D&D 5E A different take on Alignment

[Chaosmancer]

It is all we need with regard to how it will act in a moral sense. That's the context in which this discussion is taking place, so that's why we are saying that it's all you need. We don't need blurbs like, "Enjoys watching kids boil in oil." or "It will defend clergy with its life." We know the game circumstances surrounding the encounter. Those don't involve the moral decisions the NPC will make. All we do then is plug in alignment and go.

I knew I should have waited to post that last bit until I got to the new page.

"In a moral sense" is a pretty strange thing, when most NPCs aren't interacting with players in a moral sense.

If I need a shopkeeper, I don't need to know their alignment. I generally don't make shopkeepers greedy enough to cheat the players, because that ends up with them feeling like I am trying to cheat them. I have done it on occasion, but I rarely do.

What I really need is a personality. Bubbly, Gruff, Master Craftsman, overworked, ect ect ect. Those are much more helpful in roleplaying them than deciding if they are Chaotic Neutral or Lawful Good. Because that stuff doesn't tell me that Shava is a joyful alchemist who is always eager to see new things.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I'm not sure how anyone is expected to take your point about discussing anything in good faith seriously when you have created a bullet point list of strawman arguments that you claim your opponents are arguing for in this thread.


The Rationality: "I disliked it. You used the thing I disliked. Ergo you messed up." What could possibly be illogical about that?


This. Alignment in the World Axis mythos means something.


I think your anti-law/pro-chaos biases are speaking here, and it undermines your assessment of alignment in 4E.


To both of you: I disagree that 4E made is a mistake with alignment, but that's mainly because of how I see 4E's alignment as deeply indebted to the Chaoskampf motif that is highly prevalent in ancient and classical mythology: e.g., Genesis 1 (and elsewhere in the Bible), the Akkadian Enuma Elish, the Ugaritic Baal Cycle, Hesiod's Theogony, etc.

In our own mythical traditions, creation is a process brought about only by applying order to chaos. It is what enables both life and civilization to transpire. Thus, creation is regarded as something "good" (both morally and qualitatively) that is constantly threatened to unravel through chaos, moral wickedness, destruction, and violence on both a cosmic scale (e.g., Yam, Tiamat, Titans, Set, Jotun, etc.) and a mortal one (e.g., Genesis 6:11-12). Kings and priests are often depicted as bringers of order and peace for this reason, as their duties are imagined to help maintain moral/social/cosmic order and fight back chaos in the world.

This is effectively the mythology of the Dawn War and World Axis mythos. This is why Lawful Good sits at the top: it represents the order and moral goodness required to preserve and further this mythic Creation. This is why I loved 4E's alignment. It tapped into the real human experience of our own historical myth-making, storytelling traditions. I suspect, though I cannot be sure, that this is James Wyatt's brilliant handiwork.

I still didn't like alignment in 4e, but it was done much better in a lot of ways.

One of the best things about it is that they stopped trying to break each alignment into three distinct sets. One of the most frustrating things about the 9-box system is that you can have Lawful Good, and Chaotic Good as some very distinct poles, but what the heck is Neutral Good supposed to be? Sometimes I follow law and order, sometimes I dont? But that is also lawful because not everyone follows all laws?

Making it Lawful Good, Good, is just much cleaner. There isn't a squishy middle that can expand and contract based on moment to moment considerations. There isn't conflict between trying to figure out which is which. You have a small number of hyper-lawful good types, everyone else is just good or unaligned and we move on. Much cleaner. Much easier.


And, cosmologically, it worked incredibly well, compared to the convolutions of the various versions of the great wheel. I am discussing in another forum, and I guess the 1e version had around 52 planes of various alignments and idealogies? And even the current 9 alignment system produces 17 unique alignment planes? Most of which no one even thinks about let alone uses?

4e was far cleaner and set up a very strong identity in what they were trying to accomplish, mythologically speaking.

 

[Krachek]

I made no exaggeration at all. There have been approximately 13 million players and I will bet at least half use(d) alignment. Plus the farther back you go in editions, the higher the percentage of players that used alignment.

This is a Strawman. We are saying it's a tool to aid roleplay, not something to solve all moral issues. You are arguing something alignment has never been.

I say that alignement is the basic basic tool. Of course millions of players use happily a basic tool, this thread is about improving this basic tool, character developed these days get better and better, maybe we can consider boosting up our tools to help that.

 

[pemerton]

One of the most frustrating things about the 9-box system is that you can have Lawful Good, and Chaotic Good as some very distinct poles, but what the heck is Neutral Good supposed to be? Sometimes I follow law and order, sometimes I dont? But that is also lawful because not everyone follows all laws?

I agree with this: in 9-point alignment I think LG and CG are reasonably clear as outlooks; likewise LE and CE; I think LN is understandable too (order fetishists) and certainly TN is (naturalistic stoics, hermits, etc). CN is a bit weird but it can be a home for self-aggrandising but not utterly ruthless types.

But NG and NE are just useless. NG is very hard to tell from CG (unless, as you say, it becomes LG lite); and NE seems no different from CE (and 4e's treatment of "daemons" (or should that be the awful yugoloth?) as demons seemed a significant improvement to me).

I guess the 1e version had around 52 planes of various alignments and idealogies? And even the current 9 alignment system produces 17 unique alignment planes? Most of which no one even thinks about let alone uses?

I flip-flop a bit on the AD&D Outer Planes. They're evocative and colourful, but a bit redundant. Some of the evocative ideas, like Gehenna, Pandemonium and Tarterus, seems like they might be able to be merged with Hades and/or The Abyss without losing very much.

But I'm not sure where 52 comes from. There are 16 in Appendix IV, plus Concordant Opposition giving 17 in total.

Is 52 including Inner Planes as well (4 elemental, 4 para-elemental, 8 quasi-elemental, 2 energy)? Though even then I'm only getting to 35 plus the Ethereal and Astral. So I stilld don't know where that number comes from.

 

[Oofta]

I'm not sure how anyone is expected to take your point about discussing anything in good faith seriously when you have created a bullet point list of strawman arguments that you claim your opponents are arguing for in this thread.

It may have been a bit tongue-in-cheek, but all the reasons I gave have been raised on this thread.

 

[FrozenNorth]

I have no clue how you would run it otherwise, either the vast majority are going to have some generic categorization (possibly with different details than alignment) but it would be effectively impossible to stat out every single actor. I'm not going to have a life story for every intelligent creature the party comes across.

For the vast majority of NPCs, what they are hoping to get out of the interaction with the party would be vastly more useful than whether they are L or C, or whether they are G or E.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Do you have in-depth details on every monster and NPC? Spell out exactly how they'll react to every option? Every single one?

You mean like a couple of sentences/thoughts that indicate how they will react to the party based on the anticipated nature of the interaction. Yes I do. Because if I include NPCs, it is for a reason.

 

[Oofta]

For the vast majority of NPCs, what they are hoping to get out of the interaction with the party would be vastly more useful than whether they are L or C, or whether they are G or E.

For the vast majority of actors (NPCs and monsters) I don't have anything written down other than their role in the overall scheme of things. Half the time, they're just monsters that I filtered by alignment and level in DndBeyond.

I don't see how you could go into detail on every actor the PCs could encounter if you do a free-form game.

 

[Oofta]

You mean like a couple of sentences/thoughts that indicate how they will react to the party based on the anticipated nature of the interaction. Yes I do. Because if I include NPCs, it is for a reason.

The party is free to interact with anyone and anything they come across. Maybe they negotiate with the goblins, maybe not.

 

[FrozenNorth]

I don't want to have to read a book on every monster in order to get a general idea of their moral compass.

Why do you accuse people of twisting of words when you are doing the exact same thing? People have been talking about anything from a couple of words to acouple of sentences to characterize NPCs.

Yet you are deliberating mischaracterizing their points as “having to read a book on every monster to get a general idea of their moral compass”.