And that 8s the beauty of alignment my friend. The basics are there, the usefulness of the system is not denied. Only the interpretation is in question here. But basically, we all agree more or less on the same principles. A lawful character differs from a chaotic one and a good character will not do things than an evil one will.
That statement is practically self-evident, even without codified alignment. It's the attempt to try and codify it further that is leading to the current arguments in the thread. So what usefulness does alignment have?
PsyzhranV2 beat me to it.
I mean, a friendly character differs from a gruff one. That's inherent in the meaning of
friendly and
gruff. But that doesn't mean that it's useful for the game to tell us that every character needs to be classified on a friendly/gruff matrix. Or that we should then overlay a sleepy/alert one, so that orc are
alert gruff while faeries are
sleepy friendly and trolls are
sleepy gruff while Aragorn is
alert friendly.
For those who feel alignment detracts from the game, there is little surprise that part of the reason the thread devolved is because of a disagreement between people about how to interpret alignment (who, for the record, are both supporters of alignment).
My view is that any game which
wants to make moral disagreement of moral quandaries a focus of play, or that in some other fashion is going to have play generate situation that are
objects of moral disagreement, then alignment is unhelpful except perhaps as the most basic personality descriptor for GM-controlled characters. (Players don't need such things, as they can just play their PCs.)
Conversely, if alignment is going to be useful then it needs to be obvious what counts as departing from good, and what doesn't. And likewise what counts as lawful or chaotic (which probably is best settled from game to game and table to table, given that there is no stable widespread notion of these things).
If Good isn't morally upright and correct it is meaningless noise.
That's your opinion.
In the game world Evil people see it totally differently. They're correct, and the Good guys are wrong.
And evil people by definition, disagree with that definition.
They're correct, and the do gooders are weaklings leading the world into corruption and decadence, and only (the Sith empire, Thanos, House Bolton, the Black Network, the Brotherhood of Mutants, Drow race, Nazi Germany etc etc) can save the world from such perversion and weakness.
They see their moral code as correct, and the good guys being incorrect.
Evil people don't have a moral code.
That's what makes them evil. They have motivations and (internal) reasons, but those motivations and reasons don't amount to a
moral code.
Similarly, evil people might believe they are doing the right thing, but they are wrong. Again, this moral errors is
what's makes them evil.
If, at a table, the participants radically disagree on what is good and what is bad as that arises in the shared fiction - and hence on what counts as moral error within the context of the fiction - that seems a good reason not to use alignment descriptors at that table in that game.
The Biggest thing I've seen put torture on the table is the enemy being unwilling to tell the players any information. See, in a book or a show, you can lock them up and spend the next season slowly whittling away their resolve, turning them to see the error of their ways, ect. But DnD really doesn't have that kind of time, and the player's captured this guy to give them information NOW. So, it becomes torture and threats because the players are looking at the clock and not wanting to spend an hour of game time playing 20 questions with faceless mook #4 instead of continuing to play the game.
It is a problem, but one I don't think has a terribly satisfying resolution for any side involved, story wise.
My sympathy for a GM who (i) runs a game that can't progress unless the players have information X, and (ii) uses his/her power over the fiction (in this case, NPCs) to make sure the players don't get that information, and then (iii) complains when the players declare actions for their PC that they think might force the GM's hand in respect of that fiction: ZERO.
What you're describing sounds like the quintessence of all bad railroads and GM beatsticks I've ever heard of bundled together into one terrible combination.
DM: I dont care. Thats how it is in this game world that I'm running. When you DM you can do it differently if you choose. End of discussion.
1) Because it is to the DM to set what is and what isn't acceptable at his/her table. Welcome to 5ed as Oofta said.
2) Flamestrike was answering to an other poster about a situation. Flamestrike then proceeded to say what would happen if it would happen at his table. Fair enough?
Generally its pretty obvious when a player has strayed agreed.
It's sadly not uncommon. Ditto murder.
I've had LG PC that tortured and then tried to kill a lone pitiful Kobold sentry to a dungeon entrance they clearly outmatched and could have simply let go.
Directly after session zero when I expressly stated this precise thing was evil, and told them as much before they did the act. Couldnt have been clearer. It was (by player consensus) a Good aligned/ Heroic party with no Evil PCs allowed.
Player in question was new to the group, and tried to argue 'the ends justify the means' for several minutes to the stunned silence of the other players (and the other Good aligned PCs who were horrified).
I sacked him from the group then and there, and retconned the scene much to the cheers of the other players.
The idea that we use
GM authority or a game rule like alignment to manage aesthetic or moral disagreements between participants in the creation of a shared fiction seems very strange to me.
