D&D 5E A different take on Alignment

[Chaosmancer]

This is false and a great example of your horrible ability to interpret. I said no. Period. End of story on that front. Then as you note, I went on to clarify why it was an answer of no in that paragraph. It was a no, because while the ideal LEANS chaotic, is is not actually chaotic. It can also be an ideal held by lawful individuals. Period. End of story on that clarification.

You then decided that I was saying something that I didn't actually say, that it was a chaotic idea, which is twisting what I said.

Except.... THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I SAID YOU SAID.

That the ideal (which I was claiming was self-evidently chaotic) was not, sort of like how you phrased it here " It was a no, because while the ideal LEANS chaotic, is is not actually chaotic. "

My point, was that despite Helldritch claiming otherwise, most ideals do not need an alignment stinger on the end to tell us what sort of alignment they would fall under. They do not need to have their alignment attached to the end to prevent confusion. They are self-evident. This ideal "Independence. I am a free spirit—no one tells me what to do." is chaotic. You do not need to write "chaotic" at the end of it, to clarify that it is chaotic. It is self-evident. Unlike Helldritch's examples, you can't write "lawful" at the end and get a different ideal.

You jumped in, seemingly to a conversation you were not following closely enough to have your points straight, and agreed with the most surface level point (do we need chaotic here?), but your reasoning for agreeing with that point was because it can be either or, lawful or chaotic. Which was the point I was arguing was FALSE.

And, you can't keep accusing me of twisting your words, when you are LITERALLY saying that you are clarifying... by saying exactly what I said you said. You said that the idea might lean chaotic, but it could go either way. That was the point I was disproving.

Also incorrect. I was showing that you don't need alignment as part of the Ideal. I did not show that alignment modified the ideal. In fact, I showed the opposite in saying that both chaotic and lawful individuals could have that ideal.

RIGHT! See, you are admitting the thing. You know, the thing I said that you said. That disagreed with my ACTUAL point. The thing I was debating Helldritch on? The thing you admitted you didn't read and just skimmed?

You have now twice confirmed that you disagreed with my point. So, now I'll likely get an apology from you for all the accusations of twisting your words and trying to interpret that which needs no interpretation. Or more than likely I'll be accused of bad faith arguing and twisting your words again, as per normal.

So are you of the opinion that an ideal can't be used along with alignment for a person who wants to play with both?

That is generally what someone means when they say "this is one thing".

If your moral and ethical framework (the thing ideals relate to) is tied around the idea of being a free spirit and no one telling you how to live your life, then the very idea of a lawful society or organization that tells you how to live your life, would be incompatibly. Remember, Lawful characters (in theory) believe in order and structure of society, which means you would believe in someone telling you how to live your life.... the exact opposite of the ideal.

Would I tell a player they can't write it down? No. Because I tell them they don't need to write down alignment at all. It is a non-factor at my table, so if they had some off-beat way to twist this into someone connecting, I'm not going to shut them down, but to my eye they look about as compatible as Cesium and Water.

It's not a stand alone ideal. None of them are. You'd need a paragraph to a page for an ideal to be stand alone, and it would then well define your character if you chose it, which is probably why they are left so vague. Vague is good. You can expound on what the ideal means to your character both with or without alignment. Regardless of your personal belief here, alignment can in fact be an aid to that.

You are both right and wrong.

Firstly, you are wrong because Ideals are not left vague. We need to keep shutting this down because it is seriously hampering discussion. Open your PHB to the backgrounds. All of those ideals? Those are EXAMPLES. And yes, examples are left vague, sort of like a writing prompt. We need to make this clear, because this is a root cause of a lot of confusion it seems. Those are examples, nothing more.

But, you are also right. If you want to fully explain and define an ideal, you need a lot more than a single sentence. You expound upon them, flesh them out to be specific to your character. That is generally why I've found people tie ideals to specific things in their backstories, or give examples. They expound on them, and keep that in mind, but they don't need to write down every single word. The written sentence is the core of the idea, the kernel the rest of it grew from.

And, sure, alignment can aid in that... but I find that "are you a good person or a bad person" combined with "do you follow the rules" to be such a basic level thought that it really doesn't aid in a significant way.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Ok. Let's assume general campaign. I'd go lawful good and paladin. Then, I would probably chose noble and I would either roll or chose TIBF. If it were in my moded Greyhawk campaign, then I would have chosen national TIBF before my background.

And why lawful good ? Because this is the closest to my own mindset. I am Canadian and from Québec afterall.

So, you define yourself as lawful good.

Did you gain traits like an appreciation for the law after you read a DnD book for the first time and saw "Lawful Good" on the page? Or, more likely, did you see the description of Lawful Good and think "Huh, that sounds like me?"

Because, the point I am driving towards is that "Lawful Good" is a label applied after the character traits are chosen. It doesn't define you anymore than the word "green" defines grass. Grass is the same color, we call that color green. People who are "lawful good" were that way before we put the label "lawful good" on them.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Not @Helldritch, but if I had to answer this.
I'm usually DM, but I have a hankering to play someone Lawful Neutral. It's off the usual NG, CG, TN or CN path that many players choose. What I find helpful is to read look up the older editions on their write-ups of LN and just pick at the ideas therein and begin to to build a character from there. Is there a specific code he is following? What made him Lawful? Was he always? Will he change? What would make his overall morale compass shift? Can anyone make him betray his code temporarily? The same with the Neutral aspect.
I won't always start with Alignment, sometimes I may use Age as a starting point, or Sex or Purpose (Ideals/Bonds) or a Flaw or a Class Concept...etc

In your post to me you spoke about the alignment box - I tend to think of that box as rather broad. Not broad in a way that it becomes useless but broad in that it encompasses many available options or view points, so wealthy in use.

The questions you want to ask? Those are in opposition to the traits you are envisioning. Those traits, seemingly, appear to be an adherence to the rules no matter what, even if those rules cause great harm. You want to explore what made a person that way, how can they change.

But, for most of us, we make that character first. We don't bother looking through older editions for alignments to pick apart for ideas. We say "Hey, remember Inspector Javert from Les Miserables? What if I did a character sort of like that? With such an intense and dispassionate mindset for law and order"

You say that the box is broad, and that may be the case, but it is still a box. You are trying to take human morality, ethics and idealogy and putting it in a box. And I find that entire exercise to be pointless. Going to the TV tropes page for Lawful Neutral, you find Les Miserables and Inspector Javert there. That play was written in 1862, almost a hundred years before DnD. Hades and Nemesis from GREEK MYHOLOGY are listed under it, from over 2,000 years ago.

We never needed the label. We could understand and make and play characters with that mind set from before DnD existed. But what I have seen is that people sometimes stop asking "how would my character respond to this situation?" and instead ask "what is the Lawful Good response to this situation?" They don't think about the nuances of how ideals and morality can interact or conflict, they take a label and slap it on and then start just assuming that label is all encompassing.

A Lawful Good character, in my experience, would never bend the law to return property taken by the police. They see "Lawful" and the buck stops there. A character who beleives in the rule of law and the righteousness of the Law... does. Because the player can fully appreciate that the Law is good and important, while still seeing its flaws. And yes, I have seen people treat alignment like a straitjacket and yes I know that it isn't a straitjacket by default. I get that. But, once I removed the need for alignment, once I just let people decide if they wanted it or not, with no limits. 90% of all my players just wrote "good" on their sheet.

And do they need to write more? They just wanted to acknowledge that their character wasn't a sadist, and that was that. The rest came through actually exploring real ideals. Things and questions beyond "is the law important" and into territories that can't be so easily defined by a box. Like how you should approach life, if your greatest desire is to be a servant to someone else.

 

[Helldritch]

So, you define yourself as lawful good.

Did you gain traits like an appreciation for the law after you read a DnD book for the first time and saw "Lawful Good" on the page? Or, more likely, did you see the description of Lawful Good and think "Huh, that sounds like me?"

Because, the point I am driving towards is that "Lawful Good" is a label applied after the character traits are chosen. It doesn't define you anymore than the word "green" defines grass. Grass is the same color, we call that color green. People who are "lawful good" were that way before we put the label "lawful good" on them.

This is the description that I read that best fits me. But it is not an absolute as we have pointed out. This is what I strive for. Not what I am every seconds of my life.

 

[AnotherGuy]

The questions you want to ask? Those are in opposition to the traits you are envisioning. Those traits, seemingly, appear to be an adherence to the rules no matter what, even if those rules cause great harm. You want to explore what made a person that way, how can they change.

But, for most of us, we make that character first. We don't bother looking through older editions for alignments to pick apart for ideas. We say "Hey, remember Inspector Javert from Les Miserables? What if I did a character sort of like that? With such an intense and dispassionate mindset for law and order"

I'm particularly looking at GoT's Stannis Baratheon as the example of Lawful Neutral.

EDIT: I count myself fortunate enough to have those older editions to read through.

Going to the TV tropes page for Lawful Neutral, you find Les Miserables and Inspector Javert there. That play was written in 1862, almost a hundred years before DnD. Hades and Nemesis from GREEK MYHOLOGY are listed under it, from over 2,000 years ago. We never needed the label. We could understand and make and play characters with that mind set from before DnD existed.

I'm not answering the question of 'Does one need Alignment?'
One clearly does not.

But what I have seen is that people sometimes stop asking "how would my character respond to this situation?" and instead ask "what is the Lawful Good response to this situation?" They don't think about the nuances of how ideals and morality can interact or conflict, they take a label and slap it on and then start just assuming that label is all encompassing.

If I have understood you clearly - you're saying that if there were no alignment players would likely look to their IBFT and have to think how the situation would interact or conflict with them, and thus perhaps be more engaging with the fiction?
I'm not going to disagree with you here. I'm also not saying this is always the case with every player though but I do think for the majority of players (just my opinion) this point has merit.

A Lawful Good character, in my experience, would never bend the law to return property taken by the police. They see "Lawful" and the buck stops there. A character who beleives in the rule of law and the righteousness of the Law... does. Because the player can fully appreciate that the Law is good and important, while still seeing its flaws. And yes, I have seen people treat alignment like a straitjacket and yes I know that it isn't a straitjacket by default. I get that. But, once I removed the need for alignment, once I just let people decide if they wanted it or not, with no limits. 90% of all my players just wrote "good" on their sheet.

And yet there were Lawful people who had sided with Stannis, with the Lanisters and with the Targaryen Queen. If a table views Alignment as a straitjacket, then I'd agree with you, it would be best they did not use it.

 

[FrozenNorth]

And yet there were Lawful people who had sided with Stannis, with the Lanisters and with the Targaryen Queen. If a table views Alignment as a straitjacket, then I'd agree with you, it would be best they did not use it.

I agree with 90% of what you said, so of course, I’m going to pick at the 10% I disagree with.

There weren’t ANY Lawful people who sided with Stannis, or the Lannisters or the Targaryans. Alignment doesn’t exist in Game of Thrones.

This is assigning an alignment to fictional characters, then after the fact, suggesting that the fact that they don’t act like alignment is a straitjacket is evidence that alignment isn’t a straitjacket.

 

[Oofta]

Imagine you were a player for a moment.

And let's avoid "well, they said they wanted an all evil campaign, so I picked evil"

Average campaign. What would cause you to pick the alignment you end up picking for your character?

Funny thing is, there are times when I pick an alignment that I am not because I want to stretch a bit.

For example, I had a lot of fun playing a CN barbarian. Very mercenary, didn't take any pleasure in hurting people but a good bar fight is called "Thursday night". He was also brutally honest because he didn't give a #### what people thought and viewed lying and subterfuge as a sign of weakness. I played a N wizard who really was just out for himself but still had limits on how far he'd go to achieve those goals.

While I don't care to play evil PCs, other than that the only alignment I haven't played is LN ... I just can't get into the head space. Which, for me is part of what playing different alignments is about. It's trying to view the world as someone else would see it. I like to think of myself as NG (or at least that would be my go-to alignment for a PC based on my views), so approaching the world and trying to solve things from a different perspective is a way to try to gain empathy for other people's view of the world.

Of course the real answer to how I decide who a PC is starts with a mini. As I'm painting I need to think about who the mini represents and things go from there.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Alignment doesn’t exist in Game of Thrones.

Then my question is for you to define alignment as you see it?

 

[Desdichado]

So don't play with it.

Much like hit points. The purpose if it very easy, though. It's simply a tool to aid people in playing their characters.

There are a lot of alignment threads, yes.

This is simply untrue. There are a lot of players who are not as creative as you are, and who struggle with ways to play their characters. I've watched them use alignment as the tool it was intended to be and it aided them in their roleplay. It's very helpful to them.

And this has never been true in the history of the game. Yes, a few bad DMs used it that way, but it has never been the purpose of alignment to control bad player behavior. What's more, if you take alignment away, guess what. A bad player is still going to engage in bad behavior. It's exceedingly stupid for someone to try and control a bad player with alignment. You just get rid of the player if he's that much of a disruption.

Again, since it isn't a tool for policing bad player behavior, wouldn't work if you tried it, and the bad players would still be bad without alignment, no I can't see it.

It's in literally every book. Characters in books have personalities and those personalities can be assigned an alignment. Apparently 4e had cosmic sides for alignment, so that edition matched Moorcock, but none of the others really did. Oh, there was a cosmic struggle with demons, devils, etc., but alignment on an individual level has been personality since at least 1e, maybe basic.

This I agree with. I only ever saw a handful of alignment arguments at games, and with I think one exception, they were all about paladins.

You need to replace "is so problematic" with "was so problematic." Alignment has had no teeth with paladins for years now.

Differences of opinion, yes. Mostly between those who disagree with the DMG and the authority it gives to the DM, and the DM himself.

You should give alignment another look. 5e has diluted it so much that it really isn't more than a minor tool to aid in roleplay. There are no mechanics other than a small handful of artifacts that use it, and no mechanism for the DM to do anything with the players over it.

Again, then don't use it. Personally, I leave it up to my players if they want to use alignment and to what degree. I don't even bother looking at it on their sheets. My world reacts to their actions, not a few letters on a sheet of paper. The primary use I have for alignment is help playing NPCs.

Absolutely!!

Shame! Shame! Shame! Shame!

Uh. Well, thanks for the advice to not use alignment, when the whole point of my "alignment manifesto" is to state that I don't and why. That's helpful advice.

Other than that, I think we're talking about different things with regards to alignment historically. As I said, I'm surprised it survived the Holmes set, in some ways. In fact, the Holmes set could arguably be seen as a watershed moment in "breaking" alignment; in the original OD&D, alignment seems to have been little more than a team jersey to indicate which "side" you were on. The OD&D Greyhawk supplement had the first admonition to "play" your alignment, although it offered little advice on what that was supposed to mean, other than putting the interpretation in the hands of the referee. The Holmes set is the first place that talked about "codes" associated with alignment, and it being a predictor of character behavior. AD&D, on the other hand, took a stance that was more like alignment being a descriptor rather than predictor. And because both were in print at the same time, at a time when most peoples actual gaming at the table was probably a mishmash of various D&D rules-sets, and they slipped easily between D&D and AD&D, often without necessarily even knowing, understanding, or caring, about the differences between them, it's not surprising that the role alignment was supposed to play in the game was interpreted all kinds of different ways due to these conflicting descriptions of what it meant and what it was supposed to be for, depending on which interpretation they latched on to for whatever reason.

And I get it; your experience with alignment is different than mine. I already addressed that; just saying so certainly isn't going to change my mind that my common experiences aren't... well, common. And, if your description about 5e alignment is correct, which seems to make sense given that it follows logically from 4e's position on alignment, then why would I take another look at it? That presumes that alignment brings something to the table that's of value, and I've already been quite clear that I've never once seen that it does. No alignment at all is better than alignment that causes me headaches, but no alignment at all is still better than alignment that doesn't cause me headaches, but also offers me nothing that I value at the game.

 

[Maxperson]

Except.... THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I SAID YOU SAID.

That the ideal (which I was claiming was self-evidently chaotic) was not, sort of like how you phrased it here " It was a no, because while the ideal LEANS chaotic, is is not actually chaotic. "

My point, was that despite Helldritch claiming otherwise, most ideals do not need an alignment stinger on the end to tell us what sort of alignment they would fall under. They do not need to have their alignment attached to the end to prevent confusion. They are self-evident. This ideal "Independence. I am a free spirit—no one tells me what to do." is chaotic. You do not need to write "chaotic" at the end of it, to clarify that it is chaotic. It is self-evident. Unlike Helldritch's examples, you can't write "lawful" at the end and get a different ideal.

You jumped in, seemingly to a conversation you were not following closely enough to have your points straight, and agreed with the most surface level point (do we need chaotic here?), but your reasoning for agreeing with that point was because it can be either or, lawful or chaotic. Which was the point I was arguing was FALSE.

And, you can't keep accusing me of twisting your words, when you are LITERALLY saying that you are clarifying... by saying exactly what I said you said. You said that the idea might lean chaotic, but it could go either way. That was the point I was disproving.

Okay. Then we only partially agree. We agree that no tags are necessary, but not why. You think(and are wrong about) that the ideals are self-evidently only possibly one alignment. You failed to disprove that they could go either way, by the way, because we can easily and validly place them into other alignments. Since we can do that, then you cannot be correct in your position.

However, I did say very clearly that the tag was not necessary, so when you said, "So you're saying that they are required." you were twisting my words badly. There is no other way to look at your statement. It was blatant twisting to say that I was saying the opposite of what I said and backed up with my explanation that followed.

RIGHT! See, you are admitting the thing. You know, the thing I said that you said. That disagreed with my ACTUAL point. The thing I was debating Helldritch on? The thing you admitted you didn't read and just skimmed?

You have now twice confirmed that you disagreed with my point. So, now I'll likely get an apology from you for all the accusations of twisting your words and trying to interpret that which needs no interpretation. Or more than likely I'll be accused of bad faith arguing and twisting your words again, as per normal.

Well, no. First, we did partially agree. We agree that no tag is necessary. And you did in fact twist my words when you said, "So you're saying that they are necessary." My accusations that you twisted what I said are absolutely true. You twisted my words so hard you had them saying the opposite of what I said and meant.

That is generally what someone means when they say "this is one thing".

If your moral and ethical framework (the thing ideals relate to) is tied around the idea of being a free spirit and no one telling you how to live your life, then the very idea of a lawful society or organization that tells you how to live your life, would be incompatibly. Remember, Lawful characters (in theory) believe in order and structure of society, which means you would believe in someone telling you how to live your life.... the exact opposite of the ideal.

Except that lawful has other meanings than structured society. A hermit can be lawful. He can live a well ordered life with a strict code of honor and ethics, while still being a free spirit and not listening to others. They are not incompatible at all. The ideal you mentioned only strongly leans chaotic. Chaotic is not the only alignment it could possibly fall under.

You are both right and wrong.

Firstly, you are wrong because Ideals are not left vague. We need to keep shutting this down because it is seriously hampering discussion. Open your PHB to the backgrounds. All of those ideals? Those are EXAMPLES. And yes, examples are left vague, sort of like a writing prompt. We need to make this clear, because this is a root cause of a lot of confusion it seems. Those are examples, nothing more.

The ideal is a single word. It doesn't get any more vague than that. Here's the first ideal from Acolyte.

"Tradition. The ancient traditions of worship and sacrifice must be preserved and upheld. (Lawful)."

So you can see that as a single word, there's no way to tell what alignment it falls in. There are lawful traditions, chaotic traditions and neutral traditions. The example that follows isn't even always lawful, just heavily so. If the ancient tradition is one of chaos, it's not a lawful act to uphold and preserve it.

But, you are also right. If you want to fully explain and define an ideal, you need a lot more than a single sentence. You expound upon them, flesh them out to be specific to your character. That is generally why I've found people tie ideals to specific things in their backstories, or give examples. They expound on them, and keep that in mind, but they don't need to write down every single word. The written sentence is the core of the idea, the kernel the rest of it grew from.

If you want ANY decent explanation that would fall under a specific alignment you have to have more than a single sentence. I mean, you are literally claiming that a single word isn't a vague ideal.

And, sure, alignment can aid in that... but I find that "are you a good person or a bad person" combined with "do you follow the rules" to be such a basic level thought that it really doesn't aid in a significant way.

Which is fine. It doesn't have to aid you in a significant way. It does in fact aid others in a significant way, though. I've seen it many times. The problem is not whether alignment aids you significantly or even at all. It's that you guys want to take away a tool that significantly aids others that are not where you are creatively.