D&D 5E So what's the problem with restrictions, especially when it comes to the Paladin?

[JamesonCourage]

I think the notion of "misinterpret" is not all that helpful here.

I meant misinterpret from what the author / designer meant by it.

Which also goes to the issue of "strong thematic materia" and "squeezing stardard views into the alignment system". You can't at one-and-the-same-time preserve the strength of the thematic material, and tell people that it's all about a fictional moral system that has no bearing upon or connection to real world values.

Well, I mean... you can't?

People gerally don't play paladins because they adhere to some fictional, stipulated moral code which (for no particular reason?) we happen to label "lawful good" or "honourable" or "chivalric" - at least, not in my experience. They are interested in exploring the idea of a genuinely lawful good warrior who is genuinely honourable and chivalric. That's what gives the material it's thematic heft.

I generally agree; the code is the part of the D&D mythology, but it's usually not (in my experience) why people want to play Paladins.

That's not to say there's not some scope for tweaking on the margins - the GM might explain to the players, for instance, that certain social norms are different in the gameworld from the contemporary USA (eg that debt bondage is widely understood as a permissible institution, even though it is obviously at odds with contemporary human rights norms as well as bankruptcy practices). But the more the GM says "This isn't about real world values, it's about these fictional values that I'm elucidating for you", the more the GM is killing off the strength of the thematic material.

Ah, but that's not what I mean. The players can explore real world values, but alignment isn't about real world values. In D&D, Good is different from our "good" (much less well-defined). Thus, my players have had quite a lot of enjoyment as Good characters that have had more than one set of problems with what Good is in-game. That is because my players were following a more modern view of "good", and it doesn't always match up with D&D's Good, which is a more tangible force in the game world.

Putting too much pressure on this has the tendency to cause the paladin ideal to collapse into incoherence, or perhaps self-delusion on the part of the paladin - for a D&D example, sse Sturm Brightblade in Dragonlance - did he exemplify paladinhood, or ought he to have fallen?

No idea; I don't read fantasy books; I loathe long descriptions, and they're too often filled with it. I'm trying to read something short for the first time in years (Conan the Conqueror, the 223-page story), and it's taking me months, because I don't read for long, and I don't pick it up for weeks. It's a lot more tolerable than Tolkien was to me, though. I couldn't get past the initial Shire scene. It just took too long.

At any rate, I can't comment on that Paladin, I can only use my own experiences. As always, play what you like

 

[pemerton]

Were Sturm actually a paladin, why would you think he might have fallen?

It's a long time (25 years?) since I read the books too, but going from memory as reinforced by the odd post that discusses Dragonlance, Sturm revitalised the Knights of Solamnia by realising that they had become too obsessed by the technicalities of their Rule and Measure, rather than getting to the heart of what justice requires. It's a fairly standard reformation story.

My point in reply to [MENTION=6668292]JamesonCourage[/MENTION] was that the more one emphasises that alignment refers to fictional values, or "the morality of the fantasy world", the less room their becomes for something like Sturm's story. His story depends upon their being space to assert the difference between the professed values and the reality of what the Knights are doing; but in a game in which the values are fictional ones, the morality of the fantasy world, where does the player get the leverage to do this? Because if they invoke realworld values and conceptions of justice and the like, they are already departing from the ostensible premise that we're engaging not with real world values but fictional ones.

The alternative possibility I offered is that paladins end up being self-deluded; the same could be said for certain gods. For instance, suppose that in a given campaign world the god of mercy is LG (or NG, perhaps, depending on GM's preference). Now suppose that a player in the campaign is confronted with a situation in which s/he takes mercy to be called for, and acts on that. (I'll leave the details to our respective imaginations, in order to avoid violating board rules.) If the GM replies "No, that's not a LG/NG action, and it puts you in danger of alignment change", then the player can reasonably reply "That god isn't a god of mercy at all; or is a deluded one; because the god has commitements (in virtue of the LG/NG alignment as interpreted by the GM in the campaign world) that contradict the core value of mercy". Now of course the GM can say that, by "mercy", is meant not true mercy but fictional mercy, as it is understood in the campaign world; but given the number of ordinary English words that are value-laden to some or other degree, that isn't going to be a general solution - in articulating fantasy mercy the GM will have to use one of those other words, and the problem will recur.

As I said to JC, there can be tolerable stuff on the margins - like my debt bondage example. But in a game where freeing the slaves becomes important (and I have GMed such a game) than that example will break down too, as notions like "justice" and "liberty" get deployed by the players in their true senses and escape the attempt at confing them to the ostensible fictional meaning.

The players can explore real world values, but alignment isn't about real world values. In D&D, Good is different from our "good" (much less well-defined).

I have explained above why I think this can tend to lead to a view of the gods as self-deluded. That's fine, but I think it then puts limits on what you can do with a paladin in the game.

I think I mentioned upthread the campaign I GMed in which a paladin turned upon the heavens in the pursuit of justice for earth. Part of what permitted that to work was that the paladin was a servant not of the heavens but of the Buddhas, and hence there was a "higher divinity" by reference to which his rectitude could be defined in game - though the gods were his enemies the Buddhas were not - and hence the game didn't become nihilistic or ironic in its tone. The paladin archetype still made sense - heaven and its gods become to this paladin like the Knights of Solamnia to Sturm Brightblade, namely, an institution that has fallen short of the ideals it professes and hence is in need of reform.

But if there were no higher divinity - if all divinity were confined within the commitments of the fantasy morality, and hence the critical perspective of the players (and their PCs) had no divine sanction with the game - then I can't see how either nihilism, irony or (perhaps) pity towards the gods can be avoided as an outcome. Their moral dictates would have no genuine force; "good" would just be a label for the views of some gods, that tells us nothing about whether or not that view merits respect.

And in that environment, I can't see how the paladin works. Why is it important to be LG? What non-arbitrary moral commitment does that represent? The REH Conan stories express the sort of approach to divinity and morality I see here (and that is part of what marks them as modernist fantasy, quite unlike Tolkien in my view), but precisely for that reason the idea of a paladin has no place in Conan.

paladins aren't medieval knights, nor stand-ins for any knightly order. They're an idealized paragon, filtered through the D&D alignment rules with a morality that any medieval knight probably couldn't hope to touch

Sure. But the fact that they're idealised means they have to speak to, and express, ideals. The more those ideals aren't [true ideals but simply fantasy ideals stipulated by the GM for the purposes of making the alignment rules run smoothly, the less the paladin fulfills this very role that you have (correctly, in my view) stipulated for it.

A caveat - if we're playing [MENTION=6688858]Libramarian[/MENTION]'s sort of game, in which the paladin is a mixture of colour/flavour plus a gameplay challenge of crawling through dungeons with one hand (morally) tied behind your back, then the problems I'm talking about probably won't come up. But I don't think either billd91 or JC is talking about that sort of game.

 

[Libramarian]

This is alive and well in computer MMOs, which seems to be the spiritual successors of 1E power gaming and charop. As a storytelling player, I naturally look down a bit on this, but I can see how others like it (and I shamelessly indulge it when I play MMOs).

Yes, but I think D&D still offers a unique take on this. When you have a large, juicy delicious human brain running the simulation rather than a computer, you have a conversational game interface, which allows far more creative play. (On the flipside, it's too slow for the reaction time/rhythm aspect of playing a computer game.)

 

[billd91]

Sure. But the fact that they're idealised means they have to speak to, and express, ideals. The more those ideals aren't [true ideals but simply fantasy ideals stipulated by the GM for the purposes of making the alignment rules run smoothly, the less the paladin fulfills this very role that you have (correctly, in my view) stipulated for it.

I think you need to dispense with this distinction between true ideals and fantasy ideals. The game defines certain broad ideals that, if a character exhibits them, places them generally within certain alignments. Those ideals are simplified, true, to make the alignment rules easier for players, most of whom don't study philosophy and who probably don't study historical mores, to work with. But the idea that there's no space to explore moral issues, or even the contradictions in hidebound knightly orders who have lost their way, is alien to me and suggests, to me, that you're over thinking and over defining the situation to the point you are unable to reconcile how a player can take a rule-imposed set of behavior expectations and make meaningful moral decisions as that character.

 

[Hussar]

I think you need to dispense with this distinction between true ideals and fantasy ideals. The game defines certain broad ideals that, if a character exhibits them, places them generally within certain alignments. Those ideals are simplified, true, to make the alignment rules easier for players, most of whom don't study philosophy and who probably don't study historical mores, to work with. But the idea that there's no space to explore moral issues, or even the contradictions in hidebound knightly orders who have lost their way, is alien to me and suggests, to me, that you're over thinking and over defining the situation to the point you are unable to reconcile how a player can take a rule-imposed set of behavior expectations and make meaningful moral decisions as that character.

It's not that there isn't space for exploration in the rules. Obviously there is. However, there isn't any room for exploration in the intersection between what the game says and how the DM interprets those rules. The player cannot disagree with the DM. The player cannot interpret things differently from the DM, because it is the DM who determines when the player has violated the DM's interpretation of the alignment rules.

So, since the DM is telling me what is good or evil, what exploration can I really make? At best I can explore the DM's interpretation of alignment.

 

[JamesonCourage]

I have explained above why I think this can tend to lead to a view of the gods as self-deluded. That's fine, but I think it then puts limits on what you can do with a paladin in the game.

Well, yes, but any limitation on any character puts limits on what you can do with said character in the game.

At any rate, take your mercy example. My players could definitely explore the morality issue here. They might say "it's not Good, but it's right." Then, they might grapple with whether or not it's worth doing, even if Paladin powers are lost, gods are upset, etc. This is the exact type of moral exploration that can happen even with alignment "defining" the fictional morality. Sure, in the fictional reality, that type of mercy isn't matching with the tangible "Good" in the game, but it tells us nothing about whether or not it's the right thing to do. And, as far as I know, exploring whether or not it's the right thing to do is what we might be looking for at certain points here, yes?

Their moral dictates would have no genuine force; "good" would just be a label for the views of some gods, that tells us nothing about whether or not that view merits respect.

In my game, this isn't too far off. In my personal spin (the canon of my old 3.X game) of D&D, the first gods were pushed (by Asmodeus) to define "evil" so that people knew what "good" was. After much debate, they settled on their definitions, and it was signed into the core of the multiverse by signing a contract in Asmodeus' blood. This became "Good" and "Evil", definitions which Asmodeus then used to his own benefit for quite some time. (Leaving off with the myth story here, but I'm leaving out a huge chunk of what the role in the multiverse Asmodeus plays.)

To this end, Good and Evil are fundamental forces in the multiverse, and are tangible things that can be measured to some degree (Detect Evil, Protection from Evil, Smite Evil, etc.). However, this does not tell us, in-game, whether doing something just because it is Good is the right thing to do. You can still explore mercy, judging whether or not it's the right thing to do.

My players did not like a Lawful Evil Monk NPC at one point, because he was very brutal, threatened people a lot, and was very violent. But, also, because he detected as Evil, which is a big red flag in their experience. However, they found out that he only attacks particularly violent evil creatures (little "e") -though he'll defend himself brutally from anyone who attacks him- or creatures that protect those evil creatures. After some debate, they didn't attack him, or pursue him later. At two points, they even worked alongside of him. Overall, their PCs had a negative opinion of him, but they thought it would be wrong to attack someone who singled out murderers and dealt with them. And, in-game, killing a particularly violent Evil creature would likely be considered Good, but they felt that it was wrong, overall (though one PC who would eventually become a Paladin was okay with the idea of dispatching the Monk).

Later on, Asmodeus filled a similar role, on a much more primal level. The players left off that campaign exploring, essentially, "should we help Evil in this instance? Is that the right thing to do?" Because Good ≠ right thing to do, necessarily. But, none of this engagement with the game (or the long talks with Herades, Therall, etc.) made them "pity" the gods. It just made it clear that Good ≠ right, necessarily, even if it often is. And that was interesting for them to explore.

And in that environment, I can't see how the paladin works. Why is it important to be LG? What non-arbitrary moral commitment does that represent?

I don't understand this sentiment still. They had a huge place in my game (this is all in my game, now). Paladins are essentially zealots. Some fall for noble reasons, in fact (but most don't). But, by following the code, the essence of Good (the tangible force in the multiverse) imbues them with powers that help them uphold Good. Because, the tangible force of Good is concerned with conquering Evil. That's why; the gods created the force of Good thinking that it was "right", but is it? Well, that's open to debate; bring on the philosophical and moral exploration! It happened often at my table, and Paladins made strong arguments for why Good was right in my game. But, did that mean you can't explore morality? Not at all. It was explored often, in my game, and Paladins had a huge piece in driving it.

Again, that was my game, and how I handled it. And, if I ever touch on D&D, alignment will always be there (especially Good and Evil), and Paladins will always have a hand in exploration of real-world moral issues (they're my favorite class, after all...). As always, play what you like

 

[billd91]

It's not that there isn't space for exploration in the rules. Obviously there is. However, there isn't any room for exploration in the intersection between what the game says and how the DM interprets those rules. The player cannot disagree with the DM. The player cannot interpret things differently from the DM, because it is the DM who determines when the player has violated the DM's interpretation of the alignment rules.

So, since the DM is telling me what is good or evil, what exploration can I really make? At best I can explore the DM's interpretation of alignment.

You can explore all you want. You just have to accept that there may be some consequences for doing so. If you don't want to suffer those consequences, don't go down those paths - explore other ones.

 

[pemerton]

At any rate, take your mercy example. My players could definitely explore the morality issue here. They might say "it's not Good, but it's right." Then, they might grapple with whether or not it's worth doing

But this creates the possibility that the god of mercy, in being committed to "Good", is making a mistake. I have trouble with that - no one should understand mercy better than the god of mercy.

Paladins are essentially zealots.

<snip>

the gods created the force of Good thinking that it was "right", but is it?

On this account, though, it seems arbitrary that there are not "paladins" for the other teams.

My own view is that it is pretty inherent to the idea of paladinhood - on which there are only LG paladins - that the paladins' self-conception as distinctively virtuous is not mistaken.

 

[pemerton]

I think you need to dispense with this distinction between true ideals and fantasy ideals. The game defines certain broad ideals that, if a character exhibits them, places them generally within certain alignments. Those ideals are simplified, true, to make the alignment rules easier for players

I didn't introduce the distinction. Multiple other posters invoked it, upthread, to explain why the GM has authority over interpreting alignment in the game - because the GM is the arbiter of the morality of the gameworld (what I've called the fictional or fantasy morality).

If the alignment ideals are meant to be real ideals, than the GM's authority seems to become harder to explain - why is the GM a moral arbiter for the table?

 

[Imaro]

But this creates the possibility that the god of mercy, in being committed to "Good", is making a mistake. I have trouble with that - no one should understand mercy better than the god of mercy.

Why would understanding of mercy impart an understanding of good or evil?

On this account, though, it seems arbitrary that there are not "paladins" for the other teams.

My own view is that it is pretty inherent to the idea of paladinhood - on which there are only LG paladins - that the paladins' self-conception as distinctively virtuous is not mistaken.

Uhmm... you release anti-paladins in some form or another have existed since 1e.

EDIT: Even BECMI had a counterpart in the Avenger...