Do alignments improve the gaming experience?

[pemerton]

people with the same alignment are expected to reach different value judgments about whether specific ways to implement their values will work effectively. Of *course* compassionate people can disagree about the relative merits of the Soviet system or any other while remaining Good; that is a feature rather than a bug of the D&D alignment writeup. If it were otherwise, then alignment really would be the personality straitjacket that some in this thread have (in my view wrongly) accused it of being.

<snip>

People have innumerably different takes on the degree to which the Soviet system fulfills its stated goals of liberation and compassion, and those differing evaluations of empirical evidence will lead people with similar values to reach different conclusions about the system. Those who decide the Soviet system helps the weak will support the system if they are Good but oppose it if they are Evil. Those who decide the Soviet system oppresses the weak will support the system if they are Evil but oppose it if they are Good.

On this take on alignment, I guess I don't understand who comes out as evil. The number of people who actively oppose helping the weak and actively support oppressing the weak is vanishingly small. (Depending on your political views you might think that many people in fact do this: see eg Thomas Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights; or Scott Veitch, Law and Irresponsibility. But very few people actively set out to do this.)

For instance, your criterion seems to make Stalin or Mao come out as Good, assuming he's sincere. That strike me as an odd outcome. Not because I think Stalin or Mao should necessarily come out as Evil - I don't use alignment, and don't think Stalin or Mao should come out as anything. What strikes me as weird is that, in a game that did/I] use alignment, it seems that the priest of Tritherion would have to concede that Stalin is Good - both pursue individual welfare, after all, they just disagree over the empirical underpinnings of its realisation.

In other words, if a sincere commitment to human welfare is enough to count as Good, I don't see where the Evil villains are going to come from.

Anyway, for what it's worth I don't agree that D&D alignment is intended to capture, as Good, a sincere commitment to human welfare. I think it is aiming for a much more specific theory of what human welfare consists in, although it has a lot of trouble articulating it because it wants to hold to the inconsistent possibility that a theory of human welfare can be divorced from questions about the nature and desirability of human organisation.

You've never heard the term "bleeding heart liberal" applied to those who favour a stronger social safety net?

Of course I have. But critics of "do gooders" and "bleeding hearts" don't hate compassion. They think that those they criticise aren't really serving the welfare interests they claim to be eg because they are unfairly taking from the entitled to give to the unentitled (and hence hypocritically deny compassionate treatment to hard workers, property owners etc), or because they are fostering "cycles of dependency".

The number of individuals in the world who actually put forward disregard for the welfare of others as a criterion for social organisation or for judging the morality of actions is pretty small.

People do not argue for stiffer sentences for criminals, rather than compassionate reform?

<snip>

And here we see a willingness to compromise compassion in the face of harsh reality.

Those who argue for stiffer sentences almost always frame it in terms of welfare. They either run consequentialist arguments, that more lenient sentences don't deter crime and hence undermine the welfare of future victims of crime; or they run "sympathy to victims" arguments, along the lines of compassion for the victims requiring harsh treatment of the perpetrators; or they run retributivist-type arguments, that proper regard to the criminal's interests requires punishment. (This may not be compassionate in the strictest sense, but then the definition of "good" in D&D doesn't talk about compassion but rather other-regard and a concern for dignity. For strict retributivists, punishing the perpetrator is part of respecting their dignity and autonomy.)

"robust rule of law" says it all.

Which one does it say? Lawful, or chaotic?

 

[jsaving]

On this take on alignment, I guess I don't understand who comes out as evil. The number of people who actively oppose helping the weak and actively support oppressing the weak is vanishingly small.

I'd completely disagree on this point -- a large chunk of people "look out for #1," which is selfish and therefore evil in a D&D context. And I don't at all follow why past world leaders who sought to gain personal power by subjugating and ultimately eliminating groups toward whom they felt a personal animus could be considered Good simply because they occasionally claimed to be.

But I do agree that if alignment were determined by the claims people make, then almost nobody would be Evil. After all, even the truly selfish and oppressive recognize they can gain more converts/friends with honey than with vinegar, at least to a point. This is precisely why spells like "know alignment" and "detect evil" are in the game, because compassionate statements so often conceal selfish motives. (It also happens to be why I took those spells out of my campaign, because I think it enriches the game to have PCs struggle to pin down people's motives during gameplay rather than having those motives infallibly handed to them on a silver platter through the simple casting of a low-level spell.)

 

[S'mon]

If Harry is G and his boss N (or E), we know that Harry values compassion more than his boss does -- but that is because Harry has more compassion than his boss does. The labels G and N are only shorthand labels for those values, correctly achieving their goal of telling you which character is more compassionate without "dictating" or "pre-deciding" this themselves.

Compassion as the only measure of Good seems a very particular moral stance to me.
Some GMs might take that approach; it doesn't seem to resemble Gygaxian Good but
maybe WotC-Good says something like that (I haven't paid much attention recently).
AIR the argument in Dirty Harry, Death Wish and other films of the era was that too much
Compassion for the bad people by the State/System was a positive Evil - it let them free
to harm again. If you are GMing a Dirty Harry game in accord with the POV of the movies,
then the most compassionate-for-the-criminals characters may think they're Good, but really they're
misguided; their excessive compassion harms others - innocent others - and is really selfish; they're
probably Neutral. And even if Harry has a low opinion of himself, he's really a good guy doing the right thing; he's probably Good-aligned.

 

[S'mon]

What makes no sense is for (say) a cleric to cast Know Alignement or Detect Evil and say "I know that action/person is evil but I don't know whether or not it is right/virtuous."

Right. The GM does not peg behaviour (PC or NPC) as Evil, and say "In this situation the
virtuous stance is the Evil one." He almost certainly does not say "The Good Aligned characters are wrong, and the Evil characters are right" - because IRL two groups may differ about what is the greater good (eg compassion vs justice), but D&D-Evil characters aren't supposed to be seeking the Good in the first place.

 

[billd91]

Right. The GM does not peg behaviour (PC or NPC) as Evil, and say "In this situation the
virtuous stance is the Evil one." He almost certainly does not say "The Good Aligned characters are wrong, and the Evil characters are right" - because IRL two groups may differ about what is the greater good (eg compassion vs justice), but D&D-Evil characters aren't supposed to be seeking the Good in the first place.

Putting them back in the straightjacket again, I see. Evil guys can't help little old ladies across the street? Maybe they won't in general, but what if it's his grandmother?

They're not supposed to be making doing good their life's work but that doesn't mean they can't chip in a few silvers for the orphans from time to time.

 

[S'mon]

Putting them back in the straightjacket again, I see. Evil guys can't help little old ladies across the street? Maybe they won't in general, but what if it's his grandmother?

They're not supposed to be making doing good their life's work but that doesn't mean they can't chip in a few silvers for the orphans from time to time.

According to Gygax in 1e DMG, Neutral Evils want maximum Evilness for everyone; Chaotic Evils want disorder and Woe, Lawful Evils want regimented tyranny with themselves on top.
Helping granny across the street sounds like Neutral, or at least strong N tendencies. Likewise chipping in for the orphans, if done without ulterior motive.

Edit: Not that your comment was relevant to my point, AFAICT.

 

[Campbell]

Let's try to bring some focus back to this thread: When playing the game how should alignment shape player decisions? What are the consequences on the shape of play and resulting fiction? Actual play examples would be helpful. I'm sincerely interested in what play techniques and GMing principles are in use.

 

[pemerton]

Compassion as the only measure of Good seems a very particular moral stance to me.

<snip>

it doesn't seem to resemble Gygaxian Good but maybe WotC-Good says something like that (I haven't paid much attention recently).

Here is WotC-3.5-SRD-Good:

"Good" implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others.​

"Compassionate" might be a passable summary of all that, but I think it downplays the "dignity" aspect, especially for Dirty Harry types who think that treating people with dignity includes holding them accountable for their autonomously-performed actions.

And here is WotC-3.5-SRD-Evil-&-Neutral:

"Evil" implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master.

People who are neutral with respect to good and evil have compunctions against killing the innocent but lack the commitment to make sacrifices to protect or help others. Neutral people are committed to others by personal relationships.​

To me, this suggests that [MENTION=3400]billd91[/MENTION]'s person who helps his/her grandmother across the road is Neutral - "committed to others by personal relationships". It sets a fairly high bar for evil - it is not simply selfishness, but "hurting, oppressing and killing others", due either to a lack of moral scruples or an active love of inflicting suffering. (The bit about "duty to some evil deity or master" seems redundant - why would anyone subordinate him-/herself to such a being unless s/he either lacked scruples or enjoyed inflicting suffering?)

Also, the bit about neutrals "having compunctions against killing the innocent" seems to imply that good people may not have compunctions against killing the non-innocent. Which is consistent with warriors like paladins being good. Whether "non-innocent" here is understood in the context of defensive violence, or also punitive violence, isn't elaborated upon and presumably is left as a matter for the game participants to sort out!

I'd completely disagree on this point -- a large chunk of people "look out for #1," which is selfish and therefore evil in a D&D context.

I'm not sure which D&D context you have in mind. In 3E, as per the above quotes, looking out for #1 doesn't make a person evil unless it gets to the point that s/he has no scruples at all. Most of those looking out for #1 have compunctions against killing the innocent - they just lack the commitment to be good.

I don't at all follow why past world leaders who sought to gain personal power by subjugating and ultimately eliminating groups toward whom they felt a personal animus could be considered Good simply because they occasionally claimed to be.

Well this is where I don't really understand how 2-dimensional alignment is meant to work. Obviously some Communist leaders were just thugs, but some were sincere. If you don't like Stalin or Mao in that role, stick in Lenin or Trotsky instead. They had a genuine concern for the dignity of all sentient beings - the pursuit of universal emancipation is what drove them! They weren't selfish, and endured great hardship in the pursuit and accomplishment of revolution. They made personal sacrifices to help others, at least as they understood what such help required them to do.

So if we are nevertheless to say that they are Evil rather than Good, it seems that we have to form a view not just of their commitments, but of what they actually did and achieved/failed to achieve. But at that point how can we be neutral in relation to questions of social organisation that are ostensibly, in the D&D framework, orthogonal to Good and Evil and compatible with both? For instance, how can anyone deny that they were compassionate people - despite their subjective mental state of wanting to achieve universal emancipation - without taking a view on what forms of social organisation do and don't genuinely give effect to compassion?

even the truly selfish and oppressive recognize they can gain more converts/friends with honey than with vinegar, at least to a point. This is precisely why spells like "know alignment" and "detect evil" are in the game, because compassionate statements so often conceal selfish motives.

I'm not worried about hypocrites. The cases that I'm interested in are those of sincere moral and political disagreement.

 

[pemerton]

When playing the game how should alignment shape player decisions? What are the consequences on the shape of play and resulting fiction? Actual play examples would be helpful. I'm sincerely interested in what play techniques and GMing principles are in use.

Most of Gygax's discussion of GMing alignment is about tracking PC alignment on the alignment graph (eg from p 24 of his DMG, "It is important to keep track of player character behaviour with respect to their professed alignment. Actions do speak far more eloquently than professions . . . [D]rift should be noted by you, and when it takes the individual into a new alignment area, you should then inform the player that his or her character has changed alignment").

He also says (p 24) that "It is of utmost importance to keep rigid control of alignment behaviour with respect to such characters as serve deities who will accept only certain alignments, those who are paladins, those with evil familiars, and so on. Part of the role they have accepted requires a set behaviour mode, and its benefits are balanced by this. Therefore, failure to demand strict adherence to alignment behaviour is to allow a game abuse."

Gygax's DMG also has a rule that, I assume, was little-used in actual play but is quite interesting. It is part of the training rules on p 86.

The training rules for AD&D require the GM to allocate each PC, as played by his/her player, a rating of 1 through 4 for each adventure. 1 is Excellent; 4 is Poor.

The questions the GM has to ask, in assigning the rating, include:

* Did s/he perform basically in the character of his/her class? (Examples are given of poor behaviour: clerics who refuse to help and heal or do not remain faithful to their deity; fighters who hang back from combat, attempt to steal or fail to boldly lead; magic-users who seek to engage in melee or ignore the use of magic items in crucial situations; thieves who boldly engage in frontal attacks or who refrain from acquisition of an extra bit of treasure when the opportunity arises. Presumably excellence is the converse of all these.)

* Was the character a "cautious" character who did not pull his/her own weight? (If the answer is "yes", that merits a rating of 4.)

* Were the character's actions in keeping with his/her professed alignment?​

When it comes time to gain a level, the average rating across adventures (with equal weight across adventures regardless of the number of XP earned on each) is averaged. This tells us the number of weeks of training required to gain a level (decimals are retained: each 0.145 equals an additional day of training required).

Extra training has two sorts of resource costs: extra gold must be paid (because costs are per week); and the PC loses game time, which in Gygax's conception of play (based on flexible and changing groups adventuring in a many-player shared world) is itself a cost, because it limits the adventures and other activities that the PC can engage in.

This all suggests to me that sticking to one's alignment is intended to be a challenge for players, particularly when those alignment requirements are very strict. What the source of the challenge is, though, isn't really spelled out.

As best I can tell, the challenge for players of good PCs (and perhaps lawfuls too?) is that very often advantage in combat and in looting (which are the two sources of XPs) can be gained by being underhanded. I'm less sure on the challenge for players of evil PCs (with their imps and quasits), but perhaps the challenge arises from the fact that evil is fundamentally anti-social, and hence if played consistently makes it hard for a PC to find fellow characters to adventure with. (On p 24 Gygax gives as an example of a poorly played PC "a professed lawful evil character [who] is consistently seeking to be helpful and is respecting the lesser creatures".) If you change the XP rules, and/or change the Gygaxian assumptions about how parties are formed (loose alliances of PCs plus NPCs hired in accordance with the rather arcane loyalty rules) then alignment will likely cease to be a source of challenge in these ways.

I don't see any sign that Gygax thinks that alignment should be a source of challenge for the character. For instance, the idea that a player might play his/her character wrestling with a moral dilemma, and that alignment might somehow feed into this, seems to be completely absent.

 

[N'raac]

The party catches the evil doer red handed. The bad guy is standing over the bloody corpse, screaming, "I did it and I'll do it again!" There's no doubt here. So, a fight ensues, the party captures the bad guy. The paladin throws a rope over the nearest tree branch and announces he's going to execute the prisoner on the spot.

Now, according to Imaro, there is no "aha gotcha" moments. The Dm is obligated to tell the player if the DM thinks the player is out of line. So, the DM announces, "Hey, that's an evil act - you can't execute prisoners. You have to take them back to face justice". Not a unreasonable interpretation of alignment at all. It's perfectly reasonable. The paladin player argues for a bit, but, the DM stands firm.

Now, what choice does the paladin player have here? He can execute the prisoner, which he feels is the good and just course of action, knowing the whole time that he's going to become a fighter afterwards, or he can drag the prisoner back to civilisation.

I don't know what that player will decide, but I do know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that that group will never take prisoners again.

I would question why it is acceptable to kill the enemy in combat and acceptable for capital punishment to be meted out, but not acceptable for the Paladin to mete out that punishment. However, I can also see the GM's reasoning. It should then be consistent with the game world - executing prisoners on the spot is known to be an evil act, and it marks those who do so as evil. This is recognized by the world at large which, presuming it is, strives to be, or even professes to be, Good in general should mean positive consequences for the characters who do, in fact, bring the villain in to face justice and negative consequences for those who choose to kill them on the spot, kill unconscious prisoners, reject surrender or even use excessive force in combat.

If the GM is using "you can't execute prisoners" as a bludgeon with which to beat the PC's for being Good, while nothing but negative consequences arise from Good behaviour, then the fact the players refuse to play Good characters, take prisoners, etc. rests on the shoulders of the GM, not the alignment rules.

BTW, who cares whether they will ever take prisoners if they simply kill them shortly thereafter? What's the gameplay benefit of "we string him up after taking him prisoner in combat" and "we kill him in combat"?

On this take on alignment, I guess I don't understand who comes out as evil. The number of people who actively oppose helping the weak and actively support oppressing the weak is vanishingly small. (Depending on your political views you might think that many people in fact do this: see eg Thomas Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights; or Scott Veitch, Law and Irresponsibility. But very few people actively set out to do this.)

For instance, your criterion seems to make Stalin or Mao come out as Good, assuming he's sincere.

And do you believe that the dictators who purge their enemies and pursue genocide are sincere in their benevolence and professed love of the people? Perhaps this is why Good and Evil are judged by actions, not simply words.

In other words, if a sincere commitment to human welfare is enough to count as Good, I don't see where the Evil villains are going to come from.

From those whose commitment to human welfare is not sincere? Of course, a character who is sincerely pursuing human welfare and truly believes it is best for 90%+ of the population to be killed off seems like he is Neutral, at best. Must every opponent be Evil to be credible?

Of course I have. But critics of "do gooders" and "bleeding hearts" don't hate compassion. They think that those they criticise aren't really serving the welfare interests they claim to be eg because they are unfairly taking from the entitled to give to the unentitled (and hence hypocritically deny compassionate treatment to hard workers, property owners etc), or because they are fostering "cycles of dependency".

They also seem to think those issues are more important than compassion for the unfortunate. If a few thousand of them die in my factories because of lax safety standards, well that's what's needed for business to be profitable and the survivors to remain employed - provided they avoid being maimed, in which case they have a promising second career as a beggar, asking for handouts from those who do have compassion.

The number of individuals in the world who actually put forward disregard for the welfare of others as a criterion for social organisation or for judging the morality of actions is pretty small.

How about the number who profess to have high regard for the welfare of others but are, in fact, deceiving others and possibly even themselves?

Which one does it say? Lawful, or chaotic?

To me, a strong societal order says "Law" while a focus on individual freedoms says "Chaotic". A balance between the two says "neither" and thus neutral with respect to Law and Chaos.