D&D 5E A different take on Alignment

[pemerton]

When players want to play their Paladins like this:

I don't know what you're inviting me to make of the image; but I don't feel that it contradicts my point.

You seem to have a very deep concern about vicious and immoral paladins. If the concern is about mere possibility, I'd suggest that you relax. If it's driven by actual experience, then as I've posted I think there's something going wrong either with the circles of RPGers you move in, or with the games that you're participating in.

 

[Oofta]

It has nothing to do and everything to do with deep human struggles. This is the dichotomy of D&D. It is a RPG but it also has its roots deep into wargaming.

You can explore human struggles in D&D but it is an ill suited tool to do it. It does not mean that you can't do it. Just that there are better RPG for this approach. White Wolf's games are especially good for that.

D&D is all about high fantasy, but you can play grim dark, gritty realism and even more extreme games or comic games with it. It is because D&D is so broad in spectrum and versatility that we have so many play styles. The only other system that is as versatile as D&D is GURPS. It does fantasy, horror, sci-fi and other genre really well. And if you remember well, D&D also did sci-fi with the Buck Roger's RPG.

So yes, D&D can be used for exploring deep human psyche and struggles. It is generic enough to do it. But it is ill suited for this kind of play. I can bake a cake in a normal stove, but in a boiler's fire chamber that is 850 celcius not so well. I can try, I can even succeed. But it would not be the right tool.

Don't get me wrong - I agree that it can. The post I was responding to seemed to indicate (and if I misinterpreted, sorry) that it's a negative aspect of D&D that the founders of the game did not explore "deep human struggles".

I just don't see the need for the game to have rules or design goal to try to be anything other than a glorified small scale wargame with support for RP in whatever form that takes. For some games there are going to be aspects of horror, others will focus on heroic fiction, still others on mysteries of what it is to be human. The flexibility, leaving it in the hands of the DM and group is in some cases a weakness of D&D but also it's biggest strength.

 

[pemerton]

The post I was responding to seemed to indicate (and if I misinterpreted, sorry) that it's a negative aspect of D&D that the founders of the game did not explore "deep human struggles".

The post you were responding to didn't even say anything about D&D! It was inviting another poster to provide evidence that would support their claim that Gygax and Arneson had developed literary sensibilities (contrary to my claim that they seemed not to have).

I just don't see the need for the game to have rules or design goal to try to be anything other than a glorified small scale wargame with support for RP in whatever form that takes.

As a fairly serious RPGer, and some-time D&D player, I have zero interest in small scale wargames, glorified or otherwise.

 

[FrozenNorth]

The best character I ever DMed for was in 4e, a tiefling fiend warlock.

Her patron was one of the Lords of Dust, demons bound below Eberron, but the other characters could never quite get a good handle on her: was she a dupe? A person making the best of a bad situation? A person driven by desperation? Or a pragmatic opportunist?

The attempts of the other players to sound out her intentions were foiled by her sky-high Bluff check. As DM, I trusted the player to create an interesting and complex character. So, the other characters kept the warlock somewhat at arm’s length, because they couldn’t pigeonhole her, though she got along well with the druid.

The climax of the campaign had the characters defeat an existential threat to Eberron, but at a great cost: the were lost in Xoriat, the plane of madness.

The creatures in Xoriat were brutal, but if killed, residuum could be harvested to either contact Eberron, or if enough creatures were killed, to free themselves. But I told them, once they have committed to a plan to escape, each character had to roll a die. One a 1, their character irrevocably died before being rescued. On a 2, their character survived but was sufficiently maimed that they would have to give up adventuring forever.

Here’s the kicker: the size of the die was inversely proportional to how long it would take the plan to reach fruition. If they waited to harvest enough residuum to free themselves, they would roll a 1d4.

The warlock reached out to her patron. Over the campaign, the warlock had accrued favors to her patron that she would have to pay off, but the patron also saw her as a powerful investment, so he wasn’t about to cut her loose. The patron suspected that the others would not want to work for him, so he offered the warlock a deal. For freeing the warlock, the warlock would accrue a favor to him. For freeing the others, each of them would accrue a favor to the warlock.

The warlock pitched the hell out of this proposal (no pun intended!) to the other characters. The other characters did not trust the warlock enough to accept, though the druid was wavering. The warlock took the deal for herself alone, lamenting her friends.

Time passes differently on Coriat than on Eberron. The swordmage (who had been trapped in Xoriat for 30 years in his backstory) cracked, and one day, simply walked off into nothingness.

The barbarian, the elf and the druid were saved by the barbarian’s great-nephew (the barbarian’s clan had also been contacted). The barbarian got to see his clan triumphant and his great-nephew a hero following in his great-uncle’s footsteps before dying at the literal last moment before crossing over.

The elf survived but suffered a wound so great that he was unable to ever adventure again. He suffered the tragedy of returning to a world in which he did not fit, where his greatest enemies had become his people’s greatest allies.

The druid returned safe and sound but retired from adventuring anyway. The party had been trapped in Xoriat by an enemy seeking to strike at him personally, and he took the deaths of his friends hard. He had a purpose however, nurturing the growth of the founder of his order.

As for the warlock? How do you react when the people whom you trust, whom you have travelled with, literally tell you to your face that they would rather risk madness and destruction than put themselves in your hands? She had left early, arriving mere months after her departure to Xoriat rather than years. In the epilogue, she had followed in her mentor’s footsteps, becoming a crimelord, though one with a bit of a soft spot for orphans.

 

[FrozenNorth]

As a fairly serious RPGer, and some-time D&D player, I have zero interest in small scale wargames, glorified or otherwise.

From the looks of things, you would have enjoyed my game.

 

[Maxperson]

Also, and as I posted upthread: if your game is full of players who play their PCs as torturers, something is pretty wrong either with your crowd or with your game.

Why? Why is there anything wrong with exploring other avenues of roleplaying. Now, if they were getting off on it, sure, something would be wrong there. Otherwise it's just harmless fun, stretching your roleplaying boundaries. Or are you suggesting that something was pretty wrong with Heath Ledger for playing the Joker or those who have played killers and monsters on TV and in the movies? Because roleplaying someone like that in a game is little different.

 

[Flamestrike]

I don't know what you're inviting me to make of the image; but I don't feel that it contradicts my point.

You seem to have a very deep concern about vicious and immoral paladins. If the concern is about mere possibility, I'd suggest that you relax. If it's driven by actual experience, then as I've posted I think there's something going wrong either with the circles of RPGers you move in, or with the games that you're participating in.

Dude, I've likely been playing since before you were born. I cut my teeth on AD&D and BECMI in the early 80's. I've literally played at hundreds of tables across nearly 40 years and three continents, across 5 editions of the game (skipping one).

PC's with 'Good' on their character sheet, and then proceeding to be very Evil (and then attempting to justify it to the DM) is not a rare phenomenon. It's actually incredibly common.

Our game rewards violence. Literally. With XP. Its the game currency to advance your character. Killing things and taking their stuff is the central core of the game. The game is built around violence, with abilities having mostly combat effects. It's also a game played by mostly immature young men (and boys) raised on 'action hero' mentality where brutally dismembering your opponent with an axe while sparing the time for a witty one liner is 'good', in an environment (a fictional game) where actually displaying any empathy for a NPC is a near impossible task, even for a well adjusted person.

Look at any alignment thread (including this one) in the history of the internet, and you get two clear camps form:

1) The ends justify the means and Lawful means following the laws. These are the dudes that want to apply a Chaotic Good alignment to the Punisher.

2) The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and 'Lawful' means following a strict code of conduct - not necessarily the law of the land. These dudes (and I am one of them) rate the Punisher as LE.

You then see the twits in Camp 1 start to condone even genocide, murder, torture, filicide, infanticide, mass killings etc as something a 'morally good' person can engage in, and the argument grinds to it's inevitable stupid and pointless insults and madness.

Every. Single. Thread. And nearly at every single table of new players I've ever had (and I've had hundreds of groups).

This doesn't make alignment 'pointless' as a tool though, as some people in this thread are suggesting. It just means the DM has to (at session zero) clearly establish which of those two definitions of alignment apply, ensure his players know clearly when selecting their alignments, and and repercussions or ramifications of stepping outside those bounds (if any).

All this other talk is just meaningless waffle really that's been done a billion times before in a billion other threads. But you guys do you.

 

[Flamestrike]

As for the warlock? How do you react when the people whom you trust, whom you have travelled with, literally tell you to your face that they would rather risk madness and destruction than put themselves in your hands? She had left early, arriving mere months after her departure to Xoriat rather than years. In the epilogue, she had followed in her mentor’s footsteps, becoming a crimelord, though one with a bit of a soft spot for orphans.

I had a Cleric of Bane/ Blackguard that had a soft spot for orphans. I refused to harm children full stop, and helped orphans when I could. Also refused to engage in torture (although a quick merciful death for a captive was OK).

I was an orphan myself, and a member of the martyrs progeny of Tantras when Bane and Torm duked it out, and my parents (ironically) gave their lives to help Torm slay Bane.

Initially LG (raised as a Cleric of Torm) I fell from grace, and accepted the real 'truth': Torm had killed my parents, and had taken everything from me. I recanted and fell to worship the black hand.

Fascist and fundamentalist of Banes faith, he was very LE. He sought peace though unifying Faerun under one flag, one nation, one church and one God.

And then to travel to Celestia and slay the false god Torm witth his own hands.

It was a twisted headspace for me to get into.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Then I truly recommend you Vampire the Masquerade. It is a master piece to explore the psyche and the deep motivations of a character. The "monsters we are lest monsters we become!" takes a whole new meaning in the hands of a capable GM. I can't vouch for the newest editions, but for the 1st edition, just wow. Even Werewolf the Apocalypse is a whole new ballgame onto itself RP wise.

Again, D&D can be used for exploring the psyche. And it can even do well in the hand of a dedicated DM that really put some work ( and by that, I mean a lot) into this endeavour but there are other systems that do it way easier and more fully than D&D.

I’ve play a lot of WoD, and I disagree. It has some stuff to try and force certain conflicts, but IME that doesn’t lead to any deeper exploration of important questions than I’ve had in D&D games. IME, if you have a group that wants to explore that stuff, a game that doesn’t use mechanics to guide that exploration is much better.

My experience with WoD is that the mechanics get in the way more than they contribute, i this particular aspect of play.

 

[FrozenNorth]

And then to travel to Celestia and slay the false god Torm witth his own hands.

It was a twisted headspace for me to get into.

Sounds like a fun game.