D&D 5E A different take on Alignment

[pemerton]

You haven't explained what is usefully brought to the table by alignment rules in circumstances where there is significant disagreement, at the table, over how to morally judge the events that come up in play.

Yes I have. To both.

Then perhaps you'd care to reiterate? I read your posts where you explained that, at your table, you impose your own conception of alignment. But what does that bring to the table?

If your answer is the ability to adjudicate the effects of a Talisman of Pure Good, then I guess my follow-up question is is such a corner case item worth a whole system edifice grounded in moral controversy in order to support it?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

If you are, you should look into Dogs in the Vineyard or Burning Wheel or any number of Powered By the Apocalypse games (Dungeon World handles it swell).

If I run another game in the future for online folks (I presently have 2, of which I aim for people who either don't have experience with a system or only get to GM and never get to play, so I'm stocked up), I'll send you an invitation.

Thank you! I totally forgot to reply to this part earlier, sorry!

My experience with pbta games is limited, and not super positive, but I’m definitely willing to be shown what I’m missing.

 

[Manbearcat]

You’re asking for a lot of work from me that isn’t work when I am running a game. Just like I’d not have to consciously think about the narrating voice of the song Dust Bowl Dance in order for it to help me to decide that the rich guy is exploiting the poor/struggling farmer to take his land and cattle in a place where the land is getting harder to work because of the decisions of powerful people who don’t care if the locals all starve, I’d also not have to consciously reference alignment to do so.

Where alignment, and external genre references, come in, is expanding on what comes up in play later, and as a player deciding the details of the character I’m playing.

Let me back this up just a hair.

What if I want the framing to be provocative but somewhat unfixed or agnostic. I don't want want to signpost BAD GUY DOING BAD THING SO FEEL THIS WAY ABOUT IT in big neon lights. I absolutely need some of that to provoke, but I also need some countervailing evidence or possibilities here. Then I can take the players' cues from how they are orienting themselves toward the situation and use that as an input for subsequent framing or as an output for action resolution.

* What if the rancher lent them the Coin with a non-exploitative lending model (without punishing interest...without an investment mindset such that he has certitude that they will default and lose their assets to him, yielding profit)?

* What if they're belligerent debtors (or perhaps the father is/was)?

Way back when, lending was overwhelmingly looked at as the avenue of a scoundrel. But our modern take is more nuanced. Where does the Paladin fall in line with lending broadly and what if there is evidence here that the Covington family is at least somewhat liable for this failed transaction?

How does prescriptive alignment for the NPCs here help me (the lender, the father, the daughter, or the Covingtons broadly)?

 

[Helldritch]

You mean back when torture was OK, women and colored folk were property who could be legally raped and so forth?

Back when laws were a lot more evil?

Way before that. Stop viewing the ancient world with your modern eyes and use theirs. A lot of what we take for granted today have taken hundreds, no thousands of years to muse, think and evolve. And I am certain that what we take for granted as good today might look like evil incarnate in the future.

Back in those times, the law of Talion was something quite acceptable. From the :" Do onto others what they have done onto you" to "Do not do to others what you do not want them to do onto you" there was quite a long time to conceive and even longer to apply. And it was not in every part of the world and it is not still applied everywhere.

We have had this conversation before and as long as you keep applying modern sensitivities to medieval fantasy dark age... we will never reach an agreement. Hell we are talking about a time when children were brought to public executions and tortures to show them what happened to criminals (and often the crime was only theft of a loaf of bread.) And yet, the people would help each others in times of trouble and famine. I do not think they were evil. They simply did not have the ease of life we have today, our understanding and our modern day point of view and knowledge.

 

[pemerton]

Let me back this up just a hair.

What if I want the framing to be provocative but somewhat unfixed or agnostic. I don't want want to signpost BAD GUY DOING BAD THING SO FEEL THIS WAY ABOUT IT in big neon lights. I absolutely need some of that to provoke, but I also need some countervailing evidence or possibilities here. Then I can take the players' cues from how they are orienting themselves toward the situation and use that as an input for subsequent framing or as an output for action resolution.

* What if the rancher lent them the Coin with a non-exploitative lending model (without punishing interest...without an investment mindset such that he has certitude that they will default and lose their assets to him, yielding profit)?

* What if they're belligerent debtors (or perhaps the father is/was)?

Way back when, lending was overwhelmingly looked at as the avenue of a scoundrel. But our modern take is more nuanced. Where does the Paladin fall in line with lending broadly and what if there is evidence here that the Covington family is at least somewhat liable for this failed transaction?

How does prescriptive alignment for the NPCs here help me (the lender, the father, the daughter, or the Covingtons broadly)?

What I think this drives home is that alignment is a terrible system if applied to fiction that is intended to evince or engender moral doubt.

Because alignment already tells you that someone or something is good or evil! It eliminates doubt in that respect.

 

[Manbearcat]

What I think this drives home is that alignment is a terrible system if applied to fiction that is intended to evince or engender moral doubt.

Because alignment already tells you that someone or something is good or evil! It eliminates doubt in that respect.

Yup. That is the inherent problem to dynamism/variability that I was citing above.

Its particularly problematic for game featuring "play to find out" as an apex priority. If there is no moral doubt, if people (NPCs and PCs alike) don't encompass dualities or inconsistencies (as they do in real life), then instantiating any given situation is going to deterministically yield the same end state. I'm looking for the stochastic model (which is basically required for "play to find out") and D&D alignment is actively not helpful to that at best (while, again, increasing cognitive burden) or an impediment to that at worse.

 

[pemerton]

Yup. That is the inherent problem to dynamism/variability that I was citing above.

Its particularly problematic for game featuring "play to find out" as an apex priority. If there is no moral doubt, if people (NPCs and PCs alike) don't encompass dualities or inconsistencies (as they do in real life), then instantiating any given situation is going to deterministically yield the same end state. I'm looking for the stochastic model (which is basically required for "play to find out") and D&D alignment is actively not helpful to that at best (while, again, increasing cognitive burden) or an impediment to that at worse.

As you know, I think there is a way out of this conundrum: focus on law and chaos as competing means, and play to find out which one actually leads to an increase in welfare/rights satisfaction. But that requires a particular sort of set-up to work.

 

[Manbearcat]

As you know, I think there is a way out of this conundrum: focus on law and chaos as competing means, and play to find out which one actually leads to an increase in welfare/rights satisfaction. But that requires a particular sort of set-up to work.

Yup, it absolutely can work, but (in my opinion) that set-up is significantly facilitated by robust action resolution mechanics (PC build mechanics and advancement/regression that interfaces with the rest of the system, fortune rolls for non PC-centered setting volition/offscreen, clocks w/ win/loss con, tracks w/ teeth, general resolution mechanics and meaty decision-points) that wrest at least some control from "GM decides" as the model for determining the fallout of interactions (PC: obstacle, PC: PC, setting: setting).

You don't have to have all of it (4e had some of it, not all of it, but was fantastic at law vs chaos), but you need some of it.

EDIT - Even if its something like your personal revelatory moments with OA where you were roughing in something kindred with "intent and task" action resolution, Fail Forward, and disciplined/principled GMing around both that architecture and shared (table-wide) understanding of genre conceits (and how that affects consequences and fallout when moves made aren't successful) is sufficient. Not idea, but sufficient. Something has to bind the GM and it has to be table-facing (or at least transparent).

If its all opaque and you can't tell the difference between Force/Story Mandate GMing and not, then it may as well always be Force/Story Mandate.

 

[Maxperson]

So, you are literally going to ignore the text from 3.5? And you are going to continue claiming that chaotic power in no way influences a character Arcehtype into being chaotic?

The part where it says tends slightly towards chaos over law? Yeah. Pretty much. A dollar and a penny is slightly more than a dollar. "Slight" might as well not exist for all the real effect it has. In any case, 5e doesn't even have "slight" in there. There's no pre-disposition to chaos in 5e. None.

And, you are going to provide zero evidence to refute my multiple points of evidence, except to say "blood doesn't make you chaotic" (which, actually, it can. It isn't exactly scientific, but people have put forth the blood types correspond to personality for years, and this is literaly a raging storm of magical energy for blood, which, you know, might affect a person more than being AB negative)

You have no evidence that sorcerers in 5e tend towards chaos. There's literally nothing for me to refute. All you have is "slight" from 3e.

you have disproven nothing.

There was nothing for me to disprove.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Let me back this up just a hair.

What if I want the framing to be provocative but somewhat unfixed or agnostic. I don't want want to signpost BAD GUY DOING BAD THING SO FEEL THIS WAY ABOUT IT in big neon lights. I absolutely need some of that to provoke, but I also need some countervailing evidence or possibilities here. Then I can take the players' cues from how they are orienting themselves toward the situation and use that as an input for subsequent framing or as an output for action resolution.

* What if the rancher lent them the Coin with a non-exploitative lending model (without punishing interest...without an investment mindset such that he has certitude that they will default and lose their assets to him, yielding profit)?

* What if they're belligerent debtors (or perhaps the father is/was)?

Way back when, lending was overwhelmingly looked at as the avenue of a scoundrel. But our modern take is more nuanced. Where does the Paladin fall in line with lending broadly and what if there is evidence here that the Covington family is at least somewhat liable for this failed transaction?

How does prescriptive alignment for the NPCs here help me (the lender, the father, the daughter, or the Covingtons broadly)?

So, you’re employing a completely different model of play than what most people would consider normal D&D play, in a game that very much isn’t D&D, and wondering why a D&Dism doesn’t line up with your play goals?