Alignment violations and how to deal with them

[am181d]

I going to quibble and say that personality and alignment have only a very tenuous connection.

I can easily imagine a neutral good sarcastic, greedy, miserly, jerk. I can easily imagine a generous, sociable, friendly neutral evil person. Good people can be cowardly. Evil people can be brave.

Alignment for me is really something that is rarely expressed in a person. It's not something about a person you immediately notice and rarely have proof of. It's a deep underlying motivation. It's what a person does when the chips are down, when he's under stress, and what a person does about it.

To me, it sounds like you're still talking about the character's personality. You're just saying some aspects of the personality aren't expressed unless "the chips are down." But for a D&D character, when are the chips up?

Again, I'm going to quibble around this and say that the real purpose here is to provide a very simple framework around the exploration of otherwise very complex topics in a way that is useful to heroic narratives. I'm not happy with the word 'cudgel', but do think that players need to accept that for the purposes of the game, 'good' and 'evil' and so forth have specific definitions.

I think they have definitions. I don't think those definitions are particularly specific. (Nor should they be.) If a player says "I thought it was a lawful act because of X/Y/Z," I'd be inclined to nod my head and move on.

 

[N'raac]

To me, it sounds like you're still talking about the character's personality. You're just saying some aspects of the personality aren't expressed unless "the chips are down." But for a D&D character, when are the chips up?

My experience is often the reverse, that the personality disappears when tactical choices are made. "well, sure he hates goblins, but the human cleric is the better tactical choice, so of course he will attack the human cleric first"; "yes, he's afraid of water, but he'll still go on the boat - he's not SO afraid that he'd travel through the more dangerous and lengthy wilderness journey first!"

No different than "Yes, he's Lawful Good, but he doesn't put up with lip from the barman - now drink from the spittoon!"; "Sure, he's Lawful Good - the greatest good will come from quickly locating the evil priest's lair, so Torch to the Groin again for the best interrogation modifier".

One of my key alignment tenets is similar to your "I thought it was lawful because...", though perhaps a bit less lenient. That is that if there is no right answer, there can be no wrong answer. That is, if the Paladin is put in the moral quandary (eg. "kill one innocent or let five die"), since neither approach is the "good, respectful of innocent life" answer, he loses nothing for either choice. If you want players to play "Lawful Good", then there must be another choice for the Paladin to take which preserves all six innocent lives.

If the GM structures the game so "good" becomes "lawful stupid" or "character suicide", he has no right to complain when the players stop playing Good characters, whether by name or by actions. If we want characters played as Good, Righteous and Valorous, then that type of play must reap rewards, not be clearly seen as less effective than ruthlessness or evil. If the PC's succeed by ruithlessness and fail by righteousness, why would we be surprised that they stop making Good characters?

 

[Ahnehnois]

I going to quibble and say that personality and alignment have only a very tenuous connection.

I can easily imagine a neutral good sarcastic, greedy, miserly, jerk. I can easily imagine a generous, sociable, friendly neutral evil person. Good people can be cowardly. Evil people can be brave.

And so on and so forth. I agree.

It's not considered obvious that 'Good' is right, and in fact most of the time far from it.

My conception of D&D "good" has always been that it is puritanical zealotry. Intolerant, uncompromising, and ultimately hypocritical. I would never want to live with a paladin.

 

[N'raac]

My conception of D&D "good" has always been that it is puritanical zealotry. Intolerant, uncompromising, and ultimately hypocritical.

To me, that sounds a lot more like Lawful Neutral. Lawful Good must balance the tenets of Law with the precepts of Good, leading to such concepts as "Let the punishment fit the crime" ruling over "The penalty for thievery is loss of a hand - it matters not whether the theft was to enrich the thief or feed a starving child. The Law is the Law."

 

[Starfox]

However, in general, if you play with normal Americans you will not get a lot of well described and well played lawful character concepts. Lawfulness doesn't come easy to most Americans IMO (Mormons and a few other groups being exceptions.) So lawful mindedness can be something that they struggle with, particularly if the DM has a similar anti-authoritarian inclination and tends to have all NPCs in authority be self-serving jerks who exclude and alienate the PCs right from the start.

This rings a bell with me. Being a European, I notice that scenario design often expect PC actions that are alien to my group - often in an individualistic/anti-establishment pattern. A concrete example was the start of the Skull & Shackles adventure path, where half the group wanted to remain loyal to the captain, despite the "friendly hazing" they all got. Clearly the scenario expected a much fiercer rebellion from the characters.

I also notice that I tend to disagree with Americans on who is "lawful" when discussing real life people/organizations/nations.

 

[Ahnehnois]

To me, that sounds a lot more like Lawful Neutral. Lawful Good must balance the tenets of Law with the precepts of Good, leading to such concepts as "Let the punishment fit the crime" ruling over "The penalty for thievery is loss of a hand - it matters not whether the theft was to enrich the thief or feed a starving child. The Law is the Law."

True; however Good is still quite extreme if based on a literal reading of the rules.

Good characters and creatures protect innocent life.
"Good" implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others.

For example, a contemporary example of Good would be PETA. Another contemporary example would be the ongoing debate in psychology on the rationale for, and even the very existence of, the concept of altruism. Conversely, virtually no D&D adventurer could be Good, because most adventurers kill quite a few sentient beings, often for very little reason.

 

[N'raac]

Conversely, virtually no D&D adventurer could be Good, because most adventurers kill quite a few sentient beings, often for very little reason.

This is a matter of campaign style, although I'm always amazed at how infrequently any position between "Staunch friend and ally" and "KILL HIM ON SIGHT!!!" ever occurs to a typical PC group.

It is certainly possible for PC's to refrain from killing anyone they take a dislike to, or who possesses something they would like to have for themselves. They can negotiate and bargain. But the crux of a lot of fantasy fiction is that, ultimately, the enemy must be defeated in combat or Good shall pass from the face of the earth. Can we play each alignment as extremists only? Sure - but let's re-draw that alignment square to have a huge middle of Neutral and some skinny fringes of other alignments, instead of a diagram implying about equal numbers of each of the nine, so it represents that these are extremes.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Can we play each alignment as extremists only? Sure - but let's re-draw that alignment square to have a huge middle of Neutral and some skinny fringes of other alignments, instead of a diagram implying about equal numbers of each of the nine, so it represents that these are extremes.

That's how I do it. Literally, I did draw a point for absolute neutrality, four points for the absolutes of alignment, a circle through those four to indicate the limits of how far from neutral one can be, and a square centered on neutral with sides equal to half the diameter of the circle (indicating that someone who is more than halfway to absolute Good is Good, etc.). A few more straight lines extended from the square delineate the different alignments.

According to my high school's geometry software, this made roughly 33% of people neutral, 13% of each NG, NE, LN, and CN, and 3% of the other four alignments. Those are my default assumptions for any D&D world.

 

[Celebrim]

To me, it sounds like you're still talking about the character's personality.

Well, I guess now we need a specific definition of personality. What do you and I mean by saying 'a character's personality'?

You're just saying some aspects of the personality aren't expressed unless "the chips are down." But for a D&D character, when are the chips up?

In my experience, at most tables, very rarely. For a D&D character, very rarely are there ever any serious conflicts between the players metagoals and the end game story. In general, the fundamental story of D&D assumes that what is good for the player character is also good for the world. PC's are rarely called on to make sacrifices or to sincerely choose between 'being good' and doing what makes the PC (or player) happy in the short term. And, if the PC's fail to be truly good on occasion, or even many occasions, then surely that is mitigated by the fact that they are saving the world, right? What's that to the occasional murder along the way? D&D stories rarely ask these questions, and the players seldom wrestle with them as important.

I think they have definitions. I don't think those definitions are particularly specific.

I'm not going to quibble with whether they are specific or not in the real world. For the purposes of the game, the definitions are specific. If they are not specific, then there is no point in having them.

If a player says "I thought it was a lawful act because of X/Y/Z," I'd be inclined to nod my head and move on.

Why? Fundamentally, those actions make a statement about what you believe. If the truth is that all truth is relative to the person, and there is no specific answers - just your own answers, then you've sided with a particular alignment view point. Essentially you are telling your players, "Forget this malarkey about nine alignments. There is one fundamental truth, and that truth is that there is no truth." If that is the case, when could ever the chips be down? When could it ever matter what the character was doing, if at best the player is the only judge of his own actions?

 

[Celebrim]

My conception of D&D "good" has always been that it is puritanical zealotry. Intolerant, uncompromising, and ultimately hypocritical. I would never want to live with a paladin.

Then, wouldn't 'good' by definition not be 'good'.

And incidentally, this is also an aligned stance. Surely you don't believe 'good' sees itself in this way or justifies itself in this way. So this is an outside perspective on good. I personally prefer to let each alignment attempt to justify itself. If you let each alignment describe the other alignments, you get some very interesting insight into how the alignment thinks about the world, but you don't really learn much about any other alignment.