D&D 5E RIP alignment

[el-remmen]

I said it earlier, but I'd rather get rid of all intelligent (non-extraplaner or undead) evil creatures than get rid of alignment. To me, alignment is more vital to the essence of D&D than orcs or goblins are. I'd rather D&D have humans be the only playable species and remove all others than get rid of alignment.

This makes no sense to me, but okay. I too have considered "all-human" campaign settings.

In my current games, all the common bigoted assumptions about orcs and goblins (and dwarves and elves, though those land differently) still exist. . . They are just wrong or used as propaganda or based on old stories or limited experience, etc. ..

 

[Maxperson]

If you need something in the written section to "fix" something in another section... why not just fix the broken section itself first, hmm?

It's not any more of a "fix" than making feats optional. It's simply a difference for those people who don't like alignment, whatever their reason. Alignment isn't racist or broken. If you have the opinion, whatever your reason, that it should not be used, then making it optional at the beginning of the book fixes that. Wanting to ruin it for everyone else is selfish.

 

[Oofta]

No, this comparison is just wrong. No is saying you can never use alignment again, it just shouldn't be part of the base game. If you want to include alignment and alignment-based spells, they are better off as a a variant. It's the perfect thing for the DMG.

The more accurate comparison here would be if you were to buy anything at this grocery store, you also had to buy a gallon of vanilla ice cream. And if people complained, a bunch of people would barge in and say "Well, you can just throw out the vanilla if you don't want it!"

Your analogy would only work if I said removing alignment was like making vanilla ice cream illegal. Obviously I can house rule anything I want.

I just think getting rid of alignment as a tool is throwing out a useful tool because some people don't understand how it's meant to be used as explicitly spelled out in the books.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I see what you did there.

But hey, if you want to use this as your GOTCHA! to ignore everything else I said and thus just keep living your life as you have been thinking everything is fine... more power to ya! Hope it works out!

But it does mean there's still a chance you're gonna possibly get cancelled at some point with that attitude. Even for something you don't think you did wrong. Better enjoy yourself while you can!

Heh heh... touche!

Been keeping that bullet stored in your pocket for a while now, haven't ya, @Alzrius? LOL!

But yeah... if I get cancelled, it'll be on me. You'll have permission to laugh at my misery if/when it happens.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Actually Zelda already uses the 'other' solution, the monsters are all magical manifestations of evil power, if I'm not mistaken. They don't really have lives, souls, thoughts or feelings in the same way real people do, so even if they seem intelligent, like Bokoblins, its just enough cunning to make them useful minions. That's why they disappear in a puff of that malice stuff Ganon uses when you kill them and literally come back to life in BOTW on the night of the blood moon, we've been seeing that puff of smoke for them since at least the N64 era.

I'm actually ambivalent toward alignment, I think that it should either be done away with, or be stronger and more setting specific to convey an actual in-universe force. I also think it should be removed from 'the mortal races' entirely save by some kind of magical investment or influence by other forces, ergo, Orcs as we currently write them, as mostly people shouldn't be marked evil. But orcs written in line with Zelda's moblins, would be marked evil, and a fantasy setting could absolutely do that. It's actually why our Pathfinder setting rewrites orcs completely into something that could still serve as antagonists (in the same way Elves can) but aren't meaningfully evil in the traditional sense, they're mortal.

Finally, please be careful about fitting anything into some broad strokes pattern of social progress, its a mark of privilege to abstract things that you aren't harmed by to that degree to simplistic narratives. Depicting women as equal in roleplaying games, and addressing genre tropes concerning good and evil as concrete forces and how that intersects with intelligent creatures who fall under the influence of those categories are two materially different things. One is a clear example of sexism, the other is supported by a somewhat more tenuous association between imperialist characterizations of bipoc peoples and fantasy tropes about intelligent monsters like orcs and goblins that runs to the core of the genre.

 

[Sacrosanct]

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.

You’re at least the second person to argue people are too lazy to read the fluff text. I don’t think that makes the argument you think it does, because arguing that people should read is an argument TO get rid of alignment in the stat block. That is, if you read the fluff text which tells you how the creature generally behaves, then you don’t need an alignment in the stat block regardless.

So we all agree then? Get rid of default alignments and just have people read the fluff? Great news!

 

[tetrasodium]

Re: D&D

Au contraire. There's no such thing as a too-big tent.

And who/what would you exclude in this shrinkage process; and - given the recent move toward inclusivity - how?

The good-evil/law-chaos axis alignment is the opposite of big tent as it really only works for settings with a shallow light vrs dark because because type baseline & starts breaking down as soon as you start looking at it or adding even a little nuance to things. In wotc owned settings like eberron darksun & even to a degree ravenloft that alignment system is an ill fitting mess. As @Faolyn said earlier you can have mechanus as the plane of mathematical precision focused on the pursuit of perfect order & the creatures there can be focused on those things allowing them to be transplanted anywhere those themes are useful with nothing lost. You can not however fit the mechanus is lawful good & these creatures are concerned with law so the end into settings with deeper & more more nuanced baselines on alignment without a big mess

 

[MGibster]

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.

And yet nobody ever does anything about that monster Link and his pottery destroying ways. The poor, poor people of Hyrule continue to suffer.

 

[Remathilis]

In other words, the angst-driven 1990s all over again.

Colour me unenthused.

Some of it is. Some of it is making friends with the monsters and turning them to you allies.

Goblins. Gotta catch them all

 

[Charlaquin]

In other words, the angst-driven 1990s all over again.

Colour me unenthused.

Nah, post-postmodernism trades in the cynicism of postmodernism for sincerity. If there’s angst in 2010s/20s dramatic fiction, it’s either being played ironically for a laugh or revealed to be a defense mechanism covering a more earnest vulnerability.