Why I don't like alignment in fantasy RPGs

[prosfilaes]

In my real life, at least, there is no equivalence to this - when I evaluate my own conduct, whether aesthetically, or morally, or . . ., that is my evaluation and it stands until I revise it.

But in real life it stands only as your personal evaluation. If there is anything in reality that bears any relation to alignment, it's not controlled by you. Certainly to the extent that other people react to you based on your "alignment" it's based mostly on external reputation, not your personal evaluation.

If the best that can be said for alignment rules is that they give the GM a mechanical stick with which to beat the player of a paladin who has his PC gratuitously throw a baby out a wind, then it seems to me there's not much to be said.

You're taking it out of context; it was a response to a statement that having certain evil acts have mechanical consequences was bad, that there's a distinction between fluff and real mechanical actions, and that blurring the line made things more gamy.

Any player trying sincerely to play a paladin would only have the PC toss a baby out of a window because s/he had some seriously considered reason to do so - either s/he thinks (for example) that it is the lesser of two evils, or in some other way morally permitted even if not optimal (in which case punishment would be gratuitous and one might expect the player to play out some remorse in any event) or s/he is trying to play out some sort of mental/moral collapse on the part of her PC, in which case what s/he goes on to do is likely to be far more interesting gameplay than having the GM say "OK, take XYZ mechanical penalties for breaking alignment".

Alignment is probably the wrong tool to use if you want to do complex moral questions, and if you do, you need to use an alignment system that doesn't punish players for honestly making hard choices.

If a fellow player decides to play out some sort of mental/moral collapse in this fashion, what he goes on to do is going to be predictable; the character is going to fight the rest of the party, hopefully die, and then the rest of the players are going to discuss what happened and what they're going to do with the body. (Some of my more sociopathic character may just ask him to leave the party; once you've started throwing babies out of windows, it's just not sane to travel with you any more.)

Frankly, I don't want another player to play out some sort of mental/moral collapse. Game-wise, they're going to be chewing up game time with internal monologues and hamming up their character instead of group play. In-world, they've just done something that's a hanging offense virtually everywhere and everywhen, and still sparks very high on the outrage table. If that action didn't make us outlaws from civilization, the next one may. And there's a certain moral opprobrium to working with people who throw babies out of windows.

And if you have players rolling up paladins and clerics but not interested in playing them sincerely, what makes you think that the alignment rules are going to change that?

It's going to make them play with certain behavioral limitations if they want to keep their powers. It's entirely possible--and consistent with historic paganism--that the gods don't care about sincerity, just what the characters do.

 

[pemerton]

When I have a player with a character whose concept depends on moral and ethical code, I have the player document the chacters code of conduct. I then let the player know that actions breaking said code may or may not have in-game ramifications based upon the circumstances of any infractions (i.e. any witnesses, repeat offenses, etc.)

Looks sensible to me.

 

[pemerton]

I try to give you a coherent answer but I fear some things will get lost in translation.

Thanks for the thoughfu reply.

Ok, on alignment as a balancing factor:
Thinking back at the AD&D Paladin, that really was a power-house. Full Fighter, added Spellcasting and Turning? Check. Good Stats if you rolled them? Check. Exp Bonus for High Stats? Inbuild. Sure that guy needed some counter-point.

This fits with my impression.

On BoED.

<snip>

The book states that it is damn hard and complicated to keep and stay exalted and that possibly a lot of dm feedback is involved. That´s the trade-off for power.

<snip interesting demon analogy>

Where now is the difference between playing a demon-possessed guy and a living saint when in both cases you trade character controll and freedom willingly for raw power?

I can follow what your describing - but unless everyone at the table is playing the same way (ie all the players have to interact a lot with the GM as part of the process of making choices for their PCs), I think it's just the sort of recipe for conflict that I'm criticising. And to work, I also think it would depend upon the GM being very careful not to set up the game in such a way that in every conflict it was the GM, and not the player, who had the final say over what counted as an acceptable response for the PCs.

I guess heavy-handed alignment management is a left-over from earlier editions which is still in the heads of some dms.

To an extent, I think. But also many 3E GMs insist on no evil PCs (and the PHB is written in this tone, with Evil being described not from the point of view of a protagonist, but rather as the property of an antagonist). And this then gives the power back to the GM. Not to mention that even if the GM does allow evil PCs, who wants to be told - when they think their PC is doing the right thing - that in fact their PC is evil?

 

[ProfessorCirno]

In some ways, drawing a line between "fluff" actions and stuff that actually matters seems more arbitrary and more likely to keep people out of the setting. Why should sticking your hand in the demon's mount and having to take damage and lose equipment be okay, but throwing a baby out the window and losing the favor of your god not be?

Are you really going to argue that sticking your hand in the demon's mount is a moral decision?


My problem with alignment is this: It breaks down potential grey areas into black and white, which throws a wrecking ball through drama and complex characterization. Even with no mechanics attached, you are creating a black/white spectrum. You are stating that actions and/or creatures and/or ideals are always, always, always evil, or always, always, always good, with "neutral" lying between the two.

Awhile back I was listening to a panel Obsidian did for their game Alpha Protocol, and they mentioned that having a "karma meter" of any sort makes it automatically a focus. That if you had a meter for counting how often a player lied, they would instinctively try to game the system. Just by having the count, people would begin to act differently then they normally would, due to awareness of the number of "lies" being counted. In having alignment, you are creating a basis for "Act this way." People second guess their actions and pause to look at what their alignment is and ponder if that's something a character of their alignment would do.

That's basically the opposite of what I want in a game.

I prefer characters to play out naturally. If a character suddenly acts radically different, then there should be an in-game response, not an out of game reprimand. If a holy warrior of whatever deity commits a heinous act that others hear about, then their reputation suffers immensely. If nobody finds out, then who knows what happens? Maybe the paladin has inner turmoil over it. Maybe they don't and commit later horrible acts that do get caught. That's part of the excitement!

Moral choices should have consequences, but those consequences should be reflected in the play of the game, not in the mechanics. Perhaps acting evil makes a fight harder. Or better, perhaps it makes a fight easier. I never understood how evil actually survives in any D&D setting seeing as how the mechanics that support the forces of good are so much laughably better and more powerful; kinda hard to be tempted into evil when the cost is losing your sweet powers. But in a game without a mechanical reason to stay on the hard line, you get much more dramatic choices.

Nobody wants their character to suddenly become a worthless pile of junk who lost all their mechanics. Supposedly this makes paladins make "hard choices." I'd argue that it does the opposite - it either makes no hard choices because "I don't want to lose my powers," or it sets up for terrible GM traps and "Gotcha!" moments.

To put it another way - for every one story I hear about a cool and epic and dramatic paladin moment involving potentially falling and moral choices, I hear hundreds of bad ones. And the good ones typically would've been better without the mechanics for falling, too.

 

[prosfilaes]

Are you really going to argue that sticking your hand in the demon's mount is a moral decision?

(A) If you're talking about violating the will of your god, why is that any more of a moral decision?

(B) You want to draw a sharp line between moral and amoral decisions; that's not realistic. Everything you do has a moral component and natural ramifications. Many moralities state that negligently causing yourself injury is wrong. Killing a prisoner is a common example of where morality and consequences come into play.

My problem with alignment is this: It breaks down potential grey areas into black and white, which throws a wrecking ball through drama and complex characterization.

That's like saying that your problem with D&D 3 combat is that the lack of hit location tables breaks down potential grey areas into black and white. It does; there's so much interesting gaming that could go on if you could shoot an enemy in the leg to slow them down, or shoot them in the hand to force them to drop their weapon. That's a very serious issue for some people. But turns out most people don't care, that they're happy with the black and white nature of D&D 3 combat.

In my experience, I get plenty of drama and complex characterization with alignment. What I'm craving in my gaming is not more drama and complex characterization.

I prefer characters to play out naturally.

I have that problem D&D 3.5, but it has more to do mechanic character building instead of character evolving when leveling.

If a character suddenly acts radically different, then there should be an in-game response, not an out of game reprimand.

I'm not a support of alignment as beat-stick. As a DM, I would change most alignments without reprimand. I feel that alignments for barbarians and monks is a little silly.

If a holy warrior of whatever deity commits a heinous act that others hear about, then their reputation suffers immensely.

You want to play in a different world than me. But it's not at all out of game for certain actions for paladins and clerics to be like shoving a fork into a light socket, to have a dramatic immediate effect on their connection to the supernatural. Just because you don't want a connection to a god to be a direct powerful thing sensitive to the actions of the worshipper, doesn't make it an out of game reprimand.

It strikes me that in the game I'm playing in next Saturday, I want more nachos, more jokes, more villain monologues and more chances to make the difference in battle without getting scratched. I'd like to see some of my back story come up; maybe run into my missing child and ham it up with overacted The Empire Strikes Back. More drama, more complex characterization, no, not really. Remember: Everything goes better with cheese, even D&D.

 

[Coldwyn]

Like I said, pmetron, I´m a modern person, so I lie, steal, commit fraud and indulge myself on criminal behavior on a regualar base and still beliebe myself to be "good" while still working as a consultant.

Now concerning roleplaying, I tend to stick with the social contract (which is I still lie, cheat, commit fraud and so on nonetheless). This means I try to stick to the rules we all agreed on for the game, mostly because it´s a game and no simulated personality in a simulated enviroment. So when all gamers at the table agree on the basic on what is good, lawfull, chaotic and so on. I at least try to portrait my character along the lines we agreed upon.
As a modern day person, I tend to take te view along the "greater good at the end", a thing that doesn´t have to hold up to the social contract.
And that´s the deal, if said social dontrac ist stated out at the beginning of the game and everyone agrees to it, there are no problems
beside you, the player, occassionally having to think twice before you act.
If your groups social contract is based on mdern day flexible moraility, fine, if not, fine too, as long as everyone agreed to that.

 

[prosfilaes]

If your groups social contract is based on mdern day flexible moraility, fine, if not, fine too, as long as everyone agreed to that.

I think one of my most frustrating gaming experiences was taking on the Keep on the Borderlands with the attitude, shared by most but not all of my party, that you can't just invade someone's house and kill them. I'm not sure making them move was much more moral, but I think more fun would have been had if the DM has point out up front what type of game he was prepared for.

And though that frustration had to do with morality, it had little to do with alignment.

 

[pemerton]

Nobody wants their character to suddenly become a worthless pile of junk who lost all their mechanics. Supposedly this makes paladins make "hard choices." I'd argue that it does the opposite - it either makes no hard choices because "I don't want to lose my powers," or it sets up for terrible GM traps and "Gotcha!" moments.

Prof, the whole post was good but this paragraph in particular is precisely what I was getting at in my OP.

 

[pemerton]

So when all gamers at the table agree on the basic on what is good, lawfull, chaotic and so on. I at least try to portrait my character along the lines we agreed upon.

My conern with alignment in the (pre-4e) D&D sense is that, in actual play, it turns out not to be based on agreement at the table, but by enforcement by the GM.

If your groups social contract is based on mdern day flexible moraility, fine, if not, fine too, as long as everyone agreed to that.

One cause of the lack of agreement on moral judgement, that in turn leads to needless conflict at the game table, is that whatever we have agreed to roleplay, we can't change the fact that we are modern people, and we are aware of the reality of moral disagreement, and we do in fact have competing interpretations of moral matters.

The player of the paladin who believes that throwing the baby out the window is permissible because the lesser of two evils (otherwise, let's say, the baby will die in the corrupting aura of the approaching demon, and the paladin doesn't have the capacity to protect the baby or to remove the baby from the building safely) can't shed that belief just by resolving to play a heroic PC in a morally cleancut gameworld.

If you want to play heroic PCs in a morally cleancut gameworld, then the steps that have to be taken are metagame steps, not introduction of alignment rules. For example, players have to promise not to introduce morally challengeing PCs (like necromancers, warlocks or tieflings, to pick some easy examples) and the GM has to promise not to pose any moral dilemmas in play (so no babies trapped in the rooms that are threatened by approaching demons).

 

[pemerton]

It's entirely possible--and consistent with historic paganism--that the gods don't care about sincerity, just what the characters do.

I wasn't referring to the sincerity of the PC. I was referring to the sincerity of the player. If your player of a paladin is sincere about playing a holy warrior, you don't need alignment - the player will deliver her own interesting interpretation of holiness, without needing the GM to help her play her PC. Conversely, if she is not really interested in playing a holy warrior, but for some reason is nevertheless rolling up a paladin PC, using alignment isn't going to make the latent conflict in that situation go away. Indeed, my whole contention is that it is likely to aggravate it.

If a fellow player decides to play out some sort of mental/moral collapse in this fashion, what he goes on to do is going to be predictable; the character is going to fight the rest of the party, hopefully die, and then the rest of the players are going to discuss what happened and what they're going to do with the body.

That's not my experience at all. I have had intra-party fighting, killing and looting in my games, but not associated with the sort of moral collapse (or transition) that I described.

In my experience it's very possible to play out, over the course of many sessions, very complex and nuanced moral transformations in PC personalities - from good to bad, from bad to good, or a bit of both - without party collapse either ingame or among the players at the game table.

Frankly, I don't want another player to play out some sort of mental/moral collapse. Game-wise, they're going to be chewing up game time with internal monologues and hamming up their character instead of group play.

Again, my experience GMing this is quite different.

One of the more memorable PCs I've had in my games was a high level mage (a Rolemaster sorcerer, who in D&D terms would probably be a wizard with a focus on transmutation, energy drains and domination). Over a year or more of play that PC fell, from being a respected lawyer in an independent city leasing a beautiful and well-appointed townhouse, to a drug addict (addicted to magic-enhancing herbs that also tended to leave him in a stupor) who couldn't afford to renew his lease until he joined with a force invading the city in return for their discharging his debts and appointing him a magistrate. He eventually redeemed himself to an extent, at least at the personal level (in terms of his own self-respect) by establishing a successful relationship with an elven shapechanger - who was herself then killed by a monster that another PC had summoned, and that went rogue in the middle of a difficult combat. This was somewhat ironic because it was only through the party leadership of that other PC that the sorcerer had had the opportunity (i) to betray his city for profit, (ii) to meet the elf (the meeting happened on a mission led by that other PC) and (iii) to cleanse himself of his addiction (the leader PC didn't find a drug-addicted flunky very useful). Unsurprisingly, the relationship between those two PCs was a major focus of the game, both in the events I've described and in the events that followed (the player of the sorcerer toyed with having his PC lapse back into despair, but then decided he would dedicate himself to the party's endeavours in order to make enough money to bring the elf back to life).

So in my experience playing out a moral collapse has nothing in particular to do with monologues, hamming it up or disrupting party play.