D&D 5E A different take on Alignment

[FrozenNorth]

Because you are good at it. Try to look at it from a new player's perspective. They are likely to be overwhelmed by rules and such. Any aid to help them roleplay their characters like alignment, flaws, merits, etc. is a good thing.

I am very skeptical when people who have been playing the game pull out the “think of the new players” card. I’m pretty sure that asking players to understand the alignment system then apply it is more difficult than getting them to put themselves in their characters’ shoes.

I mean, 4-year olds are already doing this when they are playing with their stuffed animals.

Edit: the system is going wonky. This was a quote by Maxperson, not doctorbadwolf.

 

[Maxperson]

I am very skeptical when people who have been playing the game pull out the “think of the new players” card. I’m pretty sure that asking players to understand the alignment system then apply it is more difficult than getting them to put themselves in their characters’ shoes.

I mean, 4-year olds are already doing this when they are playing with their stuffed animals.

Edit: the system is going wonky. This was a quote by Maxperson, not doctorbadwolf.

You can be skeptical, but I've been there multiple times with new players. Having them read the alignment blurbs helped them to put themselves into their character's shoes. Nobody is claiming alignment is a fix-all. Just that it's an aid. It helps some people.

As an aside, I read an interesting article a few years ago that suggested that kids are born creative geniuses, but by the time they are adults, the rigidity of schooling has beaten that out of most of them, leaving relatively few really creative people. All I know is that I've had to help a number of new players and the alignment system was a great tool for it.

We are born creative geniuses and the education system dumbs us down, according to NASA scientists

The scientists gave the test to 1,600 children between the ages of 4 and 5. What they found shocked them.

ideapod.com

 

[Oofta]

Funny thing is, the only time alignment becomes "a controversy" it's from online posters that dislike alignment for whatever reason and want it to fail. So they twist and turn what alignment is for (especially in 5E), say that if we can't determine based solely on snippets of behavior that it's useless. That if you need anything other than alignment, why bother?

I've never had much disagreement on alignment in the real world. I don't stress alignment (other than no evil in my home campaign). I do tell people it's neither a straightjacket nor an excuse. If people ask I just explain how it's what color glasses they view the world through.

But broken? Useless? It's never come up in real life. Occasionally someone will muse that their PC is __ alignment how would they look at a situation or briefly discuss alignment as a short-hand for what a PC or NPC will likely respond to something. That's what it's there for, one descriptor among many.

 

[tetrasodium]

Alinment is pretty useless for describing mortals with free will, especially the d&d alignment. I've had good luck with a thing someone wrote called thematic alignment but next campaign might draw more on 638 Primary Personality Traits as they can even be leveraged nicely into the misguided traits/flaws/bonds that are more often than not just pointless & zany catchphrases desperately in search of an excuse to disrupt or pointlessly derail

 

[Maxperson]

Funny thing is, the only time alignment becomes "a controversy" it's from online posters that dislike alignment for whatever reason and want it to fail. So they twist and turn what alignment is for (especially in 5E), say that if we can't determine based solely on snippets of behavior that it's useless. That if you need anything other than alignment, why bother?

I've never had much disagreement on alignment in the real world. I don't stress alignment (other than no evil in my home campaign). I do tell people it's neither a straightjacket nor an excuse. If people ask I just explain how it's what color glasses they view the world through.

But broken? Useless? It's never come up in real life. Occasionally someone will muse that their PC is __ alignment how would they look at a situation or briefly discuss alignment as a short-hand for what a PC or NPC will likely respond to something. That's what it's there for, one descriptor among many.

I've had issues with alignment in the games I've played in, but not since 2e, and only with Paladins and what qualified as an evil act. Outside of that very narrow scope, there have been no problems with it for the groups I've played with.

 

[Oofta]

I've had issues with alignment in the games I've played in, but not since 2e, and only with Paladins and what qualified as an evil act. Outside of that very narrow scope, there have been no problems with it for the groups I've played with.

I agree that many editions ago there were times it was a problem. The description of CN in the 2E was, in a word, horrible. It didn't describe an alignment it described an insane person that no one in their right mind would associate with.

Even back then it was extremely limited, we just ignored or house ruled it differently like we did with several other things.

 

[Hriston]

On this point: I think Gygax is sensible to make truth one of the values that is constitutive of goodness. It is 3E D&D, I think, that moves truth/honour into the "lawful" category, to the detriment of coherence because now law can be an end in itself at odds with the good.

Yes, it's from Gygax's PHB that I'm getting that it's an Evil act to deprive others of the truth. Lawful Evil, for example, is said to hold truth as valueless, whereas for Lawful Good, truth is said to be of the highest value.

Agreed. I think this "unidentified means" is under-characterised in the AD&D DMG and I'm not sure the whole package, as presented, is fully coherent. It is tempting to think that the alignment adjustments are shorthands for responses to being treated certain ways, but there are also adjustments for treatment that would then be superfluous. There are also alignment adjustments expressed in absolute terms that are different from the adjustments for relative alignment differences. I've never been persuaded that the whole package makes sense.

Although I never used these modifiers (or reaction rolls in general) when I DM'd Holmes/AD&D back in the early '80s, I've partially adapted them for my current 5E game and believe I've achieved some coherence. I think you're right that the easiest explanation for the adjustments for "Alignment of Liege" is that a certain type of treatment or demeanor on the part of the speaking character is implied. Whatever the mechanism in the fiction, however, I think the values given are meant to be consistent with the idea that if one is dealing with a chaotic as opposed to a lawful person, then they are likely to put their needs above those of the group, and that if you're dealing with an evil as opposed to a good person, then they are likely to trample on your rights if your rights interfere with their goals.

100% this. The idea that alignment descriptors are portable to fiction in general, let alone the real world in general, is pretty weird in my view. And seems to be belied by the fact that no school of philosophy (for the real world) or no school of criticism (for fiction) uses them. And their attempted use in this respect has not produced their own meaningful schools of philosophy or criticism.

I think it has to do with a desire for alignment to simulate something about fictional characters or real people in general and seems to go hand in hand with using alignment as an aid to roleplaying the "character on the character sheet". I find the first part of that somewhat seductive (as evidenced by some of my posts in this thread), although I very much dislike the second part as an approach to roleplaying. The approach to alignment that I prefer to use in-game is to nudge things toward conflict, consistent with its war-game origins in Chainmail. In that way, I see it as part of "playing D&D" and don't see much use for it otherwise. I do think that using examples from fiction (or real life) could be helpful in understanding alignment for use in D&D, but they would have to be the right examples and familiar to and agreed upon by the participants in the conversation to be at all useful.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

It is 3E D&D, I think, that moves truth/honour into the "lawful" category, to the detriment of coherence because now law can be an end in itself at odds with the good.

But the truth can be at odds with the good, so it makes sense.

that if one is dealing with a chaotic as opposed to a lawful person, then they are likely to put their needs above those of the group

That doesn’t make any sense, to me. Selfishness isn’t an Order/Freedom thing, it’s a Good/Evil thing. Altruism is not related to ones beliefs and priorities wrt how much a society or person needs hard coded structures and systems in order to function.

 

[darkbard]

@Manbearcat

Your NPC names sound more like DitV than DW! ( @darkbard's PC, on the other hand, has a traditional FRPG name, though I note it's not on the DW name list for paladins.)

Alastor's name is taken from the Shelley poem of that name. As a disciple of the goddess of Truth and/in Emotion, the character is a means for me of exploring some romantic themes and tropes in play.

We do have a bit of Wild West color in our little world, from a muddy, frontier justice town to the already noted naming conventions among some groups to the DitV-esque evil rancher exploiting a family down on its luck.

But there are some standard fantasy tropes and trappings too. My wife's Wizard is Maraqli, who casts spells by plucking the threads of the magic Tapestry that subtends the world. And we're facing off against some high fantasy standard foes: a necromancer (Esemere) who extends his millenia-long life by stealing the bodies of young magical prodigies to inhabit, and a Far Realm entity known only as The Devourer that assaults the magic of the Tapestry and may be destined to consume all magic (and the world along with it?). And there have been spirits, bullywugs, bandits, and perytons along the way so far!

 

[Hriston]

That doesn’t make any sense, to me. Selfishness isn’t an Order/Freedom thing, it’s a Good/Evil thing. Altruism is not related to ones beliefs and priorities wrt how much a society or person needs hard coded structures and systems in order to function.

This is the definition I'm working with, from the 1E DMG, p. 23 (some bolding added):

Law And Chaos: The opposition here is between organized groups and individuals. That is, law dictates that order and organization is necessary and desirable, while chaos holds to the opposite view. Law generally supports the group as more important than the individual, while chaos promotes the individual over the group.​

​

If the individual with whom you're dealing holds themselves to be more important than any group to which they belong, then cooperative relationships with that person are generally going to be subject to satisfying the needs/wants of that individual being met over those with whom s/he has made such agreements.