared to accept whatever consequence results from that change. Only in Palladium, you actually *know* what your alignment guidelines are, and as a player you actually have a chance of controlling that change. How odd!
*Any* fictional world is going to mirror the real world, however dimly, and I'd say that the D&D reflection is dimmer than most. If D&D is trying to avoid a straitjacket, it has failed (IMO, of course) by including alignment-specific penalties and spell powers. Worse, as I said before, it gives us nothing in return.
Palladium's Principled alignment only codifies things I expect from Lawful Good characters anyway, and gives players specific examples as a basis for roleplay rather than using nebulous phrases such as "fights evil without mercy" (whatever that is supposed to mean). If your paladin engages in torture in one of my D&D campaigns for any reason, I'll strip his paladin status in the same instant that I change his alignment to Lawful Neutral. but I'll warn you before it happens: are you *sure* you want to do this?
Maybe you're right: maybe people don't want an alignment system that is clear, consistent, and above all playable. But then there were people that claimed to like the arcane mechanics of AD&D, and since 3d Ed came out they are fewer and farther between. I don't buy it. Ambiguous is frustrating. Inconsistent is annoying. Understated in importance is just plain bad design.
Heres a mail in which I agree entirely with Cocytus In his reply to Cadfan:
Cadfan said:
"...are you sure you aren't transferring a moral rule that was created for specific reasons into a situation where those specific reasons do not exist?"
Cocytus said:
'Pretty sure. Remember that morals have two axes in D&D, not just one. ;)'
Mo says:
In general I really like Cadfans questions and Cocytus' replies. These guys are really thinking about the effects of magic on the Fantasy world.
What I believe is , spells will not get rid of moral dilemmas entirely, and if they do then you should adjust spell effects so that this doesn't happen. However, Cadfan is correct that spells will have some effect. However this is no different than developing technology in the real world. For example DNA testing now makes possible identifying a criminal with some certainty, but it still needs rigorous procedures to comply with the basic requirements of evidence and fairness. This is a vast field, and I can only give a few examples to show you how I would view various cases:
(1) I believe that the important thing is still ACTION. It is unfair to prosecute someone unless they have done something. If you start punishing for ATTITUDE then you lay wide open the road to judicial abuse. A ruler might for example decide that any Chaotic element should be put in jail as potential troublemakers for example. Of course this could happen . I just think its an abuse.
(2) spells like Detect Truth will certainly affect judicial procedures if a high enough priest is available. Still prone to abuse unless proper procedures set in place.
(3) killing goblin women & children. Very likely legal because they are probably not protected by human law. I would say an evil action, but may still be justifiable on security or racial survival grounds.
Anyway, to answer Cadfans question directly, I don't think moral rules will or should vary greatly because of changes caused by spell effects. You should still be judged by what you have DONE, not by your ALIGNMENT. There is a grey area where you might be able to divine INTENTIONS, but I like grey areas.
That's where you're wrong, buddy! In my campaign world, one can be done for killing goblin women and children, because they are sentient life, capable of independant thought, possessing the ability to speak. This makes it immoral to kill them, without good reason.
Olly,
I would agree Its immoral. However that is not the same as illegal. And highly moral guys like Olly & Mo are not in the majority in medieval fantasy settings.
I doubt if, in many lands in my campaign, anyone would blink an eye at killing goblin kids. This is not because it isn't a horrible action. I agree it is vile, but its just that I believe that in primitive and violent societies, most people will end up being bigoted racists, and their rulers will probably be the same.
One final point Olly, there are grey areas to do with survival and security. Many immoral actions may be justifiable on grounds of self defence.
Of course the clever politician will always couch his immoral actions in terms of self defence. For examlpe:
(1) Hitler claimed he invaded weak poland in self defence because they fired over the border first. yeah right !
(2) Bush and Blair actually claimed that IRAQ ravaged by 20+ years of sanctions and under continuous surveillance, was actually some kind of threat to the greatest military power the world has ever known ( sorry if any of you guys believe this, I'm not trying to be controversial ).
Anyway, I take these two examples as obvious lies, but there are occasions of genuine threat when very brutal action becomes justifiable in terms of self defence.
Realistic Mo
I tend to take a practical approach to gaming - the minimum effort for the greatest gain. It comes down to the game mechanics in D&D sabotaging the story mechanics. For this reason, I'm not too keen on divination spellcasters in my games, though I've stopped just short of forbidding them.
In the Detect Evil case, it isn't too hard to go by the book to limit their practical use. Detecting an "evil presence" within an area (but not knowing strength or position) etc, doesn't really give players that much info. The range and area of effect isn't that huge either, and the "concentrate" thingy limits the practical use. It isn't a very good truth serum, nor is it especially good radar.
As for what you DO to evil entities, that's largely a function of setting and style. Does your Paladin execute an evil person on the spot? Not in my game.
Remember, a Paladin is Lawful as well as Good. Executions of this sort require a crime, in addition to "evil motivation". And many towns may be under rule of law themselves. You can't just go around killing people - at least in my game. Unless, of course - something is tainted with the extraplanar evil - demons and such.
It's also not so easy for most characters to do this surrepticiously. Verbal and Somatic components or Divine Focus. Let your players know beforehand what the average reaction would be if someone started heating up their holy symbol and chanting in the middle of a tavern, or in a negotiation. What's the etiquette?
Methinks in a world where someone could just as easily fling a fireball as cast a detection, that it's likely this would get a chilly reaction.
Note - none of this over-rules the basic abilities or arranges the scenario so that they are moot. It's not about denying players the benefit of their abilities. Choices and consequences is the name of the game. for the players, is the cost they know they are going to pay, worth the benefit they might get from casting.
Sorry Joe but an assassin (the prestige class, not any common hired killer) is Evil, period.
Second, an assassin or what ever evil character registers on a detect evil (check it PHB 3.5 under "detect evil").
Now even if police forces and tribunals have detection spells, there are ways in which a person can radiate an alignment but not be so.
Spells can lead you to misread the aura, posession, some curses, magic items have their own alignment at times, etc.
In AD&D I once created a manacratic state where the systematic application of magic was the solution to everything. It was about as advanced as the most advanced countries of our time (if not more).
Still, since nobody is uncorruptible detection of lie or evil could not be used alone in a court of law. Also they had their own version of the death penalty for evil people: the personality inversion (helmet of opposite alignment). So there was no way for them to accept the cold blooded execution of any mortal material plane sentient. Since even if proven guilty of the worst attrocities, the criminal could be cured of insanity, changed alignment and made to repay his debt to society.
But that is a very High Magic setting.
Look at it like the Jedi in Star Wars, while they can read intents and detect the dark side, they are not jury, judge and executionner because:
1 - there are too few of them.
2 - it would lead the rest of the population to resent and hate them for holding power over them. A power they themselves can never have. Hey in the real world, many resent lawyers, judges and officers of the law. And it is withing most people's capacities to hold such a position.
So even if there are clerics and paladins in most city watches, they don't can't apply the law all by themselves and have to follow some if not all mundane rules of conduct.
Sam said: "So even if there are clerics and paladins in most city watches, they don't can't apply the law all by themselves and have to follow some if not all mundane rules of conduct."
Which brings us back to the stigma against casting magic in public. At least 90% of the population doesn't have Spellcraft skill, so they would assume the worst about the caster. To paraphrase "Sir Apropos of Nothing": "Most barkeeps don't cater to people that can make you forget they didn't pay."
Sam,
There's a videogame out there called "Tenchu." Play it...play all three...well, maybe just play the first and the third. Not ALL assassins are evil. Historically, many ninja clans in feudal Japan had a code of honor more strict than that of the noble Samurai.
Nephandus said:
"It's also not so easy for most characters to do this surrepticiously. Verbal and Somatic components or Divine Focus. Let your players know beforehand what the average reaction would be if someone started heating up their holy symbol and chanting in the middle of a tavern, or in a negotiation. What's the etiquette?
Methinks in a world where someone could just as easily fling a fireball as cast a detection, that it's likely this would get a chilly reaction."
Ashaqua added:
"Which brings us back to the stigma against casting magic in public. At least 90% of the population doesn't have Spellcraft skill, so they would assume the worst about the caster."
I think these are important points. When Cadfan mentioned (on the Alignment Refinement thread) that certain low-level Divination spells were ruining his mystery-investigation scenarios, in some cases I had to wonder: why should the baron (in cadfan's scenario 2, see that thread) tolerate some uppity, lower-status-than-the-baron cleric coming into his courtroom and casting spells? It's interpretable as a hostile action: at the very least, I think the guards would be called to haul the presumptuous little bastard away. Now, if the baron gave his word that he would submit to a Zone of Truth spell cast in front of his peers, that would be a different story - but he wouldn't do that unless he had a very compelling reason to do so.
Weighing in on the assassin issue:
One can have a code of honor and still be evil. This is why I love the Lawful Evil alignment for villains: honorable but ruthless characters make great foils for heroes.
I think the ruthlessness implicit in the concept of the professional killer makes the designers of D&D - and most DMs - want to restrict the Assassin to an evil class. Personally, I could see Neutral or Chaotic Neutral characters being assassins, but that's something that would be interpreted very differently by other DMs. What little the PHB says on the subject of evil - that evil characters are distinguished from neutral ones by their *ruthlessness* - makes me think that in 3d ed, there is less conceptual wiggle room for neutral assassins.
For all you doubting Mohammeds out there (just teasing, Mo), Palladium has a great, Lawful-Evil-like alignment called Aberrant. The Aberrant character follows a strict code of honor: just because his ethics happen to fall outside the boundaries of normal society's doesn't mean he doesn't have ethics. He may torture you and oppress your family with heavy "protection money" demands, but he won't harm your children, and he'll keep his word of honor if he gives it.
Dammit - I keep writing Ashagua's handle 'Ashaqua'. Sorry about that.
AMEN to Aberrant!!
That's my favorite alignment. I just wish the Palladium game systems weren't so DAMN COMPLICATED! However, whilst they sit upon my shelf, they make for great source books!
I have developed a point system to track the character's alignment. Using one number for their good/evil tendencies and another number for their lawful/chaotic tendencies. They earn or lose points based on their actions. So one person may be good, while another may be very good, etc. This also allows for gradations of good and evil. So one person may be a little bit evil, while another may be hell on wheels. It also shows characters developing over time towards either good or bad in the long run, so that all actions have an impact on whether someone is good or bad.
Cocytus, a man after my own heart. You can't beat a good bit of lawful evil now and again!
Oh, and on the subject of killing goblin whelps, Mo, I have to agree in part with you. I think a vast majority of people in fantasy worlds are racist one way or another. Most predominantly in traditionally 'evil' races like orcs and goblins who loathe elves and dwarves. Dwarves are predjudiced against elves, and likewise, elves are predjudiced against dwarves.
Even Elrond was a bigot, if you believe the movies, what with him being distrustful of the world of men... although it didn't happen in the books... but I like the movie Elrond better... Hugo Weaving kicks large portions of ass with great severity.
AAAH! we achieve agreement !
I agree with all last 10 posts from:
On December 9, 2003 01:02 PM, Nephandus said:
To
On December 10, 2003 04:43 AM, Olly said:
Except the bit of
On December 9, 2003 02:59 PM, sam from quebec said:
where sam insists Assassins are Evil period. because it says so (check it PHB 3.5 under "detect evil").
My reply to Sam is that experienced DMs have their own views on such matters, and rules are not sancrosanct. Much depends on the logic of your campaign. If, as a DM you wish to change the effects of the Detect Evil spell or rule that an assassin is 'Aberrant' rather than Evil, then its your priviledge to do so.
As I've stated before, its a well used convention (though not part of the rules) that Detect Evil only shows up strong high level or pure evil. An assassin may for example be in other ways a decent man 'see the film "the unforgiven" '.
Hmmm.... how to explain to my wife that when I said her mother was Evil .... I really meant Aberrant.
maybe psychotic-evil, eh?
My ex-girlfriend was lawful evil. She was fine to start off with, lovely, very sweet, but then, she stabs me in the back and goes off with my best friend, ruining two relationships for the price of one. The witch.
Needless to say, I stoned her to death, and burnt her body.
Mo, if you read Terry Pratchett's Discworld books they have an Assassin's Guild. These Assassins are not simply hired thugs who kill people in the street for a handful of gold. With these guys it's a lapful or nothing. The Assassin's Guild values human life immensely and thus, charges large amounts to take it away. Also, Assassins in Discworld are always noble, well-educated gentlemen and women, who never stoop to gunning down a victim in the street, and try not to kill guards, servants and witnesses, wherever possible.
Sure it's because they are noble...
No man! It's because the less people you kill, the less reprisal and the simplest the job is. Just as in the real world the mob tries to make clean kills, so as not to anger the populace and put political pressue on governments who would adopt anti mob laws.
It's practicality not honour.
Mind you, I could see a non evil assassin (but you'd have to rewrite 2 prerequisites for the class: 1 - any evil alignment. 2 - Must kill someone as an initiation rite.)
But I'm talking Core D&D here. Now if you start modifying classes, spells, etc. Well we're not really talking D&D anymore are we, we're talking Mo's D&D, Sam's D&D, etc.
It is not necessarily lack of experience that prompts a DM to follow the rules or not. I follow most of them because I find them convenient. But, for alignment definition I use Monty Cook's scale of alignments from Unhallowed Might and I also use the language rules from Kingdom of Kalamar. I've used a home made rule for character creation based on the building cost from the DMG. I've tailored some prestige classes so they fit my campaign (more in their backgrounds than the actual rules that apply to them).
Shaping a system to your hand is much like the art of growing Bonzaï. It requires patience to make the little changes over a long period of time.
Sam, you need to read Discworld, medically.
In Discworld, by Terry Pratchett, all of what I have just said is true.
If you argue with me about it, I will win. End of story.
I am not saying that Pratchett didn't imagine it like that. I'm just saying that if one sells one's service as a hired assassin, one's morality and honour is already questionnable.
Just as spanish inquisitors were just butchers who did the Vatican's dirty work.
Come on assassins being good? It might work if you read it, some members of the guild might actually believe it, but the leaders have to be very deluded if they believe themselves to be good.
Of course if Pratchet's assassins make sure to kill only vile creatures, don't do it for the money or the power and allow the victim to die with honour or plead his/her case and ...
But they are definitely not usual assassins. Assassins kill for money, power or fun (not to be confused with the original Hashashin who were nothing more than muslim black ops of the crusades and not really hired killers per say (even if they were "paid" with hashish)).
Good assassins in deed, pff.
What next: kind slavelords, enlightened dictators and morally conscious mass murderers.
On another matter prejudice doesn't mean evil. Alignment will influence how your prejudice manifests though.
I think some of the tension is coming from the difference between assassins as a prestige class template of rules and abilities, and assassins as a profession.
A prestige class is basically a set of rules and abilities for a character. The fluff that goes with it is how the game encourages those rules and abilities to be incorporated into a campaign. I think problems are created when the rules lay down the law, and make the fluff part of the rules. For example, the assassin prestige class requires you to kill a person for no reason. That's pretty evil, and suggests that only an evil character should be an assassin. But what about the player who wants to use the assassin rules, but doesn't want to be evil, and doesn't want to kill random people for no reason? The game doesn't allow for that, unless the DM edits the rule.
Personally, I think the game *usually* does a good job with this. For example, I think the assassin prestige class is designed in terms of rules so that a non evil player simply wouldn't get much out of it, nor would they make much sense pursuing it. The rules all deal with how to kill people with poison, etc, silenly. That's usually not a good thing to be doing, and I think most would-be good assassins might be better of just being rogues. But there are a few other prestige classes where I would easily edit the prereqs to get rid of flavor based requirements. Drunken Master, for example, requires you to survive a night of revelling with other drunken masters. That's fine and all, but I can think of campaigns where that wouldn't be reasonable, and where the DM might still want to let the PC become a drunken master.
Anyways, maybe the real problem is the conflict between the two definitions of assassin-
1) those people who use the rules from the assassin prestige class, and
2) those people who kill other people for money.
An assassin is really just someone who kills for money (or some other form of compensation, but usually not solely for pleasure or personal gain from the killing itself. An ambitious prince that kills his father isn't really a professional assassin, nor is a depraved serial killer one).
We see that as evil, because we don't like that idea that someone - especially friends or family, or ourselves - could be killed by someone with willful intent, and ideally (from the assassin's POV) with no way to defend against it. But is an assassin really different from a mercenary? A mercenary fights and kills for money; does it matter that one is more prone to appear on the battlefield?
What if the assassin were a bounty hunter of sorts, killing only those who have been found guilty of crimes? Consider a police sniper, who is very much an assassin, yet operates within the law, ostensibly for the public good. In a similar vein, consider a spy or special combat agent who might find himself killing a diplomat, or the leader of an enemy army; is this "evil"? Definitely depends who you ask! What if the assassin had a personal code of honor that limited the jobs he was willing to take?
Obviously, all of these are different from the stereotypical assassin.. but isn't it stereotyping to say that all assassins MUST be evil, regardless of who they are and how they operate? It would certainly be a stretch to say that one could be lawful good (the police sniper MIGHT qualify, though I doubt he would enjoy his job; lawful neutral would be a better fit) but I think there's room for flexibility. I say let the character, not the rules, determine the character's alignment.
I have a gripe with the police sniper example.
A police sniper is only legaly used in hostage situations where a group or individual has opened hostilities and threatens the life of innocents. It is somewhat lawfull and good to save the innocents.
Now if police sniper started killing off crime bosses in their homes, or senators in the opposition or social activists. Most of the good and the lawfull would go with it.
Bounty hunters and assassins are different, although one who nevers bother to bring them back alive would be evil. Well I guess all of us who've seen Logan's run could argue he was a some sort of good assassin... but as in hired killer there is the word killer.
Mercenaries are warriors, they are not necessarly hired to kill. They can guard, protect, capture, escort, patrol. They don't go out of their wy to kill unless they are evil or are fighting an enemy they really hate.
Anywho, just another grain of salt.
Okay, nobody has said this yet but I feel it is neccescary.
Palladium sucks.
It needed to be said. The entire system is convoluted and stupid, regardless of the incarnation. I hate sitting down and spending six hours making a character that I then realize has the shittiest OCC in the game because my buddy with Atlantis just spent as long as I did making an Undead Slayer. Then I die after only an hour of play. I never even got to use all those damn skills. I hate it. And don't give me that 'Hero's Unlimited is a good use of the system' crap. It took me twice as long and I ended up with more stupid skills because none of the packages had what i wantwed unless I wanted to play someone akin to Superman and not The Punisher.
And have you ever tried to RUN the goddamn system. NPC are nigh impossible to manage on anything more than the most basic thug level. And I absolutely hate the whole SDC/MDC thing. I had a squad of Coalition Specail Forces agents in a Rifts game level an antire alpine villa with laser pistols when they were supposed to perform a covert insertion and withdrawl. Then the Juicer OUTRAN an attack chopper. What the f**k is up with that!? And he did it in deep snow while carrying his buddy on his back.
The whole thing is like and convoluted 2nd Ed D&D.
Only worse.
Now I feel I must say that, at least Kevin Simbeada (I know I spelled it wrong) does have some good ideas when it comes to world design, not counting Rifts New West. I enjoyed that aspect of his games allmost enough to fight with that STUPID system.
Allmost, but not quite most of the time.
::End Of Rant::
And, yes, I know that was rather off topic.
Jeez, I should turn that into an article. I could call it "Why I Hate Palladium". Kind of has a nice ring to it.
Yeah...
In Palladium's rules, you can ONLY be an assassin if you are of 'evil' alignment. I still think there can be assassins that aren't evil...
Sam:
My point was to show that an assassin is just someone who kills people, and that since killing people is not always necessarily evil, neither are assassins necessarily evil. Alignment should be a function of their beliefs and behavior, not their profession.
This assumes, of course, that you believe that killing is not always necessarily evil.. and hence I provided examples of people who might only kill the wicked or the lawfully condemned. No matter what his REASON, a police sniper's job is to kill people, making it the perfect counterexample.
Did they put "the assasin" character back into D&D for 3.5?
Sigh - I thought the original 3e makers were quite clear on why that class was excluded. Essentially anyone is an assassin - who goes on a mission to kill someone. You can look to the Bond or Austin Powers rogues gallery to see a bunch of them, and they all have their own methods.
Methinks I'd be as likely to see a successful Wizard become an assasin as I would a Rogue. The word, to me, conjures a specific task, rather than any one kind of character.
Nephandus:
The assassin appears as a prestige class in 3.0: see DMG:29-30.
I think your and Xplo's definition of assassin is the preferable one, but don't get me started - that will take me down the road of railing against class-based systems in general, and who needs that?
Eater:
Bear in mind, the *only* thing I think Palladium does better than d20 D&D is its alignment system, for the simple reason that any player can look up the alignment requirements and know what is acceptable behavior for her character.
The Palladium conception of diverse, specialized classes of "Men of Magic" is a great one in theory, but the execution is somewhat lacking.
As for the rest of the Palladium rules, well, there's a reason I converted my Palladium campaign world to d20 D&D. ;)
The Paladium RPG system isn't for me either. I remember spending hours upon hours creating characters for Teenage Mutants Ninja Turtles for nothing. I think it's even worst than Rolemaster in terms of clunkiness and lack of game fluidity.
I must admit that the RIFT setting is wickedly cool while many of their "non game mechanic" concepts are interesting.
Otherwise the Paladium system just plain sucks, period, even more than Marina does in D&D the Movie.
The most complicated system I tolerate is GURPS and only because of the simplicity of running a game once characters are created (if you limit the number of supplements used).
Well, at least I'm not the only person who feels that way. I never liked allignment and classes as a character tool anyway. I'll take a free form system like White Wolf, Shadowrun or GURPS any day. And Rifts is my favorite Palladium setting, with the exception of New West which I think blows.
Allignments as a whole annoy the crap out of me no matter what system they're in. D&D I do think does allignments better than Palladium, but then I don't put that much of an emphasis on them anyway.
Oh yeah, and the only thing that didn't suck about the D&D movie was Thora Birch. Not her character mind you, just her.
Apparently, I'm not the only one who uses that movie as a mastabatory aid...
(Awkward silence)
(Whispers) I went too far...
And Sam, you're a bad man. Those who insult Marina in my presence shall face the consequences.
(Rasping, demonic voice)
YOU ARE MY NEMESIS. ONE DAY, IN THE FUTURE, OUR PATHS WILL CROSS AGAIN, AND I... WILL... DESTROY... YOU...
(Spins head 360 degrees)
I FEEL A TAD EVIL.
[Sings, but evilly, mark you] LOVELY MARINA, HAVE YOU SEEN HER, DRINKING RIBENA, IN THE CANTINA, I'VE NEVER BEEN KEENER, TO SHOW HER MY WEINER, IT'S NEVER BEEN CLEANER, OH LOVELY MARINA, MORE PRETTY THAN XENA... THE WARRIOR PRINCESS... WITH THE SWORD...
THANK YOU PLEASE.
Shut up Olly.
You're over-communicating again.
Tranq-dart for Olly, coming right up...
[Protesting] I don't wanna go in the containment cell again, Ass.
*Shows up wearing a white lab coat, straight jacket in hand.*
Just remember your happy place, Olly. It'll be OK.
Olly, Shark, Assassin, Ashaqua if you ever come by Quebec City drop me an e-mail at donjon77@sympatico.ca.
I'll gladly buy the beer/cofee/coco or whatever if you're as much of a nut in person as you are on the net.
Oh yeah alignment.
Well I think alignment problems come up only when all participants of the game can't agree on them.
This becomes a problem in "no alignment games" when players don't agree on acceptable character conduct.
For example, in the Babylon 5 RPG (which has no alignments) I might find turning in a rogue telepath to the Psycore acceptable while other players won't. Alignments give you a baseline (not an exhaustibe rulebook) as to what is acceptable behaviour for your character. That's all.
Yeah...
They should be viewed as GUIDELINES of common behavior of an individual. They should NOT be viewed as rules or limitations of one's actions. They should give a players an IDEA of what CAN (not MUST) be expected of them.
Assassin -
"They should NOT be viewed as rules or limitations of one's actions. They should give a players an IDEA of what CAN (not MUST) be expected of them."
Perhaps so.. unfortunately, they are explicitly viewed as rules and limitations. Some classes have alignment restrictions, and the penalties for breaking them can be severe. Some spells and magic items only work for (or on!) creatures of certain alignments.
Suppose my GM feels that I'm not playing my paladin "good" enough, and strips his powers. I disagree, claiming that his behavior is appropriate for a LG character. Huge fight ensues.. or at least, I feel cheated for being punished although I've done nothing wrong.
In short, alignment and game mechanics don't mix, yet they are inseparable.
Forget D&D. American Beauty....
That's what I'm talking about.
I didn't check gamegrene.com for a while, and when I come back there's this huge discussion thread. :) Thanks, Cocytus, I feel honored that one of my remarks was part of the reasons for you to write this latest article.
Coming late into this, I don't know where to start. Most points I wanted to adress in regard to this topic have already been brought up by others by now, so it would be a waste of bandwidth if I basically wrote the same things just dressed up a bit differently.
I especially agree with most things stated here by Cocytus, Xplo, Nephandus, cadfan, sam_from_quebec, Mo, and Olly's "goblin baby scenario". (Just to warn people on which side of the argument I will come in. :-P)
I'll post more tomorrow after a night's sleep and after I had a chance to read through the postings again.
Sam, I would be honoured to join you in Quebec city for a bit of a get-together, though I'm not sure when I'm next in Canada. Just make sure you've got shedloads of Coca-Cola. I love that stuff!
Oh, Alignment. Yeah. Killin' goblin babies is wrong.
Snowboarding and gaming in Canada would be sweet...
Oh yeah, babies...
Don't let Crazy-Eddie put goblin-babies on spikes.
(Turns to the East, kneels on the floor and prays, whilst mumbling 'Izzard!')
Oh and Sam, when I go to Canada to visit you, as well as loads of Coca-Cola, I also will require a harem of the most beautiful, intelligent and virginal women Canada has to offer to accompany me. Obviously.
It'll be great fun. You could teach us all Canadianese, and we could go out hunting for moose, and annoying the mounties, and entering maple syrup eating contests, and playing ice hockey, and farting on one another's heads, and saying 'Eh?' at the end of every sentence... Oh it'll be a laugh.
Hum... Olly you watch too much South Park.
And I'm in Quebec beautiful and intelligent women are plentiful, they don't remain virginal for long unless they want it that way.
Saying Eh isn't that common in Quebec, even among the anglos.
Snowboarding and gaming... yeah that'd be great Mystic Assassin. Freestyle or Racing?
Anywho, this article and the others it inspired from have forced me to rethink some of my positions on certain alignments, or at least how I implement alignments in my game. Great job Cocytus.
Hum... Olly you watch too much South Park.
And I'm in Quebec beautiful and intelligent women are plentiful, they don't remain virginal for long unless they want it that way.
Saying Eh isn't that common in Quebec, even among the anglos.
Snowboarding and gaming... yeah that'd be great Mystic Assassin. Freestyle or Racing?
Anywho, this article and the others it's inspired from have forced me to rethink some of my positions on certain alignments, or at least how I implement alignments in my game. Great job Cocytus.
Backcountry for me, please...
Just me and the mountain...and soft, pillowy powder to fall into.
Trees, clearly marked and wrapped like football goal-posts.