Understanding Alignment

[Hussar]

It does exist because thats how it works. Look at the history of mankind. It is full of such things. The only difference is that in D&D the cosmos itself is the one who assigns you to a team.

In the real world, when we kill people because we're convinced that we're team Good and they are team Evil, history pretty much always calls us the villains.

 

[Derren]

In the real world, when we kill people because we're convinced that we're team Good and they are team Evil, history pretty much always calls us the villains.

So? Who calls the Allies the villians for killing Nazis?

 

[MrGrenadine]

So? Who calls the Allies the villians for killing Nazis?

Any surviving members of the Axis, I'm sure.

On another note: great post Celebrim.

 

[Afrodyte]

So? Who calls the Allies the villians for killing Nazis?

And you guys were doing so well. *Sigh*

I'd love to see an online conversation where Nazis were mentioned in a discussion about the Nazis and the Holocaust.

 

[Derren]

And you guys were doing so well. *Sigh*

I'd love to see an online conversation where Nazis were mentioned in a discussion about the Nazis and the Holocaust.

You might want to read your own link as "nazi" here wasn't used as an insult at all.

The discussion is about "killing someone just because they are evil". Hussar says that this is unrealistic and that any real world example ended up being labled evil by historians.

Thing is, that is not the case. Nazis are the more prominent examples of "Team Evil" and so far no historian labled the allies as villians becuase they killed Nazis for being Nazis.

Another examples would be the crusades where. While there are some historians would say that the christians were the real villians, the majority don't lable them as villians for killing muslims.

There are of course many example where Hussars statement would fit, but unlike those examples "Team evil" really is evil, something which makes this different than the real world examples were "Team evil" was just propaganda.

PS: What I observed is that the ones who end threads are not the ones using the word "Nazi", but the ones who ponce in with "Goodwins Law" posts and completely derail the discussion.

 

[CCamfield]

So? Who calls the Allies the villians for killing Nazis?

Nobody, I'm sure.

But what degree of behavior is considered "good" in the pursuit of good?

Since you brought up the Allies, about the Dresden firebombing campaign? That's highly controversial.

This very thread, to me (like so many before it) is an indication of why alignment doesn't work. We can't agree on what it means or how to use it, and at the end of the day character personality and motivation should be considered first.

 

[MrGrenadine]

This very thread, to me (like so many before it) is an indication of why alignment doesn't work. We can't agree on what it means or how to use it, and at the end of the day character personality and motivation should be considered first.

Except we don't all need to agree for the alignment system to work, unless we all play in the same campaign--which we don't.

Obviously, the Good-Evil/Law-Chaos system is robust enough to handle multiple interpretations, and can be willfully ignored by those who wish to use no alignment system or some other system.

But just because some folks don't understand it, or like it, or use it, that doesn't mean its not a valid and useful system.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

And, here we have exactly what I said earlier, which Prof C claimed didn't exist - Team Good kills Team Evil for no other reason than they are Team Evil and we are Team Good.

Um, no.

I claimed that Team Evil has to do something to be Team Evil, and that's when Team Good steps in.

Crusades were sparked by the invasions, destruction, and other nasty bits from the Seljuk Turks.

WW2 was sparked by the Nazi invasion.

Give me an example in which Team Evil is just sitting around, not doing anything to harm anyone, and Team Good comes in to defeat them.


As far as alignment not working goes:

I've seen that claim made multiple times throughout the thread, despite it being shown to be not true each time - at least in respects to people who enjoy alignment - so I feel the question must be asked: why is there such an emphasis in trying to prove to others that alignment doesn't work to people who enjoy using it?

Note that I'm not asking for reasons you dislike alignment, I'm asking why you want to prove to others that it is so completely flawed that people cannot logically enjoy using it or having it.

 

[awesomeocalypse]

May I suggest that one possible crux of the matter is whether or not you believe ethics and morals can be described in a systematic way at all. Let's return to that in a bit.

They can be described in whatever way you like. That doesn't make them objective--even hard, logic-driven philosophy (say, for example, utilitiarianism ala Peter Singer) relies to some degree on givens. Morality, as far as any of us can know, is subjective.

Let me also suggest that that is another possible crux of the matter. One of the biggest problems in any systematic description of ethics or morality is that people will tend to disagree over what actions belong in the bucket we want to label 'good' and the bucket we want to label 'evil'. I've never really seen this as a huge problem, but I can see why some people find it a stumbling block. For me, so long as the world's owner describes what belongs in each bucket for his world, it doesn't bother me that his conception of what belongs in each bucket does not correspond to my personal real world ethics and beliefs. For others, it matters very much to them that there character not only acts in the way that they call good (or evil if they prefer) but that they recieve the label that they think that they deserve for those actions. For my part, it only matters that I'm warned ahead of time what to expect.

It bothers me a lot, primarily because it doesn't ring true.

Leaving aside the specific example for which we have insufficient information to make an answer of any sort, here is another possible difficulty. I can put it no more plainly than saying, "Does it matter what you think of your own actions?" Surely very very few people indeed think ill of themselves, but what does that matter? Surely far more people do evil than like to think of themselves as evil. Surely evil can feel it has the best of motives.

But whose opinions do matter? Your family's? Your community's? Your country's? Someone else's country's? Your god's? Someone else's gods? The law?

And if it is your "family's", does that mean your family all necessarily share the same opinion? If not, whose gets more weight?

In my experience, the vast, vast majority of people place themselves in their own mental "good person" bucket, and for any one of them you could find literally millions of people who would place them in the "bad person" bucket.

Once again, we reach a point where a value judgment is being made. We are told that there being no univeral absolute is, 'the way it should be'.

Merely the way it is, as far as any of us can know.

But again, in earlier additions of D&D no diety when described ever had such broad and simplistic teachings nor lacked for highly specific goals or particular things that they cared about. Why this pretence that such things were lacking in earlier editions and are novel when introduced?

Right, but what I'm saying is that those specific goals and teachings are all that matter. Removing alignment would take away nothing whatsoever. "Neutral" or "Good" are phrases that are going to be taken in slightly different directions by everyone, and will be hopelessly broad regardless--why not just focus on the specific descriptions of what each god (and person) cares about and acts like and believes? What is alignment adding?

I fail to see how this was any different than an older edition of D&D except that you've perhaps gotten mature enough not to argue about it in a meta-game way. Valuing order, duty, responsibility, obedience to family and so forth over passion and emotion is a description of 'lawful' over 'chaotic' broadly accepted by virtually everyone that has ever taken a stab at describing the goals of the two competing ideologies. Why in the world should we think this a conflict over what 'good' is, I cannot tell except to say that perhaps the problem is that 'modern conceptions' of good are perhaps biased to one side of the lawful/chaotic question. After all, we no longer believe in the goodness of arranged marriages nor do we think that a parent forbidding one to marry should have the slightest constraint on someone's actions, yet I think on reflection that we would not want to condemn a society that thought that way (say modern South Korea) as being intrinsicly 'evil' for thinking that.

Old editions of D&D made alignment a mechanic. Arguing about it in a metagame way was an inevitability when you had rules stating that items and even entire classes would stop working if they weren't "good". How could that possible *not* lead to metagame arguments over what constitutes good and evil? "You lose some paladin powers when you no longer uphold these specific teachings and beliefs of your god" is a vastly more useful way to approach the problem than, "you lose your paladin powers if you aren't good." The former means the same thing to everyone. The latter means pretty much what each individual is inclined to take from it.

Before we look at your puzzle, I'd like to note that the real murkiness and uselessness of this sort of question is related to a problem not found within roleplaying games - the incompleteness of information possessed by the persons seeking to answer the question. The major reason IMO we have difficulties answering the question, "What alignment is Batman?" or "What alignment is JFK?" is that every answerer tends to have a different incomplete picture of the character or person who is being put to the test. In the case of 'What alignment is Batman', almost everyone knows who Batman is generally, and is acquainted perhaps with one or three or ten of his adventures, but few of us are so well read as to be acquainted with all of his adventures. You can always tell those that have something approaching expertise in the subject when they answer, "Which one?", because Batman's presentation has evolved and forked in some many miriad ways that we can't realistically call him one consistant character. And, even if we were the expert on Batman, we should never really know all about Batman from the pages of his adventures. The problem with JFK is even more acute, for even if we were a world reknowned expert on JFK, we should know him less well for all that than the average fan boy knows Batman because JFK remains an enigma to history shrouded in secrecy, debate, legend, and mystery, but most of all because we have no real window into JFK's private mental life. There is no definitive account of anyone's life which we may be privy to.

This is true, but in a good roleplaying game it should *also* be true. Don't tell me your half-elf is "good", act out a character in all his complexity, and let everyone else decide for themselves whether they think of you as "good" or "evil". Sure, applying the descriptor "good" doesn't *prevent that--unless, of course, you make it an actual mechanic, in which case it absolutely prevents that by forcing you to portray a "good" that conforms to good as your DM sees it. But even if its not a mechanic, it tells us so little about what your character is actually like as a person that you may as well be listing your favorite color.

Distinct ideology? Could you say what in the world it is, because I haven't a clue. Which is in fact the problem with abandoning a systematic description, because having abandoned it, we are left with the need to provide a description anyway and doing that is no easier than providing a systematic description in the first place. I mean really, can we conclude what JFK's real goals were with any more precision and general agreement than we can conclude what alignment he had?

Precisely. In the real world, none of us can definitively, objectively include anything about anyone else. We are left merely to form our own opinions, and to convince others that they are correct, based on their actions as we perceive them.

To change that is to change one of the most fundamental facets of human existence, and necessarily dramatically alters the philosophical dynamic of the world.

But, there is nothing that prevents a fantasy role playing game from being one. And in particular, even if you fantasy RPG is nothing like 'Disneyesque moral paragons running around killing Nazi Demon serial killers', it's going to probably be a morality play of a sort it just may have very different meanings than some other morality play. After all, a play which means, "Good is relative and the truth is murky.", is still a morality play. And even more importantly, unlike real life, in an RPG we never ever lack perfect information about the characters within. The DM has perfect knowledge of every NPC. He knows their innermost thoughts and convictions. He never has to doubt what there goals, motives, and beliefs are. Likewise, the player has perfect knowledge of the PC. So why should we find ourselves in any difficulty comparable to knowing the alignment of a real person?

Because the DM and the players will still each have different perceptions of good and evil, and by making alingment a mechanic you render the DMs perception of good and evil an objective facet of the universe. A universe with objective good and evil is nothing like the one I know, and it simply doesn't ring true to me.

None of the questions that you pose are in any way hampered by the alignment system or get less tricky if you have an alignment system. What I'm interested in is precisely the selective bias you state in what you are interested in. To be frank, you repeatedly have staked out a position at every turn which is relatively easy to describe in D&D alignment terms. Whatever else may be said of your beliefs about how RPG's ought to be played, they aren't 'lawful'. You repeatedly describe 'truth' in terms of ambiguity and disorder:

None of them are remotely aided by the alignment system either. Moreover, if we make alignment a mechanic, then my personal opinion of where they fall on an alignment scale (tht is, how closely they conform to my personal idea of good) becomes an objective facet of the universe, which means they are no longer questions. "To be or not to be?" Is *not* the question when you have a guy in charge who can say, "actually, its "not to be". so there you go."

Are you sure? Because I'm not at all sure of that, nor am I sure how it follows in your logic. I for my part feel sure that it would perhaps be a different set of questions than the one set that you seem interested in, and I'm not at all sure that the universe is made more complex and interesting when the set of questions brought up by having at least the possibility of objective answers out there bound up in 'some god's decree' or the 'planar structure of the universe' is banished from the universe. In fact, I find it something like two color universe (say sepia and green) where sepia is banned from the universe and all you have to pick from is shades of green. (I'd use black and white, but I don't want to appear to be passing judgment.)

The only "good" and "evil" that any of us can know for sure that exist exist in each of our own heads. Beyond that, all we have is faith. That is life.

Now, you seem pretty interested in playing in a world that, in that respect, does not mimic life. That is certainly up to you, but for me personally, it destroys my sense of disbelief faster than all the dragons and wizards and gibbering mouthers in the world ever could.

And precisely the wrong way to actually use it. Once again, alignment is not a straightjacket. You can't take an individual, say he's XY alignment, and suggest that's ALL that he is. Alignment does not encompass ALL his philosophy, religion, morals and ethics. They are not succinctly summed up in that alignment dictating that he cannot, MUST not evidence behaviors which might suggest any other alignment at any time.

When alignment is a mechanic, it necessarily renders the DMs conception of good and evil an objective facet of the universe. When alignment is not a mechanic, it says so very little about who a person is that it does nothing but waste character sheet space.

Oh it's great fun to argue about what alignment JFK or Gandalf was but it misses the point about how alignment would have been used by the PLAYER of the PC's of JFK or Gandalf. Did the alignment that JFK's player had written on his character sheet ever provide guidance for choosing his characters actions? Was JFK's player CONSTRAINED by that alignment in deciding what his character would do and why? Was he able to shift alignments? Were his actions appropriate reactions to in-game events with alignment still providing the PLAYER a general point of view even if his immediate actions might better suggest a different alignment? Was his alignment still a useful general reflection of his characters morals and ethics?

Did the fact that Tolkein didn't have a two-word descriptor like "neutral good" in his head when he created Gandalf inhibit in any way his ability to create an interesting and fully realized character with a clear sense of personal morality? And if he had had it, would it have added anything at all?

And once again, simple anecdotal evidence invalidates that. Just because you saw it that way and handled it that way doesn't mean that everyone else did or should. Two of the most general observations I have made about alignment are that: 1) it's a huge recurring topic online but my personal experience is that it's been a VASTLY smaller issue and arguments over it are uncommon at best, and 2) any game of D&D I played WITHOUT alignment became shockingly likely to feature base and degenerate characters, and spiraled out of control quickly and fell apart when characters found they could sink no lower without the DM ending it instantly. That is to say, as a ROLEPLAYING GUIDELINE, it WORKED.

In my experience, games with alignment tend to either

a.) devolve into "team good takes on team evil"
or
b.) move quickly into heavy roleplay in which alignment was almost immediately forgotten as people got into playing a fully realized, complex character

Alignment doesn't define all motivations - it describes a characters actions.

How could you even pretend that this means anything? "Good" is no more a useful descriptor of the sum total of someone's actions than it is of their philosophy or religion.

I believe the accepted notion is that drama is found simply in conflict. That conflict could be found just as easily in black/white as in shades of gray.

Melodrama is a subset of drama. Drama as distinct from melodrama is all drama that cannot be considered melodrama, that is, conflict which does not simply break down into clear camps of objective good and evil.

See, I have no particular use for using D&D to explore moral questions. EVERY moral quandry presented to me in D&D by a DM for the purpose of presenting a moral quandry has been of the nature of, "Guess what _I_ want you to do and watch your character get THWAPPED when you guess incorrectly." EVERY one. That is not an exploration of morality.

This should only ever happen if alignment serves some mechanical function though, or if the DM is actuvely intending to create some sort of morality play, in which case he's essentially rendering alignment mechanical anyway by tying metagame benefits like "success" or "failure" to whether you conform to his personal idea of good and evil.

That is exactly what I'm against. If I present the players with two sides, each with greivances that could be looked on as legitimate, I have no intention of penalizing or rewarding them for siding with one or the other. In fact, I'd prefer that they are unsure of who to side with, that they have to argue it out between each other, that they really have to get into their characters head and think about what matters to them and where this dilemnda falls on their personal scale.

On the other hand I REVEL in the ability of the CLASSIC paladin to slay evil things, morally secure in the knowledge that to do so is right for no other reason than that they are evil.

And I revel in the paladin's ability to do that, and then for the peaceful and scholarly wizard to declare him a self-righteous, zealot brute, and to have that disagreement stand as a legitimate and interesting conflict, rather than for the paladin to be able to say, 'well, I still got my powers beeyatch, guess that means I'm right--I *am* good. Objectively."

 

[Celebrim]

awesomeocalypse: Well, you seem to have conceeded everything that I thought might be contriversial or might cause you offense. I don't really feel like arguing ethics or theology with you, and this isn't the place, so I'm not going to be able to really respond to 90% of your post. Besides, with all my points being conceded to me, I'm not sure that there is a whole lot left to say.

You spend much of your time, indeed almost you entire response, not discussing alignment at all, but instead attempting to prove to me that morality is subjective and relative and hense that the game universe ought to match the real one as you percieve it.

You say it yourself better than I could:

It bothers me a lot, primarily because it doesn't ring true...A universe with objective good and evil is nothing like the one I know, and it simply doesn't ring true to me.

That you held such belief and that such belief would tend to cause you to reject an alignment system was most of what I was trying to achieve. You really can't argue with that sort of position, so I won't try, but I would note how curious it is for you to be arguing for the non-existance of the alignment system when a character with your beliefs would fit so neatly inside it.

I would note that a nuetral character or perhaps a chaotic neutral character would look at the classic D&D cosmology and say the exact same thing, "Morality is subjective as far as we know.", and no one with in the classic D&D universe would be able to prove otherwise. All they would be able to do is prove is something like, "You can be smote with lawful energy", but this wouldn't prove that law was objectively better. The question of the way the universe works or should work doesn't disappear, it just changes how the question is phrased.

Old editions of D&D made alignment a mechanic. Arguing about it in a metagame way was an inevitability when you had rules stating that items and even entire classes would stop working if they weren't "good". How could that possible *not* lead to metagame arguments over what constitutes good and evil?

Errr... because it didn't. I have personal experience of it not leading to metagame arguments over what constitutes good and evil. This is not something I can prove - perhaps I'm delusional or have false memories or am lying - but my own experential knowledge is not something you are going to disuade me from with logic so don't bother trying. I don't have to explain to you how it is possible or understand how it is possible to experience it.

However, in this case, I do rather think I understand it. The only times I've seen these sorts of metagame arguments was when the DM sprang some interpretation on the player without warning, "Because you did that new alignment is X, lose a level.", or some equivalent. And, the player's contrary arguments in such disputes were all proxy arguments of, "Well, if I'd known that was the consequence, I wouldn't have done it, can I have a take back?"

"You lose some paladin powers when you no longer uphold these specific teachings and beliefs of your god" is a vastly more useful way to approach the problem than, "you lose your paladin powers if you aren't good." The former means the same thing to everyone. The latter means pretty much what each individual is inclined to take from it.

I suppose the irony of that claim is lost on you.

This is true, but in a good roleplaying game it should *also* be true. Don't tell me your half-elf is "good", act out a character in all his complexity, and let everyone else decide for themselves whether they think of you as "good" or "evil".

I've played at tables with hidden character sheets.

Sure, applying the descriptor "good" doesn't *prevent that--unless, of course, you make it an actual mechanic, in which case it absolutely prevents that by forcing you to portray a "good" that conforms to good as your DM sees it.

I'm afraid my answer to this is, "So?" I don't have alot of objection to accepting an external absolute standard for what is good and evil. If it happens that the in game one is different than one I believe in, that's not abhorent - that's interesting. I might in such a universe proudly wave a different banner under a conviction that 'Good' in that universe wasn't really good, and that the truth was held by the lawfuls or the chaotics of that universe.

To change that is to change one of the most fundamental facets of human existence, and necessarily dramatically alters the philosophical dynamic of the world.

Even if I grant that, so what? If I play in a game world where the fundamental philosophical dynamic of the world is different than the one I believe the world I live in has, that's not abhorent to me either - that's interesting.

Because the DM and the players will still each have different perceptions of good and evil, and by making alingment a mechanic you render the DMs perception of good and evil an objective facet of the universe.

Again, so what? At worst, you would find yourself in the cosmic equivalent of being a dissident to the laws of a nation who found those laws immoral, but in this case it would be the very nature of the universe which you found immoral. If it is 'Good' that you find immoral, may I introduce you to one explanation for the attractiveness of 'Neutral Evil'.

None of them are remotely aided by the alignment system either. Moreover, if we make alignment a mechanic, then my personal opinion of where they fall on an alignment scale (tht is, how closely they conform to my personal idea of good) becomes an objective facet of the universe, which means they are no longer questions. "To be or not to be?" Is *not* the question when you have a guy in charge who can say, "actually, its "not to be". so there you go."

You don't strike me as someone who easily bows to authority.

Now, you seem pretty interested in playing in a world that, in that respect, does not mimic life. That is certainly up to you, but for me personally, it destroys my sense of disbelief faster than all the dragons and wizards and gibbering mouthers in the world ever could.

Actually, I've been talking about a world that I think mimics life. It's your world of purely subjective truth that would not mimic life as I know it, and while I find it interesting I find it less interesting than a world that does not know whether truth is subjective or objective and is fighting to determine the outcome of these questions.