Lawful Good Alignment and Roleplaying

[takyris]

I have the sad metagamey feeling that if it were an NPC, he'd either attack the gnome or turn him into the authorities, but that because it's a PC, the result will be something along the lines of, "I'm not doing anything, but BOY am I unhappy with you!"

Dude, gnomeboy acted under false pretenses and caused the deaths of two innocent people, one of them a child. At BEST, if the rest of the party could convince the monk to not turn the gnome into the harpers as an accessory, the monk should refuse to continue on with the gnome in the party, going so far as to leave himself if necessary.

 

[Haradim]

I would have to agree that he can go either way, and have to say that it is ultimately up to the player in question.

Being LG doesn't make him a pinnacle of Goodness and justice. It just says that has proven to be a Good person with Orderly (Lawful) means of going about his life; even Paladins are like this (they gain their bent toward 'pinnacle of Goodness' largely from their Code and given duty). His Lawful aspect may be summed up as a need to remain disciplined, in preparation for his eventual spiritual ascention. So his Lawful aspect need not indicate any desire for justice or vengeance; such things may, in fact, be frowned upon as emotional, and thus disruptive to his spritual perfection.

His Good side can indeed decide to show mercy. He may not see the character as having any direct involvement in the matter, and thus, not someone who should be unduly punished for what happened.

Of course, there is nothing saying he can't do otherwise. He can remain Lawful so long as he doesn't become unlawful, which isn't likely to be a big factor in this case. And he can remain Good, so long as he doesn't take things too far (such as murdering the character in question). Since it generally takes a fair bit to alter alignment in one instance, he is fairly safe from such effects.

Not that being LN is necessarily a bad thing...

That's my incoherent take on things.

 

[Dakkareth]

As the gnome a) didn't do it himself and b)didn't know, what was going to happen, he have been and unwitting accomplice, but not a murderer himself.

So if he was to show genuine remorce and sever his ties with that rival organisation, one could indeed leave him go. This would put emphasis on the 'good' part of lawful good.

But as the lawful aspect seems to be prevalent (monk and only recent change to LG), a less forgiving attitude would certainly be in character.

 

[Petrosian]

The first thing i tell my players regarding alignment: "Play your CHARACTER, not your alignment."

The second thing i tell my players about alignment: "Alignment is a description DERIVED from the character's actions. Alignment should never DRIVE a character's actions."

So, to me, Since alignments don't forgive or forget but rather characters do, the only issue which might arise for this character would occur if the player and the GM have different views of what the "order of monks" would consider proper. This would be important for games in which the Gm enforces the monk alignment rules. Were i running such, i would tell the player, as GM, when he suggests that course of action something like "your character would recall how highly the order treasures it traditional views on..." and use that to make sure the PLAYER knows that his character knows what the "law of the land" is and can decide whether his character folllows the code or whether his character decides to in this case make an exception. In most cases, even if he makes an exception, thats perfectly fine... alignments don't change because you differ on one thing. Even the PHB iirc goes into how every person of alignment X doesn't have the same traits on every issue of alignment. So maybe your character, if thats how you see him as a PERSON, is a very lawful good character who is not into the eye for an eye and is into forgiveness. maybe he is much more willing to see true repentance and regret as worthy of forgiveness and a chance to redeem oneself.

But again this comes back to what the character thinks, what the person you are roleplaying is like as opposed to an alignment.

 

[DonAdam]

Re: Re: Lawful Good Alignment and Roleplaying

Since when does LG mean Forgive & Forget?

I don't think forgive and forget is necessary, but I think it is allowed by the monk. The monk's personality fits LG (IMO) and forgiving Gimble fits his personality (we all agree that he has acted very consistently, the debate is whether he has acted LG).

It sounds like this is partially caused by your DM having a simplistic understanding of LG types. (no offense)

No offense taken. In fact, this was exactly the point of the argument. I take the plain, loose sense of the words "lawful" and "good," putting the two together, because I think that with the PHB definitions of the nine alignments you're limiting the spectrum of personalities that will ever appear in the game.

Tense was going by the PHB definitions, which I never bothered to look at closely. If you want what I think about alignments, the Book of the Righteous' explanations (on page 222-223) pretty much fit what I think they should be. Of course, with those definitions, there is no way that you can justify barbarians, bards, or monks being limited on the law/chaos axis.

Tense & DonAdam - discussion about this topic could go on and on, but your input is much more interesting than the theoretical LG-as-a-principle discussion.

Well, the way we discuss things, it ALWAYS takes on a theoretical, abstract bent. It's a habit for us, and this discussion was no exception.

Question to you 2:
Why would the monk be expected, in any way shape or form, to Forgive & Forget?
Does it make the campaign easier (for the DM and Gimble's player) if his PC does that?
What exact actions or statements has the monk player done IC that you guys had a 'problem' with? In other words, why did "some other players disagree with how he had roleplayed it..."?

It was not expected for metagame reasons, but because I know the characters (it was "expected" as in "predicted," not as in an ought statement). The party represented a spectrum of preferences for dealing with the little bugger. Tense favored killing or abandoning him, which made alot of sense given the interactions those two characters had had. Beld's personal relationship with Gimble, and his recent experiences with his vengeance-mongering former best friend, led me to think that he would be the most merciful. Tense is the one who brought alignment into consideration, which, admittedly, we had sidelined.

Something that we didn't bring up in our discussion, though, is that, though Beld is reclusive (being a monk), if he had a best friend in the party it was probably Gimble. They had worked as a kind of "sub-team" for infiltrations the party did early on, and they are often of one mind when the party is making plans (which is roughly 1/6 to 1/5 of the campaign, literally).

Also, Beld, though LG, comes from a LN order. Gimble is LN (having worked for Khelben's splinter harper group) so most of Beld's other colleagues are alot like Gimble, so they got along well.

Lastly: what the hell is with the name of Gimble? It certainly is a sign that the player of Gimble has no ... well, suffice to say, it's not a good indicator of the player's skills.

He picked it out of the PHB, LONG before the little bard showed up.

P.S. Story hours for this should be coming soon.

 

[DonAdam]

Two more observations:

1) They did hand the gnome over to the harpers at the first chance. The monk supported this; what happened was that the other characters wanted to beat Gimble into a pulp right there, and he objected.

2) I wouldn't say "lawfulness" was more important. The campaign had been going for 3 semesters (this was the beginning of the 3rd) and he had switched to good halfway through the 1st semester.

 

[reapersaurus]

Thanks for the replies.

So... what exactl problems did some of the other players have with the monk's actions?

 

[allenw]

DonAdam,
Is/was the Gnome a PC? If so, I have to question your apparent choice to put a PC into a no-win situation that, if properly roleplayed on all sides, could quite possibly result in being killed by the other PCs.

 

[PowerWordDumb]

I'd just like to note with great appreciation that this thread has yet to devolve to the oh-so-trite "LG types must rehabilitate all evildoers" level.

I came in expecting to have to hold down a gag reflex at the usual touchy-feely interpretation of LG, but you folks are doing a great job of realistic and mature interpretations of the alignment and its roleplaying implications. Thanks for restoring my faith in this sites ability to talk through alignment questions!

 

[DonAdam]

I think Tense's objection is that, though we all expected Beld to have the least severe reaction, that it was not a lawful good (by the PHB definition) reaction. On the spectrum of kill/forgive, he was definitely closest to forgive out of the whole party. Tense believes that the LG character would be on the opposite side of the spectrum.

As far as the gnome being a PC... he agreed to it, and we had a blast with it. He knew this was going to happen from the beginning of the campaign. Yes, they could have killed him. Yes, they could have kicked him out of the party. Yes, they could have forgiven him.

What happened? Well, you'll have to wait for the story hour to find out