Do alignments improve the gaming experience?

[Bedrockgames]

I must agree with N'racc that for me, i do not like it when players are able to impose upon the setting through their character concept, rather it ought to fit naturally with the established setting. One thing that frustrated me in 3E as a player was people bringing in characters using prestige characters that had zero connection to the established framework of the existing campaign setting. Everyone is obviously going to have different levels of tolerance, but for me many of these character concepts were like having a Ranma 1/2 character showing up in ravenloft. I think i really need the setting to feel external to the characts, with laws they are subject to.

 

[Umbran]

100% this.

If you want there to be a "challenge" for players in RPing their PCs - can they remain consistent with some predefined parameters - than alignment may be helpful. (This is how the 2nd ed AD&D PHB presents things, as quoted a little bit upthread.)

But if you want the players to play their own PCs according to their own conceptions of them, and see what happens in the game as a result, then alignment is nothing but an obstacle to that.

Except, of course, the fact that these things are not mutually exclusive, and so the absolute, "nothing" does not hold. I submit that most play is inherently a mix of "can you succeed within some predefined parameters" and "play our own PC according to your own conception of them". To reduce to the absurd to make the logic clear - I don't care about the player concept, the character cannot fly unless there's mechanical justification for it on the sheet, per the rules of the game.

No matter their conceptions, PCs cannot, in general, take arbitrary actions without suffering negative consequences. There's always some issues with remaining within some bounds set by the GM. "How do I deal with this situation given the restrictions placed on me by the world?" is a common question the players ask themselves. Alignment is merely one set of boundaries a character might be asked to operate within.

 

[Cadence]

In the games I've run without alignment mechanics, here are just some of the things that I remember when I reflect back on 25+ years of campaigns:

Great examples of play! I can see most of those things happening in a game with alignments too (I've seen some things that would have similar descriptions to some of them occur and wish I could have seen the others).

Above are just some of the play experiences that I have had which would have been impeded by alignment - because were I using mechanical alignment then on each of those occasions the players, instead of just playing their PCs, would also have been wondering how I as GM are judging those decisions and making notes on the alignment graph, and would have been waiting to learn whether they were still good or evil or lawful or chaotic or whatever else.

I'm at a loss as to why alignment would have caused problems with (1), (5), (6), and any of (8)-(11). It even seems supportive of why a couple of them could have occurred (of course the Duergar were dependable, they're lawful and they think that the things you're doing hurt their enemies more than they help the good and/or chaotic guys).

In most of those cases I don't think we would have worried about alignment change on the character sheet until something forced us to (like the character's choice of class being predicated on them not doing such things or when the opponents want to use a detect alignment spell or whatnot), which leads to...

It is about the fact that it involves the GM, at all, in having to adjudicate on evaluative questions that arise as a result of the players' decisions for their PCs. Whether the GM is doing his/her job well or poorly, if that job includes making alignment adjudications then the GM is doing something that I don't want him/her (or me, when I GM) to have to do.

Because adjudicating Fate aspects or Burning Wheel beliefs or Marvel Heroic distinctions and milestones doesn't actually have that element - the player is the one who takes the lead in playing his/her PC in accordance with his/her own conception, and from time to time, if the GM doesn't notice, reminds the GM to hand out the requisite tokens - they do not for me raise the same issues at all.

I can understand wanting to minimize the GM power to over-rule the player's power to form the shared game world except in the most bizarre circumstances. I want to assume that you aren't saying you can't envisage any situations where you would countermand the player's command of backstory? Say the Samurai had previously attacked Ogres in a similar situation (to the detriment of some negotiations other party members were doing) because "my order's code doesn't allow me to treat with Ogres and other Oni spawn and any of us would commit ritual suicide if forced to do so". You then used that fact in setting up something that happened to other members of the order in framing an important scene later on. Now, several sessions later, he dices with them and says "I was outnumbered and my order's code doesn't mean I have to be inflexible". Is the order's code rewritten so that they don't demand he kill himself? What if "Die before treating with Oni spawn" had been one of his aspects in Fate? Would you be fine with him refusing a compel to attack them because the order is flexible?

If you want there to be a "challenge" for players in RPing their PCs - can they remain consistent with some predefined parameters - than alignment may be helpful. (This is how the 2nd ed AD&D PHB presents things, as quoted a little bit upthread.) If you want players play of their PCs to be some sort of exploration of parameters pregiven by the GM as part of authoring the campaign backstory, then again alignment may be helpful. But if you want the players to play their own PCs according to their own conceptions of them, and see what happens in the game as a result, then alignment is nothing but an obstacle to that.

Isn't it only an obstacle to following their own conceptions if they pick a class with an alignment restriction? If they want a barbarian who didn't chafe at rules, a monk who was a random, rule breaking trickster, or a sadist paladin... then it seems to me they either should have thought of that earlier and negotiated the class description with the GM, or they are changing something fundamental about their own initial conception (akin to completely over-hauling an aspect in Fate).


Edit: Big nod of agreement with @Umbran 's post just above this one.

 

[pemerton]

"How do I deal with this situation given the restrictions placed on me by the world?" is a common question the players ask themselves. Alignment is merely one set of boundaries a character might be asked to operate within.

Imagine an activity for which an important goal - perhaps the main goal - is to evoke an evaluative and/or expressive response on the part of a participant, which that participant shares with the other participants, in turn evoking similar responses from them - and a good part of the pleasure of the activity is in enjoying the dynamic interaction of these responses. And part of this dynamic is that individual participants evaluate along different dimensions of value (aesthetic, personal morality, politics, etiquette etc), and express their own conceptions of what is salient about a given element within their activity, both in their original responses an in their interactions with other participants. And all these responses in turn generate new content which can itself be the object of further expression and evaluation.

That is an activity in which having one participant be a referee of expression and evaluation would not help. Because it would change the nature of the activity, from a concern by the participants with what to express and how to evaluate, to an additional, and potentially overriding, concern with the attitude of the referee towards candidate expressions and evaluations.

There are a number of parlour games which illustrate this point, though typically in the expressive rather than the evaluative mode, and without a great deal of feedback and iteration: various forms of dictionary games; Pictionary, as a variant that involves visual expression; charades; etc. Part of the fun of these games is watching how your friends express themselves, and what they think is salient, for instance, in conveying some idea; or what ideas or images they think some word or phrase evokes.

Sincere discussion about works of art, or political ideas, can have this sort of character too - I say "sincere" to contrast with discussion in which people hold back, and censor their own views, out of some felt need to conform to received opinion that they don't themselves share.

So do many other human activities. Children's games, for instance, when telling stories with their dolls or blocks or Lego. And I gather also at least some forms of improvisational theatre, although that's not an activity I'm personally familiar with.

In the context of RPGing, I've got not special desire to monopolise the phrase "play one's own PC according to one's own conceptions of it" in order to describe an approach which has the characteristics I've just described - although I do think that's what [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] had in mind in the post with which I agreed. (Hussar can of course correct me if I misunderstood him!)

But I will insist that there is a viable approach to RPGing along the lines that I've described, that the idea of playing a PC according to one's own conception of it is a clear element of that approach, that notions like "sincerity" that often occur in philosophical discussions of evaluative (especially aesthetic) and expressive response are relevant to understanding such play (and are directly at issue in cases like Hussar's example of "don't touch my character"), and that a referee's adjudication of such responses is at odds with the whole raison d'etre and pleasure-generating capacity of such activity.

That's not to say that you couldn't get some other pleasurable activity out of introducing a referee, and therefore changing the dynamics and rationale of responses. But you would have fundamentally changed the nature of the activity.

To reduce to the absurd to make the logic clear - I don't care about the player concept, the character cannot fly unless there's mechanical justification for it on the sheet, per the rules of the game.

No matter their conceptions, PCs cannot, in general, take arbitrary actions without suffering negative consequences.

The example of flight is clear, and I don't think it's absurd as an example. But I don't think it really addresses the issue.

The ability to fly is - for the player - an action resolution resource. It permits certain actions, for example, to be declared successful via player fiat: "I fly over the pit"; "I fly up the ciff"; etc. For some PCs, it is an external or purely procedural resource (eg the PC looted some winged sandals from an NPC). For others, it goes to the core of the PC, such that removing or blocking the ability would have to be handled with care (eg the player is playing The Angel in a Marvel Heroic RP game). But it remains an action resolution resource, and shutting it down, or making it available, doesn't impinge upon any expressive or evaluative response that the player has to events in the fiction. (If the PC loses his wings of flying, the PC might decide the PC is now crap and not want to play him/her anymore - but that is not an evaluative response to the fiction, that is an evaluative response to having "lost" the game, which is a metagame state of affairs.)

It is true that in at least some versions of D&D being LG, or CE, matters to action resolution. But in no edition is it purely an action resolution resource. It is also a label that signals an evaluative judgement about the character, and the character's behaviour within the fiction. The nature of the judgement can vary: in my personal experience it is most often a judgement either that the character is not behaving true to some expressed ideal, or that the character is not behaving in a morally proper manner (or both). But whatever its precise content, such a judgements is fundamentally different from a referee enforcing the expectation that a person without magical wings can't fly. It is not just about action resolution. It has an evaluative component.

In this way, an alignment judgement is also different from a mere in-fiction negative consequence. An in-fiction negative consequence is, for instance, that an NPC doesn't like what you did, and thinks it was wrong. That does not impinge upon the player's own evaluative and expressive responses, though it does provide more material for the player to work with.

Nor is an alignment judgement simply a negative mechanical consequence. A player in my game wields the Rod of 5 (out of a possible 7) Parts. When he or his friends fight immortals, the Rod gets angry, and if they do it often enough the Rod might even refuse to grant him some of its powers. This is not a purely theoretical threat, because from time to time the PCs find themselves opposed to the immortal servants of various gods (last session, for instance, they were fighting Torog's servants in the Soul Abattoir, and the Rod came very close to refusing to carry its wielder on the currents of air that it can summon). But this does not impinge upon the player's evaluative and expressive responses - the player can (and in fact does) form the view that the Rod is too rigid in its devotion to the notion of divine order.

But an alignment judgement isn't just saying "Now these NPCs don't like you, because they think you betrayed your ideals" or "Now this artefact is withholding power from you, because it thinks you're flouting moral precepts." An alignment judgement involves the GM saying "You did betray your ideals", or "You did flout moral precepts." And that is the feature of alignment that is an obstacle to my play experience, because an obstacle to the player playing his/her PC in accordance with his/her conception of it, in the sense of that phrase I have explained above.

 

[pemerton]

Great examples of play!

Thanks - nice of you to say so!

I'm at a loss as to why alignment would have caused problems with (1), (5), (6), and any of (8)-(11). It even seems supportive of why a couple of them could have occurred (of course the Duergar were dependable, they're lawful and they think that the things you're doing hurt their enemies more than they help the good and/or chaotic guys).

(1) Because if the ogres are CE, and the PC is (which is often the default, particularly for a samurai) either xG or LN, the resulting alignment conflict creates at least prima facie obstacles to peaceable interaction. Also, because a standard element in explaining Good is that "good opposes evil", sitting down and dicing with CE ogres runs the risk of being seen as at best a neutral act, and therefore a potential threat to alignment status, and hence pressure is generated on the player to declare other actions for their PC.

Now if I want to put pressure on the player deciding that the PC sits down to dice with ogres I can easily do that - "As you take your seat, you notice that the bamboo is strapped together with human sinew", or "As you walk into the ogre's sitting room you go past an open kitchen door, where you can see a pile of children's skulls in one corner". But this is pressure generated by the concrete details of the fiction, not simply via stipulation at the level of alignment descriptor.

My own view, influenced by others' accounts of the history of the game and of some approaches to play that were probably more typical in the 70s and early 80s, is that this is part of the (original) point of alignment - it generates moral pressure by stipulation without needing to introduce concrete details into the fiction, and thereby both (i) saves the effort of introducing those details, and (ii) creates pressure even on players in "pawn stance" play who will happily massacre a village of innocents if they can get a few XP for the endeavour. Change the playstyle, though, and neither of those reasons are operational any more.

(5) Two reasons, I think. First, if alignment were in play the angel would probably be LG (I haven't got the module to confirm that, but I think it's a pretty safe bet - the rules mandate that she be xG at any event) and the PC probably not (depending on GM the PC might have been LN, N or CN, I think). This sets up an alignment conflict - which the angel could easily confirm via Detect X or Know Alignment or even Zone of Truth while asking the PC to tell her something of his life story - which is likely to be an impediment to her relenting to him. Second, if the angel were Lawful, then the notion of her being talked into allowing herself to be killed in contravention of her instructions becomes all that more challenging - perhaps absurd, at least in the view of some D&Ders, I imagine.

(8) and (9) both resemble (1). At least in my experience many GMs frown upon PCs forming systematically friendly relationships with evil humanoids. It tends to be regarded as a "non-good" act. There are additional complexities around the duergar's Asmodeus worship, which - depending on a particular GM's cosmological approach - might make the duergar especially heinously evil. Also, drawing on a point I made in relation to (1), the absence of alignment as a stipulated dimension of concurrence or conflict makes the concrete details of the situation more salient in play. In the case of the duergar, for instance, the drow took something of a back seat, and was sent by the duergar to inferior accommodation, not because he was Chaotic but because they could see that he wore a demonskin cloak (he is a Demonskin Adept) and could sense his connection to the Elemental Chaos and the Abyss; while the tiefling paladin (of the Raven Queen) and the imp-allied invoker/wizard were treated as honoured guests. There was also some nice reflective roleplaying from the tiefling's player, who noted that duergar's devil-worship meant that they, like the tiefling, were also a fallen race, who simply hadn't yet arrived at that realisation. (That fall came, somewhat ironically, as a result of subsequent actions by the PCs.)

The use of alignment as a short-hand personality descriptor (eg duergar are lawful, hence reliable) is, on its own, harmless enough - though equally the books could just tell me that they are reliable - but that is not all alignment, in its traditional form does: it also tries to express other aspects of the duergar's personality (eg that they're anti-individualist - making it hard to find a label to carve out a reliable individualist), and to integrate them into a stipulated realm of moral conflict.

(10) and (11) are cases where I think alignment would hurt in a different way, by changing and perhaps cheapening the framework for response. Eg instead of taking hard steps (which they did) to redeem the paladin because it struck them as the right thing to do, the reasoning can take the form "We should do this because we're Good" or "Nah, he's Evil so we don't have to worry about killing him." In the case of the bears, taming and befriending rather than killing conferred no mechanical disadvantage (nor any advantage), but again the presence of alignment would interpose needless, and potentially distorting, mediation between the ingame fiction and the players' decisions in response. And hence also on the ability of that player to look back and say "I feel good about that." The mode of pleased self-reflection there was quite different from "I feel good about the clever tactical way we resolved that encounter" - and the mediation of alignment, and "We're good, so we better do X rather than Y" pushes decision-making about whether or not to kill bears more into the tactical realm.

In most of those cases I don't think we would have worried about alignment change on the character sheet until something forced us to (like the character's choice of class being predicated on them not doing such things or when the opponents want to use a detect alignment spell or whatnot)

<snip>

Isn't it only an obstacle to following their own conceptions if they pick a class with an alignment restriction? If they want a barbarian who didn't chafe at rules, a monk who was a random, rule breaking trickster, or a sadist paladin... then it seems to me they either should have thought of that earlier and negotiated the class description with the GM, or they are changing something fundamental about their own initial conception

My reply to this has two stages.

First, if alignment doesn't matter - if we're not tracking alignment change, for instance, and only using it as a shorthand personality label for NPCs - then I don't really see the point of it (see my comments re duergar above) but it is harmless enough. 4e takes this approach. I think B/X can be played this way pretty easily, too, though I don't know that that would be the default.

But second, it actually turns out that it does matter: in a big way for some classes, and in modest ways for everyone - for instance, if my conception of my PC is that I'm not evil, but now when angels and noble knights cast "Detect Evil" they pick me up (or when they speak a Holy Word they blast me as well, or whatever), or if I tell them my exploits they (using the same reasoning as the GM) work out that I am Evil, and hence (by stipulation) their enemy because a wrongdoer, that matters.

To reiterate - I don't care that NPCs don't like my PC. That's the GM's prerogative as part of scene-framing, ascertaining consequences of action resolution, etc. (Of course it should be done well in accordance with the broader parameters of the game, but that's a different matter.) What I care about is that the alignment rules make it the case that they're right not to like my PC.

As far as the whimsical monk or sadist paladin is concerned, they are red herrings in my view. To try and make it clear why this is so: I could keep mechanical alignment, and permit sadist paladins and whimsical monks, simply by houseruling that those classes may be of any alignment. But my concern is not with the freedom I, or my players, have to play sadist paladins or whimsical monks, and so such a houserule wouldn't address my concern. What I don't like is a mechanic that requires me to monitor and adjudicate whether or not the monk as played is too whimsical, or the paladin too sadist. My reply to Umbran not far upthread sets out the rationale for this in more detail.

I can understand wanting to minimize the GM power to over-rule the player's power to form the shared game world except in the most bizarre circumstances. I want to assume that you aren't saying you can't envisage any situations where you would countermand the player's command of backstory? Say the Samurai had previously attacked Ogres in a similar situation (to the detriment of some negotiations other party members were doing) because "my order's code doesn't allow me to treat with Ogres and other Oni spawn and any of us would commit ritual suicide if forced to do so". You then used that fact in setting up something that happened to other members of the order in framing an important scene later on. Now, several sessions later, he dices with them and says "I was outnumbered and my order's code doesn't mean I have to be inflexible". Is the order's code rewritten so that they don't demand he kill himself?

NPC reactions I regard as, by default, within the authority of the GM, though the GM is bound by the action resolution rules (and so, for instance, the player is entitled to try and persuade the order's leaders that his interpretation of the code is to be preferred - qv Sturm Brightblade in Dragonlance). I've indicated some exceptions upthread, when the NPC in question is an integral part of the player's build, but I don't see that that's relevant at present.

In my reply to Umbran I explain why I think that GM-adjudicated NPC reactions aren't the same as alignment mechanics.

But as you describe the two episodes of play, at my table at least the biggest issue would be with the other players. I would expect conversation having simultaneous ingame (PC to PC) and metagame (player to play) dimensions, in which the other players say "WTF - were you lying about your code before, or are you squibbing now?" And then that conversation, and its consequences, would play out. Maybe the samurai player is squibbing because he can't bear to lose his PC to ritual suicide and isn't willing, for whatever reason, to take on the gores. Maybe the samurai player has, in the play of his PC, come to a new realisation about the flexibility of the code (again, qv Sturm Brightblade).

I might participate in that conversation - that's part of the fun of RPGing! - and I might play out NPCs in ways that I think make sense, are fair, and are consistent with the parameters of action resolution outcomes. But I don't see how I need to countermand anything the player has said or any action declared for the PC.

Is there something I've missed in, or misunderstood about, your setup?

What if "Die before treating with Oni spawn" had been one of his aspects in Fate? Would you be fine with him refusing a compel to attack them because the order is flexible?

Well, he can refuse the compel by paying a token! (I'm assuming here that "compel to attack" is a permissible GM move in Fate - as I've said upthread, my knowledge of Fate is pretty rough and ready.) If he pays the token, how should we think of his PC? As a coward? A betrayer of the code? Or someone who's come to a higher realisation about the true meaning of the code? That's not something I regard as a matter for GM stipulation - that's something that I see as being addressed by further play.

 

[N'raac]

What I see from your comments is “alignment as straightjacket”.

(1) Because if the ogres are CE, and the PC is (which is often the default, particularly for a samurai) either xG or LN, the resulting alignment conflict creates at least prima facie obstacles to peaceable interaction. Also, because a standard element in explaining Good is that "good opposes evil", sitting down and dicing with CE ogres runs the risk of being seen as at best a neutral act, and therefore a potential threat to alignment status, and hence pressure is generated on the player to declare other actions for their PC.

I’d expect the Samurai to be Lawful. ARE the ogres evil? You’ve noted you would indicate they are by their actions, with some evocative descriptions. Is there any reason to believe these ogres are, in fact, evil? They don’t seem to be ACTING evil. And an arrangement under which they do not prey on the Samurai’s people seems like a Good thing to achieve.

(5) Two reasons, I think. First, if alignment were in play the angel would probably be LG (I haven't got the module to confirm that, but I think it's a pretty safe bet - the rules mandate that she be xG at any event) and the PC probably not (depending on GM the PC might have been LN, N or CN, I think). This sets up an alignment conflict - which the angel could easily confirm via Detect X or Know Alignment or even Zone of Truth while asking the PC to tell her something of his life story - which is likely to be an impediment to her relenting to him.

Is the problem that there IS alignment, or that it can be detected? Can the Angel not use Zone of Truth to hear something of the PC’s life story and judge for itself whether this meets with its moral code, or does not? Or is your preference a game where Angels and Demons run the spectrum between Good and Evil, so the Angel in this story is more Chaotic Neutral?

Second, if the angel were Lawful, then the notion of her being talked into allowing herself to be killed in contravention of her instructions becomes all that more challenging - perhaps absurd, at least in the view of some D&Ders, I imagine.

“Alignment as straightjacket”. The Angel’s bias is almost certainly to follow its instructions. Wasn’t that its bias in your game? But it is not simply a blind Lawful pawn following orders. It is also Good, and it seems like the PC’s were able to present a compelling argument that the greater good mandates, perhaps even required, deviating from its instructions. I assume they didn’t just say “Hey mind if we cut you up to create a Gate?”

(8) and (9) both resemble (1). At least in my experience many GMs frown upon PCs forming systematically friendly relationships with evil humanoids. It tends to be regarded as a "non-good" act. There are additional complexities around the duergar's Asmodeus worship, which - depending on a particular GM's cosmological approach - might make the duergar especially heinously evil.

Is devil worship considered perfectly acceptable in your game, with no moral issues? “Why, they’re just the nicest, kindest, most friendly baby-sacrificing devil worshippers I’ve ever come across”? Do they actually DO anything evil?

Also, drawing on a point I made in relation to (1), the absence of alignment as a stipulated dimension of concurrence or conflict makes the concrete details of the situation more salient in play. In the case of the duergar, for instance, the drow took something of a back seat, and was sent by the duergar to inferior accommodation, not because he was Chaotic but because they could see that he wore a demonskin cloak (he is a Demonskin Adept) and could sense his connection to the Elemental Chaos and the Abyss

So basically the same Law/Chaos conflict which exists under standard alignment structures.

while the tiefling paladin (of the Raven Queen) and the imp-allied invoker/wizard were treated as honoured guests. There was also some nice reflective roleplaying from the tiefling's player, who noted that duergar's devil-worship meant that they, like the tiefling, were also a fallen race, who simply hadn't yet arrived at that realisation. (That fall came, somewhat ironically, as a result of subsequent actions by the PCs.)

So we just accept devil worship is OK? Are there actual evil acts involved in the worship of Asmodeus, or maybe he’s just misunderstood?

To reiterate - I don't care that NPCs don't like my PC. That's the GM's prerogative as part of scene-framing, ascertaining consequences of action resolution, etc. (Of course it should be done well in accordance with the broader parameters of the game, but that's a different matter.) What I care about is that the alignment rules make it the case that they're right not to like my PC.

Where you don’t find it appropriate that devout followers of a Good deity might oppose demon or devil worshippers?

Well, he can refuse the compel by paying a token! (I'm assuming here that "compel to attack" is a permissible GM move in Fate - as I've said upthread, my knowledge of Fate is pretty rough and ready.) If he pays the token, how should we think of his PC? As a coward? A betrayer of the code? Or someone who's come to a higher realisation about the true meaning of the code? That's not something I regard as a matter for GM stipulation - that's something that I see as being addressed by further play.

Does he seem like someone for whom death is preferable to trucking with Ogrekind? Was his Aspect actually “Kind of doesn’t like Ogres much but it’s no big deal”?

 

[Cadence]

EDIT: Apologies for the duplication with @N'raac on several points, especially on the Ogres and Angel. Internet-stall induced reboot delayed my post and I didn't have the energy to re-edit everything I had saved in the notepad window.

--

As an aside, just stumbled across this...

Alignment is a curious creature; it summarizes the philosophy and morality of a person, and yet no two characters with the same alignment are exactly alike. Still, alignment says much about a character's soul and the way she interacts with others.

---

(1) Because if the ogres are CE, and the PC is (which is often the default, particularly for a samurai) either xG or LN, the resulting alignment conflict creates at least prima facie obstacles to peaceable interaction.

Well, typically CE...

While a monster's size and type remain constant <snip>, alignment is far more fluid. The alignments listed for each monster in this book represent the norm for those monsters—they can vary as you require them to in order to serve the needs of your campaign.

and they aren't bad enough to show up for the Detect Evil spell (need to be 5HD or have evil intent... although it seems like protection from evil and protection from chaos would mess with most ogres if I read them right). [EDIT: Gack, my objection so far sounds nit-pickier than I originally thought.]

Also, because a standard element in explaining Good is that "good opposes evil", sitting down and dicing with CE ogres runs the risk of being seen as at best a neutral act, and therefore a potential threat to alignment status, and hence pressure is generated on the player to declare other actions for their PC.

I don't think a "neutral act" is any threat to alignment status in and of itself. Aren't most acts neutral? If neutral acts were anti-good, then could any good character walk down a typical metropolis street to go anywhere given the number of hungry, down-trodden, diseased, and depressed people they would encounter who could use some help?

And I'm not sure that treating with evil is necessarily evil either. Can the lawful good police officer get information from someone they suspect of being sketchy without hard evidence? If the ogres aren't currently doing anything evil and you'd be stopping a bigger evil down the road, isn't dicing with them at worst pragmatically neutral? Does a good character surrounded by evil have to take them on all at once and inevitably fail?

(5) Second, if the angel were Lawful, then the notion of her being talked into allowing herself to be killed in contravention of her instructions becomes all that more challenging - perhaps absurd, at least in the view of some D&Ders, I imagine.

I think I'd make a distinction between instructions and axiomatic beliefs. If the angel is in service of a zealous deity of vengeful purity then I think the players (and world?) are toast since it won't even talk to them. On the other hand a lawful good creator god might have preserving the universe at the top of its list and so the situation on the ground could reasonably over-ride the last given instructions (can the angel do a quick commune?).

I can certainly see the alignment having the bad effect here of having some GMs feel like they couldn't have the angel change no matter what. So, I guess I'd count this as somewhere between a loss for the pro-alignment side and a stark reminder of the importance of having a lot of strong disclaimers in the chapter on alignment.

The use of alignment as a short-hand personality descriptor (eg duergar are lawful, hence reliable) is, on its own, harmless enough - though equally the books could just tell me that they are reliable - but that is not all alignment, in its traditional form does: it also tries to express other aspects of the duergar's personality (eg that they're anti-individualist - making it hard to find a label to carve out a reliable individualist), and to integrate them into a stipulated realm of moral conflict.

If an alignment system is used I would certainly be in favor of having, say, a two or three word descriptor given after the alignment!

I'm trying to form a comment about what would happen if the extra descriptors after "Good" were chosen to be Utilitarianist, Deontologist, or Virtue Ethicist [especially in light of your comments on (10) and (11)] and failing. Unsurprisingly, a few "Philosophy of..." books is poor preparation.

(10) and (11) are cases where I think alignment would hurt in a different way, by changing and perhaps cheapening the framework for response. Eg instead of taking hard steps (which they did) to redeem the paladin because it struck them as the right thing to do, the reasoning can take the form "We should do this because we're Good" or "Nah, he's Evil so we don't have to worry about killing him."

Even if they had a simplistic view of their character's character, won't they still have to make the choice between the two of those? Won't they have to think about the one that they think is the right thing to do based on how they imagine their character thinking?

If the players view the alignment on their character sheet as being a descriptive projection of more complicated things... and realize they can change it if it doesn't fit their character conception... then I don't see why it would stop them from doing what they considered the right thing? Even for a paladin, wouldn't it take the DM ruling that either "killing evil things is evil" or "allowing evil things to redeem themselves" is evil to make it a non-decision?

In my reply to Umbran I explain why I think that GM-adjudicated NPC reactions aren't the same as alignment mechanics.

Do the gods count as NPCs? (Does that maybe get to the heart of the matter depending on how the GM views the cosmology of the world?)

But as you describe the two episodes of play, at my table at least the biggest issue would be with the other players. I would expect conversation having simultaneous ingame (PC to PC) and metagame (player to play) dimensions, in which the other players say "WTF - were you lying about your code before, or are you squibbing now?" And then that conversation, and its consequences, would play out.

I think all the groups I've played in have viewed the GM as at least the first among equals and would have expected him to take the lead. Honestly (and I feel kind of silly not to have thought of it), having the other players be the heavies hadn't occurred to me.

Is there something I've missed in, or misunderstood about, your setup?

Well, he can refuse the compel by paying a token!

By refuse, I meant, refuse to accept it as a legitimate compel attempt. (Player says, no my code doesn't mean that, you can't compel me like this, I'm not paying.)

Or similarly, what if the player argues with you that your playing of the NPCs' reactions is completely unreasonable?

 

[pemerton]

I guess I'd count this as somewhere between a loss for the pro-alignment side and a stark reminder of the importance of having a lot of strong disclaimers in the chapter on alignment.

As far as wins and losses are concerned, I think it depends on what you're hoping to do in the game.
[MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION] can of course correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I have a pretty good handle on what he means when he talks about alignment being a tool that the GM uses to convey his/her sense of the gameworld, and then adhering to alignment in play, or alternatively departing from it and having the GM impose alignment changes, being part of experiencing the GM's world. Nothing I'm saying is intended to challenge the utility of alignment to that sort of play. Similarly with respect to [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] and the 2nd ed AD&D idea of playing one's alignment being part of the challenge of the game, and the GM being the adjudicator.

Now it's true that I'm saying that I personally don't especially enjoy either of those approaches to play, whether as player or as GM, but I'd hope that's not being taken as a challenge to those styles. I take it for granted that other people are allowed to like things I don't!

I also hope it's clear why I think that playing in one of those styles means that the player is doing something, in playing his/her PC, other than simply "playing it according to his/her conception". In the "explore the GM's world" style, the player has to take on board the moral framework of the GM's world in forming a conception of his/her PC - eg in this GM's world, being good means refraining from XYZ. In the "roleplaying your alignment is part of the challenge" style, a player who simply plays according to his/her conception of the PC is not taking the challenge seriously. Part of the challenge is developing that conception within the alignment framework as it will be adjudicated by the GM, and then playing accordingly.

Again, none of the above is (hostile) criticism towards those styles. It's analysis (and perhaps criticism in the sense of "literary criticism"), as part of an attempt to explain why, given that I want X out of my RPGing (a certain approach by the players to playing their PCs), I don't need or want this other thing Y to get in the way (mechanical alignment).

By refuse, I meant, refuse to accept it as a legitimate compel attempt. (Player says, no my code doesn't mean that, you can't compel me like this, I'm not paying.)

I don't know how Fate handles this, according to its rules as written.

Burning Wheel has a rule that says (i) the player is always free to change his/her beliefs, but (ii) the GM can postpone that until the end of the current ingame situation if s/he thinks the player is just trying to squib. Part of what makes this rule viable is that Burning Wheel action resolution is adjudicated in a "fail forward" fashion, so that the player has a type of metagame guarantee that makes it easier not to squib: your PC might suffer, and your goals might become harder to achieve, but you're not going to be left unable to keep playing this PC in this game dealing with these issues. (Aside: Burning Wheel doesn't have compels. Rather, the GM is expected to frame situations such that, if the player acts contrary to his/her belief bad things will happen, and if the player acts in accordance with his/her belief great risks will have to be taken - so you could say it emphasises "compels via framing", with the GM taking the lead from the players' beliefs, rather than literal mechanical compels, and all in a rather gritty and downbeat tone. So if a player changes beliefs mid-scene, s/he is creating an excuse not to feel the "between a rock and a hard place" pressure that the GM is trying to create. Hence the right of the GM to defer the change until after the current situation is resolved.)

I don't know how Fate handles changing aspects. Assuming it allows it, it seems to me that what the player is wanting to do in the above example is to change an aspect (we can make it stark by describing the change this way: instead of, say, "Bound by the code", they want the aspect "It's really just guidelines"). The question then becomes, what are the timing rules: if the GM compels can the player change an aspect at "interrupt speed"? My gut feel is no, they shouldn't be able to because it creates too big a standing temptation to squib. Let them pay the token - in Fate that's really not a big deal (I would have thought it's about as serious as paying a healing surge in 4e, maybe less so).

The fact that it's not really a big deal is actually quite important, too: that's one of the design techniques that a game like Fate uses to facilitate play in a very practical sense. (4e is actually similar in some ways with healing surges: in a thread a year or so ago [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] and I both commented how in 4e, setting stakes and levying penalties of "lose a handful of hp here" and "lose a HS there" doesn't have the same punitive feel that it would have in classic D&D, mostly because of the way hp recovery is set up, and the fact that losing a healing surge doesn't immediately reduced your action resolution capabilities in the same way that losing hp does (because in the latter case it takes you that much closer to dying before you can do anything to save yourself), and this tends to encourage an approach to improvised actions and the consequences thereof that is quite different from more traditional D&D play.)

Or similarly, what if the player argues with you that your playing of the NPCs is completely unreasonable?

Fail forward helps here - by lowering the practical stakes of failure (you're not going to "lose the game" or have to abandon your PC) without diluting the fictional stakes ("All my friends hate me now! How can I persuade them I really was doing the right thing?") it reduces some of the pressure around adjudicative disagreements.

Social mechanics help too: instead of objecting at the metagame level, the player has the resources to engage the situation via his/her PC, and change those NPCs' minds.

A further technique, that [MENTION=6681948]N'raac[/MENTION] alluded to upthread, is my preference for not resolving actions by reference to "hidden backstory" ie backstory that the players don't have access to, and hence can't anticipate the consequences of when they make choices for their PCs. In the sorts of situations we're looking at in this thread (fidelity, betrayal, honour etc) I have NPCs, artefacts, imp familiars, the general back and forth of table talk, all as devices to let the players know what I think the stakes are before they commit. Sometimes they will suggest that the stakes should be different (eg But what about that other thing where blah blah blah?) in which case I'll correct my framing - mostly I would say they lobby for self-interest but sometimes they think I'm being too soft! Sometimes they will remind me of an action resolution outcome (say, the result of a skill challenge) that I've forgotten about and that means I'm not at total liberty to decide how my NPCs react.

So I can't recall a time when the players have complained about the playing of NPCs being unreasonable, and I think it is the techniques above that help achieve that outcome.

Do the gods count as NPCs?

Like I posted upthread, if I have a player whose PC is a devotee of the god then I regard that god as shared property. I don't have unilateral authority.

In the case of the Raven Queen in my current 4e game, authority is actually shared 4 ways: me (as GM) and three players, each of whom is playing a PC with a divine class who is a devotee of the Raven Queen (though for one she is only one of many divine beings that he serves). Each of those PCs has quite a different perspective on, and relationship with, the Raven Queen, but to date at least that hasn't been an issue in play. [MENTION=6681948]N'raac[/MENTION] upthread posited the possibility of these players finding out, 5 years into the campaign, that in fact only one of them was right about their god, and that the others were wrong all along. As I said in reply, I don't feel that this is a genuine danger, because it seems to posit a type of "bolt from the blue" adjudication or scene-resolution which simply wouldn't fit with the sorts of techniques I've just discussed for helping keep everyone on the same page during action resolution and the determination of consequences.

I think all the groups I've played in have viewed the GM as at least the first among equals and would have expected him to take the lead. Honestly (and I feel kind of silly not to have thought of it), having the other players be the heavies hadn't occurred to me.

An important part of what I was trying to get across is that their response, in quite a distinctive way when compared to the GM, can mix in-character and out-of-character (though it doesn't have to), and so the disagreement can itself be incorporated into the unfolding game rather than be a sort of meta-level disruption to the unfolding game.

I think there are practical limits on how hard you can push this in D&D (or similar games) because it is really aimed at party play, and so having the PCs separate for any extended period, particularly if they separate in anger, makes things hard for both players and GM. Also, D&D (including here 4e, as well as D&D-like games such as Rolemaster) does not have canonical methods for resolving an intra-party dispute via mechanical means short of combat. At one point in my 4e game, when disputes about where the party should go next, which were grounded in disagreements over which of two goals was a higher priority, had taken up a fair bit of one session, then been postponed only to carry over in a big way into the next session, I made the players stop arguing and roll for it (I can't remember what dice rule I used but it was inspired by something [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] once posted and involved adjustments for CHA and social skills) after agreeing to all go along with whichever side won the roll. But that's ad hocery and I wouldn't want to have to do too much of it. (The players did accept the outcome of the roll. They've since finished the winning goal and are now approaching the climax of the second goal.)

Other systems which can either better tolerate PC separation, and/or which have more robust interpersonal mechanics for resolving disputes among the PCs - and which therefore considerably reduce the practical stakes of inter-PC disagreement without diluting the fictional stakes - would certainly encourage me to push harder on these points of pressure for the players.

Well, typically CE...

<snip>

and they aren't bad enough to show up for the Detect Evil spell (need to be 5HD or have evil intent... although it seems like protection from evil and protection from chaos would mess with most ogres if I read them right). [EDIT: Gack, that sounds nit-pickier than I originally thought.]

From my point of view not so much nit-picky - if you're playing with mechanical alignment these are the nits you have to pick, just like when I'm playing 4e I have stacks of coloured tokens 3 or more high to track all the effects that have been placed on a target during combat and there's no point pretending otherwise!- as tending to reinforce the features of the system that I don't want. It puts the focus of play on stuff that doesn't matter to me, and thereby distracts it from the stuff that does matter to me (and I think focus tends to be a zero-sum thing).

If the players view the alignment on their character sheet as being a descriptive projection of more complicated things... and realize they can change it if it doesn't fit their character conception... then I don't see why it would stop them from doing what they considered the right thing?

Maybe. I haven't done the experiment. I still think it shifts the focus of play away from where I want it - on expressive and evaluative responses - onto something that I don't really want - trying to work out, according to someone's (presumably the GM's) conception, how we should best describe someone's behaviour within the alignment rubric. Given my goals, I'm just not seeing what value this is adding to my game.

 

[pemerton]

In other words, your statement that the player’s vision of the character is the only one that matters in your games is not, in my view, accurate. Imposing your vision on the player during the character creation process changes the timing, not the reality.

You're confused. I haven't imposed my vision on anyone. No one has tried to create a character for my game since 2010 unless you count the rebuild of the invoker/wizard in 2012 - and on no occasion did I "impose my vision". I talked to the player about the character and where it fitted into the existing backstory. The most challenging of these was in fact the rebuild, because (i) there was a lot more established backstory by then and (ii) it was an elaborate character with an elaborate backstory.

Just in case there is any doubt: you are not proposing a PC for my campaign. You have not asked to join my campaign, and I am not inviting you to do so. (I think you're on the wrong continent, before we get to any other relevant considerations.) All you know is that in my game, from the start, and with the non-collusive consent of all the players who read the relevant material in the 4e books, it has been taken as a given that the Raven Queen does not approve of undeath, nor of death for its own sake given that she is also a god of fate. Given that that backstory has never even remotely been in contention, no one's vision has been imposed on anyone. (Though some eyebrows were raised when it was learned that Kas, a vampire, is a vassal of the Raven Queen. The extent to which she is highly expedient is a matter of ongoing debate among the players and PCs. In our most recent session, when it was clarified that the Raven Queen regards Torog's torture of souls in his Soul Abattoir of pointless, the player of the dwarf said (I think in character) that that's the first nice thing he's heard about the Raven Queen - she is opposed to pointless torture. The bigger point is that one person's expedience is someone else's compromise in the service of principle - you only have to look at everyday political debate to see that. The game doesn't need an authoritative answer to this question in order to go on.)

Players with a different vision than yours either agree to conform with your visions (“OK, he will serve a Demon Prince in accordance with your vision that this is the best fit for his views” or “OK, he will temper his views based on your vision of the Raven Queen’s morality” or “OK, I will design a different character since we have irreconcilable differences on this one’s morality in game”).

You assert this stuff as if you know me, but you're just making it up! You have no idea what sort of PC you, or anyone else, might play in my game, because we haven't talked about what the possibilities are. All I've done is point out the received view of the Raven Queen derived by my group from the default 4e material.

You are still assessing the consistency of the character’s code with the being he claims to serve.

I'm not sure what the "still" is doing here. Yes, I am assessing the coherence of your proposed PC with the received backstory: for instance, is it consistent with the received backstory for the Raven Queen that someone might show their devotion to her by murdering random people in her name?

I don't see what that has to do with judging your PC. You seem to think that random murder is evil. It would be evil, then, wouldn't it, whether you did it in the name of the Raven Queen or in the name of Demogorgon. If you personally judge a certain sort of behaviour (say, wanton murder) as evil; and if you want to play a PC who is devoted to such behaviour; but want to refrain from judging your PC evil - I am curious as to why? It sounds like a request for a type of exoneration - a pardon granted by the GM and/or the game system - but I don't really get it.

What I also don't understand, and what you've not explained, is how and why this wanton murder would be a mode of honouring the Raven Queen, as she is described in the default 4e campaign world.

Why does it matter to you whether my character serves the Raven Queen rather than, say, Demogorgon or Orcus?

Because I value coherence and consistency in backstory? I mean, you could suggest as your PC a bookish nerd who can barely see even when wearing glasses, who honours Kord by sneezing in even the gentlest breeze. I don't see how that PC fits into the gameworld, though.

I am assuming that, unlike the RQ, Orcus and Demogorgon are aligned, with evil. That is certainly what “Demon Prince” suggests to me. As such, you are pre-judging my character’s morality as Evil, in contrast to your statement that the character’s morality should be judged only by the player of the character.

<snip>

So there is no preconception whether a Demon Prince (which you are suggesting is my character’s appropriate patron) is good or evil? That seems quite unusual to me.

You seem to have mistaken me for someone who is using an alignment mechanic!

Of course most NPCs in the gameworld are going to have a dim view of the demon princes such as Orcus and Demogorgon. But then most NPCs in the gameworld are going to have a dim view of a person - such as the PC you propose - who honours his/her patron via murder and the animation of the dead. But on its own that doesn't settle the evaluative question - that's the whole point of what I've been saying.

Orcus hates life and loves undeath; Demogorgon revels in the savage destruction of ilfe. If someone wanted to play a PC dedicated to killing others and raising them as undead, Orcus would look like a good prospect; if someone wanted to play a PC who was a wild killer, Demogorgon would look like a good prospect. That's what I am prejudging - the fit between your PC's stated mode of worship, and the various entities who might enjoy such a mode of worship. Whether those inclinations make them evil isn't something I need to judge to run the game; whether your PC being devoted to them makes him/her evil likewise isn't something I need to judge to run the game. If you have a conception of your PC which explains how, in fact, in behaving in these ways s/he is doing the right thing, then maybe the same can be said for Demogorgon or Orcus.

The best story I've heard in defence of Orcus-style unlife is found in Rolemaster Companion VI (written by Lev Anderson, who I think is the same person who posts as Lev Lafeyette on RPGnet). The basic rationale is that mortality is a weakness, and hence undeath is a preferable status. Adding some 4e-isms to this account, then, you might argue that the gods are to be despised for two reasons: (i) because they created mortal life; (ii) because, themselves possessing the secret of immortality, they have not shared it with their creation. Hence the Abyss and its demonic inhabitants strive to bring down and destroy the gods. The devotee of Orcus is one of the few who has seen through the falsehoods and false hopes peddled by the gods!

I'll leave the development of a similar account of the logic of murderous Demogorgon worship as an exercise for the reader.

Now if you think that the Raven Queen, as described in the 4e PHB, would be honoured by the sacrifice to her of random murder victims and their animation as undead, explain away. But I'm not seeing it in the description of her (p 22):

She marks the end of each mortal life, and mourners call upon her during funeral rites, in the hope that she will guard the departed from the curse of undeath.​

"Guarding the departed from the curse of undeath" does not generally entail that you are an inflictor of undeath. Being a "marker of the end of lives" does not generally entail that you are a bringer of the end of those lives.

If you want to serve a god rather than a demon, here are some other possibilities that strike me as better suited than the Raven Queen (PHB p 23):

* Gruumsh . . . exhorts his followers to slaughter and pillage.

* Vecna is . . . god of undead, necromancy, and secrets. He rules that which is not meant to be known and that which people wish to keep secret.

* Zehir is . . . god of darkness, poison, and assassins.​

I find it difficult to believe a character that is unacceptable pre-play suddenly becomes acceptable when he appears after a session or two. Let us assume I agreed to tone down my initial character pitch, then shifted back to the original pitch over the first few weeks so by 2nd level, I am firmly back to the belief that dedicated service to the Raven Queen involves sending as many souls to her as possible

What you believe is your business. But I do think there may be more to the heaven and earth of RPGing than is dreamed of in your philosophy! For example, it seems to me that you underestimate the importance of actual play and the context that it provides for (nearly? - I'm not sure that I need the qualifier) every element of the fiction.

I utterly deny that alignment in any way requires, or causes, us to know how these things are going to play out.

I haven't asserted that it would. But it would require me, as GM, to form views about the significance, for PC alignment, of the actions declared by my players for their PCs. And that is an activity which is inimical to my enjoyment of the game and to my cultivation of the approach to play that I enjoy.

Most of these strike me as quite “so what?” in the scheme of alignment.

<snip>

All of these examples seem, to me, only to suggest that you view alignment as a straightjacket, assuming your objective is to show “great gaming that could never have happened if we used alignment”.

My goal is to show what I said I was showing - episodes of play to which alignment would be an impediment. The impediment, as I have repeatedly stated, would consist in me having to judge the moral character of the choices made by my players in the course of playing their PCs.

ARE the ogres evil? You’ve noted you would indicate they are by their actions, with some evocative descriptions. Is there any reason to believe these ogres are, in fact, evil? They don’t seem to be ACTING evil.

I don't know - I'm the one who doesn't use alignment, remember! I'm aware, however, of multiple editions of the Monster Manual that label ogres as evil. What is the point of that labelling if I'm meant to ignore it? Is there a passage I missed in the 3E PHB that explains how otherwise evil people who play dice suddenly cease to be evil?

Why would I want to waste my time worrying about the alignment of ogres, and tying myself up in ever-more-contorted knots to explain why it's OK for the samurai (who had to write LN or LG on his PC sheet) to treat with them, when instead I can just run my game in which the samurai treats with the ogres, plays a few hands of dice, discretely ignores the skulls in the kitchen, and then we collectively find out what (if anything) the cost of this is?

What is alignment adding here?

Can the Angel not use Zone of Truth to hear something of the PC’s life story and judge for itself whether this meets with its moral code, or does not?

Of course. But the PC can plead his case, and try to make the angel change her mind from an initial judgement. As happened here. If someone casts Know Alignment and you ping as CN, I don't think there's going to be much pleading and persuading. The spell already processes all the arguments and reaches the true conclusion, doesn't it?

Or has the argument now become "You can use alignment even though the cosmos and its inherently aligned servants like angels can never definitively determine, independent of actual discourse and argument, what alignment a person is"? At that point I seem to have lost the most clearly mooted story benefit of alignment, namely, integration of morals and cosmology. What's left?

Or is your preference a game where Angels and Demons run the spectrum between Good and Evil, so the Angel in this story is more Chaotic Neutral?

You seem to have mistaken me for someone who uses alignment. This angel is who she is. The module describes her personality - I can't remember the details, but it includes the standard stuff about resolute guardian etc etc. The point of the episode of play, as I experienced it, was that a player gave an impassioned argument, in character and drawing upon much of what had hitherto unfolded in the game, that the values to which the angel herself was committed required her to change her mind and let him kill her. And using the action resolution mechanics of the system in question (Rolemaster), he persuaded her.

It is not only orthogonal to that play and it's point to spend even a moment's thought on whether the angel is really CN (or has been persuaded to change her alignment by the PC), it is actively antithetical, because it shifts attention and effort from what matters - this moving moment at the table that produces this amazing event in the fiction - to something that is utterly pointless and irrelevant as far as I am concerned - namely, which of some bundle of judgemental labels is now the best one to stick on this NPC.

Is devil worship considered perfectly acceptable in your game, with no moral issues?

Given that I play a game with a whole PC race dedicated to addressing this question - namely, the tieflings - and given that I have a tiefling PC in my game, the answer is that of course devil worship raises moral issues. I even indicated some in the post to which you are replying: namely, that the tiefling expressed the view that the fall of the duergar was foretold, much as it was for the duergar the moment they made a pact with such treacherous beings.

So we just accept devil worship is OK?

Who is "we"? In my game the drow generally kept a low profile until he played a key role in triggering the downfall of the duergar (and he was not too upset by that). The tiefling and the dwarf expressed pity, although for different reasons. The elf servant of the Raven Queen had no strong view. The wielder of the Sceptre of Law (= Rod of 7 Parts) admired their devotion to divine order and tried to avoid letting it slip that he is allied with Levistus, who is an enemy of Asmodeus.

You seem to be insisting that an answer be worked out in advance. I am trying to explain that I would regard that as defeating the main purpose of play.

“Why, they’re just the nicest, kindest, most friendly baby-sacrificing devil worshippers I’ve ever come across”? Do they actually DO anything evil?

If alignment is not a straitjacket, and if it is fine for a samurai to treat with ogres for the greater good, why is this question relevant to you?

I know why it is irrelevant to me - because I don't use alignment, and so don't need to answer the question. I can just look up the description of Asmodeus on p 23 of the PHB:

He is patron of the powerful, god of tyranny and domination, and the commander of devils.​

The duergar desire power, are brutal slavers (which is how the PCs first met them, negotiating a deal to redeem some captives who had been sold into slavery by the duergar) and not democrats. (The last thing hardly distinguishes them in the world of D&D, though! Nor does the first, really.)

What I see from your comments is “alignment as straightjacket”.

<snip>

Where you don’t find it appropriate that devout followers of a Good deity might oppose demon or devil worshippers?

You're the one who seems concerned by what is or isn't appropriate for adherents of particular alignments.

What I see is that alignment mechanics involve me having to form a number of judgements about both PCs and now (in the case of the angel) NPCs which add nothing to the expressive and evaluative responses that the participants have to the unfolding events of play, and hence add nothing to my play.

Sadras and Bedrockgames have done a fine job discussing the positive role alignment can play. I have little to add to their points. I have found the analysis of your own evaluative framework (which you seem unable to acknowledge you even have) quite fascinating, so I continue to pursue that.

I don't know what you mean by "my own evaluative framework". Given that I'm a published moral philosopher, I think I have a reasonable grasp of my own evaluative framework. It's just that I don't need to apply it as part of my GMing duties.

If the positive role of alignment does not extend beyond what [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] and [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION] have offered, then it should be clear why I don't use it and why it would be an impediment to my play: because I am not interested (as either player or GM) in exploring the GM's conception of the morality of the gameworld; and nor am I interested in adherence to alignment being part of the roleplaying challenge.

 

[pemerton]

It seems like the GM invoking compels, which the other Fate players seem to indicate is fairly common, goes well beyond the GM handing out the requisite tokens

Sure, if the player rejects the compel the player hands the GM a token.

So Fate can also be unsatisfactory to you.

<snip>

I would suggest that a Compel, with its requirement the character either comply or spend a Fate point, is a core component of the Fate system’s action resolution mechanics, so your dissatisfaction is with those mechanics, not with their failure to be implemented.

<snip>

While the “snake eats the victims while you cower” end to a scene feels somewhat anticlimactic to me, that is a risk we take in invoking action resolution mechanics and allowing the dice to fall where they may.

Actually, the dice didn't fall. The GM compelled a scene resolution before the player could even engage the scene via his/her PC.

Upthread, Ratskinner had this to say about this matter:

The stated goal of a scene is "the players try to achieve a goal or otherwise accomplish something significant in a scenario." The advice a few pages later is to end the scene as soon as that's resolved. I definitely agree that complicating scenes (or framing them in interesting ways) is the primary purpose of the compel mechanic. There is no particular advice about using compels to resolve such a thing. As above, I'd say its bad form...that is, it creates a "non-scene" rather than scene, for the DM to use it as presented in the scenario.

That certainly makes sense to me, and fits with all my intuitions about how a game like fate should be run.

There are some reasons why I find Basic D&D unsatisfactory. The fact that a red dragon in the first room of the first dungeon will auto-kill the 1st level PCs isn't one of them, though - such an event is simply a sign of the GM ignoring the clear advice in the rulebooks. It's a mistake by a bad or a rookie GM.

There may well be reasons why I find Fate unsatisfactory, but I doubt that your scenario ist one of them. A GM compelling a scene resolution the moment the scene is framed strikes me as a mistake by a bad or a rookie GM, made in disregard of the book's advice that a scene involves "the players try[ing] to achieve a goal." In what you described the player had no opportunity to try.

I have previously noted that I don’t believe “fail forward” must mean that no actual failure is ever possible.

OK. I don't know anyone - poster or game designer - who disagrees with you. That seems irrelevant to compelling the end of a scene, though, which has no bearing on fail forward. "Fail forward" is a technique for adjudicating action declarations which result in mechanical failure. In the scene you described there has been no action declaration by the player, hence no adjudication, hence no fail forward.

Does he seem like someone for whom death is preferable to trucking with Ogrekind? Was his Aspect actually “Kind of doesn’t like Ogres much but it’s no big deal”?

An aspect is a statement of a point on which a player wishes to be challenged. You are implying here that it is bad play for a player to buy off a compel and therefore act contrary to what an aspect might otherwise dictate. That is contrary to the whole spirit of a game like Fate, where choosing whether or not to accept the compel is the prerogative of the player.

Burning Wheel, in its design, actively encourages players to seek out and/or create situations in which they cannot honour all their beliefs at once, so they can earn higher-grade fate points for roleplaying out the agony of choosing which belief to honour.