Ah, alignment. One of my favorite dead horses. I keep my position archived for handy reference whenever the topic comes up.
- Alignment actually detracts from my gaming experience.
So don't play with it.
- Alignment has been kicking around for ...what, forty five years now? What exactly it means is still the subject of intense debate among D&D players. Nobody has ever managed to clarify how it is meant to be used, and interpretations of it are problematic.
Much like hit points. The purpose if it very easy, though. It's simply a tool to aid people in playing their characters.
- In many, many years of hanging out in RPG related forums, I've noticed that there is almost always an alignment related thread on the first page of any forum. It's a constant source if strife; or at least disagreement. The attempts to assign alignment to fictional characters is another great example of how it is too shallow and too restrictive to actually accurately exemplify any kind of rational person's philosophy, even given the relatively shallow expectations placed on D&D characters.
There are a lot of alignment threads, yes.
- Alignment as a predictive model, or roleplaying guide for characters, is too shallow and superficial to be very helpful. For the most part, falling back on alignment descriptions as a guide to roleplaying is a step backwards in roleplaying from the assumptions of even the most novice of roleplayers.
This is simply untrue. There are a lot of players who are not as creative as you are, and who struggle with ways to play their characters. I've watched them use alignment as the tool it was intended to be and it aided them in their roleplay. It's very helpful to them.
- Alignment seems to most frequently be used as a preemptive bludgeon to control or constrain bad player behavior, or at least to punish it. It could be useful for gamers who's groups include disagreeable player behavior, but for groups composed entirely of reasonable people, it's at best superfluous, and at worst, a potential source of conflict of interpretations. The constant referral to LG characters and paladins in particular who run around slitting people's throats, killing orc babies, or torturing prisoners in game leads me to believe that either players are picking the alignment without buying into the archetype, which is problematic, or are simply incapable of behaving appropriately with their characters. These kinds of things don't happen in my games (or at least, if they do, the players don't try to pretend that their characters are good.)
And this has never been true in the history of the game. Yes, a few bad DMs used it that way, but it has never been the purpose of alignment to control bad player behavior. What's more, if you take alignment away, guess what. A bad player is still going to engage in bad behavior. It's exceedingly stupid for someone to try and control a bad player with alignment. You just get rid of the player if he's that much of a disruption.
- For people with this problem, my first response would be seek out better players, but my second response is that yeah, I can see how alignment would be useful to you. But surely you can see how it is an active detriment to gamers who don't need to police bad player behavior?
Again, since it isn't a tool for policing bad player behavior, wouldn't work if you tried it, and the bad players would still be bad without alignment, no I can't see it.
- Other than in truncated form in the Elric books and a handful of Poul Anderson ones, alignment is not something that really features in any of the fantasy fiction source material that makes up the foundation on which D&D is based. It's a very specific and unique artifact to D&D itself.
It's in literally every book. Characters in books have personalities and those personalities can be assigned an alignment. Apparently 4e had cosmic sides for alignment, so that edition matched Moorcock, but none of the others really did. Oh, there was a cosmic struggle with demons, devils, etc., but alignment on an individual level has been personality since at least 1e, maybe basic.
- Alignment isn't really a major issue for most characters even so; where it really becomes problematic is with the paladin class (and to a somewhat lesser extent, the cleric class.) Most alignment issues can be avoided if those classes are avoided.
This I agree with. I only ever saw a handful of alignment arguments at games, and with I think one exception, they were all about paladins.
- The reason that it is so problematic with the paladin class in particular is that it gives a great deal of power over character resources and character decisions into the hands of the GM. For the most part, this is not desirable, and in fact, the implicit social contract between gamers is that this is the GM meddling ham-fistedly into player sovereign territory. Or, at least it would be with any other class or situation in which character behavior is constrained by the GM's interpretation of the rules.
You need to replace "is so problematic" with "was so problematic." Alignment has had no teeth with paladins for years now.
- Sure, there are differences of opinion on where the line between player sovereign territory and GM sovereign territory actually lie. If it were not so, there wouldn't be any such thing as debate over sandbox style play, for instance.
Differences of opinion, yes. Mostly between those who disagree with the DMG and the authority it gives to the DM, and the DM himself.
- Now, you may be doing something entirely different with alignment. If that works for you: great! I'm talking about a pattern that I've observed over many, many gamers over many, many years. I make no claim to the universality of this pattern. Neither do a handful of anecdotal exceptions prove sufficient to convince me to change my mind that this pattern of alignment usage and misusage isn't rampant amongst D&D players, however.
You should give alignment another look. 5e has diluted it so much that it really isn't more than a minor tool to aid in roleplay. There are no mechanics other than a small handful of artifacts that use it, and no mechanism for the DM to do anything with the players over it.
- That said; I'd still prefer no alternative to alignment at all. I think that the entire concept was initially meant to be no more than "team jersey" for the overtly wargaming slant of the earliest version of the game. As the game evolved into a roleplaying game "for real" the continued use of alignment, and the attempts to shoe-horn it into a roleplaying milieu were flawed from the get-go, and the whole concept should have been done away with sometime in the late 70s. The fact that they managed to survive past the Holmes edition of BD&D (which was really meant to be nothing so much as a reorganization and representation of OD&D anyway) is somewhat surprising.
Again, then don't use it. Personally, I leave it up to my players if they want to use alignment and to what degree. I don't even bother looking at it on their sheets. My world reacts to their actions, not a few letters on a sheet of paper. The primary use I have for alignment is help playing NPCs.
- If you disagree with me on the use of alignment, neither you nor I are bad people with wrong-headed thinking that needs to be excoriated. Rational people can disagree over things, and the discussion of such is at the heart of any interesting conversation.
Absolutely!!
- If, on the other hand, you feel the need to constantly drive home the error of my ways, I can see why alignment appeals to you. You should also see quite clearly why I will never game with you, you control freak.
Shame! Shame! Shame! Shame!
