Do alignments improve the gaming experience?

[Sadras]

But, who sets those standards? It's not like the game universe sets those standards all by itself. Those standards are set by the DM and the DM's interpretation (hopefully through the lens of the setting, but, not necessarily) of alignment.

Alignment is part of the setting.

But, therein lies the problem. For one, as part of a military or police force, I would have a very codified set of behaviours that most certainly does not allow two different people to look at the same action and come up with diametrically opposed interpretations of actions.

And no two superiors in the police force are the same, they might let you off with a warning or they might punish you for a week or they might strip you permanently.

And, at no point would my soldier or police officer, acting outside of those codes, suddenly no longer be able to access the skills he learned in order to become a police officer or soldier. I might be demoted, I might be drummed out of the service, I might even be imprisoned or executed, but, at not point would my character sheet ever actually change.

No you do not lose the skills but you lose all the benefits of that organisation (Paladinhood) - you lose the licence to carry/use a firearm, make arrests, wear the uniform, drive a police car, use the police radio, the authority to commandeer vehicles...etc in the same way a paladin still has the ability to fight, use a weapon, retains all his skills and knowledge but loses all access to the divine. So your character sheet changes in a big way in both instances.

But, there is rewriting going on. The player and the DM have made this agreement in good faith. No one is being a jerk. But, there is an honest disagreement over interpretation. Again, I point to several examples in this thread alone of two perfectly reasonable people looking at the same situation and giving opposite interpretations. Why should the DM's interpretation always win?

DMs are not unreasonable. They will listen to the players motivations as well as the rest of the groups at the table. You are really assuming the worst of the DM, because just like you state

A player who simply chooses the easier choose to "win the game" knows that he's violating the table's trust.
If he doesn't care, then he's not really someone I want to game with.

I wouldn't want to game with DMs who are not just and reasonable. As I believe @Imaro mentioned some pages back, trust is a two-way street.

As a DM, I do not want this responsibility.

Fair enough. But you cannot deny you make plenty of decisions on characters through various lenses, perhaps not through the lens of alignment, but through others. Your only argument being that DMs and players can look at an action and judge it differently. DMs and players do that all the time with PCs plans. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. As I and @Bedrockgames have said before we believe this to be a feature not a bug.

See, the argument seems to be that we need DM adjudicated alignment because players cannot be objective.

No they certainly cannot, certainly not on the level as most DMs. Consider why many house rules and limitations in the game are put in place, why there is this constant chatter re class balance on the forums, or muchkinism, broken combinations...etc. Unfortunately I do not have the stats, but I guarantee you a fair number of players look at ways to optimise their character builds mechanically, which is not wrong, but that reflects a predisposition to choose on mechanics rather than the concept of a character and that is normal given that D&D is still a game.
Given that a class such as a paladin is arguably more conceptual in nature than most of the other classes (less gamist), it requires boundaries of a conceptual nature which might otherwise be broken by munchkinist/gamist tactics. Hence it is better to have an external adjudicator (i.e. not the player).

I hope you understand what I'm attempting to say here, I currently do not have the time to elaborate further or place it more eloquently, perhaps when I get a chance later.

I would argue that the player knows his character better than the DM does and has no need for oversight.

Agreed, however the DM is not playing the character he is playing the Deity whom he knows best.

 

[Hussar]

I highly doubt that my actions as a police officer would result in one superior giving me a slap on the wrist while another fires me.

Not unless someone was trying to cover something up.

 

[Imaro]

I highly doubt that my actions as a police officer would result in one superior giving me a slap on the wrist while another fires me.

Not unless someone was trying to cover something up.

Are we really at this point of nit-picking??? Ok, how about suspension (you loose your authority in the same way as being fired, but can regain it just as the paladin or cleric could) vs. desk duty...


EDIT: Also even though I can't XP you nice post [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION]

 

[Imaro]

As a DM, I do not want this responsibility. I trust you to play your character in a manner which is consistent with the character you have presented to me, whether it's a noble paladin or a shifty eyed thief. Doesn't matter. I entrust you with the responsibility of playing your character to the best of your ability. If you want to simply ignore that responsibility whenever it becomes more convenient, then why are you playing that character?

See, the argument seems to be that we need DM adjudicated alignment because players cannot be objective. I would argue that the player knows his character better than the DM does and has no need for oversight. Given the choice between maintaining character integrity and possibly losing the character and compromising the character and then trying to justify actions to the table, well, for me and anyone I want to play with, I'm reaching for a new character sheet. If no one is judging your behaviour, then who are you justifying your actions to? Yourself? Why bother? A player who simply chooses the easier choose to "win the game" knows that he's violating the table's trust.

If he doesn't care, then he's not really someone I want to game with.

While I think [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] pretty much covered the bases in responding to your post, I am curious about something...

Emphasis mine... I'm a little confused, if what you state above is true then alignment should be trivially easy for you to ignore... All you have to do is tell the paladin player to write LG on his sheet and never judge him. Let him do whatever he wants let him always qualify as LG and leave everything in the players hands... how does alignment in any edition actively prevent a DM from doing this if they want?

On a side note, I notice though that you are still using DM judgement in deciding whether someone is playing their character well enough that they be allowed to remain at the table with you and your group...

 

[N'raac]

Wow.

@Umbran, @Sadras, @Imaro and @Cadence said anything I could have said. And, of course, I can't xp a single one of them...

The key disconnect here seems to be Good and Evil as cosmological forces. The character (or the player) is not judged against my personal standard of Good or Evil, but against the standard set by those cosmological forces, as described in the game rules, and as interpreted, possibly even modified as house rules, by the GM.

This is no different, to me, than reading the Raven Queen's paragraph @pemerton provided way upthread to conclude that she hates the Undead, or that she would employ agents who seek out those who, by luck or design, might otherwise avoid their fated deaths, and put them back on their fated path (ie cut their lives off as was fated). Or deciding that Vecna chooses to remove the character's familiar for x period of time, rather than revoking all powers of the Eye and the familiar on a more permanent basis, or offering the character even greater powers to tempt him to be a more devoted servant, or deciding that the Raven Queen does not reward the player's actions in her favour by blocking Vecna's vengeance, providing compensatory gifts or even providing gifts well in excess of those removed by Vecna.

@Hussar - on police discipline or military justice - your view of homogenous interpretations seems misplaced. If every superior would reach the same conclusion, why are military trials, disciplinary hearings, etc. traditionally conducted by a tribunal rather than a single arbiter? What is the benefit of having three judges if their views would always move in lockstep anyway? Do you really believe each and every person of similar rank in a similar organization agrees 100% with the decision made in each and every case? In non-military courts, published appellate decisions with a panel of judges often reveal very different opinions on the correct answer to the case.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Wow.

@Umbran, @Sadras, @Imaro and @Cadence said anything I could have said. And, of course, I can't xp a single one of them...

The key disconnect here seems to be Good and Evil as cosmological forces. The character (or the player) is not judged against my personal standard of Good or Evil, but against the standard set by those cosmological forces, as described in the game rules, and as interpreted, possibly even modified as house rules, by the GM.

this is the heart of it for me. D&D assumes a cosmology that isn't subjective to individual character's feelings or preferences. If each player gets to decide whether his paladin is doing the right thing, then the whole sense of a real cosmology like that starts to fall apart for me. So for the dungeons and dragons settings, i think alignment handled by the gm is very important. Now the gm uses his own subjective interpretation, but by having a single individual it simulates an objective cosmos pretty well. And that doesnt mean you entirely ignore player input or concerns. It is perfectly reasonable to talk to pkahers about their expectations and for the gm to arrive at a final decision on indiv dual judgment calls taking player feedback into account. For me the key thing though is ultimately the GM has final say.

 

[Umbran]

But, who sets those standards? It's not like the game universe sets those standards all by itself. Those standards are set by the DM and the DM's interpretation (hopefully through the lens of the setting, but, not necessarily) of alignment.

So? The power of alignment is a setting element! Why shouldn't the GM be setting it? Just like the races available, the cultures that sit in the world - setting what the Cosmic Alignment Judge thinks helps set the tone of the game.

But, therein lies the problem. For one, as part of a military or police force, I would have a very codified set of behaviours that most certainly does not allow two different people to look at the same action and come up with diametrically opposed interpretations of actions.

You ever see the film, "A Few Good Men" (with the iconic line, "You can't handle the truth!"). You never seen on the news how cops have to go to court to decide if they used "excessive force"? Even in the real world, with codified behaviors, there are different interpretations, and sometimes someone who honestly feels they were on the right side of the line ends up being judged otherwise.

And, at no point would my soldier or police officer, acting outside of those codes, suddenly no longer be able to access the skills he learned in order to become a police officer or soldier. I might be demoted, I might be drummed out of the service, I might even be imprisoned or executed, but, at not point would my character sheet ever actually change.

If your game has them as part of such a force, but is has no mechanical impact that changes... well, then I think you're being a little odd about it.

In my Deadlands game, anyone who wants to be part of law enforcement needs to have the "Lawman" Edge. There's a couple Edges available for military service, and those edges give them some power they can call upon. If they get drummed out of the service, sure as anything they're losing the Edge. If they leave on really bad terms, that edge could even flip over to being a Hindrance.

Why should the DM's interpretation always win?

*Always* win? 'Cause *no* GM ever enters into a conversation and is convinced by the player's point of view? Really?

Well, see above. The details of alignment interpretation are a setting element, and GM has final say over those.

As a DM, I do not want this responsibility.

That's fine. As a DM, I don't really like races with level adjustments. We all have our likes and dislikes in games. You rule out of your game what you don't like, I'll rule out of my game what I don't like. I'm pretty sure you'll understand that, "I don't personally like it," is not a sound basis for arguing to eliminate a design element. The game was not designed to have only elements you, personally, like. Picking up a game is an exercise in compromise.

I entrust you with the responsibility of playing your character to the best of your ability. If you want to simply ignore that responsibility whenever it becomes more convenient, then why are you playing that character?

And, if you're running a game where character abilities are never tied to their behavior, that's fine and dandy. There's lots of games out there like that.

But, do you ever have them roll dice? See below...

See, the argument seems to be that we need DM adjudicated alignment because players cannot be objective. I would argue that the player knows his character better than the DM does and has no need for oversight.

There are several arguments. And it isn't about "need". I don't "need" elves, but I'd be kind of surprised to see they'd been eliminated from the game....

One I've stated above - the details of alignment can be viewed as a setting element, with effects upon the cultures of the world, and so on. Sometimes, that's a nice set of knobs for the GM to be able to twist and turn.

Another: has it crossed our mind that just like some players like testing their tactical mettle against the challenges the GM sets up, some players may also like playing through the tension generated by rules imposed from outside their own head? Some of them like the challenge or risk of falling (and maybe getting back up again). It isn't much of a challenge or risk if the player gets to decide on their own if they've succeeded.

As for the one rule you mention - It isn't that the player can't be objective, so much as players can sometimes be a little cheesy. It is truly awesome that you've no players that you need to ride herd on to keep them from intentionally or unconsciously abusing the system in which they're playing. Maybe you've had the stunning good luck to never have had to deal with such a thing. Your players never need any oversight! Awesome!

But, honestly, if you really needed no oversight whatsoever, you wouldn't even need rules, would you? You wouldn't need to roll a d20 to see if they hit, 'cause they just know how often they should hit, and will choose to hit or not as is appropriate, right?

Clearly, that's a little absurd. So, your players do need some oversight, some guidance from rules and GM on some things, the imposition of some exterior rules to keep everyone on the same track, and to make sure there's some sense of challenge to the game. Thus, we are only quibbling over where the line between oversight and no-oversight is drawn, and there's not going to be one clear answer for everyone.

Please leave allowances for those of us who live in a less perfect world than you. Some of us want something in between "just let them do anything they wish" and "throw them out of your game".

 

[Cadence]

The key disconnect here seems to be Good and Evil as cosmological forces. The character (or the player) is not judged against my personal standard of Good or Evil, but against the standard set by those cosmological forces, as described in the game rules, and as interpreted, possibly even modified as house rules, by the GM.

I think part of it is how each of us has internalized alignments presentation in RAW. In 1e (see quotes in posts #602 and 604 above), alignment is a set of 9 labels (such as lawful good) as laid out briefly in the DMG and interpreted by the DM. There is an associated secret hammer the DM should pull out and punish characters with by surprise if they don't follow the DM's personal interpretation of the various alignment descriptions. It admits that interpretations are needed (see quotes in #656), but leaves the actual interpretation to only the DM.

Coming from that viewpoint, I can see @pemerton 's concern. It seems to at least border on requiring the DM to make moral judgements of the character's actions and to place their moral judgements over those of the players and come close to telling the player that they don't know what good means. (Consider the case where the player is playing the character by their own moral code, and the DM is judging alignment by theirs).

As I just repeated above, the reason I do not use mechanical alignment is because it is a needless epiphenomenal device, that requires the GM to make judgements using morally loaded language about the choices that the players make for playing their PCs.

Would calling the acts acceptable/unacceptable to the lords of light/dark/entropy/far realms/consistancy/stasis make it less odious at the table (although not necessarily making it more useful)?

In my view, perhaps - because the player is free to repudiate the views of those beings without having to repudiate or adopt any particular moral label. Also, at least as I have seen those sorts of "lords of X" used, it remains an open question whether they are really exemplars of X ...

On the other hand, if one takes the 2e DMG approach (see quotes in #610) that is softened a great deal from 1e, the player and DM at least have to discuss things and the rules give the DM an official out to just let it slide. In that case, I can then see the argument that if we're just always going to let it slide, then what's the point? It might also be worth noting that the Paladin section of the 2e PhB seems to hearken back to the 1e approach to the alignment hammer.

PF takes a big step away in terms of the cleric. The cleric gets an alignment aura from their deity, even if their own alignment is one step away. The cleric's actions are judge based on whether they grossly violating the code of conduct required by the god, and not the alignment.

I think if someone came from 2e DMG to PF, then it could be easy to choose to ignore the parts (8 paragraphs on punishing characters in 2e) that hearken back to 1e and take the view that the DM is just interpreting the will of the gods. If the jump is from 1e (and maybe 2e PhB) to 4e, then I can imagine someone seeing a stark contrast between DM as secret arbiter of morality and completely not putting the DM in that position at all.

I suspect that a little better wording (a rough attempt in #652 above) could keep the alignment in while also removing the vestiges of 1e's supreme arbiter of characters' (who are possibly being played as proxies for the players) morality.

Of course that still leaves open the question of whether even cosmological alignment adds enough to the game to be hard wired into it in terms of all the class restrictions, domains, spells, magic items, etc... like in 3/3.5/PF. I lean towards keeping it as being part of the traditional feel of D&D, but I have to admit that entire machinery doesn't seem to come up very often in the games I play.

 

[pemerton]

It seemed self evident to me that if something was clearly and specifically stated in the rule books as a good or evil act no arbitration was necessary for said action

The 1st ed DMG tells us that good characters respect human (creature) rights. That entails that a rights-violating action is either neutral or (more likely) evil. This inclues, presumably, the right to life. The significance of the right to life is emphasised by the remarks, under Assassins in the PHB, that killing for profit is evil.

Yet the most typical and mechanically fundamental unit of D&D play is combat, which by default is to the death. So straight away, the alignment rules in combination with gameplay require us to have a theory of justified, and therefore non-rights-violating, killing. Do we really need examples - dealing with orc children, or [MENTION=78357]Herschel[/MENTION]'s colonialism example, or [MENTION=6681948]N'raac[/MENTION]'s throat-torn baby - to drive home the point that there can be interpretive disagreements even over this "clearly and specifically stated" requirement? Let alone over what counts as being honest, or honourable, or altruistic, or any other descriptions used to state alignment requirements?

They call for you to judge the character's action against the fictional game universe's standards of good or evil, yes.

<snip>

if the characters puts themselves in the place of being beholden to a cosmological power, how is that different? The paladin, before game start, has made such an agreement

It's hard for me to address this within the confines of the board rules. As I'm replying to a moderator, I'll trust that if I step outside those boundaries you will let me know and/or edit my post appropriately.

For me, the paladin is very obviously modelled on an archetype that has roots much older than Poul Anderson and the D&D class writeup. As the very name of the class tells us, it is inspired by the example of the holy warrior. This has both historical and legendary/literary instances: Edward the Confessor, the crusading orders, Arthur and his knights, Roland et al, Aragorn etc.

These are not people who have "made an agreement" with some arbitrary power and thereby become beholden to that power. That a description of Faust, or in D&D terms a warlock or (perhaps, as in my 4e game) an acolyte of Vecna.

Rather, the paladin is called to the service of a being who exemplifies and demands virtue and right conduct. The paladin exemplifies goodness and honour. That is not to say that everyone who fails to live like a paladin is a wrongdoer - the life of the saint or the paladin is superogatory. But it is not a merely voluntary pact: it's a higher calling.

To be rejected by the being into whose service a paladin is called is not simply to have broken the terms of a contract: it is to be condemned on moral grounds.

That is fundamentally different from Vecna inflicting retribution by striking out at the invoker's imp familiar. That is a punishment, but it's not a condemnation. The same applies to your example of an officer of a mundane hierarchy: a rulebreaker might be expelled, but to be expelled isn't to stand condemned. For instance, a person who is expelled from the military for (say) refusing to execute prisoners or murder civilians might well conceive of him-/herself as a hero unjustly treated. But a paladin who falls from grace has no framework from which to judge him-/herself a hero. To turn the verb into an adjective: s/he has fallen.

That's a bargain the player willingly makes going into the game. There's no "rewriting" involved if the player is properly informed heading into the situation.

Even with the military example, however, I still personally would preferthat should not be a unilateral GM decision if it's inherent to the character concept - if the player believed that his/her PC was not breaking the rules, for instance because of a difference of interpretation, I would be hesitant to unilaterally impose my interpretation where that is at odds with the player's good faith interpretation of a code that is more important to them - given the PC they are playing - than to me.

I think this is an echo of [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s point: if the player doesn't believe s/he is violating the code, and the GM does, due to a difference of interpretation, why should the GM's interpretation be preferred? [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION] has offered one answer to that question: because a key rationale for play is exploring the GM's world. [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] has offered another answer to that question: because complying with the GM's interpretatation is part of the challenge of play. But if neither of those reasons applies to a given game - for instance, because the game doesn't emphasise exploration of a GM's world, nor does it emphasis roleplaying as a challenge (instead emphasising, perhaps, the creative or expressive dimension of playing a character) - then I don't think there is any reason to prefer the GM's interpretation.

It's not that the GM is the final arbiter of the "players' choices", but that they're the final arbiter of the game and the outcomes of the players' choices.

I don't think the GM is the final arbiter of all the players' choices. I remember we discussed this in the long-running "fighters vs casters" thread, and I suggested that even some of Gygax's strong language to that effect was best understood as meaning that the GM is the final arbiter of the PCs' fictional positioning, but not necessarily of such things as whether or not the fighter player writing down "fighter" on his/her PC sheet means s/he has the class abilities of a fighter or the class abilities of a thief.

In the context of alignment, my conern is that if the GM is made the final arbiter of whether or not a player's choices for his/her PC are alignment-compliant, then either (i) alignment is no longer a model of what is proper, which makes the paladin archetype (in my view) impossible to play - a paladin is called to proper behaviour, not to compliance with an arbitrary code - or else (ii) the player has to subordinate his/her evaluative judgement to that of the GM.

The first is what Imaro appears to suggest:

they require you to determine whether a character's actions are consistent with those a particular deity or cosmological force would deem to be in accordance with their concept of good or evil

This interpretation of alignment appears to entail that the following sentence is a candidate for truth: "I violated the requirements of that LG god, but in doing so I acted in accordance with the requirements of law and good, because I upheld the demans of honour, justice, fairness and human welfare."

I think the sentence only has to be written down for its oddness to be apparent. Under this approach, why do we even use the labels "good" and "evil" if they are no longer doing the work they do in ordinary English usage?

[MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION] suggests something similar to this with the idea that "good" and "evil" are relative in their meaning to the GM's conception of the gameworld's cosmology. But that creates the same sorts of problems. Now a player can of course leave their own evaluative baggage at the door - which then shifts us to a version of option (ii) above - but that is not what I am looking for when I play a paladin, or when I GM a paladin. When I play a paladin I want to find out what honour requires, not what the GM thinks honour requires: to put it another way, I want to undertake a moral and aesthetic exploration (of the demands of honour), not a psychological and biographical exploration (of my GM's beliefs about honour). And when I GM a paladin I want to find out what the player will put forward as his/her conception of honour: roughly speaking, I want to read the book the player writes, not write my own book which the player then reads back to me.

you still determine how this deity feels about a particular action... which is exactly what you are doing with alignment.

<snip>

I'm not understanding is how this is any different than determining whether a deity, cosmic force, or whatever determines you've made it angry by not following it's concepts of good or evil???

To my mind, deciding that Vecna is angry at you because you thwarted his chance at increasing his metaphysical power has basically nothing in common with deciding that a player had his/her PC act dishonourably, or wrongly in some other way. The first is a judgement about whether or not you thwarted a being's pretty simply interpreted desire. The second is a judgement about whether or not the PC, as played by the player, lived up to some standard or moral requirement.

You are suggsting that "Lawful Good" has no meaning other than "What LG gods require". Leaving aside the fact that not all LG gods want the same thing, this is a very contentious way of defining "good", both as a matter of general principle and within the context of D&D. For instance, neither Gygax nor 2nd ed AD&D nor 3E define "Lawful Good" in this way. They set out general moral requirements, and the implication is that these requirements govern LG gods rather than vice versa.

On this point, [MENTION=6701124]Cadence[/MENTION]: I know that Gyagx's DMG stipulates that LG peoples might be mortal enemies, but it also stipulates that 'Good' entails respect for human rights, and that 'Lawful" entails respect for beneficent systems of social organisation. In the theory of international justice and international morality, there is a popular theory of democratic peace (having its origins in Kant's essay on "Perpetual Peace") - the theory of democratic peace is the theory that countries that honour human rights at home and respect internatinal law abroad won't go to war with one another. Now whether or not the theory of democratic peace is true is a matter of some contention, and I won't express my views here. But it's truth isn't simply a matter of stipulation.

And just to cash it out a little bit: two LG nations at war means two nations whose soldiers are killing one another. Thus prima facie violating one another's rights to life. With what justification? Self-defence? So two LG nations can't agree over which is the aggressor. But if each is continuing to prosecute the war, rather than seek a negotiated peace, in what sense are they still LG rather than (say) Neutral or even Chaotic Evil, taking the view that might makes right and is justified even in circusmstances of uncertainy over the justice of their own cause, and doubt about whether the targets of their violence are legitimate targets.

As I said, these matters can't be settled just by stipulation. I mean, Gygax or Paizo or someone else could write a rulebook containing the sentence "In this game (i) geometry is Euclidean and (ii) the king's table is exactly 21 feet around and 7 feet across." But the fact that they state it doesn't make it coherent.

 

[pemerton]

At your table, what's the tie-breaker if things are split 50-50 over something?

We don't have a general, formal rule. In that sense my game table is less like a legislature or multi-member court, and more like a typical family or outing of friends. If we can't agree we resolve via informal discussion aimed at consensus.

In practice I don't find it to be a big issue.