D&D 5E A different take on Alignment

[Maxperson]

This is bizarre! If alignment is as useful and straightforward as you claim, then why is this causing hours and hours of work? When you use a monster, you decide what you want its disposition to be and add an appropriate alignment description! I could do this as a teenage GM inventing new monsters for my D&D game.

Almost as bizarre as not understanding that he would have to go through each and every creature line by line and determine alignment for it, then mark up his book as he writes in alignment. That would take hours of reading and study.

 

[Manbearcat]

My own preference, as I have said before, would focus on use and motive rather than moral framework

Let’s see here. A possible ideal for a Green Dragon? What would help me run them is not knowing they are LE but what they value or approaches 5ey take. So just brainstorming here but I would tentatively consider “Ideal: Information is a powerful weapon against the weak.” or “Ideal: Treachery is how foolIsh victims describe the truly cunning.”

If this was framed in terms of Motive, I might go win something like “To gain accumulate power through information, manipulationand trickery.”

I believe that @Manbearcat presented examples of monster entries in Dungeon World. Would have a problem running those monsters without alignment? Have you seen a monster write-up in the Cypher Syestem?


I have explained to you how you have straw-manned me and others before in ways that illustrate how it qualifies as a straw man. Not once have been able to offer an actual rebuttal other than through more logical fallacies.

Green Dragon

Special Qualities: Meld into the Forest
Instinct: Puppeteer
Moves:

Breath Acid
Bring the Forest to Life
Ensorcell Lessers
Summon Charmed Allies

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Would you have an issue if every monster stat block had, in parentheses, a set of dice to roll, just like they do with damage?

I'm not sure how that would alter things, but I could see it, potentially? It would at least make it harder to see alignment as hard-coded, which is (as stated) an enormous cognitive hurdle for an excessive number of people I've played with or spoken to.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Okay what about the next Red Dragon and the one after that? If we're treating them like PCs, they all get different traits, ideals, bonds and flaws.

If we're only going to include one line like that, then your examples are far more limiting than alignment and would result even more in cartoonish carbon copy dragons.

If I'm putting multiple red dragons into the same campaign, then either I'm not giving them the space and majesty they deserve, or I'm making them unique NPCs.

I'm not getting your complaint. It is insufficient to answer Oofta's question because it can only work if I make a hundred unique NPCs on the spot? He asked for general guidelines, I gave them. Just because that doesn't account for dozens of dragons in the same campaign doesn't mean that they don't work.

You didn't turn my argument around. It's true that none or virtually no new players are complaining in alignment threads. I'm posting a fact. You're posting something you pulled out of your bunghole.

No. I pointed out that "none or virtually no new players are complaining in alignment threads" and that could be because they are ignoring the system.

Your exact same evidence and point... but not your conclusion. So, if I pulled it out of "my bunghole" as you so colorfully put it, then what did you do? Since I am literally taking your same argument and finding a different conclusion that is consistent with that data?

 

[Chaosmancer]

So all green dragons have schemes? What are the goals of the schemes? Make a better society? Sow chaos? Build a structured society that supports the dragons further goals?

The red dragon is a tyrant. How does he rule? By establishing a hierarchy of underlings with established titles? Through bullying and intimidation? Do his underlings have to show obedience to the people higher up the hierarchy, or are does the dragon encourage survival of the fittest pitting individuals against each other for their amusement?

Not that bad as far as ideals go, but they only tell my one small aspect.

Do all Green Dragons have schemes? Well, the MM says that is a defining feature of them. So... yeah, seems like they do.

What are the goals of the schemes? Well, considering I said "I show my power" and "corrupting and twisting" it is likely that the majority of these schemes are for self-empowerment or chaos and ruin of others. You don't generally corrupt people to build a structured society for the betterment of others, generally it is for the purposes of ruin.

Tyrants generally rule through intimidation and fear, it is a defining feature of tyrannical rule. A Hierarchy could be done, but that seems like a more specific details. Sort of like whether or not they would eat adventurers or take care of their children. Sure, I can provide those details, but you didn't ask me to set up an entire NPC plus plot for you, you asked for different ideals that highlighted differences in Green Dragons and Red Dragons. Something that I did. If you wanted an entire socio-political commentary on how Red Dragons run their empires, that is a bit of a different question than "what is their ideal"

 

[Maxperson]

No. I pointed out that "none or virtually no new players are complaining in alignment threads" and that could be because they are ignoring the system.

Human nature says that they are following the rules more than they are ignoring them, especially since alignment has zero issues in 5e, unless the DM puts the very, very few magic items that use it into the game AND decides to be a jerk about something that has only one line of fluff to it.

Your exact same evidence and point... but not your conclusion.

No. The evidence(human nature and the nature of 5e alignment) implies use of rules, not lack of their use. Not to mention that the odds of every single new player not using alignment are far worse than the odds that I'm winning the lotto tomorrow.

 

[AnotherGuy]

No. It's the test of whether or not a framework for analysing the moral character of imagined people is useful. If it was, those professions whose job it is to undertake such analysis would have picked up on it.

Topics.
(1) Can alignment be applied to fictional characters.
(2) Is alignment a useful framework for applying to fictional characters.

I was debating (1).
You are debating (2). I'm not interested in your flawed strawman debate.

 

[AnotherGuy]

But, to go off of some of what it seems @Maxperson has been arguing, why is Ned Stark not chaotic. He follows his own desires first and foremost. He desires to follow the laws of the king and the land, abandons that to follow his desires to protect his family, follows them again when it is convenient to do so.

Why is that not a valid interpretation of his alignment?

I skimmed and I believe Max has answered you and to be honest I have not been following all the conversations on this topic, so I would not do any justice in answering this. This thread mushrooms quickly.

 

[AnotherGuy]

The quote indicates how he acts most of the time professionally. We have no data how he acts most of the time with his family, or in his hobbies or anything else.

And that is why alignment creates static characters. Its supporters act like it is simultaneously strong enough to tell you something about every aspect of someone’s life, personal, professional, etc., and weak enough that even that the fact that at any given moment a character is following it is not a big deal.

Strongly disagree. If you choose to play the character static that is on you, not alignment.
One can play a static character with regards to traits, flaws, class, background, religion, hobbies....anything and yet we do not blame these other things.

Last session, a good-natured character engaged in threat of torture and lying and in the end sanctioned a murder. The victim of all of this was a goblin. The player motivated that his character's knowledge of and history with goblins was that they were rapists, killers, pillagers and just in general a destructive force and that her views was that all goblins were vile, evil, irredeemable creatures. It was backstory created on the spot for a pregenerated character.

 

[TheSword]

It’s very odd that people who have explicitly said in the past they don’t play 5e d&d are so strident about their view of 5e’s alignment system. Suggesting that a different game’s system should be used.

A newish group of six (in their late twenties early thirties) playing for about 18 months have had zero problem understanding alignment. They do regularly post D&D alignment memes though, suggesting for them it is at least in someway an identifiable component of their game.

‘No Evil’, is often about preventing disruption. It works. I have regretted any game where I didn’t say to players No Evil (with the exception of Way of the Wicked).

Bonds, Flaws, Ideals etc are all keyed to Alignment.

The main criticisms of Alignment have been resolved by this iteration of the game. All we are really left with is some people’s feeling that they don’t like Alignment. That’s not really good enough for me, and I hope the designers agree.