D&D 5E A different take on Alignment

[Helldritch]

/Sarcastic example incoming

Yes, it is a tool. A TOOL, don't I understand?

Like you use a hammer to drive nails.
You use a screwdriver is used to screw in screws.
You use a measuring tape to measure distances.

So, what useful function does Alignment provide me?

Well, it allows me, to take a good character or creature.... and say that they are good.

mindblown

I can even take someone who is evil and cares about keeping his word, and then say that he is lawful evil... which you know, saying it out loud, sounds kind of like sorting through a big pile of colored balls, and taking the blue ball, and putting it in the blue slot, to confirm that it is blue.


After all, how could I possibly tell if something is good or evil, if I didn't have alignment to tell me if they were good or evil?

/Sarcasm ending

I know that was a bit harsh, but really, alignment is recursive. It labels something as evil, so that we know it is evil, so that we can label it as evil. As a DM or player making something, I need to decide that it is evil first, so alignment is no help at all.

AHA! People might shout, but what if you open a book and see a new monster, one you've never seen before! What would you do then without that ever useful tool of alignment!

(cough, sorry, still some sarcasm stuck in my throat)

I'd read the monster description.

I know that I'm unique in feeling perfectly fine reading three to seven paragraphs to learn about a new monster in a 300 page book I spent $60 to own, but I find that these descriptions give me so much more information. They tell me where the monster might be found, who its allies might be, what some basic tactics are, why it has some of those abilities it has, all of these other... oh what is a good term... tools, all of these other tools I might want to use. And usually includes enough information to also let me run it, without the need for alignment.

I mean, sure, I might have no idea that there are evil beings who are selfish and only care about their own gain if I didn't have the alignment chart to tell me that, but somehow, I think reading about how a monstrous being used to be a human before being twisted by their lust for power into something monstrous might give me the same idea.

Yes, Alignment is a tool. A single tool in my toolbox. And it is a poor tool, outstripped by an entire second tool box provided alongside every monster that people refuse to use because they must defend the honor of Alignment. A single

And again you fail to see the subtelity of the tool.
Take two fighters.
Both have the same ideal, bonds and flaw.
Both are humans and come from the same town. Make them twins for all I care.
But one is LE the other is LG.
They will play very differently from each other even if otherwise they are exactly the same. Good enough for me to justify the use of alignment.

 

[pemerton]

Some people love to argue. Those arguments are going to continue whether or not alignment is part of the game. Just like we're going to have that disruptive person that, instead of writing LG on their character sheet will write down "Leader, seeker of justice and truth".

Alignment isn't the root cause of the issues it gets blamed for, it just an attribute of the game that people latch onto; the problems will remain.

My experience in this respect is similar to @EzekielRaiden's: I have found that GM adjudication of alignment generates disagreements that don't arise if that is not part of the game.

 

[FrozenNorth]

It really isn’t specific, it gives broad themes with naturally grey boundaries that are up for discussion and debate.

I would suggest that this is another problem with alignment, and not one that has been brought up in this thread. Back in 3e, alignment wasn’t just about ethics and penchant towards order and chaos, it was also about personality, that has absolutely nothing to do with either ethics or order/chaos.

So the monk wasn’t required to be lawful because all monks tend to support the status quo, he had to be lawful because all monks are disciplined, and therefore they tend towards law. Bards weren’t chaotic because they were all iconoclasts, it was because Chaos something something creative process.

Fast-forward to 5e, and the PHB does identify alignment with ethics and penchant for order and chaos, yet players and forumites still tend to ascribe personality traits to alignments.

Like above. Saying someone is LG actually tells you nothing about broad swathes of their personality. It only tells you about their alignment and THAT is only important in the exceedingly rare cases where their alignment is relevant to what is happening.

A person could be extremely aggressive in a boxing match and extremely caring and loving to his baby. Key words add very little or than just playing to stereotypes and easy labels.

This is just wrong. The English language has thousands of words, so using two or three to describe an NPC yields many thousand possibilities. This is the opposite of a stereotype.

Meanwhile, alignment by its nature MUST assign one of 9 boxes to people, and in doing so purports to determine both their ethics and their penchant to Order or Chaos. By its nature, this is orders more likely to tend towards “stereotypes and easy labels”.

Suppose we were to replace alignment by the creature’s result of the Meyers-Briggs test. That in and of itself would expand the categories because there are 16 possible results rather than 9.

 

[pemerton]

Take two fighters.
Both have the same ideal, bonds and flaw.
Both are humans and come from the same town. Make them twins for all I care.
But one is LE the other is LG.

This seems rather incoherent to me.

Consider a paladin type:

Ideal: I will defend the weak. Or maybe I will exact righteous vengeance upon the wicked!
Bond: My king. Or perhaps My god.
Flaw: Lack of humility. Or for a different flavour, Sometimes I doubt.

Or a gentle monastic type:

Ideal: I will relieve suffering. Or My prayers will bring salvation to all.
Bond: My abbot. Or My monastery. Or Those in whose company I travel.
Flaw: I long for a comfortable bed. Or I lack patience with unbelievers. Or maybe I speak too much.

How could either of those characters be LE?

 

[FrozenNorth]

My experience in this respect is similar to @EzekielRaiden's: I have found that GM adjudication of alignment generates disagreements that don't arise if that is not part of the game.

Meanwhile, I have found that even players who agree alignment is purely descriptive tend to be overly influenced by the alignment written towards playing their character as more of a stereotype.

 

[Oofta]

My experience in this respect is similar to @EzekielRaiden's: I have found that GM adjudication of alignment generates disagreements that don't arise if that is not part of the game.

So a DM can't make a ruling?

If the DM is telling players what they can or cannot believe/think, that can be an issue. On the other hand I have a strong no evil policy which includes no torture. I'm going to have that same policy in whatever game I run, no matter whether there's alignment or not.

Would that a problem for you?

 

[pemerton]

An alignment system (which can be adjusted to different individuals) allows us to get a rough idea on outlook with a broad brush without needing to agonize over it.

So what's the answer to my questions? Does a CE dragon love its children, or eat them as they hatch? Is it impressed by the swagger of an adventurer who boldly confronts it, and let her pass - or rather will it fire breath her to death and be done with it? Does it detest or admire Vermeers?

 

[Oofta]

I think some of the complaints about alignment are simple frequency illusions. Basically if you don't like alignment, any time alignment comes up in a game it's going to stick out like a sore thumb.

So if you don't like alignment it's the reason Bob is playing a jackass, even if Bob always plays a jackass in other games that don't use alignment. Rulings by a DM are "bad" if they involve anything to do with alignment but not anything else that comes up in the game. Arguments about alignment cause games to fall apart even when there are a dozen other reasons. Having default alignment on orcs is bad, even though there will inevitably be some version of signaling "usually a bad guy" in most games.

 

[pemerton]

So a DM can't make a ruling?

If the DM is telling players what they can or cannot believe/think, that can be an issue. On the other hand I have a strong no evil policy which includes no torture. I'm going to have that same policy in whatever game I run, no matter whether there's alignment or not.

Would that a problem for you?

I have only ever had one PC in a (Rolemaster) game that I GMed who used torture as a standard method of operation: he had vats of magically-created acid in the basement of his house to facilitate the process. For reasons of good taste these deeds took place off screen.

The player was a relatively devout Catholic who was doing research on non-Newtonian fluids. He also liked playing Warhammer Fantasy Battle and had an army of dwarves.

I have never played a character who used torture as a method.

If I wanted to talk to a player or a GM about the limits of good taste in characterisation, I would not need to point to a game-mechanical label of evil to do so. I'd just talk about the limits that I thought were salient.

 

[Oofta]

I have only ever had one PC in a (Rolemaster) game that I GMed who used torture as a standard method of operation: he had vats of magically-created acid in the basement of his house to facilitate the process. For reasons of good taste these deeds took place off screen.

The player was a relatively devout Catholic who was doing research on non-Newtonian fluids. He also liked playing Warhammer Fantasy Battle and had an army of dwarves.

I have never played a character who used torture as a method.

If I wanted to talk to a player or a GM about the limits of good taste in characterisation, I would not need to point to a game-mechanical label of evil to do so. I'd just talk about the limits that I thought were salient.

Which doesn't answer my question. Is it okay for a DM to have restrictions and make judgement calls on moral issues? In my case it's "torture is evil, I don't allow evil in my game". It's not a question about torture per se, it's a question about the DM setting boundaries on acceptable play.

I don't point to any "game mechanic". I simply state "no evil". The concept of evil is not limited to the game.