D&D 5E A different take on Alignment

[FrozenNorth]

How many people have you played with over the years?

I sat out 3e and 3.5e, but I started with Rules Cyclopedia, and played quite a bit of 2nd ed., 4th ed and 5th ed.

Probably haven’t played with thousands, but played with quite a few.

 

[FrozenNorth]

It's not baseless man. Alignment has been an integral part of the game for decades. The truth of MY statement is apparent on its face. Millions have successfully used it. Heck I even went with a very low 50% number, rather than the much higher probable number. The absurdity of yours is just as apparent. Prove your ludicrous claim.

The fact that millions have played D&D is not in doubt. The fact that more people got something positive out of alignment rather than just ignored it or had disputes is.

By the way, are we talking about alignment in 5e only or not? It seems that whenever someone points out the many problems with alignment over the years, its defenders say “well, in 5e, alignment is only descriptive”, but whenever it’s a question of appealing to tradition or alignment being integral, it’s suddenly “millions of people have played with alignment without problem for 50 years”.

You can’t have it both ways.

 

[Maxperson]

The fact that millions have played D&D is not in doubt. The fact that more people got something positive out of alignment rather than just ignored it or had disputes is.

That's two different things, one of which is a raging Strawman. I didn't say positive. I said it worked just fine. That's not in doubt, either. It's reaaaaaaaaly outrageous to claim that most of those that played the game from 1e on ignored alignment or had a really bad time with it(a few disputes is not broken alignment).

You can’t have it both ways.

Then you need to stop your side from using anything pre-5e. They're using 1e, 2e, and 3e to talk about alignment horrors, so I have to respond to that. You don't want me to use it, you guys stop using it.

 

[Doug McCrae]

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.

I think L Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt's The Roaring Trumpet and Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions also draw on this tradition. Their conception of law and chaos in the quotations upthread is similar--chaos is a primal and ancient threat to civilisation and the natural order. In Three Hearts and Three Lions, the lands controlled by Chaos fall under a perpetual sunless twilight. Anderson was also influenced by the concept of entropy in physics--he had a degree in the subject. Moorcock drew on the same tradition--creation myth--but altered it. He was also influenced by Anderson, and by the Christian mysticism of Rudolf Steiner. From the introduction to Elric: The Stealer of Souls (2008):

While it is true that for a short time (at around the age of seven) I attended Michael Hall School in Sussex, which was run on the rather attractive mystical Christian principles of Rudolf Steiner... I was only briefly interested, as a young adult, in Steiner’s ideas, which had influenced my mentor, Ernst Jelinek. These, however, did influence the cosmology of the Elric stories. Poul Anderson’s marvelous fantasies The Broken Sword and Three Hearts and Three Lions were probably of equal influence, as was my fascination with Norse, Celtic, Hindu, and Zoroastrian mythology.​

I've developed the ideas of Law and Chaos from an early age because they seemed better to describe the two chief warring temperaments both in ourselves as well as in society -- and to describe such elements in terms of Good and Evil seems (as I hope I demonstrate) a rather useless way of looking at our problems. Poul Anderson influenced me in this, with his The Broken Sword, the first edition of which I heartily recommend, and also, to a degree, with his Three Hearts and Three Lions. In a sense he used them, as I tended to more in the very early stories, as substitutes for Good and Evil, but even there I was beginning to realise how much better terms Law and Chaos were. That way, for instance, we don't get to demonize those we disagree with!

Source

Law and Chaos in Chainmail, Blackmoor, and OD&D ended up less interesting than its sources imo.

 

[Oofta]

I did some quick guesstimating and between my wife and I both DMing and too many moves, I've probably played with close to 50 people in home games. I don't want to guess how many people I've played with in public games over the years, it's probably hundreds.

Alignment has always been interpreted close enough to the same that it didn't matter. I don't remember a single time there was any question or clarification needed other than my no evil policy (which has been extremely rare, usually just that I consider torture evil). Every once in a while it's discussed, but that's it.

If this was such a major issue for a significant percentage of the population it seems like I would have come across it at least once. Problem is, if it wasn't for forums like this I wouldn't know there was an issue.

Have there been players that used it to justify being an ass? I can believe it, I just don't think getting rid of alignment will change anything. Widespread, vociferous, argument causing disagreement? I've never seen it in the real world. Does a small percentage of the gaming population dislike alignment? Obviously. I just think the vast majority treat it appropriately like the general descriptor that it is.

I do think the oldest editions of the game over-emphasized alignment, but we pretty much ignored the things like DM tracking alignment and penalizing XP if alignment changed along with silliness like alignment languages. Oh, and the 2E description of CN being basically insane was stupid.

 

[pemerton]

Once again @Doug McCrae takes us to the heart of things.

I was especially struck by this from Moorcock "A lot of my work is really about… Law and Chaos… about common sense and romanticism, and finding a balance between the two." Bentham (or Benjamin Franklin) vs Neitzsche.

In my 4e campaign I mentioned upthread, the chaos sorcerer/bard is definitely on the side of Neitzsche: spontaneity; beauty; freedom of action; hurling suns and shaping worlds!

The invoker/wizard, on the other hand, is not quite Bentham. He cares about loutish peasants and fat-gutted burghers, but his own motivations are themselves almost aesthetic too: it's just an aesthetic of structure and predictability. He has the outlook of an engineer.

One point where I would personally depart from Moorcock is in the full scope of romanticism. There is a romantic perspective - perhaps a reactionary one - according to which beauty, and not just the beauty of a peasant field or a burher's gilt front door, can issue from ordered human life. This is what JRRT tries to convey in LotR.

 

[pemerton]

Law and Chaos in Chainmail, Blackmoor, and OD&D ended up less interesting than its sources imo.

Agreed. Gygax and Arneson both had a great sense of gameplay, but neither seems to have had a very rich literary sensibility. (In RPG designers, we could contrast with Greg Stafford, Robin Laws and Vincent Baker - all of whom have both a sense of gameplay and of what makes fiction powerful.)

 

[Helldritch]

Agreed. Gygax and Arneson both had a great sense of gameplay, but neither seems to have had a very rich literary sensibility. (In RPG designers, we could contrast with Greg Stafford, Robin Laws and Vincent Baker - all of whom have both a sense of gameplay and of what makes fiction powerful.)

I disagree. Both Gygax and Arneson read quite a lot, just watch their recommended reading in the appendice of the 1ed DMG. Did they catter to our modern sensitivity ? Of course not. But they read a lot with the "sensitivity" of the sixties and seventies which was quite different from today's.

 

[pemerton]

I disagree. Both Gygax and Arneson read quite a lot

That's not what I said. I said they didn't have a very rich literary sensibility, and I contrasted that with the sense some other great RPG designers have of what makes fiction powerful.

To elaborate on the point, just contrast what Moorcock says about alignment with what is said in Chainmail or Moldvay Basic.

Is there any example you're able to point to of Gygax suggesting, or using, alignment as a way of understanding deep human struggles?

 

[Helldritch]

That's not what I said. I said they didn't have a very rich literary sensibility, and I contrasted that with the sense some other great RPG designers have of what makes fiction powerful.

To elaborate on the point, just contrast what Moorcock says about alignment with what is said in Chainmail or Moldvay Basic.

Is there any example you're able to point to of Gygax suggesting, or using, alignment as a way of understanding deep human struggles?

Here is what I said

Did they catter to our modern sensitivity ? Of course not. But they read a lot with the "sensitivity" of the sixties and seventies which was quite different from today's.

So yes, for their time they were in advance compared to their peers in the wargame community. They were even advocating for female players. Which, in such a macho community at the time was considered an heresy. Were they perfect? Of course not. Who is? It is only with our eyes of today that some are putting them in a bad light. What is good RP today, is not the same as what was good back then. We, as a community, have evolved beyond what they have imagined. And that is good.

Put yourself in their shoes, see the world around you as it was and you will see that compared to their peers, they were pioneers! It is as if you are trying to compare the performance of racing cars of the 1900 and those of today. By todays' standards they are turtles, inefficient and backward in design. And yet, in their time, they were the best of the best. The same applies to the work of Gygax and Arneson.