D&D 5E RIP alignment

[Faolyn]

No, but just like the UA/Tasha thread, we could dance around this for a month, but i'm not interested in that.

OK. It's just that you haven't even given us anything to dance around.

You: Removing alignment is bad!

Me: Why?

You: I don't want to talk about it.

Honestly, it sounds like you have realized there's no real loss by removing alignment, but you have decided that you don't want to actually change your mind on anything. Which is the real loss here.

 

[Charlaquin]

So, even if D&D does this, what does that mean for the many other pieces of media influenced by D&D? Is Legend of Zelda going to have to get rid of always evil monsters? Is Link going to have to talk to every moblin he meets to make sure they're evil before he fights them?

That’s slippery slope fallacy, and a really egregious example of it. What WotC does with D&D has no bearing on what Nintendo does with Legend of Zelda. Also, there have been examples of non-evil monsters in Zelda for years, maybe even decades.

 

[Morrus]

So, even if D&D does this, what does that mean for the many other pieces of media influenced by D&D? Is Legend of Zelda going to have to get rid of always evil monsters? Is Link going to have to talk to every moblin he meets to make sure they're evil before he fights them?

Yes. Zelda will have to do that because WotC rules the world. You think that’s bad, you should see what they’re doing with the nougat density in Mars Bars. And they made me swap my green towels for new ones with polka dots.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

Sounds nice in theory, but in practice "learning the game" to the extent you seem to want can take months if not years; and even then can only really be done through play* rather than by reading.

That, or you're creating a rather significant (and IMO unnecessary) barrier to entry for new players/DMs.

* - and during that learning process is when the simple top-level descriptors come in most handy.

 

[Charlaquin]

Sounds nice in theory, but in practice "learning the game" to the extent you seem to want can take months if not years; and even then can only really be done through play* rather than by reading.

That, or you're creating a rather significant (and IMO unnecessary) barrier to entry for new players/DMs.

* - and during that learning process is when the simple top-level descriptors come in most handy.

I rather think it’s removing a barrier to entry. These days, no one is coming into D&D without pre-existing notions of what the various fantastical creatures it features are like. There is a strong cultural zeitgeist around the concepts of orcs, goblins, and other such creatures. When a new player who has been exposed to all sorts of fantasy media with all manner of different takes on orcs, most of them pretty nuanced, comes in to D&D and reads that orcs are inherently evil, that clashes with their expectation. Some new players will accept this different take, and take the time to read about them and form an understanding of what orcs look like in this setting, but others will be put off by the regressive, reductive take, and will either have to do a lot of extra work to change it to their liking, or pass on the game. In a game that’s at least nominally supposed to be flexible and allow for a wide variety of different settings.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Sounds nice in theory, but in practice "learning the game" to the extent you seem to want can take months if not years; and even then can only really be done through play* rather than by reading.

That, or you're creating a rather significant (and IMO unnecessary) barrier to entry for new players/DMs.

* - and during that learning process is when the simple top-level descriptors come in most handy.

Yes, I am asking the potential new DM that does not yet know that in D&D trolls have traditionally always been evil in previous editions of the game... to read the flavor text of the Monster Manual for the troll entry so they get a sense of how the D&D troll is in the game. Wherein... in some later Monster Manual for either a 5.5 or 6E or whatever... the flavor text will detail why some trolls could be evil, why some trolls could be good, why some trolls might be unintelligent, why some trolls might be smart, and how/when/why trolls might be antagonists or assistants to the party in the game.

As opposed to just putting 'chaotic evil' in the statblock and using that as the expected explanation of what trolls are like in D&D.

Now if those couple paragraphs of reading are too much for certain new DMs and they decide not to play the game... okay, so be it. I personally think that's rather short-sighted of them, seeing as how they already are going to be reading hundreds of pages in two other tomes to learn how to play the game... but if it's too much, it's too much. But I'd still rather make things more welcoming to as many of those new players as I could... even if a few of them won't take to all that descriptive reading.

 

[Lanefan]

It's more like 'I don't see the point of vanilla ice cream and I wish that law that everyone needs to eat a cone every morning before work should be repealed'.

Here's the thing: if you're not the DM, you don't have a choice but to engage with alignment and the stupid moral and ethical arguments it entails. I make a diplomancer who is a pathological liar but is CG. The DM thinks lying is evil because of the BoED 3.5 and they insist I'm CN at best and because of the stupidity around what people think of CN or Evil alignments, my character is banned.

The stupidity there is not in the alignment system itself; rather it's in the DM for banning your rather-cool-sounding character (which I also would probably peg as CN if what's here was all the info I had to work with).

That's the argument to pursue with vigour: to get your DM to allow the playing of PCs of any alignment.

 

[teitan]

RE: D&Ds identity.
I’m pretty sure alignment is really far down the list of things that make up the identity of D&D.

With all the jokes out there about alignment I think you’re wrong though personally I don’t have a care either way on it. I tend to think of Alignment in the same way as Moorecock where it is about cosmic forces in conflict than LG vs CN sorts of things. Mordenkainen is one such example of that approach being the intent. But that could easily be something for only certain settings like Greyhawk, which is very much about that battle. Spells like detect evil/good don’t need alignment to work.

 

[Maxperson]

The "option" here all just comes down to this:

You leave default alignments in a monster or NPC statblock and players have the option of ignoring them...

or

You remove default alignments in a monster or NPC statblock and players have the option of adding one back in (if they recognize the monster or and/or do pretty standard reading comprehension of what the monster or NPC is doing.)

One of these ways makes certain older players happy... the ones who don't like change. The other lessens the possibility that some new players decide to pick up the game because the default racial tropes are not to their liking.

The latter group should be able to read the paragraph or two at the beginning that fixes that. If someone is too lazy to read and they choose not to play, they have only themself to blame. Not WotC. Not alignment.

 

[Vaalingrade]

So, even if D&D does this, what does that mean for the many other pieces of media influenced by D&D? Is Legend of Zelda going to have to get rid of always evil monsters? Is Link going to have to talk to every moblin he meets to make sure they're evil before he fights them?

...

There's no alignment in Legend of Zelda.

There are groups who serve Ganon and those who Ganon victimizes usually for not serving him.

You don't need the excuse of alignment to fight moblins because they attack you on sight. Link isn't bouncing into moblin (or Zora* if you're old school) homes and murdering them because 'evil'; he's on a mission to stop Ganon and moblins and other guys are being thrown between him and saving Hyrule.

LoZ, much like D&D does not need alignment to justify conflict**.

*Remember when they were always an enemy in game? After the most recent generations would be okay killing them on sight?

**Because someone is going to leap in immediately to say that's not what alignment is for, this is what the post I'm quoting is saying. Also, yes it is... or was. It was introduced to enforce Moorcook's Law vs Chaos before corrupting into what it's become today. At the dawn of the game, there was no consideration given for being a shorthand for behavior... probably because it's not actually good for doing that; people just heavily extrapolate by adding their knowledge of lore to one of nine boxes.