D&D 5E A different take on Alignment

[Oofta]

I know I shouldn't bother because I recognize gotcha questions ... because the scenarios you describe are the 10% that I probably would have put more thought into before the encounter. But sure. Knowing that it's a CE red dragon, not having read up on them for quite a while:

So are you able to answer the questions from upthread:

Does a CE dragon love its children, or eat them as they hatch?

It has no compassion, no mercy. So like many predators, a parent will protect their children up until the point the cost is too high. They will do whatever is expedient since there is no tradition or rule that they care about that forbids it. A male dragon will likely seek to kill hatchlings so that they can impregnate the female.

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?

Depends on their mood I suppose, likely tell the adventurer it's giving them a pass and then breath fire and have lunch when they go to leave.

Does it detest or admire Vermeer paintings?

Far too orderly. More likely to appreciate Francis Bacon.

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 it 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?

Depends on their mood. Likely toys with them until it's done and then kills them. It gets the information, making whatever promises necessary before it kills them.

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

Ogres aren't very bright, if the dragon can bully others into service and it has a use for them it likely would. Until it gets hungry and needs a snack.

So counter question. I based this on the fact that all I remember about red dragons is that they're CE, love treasure and are arrogant like most dragons. How much would you have to have written about a dragon in verbiage of IBF (Ideals/Bonds/Flaws) to get the same gist? But beware - and this is the problem I have with the theory that IBF - if you go into too much specificity you're describing an individual red dragon, not the default moral compass to give DMs a starting point that alignment gives. So you want something broad, but also descriptive.

 

[Oofta]

I was asking @Oofta, who said that he doesn't pay attention or even know what alignment is written on the PC sheets in his game. How is alignment a RP aid if the referee can't even infer it from the RP, or from the way the player's go about declaring their actions?

Why would I need to? Alignment for PCs is a general guideline and inspirational starting point, not a dictate of how they must act.

 

[Oofta]

You seem to read statements of ideals as if interpreting a statutory text. But there is no need for strained readings: the player can write whatever s/he thinks will best express his/her PC, and so I think they can mostly be taken at face value and as carrying their standard connotations.

Eg someone who says My flaw is that I speak harshly to my friends is probably not trying to convey that in fact she properly tells them the truth even though that might be hard for them to hear. In that case it would make sense to say My flaw is that I tell my friends the blunt truth, even when that will be hard for them to hear.

Also, given that the 5e D&D rules describe ideals as "fundamental moral and ethical principles that compel" a character's actions, I don't think I'm reaching to far beyond the intended function in saying that a character's ideal, bond and flaw reveal that character's moral compass.

Speaks harshly is a behavior and doesn't say anything about the "why". It may be because they don't care about other's feelings and feel no empathy (typically evil alignment) or it may be because they care deeply and this is the best way they know how to help their friends be better people (likely good alignment).

Except it doesn't state that they reveal the character's moral compass, those words are reserved for alignment.

 

[Oofta]

See, but Oofta, what you wrote down as the Ideals, Bonds and Flaws are clearly different. And the reason for that is because the Order of the Blinding Light is clearly different than the Order of the Guiding light. Sure, because you out LE I can assume I know things about how they operate. But, I don't have any details, and I could be wrong.

So, if I was going to use those orders, then I would have read up on them. And, in reading up on them, I wouldn't have needed the LE or the LG. The description of the order, their beliefs, their heirarchy and their practices would have been enough, without me needing to also add those descriptors.

That is the point.

No, I wrote down the ideals/bonds/flaws I was given as they are presented in the book. One simple sentence. I just gave extra detail on how those are implemented based on alignment.

 

[Maxperson]

This isn't true. My faith is a referring term that contains a relative adjective. I can't work out what the ideal is until I know what faith is being referred to.

Which is exactly my point. The ideal as written is worthless. You need to go outside of it to find out any moral value. Even then it will often not tell you anything, since gods often have followers and clerics that are both good and not good, or evil and not evil. I think a few might have both good and evil followers.

It would be like the ideal I uphold the values of the Revolution! It makes a pretty big difference if the Revolution is the 1776 one or the 1917 one! You can't tell me that Thomas Jefferson and Leon Trotsky have the same ideal.

Right. Which is why, "I will defend the weak." can be both good and evil, but not in the same person.

 

[Maxperson]

But that whole "What alignment is Donald Duck?" personality type thing? Get that boring malarkey out of here.

I'm pretty sure he's quackers.

 

[pemerton]

@Maxperson, I don't really understand your approach to reading what others have written.

Saying that my ideal is to defend my faith isn't presenting an abstract phrase along the lines of there is some X and some Y such that (i) X is a person, and (ii) Y is a faith, and (iii) X practices Y, and (iv) X defends Y.

When the ideal is attributed to a concrete person - be that a real person or, in RPGing, an imaginary person - then the variables that are present in the abstract phrase actually become instantiated. There is a concrete X - the person whose ideal we are learning about - and a concrete Y - the faith that is practised, and defended, by that person. Often the instantiation of the variables is made evident by the context - eg perhaps there is an illustration of the character in question who looks just like a Knight Templar. Or maybe the way the game presents the character makes it clear - eg at the top of the PC sheet is written Thurgon, Knight of the Iron Tower or Sir Justin, Grand Master of the Order of St Sigobert (these two examples are taken from active campaigns that I am involved in).

If the context is not clear, then further investigation may be required. This is often the case when trying to interpret something that is lacking in context (I have to do it quite often reading posts on ENworld, because most posters assume a North American and particularly US context that is not familiar to me). That doesn't mean that I am "going outside" of what has been said. It just means that sometimes working out what has been said by someone - ie what meaning is recoverable from the statement that has been produced - can require a bit of work.

As I said, both Jefferson and Trotsky might declare as their ideal to defend the Revolution, but each is talking about a different Revolution, and hence evincing a different ideal. A Spaniard whose ideal is to defend my King and his claims might find himself at war with a Prussian whose ideal is to defend my King and his claims if (as tended to be the case, historically) Spain and Prussia had different kings. This prospect of conflict is sufficient to show that the ideals are not the same in their concrete instantiations, although they can be expressed using the same sentence of English because they have the same abstract logical structure.

 

[Maxperson]

@Maxperson, I don't really understand your approach to reading what others have written.

Saying that my ideal is to defend my faith isn't presenting an abstract phrase along the lines of there is some X and some Y such that (i) X is a person, and (ii) Y is a faith, and (iii) X practices Y, and (iv) X defends Y.

When the ideal is attributed to a concrete person - be that a real person or, in RPGing, an imaginary person - then the variables that are present in the abstract phrase actually become instantiated. There is a concrete X - the person whose ideal we are learning about - and a concrete Y - the faith that is practised, and defended, by that person. Often the instantiation of the variables is made evident by the context - eg perhaps there is an illustration of the character in question who looks just like a Knight Templar. Or maybe the way the game presents the character makes it clear - eg at the top of the PC sheet is written Thurgon, Knight of the Iron Tower or Sir Justin, Grand Master of the Order of St Sigobert (these two examples are taken from active campaigns that I am involved in).

If the context is not clear, then further investigation may be required. This is often the case when trying to interpret something that is lacking in context (I have to do it quite often reading posts on ENworld, because most posters assume a North American and particularly US context that is not familiar to me). That doesn't mean that I am "going outside" of what has been said. It just means that sometimes working out what has been said by someone - ie what meaning is recoverable from the statement that has been produced - can require a bit of work.

As I said, both Jefferson and Trotsky might declare as their ideal to defend the Revolution, but each is talking about a different Revolution, and hence evincing a different ideal. A Spaniard whose ideal is to defend my King and his claims might find himself at war with a Prussian whose ideal is to defend my King and his claims if (as tended to be the case, historically) Spain and Prussia had different kings. This prospect of conflict is sufficient to show that the ideals are not the same in their concrete instantiations, although they can be expressed using the same sentence of English because they have the same abstract logical structure.

@pemerton. What I am saying is that the ideals alone tell us very little. As you note in great detail above, you have to have more outside of the ideals in order to tell us what they mean to the PC. You can't go by, "I defend my faith." You have to go outside of that sentence and figure out what that faith it, then what aspect(s) of that faith are the focus of the PC, and how he goes about defending those. You can't go by, "I defend the Revolution." You have to know what revolution it is, and how the PC goes about defending it.

The Ideals, Bonds and Flaws in the PHB are a good start, but they are too vague to really be any more helpful than alignment is, and in many cases aren't even as helpful. You have to figure out a lot more about them before they can really tell you much of anything about the PC.

 

[pemerton]

@pemerton. What I am saying is that the ideals alone tell us very little. As you note in great detail above, you have to have more outside of the ideals in order to tell us what they mean to the PC. You can't go by, "I defend my faith." You have to go outside of that sentence and figure out what that faith it, then what aspect(s) of that faith are the focus of the PC, and how he goes about defending those. You can't go by, "I defend the Revolution." You have to know what revolution it is, and how the PC goes about defending it.

By the ideals alone I take it that you mean the bare words of the ideal shorn of context.

If that turns out to be a problem in actual game play - ie if the participants do not know the context within which an ideal is being presented - then I think there is a problem with the game that is not arising out of the statement of the ideal. Eg if someone sits down to play a RPG set in the modern world with a political orientation and doesn't know which revolution Jefferson or Trotsky is a defender of, the problem isn't going to be that the game author failed to spell that revolution out in his/her notes.

As for needing to know how the character goes about defending the revolution, I believe that that is implicit in each revolution. Jefferson has the Bill of Rights. Trotsky has What is To Be Done? If I sit down to play a modern-oriented RPG and see that a character's ideal is To defend Jefferson's Revolution I've got a pretty good sense of what comes next - assuming that the action is painted in the rather vibrant colours using th rather broad brush of the typical RPG. If the challenge of the RPG is debating the latest Farm Aid Bill then maybe it's less obvious which way that ideal is going to push the character, but I don't think that sort of issue of technical policy deliberation comes up all that often in RPGing.

 

[Maxperson]

By the ideals alone I take it that you mean the bare words of the ideal shorn of context.

If that turns out to be a problem in actual game play - ie if the participants do not know the context within which an ideal is being presented - then I think there is a problem with the game that is not arising out of the statement of the ideal. Eg if someone sits down to play a RPG set in the modern world with a political orientation and doesn't know which revolution Jefferson or Trotsky is a defender of, the problem isn't going to be that the game author failed to spell that revolution out in his/her notes.

This is avoiding the issue. We either go by what the Ideal, Bond, Flaw system has written, just like alignments. Or we can look at other things in addition to those systems to help find out what the PCs are about, just like alignments.

And quite frankly, if we're going to be looking at various revolutions, faiths, etc. to figure out what the character is about, the entire Ideal, Bond, Flaw system is just as necessary for character development as alignment is. You can toss both and just play the character looking at faiths, revolutions, etc. and not even both with ideals and bonds.