D&D 5E RIP alignment

[CubicsRube]

I have never used alignment as it feels a bit simplistic to me. I tend to go by the attributes a la "the monsters know" style approach. Not just to combat, but in general.

 

[Imaculata]

No, killing things for no other reason than they belong to a culture that is warlike and violent or enslaves people, is evil. PCs who engage in such practices are evil.

Killing an Orc should be (and always has been) no different to killing a Halfling. You only resort to force and violence if the creature threatens harm to you or others, and there is no other way to stop them.

In the real world? Yes.

In a fictional world? No.

The fantasy genre often has a very simple morality. There are good guys and bad guys. We don't stop to ponder if all Stormtroopers in Star Wars are evil, because they are the baddies, and they are merely there to get shot.

Orcs are the stormtroopers of the D&D universe. They are evil, and only there to be chopped into pieces by the heroes, without us feeling to much over it.

And that is fine!

I get why they want to change it. But its fine for fiction to have very simplified morality.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Take a complete noob. Tell the noob that Lawful means a tendency towards order and socialization. Tell the noob that chaos means freedom and not following restrictions. Then tell the noob that neutral means no particular tendency. Good and evil do not need description and never did.

Now take that noob, sit him in the DM's chair and make him run a lawful evil group of creatures... Yep, the noob will run the mob as intended without having to read the whole crearure's description in the MM. Just the stat block will be enough.

I fail to see the positives in putting things in place to inspire "noobs" to skip reading the entire rules set and just skim the very top level of the game.

If you are a new player, you SHOULD be reading the entirety of the thing you're trying to run. You should actually LEARN THE GAME. And that means, yes... if you are going to use monsters from a specific product-- say a Monster Manual or a module-- you SHOULD read the entire descriptive text that describes them and wherein it SHOULD either give you several different mannerism and ways of behavior for the monster without any "standard" or "default" (if its in the MM) or it tell you specifically why THIS monster in THIS adventure is behaving in THIS way. Give it a reason for its behavior.

It's called specificity. Everything in the game that's based upon the roleplaying aspect of said thing should have SPECIFIC reasons why they are being portrayed in that way. There should never be any reason to shortchange a creature's personality or behavior, as their behavior is the whole reason for roleplaying those creatures in the first place.

Yes, you can absolutely have a clan of orcs that are evil in a product. But at the very least you should spend at least a half-dozen sentences describing WHAT they are doing and WHY they are behaving in that way-- WHY they are doing these things that would make the reader ascribe them the alignment as 'evil'. Because anything else is just poor writing. And while there certainly are folks here on the board that WANT that kind of writing wherein they as DMs don't ever have to put any thought into what they are doing and what's being run (I mean how many times have we seen people here just say they WANT meaningless cannon-fodder humanoids that can be killed indiscriminately for no other reason than "they're evil!?)...

...the game and the company need not in any way SUPPORT those kind of actions if they feel it is in any detrimental to how people might react to the game in the future.

 

[Marc_C]

It's been a long road:

• Race-as-Class, removed.
• Extraordinary Strength (18 + percentile) for male fighters only, removed.
• Different experience tables for each class, removed.
• Arbitrary level caps for non-humans, removed.
• Stereotypical ability score modifiers, removed.
• Alignements, removed.

 

[Remathilis]

I SAID THIS WAS HAPPENING!

There was only one step left before its completely gone, and its replacement (bonds, ideals, flaws) are sitting in plain view.

 

[Aldarc]

The fantasy genre often has a very simple morality. There are good guys and bad guys. We don't stop to ponder if all Stormtroopers in Star Wars are evil, because they are the baddies, and they are merely there to get shot.

Orcs are the stormtroopers of the D&D universe. They are evil, and only there to be chopped into pieces by the heroes, without us feeling to much over it.

I'm not sure if this assumption holds true overall. I'm fairly certain that the dehumanization of the Stormtroopers has been a contentious point for a number of Star Wars fans and writers. We don't think as easily or readily about it because they are faceless, which inhibits our ability to humanize them. But when you give them faces, then suddenly this question becomes more difficult to answer. The Clone Wars regularly sought to humanize the clone troopers, who would become the initial ranks of the Stormtroopers, and provide perspective on how they were dehumanized by their allies and foes. The Star Wars sequels created the character of Finn, a stormtrooper who abandoned the ranks of the New Order. There are a number of media within the EU and Post-Disney Canon that have engaged and pondered this point regarding Stormtroopers.

 

[Remathilis]

A lot of terrible brain worms have followed Gygax's oddball use of "Race" to donate "species" and rather than, you know, actually correct that and change the name to "Species" (or even Pathfinder's ancestry is an improvement) they've instead led themselves down a path where apparently describing pit fiends as "lawful evil" perpetuates racism or somesuch. I mean, honestly guys, the alignment listing works well as a short hand description for the default expected behaviour of the creature in the Monster Manual. Ditching that but still describing orcs a rampaging, violent barbarians somehow solves the scourge of racism for some people, I guess.

Oh, you think they're going to keep orcs as rampaging, violent barbarians? The masses have spoken my friend, they're a PC race now! They're getting the Pathfinder goblin treatment.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

Nah, not gonna be buying what they're selling. This is far too much character of the game getting cut to please people other than me and my friends.

I get it, the spirit of the age is to expunge, but just not at our game table.

 

[Aldarc]

Oh, you think they're going to keep orcs as rampaging, violent barbarians? The masses have spoken my friend, they're a PC race now! They're getting the Pathfinder goblin treatment.

Goblins and Orcs both seem popular enough in the rising popular consciousness of mainstream Fantasy RP to include as core playable ancestries/lineages.

 

[Remathilis]

Well, they're well-described now, because we've had the nine-alignment system for over 40 years. If we'd never had that system we wouldn't have the Great Wheel, nor likely a number of iconic planar creatures in the game (devils as distinct from and opposed to demons; yugoloths; modrons; eladrin).

While we can certainly continue the Great Wheel cosmology without explicitly defined alignment, I don't think you'll ever be able to completely eliminate the concept from the underpinnings. You need some version of law vs. chaos to distinguish Hell from the Abyss, for example, even if you don't use the terms "lawful evil" and "chaotic evil".

You can keep devils as corrupters and bargainers, and demons as destruction and death without specifically saying LE vs CE, but the I don't imagine the lesser fiendish types are going keep what little identity they have left. The other outer-planar beings can also survive without overt alignment tags, as a hivemind of robots or angels and genies exist even without alignment to describe them. I just think there will be "less" of them.