D&D 5E A different take on Alignment

[Oofta]

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).

You were responding on a board dedicated to D&D about the authors of the game.

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

Everybody has preferences. Combat is not the primary focus of my game sessions either, but combat is the focus of the rules.

 

[pemerton]

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.

I think there may be a difference between playing a character authored by someone else, and authoring one's own character through the process of inhabitation. But that's a little tangential.

The real point is this: it's clear, in the Batman film, that the Joker is a bad guy. @Flamestrike keeps on talking about games where the players of mass murderers and torturers think of themselves as the good guys.

 

[pemerton]

Dude, I've likely been playing since before you were born.

WTF?

I cut my teeth on AD&D and BECMI in the early 80's.

Well done. I GMed my first game in 1982. What difference does that make?

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.

I've played at tournaments, in club games, and with friends. I've read accounts of people's play in the columns of Dragon magazine, on usenet, and on message boards. It's not a phenomenon that I've ever personally encountered. When I see it mentioned by others, I regard it as a sign of degenerate play: either the players are 13-year old boys or thereabouts who need to develop a bit of maturity, or else something is going badly wrong with the whole game setup.

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.

I have not played a game of D&D that fits this description since about 1984.

Katharine Kerr had an article on awarding XP for achieving goals beyond dungeon looting in Dragon 95. The most recent game of D&D I played that was more than a one-shot was 4e, which (i) does not depend upon violence to advance, and (ii) does not treat looting as the principal source of treasure. Default D&D does have magic items as a central element of PC build; in my game these were mostly gifts (from NPCs or gods). The last time I was a player in a regular game of D&D was in the late 90s: the version being played was 2nd ed AD&D, and killing things and taking their stuff was not central to that game.

The game is built around violence, with abilities having mostly combat effects.

4 colour comics are built around violence. That does not mean that they celebrate psychopathy. It's a medium, not an end in itself: Hulk vs Thunderbolt Ross, Banner and Doc Samson is the Id vs Ego, Superego and Therapist. The violence is just a storytelling device.

In the same way that it is trivially easy to have 4 colour comics without murder or torture (I give you the history of Marvel Comics at least until the mid-90s), so it is trivially easy to have FRPGing without murder or torture.

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).

Who in this thread is asserting that genocide, torture and killing children is a good thing?

Of course it seems to be not that uncommon for GMs (i) to put pressure on their players to play Good PCs, and (ii) to set up situations in which it effectively infeasible, as a gameplay move, to spare the Orc children (or whatever). This is trivially easy to avoid by changing the fictional set-up. It doesn't tell us anything about the moral character of the players; it tells us about the lack of skill of the GM.

 

[Oofta]

I think there may be a difference between playing a character authored by someone else, and authoring one's own character through the process of inhabitation. But that's a little tangential.

The real point is this: it's clear, in the Batman film, that the Joker is a bad guy. @Flamestrike keeps on talking about games where the players of mass murderers and torturers think of themselves as the good guys.

The DM also, apparently decided they were actually evil (assuming they were being serious) because their paladin started taking damage from their amulet.

Now, personally I would have told them long before that they were doing things he considered evil and it's something I don't allow. But different strokes for different folks and all.

 

[Maxperson]

I think there may be a difference between playing a character authored by someone else, and authoring one's own character through the process of inhabitation. But that's a little tangential.

Not really. You're either acting out someone else's script, or your the one you "write" as you play. Heck, actors on improv shows are even authoring their own characters.

The real point is this: it's clear, in the Batman film, that the Joker is a bad guy. @Flamestrike keeps on talking about games where the players of mass murderers and torturers think of themselves as the good guys.

I've never seen a PC murderer/torturer who the player thought was a good guy. It's pretty clear that when you choose roleplay someone evil, you are roleplaying someone who is evil.

I also can't see Flamestrike's posts. He couldn't handle receiving what he was dishing out and blocked me. If he's saying that, I personally don't believe him. It takes a special kind of person to play that kind of character and think you're playing a good guy.

 

[pemerton]

I've never seen a PC murderer/torturer who the player thought was a good guy. It's pretty clear that when you choose roleplay someone evil, you are roleplaying someone who is evil.

I also can't see Flamestrike's posts. He couldn't handle receiving what he was dishing out and blocked me. If he's saying that, I personally don't believe him. It takes a special kind of person to play that kind of character and think you're playing a good guy.

I'm puzzled that you're intervening in my exchange with @Flamestrike when you can't read the latter's posts.

 

[Maxperson]

I'm puzzled that you're intervening in my exchange with @Flamestrike when you can't read the latter's posts.

The new block feature is completely borked on this site. There's no way for me to even know you're having a conversation with him. It doesn't show any quotes at all. Just your text. It looked like you posted solo.

 

[Flamestrike]

I have not played a game of D&D that fits this description since about 1984.

Good for you, but do you concede that the default method of advancement in DnD is killing things for XP?

That monster's have XP values attached to them? You concede that right?

What you choose to do isnt really relevant to this discussion.

And if you're honestly telling me you dont regularly see immature dicks at tables going full blown murderhobo despite alignment, we live in different worlds.

 

[Oofta]

Good for you, but do you concede that the default method of advancement in DnD is killing things for XP?

That monster's have XP values attached to them? You concede that right?

What you choose to do isnt really relevant to this discussion.

And if you're honestly telling me you dont regularly see immature dicks at tables going full blown murderhobo despite alignment, we live in different worlds.

We live in different worlds. I haven't seen full blown murderhobos since I was in high school.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I didn't say I disagreed with both sides. I said I CAN disagree with both of you, meaning that I am free to disagree with you and agree with him, disagree with both of you, agree with both of you, or agree with you and disagree with him.

Cuz it didn't happen.

So... this entire "I can agree with who I wanna agree with" thing was just a smokescreen? You do think that Alignment is required for the proper functioning of Ideals?

Because you keep going back and forth, and it seems like you don't even know what you think anymore.

But being joyful and having a desire to see something new doesn't tell me enough to know if he's one of the sickos or not.

But here is a funny thing.

Say yes that he is. Now he is one of the sickos
Say that he is Chaotic Evil. Now he is one of the sickos.

That is the same step with the same result... only one of them comes with this whole official system attached, all to tell me that he is something that I just decided he is.

I mean... if I didn't want him to be one of the sickos... I wouldn't have made him Evil. So making him evil or just saying yes accomplish the same goal, with the same amount of effort.



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Yes if one goes that way into character generation, I agree with you, that you still have a character built but all this post does is prove that one can remove an element from the game and still play not that it is useless aid for people. You have not demonstrated to me how this is a useless aid.

Tables remove many things from the game, it does not mean they are useless.

Because for most people alignment comes after the character is built.

The only people I have ever seen who picked their alignment first (and not just said "Good") are experienced players who... are going for a specific set of personality traits that they picked before choosing the alignment.

It is a useless aid, because it isn't usually used as an aid, it is used as a label. And those times when it is used as an aid, when someone falls back on it to decide their reaction... they could fall back on the dozen other facts they established about their character.

I usually have an idea of the character first and use the alignment parameters as a short-hand for which types of
- IBF, deities worshiped/respected, domains (if a cleric), and maybe even background which I will be selecting. Alignment informs me first and then I begin selecting appropriate details which synergise with the alignment.

But why did you pick that alignment?

To me, that is the kicker. You pick Lawful because you want to play someone who plays by the rules, and you picked that trait before picking Lawful. And That trait is the one defining your character, not the label you grabbed after.