D&D 5E A different take on Alignment

[FrozenNorth]

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.

Meanwhile, we have very many examples in this thread of alignment supporters responding to the counterexamples raised with “the GM/player didn’t understand/implement alignment properly”. This is the case even when people who support alignment disagree and spend three pages arguing amongst themselves whether Darth Vader and the Punisher were LE or CE.

Before you call out the mote in someone else’s eye, check the beam in your own.

 

[pemerton]

I don't see how it would be possible to "frame" basic morality in such a way as to eliminate basic human concepts such as good and evil.

I didn't say such a thing.

I said that it is possible to write a fiction in which contentions about what is good and what is evil don't arise. And as I said, Stan Lee was a master of this. JRRT is pretty good at it also.

Conversely, as soon as you write any of the following into your fiction - poverty alongside plenty where those with plenty are not framed as obvious villains; slavery (or gender discrimination; or discrimination against the children of unmarried mothers, or, etc) as an accepted social practice; defensive violence (be that warfare or, in a D&D-ish game, invading the Orcish lair) which is hard to prosecute without also targetting innocents (the notorious Orc children); any trolley-problem style situation; etc, etc, etc - then good and evil may, and at many tables will, become objects of contention.

In a game in which the fiction is written in such a way as to make good and evil objects of contention then it seems to me a recipe for needless conflict to adopt a rule that says the GM must tell the other participants who is morally right and who is morally wrong. What does that add to the experience of any participant?

 

[pemerton]

What a lack of imagination.
Ok take the two paladins. Oath of protection. All first options.
The LG is pretty obvious. But the LE?

Here we have a paladin that will defend his country/king. But he will do it with extreme prejudice against the enemies of the country. Since he wants to protect his people, he will be caring about everyone underneath him. He will even show kindness to all he protects.

The difference will be in how he faces the enemies of his country/king. Where our first paladin will show mercy, the second one will not. He will try to bring enemies to justice but he will not forgive nor hesitate to kill on the spot someone that has been working against the kingdom. While both will brag about their exploit, the first one will brag about how he brought criminals to justice while the second will brag how he administered justice to the "wicked".

The first one will work for his lord and will stand by him no matter what. The second one will do the same, but if he ever get the feeling that he could become the king without too much risks...

You get the picture.

I don't get the picture. How can a LE person have the ideal I will protect the weak? But conversely, how can a LG person not have some such ideal?

 

[pemerton]

You may think alignment is silly

I didn't say that either. I said a rule that tries to replace genuine personality descriptions with Gygax's grid is silly.

As @Hriston has repeatedly posted, that is not what alignment was invented for. And as I posted in the post that you responded to, I think alignment may be useful as a framework for expressing the conflict of Law and Chaos provided the fiction is framed in ways that don't make the good and the evil objects of contention. Which is not using alignment as a rule to replace genuine personality descriptions.

 

[Aldarc]

I didn't say that either. I said a rule that tries to replace genuine personality descriptions with Gygax's grid is silly.

As @Hriston has repeatedly posted, that is not what alignment was invented for. And as I posted in the post that you responded to, I think alignment may be useful as a framework for expressing the conflict of Law and Chaos provided the fiction is framed in ways that don't make the good and the evil objects of contention. Which is not using alignment as a rule to replace genuine personality descriptions.

Alignment as cosmological forces generating player-facing conflict = Good

Alignment as pseudo-psychology personality types for GMs/players = Bad

 

[TheSword]

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?

Those are extremely specific questions that are answered by manner the DM wants to roleplay the dragon and its ecology in that particular/campaign. I don’t know why you would expect that alignment answer those questions.

 

[pemerton]

Those are extremely specific questions that are answered by manner the DM wants to roleplay the dragon and its ecology in that particular/campaign. I don’t know why you would expect that alignment answer those questions.

What question does alignment answer, then? The ones I asked were pretty typical of the sorts of things that might come up in the course of a FRPG.

Here are some more: does the CE dragon spare the lives of the adventurers who beg its mercy, because it delights in their grovelling and doesn't believe they pose any threat? Or does it fry them and/or eat them?

Does the CE dragon have the patience to try and capture an adventurer and then extract from it all it knows about the secret way into the dragon's lair? Or does it just lash out in fury and try and kill the adventurer?

Does the CE dragon bully ogres into helping it guard its hoard? Or is it too concerned that they might pilfer from it?

If alignment can't answer these sorts of questions, then how is it helping the GM roleplay the NPC/creature?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yeah, it's MBTI for D&D.

This is a disturbingly apt comparison.

Those are extremely specific questions that are answered by manner the DM wants to roleplay the dragon and its ecology in that particular/campaign. I don’t know why you would expect that alignment answer those questions.

I expect alignment to tell me at least one of two things:
1. What does this creature value? What things does it place stock in, vs. things it dismisses as unimportant or even damaging?
2. When this creature acts, what does it do? How does it behave? What actions would it take, vs. avoid or just sort of ignore, or even not realize are possible?

Edit: This is why, for example, when I discussed the Jinnistani culture earlier, I talked about things like how they just...don't really value ordinary lives as much as one might expect, or how they put stock in physical appearances (which gets expanded to the people "owned" by a noble and the lands they rule over, thus counteracting some of the social and economic inequality). These things are values; they tell me what standards by which a Jinnistani person is likely to judge the desirability of any given action (outside of obvious default values like "stay alive" etc.) A more actions-oriented approach is better for individuals than whole groups, but can still be of some utility, e.g. "Most Jinnistani do not tell lies per se, but cloak their words in double-meanings," or "A noble genie will usually seek revenge for symbolic attacks before purely functional ones, if they're of comparable severity. Since they ruthlessly pursue status and reputation, it is dangerous to slight one of them in public unless the person doing so is powerful enough to not worry about retaliation."

 

[TheSword]

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.

There won’t be many thousands of key words, there will be a few that get trotted out, time and again.

 

[TheSword]

What question does alignment answer, then? The ones I asked were pretty typical of the sorts of things that might come up in the course of a FRPG.

Here are some more: does the CE dragon spare the lives of the adventurers who beg its mercy, because it delights in their grovelling and doesn't believe they pose any threat? Or does it fry them and/or eat them?

Does the CE dragon have the patience to try and capture an adventurer and then extract from it all it knows about the secret way into the dragon's lair? Or does it just lash out in fury and try and kill the adventurer?

Does the CE dragon bully ogres into helping it guard its hoard? Or is it too concerned that they might pilfer from it?

If alignment can't answer these sorts of questions, then how is it helping the GM roleplay the NPC/creature?

General outlook on society and where they’ll go when they die. A general 8 direction steer to how characters will approach a situation, in broad terms.