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In short, I want gold dragons to be LG because it makes my D&D games play better.
Maybe it's because I hate alignment and ignore it at every oportunity, allowing personalities of all types for everything and look at things in shades of grey, but what do you mean by this?
Making orcs Evil (or ar they Chaotic Evil, no idea, don't really care) isn't my cup of tea, either, but it doesn't make my game play any worse.
D&D, for me, more than most things, is a game about fantasy archetypes. The strong warrior, the stout dwarf, the brilliant wizard, whatever. D&D tends to hodge-podge and throw in a few of its own, but rarely is a fantasy archetype ever expressly written out.
The "good dragon" is a fantasy archetype. The dragon of light and purity, aloof and defending the innocent. This is a fantasy archetype, contrasting with the evil dragon of smoke and fire, it is a dragon of sunlight and maybe even 13-year-old "I want a dragon buddy!" ideas. It's Falco from The Neverending Story. It's, heck, half of dragons in fantasy these days, because people want to be buddies with heroic dragons. D&D may have even had a hand in creating this archetype!
"Oh, but you can't really fight and kill it!" is a horrible reason to violate archetype. For me, this isn't a game about fighting and killing things. I don't care if I can't fight and kill very many LG gold dragons. They don't exist for me to fight and kill, generally speaking. They exist to help my group tell our story, to make our world more interesting and engaging, to add a variety of challenges and allies to the mix...a dozen good reasons for a dragon of pure goodness to be present in the rules.
The fact that they should exist and should be dragons of pure good is also more fuel for my "Mosnter Manuals should not just be stat blocks" point, too.
In short, I want gold dragons to be LG because it makes my D&D games play better.
Yet another stat block to reduce to 0 hp doesn't really do that.
And, yes, I know it's "easy to change for your campaign," but that's not really the point, now is it?
How is this not the point? We're talking about 10 characters in a stat block, that have no effect on the monster's mechanics or it's description- let alone the description of the NPC you would be creating to use in your game.
I wonder if a lot of the alignment issues many of us have with 4E would have been solved if the choice of alignments had instead become: Lawful, Good, Unaligned, Chaotic, and Evil.
If they were going to toss out the importance of alignment in this edition (instead of throwing it out entirely) they should have made it even more general than they did.
Unaligned has become too much of a catch-all.
(Note: The following should be read as tongue in cheek.)
Actually, I think I'm starting to grok the purpose of this alignment system WRT monsters/NPCs:
Good: Things you really shouldn't kill
Unaligned: Things you can kill if you want to.
Evil: Things you probably should kill.
Chaotic Evil: Things that need to be killed as soon as feasible.
Lawful Good's tricky to fit into this scheme, although in Dragonlance and other Balance-centered campaigns, it probably mirrors Chaotic Evil.
DISCLAIMER AGAIN: I'm not a 4E basher, I'm a 4E DM, but, as any other edition of D&D, it has things that are flaws in my concept:
RANT
Let's be clear here: 4E loves GOOOOOD vs Evil, so designers changed metallic dragons from Good to Unaligned to avoid mommies being shocked when they figure out their little heroes are attacking good aligned creatures. The heroes MUST be good! :P
/RANT
Wizards should have taken the bold way and removed all alignments for game.
__________________ And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
Wizards should have taken the bold way and removed all alignments for game.
I agree, FWIW. But instead, they did the next best thing and mechanically neutered it. Completely excising it from 4e takes zero effort, from a DMing standpoint. Heck, I told my players to put down whatever they want on their character sheet - Chaotic Good, Selfish, Libertarian, Socialist, Animal Lover...
As I said in the other thread, it's so meaningless that I wouldn't even call changing it a "house rule." It's no more a house rule than announcing that, in your world, goblins have blue skin. It's a flavor change, and that's about it.
This is somewhat different from previous editions, IME. In 1e and 2e, excising alignment took a little bit of work, but mostly it was just a few spells here and there. In 3e, it was a bit more work because of tighter mechanical integration, but still not impossible. Amazingly enough for what's otherwise such a flexible system, I found 3.5 to be the most-constrained edition, with regard to alignments. It influences a ton of spell effects - more than just a Protection spell here and there - and even spreads its tendrils into the magic weapon and damage reduction system. I found this to be a hurdle when using core 3.5 stuff in my alignmentless Arcana Evolved game.
Wizards should have taken the bold way and removed all alignments for game.
I agree. Red dragons are described as evil in their description. Gold dragons are described as good in their description. Why does the entry for alignment really matter? I say do away with alignment altogether. Actions describe alignment better than a single word entry on a character sheet or monster list.
Lawful Good's tricky to fit into this scheme, although in Dragonlance and other Balance-centered campaigns, it probably mirrors Chaotic Evil.
You realize you're a one-man band when it comes to this particular issue/problem, right? And that nobody actually considers you a heretic or apostate or similar religious-flavored label? And that people have messed around with this sort of thing with regards to Dragonlance without being half as worried about it?
What I find interesting when reading the MM2 is that the actual descriptions of Dragon behavior have not changed; gold dragons are still noble and silver dragons (and couatl) still crusade for good. The designers apparently did not change the creatures, they changed the goalposts. They put the bar higher for a creature to be considered good.
I think it's not a matter of the bar being higher exactly, but yes, the goalposts have moved. In 4e there is the idea that an alignment represents "picking a side" in the great cosmic battle. Granted, this concept may not be applied with total consistency. But it's there.
Viewed from this angle, I think it makes sense to move the metallics to unaligned. I don't see dragons as serving a cause - a dragon is a cause unto itself. Even for a "goodish" dragon like a gold or silver, I can see its behavior focused around itself doing good and being a shining beacon, etc. Not so much serving a greater cause.
I don't know, maybe this is a stretch, but it makes some sense to me. Of course by this logic the chromatic dragons should also probably be unaligned.
Then the debate turns to history and "core assumptions". Won't someone please think of the children?! The poor new players won't play DnD the same way I've been playing for 30 years. In that 30 years the sophistication of storytelling has improved greatly. Even young people can handle some light moral ambiguity. They don't care about what came before and are going to play the game how they want to play it.
The 4e world, if you could call it that, is not the same thing from 30 years ago. I used to hate DnD because it was so black-and-white. It still is to a certain extent, but it's a lot better and worlds like Eberron showed you can do DnD without being a good vs evil slugfest.
Once, just once I would like someone to tell me why the old fluff was worthwhile beyond "it's the stuff I remember from my childhood".
__________________ Not all bean-counting is of equal importance. ~Mallus
Sometimes I think people view gaming as practice for law school than as an enjoyable leisure activity. ~Professor Phobos
Some people enjoy building sandcastles. Others enjoy kicking them over. ~Wormwood
Maybe it's because I hate alignment and ignore it at every oportunity, allowing personalities of all types for everything and look at things in shades of grey, but what do you mean by this?
Making orcs Evil (or ar they Chaotic Evil, no idea, don't really care) isn't my cup of tea, either, but it doesn't make my game play any worse.
One more dragon statblock amongst several thousand statblocks?
Yawn.
One archetype of draconic good and benevolent power for use in my own games, in ways that reflect that archetype?
Yes please.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hexgrid
How is this not the point? We're talking about 10 characters in a stat block, that have no effect on the monster's mechanics or it's description- let alone the description of the NPC you would be creating to use in your game.
It's not the point because the question isn't "How can you make this work?" The question is "Why is it like this in the first place?", and there's a lot of problems with that, which cause a result that doesn't work as well as it could have.
Quote:
Originally Posted by avin
Wizards should have taken the bold way and removed all alignments for game.
At this point, this would be more in-line with how the game has been. When "good" is only reserved for PC's, it looses all meaning and just becomes a way to distinguish (some) PC's from the monsters. It doesn't reflect heroic fantasy if the alignments are only superficial. The way 4e uses alignment is pretty dumb so far. Instead of killing the sacred cow, they just put it in a cage, cut off its legs, stuck a feeding tube in it, and called it a day. Put it out of its misery.
Once, just once I would like someone to tell me why the old fluff was worthwhile beyond "it's the stuff I remember from my childhood".
Okay, here you go.
It's what makes D&D really D&D. It is what makes a game "Dungeons and Dragons" instead of Palladium Fantasy, GURPS Fantasy, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, or any one of dozens of other medieval fantasy RPGs. The mechanics of D&D change over time, but there has been this body of lore and meta-setting information that started in OD&D but really got going in AD&D 1e, and was developed vastly in 2e, and still expanded on in 3e.
There have been some incarnations of D&D that diverged from it, like Basic D&D with it's funky cosmologies, or some side-settings that diverged like the "Green book" historic reference series in 2e or Eberron in 3e, but there was always this constant core of lore and meta-setting information (baseline data settings are presumed to include or build upon unless explicitly stated otherwise), you could deviate from it for one setting or one sourcebook, but it was always there as the default constant. While the mechanics of D&D changed quite a bit, the "old fluff" was pretty constant.
4e tells us that we really weren't having fun with Lawful Good Gold Dragons (apparently it's more fun for them to be True Neutral, er "unaligned" so they can be killed with an easy conscience), the very existence of the alignments Lawful Neutral, Lawful Evil, Chaotic Good, and Chaotic Neutral (guess they were too confusing for some people), magic as we know it, the Forgotten Realms as we knew them, elves as we knew them, angels as we knew them, and that this is now what is D&D.
The game might be fun, it might be well designed, but it just doesn't feel like D&D anymore. That essential spark of continuity and identity has been destroyed. If there is absolutely no continuity in not only the game mechanics from edition to edition, but in the underlying settings then D&D is just a brand that the current owner plasters on a fantasy RPG of choice, and nothing more.
If it didn't have the D&D name on it, it would be unrecognizable alongside its predecessors, about the same as a car company taking a famous sportscar brand, making some new sturdy family sedan with some pseudo-sportscar styling and putting the old nameplate on it. Yeah, sure it says it's the 2009 Tigershark, and it's a very fine vehicle but if it wasn't for the nameplate on it you'd never guess what the name was but might think it was inspired by or copying from the original.
With all the stink over unaligned gold dragons, I'm surprised no one has brought up the unaligned couatl. There it's justified that although they are virtuous, they take such an extreme long-term and single-minded view that mere mortals can easily get destroyed by their "greater good." Pretty creepy, that.
Note that there is one Good creature in the MM2, and it's one of the Deva.
You realize you're a one-man band when it comes to this particular issue/problem, right? And that nobody actually considers you a heretic or apostate or similar religious-flavored label? And that people have messed around with this sort of thing with regards to Dragonlance without being half as worried about it?
Cheers,
Cam
You missed the disclaimer, didn't you? Really, I stopped having more than a passing interest in DL years ago. But I still say that in the core W&H novels, most of the characters or institutions that would be "Lawful Good" in 4E terms (as opposed to just "Good') are painted in an unappealing light, in some cases to the point where they're supposedly Lawful Good but look more Evil. But it's really just more evident in DL--I believe it shows up in Greyhawk (Pholtus), the Forgotten Realms, Planescape, and even in Basic's archons. Even Ravenloft has a couple of NPCs who fit the model of "self-righteous, intolerant, persecuting 'Lawful Good'"--it's just that in the Land of Mists, they aren't allowed to claim the alignment outside of their own minds.
I'm open to correction on this point, but it seems that in every D&D setting that tries to elevate Balance or Neutrality, you can find at least some examples of Good being treated just as negatively as Evil, while still being considered objectively 'Good' by the game.
I'm open to correction on this point, but it seems that in every D&D setting that tries to elevate Balance or Neutrality, you can find at least some examples of Good being treated just as negatively as Evil, while still being considered objectively 'Good' by the game.
There seemed to me to be a kind of "Law Bad, Chaos Good" thrust during 2e. Even Planescape had reflections of this, and it loved twisting with alignment:
The Harmonium were lawful. They wanted everyone to get along. Of course, they used force, and were painted as thought-police, cruel guardians of the "peace" who really just wanted to tramp out fun. Instead of people who actually wanted to emphasize co-operation.
The Xaositects were chaotic. They wanted to just go with the flow of the moment. Of course, this meant they were funny and amusing and random and cool, they could do some crazy stuff! Instead of dangerous unbalanced psychotics who would flay you alive just as soon as play tic-tac-toe with you.
I think this went kind of along with 2e's praise of elves as more awesome than anything. Not sure if it existed before then, but that's when I started to notice it.
Yeah, I've made that observation too. In 2e-3e there seemed to be an emphasis that chaos was better than law. Witness the fact that many (perhaps most) of the most moralistic and popular heroes of the D&D settings were chaotic good. Lawful seemed to be the lame choice.
And now, in 4e, it's as if it's been completely turned on its head. Much as the developers may deny it, the fact that there are now only two good alignments - "Good" and "Lawful Good," imply that law is better, just as the two evil alignments "Evil" and "Chaotic Evil" imply chaos is worse. This, of course, gets a nice heaping bunch of help from the fact that the gods are supposedly lawful and the primordials supposedly chaotic - and the gods are obviously who were are supposed to be rooting for in the immortal/elemental eternal war.
Once, just once I would like someone to tell me why the old fluff was worthwhile beyond "it's the stuff I remember from my childhood".
Okay, here you go.
It's what makes D&D really D&D.
Your explanation is already off to a bad start.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wingsandsword
It is what makes a game "Dungeons and Dragons" instead of Palladium Fantasy, GURPS Fantasy, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, or any one of dozens of other medieval fantasy RPGs. The mechanics of D&D change over time, but there has been this body of lore and meta-setting information that started in OD&D but really got going in AD&D 1e, and was developed vastly in 2e, and still expanded on in 3e.
There have been some incarnations of D&D that diverged from it, like Basic D&D with it's funky cosmologies, or some side-settings that diverged like the "Green book" historic reference series in 2e or Eberron in 3e, but there was always this constant core of lore and meta-setting information (baseline data settings are presumed to include or build upon unless explicitly stated otherwise), you could deviate from it for one setting or one sourcebook, but it was always there as the default constant. While the mechanics of D&D changed quite a bit, the "old fluff" was pretty constant.
Go on...
Quote:
Originally Posted by wingsandsword
4e tells us that we really weren't having fun with Lawful Good Gold Dragons (apparently it's more fun for them to be True Neutral, er "unaligned" so they can be killed with an easy conscience), the very existence of the alignments Lawful Neutral, Lawful Evil, Chaotic Good, and Chaotic Neutral (guess they were too confusing for some people), magic as we know it, the Forgotten Realms as we knew them, elves as we knew them, angels as we knew them, and that this is now what is D&D.
Oh. This is going to be one of those posts.
We're here talking about alignment, and you're complaining about the changes to the Forgotten Realms?
Quote:
Originally Posted by wingsandsword
The game might be fun, it might be well designed, but it just doesn't feel like D&D anymore.
This. Is. Profound. I have never heard this sentiment before, but I feel all the wiser for it. That's it, I'm giving up 4E forever! It can't be the correct D&D, because it doesn't feel right!
Quote:
Originally Posted by wingsandsword
That essential spark of continuity and identity has been destroyed. If there is absolutely no continuity in not only the game mechanics from edition to edition, but in the underlying settings then D&D is just a brand that the current owner plasters on a fantasy RPG of choice, and nothing more.
If it didn't have the D&D name on it, it would be unrecognizable alongside its predecessors, about the same as a car company taking a famous sportscar brand, making some new sturdy family sedan with some pseudo-sportscar styling and putting the old nameplate on it. Yeah, sure it says it's the 2009 Tigershark, and it's a very fine vehicle but if it wasn't for the nameplate on it you'd never guess what the name was but might think it was inspired by or copying from the original.
Obviously you have no intention of discussing alignment, so I'm going to avoid further trouble and not respond to this flamebait anymore.
Finally, FWIW, you failed in your stated intention: not once in your post did even attempt to explain why the old fluff was worth keeping, barring the response that that's how it always was. Or maybe you think you succeeded, because you never actually mentioned "childhood". Bravo.
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