Do alignments improve the gaming experience?

[billd91]

I assure you it works and has never, ever sown disfunction in any game I've run. In fact it is extraordinary in how well it works toward producing "Paladin-ey play." So I would ask folks (even if you haven't played it...merely by extrapolating from what I have written above), why does this work without a negative feedback system and/or a strong central role of the GM in adjudication of matters of faith, sin, and fallout?

My guess is this has more to do with the people and style you play with than the rules (or lack thereof) themselves. If Dogs in the Vineyard had the following and internet presence that D&D has, I'll bet we'd hear a lot more about players who take the precepts of the religion, their position within it, and the lax consequence rules to run amok without negative consequences. D&D's ubiquity is going to generate a broader survey of the gamer population, including its anti-social foibles, than an indie game that is less likely to attract players not actively interested in its particular take on things.

 

[Bedrockgames]

@Imaro


So you have an exhaustively defined faith, Paladin's in their typical role, full authority to act in whatever way is necessary to preserve the faith of a branch, you can sin and fall short of your faith, and the judgement by the King of Life and your character's mechanical and fictional evolution is up to you (+ mechanical resolution of Fallout from conflicts and Reflection between Towns).

It has players (1 or more of them) and a GM that want to have a good time and play a TTRPG.

I assure you it works and has never, ever sown disfunction in any game I've run. In fact it is extraordinary in how well it works toward producing "Paladin-ey play." So I would ask folks (even if you haven't played it...merely by extrapolating from what I have written above), why does this work without a negative feedback system and/or a strong central role of the GM in adjudication of matters of faith, sin, and fallout?

If you like games where players have a bit more say about outcomes, it probably works great. But my experience with such systems is I do not really enjoy that dynamic, i would rather outcomes like that be determined by a referee not the individual playing his character. Again, nothing wrong with it at all if you like that, but i think that style of play is a bit niche for something like D&D. I know it would not be my preference. For me it is pretty crucial that cosmological matters are handled by the GM not by me as a player.

That said I am all for faiths being detailed beforehand. I think the question there is hitting the right level of depth, so the GM has enough information to make informed judgements but isnt so burdenedwith detail he or she needs study it and understand the text like a theologian.

 

[Desdichado]

Some of the things that were said in the "Religion in D&D" thread are also relevant.

Ooooh, I'm interested in this thread, but I don't see it on the first page or two. Is it a bit old? Can you provide a link, by any chance?

 

[Celebrim]

I assure you it works and has never, ever sown disfunction in any game I've run. In fact it is extraordinary in how well it works toward producing "Paladin-ey play." So I would ask folks (even if you haven't played it...merely by extrapolating from what I have written above), why does this work without a negative feedback system and/or a strong central role of the GM in adjudication of matters of faith, sin, and fallout?

Let me start at the end first and work back to the top.

I started to write a (different) long response to this thread and realized it would be pointless, because the fundamental problem is we have no way of not talking past each other. Without common experience, we don't have the words or the frame or reference to actually communicate. We are all talking at each other, but no one has the actual means to understand the other (and be assured in their understanding).

I'm glad you brought up DitV though. When I first heard about DitV I immediately wanted to play and/or run it because it sounded like it was aiming to create exactly the sort of play experience I enjoy the most.

In answer to your question about how it 'works' (for you), I would suggest that one of the reasons it 'works' is that it is hugely self-selective in its audience. The only people who end up playing it or who can play it are people who fundamentally agree with its precepts. When I actually sat down and started studying the game, I realized that I couldn't actually play it. It was trying to create the game that I enjoy, and in many ways it was designed correctly for doing so but I personally wouldn't be able to play it.

One of the reasons is that as a Christian, I find that there isn't enough distance between the world it creates and the world I actually inhabit. It blurs the line between fantasy and reality in ways that I'm hugely uncomfortable with. Moreover, I realized immediately that even if I tried to play it, I'd likely make everyone I played with hugely uncomfortable. I spent some time thinking about the players I could actually play with, and realized that it was an empty set. In order to play the game, I'd have to completely rewrite the setting so that it wasn't a trope off of Mormonism (and hense Christianity). I couldn't play the game with pious Mormon friends, lapsed Mormon friends, Christian friends, non-Christian friends, or anyone else I could think of. Each would present a separate but real discomfort.

So the question is, does the game actually 'work'? And the answer is, "Not for me it doesn't. It works so badly it's broken right out of the box." The distance polytheism and the two-axis alignment system has from the real world is a feature for me, not a bug. The system manages to stay close enough to reality to comment on reality, while being remote enough from reality that it is clearly not an allegory for reality. No one has to insist on one to one and on to relationships between the system and reality, and there is no pressing reason to be uncomfortable with feeling like this particular departure is, for lack of better words - heretical, sacrilegious, dangerous and well evil.

I have the strong impression that the setting self-filters so that the only people playing are ones with a particular real world moral, ethical, and cosmological outlook. You have to be the sort of person that fundamentally accepts the precept that each person is their own best judge, that what is right and wrong is different for different people, and that no one can question anyone else if they are following the dictates of their own consciousness. You must believe deep down that each individually is the source of moral authority.

Ironically, DitV postulates a setting where the only persons in the setting for which this is true are the Dogs. I would argue that if you enjoy DitV and think it's approach highly reasonable and not at all niave, you would find it impossible to enjoy the game from the perspective of any character other than a Dog. After all, at that point absolute moral authority would then lie in the hands of an NPC (and not perforce the player), and you are then subject to all the things that you say you hate about alignment (and then some)!

In other words, it requires players the preeminently don't represent the ethos described in the setting and which (IMO) would consistently make a real hash of it. You're asking people to pretend to be Mormon/Christian inspired leaders while rejecting the fundamental tenants of those belief systems. That is never going to 'work' as I see it, though I'm sure there are groups for which it 'works' in the sense that it produces the play the author desired.

Here is what Vincent Baker has to say about:

Does this [the extreme boundaries of authority outlined in "A Dog's Authority"] mean that your character can't sin?

No. But it does mean that no one's in a position to judge your character's actions but you yourself. Your character might be a remorseless monster or a destroying angel- I the author of the game can't tell the difference, your GM and your fellow players can't tell the difference, only you can.

This is quite frankly unmitigated nonsense to me. I suppose there are people that read that and actually believe it, but I find it impossible to imagine that in practice this actually happens unless on the really big questions about life all the players (including the GM) are on board the same train. Does the author really believe that no one is going to be able to discern the difference between good and evil (or think that they can) and there are things that another character ought or ought not to have done under the circumstances?

Fundamentally what is going on her is a deeply embedded moral belief - "no one can judge another person's actions but themselves". In my D&D homebrew, this would be a 'chaotic' belief system. As a real world belief system we could apply a number of different labels. Existentialism would be one, for example. Baker's quote almost immediately brings me back to studying Camus's 'The Stranger' in philosophy class.

One of the fundamental assumptions Baker is making is essentially that no one is going to be acting in a way that the other players consider monstrous, and before that is true the players are going to have to be in pretty close agreement to begin with.

But even to the extent that is true, there seems to be an almost willful blindness going on here. I've read DitV scenarios. It isn't not true that sin is defined ambiguously and that winning and losing are defined ambiguously and that the setting (and therefore the GM) applies and passes no judgment on the PC's actions. Actions are supposed to have consequences and those consequences are supposed to follow a certain framework defined by The Faith. The only way that can not be true is willfully ignoring the setting.

As play progresses, you'll have the opportunity to consider your character's actions and change your character's Stats, Traits, and Relationships to reflect them. That might mean that you give your character Relationships with sins and demons, problematize his or her Traits, and burn out his or her Relationships with the Faithful - or it might mean no such thing. Sin, arrogance, hate, bloodlust; remorse, guilt, contrition; inspiration, redemption, grace: they're in how you have your character act, not (just, or necessarily) in what's on your character's sheet. Those moments, in play, are what matters.

This is I think incredibly naïve and relies on the implicit trust that players are going to behave in a way that other players are going to deem to be rational, coherent, and sympathetic. In other words, it assumes that there will be a natural consensus agreement on what it all meant, that I think that in practice isn't going to happen if you have a real wide audience playing the game. You are GMing the game and the Dog does one thing and annotates his character sheet completely at odds with how you saw the game play out and which seems designed to mitigate the consequences of his actions, and this isn't going to bother you? As a player, you're doing your best to adhere to what you see as the Faiths strictures and annotate your character sheet with your characters failings (or otherwise play as you think the game was intended to play), and this other player is in your opinion completely ignoring them and annotating his character sheet not only in a way that suggests he's meta-gaming to enlarge his character's prowess during play but that he's judging himself righteous for doing so, and you don't think he's missing the point of the game and ruining it for everyone?

I find that simply impossible to believe. And to the extent that it is possible to believe, it must be equally possible to believe that no one every argues about alignment.

tl;dr - DitV works without creating table arguments??? We are barely going to be able to discuss it without shutting down the thread, much less play it together.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I assure you it works and has never, ever sown disfunction in any game I've run. In fact it is extraordinary in how well it works toward producing "Paladin-ey play." So I would ask folks (even if you haven't played it...merely by extrapolating from what I have written above), why does this work without a negative feedback system and/or a strong central role of the GM in adjudication of matters of faith, sin, and fallout?

I can and have played Palsdins in fantasy campaigns that had no alignments or moral compasses at all- GURPS, HERO, etc.- because, presumably like the DitV players you described, I have a very strong concrete idea of how the PC is supposed to work, and rarely, if ever, deviate from that template.

However, even when I play Paladins in such systems, there are rarely any mandatory consequence for deviating from that template, unless I impose one myself, and no explicit uniform framework for redemption. In HERO, for instance, my Paladin's powers would be lost if such a deviation occurred (IOW, built with triggered Power Limitations that decrease their costs), but no other "Paladin" need be built with that guideline. There also wouldn't be an "Attonement" spell exists unless the DM or I write one up...

Which means that one of the classic (as in, found in the source material that inspired the class) challenges of playing a Paladin- the risk of losing one's divinely granted boons if/when one goes against the tenets of one's faith or violated their vows- becomes, in a sense, optional.

And that just doesn't feel...right.

These are, after all, men and women called to serve the divine. Not any old person of faith, but literally personally chosen to be the divine's sword-arm. That implies high standards of responsibility and a razor's edge of fitness for duty.

 

[Imaro]

[MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] : Well I'm not going to re-hash what has already been brought up regarding DitV... I used to own the game but only remember it vaguely, however something that stood out to me is that my impressions of the Dogs (from what I can remember, and I could be totally wrong)... or Roland Deschain for that matter... don't strike me as anything near a traditional (D&D) paladin. I'd be interested in why you think they match up as such??

 

[Celebrim]

I can and have played Palsdins in fantasy campaigns that had no alignments or moral compasses at all- GURPS, HERO, etc.- because, presumably like the DitV players you described, I have a very strong concrete idea of how the PC is supposed to work, and rarely, if ever, deviate from that template.

However, even when I play Paladins in such systems, there are rarely any mandatory consequence for deviating from that template, unless I impose one myself, and no explicit uniform framework for redemption. In HERO, for instance, my Paladin's powers would be lost if such a deviation occurred (IOW, built with triggered Power Limitations that decrease their costs), but no other "Paladin" need be built with that guideline. There also wouldn't be an "Attonement" spell exists unless the DM or I write one up...

Which means that one of the classic (as in, found in the source material that inspired the class) challenges of playing a Paladin- the risk of losing one's divinely granted boons if/when one goes against the tenets of one's faith or violated their vows- becomes, in a sense, optional.

And that just doesn't feel...right.

It doesn't feel right because if you think about it, it is fundamentally at odds with the experience of being a Paladin.

I postulate that the sort of person that really cares about exploring (Sim in GNS) belief within the framework of a character really is trying to get in touch with what it is like to be that character. They aren't merely trying to create an interesting story featuring a character that is nominally a Paladin, but the story that proceeds from being a particular character and the experience of being that character.

So in the Paladin's world view he expects to be in the situation where his judgment of right and wrong is flawed, and he must submit to an outside authority. He fully expects that in submitting to that outside authority there will be cases where he doesn't understand the judgment, doesn't personally agree with the judgment, and can't see how the judgment could be right. He doesn't expect to be his own source of moral authority. He doesn't rely on the dictates of his consciousness. When he has to make a judgment call, his first instinct is never to go with his gut, to examine his feelings, or to try to reason it out for himself. His first instinct is always to pray, or look up scriptures, or recall his teachings and stories of past heroes, or to look to the code, or to address the question to a more senior member of his order. His first instinct is always to try to appeal to outside authority to see what the outside authority says on this matter. He only goes to his own judgment, feelings, and reasoning ability when he can't access or understand the outside authority clearly, and when that happens is first assumption is always that he's likely to be making a mistake in this situation and will require contrition, study, and repentance because this is all highly unlikely (now) to work out well. He believes this way because he knows he himself is weak, ignorant, and stupid, and that the outside authority has profoundly greater understanding than he has himself. His happiness as he sees it profoundly depends not on doing what he wants to do, but in doing what pleases the outside authority.

So the experience of playing a Paladin - or anyone else that believes in the priority of external authority - while relying on yourself as judge of all feels wrong because it is entirely unlike the experience of being a Paladin. It misses the entire point. Without first hashing out what it means to adhere to your code, and then vesting someone else (the GM usually) with the authority to judge whether you are following the code, you aren't simulating the ethos at all. By the standards of the Paladin code, anyone that makes themselves the judge of all is inherently a self-righteous git and is no better (and possibly worse) than the most deplorable of villains.

 

[sheadunne]

So the experience of playing a Paladin - or anyone else that believes in the priority of external authority - while relying on yourself as judge of all feels wrong because it is entirely unlike the experience of being a Paladin. It misses the entire point. Without first hashing out what it means to adhere to your code, and then vesting someone else (the GM usually) with the authority to judge whether you are following the code, you aren't simulating the ethos at all. By the standards of the Paladin code, anyone that makes themselves the judge of all is inherently a self-righteous git and is no better (and possibly worse) than the most deplorable of villains.

The only issue here is that I have no problem separating myself from my character and judging my character based on the actions taken. (it is the player judging the characters actions, not the character judging his own actions). I find satisfaction in creating characters that find themselves in situations that test their moral fortitude and then resolving them based on how I feel the story should progress when handling them. It's not important or necessary for the GM to impose restrictions based on their understanding when it might be in conflict with my own story development. Nothing for me is more immersion breaking than a GM imposing himself on my character. He should present challenges that put the character's morality and ethics to the test, but the internal results of those challenges, when it comes to the character, should be left to the player who better understands the morality of the character himself, at least that's my preference.

This isn't to say that I'm against mechanical implications of failed oaths, I just don't think they should be subjective.

 

[D'karr]

Nothing for me is more immersion breaking than a GM imposing himself on my character. He should present challenges that put the character's morality and ethics to the test, but the internal results of those challenges, when it comes to the character, should be left to the player who better understands the morality of the character himself, at least that's my preference.

Bingo, well said. This is exactly my take on why the "classic" view of alignment as a "stick" is so counter to the game I want to play, or run.

 

[Celebrim]

The only issue here is that I have no problem separating myself from my character and judging my character based on the actions taken. (it is the player judging the characters actions, not the character judging his own actions).

While in theory I don't disagree this is possible, I first want to point out that you are again insisting on a) the primacy of the truth that no one judges oneself better than oneself ("It's not important or necessary for the GM to impose restrictions based on their understanding when it might be in conflict with my own...the player who better understands the morality of the character himself") and b) the primacy of getting what you want and think you deserve ("resolving them based on how I feel the story should progress when handling them"). I'm not going to quibble over the truth of those statements, we can for these purposes except them as valid, but I do want to highlight again the primacy you are putting on your volition and judgment and note that this is again at right angles to how the majority of people who live lives of service, duty, and devotion to a code see the world.

And secondly, while I agree that there are people who can turn the mirror on themselves quite well, I find in practice this is a pretty rare skill. Seeing truth clearly is hard. Self-evaluation is really hard, and I'm not sure that 'this is my character' is sufficient distance from 'this is me' that for most people it's easy. As I said earlier in the thread, I find that 90% of people can only role play themselves. Maybe you are really good it. And maybe you are just an incredibly good role-player. Maybe you have the same stance toward your PC's that good DMs manage toward NPCs. But, regardless, I find it strange to think that you expect to simulate duty by a system that means you are never subject to any constraint but the ones you place on yourself. That's a really low standard of obligation.