Imaro
Legend
My group and I have never had these issues... in fact the main plavce I've seen them debated are internet forums among people who don't actually play together. I'm truly sorry you had such issues with alignment when playing Planescape.
D&D 5E Do you care about setting "canon"?
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My group and I have never had these issues... in fact the main plavce I've seen them debated are internet forums among people who don't actually play together. I'm truly sorry you had such issues with alignment when playing Planescape.
The original statement was one that I made - that eladrin in 4e are otherplaner beings of CG bent.
This is what [MENTION=6779993]Elderbrain[/MENTION] denied. And the denial is wrong. You can be of CG bent without having the CG label on the sheet/statblock.
Whose argument was that? Not mine. My claim, as I've reiterated several times, is that eladrin in 4e are of CG bent. You don't need an official label to achieve that.
The weird thing is - does anyone really argue that goblins and hobgoblins in Moldvay Basic are radically different from in AD&D because Chaotic rather than LE? Or a gold dragon wildly different because Lawful rather than LG? Yet you and [MENTION=6779993]Elderbrain[/MENTION] are now arguing that, because 4e changes the alignment labels slightly, it is impossible for it to have Eladrin. Presumably you must think the same thing about all of 4e's devils, because they don't have the (non-existent) LE alignment; you must think the same thing about its goblins and hobgoblins (which likewise have the Evil rather than LE label); etc.
If the label, rather than the underlying personality tendencies and moral commitments (or lack of them) are so important, it puzzles me that you're confining your concerns to the particular case of Eladrin.
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Elderbrain
Guest
Surely you jest. What is this whole discussion about, except your desire to invalidate all the lore that has been built up for D&D since its first appearance in the 70's and replace it with 4e lore? Not have 4e lore added to the game in a separate book, but have 4e lore replace the original lore created by/approved by Gary Gygax (who thought up the Great Wheel, FYI) and have the original material removed from the current books, existing only in older books. What did the 4e design team do, but force their personal tastes on the rest of the hobby, who were happily enjoying the original cosmology and monsters? All 5e did was (mostly) un-do the retcon and restore what had been there for 40+years. This would be akin to the creator of the Ebberon campaign setting, Keith Baker, demanding that the Ebberon cosmology be the default and only planar arrangement in the core books, that the Ebberon assumptions about monster lore be in the core MM, etc, because of his personal preference for them. Fortunately, he's not so arrogant! When 3e Forgotten Realms went with a different cosmology, they didn't feel some burning need to kill off the Great Wheel - they just moved the Forgotten Realms to a separate Great Tree cosmology, outlined in the FR hardcover book. Why the hell can't that method be the standard - add new stuff in its own books, and leave the 40+ years of accumulated lore alone?
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Just because you can house-rule a problem away does not mean there is no problem.
Imaro
Legend
No... he denied with qualifiers then you claimed that his position, with said qualifiers, was wrong. Which it was not.
If this was your argument... the DM can play any creature how they want to, then I don't think anyone would disagree... But if that truly was your only point I would ask why did you feel it needed to be stated anyway. We know what the DM can do what we were speaking to in this thread was alignment as it exists in 4e., which does not include chaotic good.
Probably because as the years roll on and the number of editions rises... less and less people are familiar with Moldvay... let alone it's hobgoblins in particular. Also no one argued that the 4e Eladrin were not the same as previous editions only because their alignment differed... but yes keep the straw coming.
Well yes 4e did change much more than the Eladrin... we could continue listing all of them but then we'd either be accused of edition warring or 4e fans would dismiss the differences... because.
Two things.
There is no consistent lore. Eg orcs where Chaotic in pre-AD&D, then LE in AD&D, then CE in 3E onwards. By your own lights (qv your argument re Eladrin) this is an important rewriting.
Likewise elves (originally Neutral, late CG). Likewise giants and dragons (in 1st ed AD&D, modest HD; in 2nd ed AD&D a major boost). Likewise mindflayers (in the DSG, having as their racial goal to block out the sun; something never taken up again in later works). Etc, etc.
Second, there is no such thing as invalidation in this context. "Lore" is just a short word for published fiction. Ficiton doesn't become "invalidated", just because some different fiction featuring some of the same elements is published. Todd McFarlane's Spider Man doesn't invalidate Steve Ditko's. The terrible 1970s version of The Big Sleep with Robert Mitchum doesn't invalidate the awesome one with Bogart and Bacall; and neither invalidates Chandler's novel.
[MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION], [MENTION=94143]Shasarak[/MENTION], [MENTION=6779993]Elderbrain[/MENTION]
I am utterly baffled. You are now arguing that it is a house rule to play a character with the 4e Good alignment with the same personality and outlook as a 2nd ed AD&D character with the CG alignment, even though the description of Good clearly encompasses the description of CG.
Presumably, it follows that you think that no character before AD&D could be played identically with an AD&D character because the prior alignment descriptors were different.
Presumably, it follow that you think that every LE monster that, in 4e, was relabelled "Evil" was fundamentally changed.
This is just bizarre. Utterly bizarre. Why do you think the label is more important than the actual personality, motivation, moral outlook, etc - which have not changed one iota!
I am utterly baffled. You are now arguing that it is a house rule to play a character with the 4e Good alignment with the same personality and outlook as a 2nd ed AD&D character with the CG alignment, even though the description of Good clearly encompasses the description of CG.
Presumably, it follows that you think that no character before AD&D could be played identically with an AD&D character because the prior alignment descriptors were different.
Presumably, it follow that you think that every LE monster that, in 4e, was relabelled "Evil" was fundamentally changed.
This is just bizarre. Utterly bizarre. Why do you think the label is more important than the actual personality, motivation, moral outlook, etc - which have not changed one iota!
[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]
I can see why you would be baffled. If you unconsciously change the way you play something based on the way you used to play something and not by the way they are actually written, it must seem very baffling indeed. I mean what are these guys talking about with no Chaotic Good - it is written there right in the book - Good. It is exactly the same!
I can see why you would be baffled. If you unconsciously change the way you play something based on the way you used to play something and not by the way they are actually written, it must seem very baffling indeed. I mean what are these guys talking about with no Chaotic Good - it is written there right in the book - Good. It is exactly the same!
This is completely irrelevant when you are talking about an ongoing world like Forgotten Realms for example where literally whole geographical areas can be invalidated.
And secondly, how many Spiderman origin stories do we actually need? What are we up to now, who knows. The comic book "lore" is a complete disaster so why would you want to base your publishing strategy on that mishmash of reboots, retcons and alternate dimensions?
But do you really think that every character labelled Good in 4e must be different from every character labelled CG in AD&D 2nd ed?
Does that mean that you think every character with a given alignment label is identical?
This is nothing to do with unconsciously changing anything. As far as I can tell, it's about an alignment label fetishism that goes beyond anything I've ever seen before. How did you guys cope with the transition from 3-place to 9-point alignment? Did you literally have to rewrite every bit of your campaign, because no one in AD&D behaves the same as anyone in Moldvay Basic?
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