D&D 5E A different take on Alignment

[Umbran]

One of the things I discuss in my campaign is that justice is often swift and harsh. Punishment may vary from public shaming, flogging, indentured servitude for a period of time or execution. While there are jails for those waiting trial, there are effectively no prisons.

So, that sounds less like "justice" and more like "legal repercussions". When we are talking about a system in which chaos/law are separate from evil/good, we cannot assume that enaction of legal process to equate to justice - because those laws can be evil...

Unless, of course, you want to say that sometimes justice is evil. But I'm guessing you may not want to do that.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

How exactly do I use alignment??

Well, it's an entry in my PC spreadsheet, so I saw at a glance the current party is pretty fractious (CG, LG, NE, LN, CN) and not overly heroic.

The players choose their alignment as a statement of intent, and I'm using it as guide to party cohesion.

By now it has become apparent that the LG PC is fairly weak within their alignment boundary, prisoner executions and foregoing hostage rescues diminishing things a bit on one hand, however he's still faithfully on mission for the good of a nearby town.

The player who chose NE is a senior player, therefore his non-advocacy and evil enablement is rubbing off on the faltering LG player and rookie CN player.

CN is what she wrote, and she meant it. But her solo missions have had to be reined in doubly so because of online gaming - it chews too much time, and by herself she's just way less effective.

The CG PC is the one true hero who has loudly decried and scorned lowly actions. This has clawed back the morality of the group with behavior changing in recent sessions. Her devil-may-care heroics has also pushed forward the plot with quickened pacing, which is enhancing her party influence.

The LN PC is playing out as a total follower who does as told...

For monsters, it's a base motivation stat. If I combine that with a 'monsters' Int, HP, CR, average DPR, likely number appearing, terrain & allies, bla bla bla, I have a good handle on how to play a monster on the fly.

e.g.
a Galub Duhr (which I've never DM'd before)
N, medium, Int11, only speaks Terran, HP85, AC16, probably few in number, can animate allies all doing DPR36
Okay, so we've got a few tough creatures here minding their own business, likely doing something productive. They might come into conflict with heroes but only as a consequence of whatever they're doing, not for doing harm's sake.
If approached carefully they could be reasoned with, the language barrier is a problem, but they themselves can help figure it out. Some kind of win-win offer would be acceptable.

Now, I'm aware of a drive to strip alignment from the game... and replace it with walls of text. I've owned my MM for what, 7 years now? I think I've read 75% of it. The lore is nice, but it doesn't help reduce information down into a manageable bite size.

 

[Maxperson]

And $2 is slightly more than a $1 too.

No it's not. $2 may be a small amount of money, but it is absolutely not slightly more than $1. Slightly is a matter of degree, not totality. Double is significantly more in degree.

I provided evidence. You take umbrage with the fact that the sorcerer tended chaotic in 3rd, but only "slightly" as though that means they had no tendency at all. You ignore the clear sign posts to their chaotic nature, and I'm not wasting more time with you on this.

You provided no evidence. I will accept that you think that it's evidence, but when something as written has nothing to do with alignment, it's not evidence of predisposition of alignment.

 

[Maxperson]

As a further aside, I don't know why moral philosophers and ethicists have bothered their scholarly works since the 1980s when apparently D&D has already solved and satisfactorily answered "what constitutes good?", as evidenced by players having been able to successfully (though inconsistently and controversially) apply it to fictional characters as circular, self-referential proof that the system works and is, indeed, not broken and, in fact, useful as a moral framework.

They have to make themselves feel good about getting philosophy degrees, instead of something useful. That's why.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

Oh thanks for the guidance, i did not want to argue about politics because once it is not feasible on this board, and even if it were, to many people mistake feelings for facts these days, so that would further turn me down from it.
My intention was just to write down some very basic definition, which could apply in a hypotethical simplified fantasy universe, but if you want to go philosophic i suggest you would love to read some of the classics like Plato or Hegel or such. They got more substance than Twitter.

I see your Plato and Hegel and respond with Errico Malatesta, Pyotr Kropotkin, and Emma Goldman.

 

[Manbearcat]

Again, alignment is a useful tool for basic behavioral guidelines for both PCs and their foes/allies. LE will make me play a certain way. LG will spurr me into an other direction.

Alignment is a base upon which I can quickly evaluate how I will play both in combat and in RP. For more complex RP or personae, I will add bonds, flaws and whatever else is needed but for the basic encounter? Two letters are more than enough to guide me in my RP and combat. I will not need a wall of text to remind me how ro play such and such monsters. I read the fluff a long time ago. I can use the stat blocks as well as any other. But if I change two letters, I will also change the behavior of the foes instantly if it differs from the standard stat block.

Example.
Ogres are chaotic by nature and evil. I play them as dumb brute with little to no tactics. A bit like the hulk. Me smash things! They might get into each other's way. They will not be coordinated and they will be easily tricked into tactical blunder.
But if I see some ogres that are LE with the stat block unchanged? They will not be brighter but they will be more coordinated. They will actually listen a bit more to the commands of their leader because they are lawful. They might not understand why such and such orders are given
But being lawful, they will obey them to the best of their comprehension. In RP, these LE ogres will be less likely to lose patience because their lawful nature makes them more prone to listen and to try to think for long term goals while a chaotic one will want self gratification right now. I don't even have to read the reason why they are LE to play them correctly. But be assured that I would read why for sure.

Can you imagine Lawful Evil Ogres that complain to their friends and spouses about their douchey captain/boss?

I can (and I suspect you can as well).

Can you imagine Lawful Evil Ogres that reflect upon the hierarchy they're ensconced in and see real or perceptual corruption and fantasize about (perhaps even consider if the means become available or the corruption becomes too pernicious) overthrowing it?

I can (and I suspect you can as well).

Can you imagine Lawful Evil Ogres who punch in predictably every day and follow procedure like a good worker bee...yet one day they screw up procedure and due to the fear of liability/social cost, they do something rash that is entirely out of character (perhaps destabilizing the order of their culture)?

I can (and I suspect you can as well).

Can you imagine a Lawful Evil Ogre who has ascended his command hierarchy quite a bit, generally still stays inside the expected structure but begins a creeping regime of exploitation and nepotism and soft rule-shirking that becomes more and more insidious (or perhaps just stays the same)?

I can (and I suspect you can as well).


Like Captain America, I can do this all day. Neither Humans nor Ogres are free from personality discontinuity. We (and surely they because I'm sure they possess similar neurological and endocrine systems) are wired to inhabit discrete states and competing personas/ideals. Consequently, I don't see Lawful Evil doing service to this (in terms of expressing the dynamism of an intelligent social animal dealing with extreme environmental inputs and in terms of reliably creating interesting obstacles for PCs).

 

[PsyzhranV2]

They have to make themselves feel good about getting philosophy degrees, instead of something useful. That's why.

Cheap shot, absolutely uncalled for. Philosophy has no televance, you say? My response is that the many social and political tensions in the world today, while on the surface are in the domains of sociology and polisci, absolutely have overlap with philosophy.

Actually, I'll throw it back to you. If the study of ethics to you has been finalized, then define those ethics for me, both in the normative and metaethical dimensions. I'll be waiting.

Never mind that ethics isn't the only part of philosophy anyways. Are metaphysics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind not "something useful" to you?

EDIT: @pemerton said it best:

The idea that alignment descriptors are portable to fiction in general, let alone the real world in general, is pretty weird in my view. And seems to be belied by the fact that no school of philosophy (for the real world) or no school of criticism (for fiction) uses them. And their attempted use in this respect has not produced their own meaningful schools of philosophy or criticism.

Dunno about you, but I'm more willing to trust those scholars of ethics and art than you some rando who apparently thinks every issue in normative and metaethics has been resolved without doubt, yet won't tell us what those answers are.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Anakin Skywalker was beholden to a legitimate authority (that he constantly railed and occasionally rebelled against) in the Jedi Council (and the Republic).

Doesnt make him any less Chaotic.

He constantly rebelled against authorities that he was forced to work under. He absolutely never accepted their orders on the basis of their authority to give such orders. If he were Lawful, he’d have not constantly challenged the rulings and orders of the Council at every turn.

Assume a legitimate authority, for a moment.
a lawful person accepts their rules and orders unless they have a reason not to.
a chaotic person accepts their rules and orders only if they make sense, feel right, etc. Because authority is only legitimate so long as it acts legitimately.

Alright so this looks like something different than what I was interested in talking about (the utility, or not, of alignment in framing dynamic NPCs and, through that, framing PCs into provocative/interesting situations that challenge them).

Is this pivoting into a conversation about D&D taxonomy, the historical instantiations (scale/relevance/use) of Alignment (so how Moldvay Basic differs from AD&D, how 4e differs from 3.x, et al) throughout editions, the intersection of action resolution mechanics + GMing principles and techniques (like how Fail Forward and table-facing Win/Loss Cons in Skill Challenges differs from 3.x) and whether what I'm talking about is even a legitimate thing to talk about at all?

What constitutes orthodox D&D and what is orthodox-deviant D&D (this question is somewhat ironic in the 5e forum given the stated imperative/mission statement of its designers to embrace heterogeneity through "big tent" and "make every table your own")?

I want to be clear that this is what we're doing now? I'm not interested in that conversation (I'm interested in the conversation we were initially having), but I guess I can field it if that seems relevant to you? But I don't want to spend any time on a response about "D&D DNA/legacy" (is Moldvay Basic, 4e, Dungeon World, Torchbearer real actual D&D or not) if I can avoid it.

I feel like we can have a conversation about the utility of Alignment without having that other conversation. Even if we're just doing it conceptually as a conversation about design and running functional games (which we don't need to because Alignment has been handled differently, scale and use type, in the course of D&D's history).

Im not trying to argue about D&D or It’s history. I don’t care about legacy or tradition at all. What I’m saying is that alignment needn’t be useful to a pbta game that you run in a narratively loose manner where you decide what kind of person an NPC is during the scene in which you use them, in reaction to PC actions and decisions, in order to be a useful tool in a more standard game of D&D.

Oh thanks for the guidance, i did not want to argue about politics because once it is not feasible on this board, and even if it were, to many people mistake feelings for facts these days, so that would further turn me down from it.
My intention was just to write down some very basic definition, which could apply in a hypotethical simplified fantasy universe, but if you want to go philosophic i suggest you would love to read some of the classics like Plato or Hegel or such. They got more substance than Twitter.

What a weird comment. Are you trying to imply that I haven’t read much philosophy? If so, that’s...pretty hilarious.

 

[Maxperson]

Cheap shot, absolutely uncalled for. Philosophy has no televance, you say? My response is that the many social and political tensions in the world today, while on the surface the in the domains of sociology and polisci, absolutely have overlap with philosophy.

Actually, I'll throw it back to you. If the study of ethics to you has been finalized, then define those ethics for me, both in the normative and metaethical dimensions. I'll be waiting.

Never mind that ethics isn't the only part of philosiphy anyways. Are metaphysics, philosiphy of language, and philosophy of mind not "something useful" to you?

EDIT: @pemerton said it best:

The idea that alignment descriptors are portable to fiction in general, let alone the real world in general, is pretty weird in my view. And seems to be belied by the fact that no school of philosophy (for the real world) or no school of criticism (for fiction) uses them. And their attempted use in this respect has not produced their own meaningful schools of philosophy or criticism.

Dunno about you, but I'm more willing to trust those scholars of ethics and art than you some rando who apparently thinks every issue in normative and metaethics has been resolved without doubt, yet won't tell us what those answers are.

Orrrrrr, it was just a joke.

 

[Redwizard007]

I just don't understand all the hubbub. Alignment is a great shorthand for generalized motivation and tactics. It should never be used as a cudgel.