Do alignments improve the gaming experience?

[steenan]

I think that alignments could work towards encouraging and strengthening archetypes, as races and classes do. I have seen them used this way - as inspirations, not straightjackets.

The problem is with the technical side. Alignments suffer from poor connection with the rest of the rules. Alignments don't really DO anything, other than occasionally denying some characters their class abilities. And in trying to solve the problem, people tend to make alignments completely powerless, instead of giving them teeth.



Imagine, for a moment, a system with typical D&D 3*3 alignment matrix that does not describe them in moral terms at all. Instead, it gives them rules. Using 4e as an example, it could be something like this.

Once per session, you may regain one daily power or two healing surges when a specific, alignment-dependent trigger is met:
...
CG: You free someone from captivity or oppression.
LN: You hurt an innocent for the benefit of society.
...
CN: You stand up to someone with power and authority.
LE: You take something you want from somebody through force or social position.
...

Each gives a solid benefit and each uses a specific trigger that does not require anybody to judge how well a character is roleplayed. By rewarding behaviors instead of punishing them, such rules encourage players to engage the alignment system and show their alignment in action, instead of getting into endless discussions on nature of morality.


Dungeon World does something similar and in my experience it works quite well (although the rewards it offers are too small and too delayed for the full effect).


In short: make alignment as solid as class and race, and it will work as well.

 

[pemerton]

Talternatively, you can say that it allows the GM to set the morals and ethical powers that exist in the game world. Seeing as world design is normally the purview of the GM, that doesn't seem at all problematic, to me.

Now, the common error would be for the GM to not discuss his or her interpretations of alignment before game begins.

<snip>

If the player knows that the character will fall after jumping off a cliff, is the player's judgement subordinated to that of the GM because the player cannot simply choose to not plummet

<snip>

Alignment, as it is written in D&D, is merely another force of the game universe. If you jump off a cliff, you will fall. If he or she commits overtly evil acts, the paladin will fall.

I think you are eliding a fundamental difference.

In effect, you are saying that (in D&D) "Good" simply means "behaviour rewarded by the gods/forces of good" and "Evil" the opposite. And hence, the only reason to act well rather than wickedly is expedience.

The only major moral philosopher I can think of who accepts an analysis of moral evaluation along those lines is Hobbes, and that is one reason why he's often regarded as cyncial (or, at least, harshly realistic). Most moral philosophers accept, rather, the argument of Plato's Euthyphro to the effect that "good" and "evil" are concepts that are independent of the will of cosmological forces - ie assuming they believe in divine/cosmological forces at all, they accept that the universe punishes evil because evil behaviour lacks value and the universe rewards good because good behaviour has value.

I think this has a couple of ramificaitons for D&D play:

* If you take the realist/Hobbesian approach, no one has a reason to be good rather than evil except expedience. If in fact you think the gods of evil are stronger than the gods of good, and so can give you better rewards, you have a reason to be evil! As I posted upthread, I think this is somewhat how alignment worked in classic D&D, but the game is not normally played in that sort of mode these days. This can also fit with a cynical sword & sorcery style of play, but I think a lot of D&D play is not in this mode either (eg neither FR nor Dragonlance nor Ravenloft is aimed at that style of play).

* If you take the more standard approach, and regard "good" and "evil" as labels not just of behaviour that will be rewarded or punished by certain cosmological forces but also, and primarily, as labels of behaviour that has or lacks certain value and therefore that characters have a reason to perform or to repudiate, then the issues that I mentioned come up: players have to subordinate their own judgements of value to the GM's.

For instance, suppose a GM decides that (say) inadvertantly killing someone in a context of defence of others is not evil. And then a paladin PC inadvertantly kills someone, and the player of that PC takes a different view from the GM (s/he has a stricter view about the impermissibility of various forms of non-intentinal homicide, either for real, or as part of his/her conception of his/her PC). Now there is a gap between the value framework within which the player is conceiving of his/her PC, and the value framework that the GM is applying - the player expects that his/her paladin should be subject to divine sanction, but the GM doesn't deliver. How is that improving the play experience or the depth of either character, or player's engagement with the game?

The above example is not purely hypothetical - it came up in my game. Because I don't use alignment, as GM rather than imposing my own moral judgement I followed my player's lead and made the character's response to (what he took to be) his PC's moral error a focus of play in that particular session.

Here's another example from actual play. The player of a paladin (and the other players as well), in the course of the game, form the view that the ancient pacts that had been reached between the gods, the demons and the lords of karma in order to bring stability to the heavens amounted, in effect, to an unfair sacrifice of the interests (in life and wellbeing) of present-day mortals. So they took it upon themselves to disregard the pacts, to ally with the one god who had been exiled from the heavens for taking a similar view, and to use an artefact borrowed from that god to rewrite the heavenly and karmic order to produce a new solution to the cosmological problems that also ensured that the mortal realm did not suffer as it otherwise would have.

My own view is that nothing would have been added to that arc of play (which unfolded over several years) by having me, as GM, assign an alignment to the gods (and thereby foreclose the issue of whether their decisions and agreements were good or bad) and then judging the behaviour of the PCs (including the paladin PC) by reference to that labelling of cosmological forces.

I tend to see alignment as tied to the setting cosmology, so it isn't necessrily commentary on real world ethics

For the reasons that I have just posted, I don't think you can avoid interaction with real world values.

Of course imaginative players can divorce their own judgements from the judgements of their PCs and the NPCs/gods as played by the GM - but they know it's all just pretense. So if their paladin PC is stripped of power by the gods (as played by the GM), but by the player's lights the paladin has not done anything actually wrong, then the player is not going to believe that his/her PC was punished for a genuine wrongdoing. S/he is just exploring or imaging a world in which the gods punish people for different reasons, reasons that aren't really good reasons but nevertheless are the reasons on which the gods in that imaginary world operate.

We see a lot of posts about how verimisilitude and immersion interact. For me, both as GM and as player, this sort of play is a far, far greater burden on immersion than fortune-in-the-middle mechanics.

To give an extreme case: I can imagine playing a character who is a sincere Stalinist and KGB officer, who therefore believes that torturing and killing political opponents is a desirable and important task, and who kills dissidents and proponents of liberal freedoms as counter-revolutionaries. And I can imagine a GM who goes along with this. But why would I label this behaviour "good"? I know it is wrong. I would hope the GM could likewise see that this is so. I would expect, in the game I'm describing, that we would both recognise that I am playing a character who is sincere but radically mistaken. I wouldn't expect the GM to say - actually, in this world what your PC is doing is good, so within the fiction you're acting rightly!

In circumstances where the gap between the PC's convictions and the moral truth is narrower, or once we get into territory where there can be reasonable moral disagreement (eg the example above about the wrongdoing involved in inadvertant defensive killing), then I wouldn't necessarily expect the player's and GM's judgements to overlap. But as a player I want to be free to react according to my own evaluative judgement, and to play my PC according to my own coneption of him/her (be that as a good person, if I'm playing my paladin, or as a fallen person, if I'm playing my KGB agent). I don't want to simply abandon my own evaluative perspective and find out what it's like to share my GM's value scheme as expressed in his/her campaign world; and when GMing I don't want my players to abandon their values and simply play their PCs in accordance with my judgements as to what is right or wrong within the fiction. That's simply not what I'm looking for in an RPG, either as GM or as player.

How many times have people enered serious conflict at the table due to misunderstandings about alignment that could not have been avoided with good communication?

Yes, but it's nearly 30 years ago so I can't remember the details. In 1985 (or thereabouts) I read an article in Dragon 101 called "For King and Country" which helped me work out why alignment was hurting rather than helping my game, and I've not used it since then.

For example of play to which an alignment system would be an impediment, see the two provided earlier in this post.

 

[Celebrim]

Have you run or participated in any game where 1 or more players can not get along with his own character's alignment? To elaborate, I am talking about a large percentage of players, that create optimized characters that have some rp alignment-based restriction (ie in Pathfinder apart from paladins, clerics are dependent on their alignment since channel energy class feature depends on it as do domains selection or wizards with improved familiars should have 1 one step away from their own alignment etc). This player is here to have fun and part of his fun is to play the character he so carefully built. I am the DM and decide that his actions are not compatible with his alignment. Alignment change will affect his whole build though. Have you not ever met a player that does not accept the DM's decision or does so lightly? Isn't this ruining the fun for him and the team respectively (even more so if more than 1 such player is present in the group)?

This is a DMing failure that results from the DM not talking with a player sufficiently about the character prior to approving it. It is the responsibility of the DM to make sure that any potential ethical issues are outlined prior to the PC being approved, and the broad outline of what 'lawful' or 'evil' means in the context of his game universe is explained so that the player can make an informed choice as to what alignment he wishes to play based on an understanding of what a particular alignment means to the DM. If a DM chooses to make 'selfishness' the hallmark of evil, that better clearly be explained to a player that associated 'self-centered' with chaotic and doesn't think a self-centered attitude is incompatible with 'chaotic good'. If a DM thinks that a LG society could reasonably debate the proper role of women and whether or not slavery is an ethical institution, he better be really up front about that so that a player who feels otherwise can choose a contrasting alignment (say CG).

Then again, one thing players can fail to understand that you might want to make clear is that even good people can hold wrong beliefs, and that the story they can step up to and advance is how they change the world in that way.

If something comes up in play, it is the responsibility of the DM to make sure that the player is making an informed choice about anything that could have consequences for his character. If a DM thinks that an action departs from the player's chosen ethical code for his character, then the DM should inform the player of that ahead of time (and why) so that the consequences don't come as a shock. There are a variety of techniques for handling that well that the DM can employ depending on the situation. Going OOC is often the simplest and best. Sometimes it can be fun however to consult the PC's Wisdom score and determine by inference or fortune whether the character is as oblivious as the player is. Particularly in the case of a below average wisdom character, it is the expectation of proper characterization that they will make mistakes in judgment and betray their own convictions unknowingly and require regular chastisement and repentance. And it is a staple of literature (and really mature RPing) for a low wisdom character to believe that they have one code of conduct, but actually have another. Another thing to consider is that often if you don't knowingly violate your ethos, who ever is holding you accountable to that ethos is less likely to consider the breach unpardonable. Or, you can have the alignment violation if it is merely a trend rather than a breach be dealt with in game, such as having the character subject to dreams, visions, or divine intervention (an celestial comes and tells you the judgment of your deity). Done properly this adds a mythic richness to the game world that a world without codes, creeds, and accountability just simply lacks.

And to sum up, since at least to a respectable part of players, the alignment system might be a burden, shouldn't the game designers take this into account and reduce its impact on game mechanics?

Why should it be the goal of a game system to eliminate burdens? Isn't stepping up to the challenge and shouldering burdens in fact part of what makes a game fun? So, no, I don't see that logic at all. I think game designers have a responsibility to clearly explain the game and to give good advice on playing and running their game - something D&D has not done well in my opinion with regard to alignment. But I don't believe they have any burden to dumb the game system down.

 

[pemerton]

Imagine, for a moment, a system with typical D&D 3*3 alignment matrix that does not describe them in moral terms at all. Instead, it gives them rules. Using 4e as an example, it could be something like this.

Once per session, you may regain one daily power or two healing surges when a specific, alignment-dependent trigger is met:
...
CG: You free someone from captivity or oppression.
LN: You hurt an innocent for the benefit of society.
...
CN: You stand up to someone with power and authority.
LE: You take something you want from somebody through force or social position.
...

Each gives a solid benefit and each uses a specific trigger that does not require anybody to judge how well a character is roleplayed.

<snip>

Dungeon World does something similar and in my experience it works quite well (although the rewards it offers are too small and too delayed for the full effect).

This sort of mechanic is very very different from traditional mechanical alignment in D&D. I don't know the Dungeon World version of this, but it is similar to Beliefs in Burning Wheel, or to Milestones in Marvel Heroic RP.

In these approaches, it is generally accepted (I think) that the player has primary authority over deciding when the trigger has been meant: ie provided the player makes it clear in play that in (say) forcefully suppressing the testimony of the farmer who is being stalked by the werewolf s/he is doing so in order to stop a village-wide panic, s/he gets the benefit of the LN trigger. The GM's role is simply to judge player sincerity as part of overall game management, not to second-guess whether or not the farmer really is innocent, nor whether or not preventing a village-wide panci is really a social benefit.

Hence these approaches don't exhibit the features that I am critical of in relation to traditional mechanical alignment, of requiring the player to subordinate his/her evaluative framework to that of the GM.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think you are eliding a fundamental difference.

In effect, you are saying that (in D&D) "Good" simply means "behaviour rewarded by the gods/forces of good" and "Evil" the opposite. And hence, the only reason to act well rather than wickedly is expedience.

The only major moral philosopher I can think of who accepts an analysis of moral evaluation along those lines is Hobbes, and that is one reason why he's often regarded as cyncial (or, at least, harshly realistic). Most moral philosophers accept, rather, the argument of Plato's Euthyphro to the effect that "good" and "evil" are concepts that are independent of the will of cosmological forces - ie assuming they believe in divine/cosmological forces at all, they accept that the universe punishes evil because evil behaviour lacks value and the universe rewards good because good behaviour has value.

I think this has a couple of ramificaitons for D&D play:

* If you take the realist/Hobbesian approach, no one has a reason to be good rather than evil except expedience. If in fact you think the gods of evil are stronger than the gods of good, and so can give you better rewards, you have a reason to be evil! As I posted upthread, I think this is somewhat how alignment worked in classic D&D, but the game is not normally played in that sort of mode these days. This can also fit with a cynical sword & sorcery style of play, but I think a lot of D&D play is not in this mode either (eg neither FR nor Dragonlance nor Ravenloft is aimed at that style of play).

* If you take the more standard approach, and regard "good" and "evil" as labels not just of behaviour that will be rewarded or punished by certain cosmological forces but also, and primarily, as labels of behaviour that has or lacks certain value and therefore that characters have a reason to perform or to repudiate, then the issues that I mentioned come up: players have to subordinate their own judgements of value to the GM's.

For instance, suppose a GM decides that (say) inadvertantly killing someone in a context of defence of others is not evil. And then a paladin PC inadvertantly kills someone, and the player of that PC takes a different view from the GM (s/he has a stricter view about the impermissibility of various forms of non-intentinal homicide, either for real, or as part of his/her conception of his/her PC). Now there is a gap between the value framework within which the player is conceiving of his/her PC, and the value framework that the GM is applying - the player expects that his/her paladin should be subject to divine sanction, but the GM doesn't deliver. How is that improving the play experience or the depth of either character, or player's engagement with the game?

The above example is not purely hypothetical - it came up in my game. Because I don't use alignment, as GM rather than imposing my own moral judgement I followed my player's lead and made the character's response to (what he took to be) his PC's moral error a focus of play in that particular session.

Here's another example from actual play. The player of a paladin (and the other players as well), in the course of the game, form the view that the ancient pacts that had been reached between the gods, the demons and the lords of karma in order to bring stability to the heavens amounted, in effect, to an unfair sacrifice of the interests (in life and wellbeing) of present-day mortals. So they took it upon themselves to disregard the pacts, to ally with the one god who had been exiled from the heavens for taking a similar view, and to use an artefact borrowed from that god to rewrite the heavenly and karmic order to produce a new solution to the cosmological problems that also ensured that the mortal realm did not suffer as it otherwise would have.

My own view is that nothing would have been added to that arc of play (which unfolded over several years) by having me, as GM, assign an alignment to the gods (and thereby foreclose the issue of whether their decisions and agreements were good or bad) and then judging the behaviour of the PCs (including the paladin PC) by reference to that labelling of cosmological forces.

For the reasons that I have just posted, I don't think you can avoid interaction with real world values.

Of course imaginative players can divorce their own judgements from the judgements of their PCs and the NPCs/gods as played by the GM - but they know it's all just pretense. So if their paladin PC is stripped of power by the gods (as played by the GM), but by the player's lights the paladin has not done anything actually wrong, then the player is not going to believe that his/her PC was punished for a genuine wrongdoing. S/he is just exploring or imaging a world in which the gods punish people for different reasons, reasons that aren't really good reasons but nevertheless are the reasons on which the gods in that imaginary world operate.

We see a lot of posts about how verimisilitude and immersion interact. For me, both as GM and as player, this sort of play is a far, far greater burden on immersion than fortune-in-the-middle mechanics.

To give an extreme case: I can imagine playing a character who is a sincere Stalinist and KGB officer, who therefore believes that torturing and killing political opponents is a desirable and important task, and who kills dissidents and proponents of liberal freedoms as counter-revolutionaries. And I can imagine a GM who goes along with this. But why would I label this behaviour "good"? I know it is wrong. I would hope the GM could likewise see that this is so. I would expect, in the game I'm describing, that we would both recognise that I am playing a character who is sincere but radically mistaken. I wouldn't expect the GM to say - actually, in this world what your PC is doing is good, so within the fiction you're acting rightly!

In circumstances where the gap between the PC's convictions and the moral truth is narrower, or once we get into territory where there can be reasonable moral disagreement (eg the example above about the wrongdoing involved in inadvertant defensive killing), then I wouldn't necessarily expect the player's and GM's judgements to overlap. But as a player I want to be free to react according to my own evaluative judgement, and to play my PC according to my own coneption of him/her (be that as a good person, if I'm playing my paladin, or as a fallen person, if I'm playing my KGB agent). I don't want to simply abandon my own evaluative perspective and find out what it's like to share my GM's value scheme as expressed in his/her campaign world; and when GMing I don't want my players to abandon their values and simply play their PCs in accordance with my judgements as to what is right or wrong within the fiction. That's simply not what I'm looking for in an RPG, either as GM or as player.

Yes, but it's nearly 30 years ago so I can't remember the details. In 1985 (or thereabouts) I read an article in Dragon 101 called "For King and Country" which helped me work out why alignment was hurting rather than helping my game, and I've not used it since then.

For example of play to which an alignment system would be an impediment, see the two provided earlier in this post.

There is a lot here I disagee with (particularly on many of your points about ethical philosophy) but I think this gets too close to real world politics/religions/issues to really deal with here. I can just say, my experience doesn't match yours at all. Not doubting you may have encountered problems as you list them, but I just haven't. Given that I can walk down the street and encounter people with very diferent notions of what the good, and whether there is a cosmic ought and what shape that takes, it is pretty easy for me to imagine living under a different belief system where good is subject to different principles than my own. It hasn't presented any real issues for me. I am sure one could parse every moment of play to "prove" my real world notions are creeping in, but I am not too worried if the emulation falls a bit short. It doesn't disrupt the overall illusion, which is the point.

I think we just have very different tastes and views about playstyle.

 

[Celebrim]

About this, alignment systems are always simplifications, so the risk of roleplaying one-dimensionally is real.

I certainly agree with that, but the flip side of this in my experience is that removing the system doesn't in fact encourage greater complexity but less complexity. A simplified system is often more nuanced than no system at all. While in theory PC's made with no alignment system at all might be more nuanced complicated characters, in practice I find the reverse is true. First of all because there is no inherent reason why characters made with a system can't be nuanced and complicated, and in practice its never my most committed Thespian sorts that balk at providing a nominal alignment descriptor. Without an alignment system there is an even greater impetus than the usual to perceive characters as being merely game pieces being advanced toward some goal, and even less impetus to consider them as real flesh and blood people with wills and motivations that are their own. Now, I agree that there is no particular reason that the two alignment system is necessarily better at this task than some other system that is more or less complex depending on the conventions of the genera (see for example Pendragon for greater complexity), and people are free to devise more complex alternatives if that is what they like. But I absolutely reject the notion that replacing the simple system with no system at all, which is almost invariably what is done, is motivated by a desire for less one-dimensionality. Rather, in my experience, it's pretty much invariably motivated by a desire to go one dimensionality to no dimensionality.

 

[Celebrim]

I think that alignments could work towards encouraging and strengthening archetypes, as races and classes do. I have seen them used this way - as inspirations, not straightjackets.

The problem is with the technical side. Alignments suffer from poor connection with the rest of the rules. Alignments don't really DO anything, other than occasionally denying some characters their class abilities. And in trying to solve the problem, people tend to make alignments completely powerless, instead of giving them teeth.

Imagine, for a moment, a system with typical D&D 3*3 alignment matrix that does not describe them in moral terms at all. Instead, it gives them rules. Using 4e as an example, it could be something like this.

Once per session, you may regain one daily power or two healing surges when a specific, alignment-dependent trigger is met:
...
CG: You free someone from captivity or oppression.
LN: You hurt an innocent for the benefit of society.
...
CN: You stand up to someone with power and authority.
LE: You take something you want from somebody through force or social position.
...

Each gives a solid benefit and each uses a specific trigger that does not require anybody to judge how well a character is roleplayed. By rewarding behaviors instead of punishing them, such rules encourage players to engage the alignment system and show their alignment in action, instead of getting into endless discussions on nature of morality.

Dungeon World does something similar and in my experience it works quite well (although the rewards it offers are too small and too delayed for the full effect).

In short: make alignment as solid as class and race, and it will work as well.

Very good post. I should note that this sort of system appears quite widely in RPGs - the various White Wolf games use something similar. I'd never really thought before how the various motives or demeanors could be quite easily classified according to the D&D alignment system should we choose to do so.

I have something similar in my games, but I've defined it less formerly and left it up pretty broadly to DM (my) judgment. Your post is provoking me to thinking about the value in formalizing the system.

 

[pemerton]

There is a lot here I disagee with (particularly on many of your points about ethical philosophy) but I think this gets too close to real world politics/religions/issues

I think this is a recurrent difficulty with alignment threads. That's why I choose Stalin/KGB for my example - I was hoping it would be a fairly safe one.

Given that I can walk down the street and encounter people with very diferent notions of what the good, and whether there is a cosmic ought and what shape that takes, it is pretty easy for me to imagine living under a different belief system where good is subject to different principles than my own.

I can imagine having different beliefs. It's a type of anthropological exercise. It's just that that's not what I'm looking for in an RPG.

To give a comparison by reference to other fictional media: when I watch a film or read a book (say, the X-Men or The Quiet American) my main interest, as an audience member and critic, is not in judging how accurately the author communicatd his/her sincere convictions. My main interest is in thinking about those convictions, and their implications, and whether or not I agree with them.

Likewise in RPGing. The anthropological approach to play is not what I'm interested in.l

I am sure one could parse every moment of play to "prove" my real world notions are creeping in, but I am not too worried if the emulation falls a bit short. It doesn't disrupt the overall illusion, which is the point.

I think we just have very different tastes and views about playstyle.

I think we do have different tastes. I'm not interested in play as primarily illusion or pretense, particularly in the evaluative realm.

Here is how I would articulate the contrast between the play I enjoy and the play I don't - it may not accurately capture your preferred play, and I'm trying to speak more generally than just trying to capture our particular difference of preference, but I hope it at least gestures in the right genral direction with respect to your preferences:

Obviously, given that we're both fantasy RPGing, we're creating imaginary worlds populated by imaginary persons (including gods, demons etc) who have a range of beliefs about what is good or bad. It seems to me that traditional mechanical alignment makes the pretense/illusion primary: all the participants are trying to create a coherent shared fiction in which all evaluation is in accordance with the parameters set by the GM in creating the world.

Whereas for me, the point of the pretense is to prompt real evaluative judgements by the participants, on which I expect them to act in playing the game. That action can be very varied: for instance, a player might persist in playing a PC in a way that s/he regards as wrongful, in order to see where it leads and what sorts of responses it provokes in him-/herself and from the other participants. But in engaging with the fiction and thinking about it and playing it, participants aren't expected to subordinate their own evaluative judgements. They're expected to engage them.

That's what I mean when I say the illusion/pretense is not the main thing. It's a means to an aesthetic end in which real values are primary.

 

[Manbearcat]

This sort of mechanic is very very different from traditional mechanical alignment in D&D. I don't know the Dungeon World version of this, but it is similar to Beliefs in Burning Wheel, or to Milestones in Marvel Heroic RP.

In these approaches, it is generally accepted (I think) that the player has primary authority over deciding when the trigger has been meant: ie provided the player makes it clear in play that in (say) forcefully suppressing the testimony of the farmer who is being stalked by the werewolf s/he is doing so in order to stop a village-wide panic, s/he gets the benefit of the LN trigger. The GM's role is simply to judge player sincerity as part of overall game management, not to second-guess whether or not the farmer really is innocent, nor whether or not preventing a village-wide panci is really a social benefit.

Hence these approaches don't exhibit the features that I am critical of in relation to traditional mechanical alignment, of requiring the player to subordinate his/her evaluative framework to that of the GM.

Right on the money (and good post steenan). [MENTION=23240]steenan[/MENTION]'s post is very much like Beliefs in Burning Wheel and Milestones in Marvel Heroic RP (first thing I thought of), and to a lesser extent, like Dungeon World (and I agree with steenan that the feedback in Dungeon World is less provocative). The facets of such a system are very different than classic alignment in D&D. You have:

- Transparent, codified, non-negotiable trigger mechanism requiring no real adjudication.
- Immediate, positive mechanical feedback.

It produces a very different sort of play than what classic D&D alignment produces. Further, I would say that it functionally, in play, fulfills the promise that D&D alignment promised (tight thematic play that challenges on an ethical/moral basis and allows those answers to emerge in play) whereas D&D alignment so often has sown dysfunction and angst at the tables I have overseen. I say that as a GM with a considerable background in philosophy and ethics and a very stringent moral compass throughout my life. Regardless of that, I've never felt equipped to adjudicate the moral intricacies of a high fantasy D&D game with the wanderings of the classical alignment system and I've certainly never felt the imposition of my own will/opinion on such moral quandaries yielded universal table agreement (even if the disagreement was in silence).

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think this is a recurrent difficulty with alignment threads. That's why I choose Stalin/KGB for my example - I was hoping it would be a fairly safe one.

Just to be clear, I wasn't agreeing with the actions of Stalin or the KGB. I just think ethics are more complicated than you suggested and don't want to get into a real world discussion about the subject since it is way outside the realm of RPGs.

I can imagine having different beliefs. It's a type of anthropological exercise. It's just that that's not what I'm looking for in an RPG.

To give a comparison by reference to other fictional media: when I watch a film or read a book (say, the X-Men or The Quiet American) my main interest, as an audience member and critic, is not in judging how accurately the author communicatd his/her sincere convictions. My main interest is in thinking about those convictions, and their implications, and whether or not I agree with them.

Likewise in RPGing. The anthropological approach to play is not what I'm interested in.l

I think we do have different tastes. I'm not interested in play as primarily illusion or pretense, particularly in the evaluative realm.

I think this is a big source of many of our disagreements. I should say, I do not engage film or fiction the same way I engage RPGs. I can say, with fiction and movies, it isn't important for me that I agree with the creator's ideas, as long as I find them interesting, and find the story compelling, and it challenges my assumptions, I am content (as an example I disagree strongly with most of Robert Heinlein's politics, but love his books, particularly Starship Troopers which stakes a position I very strongly oppose). Still I think he covers the topics in an interesting way. But I can also turn that off, and just watch a movie to be entertained. I can enjoy something like Enter the Dragon purely for the adrenaline rush and over the top fun, without worrying about whether I agree what Bruce Lee and the filmakers had to say about violence.

But with RPGs, yes, I have no real interest in using them that way. For me they are not about exploring political or philosophical ideas. Just not what I am looking for.

Here is how I would articulate the contrast between the play I enjoy and the play I don't - it may not accurately capture your preferred play, and I'm trying to speak more generally than just trying to capture our particular difference of preference, but I hope it at least gestures in the right genral direction with respect to your preferences:

Obviously, given that we're both fantasy RPGing, we're creating imaginary worlds populated by imaginary persons (including gods, demons etc) who have a range of beliefs about what is good or bad. It seems to me that traditional mechanical alignment makes the pretense/illusion primary: all the participants are trying to create a coherent shared fiction in which all evaluation is in accordance with the parameters set by the GM in creating the world.

Whereas for me, the point of the pretense is to prompt real evaluative judgements by the participants, on which I expect them to act in playing the game. That action can be very varied: for instance, a player might persist in playing a PC in a way that s/he regards as wrongful, in order to see where it leads and what sorts of responses it provokes in him-/herself and from the other participants. But in engaging with the fiction and thinking about it and playing it, participants aren't expected to subordinate their own evaluative judgements. They're expected to engage them.

That's what I mean when I say the illusion/pretense is not the main thing. It's a means to an aesthetic end in which real values are primary.

I think if that is what you are trying to do, then yes, alignment might present some issues. But that is a very different approach to play than I am engaged in. Even when stuff like that might conceivably come up, like in my mafia games where the players are often taking on the roles of depraved hitmen and bank robbers, there isn't any effort toward introspection or enlightenment. It is to enjoy the fantasy of being in the Sopranos or Goodfellas. I certainly don't agree with any of the stuff the characters in that series or film do, but I can still pretend to be a mobster and adopt what I think is the mobster code of ethics, while having a great time doing it.