Do alignments improve the gaming experience?

[pemerton]

You might sincerely be confused, I cannot honestly deny you this, but you are the only poster which is demanding more details for what I believe was a decently drawn hypothetical. Perhaps he already denounced his father in public, perhaps he already tried to raise opposition - hence the reason for his banishment from the kingdom.

<snip>

I do not believe more details would change it (your answer), then why do you even bother making these kind of statements about the 11th hour...and so on?

If I had more information, I might be able to say more about what, as a GM, I might do - for instance, what scenes would I frame, what antagonists would I put into play. More information would also help me understand what the players think they are doing. Does each player think his/her PC is being a genuine paladin, or not? To me that is very important for how I would deal with the situation as a GM.

Without that information, I can't say much more than I already did, namely that this is the sort of conflict between characters that actual play resolves. If I did know more, I could say more about what steps I might actually take to help frame and resolve that actual play.

I am sorry you feel that I haven't treated your hypothetical with the respect that it deserves. If it is any consolation, I have been posting for the past several pages about an actual play example in which I do have all the information ready to hand.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=79401]Grydan[/MENTION], I'm sorry I can't XP your terrific post.

 

[pemerton]

The below to me is the greatest proof that the anti-alignment posters decide what to qualitatively evaluate, which reflects a degree of inconsistency and a preference to a certain level of consequence-free settings.

<snip>

IMO it just means they prefer a less grittier and traditional version of your D&D settings and we all do in some way - I mean we still use hit points.

I don't understand "the below" - you quote yourself saying "If a Paladin does a good deed and is rewarded by his deity (and thereby judged by the DM) why isn't that admonished? Why is the good deed not a problem for the anti-alignment crowd?" but you don't quote anyone from the "anti-alignment crowd".

What sorts of "rewarding by deity" do you have in mind? The divine PCs in my game go up levels, and receive upgraded treasure, like all the rest. That's not me judging whether they did a good or bad thing, though - it's just applying the advancement mechanics.

As for not wanting consequence free settings, what is your evidence for that?

I'll refer you to these posts in the first instance. Are these examples of what you mean by "consequence free"?

 

[Sadras]

What sorts of "rewarding by deity" do you have in mind?

Have the characters in your rpg groups ever received a gift, a pat on the back, something from a deity for good service? I'm assuming yes at some point in one campaign. And even if characters in your campaigns over the years have never received any reward/s from their deities are you opposed, on equal scale as you are on evaluating negatively, to PCs being rewarded by their deities (an in essence evaluated as 'done good' by their DMs) on good deeds?

I hope the above make sense.
My objection is that it seems acceptable to evaluate characters' actions as good and reward characters for those actions, but DMs should not dare judge any actions as bad. This does seem a little one sided.

Will revert later in terms of what I meant re consequence free

 

[Imaro]

How so? A pocket calculator is not omniscient, nor omnipotent, nor omnipresent - but it is infallible in its domain, namely, of doing 8-figure arithmetic.

When Descartes ran the cogito argument - which takes as a premise that a person is infallible in the rather narrow domain of knowing whether or not s/he is thinking - he wasn't thereby posting that people are omniscient. (As it happens I think the cogito argument, and the premise I have mentioned, are suspect; but the point still stands as an illustration that there is no general connection between fallibility in a domain and omniscience.)

You've totally avoided and danced around the question so... Again, since we established fallibility on the part of the gods in a general sense, show me in the books where this infallibility within a specific range is asserted. This should be a pretty easy request ti fullfill unless like I said before it's not the default and it is instead your own assumptions about how the deities work with nothing else to back it up.

It's there in numbers 1 and 4: moral wrongness resulting (in the context of a god described as "evil") from bad character.

I'm sorry this doesn't make sense. Are you saying moral wrongness from bad character equates to a disregard of valuable things, or a misunderstanding of valuable things (which was how you defined evil's common usage earlier) because I see no mention whatsoever of valuable things or of ones relationship to them.

No, the concordance was actually around 12, from memory - there may be a drop for opposing Vecna but I haven't done my bookkeeping to factor that in. (And reading on through your post I see there is no such drop.) The point of quoting that passage was to indicate the general capabilities of the artefact.

To be honest, I'm a little surprised to be hounded for being too flexible in my setting of stakes and consequences in a skill challenge by a poster who is fairly well known for posting how narrow and inflexible 4e is.

The discussion isn't about whether 4e is flexible or not and totally disregarding rules and making up whatever you want to happen because you feel like it doesn't speak to any inherent flexibility on the part of 4e so pleas let's not deflect this part of the conversation with irrelevant commentary. As I said earlier you did not in fact use mechanical resolution to determine what happened to the familiar or the Eye of Vecna. You made an evaluative ( To examine and judge carefully; appraise.) judgement on the characters behavior and how Vecna regarded it and then stripped him of character build resources because of it.

 

[Bedrockgames]

When Descartes ran the cogito argument - which takes as a premise that a person is infallible in the rather narrow domain of knowing whether or not s/he is thinking - he wasn't thereby posting that people are omniscient. (As it happens I think the cogito argument, and the premise I have mentioned, are suspect; but the point still stands as an illustration that there is no general connection between fallibility in a domain and omniscience.)

I don't think we ought to drag Descartes into a debate about alignment, these philosophical references just don't feel that helpful to me. But would you, Descartes or anyone else honestly describe human beings as infallible? Infallibility in this case requires that Descartes strip away all the things we have fallibility with, in order to get to the most basic block of certainty, thought and existence. He then works backward from there, to establish what he can be certain of. But there is this mass of stuff weighed with doubt beyond those basic principles he establishes. I think if you are positing a huge pantheon of gods, who are often in conflict and opposition, describing them as infallible feels a bite strange. I guess you can reduce the scope, to say well Kashvel is the god of diamonds, so his knowledge of all things related to diamonds is perfect. But surely the areas beyond this, where these infallible gods are in conflict point to a huge amount of fallibility. It sounds to me like you are arguing for limited fallibility over a narrow domain, which is fine, but I don't think that is how other people meant the term at all.

 

[Hussar]

Sadras - on your point about reward or punishment. Why do you equate that to alignment? A deity can and should reward or punish based on the goals of that deity. Alignment need not apply.

If my paladin of Heironeius brings order to a lawless land he might be rewarded by Heironeius. Sure. But not because he was lawful or good but because he is furthering H's goals.

Why would you reward a PC just for being good?

 

[Sadras]

Sadras - on your point about reward or punishment. Why do you equate that to alignment? A deity can and should reward or punish based on the goals of that deity. Alignment need not apply.

If my paladin of Heironeius brings order to a lawless land he might be rewarded by Heironeius. Sure. But not because he was lawful or good but because he is furthering H's goals.

Why would you reward a PC just for being good?

True alignment need not apply, but in your example the paladin was following H's goals.

• Who decided he was furthering H's goals? The DM.
• Who evaluated said actions? The DM.
• Who decided to reward the character for said actions? The DM.

Now take the example but instead say the paladin did not further H's goals but for whatever reason his actions caused further chaos:

• Why can the DM now not evaluate the character's actions?
• Why can the DM (through H) not punish the character?

 

[Hussar]

He certainly can. Presupposing that it's clear that the paladin is actually acting against the interests of H.

But again we're back to a pretty corner case. If you've chosen to play a paladin of Heironeus, then it would be pretty clear what your goals should be.

At this point the player is likely acting so out of character that it's probably better resolved away from the table and out of character.

Trying to use the NPC's to correct the player is an exercise in futility IMO.

 

[pemerton]

But would you, Descartes or anyone else honestly describe human beings as infallible?

Well, Descartes asserted this about a particular domain, yes. It's a crucial first step in his argument for the existence of the external world. And many great thinkers have accepted his starting point, if not the rest of the argument. (As I already indicated, I regard the first step as suspect, but that's probably a minority view in the philosophy of perception.)

There are particular domains in which some people are, for practical purposes, infallible. A trivial one would be knowing the 2 times table. I know many people who are, for practical purposes, infallible in that respect. Another trivial one, but apposite for most people, is knowing what name they go by. And knowing whether they write with their left or right hand would be yet another.

Whether a particular taste or texture makes them gag as they swallow it would probably be another, at least for a good number of people.

Beyond some fairly raw and immediate sensations, and some very trivial bits of knowledge, I agree that it is hard to attribute infallibility, even for practical purposes, to most people in respect of most things. But gods are (I would have thought) different sorts of beings - beings of ideals and thoughts, for a start, at least in 4e.