D&D General Inherently Evil?

[EzekielRaiden]

Rather than circular reasoning, it's my old friend affirming the consequent again.

There are multiple possible explanations for why people might complain about alignment.

One of those possible reasons would be "because alignment is busted." (Other possibilities include, but are not limited to, "because some people don't really understand it," "because complaining about alignment is fashionable," and "because different people like different things.")

You are asserting that "because alignment is busted" is the one and only reason why people complain without doing anything to rule out the other possible reasons. It doesn't necessarily mean you're wrong, but it does mean that you haven't put in the work to demonstrate that your reason and no other is the correct one. Therefore, you're unlikely to persuade anyone who doesn't already agree with you.


I wish affirming the consequent had a snappy name like the Texas Sharpshooter or No True Scotsman. People might notice it more often in that case.

That's...not what I'm saying. I'm not arguing it's busted at all.

I'm saying that it clearly hasn't been conceptually uniform since the 70s because we have clear, documentary evidence that many, many, MANY people have used it in ways that aren't just wildly different, they're often diametrically opposite. And that each of these groups can cite actual text and/or mechanics for it.

Consider even the incredibly dirt simple "it's a general overview of moral behavior." Sure, plenty of people have seen it that way. But even in Ye Olden Dayse, you had things like alignment languages--literal, actual languages that ONLY people of a specific alignment could speak. If for some reason your alignment changed, you could not speak or understand that language anymore, but instantly could understand your new alignment language. That makes it pretty clear that it's not just a moral thing, that it actually gets pretty deep into your literal mental and physical processes, even your skills and knowledge.

Or consider the way Dragonlance integrated alignment into its setting. The gods themselves had to toe lines and not accidentally drift out of their assigned alignments, lest the balance of the universe fall apart. That seems like a pretty good argument that alignment is supposed to be a requirement of some kind. (And yes, I have seen people use this kind of thing, though not specifically DL, as a justification for why all those statements about "alignment isn't a straitjacket" don't mean what they plainly appear to mean.)

I'm not actually making ANY claims about the quality, efficacy, appropriateness, etc. of alignment, nor ANYTHING like that. I'm LITERALLY only saying that the statement, "Alignment has remained conceptually unchanged for 50 years" is incorrect because so many people, even the game designers, have disagreed about exactly what it is, exactly how it works, and exactly how it should be communicated.

 

[Lyxen]

I'm saying that it clearly hasn't been conceptually uniform since the 70s because we have clear, documentary evidence that many, many, MANY people have used it in ways that aren't just wildly different, they're often diametrically opposite. And that each of these groups can cite actual text and/or mechanics for it.

Like probably almost every concept in the game, people have been using them in different fashion even over a single edition. Look at hit points and the concept of "meat", every single edition has had debates about it. So it's not a proof, sorry.

Consider even the incredibly dirt simple "it's a general overview of moral behavior." Sure, plenty of people have seen it that way. But even in Ye Olden Dayse, you had things like alignment languages--literal, actual languages that ONLY people of a specific alignment could speak. If for some reason your alignment changed, you could not speak or understand that language anymore, but instantly could understand your new alignment language. That makes it pretty clear that it's not just a moral thing, that it actually gets pretty deep into your literal mental and physical processes, even your skills and knowledge.

No. Simply not. It was just magical, the link to the plane where your soul would end up. Are you now arguing that having a language or not is a major power that overturns the game ? Especially since very few people I know (and I played AD&D for something like 20 years, extremely intensively) actually used it. It's barely a footnote in the history of alignment.

Or consider the way Dragonlance integrated alignment into its setting. The gods themselves had to toe lines and not accidentally drift out of their assigned alignments, lest the balance of the universe fall apart. That seems like a pretty good argument that alignment is supposed to be a requirement of some kind. (And yes, I have seen people use this kind of thing, though not specifically DL, as a justification for why all those statements about "alignment isn't a straitjacket" don't mean what they plainly appear to mean.)

And this is just for people arguing against alignment without even bothering to read the rules, once more, from the 1st edition PH: "Naturally, there are all variations and shades of tendencies within each alignment. The descriptions are generalizations only. A character can be basically good in its “true” neutrality, or tend towards evil. It is probable that your campaign referee will keep a graph of the drift of your character on the alignment chart. This is affected by the actions (and desires) of your character during the course of each adventure, and will be reflected on the graph. You may find that these actions are such as to cause the declared alignment to be shifted towards, or actually to, some other."

But note that it's exactly the same in 5e. A devil who is not consistently lawful evil is simply not a devil. A god of good which is not actually doing good is simply not the god of good, just as a god of farming who spends his time fighting is probably not a god of farming either. I don't see what is shocking there, or what has changed over time.

I'm not actually making ANY claims about the quality, efficacy, appropriateness, etc. of alignment, nor ANYTHING like that. I'm LITERALLY only saying that the statement, "Alignment has remained conceptually unchanged for 50 years" is incorrect because so many people, even the game designers, have disagreed about exactly what it is, exactly how it works, and exactly how it should be communicated.

And again, I read the descriptions of alignment from the books from edition to edition, and I find that there are always 9 alignments (even 4e who only has 7 acknowledges the presence of the grid by the very name it is using), and that they are conceptually consistent.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

And again, I read the descriptions of alignment from the books from edition to edition, and I find that there are always 9 alignments (even 4e who only has 7 acknowledges the presence of the grid by the very name it is using), and that they are conceptually consistent.

Except that originally there were only three alignments. Law, Neutral, Chaos. There weren't 9 alignments to begin with. And, as noted, 4e added a new alignment that didn't exist before: Unaligned, which is NOT the same as Neutral. Being Neutral means you choose a middle-of-the-road approach. Being Unaligned means you aren't choosing at all. It resolved the weirdness of Animals being True Neutral when they shouldn't, really, be having any alignment whatsoever.

If we speak of things "from the 70s" then we're specifically including OD&D in this thing, which only had three. And BD&D and its descendants did not all use the same stuff either: there is no Neutral Good or Neutral Evil in Holmes Basic, and in Moldvay it reverted back to the OD&D method. Editions have had 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, and 10 alignments (since 5e more or less kept Unaligned but brought back True Neutral)--possibly others, I haven't done a super deep dive on this.

Again, if we're considering the entire history of D&D, very little has actually remained unchanged.

 

[Umbran]

Have a good one, I'm not going to bother getting into yet another "you're wrong, no you are" especially when you don't even address what I really said.

Mod Note:
It is a fine idea to disengage when you don't find a discussion constructive.

It is not so great idea to take a parting shot as you do so. Please don't do that in the future.

 

[Lyxen]

Except that originally there were only three alignments. Law, Neutral, Chaos.

This has been discussed to death, it's just a branch, and one looooong dead.

There weren't 9 alignments to begin with. And, as noted, 4e added a new alignment that didn't exist before: Unaligned, which is NOT the same as Neutral. Being Neutral means you choose a middle-of-the-road approach. Being Unaligned means you aren't choosing at all. It resolved the weirdness of Animals being True Neutral when they shouldn't, really, be having any alignment whatsoever.

No, sorry, even 2e had the concept of Non-aligned creatures (PH Ch 4.), : "In addition to the alignments above, some things--particularly unintelligent monsters (killer plants, etc.) and animals--never bother with moral and ethical concerns. For these creatures, alignment is simply not applicable. A dog, even a well-trained one, is neither good nor evil, lawful nor chaotic. It is simply a dog. For these creatures, alignment is always detected as neutral." And obviously, even in AD&D, no one was stupid enough to consider that animals were concerned about the cosmic balance. 3e has also multiple types of Neutral alignment, etc.

If we speak of things "from the 70s" then we're specifically including OD&D in this thing, which only had three. And BD&D and its descendants did not all use the same stuff either: there is no Neutral Good or Neutral Evil in Holmes Basic, and in Moldvay it reverted back to the OD&D method. Editions have had 3, 6, 7, 9, and 10 alignments (since 5e more or less kept Unaligned but brought back True Neutral)--possibly others, I haven't done a super deep dive on this.

Obviously. Still, in general, the concepts are intact.

Again, if we're considering the entire history of D&D, very little has actually remained unchanged.

If you look at the definition of hit points, no two editions have the same one. Still, their use is globally unchanged. And it's the same with alignment, the variations are minor at best compared to the core of a concept that is both unique to D&D and fairly central to its philosophy.

 

[Maxperson]

Even then there were variations about neutral, my first character in AD&D was really cosmic balance, but the "selfish" kind was already there, and I have quoted the AD&D PH sentences about alignments being each very wide already.

I played characters like that once or twice back in 1e. Eventually, though, I realized the impossibility of that belief system. I mean, how many times do you have to help little old ladies across the road to make up for a brutal murder? If the brutal murder was of a dictator that killed thousands, does that intent mitigate it, and if so, by how much? Would saving 20 kids from a burning orphanage be too much good to make up for the brutal murder? There's no way to know how much good or evil you are doing in order to balance things out, and it's even harder to know how much the universe is being unbalanced, since you aren't omniscient and cannot know all the good and evil being done in the world. The only reason it worked for Elric, Erikose, Corum, etc., was that the multiverse itself was keeping track of it and just sending them on missions to balance things.

 

[Lyxen]

I played characters like that once or twice back in 1e. Eventually, though, I realized the impossibility of that belief system. I mean, how many times do you have to help little old ladies across the road to make up for a brutal murder? If the brutal murder was of a dictator that killed thousands, does that intent mitigate it, and if so, by how much? Would saving 20 kids from a burning orphanage be too much good to make up for the brutal murder? There's no way to know how much good or evil you are doing in order to balance things out, and it's even harder to know how much the universe is being unbalanced, since you aren't omniscient and cannot know all the good and evil being done in the world. The only reason it worked for Elric, Erikose, Corum, etc., was that the multiverse itself was keeping track of it and just sending them on missions to balance things.

And that's exactly what D&D is about, because the multiverse is incarnated by the DM and if he is running an epic campaign for that kind of character, that's exactly what he could do and what my DMs at the time did. My character built her wizard tower on the border between Iuz and Furyondy, and usually took the side of whoever was losing the battle.

Moreover, if you read Gygax' books (not the best read ever, but reasonably entertaining if you are into Greyhawk, a lot of the characters from the modules in particular G1-3 are in there in particular Obmi and Eclavdra), you understand his perspective: evil is much more aggressive than good, which is why God the Rogue who is a champion of Balance, is often aligned with the forces of Good, which is probably the best way to play with a group.

However, at the time, we had a number of evil PCs in our folders, which allowed me to run my Archmage along with those guys now and then.

That being said, I agree, it's easier to play a Neutral character in the more "indifferent" sense, and with less constraints on the group.

 

[Voadam]

The only reason it worked for Elric, Erikose, Corum, etc., was that the multiverse itself was keeping track of it and just sending them on missions to balance things.

True Neutral as a philosophy is a much more viable option in the 3 point Law Chaos alignment system.

You go full Aristotelian golden mean as the ideal and actively avoid the extremes. A good life needs a mix of law and chaos, too much one way or the other is bad. If either cosmic force of Law or Chaos is ascendent that has bad consequences so you go against them, otherwise do not worry about it.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Has alignment not changed in any meaningful way in 50 years, or is 5e alignment different and absolved from the issues of alignment form other editions?

 

[Maxperson]

Has alignment not changed in any meaningful way in 50 years, or is 5e alignment different and absolved from the issues of alignment form other editions?

5e alignment is much different and is effectively useless if you don't know the prior systems. One vague sentence is not enough to give new players much roleplaying help.