D&D 5E A different take on Alignment

[Helldritch]

I mean, people can be wrong, even when it’s the overwhelming majority of people.

It often takes one visionary person to start to show the wrongness of what the majority think is right. A good lord, there are some out there to show the light.

 

[Maxperson]

It often takes one visionary person to start to show the wrongness of what the majority think is right. A good lord, there are some out there to show the light.

It's often that same person that drags the group into a place it shouldn't be. In my experience, one strong personality at a table is a recipe for both grandness and disaster, as the rest of the group often just follows that person's lead. Yes, they will interact and roleplay with the game world, but as for where to go and what to do as a group, the strong personality will often win out.

 

[Manbearcat]

I really want to play a character like Rose, at some point. The element of being taken in by a Paladin is even better.

Add in some elements of the Young Guns movies, and like...some kind of fantasy Dust Bowl, and that’s a hell of a character. Especially if the Paladin is also a PC.

If you are, you should look into Dogs in the Vineyard or Burning Wheel or any number of Powered By the Apocalypse games (Dungeon World handles it swell).

If I run another game in the future for online folks (I presently have 2, of which I aim for people who either don't have experience with a system or only get to GM and never get to play, so I'm stocked up), I'll send you an invitation.

Anyway, I don’t think the actions described in your session are all that hard to parse by alignment, though Rose’s alignment isn’t clear yet. Nothing especially evil or good about her taking justice for her father in a world (presumably) where there is no real justice to be found in a court or from the local political powers, for the powerless.

Look at it another way.

If classic D&D alignment were governing NPCs in this game, some or all of the following would be in play (to one degree or another):

1) Addition cognitive workload to consider the bent of the NPC in terms of broad alignment. If this is done before play, it becomes prescriptive. This is at tension with PBtA GMing ethos.

2) If its done impromptu, then I have the added cognitive workload of (a) nailing down a broad alignment in the moment (while I have several balls in the air that I'm juggling mentally) and then take the additional step of (b) swimming upstream from there to filter my NPC moves through the lens of that broad alignment (ensuring that my moves made are coherent with the matrix I've selected).


Why would I do that?

What would it add?

When I consider this (and I've done this a gajillion times in classic D&D before), particularly in concert with the sort of Story Now play that is prioritized here, the math spits out (i) extra and unnecessary cognitive workload for (ii) potentially decreased dynamism (in the type of complexity of characters that can emerge through play) that (iii) doesn't prioritize thematically addressing/provoking the situation directly (because the moves made are filtered through the lens of Alignment rather than the lens of the dramatic need at the moment). It doesn't mean that thematic address/provocation, dramatic need at the moment, and dynamism of character is ensured to decrease...but it definitely lends itself toward that (because my first order thinking isn't about those things...and my second order thinking - possible moves made - must be filtered through that alignment matrix for coherency).

All for the sake of increased (rather than decreased or offloaded entirely) cognitive workload?

The math does not check out.

I'd rather my brain quickly access something genre relevant like "this feels a bit like a smashing together of Mattie Ross and Ripley...lets run with that and see how I can challenge the Paladin PC's conception of the situation through that?"

 

[Hriston]

And we were responding to how that seems to have little basis on how these characters are generally portrayed.

And, yes, I said everyone instead of "everyone who was responding to you on this specific point" because it was shorter and I didn't think I had to specify that I didn't mean every single person on the thread.

It seemed like you were trying to assert that there are bunches of people who agree with you. And what do you mean by "these characters"? Do you mean chaotic characters? What basis do you have for saying that these characters don't experience some difficulty in achieving their goals socially due to their chaotic and unlawful nature?

I'm not trying to be rude. Ignorance is literally not knowing something. That is why I added that part in paranthesis about it not being bad. Every example you were shown you responded with "I don't know those characters". That is ignorance. Which again, isn't bad. I'm ignorant of some of those characters.

But of you get offended by the idea that you don't know characters you admit to not knowing... I'm not sure what to say.

No, you didn't just say I was ignorant of the characters that I had said was I unfamiliar with. You said I seemed ignorant of anything except characters from the works of JRR Tolkien. That's belittling, and it's unwarranted.

Yes, I do read posts. Sequentially and respond in order. Notice how that bit was written before you told me you had seen the movie.

I thought about going back and rewriting it, but I figured that would be slightly dishonest and change the flow of what I was saying. So I decided not to backtrack and edit my post.

This doesn't make sense. I posted that I'd seen the movie before you wrote that bit because that's the post you were responding to. It isn't on me that you write your responses at the same time as you read through the posts to which you're responding. If you respond to one of my posts, I'm going to assume you actually read it before writing and posting your response.

Not sure where you are getting 1923, unless you are talking about animated shorts. The first Disney movie is generally considered snow White, from 1937.

But sure, 1992 isn't in the first half of disney's existence. Egg on my face.

Yes, short films are also movies.

It is an annoyance of mine when people respond with absurd points and then act like they disprove what the other side is saying. We (royally, as in the people who were responding to you) were responding to your rule and pointing that that the archetypes involved don't make a lot of sense. There are a plethora of "lawful" individuals who wouldn't be considered to have good social skills deserving of a buff, while there are lots of chaotic characters who are far better at rallying people around their cause and getting people to work together.

You are free to ignore our criticism of your rules, but that doesn't make our criticism invalid.

I haven't ignored your "criticism" as you call it. In fact, I've responded to every post. No, what makes your criticism invalid is that the lawful characters you're talking about may have low Charisma scores and the chaotic characters may have high Charisma scores. In fact, that's just what your description of those characters suggests.

If you refuse to clarify your rules to explain what I am misunderstanding then I have no obligation to act like I am wrong in my understanding. I'm not a mind-reader or a soothsayer after all.

I have no idea what you don't understand. All I can say is the arguments you're making are off-base. The mechanic that I described in broad strokes is pretty simple. If there's something you feel you've misunderstood, feel free to ask questions.

Tied to an alignment, as in can't be other alignments? No, of course they aren't.

But a Lawful Good Druid who follows city ordinances would be weird, and a Chaotic Neutral Paladin who parties hard and doesn't care about what image they present would be fairly against archetype. Can you play those characters? Of course. But there is a tendency, and when trying to prove the point that Charisma and Chaotic characters is a fairly linked set, making your charisma bonus to lawful characters seem odd and out of place, pointing out that tendency amongst charisma using classes to be chaotic is a good point I think.

By "tied to", I meant associated with, as in having ties to. Obviously, I don't think it's a good point, and you haven't said why you think it's a good point. Feel free to state your reasons at any time.

The point was demonstrating that, again, the most charismatic characters in fiction are usually not the most lawful characters in fiction. Making your approach much more off-beat than the archetypes and styles we typically see.

Which again, ignore the criticism if you want, but that doesn't change the fact that the criticism exists.

Well, again while I might agree that Jafar and Aladdin are not the most "lawful" characters in fiction, you've done nothing to demonstrate that they are the most charismatic characters in fiction. I mean, I'm having a hard time thinking of either of them influencing anybody to do anything. Sure, Jafar tricks Aladdin into going into the Cave of Wonders, but that's about it, and he's aided by magic. And even if any of the characters you've cited are social geniuses that are far more persuasive than any "lawful" counterexample, that's nothing that a higher Charisma score can't explain.

Really? Thought it was Gygax and Arneson who made DnD. Moorcock wrote novels that existed before DnD. Looks Andersen did the same.

Why would I talk to authors who didn't design DnD about the Design of DnD? Because they wrote books dealing with Order and Chaos? Then I might as well go back and talk to Homer as well. (Except he didn't write anything). The very idea of Centaurs and Satyrs was of the wild passions of nature overcoming society. This is an ancient idea.

Where do you think Gygax and Arneson got it from? Why do you think they called it Law and Chaos? I'll tell you because you don't seem to know. They called it that because that's what Andersen and Moorcock called it in their books, the genre of which D&D was written to evoke.

 

[Helldritch]

In that case, I was referring to reality.

In gaming to strong a personality can lead to that. Yes. But it is also my job as a DM to ensure that everyone can shine. I will restrain such a person by talking and reasoning first. It has always worked out so far.

My main argument is often you like to play? Do you think that if you take all the place that the others will want to play with you for long if you do not help them assert themselves and give them a bit more room and a better hear? Just that is often more than enough. And guess what? Most of the time, it is that strong head that will take a backseat and encourage the other players to find solutions!

 

[Maxperson]

In that case, I was referring to reality.

In gaming to strong a personality can lead to that. Yes. But it is also my job as a DM to ensure that everyone can shine. I will restrain such a person by talking and reasoning first. It has always worked out so far.

My main argument is often you like to play? Do you think that if you take all the place that the others will want to play with you for long if you do not help them assert themselves and give them a bit more room and a better hear? Just that is often more than enough. And guess what? Most of the time, it is that strong head that will take a backseat and encourage the other players to find solutions!

I'm talking about reality as well. I have two strong personalities among my players and a third is starting to become a strong personality. The last player in my group was very passive for a very long time and the strongest personality would often tell him what he should do, sometimes overriding what the player was saying, and he would start to do it. I had to step in on more than one occasion and ask the more passive player to tell me what HE wants to do. Now he's asserting himself more often as well, but still backslides sometimes. Not often enough that I have to step in, though.

 

[Hriston]

I have a different understanding of the bit you've bolded: that chaos, at least when the CG are advocating it, promotes each individual (and his/her interests) over the group (which, in the eyes of the CG, wrongly invites/forces individuals to suppress their own self-realisation).

So the concern with agreements with the chaotic wouldn't be about their selfishness but rather their readiness to recalibrate group action if their sense of how it affects the participating individuals changes.

This is also where I see some tensions between Gyagx's alignment system and Gygax's game. Because the game depends upon party play, and so already tends to beg the question in favour of law rather than chaos. Whereas I think the alignment system only works if this is left open at the start.

I wasn't assuming CG in my formulation, but I think yours gets the idea across much better and makes me realize why I seemed to be having some miscommunication with @doctorbadwolf because he also reacted as if I was saying that chaos was synonymous with selfishness, which was not my intent. Of course a CG party to an agreement would put the needs of each individual involved in the agreement above those of the group as a whole, not just themselves. But this still makes the agreement more tenuous than one entered into with a LG party for whom the stability of the agreement is tantamount, for the benefit of all parties involved collectively.

I think the fact that this dynamic, at least conceptually, pushes things into a default direction of the party of adventurers being on the side of law is intentional. Cf. the setup in B2: The Keep on the Borderlands.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

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.

Well, that isn’t a very good definition, IMO. For the reasons I already stated.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

If you are, you should look into Dogs in the Vineyard or Burning Wheel or any number of Powered By the Apocalypse games (Dungeon World handles it swell).

If I run another game in the future for online folks (I presently have 2, of which I aim for people who either don't have experience with a system or only get to GM and never get to play, so I'm stocked up), I'll send you an invitation.



Look at it another way.

If classic D&D alignment were governing NPCs in this game, some or all of the following would be in play (to one degree or another):

1) Addition cognitive workload to consider the bent of the NPC in terms of broad alignment. If this is done before play, it becomes prescriptive. This is at tension with PBtA GMing ethos.

2) If its done impromptu, then I have the added cognitive workload of (a) nailing down a broad alignment in the moment (while I have several balls in the air that I'm juggling mentally) and then take the additional step of (b) swimming upstream from there to filter my NPC moves through the lens of that broad alignment (ensuring that my moves made are coherent with the matrix I've selected).


Why would I do that?

What would it add?

When I consider this (and I've done this a gajillion times in classic D&D before), particularly in concert with the sort of Story Now play that is prioritized here, the math spits out (i) extra and unnecessary cognitive workload for (ii) potentially decreased dynamism (in the type of complexity of characters that can emerge through play) that (iii) doesn't prioritize thematically addressing/provoking the situation directly (because the moves made are filtered through the lens of Alignment rather than the lens of the dramatic need at the moment). It doesn't mean that thematic address/provocation, dramatic need at the moment, and dynamism of character is ensured to decrease...but it definitely lends itself toward that (because my first order thinking isn't about those things...and my second order thinking - possible moves made - must be filtered through that alignment matrix for coherency).

All for the sake of increased (rather than decreased or offloaded entirely) cognitive workload?

The math does not check out.

I'd rather my brain quickly access something genre relevant like "this feels a bit like a smashing together of Mattie Ross and Ripley...lets run with that and see how I can challenge the Paladin PC's conception of the situation through that?"

In general I find that alignment is just as easy to use as genre conventions and archetypal or simply famous characters, in precisely the same way.

 

[Helldritch]

I'm talking about reality as well. I have two strong personalities among my players and a third is starting to become a strong personality. The last player in my group was very passive for a very long time and the strongest personality would often tell him what he should do, sometimes overriding what the player was saying, and he would start to do it. I had to step in on more than one occasion and ask the more passive player to tell me what HE wants to do. Now he's asserting himself more often as well, but still backslides sometimes. Not often enough that I have to step in, though.

Yeah, had this problem a few times in my years as a DM but now it is over. I no longer hesitate to step in with new players and my older players are also helping out a lot. I am glad that this is over my shoulders now.