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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You know, Enigmatic, I don't think that anyone in the 'anti-alignment' camp is actually saying that discussions about what constitutes Good and Evil, Law and Chaos, should never take place during a game, or that those words shouldn't be mentioned.
The important point here, is that those discussions are, in themselves, fuel for roleplaying. Characters can hold their own ideas and opinions about what constitutes good and evil, and can debate these in-game. Players can enjoy building these philosophies into the role for their character, and enjoy the interactions with other player characters that this leads to - in character. In-game disagreements (providing that the players are mature enough not to let these spill over into real life) can be hugely enjoyable parts of the roleplaying experience that spice things up a bit from time to time.
But when you state that good and evil, law and chaos, are things that can be objectively measured, in-game, then rather than these ethical or moral debates being contained in-game, they instead spill out into the real world, as the players argue with the referee's judgements or take umbrage with the way the alignment rules work. (Just look at us arguing, and you'll see what I mean!)
Gods will have their own ideas of what is good and evil, of course, and in the (usually) polytheistic multiverse of D&D, they too will argue about these matters, often through the medium of their intermediaries on the material plane. But the arguments are in-game, and are the consequence of roles that are being acted out.
Once you introduce objective alignment as a quality that can be determined unambiguously in-game, it makes it hard for any kind of moral relativism to manifest itself within the game. This seems to have removed an interesting dimension from the roleplayer's repertoire.
I might add that, though this debate about alignment is a hoary old chestnut, it has livened this place up a bit!
Next up - should D&D include a 'Detect Politics' spell?
(Runs away laughing maniacally)
Well said Gherkin. I think I've been struggling to express that. It is a great topic because people certainly tend to polarize.
The other bones of contention in D&D (Hit Points, Armor Class, Experience Points) aren't nearly so touchy because those who really find fault with those abstractions tend to move off D&D to a better system. Alignment polarizes people who still play the game.
It is interesting that you mention other points of contention like HP, AC and XP. Curiously enough, in all of those cases they are game mechanics which are used to approximate things, and while people may have completely opposing views on how they should be done, they are accepted as a mechanic and an approximation.
This is why alignment stands out as being so different. The very nature of the topic it covers can be seen in wildly different lights. One person could say stealing is a chaotic evil act, but another would argue that if the worst thing they ever did in life was just to steal would it make them the most chaotically evil person? Others may argue that the act is Non-Lawful Non-Good, which means the worst that would ever happen is they would become neutral. All of these different view points stem from a personal belief system and how the player personally feels about the topic.
The same cannot be said for the other issues as nobody has a personal belief system about experience points, only a personal view on how they would do it.
This is why I keep harping on about how much alignment is the result of what you put into it. If you come into it with the belief that it wont work and that the relationship between actions and alignment and classes and alignment are muddy to begin with, then that is exactly what you will get out of the system.
Firstly I am not talking about objective alignment. I have always said that it should be something discussed prior to the game about what judgements are made in relation to alignment by the DM who is running the game. It can never be objective because it is always the subjective view of the person. But as the DM is the one who is controlling the game and the one who is assessing the players actions then ultimately it is the point of view of the DM which the players will be measured by and thus it should be made clear in advance how the game will see things.
In this way it is no different than the author of a book. The author is the one making the judgement calls and will write a book in a manner that portrays the actions that are taken in the way that they see it. While one author may write about stealing and how bad it is, ultimately making sure those who steal suffer for it, another author may write about stealing as being justified and write about it completely differntly as a necessry evil. The player (reader) simply chooses whether they accept this point of view and continued to play (read) knowing this to be the case.
But the counter to what you have said is that with all of this debate going on in the game, it means that a player can make certain choices, claiming that they are good in making those choices and yet continue to commit great evil while doing it. You end up with assassins who claim to be good yet take money for killing people, paladins who steal from the poor, etc, etc, etc. The players take actions, they "debate it in-game" and you end up losing the session to a squabble about whether they can justify their own actions because you have now said alignment is open for discussion during play!!
I think you are forgetting the very words of the player's handbook which can't state clearly enough. Being of a certain alignment doesn't mean that every action you take must follow that alignment. Everybody is free to act in any way they choose, but if you repeatedly act against your alignment, we simply change your alignment to reflect how you are acting. Of course there is a very large gray area in there as to whether actions go one way or another, in those cases I would say if its too difficult to work out what alignment a certain action is then you just make it neutral (or no effect), but there are other actions which clearly show an alignment and if those actions are taken over and over again then the DM would have no choice but to show a change.
An example from my own role-playing history. A person always had the idea of being Lawful Good, so they made their character a Paladin. Throughout the adventure he never passed an opportunity to open a door, look in a chest or search a room to see what he could find. The problem was that these doors, chests and rooms all belonged to someone else.
What would you do in that situation? Would you consider alignment a non-issue and allow them to keep disrespecting everybody elses property and steal everything in sight? Would you debate this right in the middle of a game? Or would you tell the player after they have done this a few times that their alignment has shifted slightly towards being neutral because the act of taking something that belongs to someone else from their room is not a lawful or a good act?
This is the reason why some classes have alignment restrictions. Seeing a character of that class continually committing certain acts just destroys all belief in what that class would really be like simple because alignment has been made a non-issue and thrown out.
Allow me to ask a simple question. Is it even possible to show you a reason to support alignment? It does appear to me that you have already made your mind up to the point where no amount of proof at all would alter your point of view. I can see times when alignment falls down and places where it doesn't fit or doesn't work, yet I struggle to find any time when you have said alignment can indeed have place where it works.
That you are of the belief that my logic is based around insight into characters only highlights this. Alignment is not valuable because of insight, alignment is valuable in providing the DM with a tool to let the characters know when they are straying from what would be considered appropriate for the aligment they have chosen.
Read my example above about the paladin. Everybody has a similar view of what the paladin is about and how they would act. If a person plays a paladin in a way that completely goes against this then they become unbelievable and the whole point in playing them is lost. Without alignment or at least something which approximates alignment there isn't much point in having a class that has this core belief. Ok so they follow a code, does that mean they rape and pillage when it falls outside their code but remain straight and true when its inside the code? Again this makes for totally unbelievable characters.
And if you find that kind of "moral certitude" disturbing, then you must be disturbed by 90% of the movies out there as they generally tend to do this very thing and for some strange reason millions of people enjoy it immensely as a result. Exceptions to the rule are great, but it is only an exception because it goes against what would normally be considered the easily identifiable difference between light and dark.
I have absolutely no problem with shades of gray. When given 2 choices you can see and understand its a shade of gray but ultimately you still have to pick one path or another. That you picked a path doesn't mean you aren't comfortable... it simply means you don't throw your hands up in the air, complain that there are only 2 paths and spend the rest of your life sitting at the cross roads mumbling about how it doesn't work and refuse to choose ;)
Hit points (whatever you feel about them) serve a function. They help you determine when your character becomes dead or incapacitated. It is my opinion that being able to determine if your character is dead or alive is an important ingredient in a role-playing game.
Armor Class serves a function. This number is a weird amalgam of how hard you are to hit and how well protected you are. Although it is a stupid rule it still serves a function that I believe adds to the game. It makes some characters less susceptible to physical attack. By doing this some characters are better in combat.
Experience points serve a function. They determine (poorly) when your character can advance their skills. Tying the in-game action to the improved prowess of your character is certainly debatable, but the advancement of the character is an element that I believe belongs in the game.
Alignment serves no valuable function. It makes a character "eligble" for certain classes and makes them the target of or immune to certain magical effects. I don't see a value in that. Can we debate this point? Why do I want to make certain characters susceptible to magical ethical powers? That's the crux of this. I don't care to debate how good/bad the alignment system is, because as you say it is far too open to interpretation. I want to know what the people who like alignment get out of using it. How does it improve the game?
"This is why I keep harping on about how much alignment is the result of what you put into it."
...and I keep asking, "What do you get out of it?" What function does it serve?
You start with "it serves no function" and then wonder why I keep saying if you dont see value in it then you wont find value in it.
Alignment serves exactly the same function that Hit Points do. They are both indicators of some aspect about your character. Neither of them in and of itself really does anything (ie if your HP are low it doesn't change anything about your character), but other mechanics use them.
Does having hit points improve the game? Its the same with alignment. Simply having something doesn't necessarily improve the game, but it stops the game from becoming unworkable. I know people who play without hit points, but I question how they know when their character would be close to dying. The exact same thing applies to alignment. You can play without alignment, but how would you know if you are doing things that are completely contrary to the character you have created?
I gave a perfect example with the Paladin opening every door and chest that they came across. Without alignment nobody can say that isn't something a paladin would do, but with alignment the DM can adjust their alignment to reflect their actions... exactly as hit points are adjusted after every wound to reflect your health.
From a role-playing perspective, alignment is another tool the DM can use to provide alternative routes to solving a problem. Just as classes or skills or feats can be used, so too can alignment. You have a goal to achieve, the fighter could go in the front door, while the rogue sneak in, or the wizard teleport in. All 3 are viable options and come with their own pros and cons and are suited to different types of characters.
The same goes for skills. The rogue could pick the lock, but the fighter doesn't have that skill, he could jump the chasm to get to the goal.
Alignment provides exactly the same kind of role-playing choice as that. Lets say a certain person has a key which you need. The good person must make the choice of whether to try and get it from them in a respectful way or go against thier normal beliefs and steal it from them, while the evil person has no compunction and would just take it. The lawful person must struggle with whether breaking the law by stealing the key is worth the eventual outcome that they believe will happen, while the chaotic person might just do it their way with or without the key. All of these options come with alignment effects, and while none of them may actually change a persons alignment, continuing ot act in certain ways could eventually make their alignment change.
So you present the players with moral and ethical dilema's, that come with certain rewards but also have pros and cons to them.
To me that is an absolutely fantastic role-playing device which expands the normal class/race/feat/skill obsticles that most boring role playing modules put before you and opens up opportunities that have a real world effect. There is no "risk" in picking a lock, no detriment suffered for doing so without alignment. Who cares if you bash down a door when there is no thought given to who the door belongs to and whether its right to just go breaking it down.
I once had a grimmoire in an adventure I ran, which provided the player with unimaginable magical power, but it slowly corrupted them and turned them evil. They found it the most enjoyable encounter to actually have to weigh up whether the magical power gained was worth becoming evil as a result (he was a good role-player and loved the challenge of having to adjust his character based on alignment). He decided he didn't want to lose being good but more and more obsticles in his way required the magical power to overcome. It almost became like an addiction where he eventually destroyed the book at the point where he became neutral. The way he role played it was great. He said he felt his care and respect for people slipping, found himself starting to become more and more apathetic to those around him and thought more and more of himself before others. It was at that point that he realised that even though he had initially chosen to use the book's magic for good, the fact he cared less and less about others meant that eventually he would no longer see the need to use it for others which defeated the original purpose.
He saw value in alignemnt and he made it an enjoyable part of the game that had more function than hit points or experience or armour class. In that game it was all about the struggle within himself and about the choice between having great power and holding onto what made him who he was.
I can come up with at least another half dozen experiences just like this one which are all completely and totally based on alignment. I think it is far more valuable than a person suddenly hitting 10,000xp and magically having their head filled with knowledge they never knew.
Don't you?
"You start with "it serves no function" and then wonder why I keep saying if you dont see value in it then you wont find value in it."
The nature of discourse is to put forth a proposition and then offer evidence to support it. Please drop this preposterous rhetoric from your posts.
"whether they can justify their own actions because you have now said alignment is open for discussion during play!!"
No, he said that ethics were open for discussion during play.
"Without alignment nobody can say that isn't something a paladin would do, but with alignment the DM can adjust their alignment to reflect their actions."
Don't you see how alignment interferes with what you want here? You want to ensure that Paladins are paragons of goodness. Rather than defining how a Paladin should behave because of their code of conduct, you are arguing that it is better to assign a label to them and then make sure they adhere to the label. You are now role-playing two steps removed from the action that you want. Defining the ethics of a Paladin does not require alignment -- just thought and prepartion.
By the way, why are Paladins held to a higher moral standard than Priests? Priests receive a greater portion of their power from Holy/unholy sources than Paladins do. I suspect it is partly because in D&D there is a tighter alignment restriction on Paladins. Players not used to engaging with the story then play against the rules not the game. This is how alignment separates the players from the game. Remove it and they are forced to interact directly with the setting. You probably want to find reasons as to why Paladins should be more Holy than Priests. Don't bother. It is a matter of opinion. My point is that adherence to alignment makes you far less likely to ask the question.
"alignment is another tool the DM can use to provide alternative routes to solving a problem."
Again you are confusing ethics and alignment. A character can have ethics without having an alignment; they can have beliefs; they can have a personality.
I see your point though. Without an alignment it will be hard for the DM to admonish and punish players who aren't playing to type. I mean what would happen if somebody who was supposed to be good did bad things? Certainly there should be a mechanism built into the game to thwart this. This way players can feel the hand of God directly upon their characters at all times. Interesting.
"He said he felt his care and respect for people slipping, found himself starting to become more and more apathetic to those around him and thought more and more of himself before others. It was at that point that he realised that even though he had initially chosen to use the book's magic for good, the fact he cared less and less about others meant that eventually he would no longer see the need to use it for others which defeated the original purpose."
That entire sequence can be played without alignment.
The point I can't escape is that alignment gives the DM a control mechanism over the players. By allowing the DM to rule over their alignment and "re-assign" players into another category the DM can take power away from characters with alignment restrictions.
Is this the only function of alignment?
I have dismissed some of your other functions. Can I use an analogy as an example. Suppose their was a contest between two cities to get a ball into a goal. One ball, two goals, and a very big field. Inhabitants of both cities flooded onto the field. You are suggesting that the game cannot be played unless every player is issued a jersey of a particular colour. I say they don't need one. The outcome of the game is dependent upon which goal the ball ends up in. It doesn't matter how it gets there. You want to add rules, lots of them. Your first rule becomes the justification for your second rule which predicates your next one.
Firstly I am not talking about objective alignment. I have always said that it should be something discussed prior to the game about what judgements are made in relation to alignment by the DM who is running the game. It can never be objective because it is always the subjective view of the person. But as the DM is the one who is controlling the game and the one who is assessing the players actions then ultimately it is the point of view of the DM which the players will be measured by and thus it should be made clear in advance how the game will see things.
Then you are talking about objective alignment. Outside of the game world, it is subjective - it is a matter of the referee's judgement, as you say, perhaps in consultation with the players.
But within the game world itself, it is objective. If every spellcaster who does a Detect Evil spell on someone gets the same result, then it is a quantity that can be objectively determined within the game, regardless of anyone's 'moral reference frame'. It's as absolute and invariant a quantity within the game world as the speed of light is in ours.
Go back and re-read my post and you'll see that I was referring to alignment being objective within the game world. Not in the real world. I was quite specific about that.
The players take actions, they "debate it in-game" and you end up losing the session to a squabble about whether they can justify their own actions because you have now said alignment is open for discussion during play!!
The fact that you consider an in-game, in-character debate between player characters as 'losing a session', quite simply indicates that we have very different ideas about what constitutes enjoyable roleplay.
I'm not saying that you are wrong to use alignment. I'm just saying that it's a style choice - and one that perhaps shouldn't have been quite so firmly entrenched in the core rules, given that it is so hotly contested by so many.
Firstly, I find it strange that you hate the word "alignment" and yet you seem to be perfectly fine with the words "moral" and "ethical". So its not ok to have an alignment, but it is ok to use morals and ethics?!?!
I think the hang up is not with the concepts that it represents but in the use of the word. How about if I remove the word "alignment" and just say "moral orientation" and "ethical orientation"? Does that make things more bareable?
I will use your analogy as an example to indicate the same thing back to you. Each of those cities is controlled by a DM who must indicate what each of the players are doing. Each city has its own culture and law and general "feel" about it and the citizens of those cities are pretty much "standard" for that city. How then do you provide the DM with an indication of how they play? How do you let him know that one side plays dirty while the other are good sports?
If the player was one of the players on one side and he has the ball and is confronted by someone on the other side, how would you as the DM play them out?
What if the player has gone to great lengths to create a character which he says has sparkling hair, is like a god on the field and is the idol of thousands of young citizens who look up to him and then when on the field starts playing dirty. There will be times when something comes up that doesn't fall easily into his "code of conduct"... what do you do then? Is everything that falls outside of the code of conduct fair play? To they simply adhere to the code of the sport and act in one way and then act like a split personality doing things totally differently in every other way?
You keep using words like "control" and "rule over". That is your percpetion of what I have been clearly saying is "guide" and "feedback". As I said in advance, discussions of ethics and morals should be done outside of the game. There is no place in the middle of a session to start debating what it is to be good or evil, that is something that should be clarified long before you even get to the table. Once that has been clarified, the players clearly have accepted this (otherwise why would they play), and thus the DM uses the results of that discussion to guide players who have stated they are following a specific path. It is the players who choose the path, the players who choose their actions, and the players who choose when to break them. The DM is not controlling anything, nor is he ruling it over them. Throughout the adventure the DM informs the player as he sees them drift from what they said they would be and it is completely and totally up to the player to decide if they want to move back to the path they chose or go a different path.
I really am completely confused as to how you can keep ignoring this and instead fall back on "control" and "rule over". I can only presume that this is the reason you dislike alignment, because you see it only as a means of control instead as a means of the player and DM being able to communicate via the concept of alignment.
If as you said "You can do that without alignment", then clearly it isn't making it worse to have it there is it? Alignment is a concept that can work. I have showed you examples where it does, and where it can be used as a fantastic tool like skills or feats. If you choose to still see it as pointless and cannot understand how it adds an additional layer of choice and risk/reward then I am sorry to say that is your loss... not mine.
Have you ever heard of not blaming your tools?
"Firstly, I find it strange that you hate the word "alignment" and yet you seem to be perfectly fine with the words "moral" and "ethical". So its not ok to have an alignment, but it is ok to use morals and ethics?!?!"
It is not the word "alignment" I have a problem with. It is the rule.
"Each of those cities is controlled by a DM who must indicate what each of the players are doing. "
That can be done by using words. Put them together into sentences and they can convey a whole range of emotions and ideas.
"How do you let him know that one side plays dirty while the other are good sports?"
I don't have to, because you just did. You defined something about about their personality and you didn't even assign them an alignment. Amazing.
"What if the player has gone to great lengths to create a character which he says has sparkling hair, is like a god on the field and is the idol of thousands of young citizens who look up to him and then when on the field starts playing dirty. There will be times when something comes up that doesn't fall easily into his "code of conduct"... what do you do then?"
What Gilgamesh does:
The people of the city respond to the character's actions in-game. Some follow this new behaviour and emulate their hero. Others turn from the hero in anger and disgust, perhaps forming their own factions.
What Enigmatic does:
Turns to a mechanism called alignment and warns the player that their conduct does not fit the original direction of their character. Should their indescretion continue then they can lose powers related to their chosen profession.
"I have showed you examples where it does, and where it can be used as a fantastic tool like skills or feats. "
No you haven't.
"There is no place in the middle of a session to start debating what it is to be good or evil, that is something that should be clarified long before you even get to the table."
This is a world where you can explore dungeons, fight opponents, and gather riches. It is not a world that I find compelling. In a morally inert landscape the dungeon loses the true danger -- the ability to change, warp, or corrupt in slow degrees the heart of the explorer. An epic opponent is one who through reflection foils the character; a character who through subtle turns can become what he seeks to destroy.
I see what you are saying regarding objective alignment now in relation to the game world. Personally I wouldn't see it that way, but I can see how you would.
Imagine you are a character who is dying. You wonder if you are going to go to heaven or hell. Where you end up is indeed an objective decision. If we could translate this to the real world (and of course assuming your religious beliefs did indeed lean in that direction) then exactly the same objective decision would result. You would either end up in one place or another. Where you end up would be considered the "tally of your deeds" in a way.
So instead of viewing alignment as being objectified by spells, I see alignment as being a physical force in exactly the same way that shadow or ether or the elements are. The actions you take "taint" you with the alignments associated with those actions. This is the way that I have chosen to explain how it all works, how magic detects it, how people radiate it, how the outer planes are made of it. Its for this reason that I see a Lawful Good Paladin having the ability to do the things he does, and why losing that alignment means he can no longer do it.
D&D is certainly moving in this direction, especially now with 4E and the fact that even fighters will have their own kind of magic (albeit a physical kind). Everything in the world is magical and mystical and alignment to me is no different.
I do agree that alignment is a style choice, which is why I disagree with the author in saying the problem lies with alignment itself. It might not be your style... but that doesn't make it wrong.
Clearly we do not see the same thing. I have shown you examples where putting moral/ethical choices to players which has a risk/reward associated with it can be done and where the outcome can be enjoyable to play.
That you choose to ignore all of those examples and say I haven't shown you is your personal perception.
Our conversation is over. I appreciate your time and effort, but I see an orange, you see an apple.
"That you choose to ignore all of those examples and say I haven't shown you is your personal perception."
I really don't see how your examples were on point. Ethics and alignment aren't the same thing. I was honestly interested to see if I had your position correctly stated in my above post.
Out of respect if you want to end the conversation, that's fine. I hope you harbour no resentment. I have always found this forum to be a place where people can wrestle with an opinion or concept. Thanks for your posts and I look forward to discussing other topics with you.
My position:
Alignment: Alignment is a rule that classifies every inhabitant of the world into nine ethical categories. Certain spells and effects function differently against certain categories. Also certain classes must remain true to their classification. The categories are built out of the combination of five words.
Ethics: The beliefs and moral attitude of a character. This can be described in any way the players or DM see fit.
Since it seems this (The longest thread on Gamegrene, I believe) discussion is about to end, I thought I'd put in an observation I've made that might prolong it a little (maybe we can break some kind of Guiness record):
I agree with Enigmatic that the Alignment can be a useful descriptor to a GM or player, possibly giving a character a moral and ethical direction that could add to (or ease) roleplaying said imaginary person (whether it's a straight-up value, or a collation of numerous previous acts).
However, like Gilgamesh, I think a Myers-Briggs-like construct (or ,as Gil puts it, "words and sentences") could be just as useful for that purpose (depending on the kind of question you want answered [For example: "Is my character going to help a starving citizen although he's doing something else right now?" might be more easily answered by the fact that he's LG; but "Is my character going to approach that band of strangers and offer her help?" may be easier to answer if you know she's Introverted])
Where I dislike the Alignment system is, as mentioned before, with its application as a quantifiable component in the game world. Dragging out the beaten corpse of Detect Evil once again, I'd say this is annoying and restrictive if it consistently impacts the actions of characters (i.e. they attack the guy with the Evil tag) or, alternatively, redundant and unneeded if not ("well, he registers as Evil, but he might be repenting, so let's not kill him").
In the same way, I'd object to spells and conditions affecting the game with another such model (e.g. a Protection From Intuitives spell).
Now, whether one decides to use such a construct (alignment, Myers-Briggs or whatever) or not, you could still have monks (paladins) and so on in your game if you replace the "Is he being Lawful (Good)" ladder with "Is he adhering to code X?" where X is Whatever You As A GM Want, and can be very very specific (keeping Kosher) or very broad (maintaining a positive attitude), allowing more variety in your game, I think, than just the alignment.
" "Is he adhering to code X?" where X is Whatever You As A GM Want, and can be very very specific (keeping Kosher) or very broad (maintaining a positive attitude), allowing more variety in your game, I think, than just the alignment."
That is what I prefer. It keeps ethics in the game world. At the start of this latest round of discussion I referred to alignment as an "Ugly Carapice" that interferes with the ethics of the game. It is a poor label that envelops the character and stops you from seeing the true character underneath.
I am a firm believer in rule transparency -- that a rule that does not interfere with the play of the game is always preferable to one that does. An ideal rule is invisible. You never see people in character change what they are doing based on the rule, only on the in-game action. This covers all things from skill and weapon selection to combat actions.
One example of a less than ideal rule would be "Hit Points." It is very common to see characters withdraw from battle when they are low on hit points. Typically in the narrative, they have not received any debilitating wounds. We accept (if we play D&D) that it is okay for a character playing in role to withdraw because they are close to death. However, in the game world they are not substantially injured (no broken bones, no critical loss of blood). The only thing they are short on are hit points -- whatever those are. This is the point where the rule jumps into the narrative and begins to warp the game.
Alignment is my least favourite rule because it interferes with the story in the same way that hit points do, but there is no upside. Taking alignment out of the game doesn't eliminate moral challenges and debates; in fact, it makes them clearer. When you take out hit points you don't know when characters are incapacitated, you mess up the game balance between fighters and other classes, and you can't determine the effect of spells and weapons (Hmmm.. guess we better leave it in or completely re-write the rules).
I've been playing ruleset 3.5 recently and have noted that there are a lot of "5' steps," "withdrawing," and "flanking" happening at the war-game table. I try to stay in character and describe what I do, letting the DM interpret if I am entitled to any situational modifiers. I prefer not to game the rules and become a "five-foot stepper." I do this so that I can peel back the battlemat and play in the world beyond. I sit beside my new friends who are playing the miniatures game and have the rule tactics down to a fine science. We both have fun, although I suspect they think I am a bit daft (no applause Enigmatic :)).
No resentment, just a little disappointment that there was not mutual benefit from the discussion.
I like to present players with as many options as possible, and I like those options to have meaning in some way.
Front Door
Requires combat, must have good fighters but run the risk of dying if things get out of hand. If the guards are innocent then this also runs the risk of not being the most moral thing to do, but you could be short on time so is disrespecting the guards and possibly hurting/killing them enough to outweigh the purpose for doing it?
Sneaky
Must have the skills to succeed, otherwise this isn't an option. Run the risk of being discovered and then having to face the guards which basically puts you back at the front door. But this may be the "good" option because you dont hurt anyone with this approach. Not very ethical though as you are breaking into someones house to do it.
Wizardly
Need to have the knowledge and magic. Might cost a bit more in obtaining the information you need to get in there. Do you fork out the money or do you try to intimidate/torture people to get it? Torturing would be easier but it isn't the nicest thing in the world to do.
Charismatic
You could try to persuade your way in, will take a lot longer than other approaches due to the set up but could make you more entrenched that you have made a guard a friend. Not very ethical to use a friendship like that, you are still deceiving them, but is it the lesser of two evils?
Inside Man
You hold the family of one of the guards to ransom and get them to do the dirty work for you. You dont have to get involved at all, run no risk of being caught or harmed and it should be the quickest means of getting what you want because they know the guard. Of course this is the lowest and most depraved way of going about it.
So the character stands before the task assessing their class abilities, their strengths and weaknesses, their skills, their morals and their ethics. Some of these are a case of simply not posessing what is necessary to go down that path, others is a case of the chance of success not being sufficient to try, others may not fit into time constraints, and one very specific one is a choice of whether the cost of choosing that path is worth the gains they expect to take.
In isolation that may not seem like much, but the more they are presented with choices like "take the easy way out but its messy or do it the hard way but its the right thing to do" the more they shape their character and their character is shaped with it.
I know you dont see a need to use alignment to do any of this, but I see alignment as a valuable tool that aids in this purpose. I dont see every character falling into one of 9 categories because any specific action (beyond those which are extreme like killing innocents etc) is simply one of many and only the sum of all of their actions gives you a rough idea about the path they are taking. At any time they can step out, step back, or even go completely against what the ethos says... its when they keep doing it repeatedly that things need to change.
Thats how I see it, thats how I play it and so far nobody has ever had a complaint.... in fact most of the comments I get back are along the lines of "Wow! Now I can see the value in alignment. I couldn't see it before, but this is great!".
Each to their own I guess. For some the categories limit them, for others the categories define them and give them a basis from which to grow.
Amazing how one little section of the game can be so many different things to so many different people.
I like some of your examples, so I am going to use them in the context that I would use it in a game and fully using alignment as I believe it was intended to be used.
"Is my character going to help a starving citizen although he's doing something else right now?"
Your character is LG. That in no way predicates what the character will do. It doesn't mean they will automatically help, nor does it mean they will always turn it down. Everything has context. Is the something else they are doing more significant than helping a starving citizen? Is there a time restriction which could be at risk if they stopped? What is the relationship the person has to the citizen?
Ultimately however none of that matters. Here is a person in need, one of the "weak" that those who follow the good ethos have sworn to protect and to help. Altruism, respect, the sanctity for life are all parts of a good person. I think we can all absolutely agree that in isolation, that helping that person is a good thing, and that not helping that person isn't evil, but it certainly isn't good. I think we can also agree that unless the character is somehow in charge of giving out food then ethics really dont come into this situation.
So clearly the situation in isolation is a moral choice. For me, regardless of what alignment they were, if they chose to help the citizen then I would see a very small shift in their alignment towards good, and if they ignored them it would be a very small shift towards neutral (if they are already neutral or evil then no effect).
This is where I think it all works. If the person was heading to do some great good and ignored the citizen because they felt the issue was small compared to the greater good then ultimately when they actually do that greater good the shift would be a larger one towards good. So the net total of the action would be towards good. If however they stopped and helped the citizen and then still managed to go on and do the greater good then their shift would be even more towards good.
So ultimately, they could choose whatever action they want, none of them are tied into an alignment, they are not forced to act one way or another, there are no restrictions, there is just a simple consequence to their action.
Now if that very same character just kept running passed starving people every single time they came across them, and it started to become a habit that this person ignored those around them crying out for help then all of those very small shifts towards neutral would eventually add up. It is quite clear from the actions of the player that the moralistic view of the person has changed. They are no longer respecting the sanctity of life, no longer defending the weak, in fact its plainly obvious that whenever someone innocent is in need of help they will walk by without stopping.
Clearly a person cannot be good if they keep doing this, and so their alignment should reflect this.
Alternatively, they could be someone who ignores the little guy, and does nothing but charge into the fray with the "big evil". The fight the big fights but overlook the little guy. Does that mean they are not good? Of course not, but they are a different kind of good. Ultimately they still retain their good alignment because the sum of their actions is indeed on the side of good. So they ignore the peasantry and the woes of the little man, they are the ones risking their lives to save the world from great evil that would consume those same people, thus ultimately helping them in a way.
Again see how alignment hasn't restricted anything, not influenced action, nor been a pain in any way. Its the sum of their actions (which any deity will weigh up before allowing them into their realms when they die) which matters.
Detect Evil
Now I am going to turn everything on its head. A group of adventurers come across a man in sparkling armour, though his face certainly isn't sparkling. They watch him fight against some evil force and defend innocents who are helplessly at the mercy of this evil. He risks his life and selflessly throws himself into the battle. The group lend a hand and in helping, one of the wizard's casts "Protection from Evil". To their amazement the man in armour cries out and begs the party to stand back and to not interfere.
They do so, the evil is defeated by the man in armour and out of curiosity a "Detect Evil" is cast on him. Yep... he is evil!
So the group draw swords, all ready to cut him to pieces because after all, he is evil! But they just watched him protect the innocent, defend the weak, risk his life to save others. How can this be?!? Like the GOOD people that they are, who would never just attack someone simply because a spell tells them something ;) , they approach the man and ask him to explain himself.
The man relates to them a sad tale of his fall from grace, of how he was once a paladin who fought for what is just and true. Of how he was convinced that a person was evil (he didn't know it was the ring in the victim's pocket that radiated evil) and as such cut him down on the spot. The act of killing an innocent tainted him with evil, and though his view didn't change, his beliefs were no different, the undeniable fact remained that for his sins he must now wear this taint. So he has dedicated his life to righting the wrong that was done, of learning from his mistake and to regain who he once was.
The one lesson that he can pass on to the group is simple:
"Magic is not fallable. While it might give you the absolute truth of the matter, there is nothing worse than believing absolute truth because it no longer has a human face. Magic can tell you right from wrong, it can tell you what it is and what it was, it can even tell you where it might go... but one thing magic can never tell you is WHY, and that is the most important thing to know"
This is where the group has to decide. Is he telling the truth or is this a fabrication? Do they sense motive to try and work out if he is lying? Do they weigh up his actions? Is it an ellaborate hoax set up to fool them into thinking this person who clearly is evil isn't?
Imagine the role-playing possibilities in this alone, how the group may go about trying to get to the bottom of it. If they kill this person because he is evil, then the innocents he just saved (who don't know better and have no clue that Detect Evil was cast or what the answer was) will brand them murderers and think that they are evil, their village sending its greatest warriors to hunt them down for killing a heroic man in cold blood. If they let him live are they letting a great evil continue to charm its way into the world?
This was why I said any DM that would simply allow a player to cast Detect Evil and make a choice solely on that isn't doing their job. Here you instantly put doubt into the mind of the player, you make them realise that the spell is just a tool to help them, not to make their mind up for them. It isn't a case of always killing evil people or always being redundant. It becomes one piece of evidence that the players put together to solve the mystery.
Honestly... this is why I am struggling to see why you guys are so absolutely focused on lynching alignment. It feels like a witch hunt to me where alignment is the poor sod who has to burn for crimes it didn't commit. I see alignment being the basis for so many amazing opportunities for role-playing it isn't funny. That you all see it as being restrictive, stifling, unnecessary or irrelevant is like throwing away a diamond because you can't see it sparkle.
But maybe I am the odd one out here.... What I can't help but think is that I am trying to show you value in something which hopefully would enrich your experiences, while you are trying to tell me something I have already found valuable is not as valuable as I think and trying to say it should't exist. (Note I didn't say you are trying to tell me to drop it, I know you have all said "if it works for you")
I get the whole "rule transparency" thing, and in fact I agree with you completely on it.
Sadly however I think that you can't be a champion of rule transparency and play D&D at the same time. There are just too many things like HP, AC, XP and everything else which defy it that to single out something like Alignment feels as if the poor thing is being picked on.
I think that is one thing you have to just accept when playing D&D. Sure make your own house rules, I am all for that, but I think you make those rules where you can't use what is already there. For you guys that means throwing out Alignment, but for me it means using it how I believe they intended it to be used.
Gilgamesh... I use the name "Enigmatic" and you think I would applaud someone for calling you daft?!?! Consider it me being polite to myself instead of what other people tend to call me which ranges from "mad" to "wierd" to "in a world of your own". ;)
Take for instance the usual statement people say to me "You only see things in black and white". To others that may be how they see me, but to me what is black or white but a final decision as to which way you fall? Give me a slightly similar situation and I may fall the other way. So put to me a multiple of thousands of slightly similar situations and half will be black and half will be white. Now look at the sum of those blacks and whites all mixed together and what colour do you see? Grey!
Another example. Someone explains to me a given situation. I say Black. They then add to that situation with more facts. I now say white. They add more, Black, more, White, more, still White, more, Black. To them I am still a "black and white" person, but for me I simply reach a decision based on the information that I have been given at the time. Add to that information and the way I view it may change. Its never absolute (I find it boring to add the caveat of "I am 95% sure" on the end of everything I say), and it is always open to change. The more I explain this to someone the more they realise it just doesn't fit into their conceptual framework of what is black and white or what is grey.... so their answer? "Your in a world of your own"
Enigmatic,
Regarding the first part of your post: It seems to me that the use of alignment only as an accumulated "point grade" of a character is extraneous and unnecessary. No reason to keep using it if "they could choose whatever action they want, none of them are tied into an alignment".
Your case in point regarding Detect Evil seems to be doable without the Detect Evil spell, or alignment, at all. Suppose the PCs are sent after this man by someone for killing said innocent only to then watch him fight selflessly in others' defense, as suggested. I think the moral dilemma would remain the same, with the same touching personal story, without need for the artificial tag that is alignment. Unless you specifically aim to point that dissonance regarding divination magic, that is, but that can also be done otherwise.
There is a difference between being allowed to do whatever you want (menaing you are neither limited or restricted in any way), and there being no consequences to the actions you choose to do. This is the biggest misconception people have about alignment. They think that just because they are LG they must make every single action they take an LG action. The fact that people make comments like "There are only 9 types of people" or that its restrictive or that it limits them proves this.
You can take whatever action you want, but those actions have consequences and if you want to maintain a specific alignment then in all honesty you should "generally" be doing things that reflect that. That doesn't mean you can't stray now and then, just that you don't do it repeatedly.
As for Detect Evil. I have to chuckle to myself about this point. If its doable without it, then its doable with it, which means there isn't a problem with alignment. Any part of the D&D game is "doable" without the rule, do we throw the whole thing away and just do diceless role-playing? But the point I was making about this was to hopefully nullify once and for all the very unrealistic counter-point people love to bring up about detecting evil then killing it. Its like one of those favourite chestnuts that no matter how much it is dispelled it keeps coming back, not because there is any validity in it (as proved with the story), but because it "sounds" like the most plausible way to discredit something that is personally disliked.
If you have ever read Terry Goodkind's "Sword of Truth" series you will know exactly what I mean. Wizard's First Rule: People will believe what they FEAR is true or what they WANT to be true. When rhetoric like that is frequently used, it smacks of them WANTING it to be true despite how many times different methods of overcoming it are provided.
It seems that the "new" rhetoric is becoming "You can do the same thing without alignment", as if somehow this justifies its removal even though the exact same qualifiers apply to just about every other part of the D&D system.
Rule transparency applies to most, bad uses of the mechanics applies to most, doing without the rule applies to most, Unrealistic applies to most.
Was there any other reason you are putting forward for why alignment is so bad that doesn't apply to pretty much the rest of the D&D system?
Any part of the D&D game is "doable" without the rule, do we throw the whole thing away and just do diceless role-playing?
Enig (can I call you Enig?), you know you're very quick to accuse others of characterising alignment in terms of absolute or extreme positions to suit their own viewpoint, but then you do the very same thing in your own arguments!
It's all a question of what you want to have structured in your game, isn't it? Combat is a competitive sort of activity - you are competing with your opponents in order to 'win' the combat. It's very difficult to adjudicate a competitive situation without any rules. The rules allow the referee to maintain a sense that he or she is being impartial. Furthermore, combat 'feels' like something that could be measured and weighed objectively, in terms of a set of objective rules (laws of mechanics). Never mind the fact that the D&D rules are a gross and unrealistic simulation of those physical laws - the feeling is still there that having those rules goes some way to imparting a sense of realism.
The rules on alignment do the opposite. They impose a structure on something that, in real life, has no objective structure that is 'provable' (and I use that word with a good deal of philosophical caution) by any sort of empirical measurement. And in doing so they drag the referee's judgement into the game world. So their effects on the game are quite different.
Any part of the D&D game is "doable" without the rule, do we throw the whole thing away and just do diceless role-playing?
:) Thanks for the EFRP plug. www.epicfantasy.net
I dislike the D&D rules in the following order: Alignment, XP, AC, HP, Classes, Magic Items, Stats, Levels. I'm not sure what BAB is, but I probably don't like it much either.
After DMing for a long time, it gets frustrating having your ideas constantly formed into the D&D mould -- substantially altered and warped. And yes, ocassionally it descends into a mindless hack-fest when that was the furthest thing from your mind at the outset. I still play the game though, searching for those few things that make D&D the universal juggernaut, and keep the better games on the fringe.
My D&D days are certainly drawing to a close.
"I dislike the D&D rules in the following order: Alignment, XP, AC, HP, Classes, Magic Items, Stats, Levels. I'm not sure what BAB is, but I probably don't like it much either."
You know, it's very interesting that all of the things you hate most about D&D are the abstractions that are used to keep track of things mechanically, and in most cases, numerically.
I think the reason that people get so up in arms about Alignment, Hit Points, Experience Points, and the like is because they either can't or don't bother to seperate the abstraction from the in-game result. A good example is attack rolls: A 1st-level fighter isn't just making one swing at his enemy every six seconds, the attack roll represents the one swing that has a chance of hitting and dealing damage.
I think that all of these issues are merely symptoms of people playing the game backwards. Great multitudes of D&D players look at the game with the idea that the stats make their character. I don't presume to tell others how to have their fun, but I prefer to go at it the other way: the stats are derived from the characters.
It's really sad, in my opinion. Some many D&D players think in terms like "Sir William has a high Charisma, so he should be a leader and good with the ladies," which makes absolutely no sense outside of the mechanical rules context. Isn't it so much more solid to say, "Sir William gets around, and he's a man of action and decision, and so he should have a high Charisma." Or, to use the alignment example, "Sir William has high moral standards, but he doesn't have a problem bucking the law or authority, especially not when it interferes with his moral code. Sir William, then, should be Chaotic Good."
I've never really had a problem with Alignment, XP, Hit Points, whatever, because I don't really consider them important in the context of the story being told. They're tools used to define things for the sake of the rules, but they shouldn't be extrapolated beyond the rules themselves.
I've also been a proponant of the idea that when the rules of any game interfere with what the players are trying to accomplish, they should be set aside. I'm not referring to the specific goals of the player characters, but to the reason that everybody is sitting around the table rolling dice. If your goal is to have fun killing bad guys, then maybe Detect Evil radar-gaming paladins are the way to go. If your goal is to have a good time telling a good story, then anything that interferes with that should be ignored or replaced. That may mean house rules, and that may mean an entirely new system.
I think the reason that people get so up in arms about Alignment, Hit Points, Experience Points, and the like is because they either can't or don't bother to seperate the abstraction from the in-game result. A good example is attack rolls: A 1st-level fighter isn't just making one swing at his enemy every six seconds, the attack roll represents the one swing that has a chance of hitting and dealing damage.
I can make the separation, but am not willing to do so. Why should I? In GURPS, one round = 1 second. Swing! Parry/Block/Dodge? If not, Hit? If so, how much damage, to where, and with what effect?
These mechanics add to the narrative: "I parried the ogre's attacks until my sword broke" is a much more entertaining story than "the ogre flailed at me for rounds and rounds, but couldn't hit my AC of 25." This, incidentally, is why my wife won't play D&D: all the abstracted modifiers upon modifiers (almost) never lead to interesting stories. CoC, by contrast, uses an even more abstract combat system (BRP) that doesn't require her to become a tabletop tactician, and CoC has resulted in many great stories, not confined to my table.
In EFRP... well, see for yourself. Gil's ideas have the potential to revolutionize tabletop roleplay as we know it. Seriously.
Lurky... can I call you lurky?
You will notice that I only use that technique when responding to those who use it themselves. In this case, my response of throwing away everything was in response to someone saying you don't "need" alignment as if it somehow means that alignment is flawed because you don't need it. Seeing as that is the method by which they choose to communicate, I kind of feel I have to communicate via the same method. After all, they are hoping that I will understand their point of view by using it on me, so one would assume that such a method is the only thing that would be understood in return. Make sense?
(Please take that tongue-in-cheek)
Combat is a good example, however I do see it differently to you. We know for a fact that the rules are an extremely poor approximation to how it would actually be, we know that there are specific combinations which cause it to be unworkable and we also know that at the end of the day, no matter what the numbers say, the DM more often than not uses the "fudge" to use their own judgement on how it effects the game as a whole. The number of times this "objective rule" is thrown out because it ended the party's career early for the sake of the game is unmentionable.
What I do find interesting though, is that you do not see alignment as being measurable or weighable. Perhaps that is where the difference is coming in, and why I see it as being valuable for what it is and you cannot. We all have a fairly good idea about right and wrong, and there are some architypal actions which can always be associated with alignments. The good help and evil destroy (in a nutshell). So we are indeed measuring and weighing them.
If we leave alignment out of it and we have ethical and moral dilemas in the game, the DM still has to judge the actions of the characters in how they make the NPCs react to them. So in essence, you are still doing exactly what alignment does, except you are doing it from the viewpoint of the NPC. So a character takes an action, the DM "judges" whether the NPC considers that fair or a direct afront to them and they react accordingly.
The difference however is that in what I propose, the players are told upfront the general philosophy that is being used to make these judgements, how certain actions are viewed and how they will be weighed. Through the course of the adventure as checks and balances are made, the players get direct feedback as to how the DM sees them going based on this philosophy that has been stated at the beginning. Thus everybody knows and understands where they stand and during the down time they can consult the DM if they feel something needs discussing.
Without alignment however, where the DM's judgement is hidden behind subconscious choices they make on behalf of NPCs in the world that the characters interact with there is no understanding, no knowledge of what constitutes right or wrong, and because it has now been reduced to individualistic points of view the players will NEVER understand where the DM is coming from. Unless the DM is a fantastic method actor who is capable of changing his complete mindset with each new NPC, then the judgement placed on the characters actions will simply be his own subconscious moral/ethical beliefs.
I think the thing that needs to be remembered is that the DM will use judgement regardless, its whether that judgement is put out there for all to see or whether it is hidden away. I guess I have always made a point of every player knowing where I am coming from, I think it makes it easier to enjoy when you can get a feel for how the DM is controlling things. When a player is completely and utterly confused about where the DM is coming from, it makes it harder for them to enjoy the game because they are constantly confronted by unexpected judgements. These always deteriorate into discussions in the middle of a session such as the ones that were suggested are "good", that means play stops and players have to wait while the person who disputes the judgement tries to sort it out with the DM.
I dont see it as imposing structure, to impose means to not only tell them that they cannot do it, but to alter their choice so that it is not done. I see it as an author of a book explaining how the world they have created works.
As a prime example of this, look at a classic like "Dark Sun". Here stealing and death are part of the world, and the characters are far more part of "mother nature" than in other worlds. In this setting, killing someone for water would be considered "survival of the fittest" and not in any way be an evil act. It simply is part of the harsh world that has been created. In the realms the very same action would be considered the greatest evil, to kill an innocent person simply for water which could be obtained anywhere for free.
So how exactly is a structure imposed here? Guidance has been provided, and the player has complete and total freedom to act in any way they want. They are presented with the consequences to their actions and its up to them to decide what they want to do.
I respect your point of view, but I believe it does add to the game and while you may feel I have not demonstrated it, I believe I have demonstrated it over and over.
Its been my experience that when two people share completely opposing views and both feel they have clearly demonstrated those views, that we are talking subjective and not objective. If it were objective then one of us would have no choice but to either conceed or to point out the flaws in the others argument which were measurable. That we both point out the flaws in each others perspective and yet neither of us feel any flaw has been shown again it means we are being subjective.
In that light all we are doing is simply sharing with each other our "opinions" on the topic of alignment. You feel that it has no value "for you", and I feel that it has value "for me". I guess in a way I am not really allowed then (with this being subjective) to say that alignment works in any form of generalization, even though I can objectify alignment within my own campaigns, but equally that means you cannot say in a generalization that alignment offers nothing to the game.
But I guess that is fairly pedantic when you look at it. At the very least I guess I felt the need to balance an article about ditching alignment with advice on how to make it work. It just seemed a bit one sided for something that I personally believe has value.... for me at least ;)
I have always seen role-playing as two very distinct and seperate parts:
1. Mental (subjective)
No matter what system you play, or even if you play no system at all you have a character who has a story and takes actions. What you create in your mind and how the game plays out is all in the mind. What you do, how they react, the story they create, its all without limits and bounds and is shaped as you go through the journey.
2. Physical (objective)
This is the game system you use. It has mechanics and rules and it tries to provide some framework through which you will use the mental aspects of the game. This may change, evolve or even be non-present (such as diceless role-playing). The point here is that it really doesn't matter.. its just a syntax. While the rules between systems might be different, it will always be an approximation that at least has some kind of fairness to it. If part of the system isn't fair, then you fix it. There is no excuse here for problems as everything is objective and measured and where it doesn't work it is modified so that it does work or at least approximate it. (Perhaps that is why I have no problem with alignment as its the physical component created to reflect the mental actions taken).
So whether its D&D, or Rolemaster (my favourite), Gurps, Heroes or whatever.... Its just a system. While a bad system can bring down your enjoyment, as long as the system is fair and even then it really doesn't matter.
I started with AD&D, then quickly moved on to AD&D 2nd Edition. Loved it. I found Rolemaster and was wrapped, but few other people could play it and found it too pedantic in areas. So I switched to D&D 3E when it came out. It was an improvement over 2E so it was a good thing. Now with 4E coming out I kind of like the "feel" of where it is going. I can see how they are trying to make it more about the journey and less about the mechanics. I do feel its an evolution of the system and I know that I will look at it positively and make the best of it I can because that is what most people will understand and be playing.
I can't stress enough that you get out what you put in. You tweak it where you think it needs it, make a house rule here and there and your set.
A prime example of this is the Natural 1/20 rule. I disliked the fact that no matter how hard something was to do or fail that you always had a 5% chance of it. That seemed "unfair" to me that someone with a skill rank of 60 would fail 1 in every 20 times he tried something. So I changed it. I decided that if you roll a 1 or a 20 then you roll again and add/subject from the score. For every 1 or 20 you rolled you kept adding/subtracting until you got a final answer. To me this retained the original concept of how it works, plus reduced the chance of success/failure appropriately. In essence I made it workable in a way that suited.
I guess you could say that this whole article is about making it work and I fully commend Cocytus for attempting it. I guess for me the attempt is basically to eliminate it altogether instead of work within it. But that is a personal choice and as such I can't really put my own personal choice on another.
So in that respect I think the article has a lot of value and merit for those who are unable to work within alignment.
Yes, it is subjective. The article is predicated on my point of view, and among other things is characterized as a "rant." When I say alignment "adds nothing to the game," I think the qualifier "in my opinion" is understood. That the best roleplayers of my personal acquaintance happen to share this opinion, and that 4e has decided to ditch it almost wholesale are significant facts to me; whether or not they are significant to you is a matter of your personal judgment. I am not an evangelist; my article does not say, "since alignment serves no legitimate function" but rather "if you agree the D&D alignment system is too ambiguous to be useful, you need not despair." One of my proposed solutions is merely "limit the use of alignment detection," which - correct me if I am wrong - is something you yourself have also suggested.
When I say "you have not demonstrated" that alignment adds to the game, I mean not only "in my opinion," but in terms of "that a character's backstory cannot do as well or better." In particular I do not feel you have adequately addressed the issue of spells such as Holy Word and Dictum, but again that is only my opinion...and since I have more or less abandoned D&D, my opinion is of dubious utility (at best) to those who have not.
Thanks again for your comments. I don't want this discussion to devolve to "yes it is" vs. "no it isn't," so I'll try to stay on the sidelines once more.
"A 1st-level fighter isn't just making one swing at his enemy every six seconds, the attack roll represents the one swing that has a chance of hitting and dealing damage."
So ... one "effective" attack every six seconds.
That's the problem. There is a disconnect between the rules and the narrative. If what you say is true - do fighters riding past each other on horseback get an attack at each other? They only pass it other for the fraction of a second. (Rhetorical Question)
I've got no problem with numbers that represent something. The problem is that there are a lot of very fuzzy rules that lead to rules that have indefinate application. Check out these chimeras:
1 Hit point: A measure of a character's physical resilience and luck. A character that has one hit point left has either run out of his/her luck but may also be wounded in some ambiguous way.
+1 AC: A measure of damage reduction that functions by reducing the number of times that you are hit. Hunh? Armor makes you less likely to be hit "effectively". Oooh I love it when we have to bail out the game designers with this word "effective." Didn't we use that somewhere else?
1 XP: A measure of how much treasure you have captured or creatures you have defeated. These points add to your skills and can be traded for abilities you have never practiced in game.
1 Attack: Six seconds of combat openings distilled into a single roll? What if the opponent isn't fighting back. Can I only hit him once in six seconds?
Alignment: read above... Go ahead and take a gander to see if anyone really knows what this rule is all about.
Nobody knows what the *@#$#$@ any of these rule mean. How can we live in the story if the rules are either unclear or are an amalgam of disparate concepts. Try these ones on for size:
Job Stature: Job stature is a numeric representation of my employment experience and my height. As studies have linked height to salary and job experience to salary I have decided to mash them together in this single stat. Characters with a high Job Stature score can expect a better salary roll. The fact that I can use this number to resolve height-related events and job experience events in game doesn't demonstrate that this is a good rule. It breaks down when you try to isolate the two concepts that I have lumped together.
So again, I have no problem measuring something. I just want the measurements to be clear enough that they don't get in the way of the game.
Alignment is particularily egregious because it doesn't need to be there.
"I felt the need to balance an article about ditching alignment with advice on how to make it work"
Thanks for sparking things up around here.
Measurable criticism --
Alignment uses two words out of five to describe a character. Not using alignment can use any number of words from 995,115 (if we stick to English language). Alignment has nine permutations while the English language has damn near infinite permutations.
Using Alignment forces DM's to accept the world where every character has either "Good" energy or "Evil" energy. Not using Alignment allows for this possibility, but also allows for other options -- in fact any ethical cosmology can be incorporated into an unaligned game.
If I can do everything that Alignment can do, and do things that Alignment cannot do is that not preferable? Even if you don't want to do the things that alignment can't? Perhaps you will encounter a situation in the game where alignment will let you down. Not having alignment can't ever let you down.
Here's the problem. You want the rules to have an ethical system. I want my game world to have an ethical context.
Alignment gives the players and the DM a rule that superimposes itself over the game world. I don't like that because it warps the game world.
Not having alignment allows for freedom or description and action. You don't like that because a player is no longer morally "safe" if they adhere to some predifined rules.
You need to play Rolemaster ;)
I am curious, do you see 4E as being an improvement overall?
Lets take what you have said (and I certainly agree with you on a lot of it), and look at the big picture....
What is the alternative? The more precise or realistic we are, the more factors we take into consideration in order to reduce its "fuzziness", the more complicated and time consuming it becomes to manage and use.
Personally I have no problem with the use of a computer to eliminate all of this complexity and "churning", in fact I think the natural evolution of role playing is to the computer environment so that people can concentrate on their characters, not on proper calculation of circumstance bonuses etc, etc (but that is another story).
When playing pen and paper however you don't have this luxury, nor do you have the time or cognative comprehension to try and take everything in to be more realistic. Thus the only thing you are left with is an abstraction or an approximation.
At some point you have to either accept the abstraction or find another system.
I have had the "scratchings" of my own RPG system which I treat like a kind of mental hobby, going over it every couple of years just to refine it a bit more. The thing is a complex beast, but I think it is far more realistic. It would be totally unplayable without the aid of a computer but it does capture all of those things which are missing in these "abstractions".
None of it needs to be there, we could eliminate XP and let the DM decide when the player "deserves" to gain a level, we could eliminate HP and let the DM decide when the player starts to suffer, we could even eliminate AC and let the DM decide when a hit strikes. You really can't say alignment doesn't need to be there when it is an abstraction just the same as everything else. Just because the topic doesn't have the same structure of "mechanics" as the rest does isn't reason enough to eliminate it in my opinion. Obviously your opinion is different.
Wow, I guess I really stirred the pot there.
"'I parried the ogre's attacks until my sword broke' is a much more entertaining story than 'the ogre flailed at me for rounds and rounds, but couldn't hit my AC of 25.'"
I completely agree there, Cocytus, but your example does leave something to be desired. You've constructed it a way that isn't really a fair assesment of either system. Look, I can reverse the situation, making it so the D&D version is more narrative:
GURPS: "The combat with the ogre went on for rounds and rounds, because his attack roll could never beat my parry roll. Eventually, he rolled enough damage to break my sword, and I couldn't use the parry skill any more. I lost lots of hit points, but luckily Fred put lots of points into his Medicine skill."
D&D: "We fought the ogre ferociously for what seemed hours, but I was able to escape unscathed due to the swordsmanship I learned from my father and the blessing that cleric of Torm placed upon my armor."
Really, it's all about what the individual people around the game table make of it.
I'll be the first to agree that D&D is really a tactical fantasy wargame with a RPG poorly tacked onto the side. It does sacrifice expediency and narration in order to create a tactically interesting game. If you're not a fan of the tactical aspect, then you won't be a fan of D&D. It's that simple.
Weirdly enough, though, I can't stand tactical wargaming unless it's within the context of an RPG. I like the fact that "calculated risk" in RPGs can lead to your friends' death, rather than simply losing several plastic minatures out of your army.
Also, is ERPG actually available, or is it just a project in the works?
Gilgamesh,
Sorry, I dont think that is measurable critisism. I see that as being purposely bias towards your own personal belief, and I will state why.
Firstly you use the word "describe", as if the entire character is summed up with those words and those words alone. For that premise to hold true it would mean that no other definition is possibly valid BUT those words and this is a false assumption.
But I will use your lovely example of 995,115 words as a means of utilizing the SIX words that are used in alignment (Morally Neutral is completely different to Ethically neutral and should in reality be considered a seperate word).
Lets take the good old "Lawful Good".
Ok, by your statement I have now "described" my character, set him in stone and limited and restricted him to just two words. To disprove your theory I will now use several of the 995,115 words from the english dictionary to give you alternative versions of the "Lawful Good" character. How could I possibly do this unless alignment was simply a "guide" that tells you the sum of their character as a whole, rather than being a restrictive label that forces their hand?
Paladin: Law-abiding, Festidious, Paragon, Hero, Saviour
Monk: Respectful, Organised, Caring, Disciplined
Fighter: Focused, Loyal, Upstanding, Anti-Hero
Cleric: Kind natured, Jovial, Obsessive Compulsive, Stalwart
In all of these cases the character is Lawful Good, and yet they are all completely differnet characters who are described using words outside of the 6 used for alignment but still remain true to those alignments.
The Paladin is the paragon of Lawful Good, while the monk believes in a structured life but not necessarily in the laws of the land but respects life, the fighter is a moody grudging anti-hero who constantly moans about how stupid people are and yet when push comes to shove he is there fighting to save them, and the cleric is a nutty but funny priest who simply cannot pass through a doorway without going through the ritual of tracing the door frame twice!
In all of them there are varying levels of good (thus dispelling your statement of "forcing the DM to accept Good or Evil energy). The fighter may only just be keeping his head above water with a lawful good alignment. He may be constantly taking actions that are selfish and self-serving, maybe even downright mean at times and yet the good things he does far outweigh the bad, the priest may be stretching the bounds of being Lawful sometimes, but his obsessive belief in the order of things and how everything in the universe has a place and a purpose maintains this Lawful moniker.
But all of that aside, your main argument is that you can do everything with alignment and more, and thus alignment should be eliminated as a result. I take it you would also eliminate aligned weapons and spells? Would you also allow barbarians to join the royal guard or assassins to help little old ladies across the street? Maybe the worst murderer in the world will be allowed to become a paladin?
What you propose cannot do everything that alignment can, because the more you vary the moral and ethical stand point through your use of 995,115 words the harder you make it to provide guidelines for stereotypical archetypes and muddy the waters which confuses people. Do I now have a "Detect Procrastination" spell instead? Or how about a "Detect Stubbournness"?
That is the inherant problem with expanding the choice of words, the english language is woefully poor when it comes to categorization and thus you have several words that can all describe exactly the same thing and yet without that overarching umbrella they become completely unmanagable.
What you end up doing is simply opening up every faced of the game world for anyone to use. A good character using poison because they find several "words" they can use to prove to you somehow its justified in their mind, an evil character who can "lay on hands" because even though they are evil they truely believe they are doing the right thing....
Essentially without this black and white you make everything gray. In essence you achieve the exact opposite of what you set out to do... You lose ethical context in the game because you no longer have absolute white and absolute black by which to measure against... now everything is shades of grey with everybody believing whatever they want because they are mixing and changing words they use to describe their character, in some contexts completely contradicting themselves by doing so.
This isn't the case with the 6 alignment words. At their extremes everybody understands exactly what the words mean. The only grey comes in when you get close to the borders... Your suggestion is nothing but borders with no balancing extremes
I'm going to answer your rhetorical question, Gilgamesh, so that I can defend the term "effective."
"...do fighters riding past each other on horseback get an attack at each other? They only pass it other for the fraction of a second."
Well, that depends on the context. If the fighters are not in a combat situation, I, as a GM, wouldn't let characters that are simply riding past one another to make attacks. It wouldn't make any sort of logical sense. Similarly, if they were in some sort of physical conflict, and happen to ride past one another, but are not actually aiming to attack each other, I wouldn't allow an attack either.
Now, what about knights jousting? Yes, they only pass one another for a "fraction of a second," but they are spending a good amount of time focused on that singel fraction of a second, preparing to strike within that small window. Yes, they can attack one another.
I could respond to most of your rules statements, but it it really wouldn't be useful to the conversation. I understand your frustration and the point you're making (at least, I think I do :P), but my point here is that yes, every single rule ever invented for a game has some element of silliness to it, if you want to dissect it. Why should I pay you because my lead top hat landed on Boardwalk? I didn't choose to stay in your hotel, the dice made me. The fact that I have to pay you everything I own because of my bad luck with the dice is, when you get right down to it, fundamentally bogus, but we accept that because it's an assumption we make when we sit down to play Monopoly. If you don't like that assumption, you can either play a different game or change the rules of the game to make it one you enjoy.
Coming full circle back to Alignment, no, it really doesn't need to be in the game. In fact, it only exists in 4E as a sidenote, which should relieve most of us here. However, I've never really run into problems with it, mostly because the people I play with aren't inclined to abuse a rule like that (thank goodness). It's actually kind of interesting to explore what a world would be like if good and evil were tangible forces like gravity.
But, as I've said, any rule that takes away from the fun of the game should be ignored, revised, or replaced. It's your game, play it how you like.
Not sure to whom you addressed this question, but for my part: yes, I do. But it's not enough to keep me in the system. Classes and levels are great fun in CRPGs, but at the tabletop, I simply find them irritating.
Sorry, can't resist:
Paladin: Law-abiding, Festidious, Paragon, Hero, Saviour
Fastidious is stretching the meaning of the word to its limit, in my opinion, and I say this as a player who, in games of D&D, defaulted to Paladin 5 times in 10.
The fighter may only just be keeping his head above water with a lawful good alignment. He may be constantly taking actions that are selfish and self-serving, maybe even downright mean at times and yet the good things he does far outweigh the bad
With respect, your conception of the meaning of the word 'antihero' is at such variance from mine as to deprive the term of its meaning in conversation between the two of us. An antihero, as defined, is someone lacking traditional heroic qualities. Don Quixote is an antihero; Tom Jones is an antihero; William Munny is an antihero; in Fantasy literature, Thomas Covenant the rapist leper is an antihero, as is Elric of Melniboné, albino wielder of the soul-devouring Stormbringer. Grumpy but ultimately good-natured good guys (Gimli, Thorin, Boromir, etc) are not antiheroes, but heroes with some unlikable qualities, and I submit to you that there is a vast difference between the two concepts.
I would never, ever let a player choose the LG tag to describe your fighter: I would want to call such a character NG with decidedly neutral (selfish) tendencies. And herein lies the problem, as my standards for "good" behavior are very narrow, compared to those of the powergaming GMs I know...so any player unfortunate enough to pass from your table (or theirs) to mine is going to find him/herself redefining the context and meaning of the whole alignment system all over again, whereas this is emphatically not the case with any other rules mechanic. If, however, the player presents us with a backstory, we can both make the character fit into our respective paradigms.
To conclude, imagine a sword that can be wielded only by the "pure of heart," or a chair like the Siege Perilous that will kill anyone who does not suit its exacting standards. Will you allow a character with no distinctive traits other than the LG tag to use it? My guess is that you will not: you will consider the PC's actions as you have experienced them firsthand, and you will make a judgment call. I don't see why you need alignment to do that... and I don't even see that it helps you make the decision.
Forgot a few things in my zeal.
I take it you would also eliminate aligned weapons
For the most part, yes. Is Orcrist a "good" blade, or was it simply forged to kill goblins? But see my example above.
and spells?
Absolutely. No need for them.
Would you also allow barbarians to join the royal guard
Great Scott, of course I would: barbarians make some of the best royal guardsmen in the business of guarding royals. Take a look at the bodyguards of the Julio-Claudian emperors of Rome. Seriously.
or assassins to help little old ladies across the street?
Why not? Leon the Professional doesn't hate little old ladies; he doesn't feel strongly about anyone at all. He only kills when he is paid to do so, and he does it dispassionately. So... because his player picked an assassin, he can't ever do a good deed? You seem to be contradicting your antihero argument here; that, or your view of character archetypes is very narrow indeed.
Maybe the worst murderer in the world will be allowed to become a paladin?
Define "worst" - ah! But then you are starting to give specific examples of what is "good," and that is precisely what I want you to do. If the "worst" is someone whose behavior is qualifiable in any definite context, the Palladium alignment "Principled" is much, much better than the nebulous "Lawful Good," whose definition is quoted verbatim, in its entirety, in this article. Hates to see the guilty go unpunished... hm. So torture is ok? When? Under what circumstances? Look, just give me back that Holy Avenger. You're a fighter. :)
What you propose cannot do everything that alignment can, because the more you vary the moral and ethical stand point through your use of 995,115 words the harder you make it to provide guidelines for stereotypical archetypes and muddy the waters which confuses people.
"Stereotypical" being the operative word, as distinct from archetypal. Yes: I want stereotypes out of my games, period. Archetypes are welcome.
What alignment is Herakles? Odysseus? Theseus? Think carefully before you answer, as each of these archetypal heroes did some very, very immoral things. Some might even call them, oh, I don't know... contradictory. How would Emerson have put it? "So I contradict myself. A foolish consistency..."
Do I now have a "Detect Procrastination" spell instead? Or how about a "Detect Stubbournness"?
This is a straw man and you know it, my friend. A mechanic in D&D itself already exists to cover these contingencies - the latter is easily revealed with a judicious use of the Sense Motive skill, and a solid case can be made that the same skill will reveal the former, given observation and time. Failing that, several mind-reading spells and psi powers exist to cover the contingency.
What you end up doing is simply opening up every faced of the game world for anyone to use. A good character using poison because they find several "words" they can use to prove to you somehow its justified in their mind, an evil character who can "lay on hands" because even though they are evil they truely believe they are doing the right thing....
To repeat the article, using poison is immoral but hacking someone to death with a sword is somehow more humane? Here in the 'States, we call it "death by lethal injection." The poison is accepted (by many) to be the more humane alternative to hanging.
What about healing is inherently good? Can a person, in an emergency or for purely selfish reasons, not heal someone capable of fighting that person's enemies or saving that person's skin in some other capacity?
now everything is shades of grey with everybody believing whatever they want because they are mixing and changing words they use to describe their character, in some contexts completely contradicting themselves by doing so.
There are too many highly controversial real-life examples to investigate here, of which torture is merely one of the most obvious. The point is simple: I believe, and I think Gil does, too, that players should be allowed to build their own characters and decide, sometimes on the spur of the moment and without explanation, how those characters will behave.
Some have pointed out in this thread that many players of high Fantasy games want the opposite of that: they want the artificial moral certainty. Well, again, you or they or anyone else who wants such certainty can have it. I don't want it. I'd rather explore nuanced shades of ethics, virtue, and heroism, and to ask the question that is also asked by the very myths these games attempt to simulate: how shall we behave? Those who believe they know the answer are busy shouting invective and at worst, causing the deaths of innocents. The rest of us are still looking, not only at work, not only in parenting and love and friendship, but even at play. Join us, if you like.
So he could drown in tables? :-P
Gil, seriously, how's EFRP going? I'm hearing such good things about it, but there's no way to try it out...and it's been a while, now.
BTW, Enigmatic, I mean you no disrespect whatsoever and do not mean to imply you are a powergaming GM in any way.
"The difference however is that in what I propose, the players are told upfront the general philosophy that is being used to make these judgements, how certain actions are viewed and how they will be weighed."
This is the essence of where we differ. Everything else hinges on this.
I don't want a moral viewpoint to exist outside of the game world. The ethics and beliefs will exist in-game. This way, players are not forced to share my philosophy. I can create characters who believe different things than me. Players can interact with these characters, lauding them or despising them. I am constantly surprised by the characters with whom they resonate and those they shun. Because we don't have good guy / bad guy they are free to do this.
more later... my wife calls.
Actually the essence of where we differ is in the assumption that any philosophy is being forced or that it exists outside of the game.
Regardless what you may think, as a DM you will pass judgement on the players actions. As the DM (who is not actually in the game), you will more than likely use your own set of values in order to judge them. A player runs around killing innocents, and you will judge them to be committing an evil act because that is your philosophy on what that act means.
The difference is that I prefer to tell players up front how they will be judged. That doesn't "force" them to do or accept anything, it lets them know the bus is coming before it gets there. Based on what you have said, you would rather the bus remains a surprise until they turn around and realise they have already been run over.
But I have to ask... how is this any different to the author of a book who builds the choice of morality into the books that are written? Do they not "force" the reader to share their philosophy for exactly the same reasons?
"The difference is that I prefer to tell players up front how they will be judged."
I don't judge them. Each NPC judges them differently. Sure I run the NPC's. I make a point of having them believe different things.
"But I have to ask... how is this any different to the author of a book who builds the choice of morality into the books that are written?"
A book is written from a perspective or voice. It is through this voice that the story unfolds. Similar or not, the reader responds to that voice.
You seem to think that the story belongs to the DM. I am in complete disagreement. The story belongs to the players. The moral "voice" of the game belongs to them. They respond to the world and the stories of others. It is their game, not yours.
I know it doesn't feel like that when you spend hours crafting scenarios that will precipitate action. However the players choose where to go, what to do, and how to perceive the events around them. Perhaps they should be telling the DM what the difference between Good and Evil is and how the NPC's will be judged?
:)
Going well thanks. I have a couple of test-plays under my belt and am working hard on source material -- that's where the hang-up has been. Without source material people are lost.
The lease for my martial arts school is up in August and I'll be restructuring come then ( I may even buy-out early because summer is typically slow). There is going to be a lot of time to devote to EFRP after that. I may put the engine out sooner under a different banner and then publish EFRP as a game that uses the engine.
Thanks for asking.
I haven't played it yet. I'll let you know.
"A book is written from a perspective or voice. It is through this voice that the story unfolds. Similar or not, the reader responds to that voice."
I like that, Gil. A lot.
This reminds of of an online incident I had the other day. I've recently discovered The Dresden Files books by Jim Butcher, and I stumbled across a negative review of them online that really torked me off. The Dresden Files, for those not in the know, is a series of novels about Harry Dresden, Chicago's only professional wizard and police consultant on all things magical. They're basically a really fun mix of dark fantasy, horror, and noir in a modern setting. There's also an RPG for the setting in production, which I'm really excited for.
Anyway, this review I read of the first Dresden Files book, Storm Front, was completely negative because the reviewer felt that the novel has chauvinist themes. What really frustrated me about this was that there are several strong female characters, and the supposed chauvinist bias comes from the fact that Harry has a somewhat old-fashioned view of women, and that the book is told from his perspective. It's interesting that this reviewer was offended by this, and I found it to be a cool moment of character consistency.
Anyway, to bring this back into the discussion, I think the reason you guys are butting heads is becasue you have two different styles of play. There is one group that I GM for that totally wants and expects me to create the story and give it to them, while another like to take the story and make it their own. If I were to try to force-feed my story to the latter group, they would hate the game, whereas if I were to attempt to let the former group completely create their own story, the game would stagnate. It's just a different way of playing, neither of which is "wrong."
You don't have to take alignment that seriously, just use them as a bit of a guideline on what your character thinks is right or wrong, and how they act it moral issues.
Don't worry. In 4th idiotition their only going to have 3 alignments,
so roleplaying you character will be extremely boring and shallow, just like character cutomization!
Gazgurk: you're really starting to edge into "annoying troll" territory. I've let it go on a bit *too* much, but you're spewing the same message over article after article, and it's starting to get a bit annoying. Perhaps you could write an article for Gamegrene, in time for the launch of D&D 4E, that expounds in reasoned detail, what is so bad about a system that you've only read first or second-hand comments about? Then you can let the matter rest, and contribute a little more constructively to the site.
Nor do I feel as if you have implied it... if anything people would often say I err on the side of more simplicity, less power and more character.
Curiously though I would not have called any of those you mentioned anti-heroes. To me the anti-hero is someone who doesn't want or seek to be a hero and yet "something" always means they end up doing the right thing. More so than that, they actually DO very bad things, and have absolutely no problem in doing them, but any bad things they do are outweighed by the good.
The story belongs to both. If it completely belonged to the player then there would be no need for a DM at all, thus it becomes a symbiotic relationship where each feed from the other. The players defer the final say to the DM, while the DM tries to follow what the players will enjoy.
To say it belongs strictly to one or the other is incorrect.
You ask "Perhaps they should be telling the DM what teh difference between Good and Evil is"... and that is exactly what I mean when I say these things should be discussed up front. If the discussion starts with the DM saying "I see it like this" and the players say "We see it like that", then you have dialog, you have a debate and ultimtely you end up somewhere that you agree.
I think I did.
The Barbarian and Monk are more poster children of misinterpretation of what Law and Chaos mean than good examples of the alignment system in action. Chaos in D&D doesn't mean totally random and Chaotic can have "purpose, a structure, a way of life" as much as Lawfuls can. Also thanks largely to anime RPGers now have a host of sword and sorcery worlds that would be impossible by D&D alignments to draw inspiration from. In these anime you have Barbarians who have high codes of personal honor, are totally trustworthy, and reliable to a fault and yet can still berserk. Then you have Monks who are selfserving recklessness authority can go stuff its head in a bucket types. The Alignment system was having problems with things like Lodoss, Rune Explorers, and Slayers and now adays falls apart like a cheap suit.
Alignment is a mechanic and one that has outlived its usefulness. Traits such those used in GURPS give both the players and DM a better idea of what a character's behavior might be. In GURPS terms Vlad Tepes Dracula had Bloodlust (Turks, Boyars, 'Criminals'); Code of Honor (Pirate); Honesty; Intolerance, Turks; Sadism (9); Sense of Duty (to 'honest' people of Walachia); Vow (Uphold the faith/protect Walachia). Doesn't that give you a much better picture of how to handle him than simply saying CE or perhaps LE?
The D&D game itself states for the Lawful, Chaotic, Good, and Evil suptypes "Any effect that depends on alignment affects a creature with this subtype as if the creature has an (Lawful, Chaotic, Good, and Evil) alignment, no matter what its alignment actually is." Also the committing of an evil act removes Paladin status but does not change alignment. Again we go back to Roger Moore's "It's not easy being good" (Dragon #51) with its female and child survivors of a take out the werewolves problem mission. Now lycanthropy in D&D isbasiclly you have somebody with MPD as seen in the wolfman pictures ie Talbot going ' Please lock me up or kill me before I turn into a rampaging monster again and kill somebody.' The Paladin knowing that there was no way to cure the poor wretchs and come next full moon they would terrorize the countryside had them painlessly executed at which point he got hosed by the alignment system because since it was daylight he had kill 'innocent' women and children.
Your example of the Paladin cutting down the man with the evil ring in his pocket is much the same. ALignment system as a club to mess you over.
When I said "belong" I was referring to the perspective within the story. Certainly the GM is involved in the plot, symbols, and themes that are present at the gaming table, but the story is not told from her perspective. It is told from the perspective of the players -- hence, the story belongs to them.
"GURPS: The combat with the ogre went on for rounds and rounds, because his attack roll could never beat my parry roll.'
Sorry but this counter example is so wrong it is not funny.
1) AC in D&D is more akin to Dodge than Parry and it is very hard to get a GURPS character's Dodge to where he is unhittable. GURPS 4e has made it even harder.
2) Since the GURPS deals with each attack the Orge has options he doesn't in D&D: Feint, Entangle, Shield slam, and All out attack for a very short list. Never mind skills like Body Language which allow one to predict parries and therefore avoid them.
A GURPS combat would more likely go "Well then I tried to parry a blow that didn't come (Feint) from the Orge who then threw his cloak around my weapon (Entangle). While trying to free my weapon the Orge charged me with that blasted spiked shield of his (Shield slam) and then started hitting me every other swing (All out attack). My that time I was screaming at the Wizard to do something anything." Sighs "Forgot the guy just LOVED fires. Burnt me, the orge, the party, and set the stuff in the room ablaze. Finally killed the blasted Orge though. Hear the wizard will be up and back to semi-normal in month."
My advice would be to find out how the GURPS combat system actually works.
Maximara, my advice would be to find out how the D&D combat system actually works...
Feinting (via the bluff skill), disarming and shield slamming all exist in D&D; so does tripping. In addition there is the full-round attack and the standard action attack. the tumble skill can also be useful in some situations.
This is all without using any special maneuvers added by various feats.
Actually both the Barbarian and the Monk are perfect examples of alignment.... though not the alignment you are talking about.
A monk, as a believer in Lawfulness holds the belief that it is through order and structure that benefits are gained, which is why he embodies it in his every day life. They believe that it is the organised structure of the philosophy they follow that they reach their ultimate goal. This is proved right by the fact that in discipline, order and structure they gain perfection in their craft.
The barbarian, as a believer of Chaos holds the belief that it is through personal endeavour, and in the freedom and individuality of actions that benefits are gained... which is why he also embodies it in his every day life. In the same way (but from a totally different perspective), the barbarian achieves perfection in his craft but from the complete opposite angle. Instead of following structure and discipline, the barbarian attains the peak of his abilities by letting go, by freeing himself of any and all limitations and restrictions and embraces the raw and unadulterated energy within.
Of course none of this restricts either the monk from being an individual, or the barbarian from following a code... The monk can still "go it alone" and the barbarian can be completely trustworthy.... They simply hold different points of view as to what gives people the greatest opportunity to excel and advance. To the monk advancement comes from doctrination and discipline, while to the barbarian advancement comes from throwing off the shackles of discipline and completely freeing yourself.
Why are these concepts so hard to understand? Is it because we have been fooled for too long by the misuse of the word "Law" and "Chaos"? Would all of these confusions be ended if we simply picked different names for them?
Good to see you back Enigmatic.
4th Edition alignment excerpt:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4ex/20080602a
EDIT: ok, I've just read this. It doesn't say much about the reduced impact of alignment in the game and it seems they've renamed Chaotic Good to Good, Lawful Evil to Evil and folded the three Neutrals to Unaligned.
At first glance, the renaming seems a bit silly to me, but I like the Unaligned part, allowing people not to be strongly (for a lack of a better word) aligned with any point of view.
I have more thoughts oon the Neutrals, but no time right now.
"Feinting (via the bluff skill), disarming and shield slamming all exist in D&D; so does tripping. In addition there is the full-round attack and the standard action attack. the tumble skill can also be useful in some situations."
Sure they exist but they are kludges; after the fact boilerplates. GURPS started out as a semi-realistic combat system called Man to Man and when from there. D&D started evolved from miniatures rules and has kind of limped along form there.
Here is a hypothetical situation: Let's say that instead of different sentient species you've just got a lot of humans, only they come in groups of different colors. They worship various different gods, and everyone believes that all of the other gods are evil except for their own.
So it would automatically be a good act to kill anyone a different color than yourself, or anyone who worships a different god. Good and Evil have no meaning when they are used only to label group who want to kill each other.
The webcomics Goblins deals with this problem in D&D, from the monster's point of view. What exactly makes a goblin evil? A lack of respect for other's life? Humans don't respect the goblin's life.
Sure it might be fun to just hack at monsters and get treasure, with no thought to role-playing or realism. So go play Diablo. It has everything you're looking for.
Read some of the early comic and the reasoning the Dwarf give to offing the kid (http://goblinscomic.com/d/20050917.html) sounds like Paladins I have read about. The 'you are with evil beings so you must be evil now hold still I want to make this as painless as possible--after all I AM LG' stick. ;-P
*looks at dates*, a little late, but you come up high on google. I agree, I typically make my character Neutral Evil, but to me Evil is just being selfish and not feeling compelled to be "moral". I make decisions based on if they will help me in the future, not for a good deed. In other words, I build up owed favors by other characters so that later they are in my debt and I can get what I want. Too many times in Neverwinter Nights PC games my alignment was shifted more "toward good" for doing things that are considered good, but nobody ever took into account > what if I'm putting on a front just to get closer to a certain goal of mine, not truly caring for the welfare of others, but i KNOW they will aid me no matter what my cause because I've saved their wife/husband/children/town/etc. I'm evil in that I will kill innocents who argue with me if I feel that they will be of no use to me in the future, and nobody will really notice that *I* did it, and I get their loot.
A good example is, if I'm sent off by the city watch to investigate some thief boss or some cult, and I'm only supposed to negotiate or something... I'll just go ahead and kill them all, and come back and say "heh, I didn't have a choice, they attacked me." But despite these things I'm constantly shifted further toward good and I lose my ability to wear certain armors or I become weak to certain effects vs. good, etc.
To me it seems like (at least with the PC games that are supposed to be following these particular rules very closely) evil means kill everyone, don't care about companions even if they could help you accomplish more killing or evil things, you just want everyone away from you and dead; that's it.
Whereas Good is a goodie-goodie fairy who can't use harsh language in front of sensitive people (even if it's the truth), and must always be enthusiastic about your care and/or pension for doing "the right thing". Sometimes in PC games I'm given a choice of the extremes, and I'm like.... WTF, neither, none of my choices are acceptable.