D&D 5E RIP alignment

[Justice and Rule]

Fantastic change in your eyes, maybe. For me it guts about 95% of the purpose of the spells.

I mean, the original spell is kind of dumb? To me, being able to know someone's alignment instantly kills actually learning about characters and such. There was a time when I suppose you'd be more interested in using your time effectively and knowing if you can trust the old man in the dungeon cuts is less important than letting the story play out. But to me that's just a drama-negator, which is why I thought it was a very smart change.

Thing is, instead of getting rid of alignment I'd prefer to go the other way and lean further into it: aligned items, aligned places, a cosmology completely based on alignment (meaning divine-based classes are also very alignment-conscious); and to make all this work you also need aligned PCs in order to, for example, find out who the aligned item will accept and who it will bite, who feels icky in the evil-consecrated space and who doesn't, and so forth.

I mean, I suppose you can do that. PF2 did that with their Paladin-style class, the Crusader, which themes your different abilities around your alignment. But even then, it's not completely necessary and you could easily just remove it, with each archetype just being a theme that you play into.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

No it's not. It's an argument to ignore people who don't bother to read. If you can't be bothered to read or at least understand what is written in the books, your opinion about what they contain shouldn't be considered. The vast majority of us do read, and will understand that section.

 

[Maxperson]

Nope, I agree... alignment in of itself for every individual is not racist or broken. However, alignment as a default condition for every member of a race can potentially be seen as racist.

The issue with orcs was never alignment, though. It was the language used indicating that they are savages, etc. There's nothing wrong with putting down a big fat CE in front of the orc entry when everyone knows from the beginning of the monster book that the alignment portion of the monster entry is optional.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

You can still have good and evil without alignment.

We're discussing more than good and evil when we're talking about alignment in Dragonlance. We're talking about those cosmic teams, and about good or evil getting disproportionate control as being bad.

 

[Rabulias]

I don’t think that alignment makes it more or less compelling as a story.

So alignment does not detract from the story for you. Removing alignment could make it less compelling for others. Why not leave it in?

 

[Maxperson]

It's not that it's a racist tool, but rather such an imprecise one that, when used, can work into racist tropes. Like, there's a difference between something being racist and something that is neutral on its face but ends up enabling racist tropes. Furthermore, it's not even a good tool given that there are so many arguments as to what each alignment means that it hurts more than it helps.

I don't buy the, "People can misuse the tool and make it racist." as an argument not to include it. People can and will misuse just about everything. That's on them, not the game or the tool.

 

[Oofta]

No it doesn't. What it does acknowledge is that not everybody wants the same thing from their games, and that many styles of games exist to accommodate those differing preferences.

I was responding to

The thing is, well designed system is focused. Even better, lazer-focused. Every rule, every word, every setting detail revolves around one, well-defined goal. Everything that doesn't work for that goal should be thrown out, swiftly and ruthlessly.

I fundamentally disagree with the statement. A well designed system may be laser focused, it may not be. My personal preference is to have generic rules that don't make assumptions about what my game will be so I can design a campaign that suits my taste.

A system can be beautifully designed like that Porsche but if it doesn't suit my needs it's not a good system for me. Yugos were just plain crap vehicles that were simply poorly designed, there are many games that ended up in the discount bin (or went straight to a hole in the desert).

That's all.

 

[Scribe]

I don't buy the, "People can misuse the tool and make it racist." as an argument not to include it. People can and will misuse just about everything. That's on them, not the game or the tool.

This is it right here. There isnt a thing on this planet that could not be misconstrued as racist at this point, or taken and made as such by actual racists. I'm reminded of the 'OK' sign as an example of this stupidity.

Alignment is not inherently flawed. The argument that it is racist, is.

 

[Justice and Rule]

We're discussing more than good and evil when we're talking about alignment in Dragonlance. We're talking about those cosmic teams, and about good or evil getting disproportionate control as being bad.

But can't that be done through ethics and actions, rather than simply an alignment box? I dunno, I'm not particularly familiar with Dragonlance.

So alignment does not detract from the story for you. Removing alignment could make it less compelling for others. Why not leave it in?

Because it's a lazy part of the game that largely seems to spark a bunch of arguments, doesn't really add to roleplay, and when used badly it can feed in to racist tropes.

Seems way better to take it out.

I don't buy the, "People can misuse the tool and make it racist." as an argument not to include it. People can and will misuse just about everything. That's on them, not the game or the tool.

No, it's on the game when the game manages to use it poorly and do that stuff. Again, making certain humanoid races just intrinsically evil is a good example of that.

 

[Rabulias]

I see alignment as another tool to be used - a dial that can be turned up, turned down, or turned sideways, as a DM and the players like. It's a handy shorthand for new DMs to get a handle on playing monsters and NPCs. Some assume that all new DMs will be offended by alignments, but I don't know if that's the case. People all learn differently, and what works for one new DM might not work for another.

It seems like the ship has sailed, but it's too bad they did not use 3.x's alignment entries like "Usually Neutral Evil" to directly imply the possibility of other alignments for a creature. Or use "Any Alignment" for free-willed humanoids and make it very clear for certain species.