No one has argued for this. No one has said that the character is the sole arbiter. They have said that the player gets to judge what it means to live up to the PC's professed values.
I can’t speak for other posters. For me, the issue is not whether the character is the sole arbiter, but whether the player is the sole arbiter. The two often get used interchangeably. Returning to my “murder for the Raven Queen” example, I had suggested a character who truly believes he serves the Raven Queen by ensuring Fated deaths take place. He kills the serving girl because she was Fated to perish in childbirth three months ago, yet somehow cheated fate, and it is his Holy Mission, as dictated by the Raven Queen, to set this right, ending her life as was Fated.
Two possibilities exist:
(a) The character is delusional, hears voices and murders believing he does so by divine grace;
(b) The character is correct – after all, the Raven Queen is deity of both Fate and Death, so I don’t find this out of step with the limited sketch of the Raven Queen you cited as the relevant passages from the rules.
I, as the player, should be allowed to select which is true – I get to decide whether I am playing a Chosen Servant of the Raven Queen (one whose actions are bound to cause a measure of controversy, because he sure looks like he could be a delusional murderer, especially to those not fully comprehending the Mysteries of the Raven Queen, which sadly includes even some who claim to be her devoted followers). Yet the concept was dismissed immediately when I first raised it as an “inappropriate view” of the Raven Queen.
If a player chooses to serve a god who is the exemplar of a value, then in my game there is no "vision of that deity" separate from the player's conception of the value in question. And what is the player's conception? That will be explored in play. Part of good GMing, for me at least (and I believe als D'karr) is framing situations that put the player's conception to the test.
Contrast this to my example above. Now, this becomes more problematic in your game, which already has a character professing to be a devoted servant of the Raven Queen. Can we co-exist despite our differences? Must one or the other be proven wrong? It seems this would be something, under your approach, which would come out in play, and not by dismissing one interpretation as “he should worship Demogorgon instead” at the outset.
I did not judge the PC's actions. I did not judge the PC to have done the right thing or the wrong thing. What I did do is force the player to choose between the Raven Queen and Vecna. That is an example of "putting the player's conception of values, and of his/her PC, to the test."
You certainly judged whether Vecna believed the PC did the right thing. Why can’t the Raven Queen judge whether her Paladin does the right thing, or Moradin judge whether his cleric did the right thing? The Raven Queen judged that two of the PC’s did the right thing, and rewarded them. By extension, she did not reward the Invoker – does that indicate she judged he did not do the right thing often enough to merit a reward? Seems he is the only one who sacrificed anything in his service, at least this time out.
Note that “whether he did good” seems irrelevant here. The RQ is unaligned, I believe, so her judgement has nothing to do with Good or Evil. Your most recent comments leave me unclear whether you have retained or dismissed the 4e alignment system, which leaves me uncertain whether Good and Evil ever enter into the picture in this regard.
I didn't just decide that Vecna was dissatisfied with his "servant". The player deliberately set out to thwart Vecna, and I adjudicated the consequence of Vecna's wrath.
The player also deliberately acted in the RQ’s interests. Why was her reaction not adjudicated as having any consequences?
Game theory is, in one sense, amoral. Or, alternatively, one could say that it posits that the only good for an agent is satisfaction of that agent's preferences. The way that you use game theoretic analysis to model moral choice is to posit that an agent's preferences including upholding moral requirements. Once you include morality in the game theoretic model in that way, an agent who knows that an action is evil will not prefer it and hence won't choose it.
Why does introducing moral choice into the matter necessarily require that the agent’s preferences include upholding moral requirements? Having alignment in the game does not require every player to select a Good character, much less a Paladin. The agent himself may well be amoral (game theory seems to posit this). If eliminating choices which are Evil, and requiring choices which are Good, places our agent at a disadvantage, this would indicate that it’s not so easy being Good. You have indicated there are no such advantages/drawbacks in your game.
My game doesn't have "villains". It has characters, including deities, whom the playes choose to have their PCs oppose. Are some of those character's irrational? Probably - I think that is true for Torog. Lolth, also, is probably to some extent a victim of weakness of will, who has then indulged in further self-justifying rationalisations.
Fair enough. However, in my view, removal of villains comes with the removal of “the struggle of Good versus Evil”. I don’t think Sauron was “a character the Fellowship of the Ring chose to oppose”. I think he was a Villain with, as shown, a capital V).
The point of not using mecanical alignment is to extend the approach to play that you adopt within those "shades of grey" to the whole game. I have already made this point upthread, but I do not remember you commenting on it.
If everything is shades of grey, how was my example of a Paladin placed in a nasty situation, who ripped the throat out of a newborn, so clearly an inappropriate character, one which I think every anti-alignment poster has indicated would never happen in their game, or any game with reasonable players? Clearly, there is a point at which we leave “grey” behind.
To remind, the Paladin in question (who keeps getting presented as a blood soaked, murderous psychopath) was opposing a particularly vile cult, and had decided its infiltration would enable him to find its leadership and destroy it from within. To that end, he had spent considerable time ingratiating himself to the Cult, and now was faced with the opportunity to advance within its ranks, facilitating his noble and righteous goal of destroying its leadership. He is then presented with the requirement he demonstrate his devotion by sacrificing a newborn to the Cult’s Dark Master by tearing its throat out with his teeth.
So, he concludes, if he refuses, the child dies anyway, and for nothing. If he does, then all his work to infiltrate the cult is in vain, he will fail in his task of destroying the cult, and many more will share this poor child’s fate. So he proceeds, promising in his heart that this atrocity shall be avenged, and the child's sacrifice remembered.
And the player looks across the table at the GM, declaring the above, and taking his action, which the player sincerely believes to be necessary to deliver the greatest good to the greatest number. The needs of the cult’s many future victims regretfully outweigh the need to avoid this immediate atrocity.
If the player is the sole arbiter of his code, I think he must be taken to be roleplaying his Paladin’s devotion to Valour, Honour and Righteousness appropriately. This is the only way that the
player gets to judge what it means to live up to the PC's professed values.
Actually, the 2nd ed alignment rules are contradictory. (Which @
Cadence noted upthread, I think).
The PHB says "Only the GM knows for sure." The DMG says "If the DM suspects that the player believes his character is acting within his alignment, the DM should warn the player that his character alignment is coming into question. An unconscious alignment change SHOULD NOT surprise the player". How can these both be true? The closest to a resolution is in the coy phrase at the end of the DMG instructionL: " - not completely, anyway." What exactly does that mean? It certainly seems to leave open that the actual moment of enforced alignment change, and hence (for a paladin) class loss, might well come as a surprise to the player.
So the player is intended to know that the GM is the final arbiter. “Only the GM knows for sure”. And the DMG provides guidance for the GM stating he should warn the player, and the player should not be surprised. He should at least know he is on the edge – at risk of a change of alignment – even if he does not know this one specific action may tip the balance between LG and LN, say. To me, this means the player should know if a proposed action is, in fact, evil, as such action would risk, but not necessarily be sufficient to cause, an alignment change from G to N.
Note that the Paladin loses status not only for a change of alignment (where he should be aware that his behaviour has been steadily inconsistent with either Law or Good), but also for a single evil act, knowingly undertaken (which does not mean an alignment change in and of itself). So the Paladin might not know whether he’s so close to the edge already that this one act might shift him from LG to LN, but would certainly know it is an evil act which would shift him closer to that line, even if not over the line changing his alignment.
1e D&D provided a lot of items in the DMG which were intended as “the rules the players should not know”. 2e reduced that a lot – I think even the to hit and saving throw tables were in the DMG, not the PHB, in 1e. However, so long as mechanics are included in the DMG, then it is a source of rules intended to fall outside the knowledge of the players. Given that, I would suggest any inconsistency between the two books would always, and clearly, resolve in favour of the DMG. Further, I believe it is fairly standard to resolve any differences in favour of the most recent publication, and the PHB was published prior to the DMG (in 3e and up, I believe they were published at the same time, but 1e and 2e released the PHB first, with the DMG following).
If the paladin doesn't lose his/her status for committing an evil act, then in what way is the game even using mechanical alignment? At this point, what role is alignment actually playing in the game?
BAD typo on my part – “retain” was intended to be “regain”, which is a marked change in the meaning of the statement. The rules say a single evil act causes permanent loss of status. The departure would be permitting later atonement.
However, if I accept your premise that the Paladin not losing status for a single evil act invalidates alignment entirely, that would mean alignment is irrelevant to everything but Paladinhood, which I do not consider to be the case.
Did you infer from those statements that I never have the PCs suffer damage? Or have their pockets picked?
I infer from your statements that damage will occur only from the action resolution mechanics within the game, not simply be imposed arbitrarily (eg.” Vecna is angered – you take damage”), and that the pickpocket is subject to all of the same rules applicable to any pickpocket, including the chance to be noticed in the act. I also infer you would not consider it equitable to have an “unwinnable challenge” (eg. the pickpocket is so good he cannot fail, and the PC could never notice him), but I infer this from your reaction to the Chamberlain against whom the PC’s could not possibly succeed in persuading t grant them an audience with the King.
The player has not had his/her feat taken away - which would be the relevant build resource. S/he has lost the use of an encounter power, which is a normal mechanical state of affairs in 4e.
As is its recover after a short rest, where you have imposed an indefinite period of loss (one which you last noted you had not even decided the duration of).
You keep saying that it is "a matter of degree". If you think having a PC take damage from being hit is much the same as permanently rewriting the PC's class, or removing a feat from a PC, and differs only in degree, then I think you have a very different conception from me and most other D&D playes as to what it at stake in each of those cases.
He did not take damage. His familiar was removed from him. The dame familiar which, presumably, was with him when other events of the skill challenge caused damage to be taken. Your notes indicated that could sometimes be “everyone takes damage”. Did no such event occur, or was the familiar somehow completely sheltered from that damage (still able to act later, in accordance with your wishes), only to become vulnerable to damage later (again, in accordance with your wishes)? Did the player, at any time in the entire scene, get to use his familiar, or was his build resource used exclusively by the GM, prior to being removed from the character for an undetermined period of time.
I stand by my “GM Fiat” assessment, with my statement that “GM Fiat” is not necessarily bad for the game and with my view that we are now discussing only the severity of reductions to a player’s ability to influence the fiction, and the situations where you consider GM fiat to impose such a reduction to be appropriate.
I have mentioined the relevant rules: they refer to the GM exercising a "light touch".
Your “light touch” seems quite heavy from where I sit. At no time in the scene, unless there is an aspect not yet shared, did the player do anything with his familiar. You ran the familiar through every action it took in the scene, then removed it entirely. Really, it was removed as the player’s resource during (or even before) the scene, as you made it an adversary, rather than a character resource. That does not strike me as a “light touch”.
The passage quoted makes clear that this is a matter for negotiation between GM and player.
So what negotiation occurred? You have been asked, repeatedly, whether the player explicitly relinquished full or partial control of his character resource, and the fact you have never provided a straight answer to this question has been highlighted several times.
I told you what was the case between me and my player, including that in an earlier recent session the familiar had activiated itself, turned invisible and stolen a ring for the PC from an NPC.
So the fact that the player did not complain the first time you co-opted his resource means it’s yours now to do with as you please? This seems to indicate player acceptance in your game of you playing outside the rules, which is fine. No one is saying playing outside the rules is bad, or wrong, or Evil, or non-Good, or Chaotic, or non-Lawful. We are saying, however, that your insistence you were playing by the book is not accurate.
Why do you think you have better knowledge than me of what the two of us understand to be the scope of "light touch" here?
The English language covers it for me. I do not believe that you have violated the trust of the players. But I believe that trust extends to you going beyond the rules, and taking far more than a “light touch” on the familiar by unilaterally determining its actions, whether beneficial to, detrimental to or even in outright opposition to its master, the player character.
(you, quite wrongly and with no textual authority, are insisting that all such consequences must be chosen by the players).
The rules text you cited referred to the characters taking damage not voluntary) or voluntarily giving up/sacrificing a resource (such as an encounter power or a healing surge). That is my textual authority. I am not going to pore over the 4e rulebooks for the sole purpose of this thread. I am taking you at your word that you have accurately reprinted the relevant rules on which your activity was based, and those rules do not support your assertion that you played in strict accordance with them.
Frankly, I’m not sure why you see any need to justify that your play was in strict accordance with the rules, in the first place. The discussion of alignment crosses multiple editions most of all of which contan alignment rules you have dispensed with), you regularly cite other games’ rules (Burning Wheel being a common one), and we or at least I) have acknowledged that good gaming and following the RAW are not synonymous. Given all of that, I am uncertain why you place such importance on us agreeing that the skill challenge in question was designed and adjudicated in precise conformance with the rules.
The usual rule does not apply here. Much like in the skill challenge from a published module that I posted upthread, in which the usual rule for recovering an encounter power does not apply. Which is much like a disease, which can change the rate at which healing surges are recovered. Which is much like a wight, which can cause a healing surge to be lost even though the player has not chosen to expend it.
Cite me the rule that describes the activation of a PC’s ability in opposition to the character itself resulting in loss of that ability for an indefinite period. Remember also that your arguments against alignment are, or seem to be, arguments that these rules, which allow a PC’s resources to be stripped away, are arguments that those rules are detrimental to the game. Given that, I hardly see citing rules that allow this being a defense against the perception your interpretations are inconsistent. They seem to indicate only that you are OK with some rules that remove character resources, or extend the period of their removal , but not with others. Hence, not an absolute distate for such rules, but opposition to a subset of them that are invoked for specific reasons, and/or whose severity falls within whatever tolerance level you have established.
In other words,
a matter of degree.
Say you want to play a paladin. Well, if you stick to "What would Superman do?" then you're not likely going to have any problems at anyone's table. Pretty much everyone is going to agree with that version of a paladin. But, I remember reading an interesting Dragon Magazine article years ago titled, "Good doesn't mean boring". In the article they talked about playing different paladins and different archetypes. Instead of "What would Superman do?" maybe you use "What would Batman do?" as your guide. Now you have a paladin that is this terrifying figure that has pretty much nothing to do with the standard "Knight in shining armour" archetype but is a paladin nonetheless.
Someone mentioned Sparhawk from David Edding's novels as an archetype for a paladin and I 100% agree. But, in the very first scene we meet Sparhawk, he's looking for a stiff piece of wire he can use as a garrotte so he can quietly murder an enemy of the church without alerting anyone. Hardly something that's going to pass by mechanical alignment
Why must any of the three be a Paladin? Can I select any character I wish from the annals of literature to be a Paladin, and you must accept this? How about Frodo? Harry Potter? Plastic Man? The Hulk?
For that matter, which Batman are we talking about? The one who walks away and leaves Ra’s Al Ghul to die, the one who has taken tremendous risks to his own life and limb to prevent the death of the Joker, or the Adam West version who never really had to make any life or death choice?
If Sparhawk’s assassination of an enemy of the church is an evil act, then he is not a Paladin. If he is a Paladin, then his assassination of an enemy of the Church must not be an evil act. His teammate’s casual decapitation of a guard delaying their meeting with a superior seems to indicate either the characters in question are not unswervingly Good, or that “respect for life” is pretty compromised in this particular game and setting.
To me, and just so no one accuses me of speaking too broadly, I am only talking about myself, no one else and not meaning a judgement on anyone else's games (I hope that's clearly stated enough), mechanical alignment forces cookie cutter characters and shallow play where player creativity is squashed under the heel of DM's wanting to preserve their particular views of how the game should be.
And to me, if the result is “cookie cutter characters and shallow play where player creativity is squashed under the heel of DM's”, then this represents poor play and poor GMing, not a flaw of the alignment rules themselves. A GM who will “squash creative play under his heel” is hardly likely to (mis)use only the alignment rules to do so.
Of course, some players would chafe at @
pemerton’s requirement that their character come with a reason to fight Goblins, resent his rejection of a “murder in the name of the Goddess of Fate and Death” concept, or be infuriated that they cannot play their Lycanthoropic Vampiric Half Demon character with a selection of class dips from multiple third party splatbooks, magazine articles and online blogs in a Classic Greco-Roman Fantasy game.
This reminds me of @
N'raac's question upthread, about wanting to introduce an undead-animating servant of the Raven Queen.
In that earlier conversation, I had some difficulty explaining to N'raac the difference between backstory - which can be settled in various ways, eg via play or via agreement among the group about some canon text - and values.
If it turns out that a particular god of beauty isn't the god of scarification, then the player who wants to bring in the scarifying beauty-worshipper is going to have to find another way.
Not to @
Hussar – we need to let the player bring in his take on it.
Another is to make a new god the focus. Which might then give rise to some interesting conflicts - who is the "real" god of beauty? From the point of view of each player, as I have said upthread I am not going to second-guess the accuracy of his/her portrayal and expression of his/her god's values. But that doesn't mean that a different character and that character's own god have to accept it.
So “who is the real god of beauty” is compelling, where “does the god of beauty favour or disfavour scarification” is not? Seems like we’re back to something different GM’s might perceive very differently (not an issue to you, I think, but a major concern @
Hussar has expressed regarding alignments).
I would expect two conflicting servants of gods of beauty to play out the same way. I even think it could be done with two conflicting servants of the same god of beauty - at least in my experience it's surprisingly easy for the GM to mangage the backstory and the scene-framing such that, even if the players push for it, the god never gets backed into a corner which requires declaring one rather than the other to be the truer servant of the relevant value. (Because what's really going on here is that a player, instead of tackling the conflict in the context of the game, is trying to get an easy win by getting the GM's endorsement
So here, it would be wrong to grant a player request for a scene where they interact directly with their deity? Because if such a scene is framed, with the question asked, the deity either has to reject scarification as beauty, or accept the possibility it is beauty, so we cannot frame the scene without answering the question.
It seems like scenes that resolve burning questions are not to be framed, even if the players might wish the framing of such a scene.
