Do alignments improve the gaming experience?

[pemerton]

You posted “the relevant passage”, then add a bunch more “relevant” details later.

<snip>

I don’t find it any more enjoyable to have the hidden backstory come out in some extended interchange over PC design.

It's fine that you prefer a different approach to campaign backstory set up than me. That still doesn't make the backstory hidden, if in fact it's all out in the open before play starts!

When we discover, 15 levels later, that my interpretation of the RQ’s code was not correct (the other PC, with whom I disputed that code, turns out to be correct) I question why she kept granting those powers which I used to violate her wishes.

Because this is not being related to any actual play episode, I'm having a lot of trouble making sense of it in practical terms. I simply have no idea what 15 levels of play would look like in which two devotees of a single god disagree over what devotion to that god requires, and that comes out i play, and the god cares which of them is right, and no sort of information or resolution or development or compliation has occured within those 15 levels, until it is suddenly sprung on everyone like a rabbit from a hat.

If alignment is meant to help me deal with such a situation, OK - but because I can't even envisage such a situation occuring, or what it would look like, that might be part of why I don't like mechanical alignment.

The difference between our approaches is superficial.

Not for me. I see a deep difference between the GM responding to declared action in terms of "is that consistent with your prior characterisation?" and the GM responding in terms of "Are you doing that?" Both invovle valuation, but the first focuses more narrowly on one sort of aesthetic value (consistency of character) which is not that important to me.

Why does the system have to build it in mechanically?

My general preference, if the game is to engender a certain sort of behaviour by the PCs, is for the mechanics to support the behaviour in question. Conversely, if the mechanics don't push any sort of behaviour, then I assume that the players will make their own choices as they see fit, and wouldn't expect the game, in its design, to assume they would choose any particular way.

What actions would you like your paladin to perform which you imagine an alignment DM would restrict? Enlighten me please because all I have heard are fears, concerns and conjectures of GMs controlling players and I think it is only fair you list some examples, otherwise we will continue to talk around each other.

I mostly GM, and I am not interested in restricting or permitting my players' action declarations.

As a player, I am not interested in the GM monitoring my PC's behaviour for consistency, so that s/he is "the only one who knows for sure" whether my PC is being true to his/her ideals. That is distracting the focus of play and the mental energy of the participants from where I want it to be - on play, and the actual consequences of play in the fiction, and evaluative responses to that. A practical example I gave upthread was my PC's dilemma as to whether or not to propose marriagne: I want to play this out as part of the game. I am happy for the GM to be part of the play, both playing NPCs and kibbitzing as part of the metagame. I am not interested in the GM trying to answer by asking the abstract (and, in my view, irrelevant) question as to whether or not getting married would be consistent with my alignment.

Hypothetical: In your campaign your Paladin decides to slay orc babies so they do not grow up as evil orc warrriors, and he still envisions himself as LG - what do you do as DM?

I would stop using alignment rules to the hypothetical doesn't come up. Also, if I didn't want the issue of "what to do with the orc babies" to come up at all, I wouldn't place any orc babies in the scenario.

I've described an actual play episode above in which a PC did summarily executve some unconscious hobgoblin warriors, and I described how I dealt with that: I expressed my shock (as did the other players), and within the game, I had most of the NPCs present in the situation express support for what the PC did.

If only Lancelot were here to tell us how its done

Lancelot is actually an interesting example: in one of the Chretien de Troyes stories Lancelot kills half-a-dozen of his fellow knights while escaping from Gawain, who is pursuing him for his wrongdoing with Guinevere. I think to modern sensibilities this would seem quite outrageous, but there is no suggestion in the work that Lancelot does the wrong thing with such killings. Attitudes to death, including who is a permissible target of lethal violence - and particularly role-basd attitues (eg by being knights they have chosen to take the risk of being killed in interpersonal violence, and so can have no complaint if they are killed) - are variable across times and places.

To have the GM making judgements about these things in response to players' declarations of their PCs' actions has no appeal for me. It adds nothing to play, and sets up impediments to play in the ways I have described.

From the above paragraph it appears you have not comprehended anything from the 2e DMG I quoted for you and you default back to, IMO, a weak argument that is based around implying Alignment DMs are poor DMs and Players using Alignments wear straight-jackets.

I think I understood it quite well.

I'll add to what you quoted the following from the 2nd ed PHB, original printing, p 49:

It is possible for a player to change his character's alignment after the character is created . . . However, changing alignment is not without its penalties. . .

Although the player may have a good idea of whre the character's alignment lies, only the DM know for sure. . .

Changing the way a character behaves and thinks will cost him experience points and slow his adancement.​

This implies to me that the GM is expected to constantly measure the players' play of their PC, and to form judgements about it, and hence to decide whether or not alignment has changed. And because the PHB (p 46) defines good in this way - "Good characters are just that" - that judgement is going to require deciding whether what the players have their PCs do is good or not.

Part of the point of this measurement seems to be because the game takes the view that playing an alignment consistently (which means, given that "only the DM knows for sure", in accordance with the GM's conception) is a good thing in itself: after all, the PHB (at p 49) says "finding the right course of action within the character's alignment is part of the fun and challenge of roleplaying."

As that is actually, for me, not part of the fun and challenge of roleplaying, and in fact something that I find inimical to my enjoyment of the game (both as player and GM), I therefore do not use alignment.

I'm closing with another quote which you are welcome to ignore again:
2e DMG (page 28) "If a paladin rides through a town ravaged by disease and ignores the suffering of the inhabitants, he has transgressed his alignment in an obvious, but small, way. Several such failures could lead to an alignment change.
In the meantime, the paladin could recognise his danger and amend his ways, preventing the change and preserving his paladinhood. If the paladin burns the village to prevent the disease from spreading he commits a seriously evil act.
In this case, the DM is justified in instituting an immediate alignment change to lawful evil or even chaotic evil. The character eventually may be able to change back to lawful good alignment, but he will never again be a paladin."

For me this also drives home difference in playstyle.

At least as I play the game, it doesn't just happen that the paladin PC is riding through a diseased-ravaged town. The GM frames scenes like that. So, if I frame such a scene, I am doing it for a reason: to see how the players engage the scene via their PCs. If I have predetermind that only one response is permissible, than what was the point of framing the scene? Or, if I think that stopping the general momentum of play to have the paladin PC deal with these comparative mundanities would simply be derailing - and so, in effect, the scene would force the player to choose between an interesting session that is not true to their character, or a tedious session that is true to their character - then I wouldn't frame the scene.

Alignment doesn't add anything to my decision-making framework as a GM here.

Good for you not having to need the the Alignment aid as DM but can you at least be open to the idea that there are others out there (DMs and Players) that might like to use it?

As I've posted multiple times upthread, it's no skin of my nose if others find it useful.

But I was asked, had I ever had a real play experience to which alignment would have been an impediment. And I've been answering that question.

 

[pemerton]

real life moral debate typically incorporates a whole lot more than just two axes.

You say that as if it is a feature, not a bug. Failure to have a framework in debate leads to misunderstanding and inconsistency in analysis.

Contemporary English-speaking moral philosophy has a very sophisticated framework and vocabulary. I'm a professional participant in this debate, and am quite familiar with the technicalities of it.

My point is simply that I find AD&D/3E two-axis, 9-point alignment, which intends to give a general framework for classifying human moral outlooks (eg 2nd ed PHB, original printing, p 46: "These nine alignments serve well to define the attitudes of most of the people in the world), hopeless for the purpose. And I don't think it's a coincidence, in this respect, that it uses a classificatory scheme that no actual serious thinker about value and morality in human life has ever adopted.

Here's a reason why I think it's hopeless as a general scheme: it can't tell me whether Jefferson and Hamilton and their friends were chaotic (because favouring individual rights) or lawful (because believing that the rule of law was utterly crucial for securing such rights); nor can it tell me whether FDR was lawful (because running a social and economic programme - the New Deal - based on ideas of solidarity and common welfare) or chaotic (because prepared to threaten the rule of law in order to get his programme through).

Here's a reason why I think it's hopeless as a scheme in one version its own favoured domain, namely romantic fantasy adventure fiction: because key to the idea of a paladin, or monk, or other classic alignment-oriented archetype is that there is a profound unity between fulfilling one's duty to onself and fulfilling one's duty to others, and codes of honour and the like are grounded in this unity. Whereas alignment, by treating (for instance) LG and CG as equally viable forms of life, implicity denies this unity and hence the validity of these world views. The paladin and monk are, essentially, mistaken. (Hence my characterisation of Planescape, which correctly intuits this feature of alginment and takes it to its natural extension within the fiction, as cycnial and relativist.)

As I've posted upthread, there's one style of fantasy in which I think alignment can potentially make sense: if you assume an REH-esque worldview in which the world itself is devoid of value, and a protagonist shapes his/her own value through actions and choices; and if you put to one side all the standard debates of post-enlightenment politics (in which Jefferson, Hamilton and FDR were all engaged) and essentially frame political or social questions as civilisation/order vs barbarism/individual prowess; then you might use 9-point alignment as a shorthand descriptor for the outlook and inclinations of individual characters. But in this sort of world there is no room for clerics or paladins or monks - and it's no coincidence that such characters are not found in the Conan stories. (Yes there are priests, but they're either cynical, or sorcerers, or self-deluded, or more than one of the above.)

Even then I'm not sure that alignment would actually add to the game - I'm not surprised, for instance, that OGL Conan doesn't see the need for it.

 

[pemerton]

I think your interpretation of "awesome" play as it relates to Fate is wrong and doesn't fit with the paradigm of aspects in Fate.

<snip>

If you take a trouble aspect centered around a phobia of snakes... you have basically chosen that your character's weakness is an irrational fear of snakes and "awesome" play isn't awesome if it lets you squirm your way around or negate that fact.

I think to pull off a good game of Fate there has to be a lot of transparency, a lot of discussion, and <snip> players who can suppress their natural gamist and/or simulationist desires and set narrativism as the driving goal of the game

Maybe I've misunderstood, but the worry that a player is "squirming his/her way around or negating a weakness" strikes me as a gamist concern - it's a worry that the player is cheating to gain a mechanical advantage.

If there was going to be no monster at all, adding a snake complicates matters.

If, however, there was going to be a monster, it isn't a complication.

The fact that it is a snake is not yet a complication! The player is still free to deal with the snake in any way he pleases. The situation is not yet more complicated for the character than the ogre would have been.

I'm not 100% sure about what is meant by "there was going to be a monster". Are we talking about established backstory, or the GM's private intentions. If the latter, I don't see how those are relevant to adjudicating the game.

If the former, then yes I can see it. I had been envisaging the situation as the player rescuing some innocents; and the presence of the snake (or ogre, or whatever) is a complication (and if a snake triggers a Fate Point because it plays off the PC's aspect). If the established situation is not "the player rescuing some innocents" but "the player rescuing some innocents from an ogre" then the ogre is not, per se, an additional complication, given it's an already-established feature of the scene.

On the issue of "awesome play", I had in mind this passage that [MENTION=6688937]Ratskinner[/MENTION] cited (and I've seen others cite it before):

Asking the players to contribute something to the beginning of your first scene is a great way to help get them invested in what’s going on right off the bat. If there’s anything that’s flexible about your opening prompt, ask your players to fill in the blanks for you when you start the scene. Clever players may try to use it as an opportunity to push for a compel and get extra fate points right off the bat—we like to call this sort of play “awesome.”​

It seems to me that this an invitation to the player, who is out to rescue some innocents, to remind the GM that s/he has a special thing for snakes, and to earn a fate point rom doing so. It certainly doesn't imply, to me, that the GM is meant to frame the snake situation from the get go and thereby deny the player the requested fate point on the ground that the snake was always going to be there and so isn't a complication!

 

[billd91]

Here's a reason why I think it's hopeless as a general scheme: it can't tell me whether Jefferson and Hamilton and their friends were chaotic (because favouring individual rights) or lawful (because believing that the rule of law was utterly crucial for securing such rights); nor can it tell me whether FDR was lawful (because running a social and economic programme - the New Deal - based on ideas of solidarity and common welfare) or chaotic (because prepared to threaten the rule of law in order to get his programme through).

Such pointless dualism. Ever heard of Neutral? It's all the rage when the target you're trying to classify exhibits substantial elements of both extremes.

 

[pemerton]

On the topic of 2nd ed AD&D and paladins:

PHB, original printing, p 27:
If a paladin should ever knowingly and willingly perform an evil act, he loses the status of paladinhood immediately and irrevocably. All benefits are then lost and no deed or magic can restore the character to paladinhood: He is eer after a fighter . . . bound by the rules for fighters. He does not gain the benefits of weapon specialization . . . since he did not select this for his character at the start.​

That looks pretty cut-and-dried to me. In conjunction with the passage I quoted upthread that says "Only the DM knows for sure", that looks to me like it is not radically different from 1st ed AD&D or 3E: the player declares actions for his/her PC and the GM decides whether or not they are good or evil, and hence whether or not the player loses his/her class abilities and becomes a second-tier fighter.

 

[Feldspar]

Such pointless dualism. Ever heard of Neutral? It's all the rage when the target you're trying to classify exhibits substantial elements of both extremes.

Heh, under that approach then a paladin who commits an evil act for some greater good has in fact committed a neutral act and is safe from the wrath of their diety.

 

[pemerton]

Such pointless dualism. Ever heard of Neutral? It's all the rage when the target you're trying to classify exhibits substantial elements of both extremes.

I'm not bowled over by the power of a classificatory scheme which has a "lawful" category, and yet which does not place the most prominent champions of the rule of law (which these days is most often defended on its role in upholding individual dignity) within that category!

Here's another one I just noticed, having Gygax's DMG in front of me (from p 23):

Neutral Good: . . . law and chaos are merely tools to use in bringing life, happiness and prosperity to all deserving creatures. Order is not good unless it brings this to all . . .

Lawful Good: . . . order and law are absolutely necessary to assure good, and . . . good is best defined as whatever brings the most benefit to the greatest number of decent, thinking creatures and the least woe to the rest.​

So the only difference between NG and LG is over the sociological question of whether order is per se a source of welfare - apparently they don't actually have differing conceptions of welfare, nor of desert!

No wonder paladins cause so much heartache - if played at all according to archetype, they have radically different conceptions of welfare and of desert from Bentham, Jefferson and Hamilton.

 

[pemerton]

Heh, under that approach then a paladin who commits an evil act for some greater good has in fact committed a neutral act and is safe from the wrath of their diety.

Cute!

 

[Feldspar]

One idea I had as part of a plan to remove crunchy alignment mechanics from 3.x was to replace the Paladin Detect Evil ability with a bonus to Sense Motive equal to their class level. Just throwing it out there apropo of nothing since I thought it was cool

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think if you are looking for a real world classification of morality, then alignment isn't a good choice. It is an artificial construct baked into the setting of D&D. If you don't find it useful, then it probably isn't fir you. But I think a lot of people are just not having the difficulty you seem to have pemerton. I think you may be over analyzing it. Given all the threads where historical and pop culture figures are talked abt in terms of what alignment they would have, and given that on those threads most people seem fine using the alignment system as a lens for judgement (though there is certainly debate over whether the behavior of a given character or person falls into L or C or N) I think it is fair to say the probems are not as bad in practice as you paint them in theory. Now, for some people alignment wont click, orr presents problems due to arguments and issues about the role of the GM. That is fair. Not everyonef is going to like it. But you seem to be arguing that it is incomprehensible and drawing on your real world experience with philosophy to make that point. It is great that you have a passion for the subject, but i dontthink most gamers are examining alignment through the framework of western philosophy.