Do alignments improve the gaming experience?

[Dwimmerlied]

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)?

I haven't. And here's the thing. If I ever created a character concept that could be hamstrung because of differing expectations, alignment or otherwise, and later became handicapped because I myself did not make sure to understand what the go was, I'd feel I had no one to blame but myself. I'd then suck it up and make sure I could still have fun. Depending on the degree, I might be disappointed, so I would seek compromise if it were possible, but I'd make sure to be more careful next time. And I would totally expect the same from any reasonable adult.

But my scenario is pretty contrived because I'm finding it hard to imagine such situations in the games I've played. Ok, so there's the Paladin. But the first thing I think of when I think Paladin is "Alignment stuff" (right before "boring"). The moral code is such a big thing that I find it hard to believe discussions about expectations wouldn't be happening before game. Would you, as a DM immediately take away a barbarian's rage ability because you feel she is playing more toward lawful than chaotic? The DM's guide certainly doesn't suggest it's a good idea. Is coming to a working compromise so out of the question in your scenario that players are frequently robbed of their mechanical abilities?

If I felt that a cleric were playing against their God's doctrine I'd talk to his or her player and determine what the deal was. I might roleplay the god visiting in a dream. The player would at every step understand the consequences of their playstyle, and in turn I would work with them to try to ensure it would work for them still. After all if it really is part of their character concept, they'll have some ideas. But, and serious question here, is this so out there? Isn't this what you would do? Would you game with someone who it is likely you will reach irreconcilable obstacles with?

I hope my reply doesn't come off as snarky or anything. I'm genuinely interested in the replies, and my mind is open btw.

 

[Bedrockgames]

That's one way to see it, I suppose. Or, alternatively, 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. That's where I suspect the arguments normally come from - not from the adjudication, but from a lack of understanding between players and GM before play begins. If the player is somehow surprised that killing an orc baby is an issue, sure, there'll be an argument. But, if you warn the player ahead of time where the lines are, and where the grey areas might be, then they make informed choices, and have much less of a basis for an argument.



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? Does the player get to argue with the basic physics of the world? No. The player's judgement is about what he or she does *in the face of* the world reality.

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 agree with what you say here. Communication can go a long way. I tend to see alignment as tied to the setting cosmology, so it isn't necessrily commentary on real world ethics, just like the existence if a panthein of gods isn't a commentary on real world religions. When I first played D&D, I admit the latter came very hard for me, because I was raised in a religious household and i couldn't conceive of a world where my religion and god weren't true. I kept asking the GM, where is God in this settin? As Ai got older, I realized these are fictional worlds, with their own rules, cosmologies and cultures. I find I can accept the settings definitions of good and evil, and seperate that from my own unserstanding of good and evil.

 

[Cadence]

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

Never, since 1981. I'm having trouble even remembering any misunderstandings.

 

[fagura]

Since most people do not have such experiences, let me chip in to the conversation

There is at least one major debate about alignment in most campaigns I run with my group. Not necessarily conflict, but debate. There are some important causes behind this other than the structure of the alignment system itself of course, ie we are rotating the DM's chair every few months to keep it more interesting, nevertheless we do not change settings and sometimes even campaign, so this means there is no 1 person who has control of world ethics. It is debatable. Second important reason is that -compared to our teen years 15-20 ago- sessions are less frequent, last less and everyone is less prepared and more tired. This means less discussion around the campaign / city / setting before play.

I can share more than a few debates on alignment we had in my group (one of which was in Curse of the Crimson throne Pathfinder adventure path in book 2 I think, where a paladin, believing that the queen was behind the king's murder demanded her interrogation during the public trial of the main suspect, but to avoid spoilers i won't get into that). Anyway, the most recent debate example was the following: I was playing a female, human enchanter (Wizard specialist). I had created the character back in d&d 2nd edition, CG character with all the typical characteristics. I had not played her for many many years. A couple of months ago I decided to convert her to Pathfinder and play her in a sequence of Pathfinder society scenarios we would run with the group. Nevertheless, I wanted to alter her personality to something that would cause some conflict of values to the character. So, I talked to the DM and agreed that my character was convinced by an evil outsider (slowly, through many interactions) that the only way she could save her husband who was missing, was to kill 100 innocent people and make it look like an accident (not necessarily all of them together - the point was to 'accumulate' 100 innocent souls and trade them for the soul of the beloved one without the society or other PCs realize who was behind this). The character's motivation was to save the beloved person, nevertheless she would sacrifice innocent souls. So, we decided LE would be the most appropriate alignment. I started making my plans. First 2 sessions everything was fine, although no innocent had been killed yet, I was still gaining the other PCs trust. In the third session, one player that had missed the first two, joined with a paladin. First thing he does, detect evil to all people present (PCs and NPCs alike). He senses evil only at my enchanter. And then suddenly, the whole balance shifts. The paladin says "we should not leave her alone with that guy" and tells the NG sorcerer (whom he knew from previous adventures) "keep a close eye on her" and so on. And there comes the debate: There is a character who until now has not harmed anyone (in fact she was CG until 2 sessions ago) and suddenly she is the black sheep of the party because the paladin saw 'red' in his detection ability. Doesn't this take away from the game experience? If there was no such mechanic or no alignment, the paladin would have to find out for himself , role playing with my enchanter. He might see through her or not, but in every case it would definitely be a richer role playing experience.

To conclude, we had a long talk about when my character would have turned evil (after committing the act or after deciding to do it), whether she could have been considered CN since she tries to save her family and might even feel guilty about these people or try to save them later etc.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Doesn't this take away from the game experience? If there was no such mechanic or no alignment, the paladin would have to find out for himself , role playing with my enchanter. He might see through her or not, but in every case it would definitely be a richer role playing experience.

Until you talk with the paladin player, you cannot definitively say that it'd be a richer experience for that person, nor should you claim to know what would be best for that person.

The real question is, whether or not you think you think it took away from your experience. From what you've said... I read it as that you had hoped to play the "secret evil person" scenario for quite a while, killing innocents on the way to 100 without difficulties... and then I would imagine only when you neared the conclusion of your quest that the problems to finish it off would start cropping up. Which would explain why you went with 100 people to begin with. I mean, you could have just as easily said you needed to kill just 3... in which case those three kills would have had a much more massive impact on you and the game.

Instead... the difficulties to finish your quest has popped immediately. You now are stuck dealing with the fallout of being an evil character prior to the "free period" of your character acting evil secretly that it seems to me like you were hoping to have.

So the real question is... what's most important for you? Being able to "be evil" without consequence for a good period of the game... or roleplaying the cnsequences of being an evil character? If it's the latter... then its quite easy enough to say that your character has already killed 98 innocents on the way to finishing the quest (prior to the game startng), and it's only now that you have just two more to do that your character is stuck with the party up his butt (with the casting of the detect evil). It now becomes an interesting roleplay challenge of trying to get those last two taken care of while being watched like a hawk.

But if it was the former... that it was the possibility of just roleplaying little individual scenarios of killing innocent people by yourself and "being bad"... then I can see why the alignment system might bother you. You aren't allowed to be evil on your own terms... there's consequences you are being forced to play immediately. But to be honest... that's really something that you'd be dealing with even without an alignment system in place. Because being evil for evil's sake means nothing if you aren't interacting with the conflicts.

A party that walks through a dungeon which is free of conflicts and consequences tends to be a rather staid or boring scenario.

A player being evil which is free of conflicts and consequences tends to be the same.

 

[Blackbrrd]

As a DM, when the game focused on alignment, the players played their characters more one dimensional, so my answer would is: no. It's much better to have made some general thoughts on how your character would act and write those down, than to come up with an alignment. It makes the characters less stereotypical.

 

[Celebrim]

I am challenging the general concept of alignments and the way they are used in most OGL settings and games.

Next to getting rid of Vancian magic, this is probably the most common challenge made to the traditional AD&D framework. Honestly, I find it a bit trite and usually misguided.

But what do they offer to an experienced player?

A great deal more than they offer the neophyte.

Firstly, there are 9 alignments. In reality, there are more than 9.000 ways of thinking and types of personalities.

So, your first misunderstanding is to equate alignment with personality. Alignment is not the same as personality and makes no attempt to record a characters personality. We could make some broad generalizations about personality by examining the combination of alignment and the characters social attributes (Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma), but even then there would be significant room for variation and a great many unrecorded factors. Whether the person is lascivious or chaste, outgoing or introverted, fastidious or slovenly, for example, is not something that can be determined easily by alignment. Certain sterotypes suggest themselves of course, but alignment is broad enough to incorporate departures from the sterotypes if we employ or imagination.

Let's think of a woman who has to choose between the survival of her son and an -unknown to her- tribe of 1.000 people. She chooses her son. Does this make her evil? Or non-good? She just let 1.000 people die to save 1 person, nevertheless many people might argue that their own mother might make the same choice.

I'm amazed that you've decided to be critical of alignment and yet seem to lack even the most basic understanding of it. You propose a very quintessential choice between the needs of the many and the needs of the one, between society and the individual, between the personal and the impersonal, and you seem to think that this is within the constrains of the alignment system principally a question of good and evil.

According to the alignment system, we certainly can't know whether this mother is good or evil (or even neutral). But we can know that she certainly isn't very piously lawful.

Is a person with schizophrenia evil? He might kill a dozen innocent men next morning for no reason, or be the most considerate, gentle, nice person to everyone for the next month.

First of all, schizophrenia is a separate disorder from multiple personality disorder. Schizophrenia is generally regarded as CN on the grounds it creates a private internal and unreviewable reality for the person. Sociopathic behavior on the other hand is generally regarded as NE in that it believes in the value of evil and destruction for its own sake. Many other personality disorders might simply be extreme personality quirks without forcing a particular alignment save where they force particular sorts of actions. The problem of multiple personality disorder is generally dealt with by giving each personality a separate alignment.

Why do we need to put a tab on a character's way of thinking and say "He is CN or NE"?

That's the heart of it. People who condemn the alignment system fundamentally do not wish the player character's thinking to be reviewable or labeled.

Secondly, mentalities are changeable. Past experiences shape the way of thinking. A character might begin NG, see cruelty in life and turn CN and then meet and be part of a kind family and turn CG or a totally different course that goes from LG to CE and back. It is still the same person. Only last time he adventured, anti-paladins could smite him and this time paladins can smite him.

Sure. And alignment is changeable as well. But it's quite possible to make a journey of personality change and character growth entirely within an alignment. For example, a character might be NG, see cruelty in life and become cold and cynical and perhaps pursue isolation and an acetic lifestyle, then meet and be part of a kind family and repent and become more warm and sociable, all without leaving his essential NG outlook on life.

Thirdly, there is a fine line between thinking of doing sth and actually doing it. A character wants to commit a very evil act. Nevertheless, he never does it. Was it because he never got the chance? Was it because sth internal stopped him every time? Only he knows (and sometimes not even him). Is he evil already? Does he become evil the moment he does it? How does a game base its mechanics on such a fine line that even the player might not be able to interpret?

This is precisely what alignment answers. The vast majority of evil characters in my campaign have never murdered anyone. What the evil (or good) alignment marker indicates for the DM whether, if they felt that murder advanced their interests, they would do so.

And lastly, there is the local perception of good / evil and law / chaos. Different mindsets might be considered evil somewhere or good somewhere else.

Sure. The people who are LE don't necessarily believe that they are in the wrong for being lawful evil. They may in fact believe that they are in the right, and that what you call 'evil' is in fact good. People who are piously CN don't believe that they are wrong - but that they are in the right. They see the fundamental root of all evil as being LN. LN's in their turn see the reverse. And even within an alignment there can be sharp disagreements. Two Lawful societies can have competing rules and interests. They may admire and understand the other, but still see each other as enemies. The personal interests of a Chaotic can of course sharply disagree with the personal interests of another Chaotic.

What the alignment system tells us though is that these things - evil and good - are real and not merely artificial constructs. Of course, even within that reality different alignments might believe that each alignment is less real than the other. For example, a NG person may believe that Good is a real and absolute thing, and that Evil (though real) is simply the absence of good. The same person may believe that Law and Chaos are artificial constructs of society and persons, and that - while the represent real traits - they are simply the flawed and broken shards of true understanding. And so forth for each of the alignments - the NE person may deny that good exists and claim instead that there are only different expressions of evil and that the 'righteous' are no better than anyone else.

Alignment allows us to resolve the complexities of relativism.

For me, the real heart of the matter is that I've never once in 30 years seen the removal of alignment lead to greater consideration of moral and ethical matters. The pretext that in doing so you are allowing for more nuanced and mature exploration in practice is always just a pretext. It invariably leads to things like, "We want to run an evil game, but we don't want to label or characters evil.", or has a basis like, "We are all in real life unreflective moral relativists and we don't want anything in our game that might challenge our understanding and make us think. We want a fundamentally chaotic game were each person is the sole judge of whether they are doing 'the right thing' or not." And so forth.

So yeah, I've got a bit of a bias against calls for removing alignment. I find them based on weak understanding of what alignment is and to generally have ulterior motives.

 

[Celebrim]

Some observations based on 30 years of D&D...

1) Ninety percent of players are unable to play characters with differing alignments. I've even seen this problem in some GMs. Every character ends up having fundamentally the same alignment, modes of behavior, and often personality. Attempts to relabel their next character by choosing a different alignment fail, because either they always end up playing themselves or else they never overcome the fundamental belief that this is a game, the character is but a playing piece, and sense it is to be a game it must be played competitively. This invariably leads to every character manifesting behavior that could be called Chaotic Evil. They do whatever is expedient for the advancement of their playing piece.

2) Alignment is a really bad system in the hands of a neophyte. Neophyte players confuse alignment with personality, and end up believing that every personality quirk has a strong alignment component and so produce highly rigid one dimensional stereotypes of nine modes of behavior. Neophyte DMs make the same mistake, fail to clearly communicate what falls within or without of alignment, and use alignment as a sledgehammer to either punish players or railroad the players. This frequently leads to unhappiness, and people blame the alignment system. But because of point #1, this seldom improves anything but the table contract.

3) Alignment systems in some form occur in the majority of fantasy RPGs, but are not limited to fantasy RPGs. In the case of say RIFTS, it's almost identical to the two axis AD&D system. Other systems build alignment through some sort of advantage and disadvantage system, or record alignment on some sort of scoring track (humanity, for example). Star Wars of course has Dark Side points. In all cases, the character is making some mark on their character that implicitly promises they'll try to conform their play to some standard which may or may not be convenient to advancing the character as a playing piece. Neglect of these systems invariably leads to treating all player character's purely as playing pieces with no more inherent individuality, personality, or beliefs than the dog, shoe, and hat in Monopoly. Play at such tables if it features any true role-playing at all, features role-playing as a form of metagaming where the intent is not to explore the personality of a character, but to cajole and wheedle and amuse the DM in the hopes of getting what you want.

4) The AD&D alignment system is not less sophisticated than the alignment systems of other RPGs, and often it is more sophisticated.

5) Games that don't feature alignment systems generally assume a single alignment. They assume that everyone has the some overarching alignment and allegiance. If you are resisting the supernatural in a Call of Cthulhu game then it can be assumed that you are fundamentally aligned with humanity and thus 'good' in such a game. Moreover there is a presumption of heroism inherent in the game system and an assumption that play is directed toward a heroic goal and that players aren't for example, going to pursue a bootlegging enterprise independent of interaction with the Cthulhu Mythos.

6) As a consequence of #1, having a player play a character like a Paladin who is heavily dependent on adhering to a moral code when the player themselves doesn't have a deep understanding and feeling for the moral code and its value can be disastrous. Much of stereotypical bad Paladin play comes out of people who either believe Paladins are the bad guys, or who have overly simplistic understanding not bound by the motivation to actually be that sort of heroic example. Elizabeth Moon's critique that real people with those beliefs would never act in the way they are almost invariably presented rings true to me.

 

[Li Shenron]

Do alignments improve the gaming experience?

Short answer: alignment systems improved at least my own gaming experience.

I've run and played games using mostly the 1-axis and 2-axis traditional D&D alignment systems, the M:tG five-colours system, and rank-based honor systems.

They have all been great tools for steering roleplay and help stay in-character.

When they fall flat, it's when some characters' mechanics are bound to alignment, and either the player refuses to accept the rules decided by designers (i.e. the player wants the exclusive mechanics but doesn't want to play by that alignment) while the DM wants to enforce them, or player and DM have diverging interpretation on the alignment description.

The best situation is then, when alignment is not bound to mechanics, at least not making the PC lose abilities if the player in not good enough in roleplaying the alignment properly. Then people can choose an alignment because they actually want to roleplay that well, and not because there's a cool powerz granted if they choose Lawful Good.

 

[Li Shenron]

As a DM, when the game focused on alignment, the players played their characters more one dimensional, so my answer would is: no. It's much better to have made some general thoughts on how your character would act and write those down, than to come up with an alignment. It makes the characters less stereotypical.

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

The flip of the coin is, IMXP, that without a track to follow ("Lawful Good" is not much of a track, but its broad description in the 3e PHB is already a usable enough track) most players tend to end up always roleplay themselves, or just do the most "efficient" thing.