D&D 5E A different take on Alignment

[Flamestrike]

Also, the alignment of a PC affects the DC of Charisma checks s/he makes. Lawful PCs get lower DCs while chaotic PCs get higher ones.

Why?

Why are Captain Jack Sparrow or Deadpool (CN) effectively less charismatic than Judge Dredd or Stannis Barratheon (LN)?

If anything, people are drawn to wild cards, bad boys, rogues and scoundrels.

 

[Hriston]

Why?

Why are Captain Jack Sparrow or Deadpool (CN) effectively less charismatic than Judge Dredd or Stannis Barratheon (LN)?

If anything, people are drawn to wild cards, bad boys, rogues and scoundrels.

I wouldn't say less charismatic, especially with all the ways Charisma is used in the game, but less socially effective, yes. That's because being lawful is about working within groups and forming group cohesion and consensus whereas being chaotic is ultimately about eschewing all that. At least that's my take. Also, I'm not at all familiar with the characters you mentioned except Sparrow, and I can't remember enough of what he did in those movies to assign a particular alignment to him.

 

[payn]

That’s it!

replace the alignment system with the “Star Trek Captain” system.

Im a sisko.

 

[Manbearcat]

My take on alignment is different still:

Deeply examined, high resolution Alignment is actively unhelpful at facilitating functional play where characters can emerge and evolve through play.

What helps functional play where characters emerge and evolve through play?

1) State something pithy about a character (a principle, an orientation toward a person or place):

“x’s bold, recklessness is likely to get them into trouble and I’ll have to get them out if it.”

“I will endanger myself to protect innocents.”

2) GM frames conflicts with adversaries and obstacles to test these ideas. Maybe they’re true. Maybe they’re not. Maybe x’s bold, recklessness allows them to protect an innocent and the PC reorients themselves after that. Maybe x’s bold, recklessness endangers innocents and the PC has to choose between helping their friend and protecting an innocent.

etc.

That works to produce ease-of-play with interesting characters in a way that “finished product PCs straight-jacketed by granular ethos” does not. And it doesn’t spark 40 years of meta examination and interrogation (both internally for the players and externally where a GM/other player objects to the output of a decision-point and acrimony ensues).

 

[payn]

And it doesn’t spark 40 years of meta examination and interrogation (both internally for the players and externally where a GM/other player objects to the output of a decision-point and acrimony ensues).

What, and miss all the fun?

 

[Aldarc]

For the longest time, I was an ardent supporter of just three: good, neutral, and evil. I felt, and still feel, that there is so much ambiguity and grey areas there that no one is ever truly just lawful good or chaotic good. It depends on mood and scenario, and people shift through that spectrum all the time. So I preferred general larger umbrellas of general moral leanings.

But I have since changed. Even with good/neutral/evil, it still really doesn't capture things well. People tend to play their PCs with their own moral influences anyway, regardless of the alignment on the sheet. And people who are disruptive will still say "I'm just playing my evil character in accordance with their alignment!" And then it still doesn't address how certain mundane humanoids are inherently "evil" when they might not be.

So I've changed more to Moorcock, B/X version of law/neutrality/chaos. Law/neutrality/chaos are all cosmic influences that have touched the creature in some way on an individual level. Are you lawful? That means you have been influenced by forces of law (which include most traits we define as "good", but how you implement those good behaviors is up to you (greater good, follow rules, work outside the rules as long as the bigger society benefits, etc). And if you're touched by chaos, you tend to want to sow discord and confusion. You want to break down societies norms and rules for the sole benefit of your enjoyment.

That way, you can have a tribe of orcs touched by chaotic cosmic forces, but that doesn't mean all orcs are chaotic or evil. it depends on what cosmic forces have had the influence on you and/or your society.

Framing alignment in terms of Law vs. Chaos, IMO, actually highlights the moral question of good/evil (as a result of its absence). Something may support the forces of Law, but is it good? B/X Alignment doesn't answer, and it's up to the players to determine that moral quandary themselves rather than have the game supply its own answers as "Good" or "Evil."

 

[Coroc]

So, I think part of the problem with alignment is thinking about it in terms of 9 distinct alignments, rather than 2 spectrums with 3 broad sectors each.

So, what if instead of having a character that is Chaotic Good (the best alignment), you have a character who is Chaotic, and who is Good.

To be more specific, “Chaotic Good” has no definition, but “Chaotic” and “Good” do, completely independent of eachother.

You could also define 3 types of neutrality, if you want, for added depth. Ie, Balance-Oriented, Indifferent, and Ambiguous.

Yea and with the new ideas like : "No mob race is inherently evil, no panic of my orc he just wants to play" it gets more comlicated.
Tbh with the new approach, the alignment system has to go for good, it does not work out anymore.

Over the editions there were such things like alignment language (glad that this one is gone), damage to certain alignment only spells, and damage of alignment type, (this stuff i miss a bit in 5e, would it be so bad if e.g. undead were susceptable to light damage hurt by positive and healed by negative energy?)

A PC certainly is more than what could be pressed into an alignment, to address your idea directly, i run it so, that your (PC) alignment (or that of a more complex mob) is only a general direction, but may change by extreme actions (or malicious magic). In my games a paladin / cleric / druid may still fall .

 

[Coroc]

...

I do believe that Chaos is more conducive to Good than Law is, but both inevitably exist in systems and individuals which are dominated by one or the other. An anarchist society will be abused by the strong, charismatic, and unscrupulous, but so will a very rigidly structured society.
...

An anarchist society will be abused by definition aka default. If you introduce rules on how anarchic you may be at maximum then you introduce lawful. A lawful society will not prevent abuse by the strong by default, but might have much more safeguarding processes against it (working legislative judicative and executive e.g.)

But Anarcho-Socialism is a philosophy that makes the very strong argument that Chaos and Law are complimentary in terms stark and simple enough to easily grasp in the abstract. The trick is not to treat either as a maxim (no thanks, Kant), but rather treat both as useful tools on a case by case basis.

I always smile at people thinking "anarcho-socialism" something even classifying in working outside a fanatasy realm
First someone gotta pay for the fun, or you cannot be social withi nsociety
Second, think a minute about what implications anarchy being acceptable behaviour might have, e.g.: Yo go to the doctor with some life threatening injury, but the doctor is on the anarchic side today, and rather plays golf in the reception hall than treating his patients.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

My view is that much of the dispute/incoherence in relation to alignment comes from treating the good alignment as not necessarily good. This produces paradoxical convictions, like Doing such-and-such is not good but is what ought to be done.

I think that if the word good (and its opposite, evil) is taken literally in the alignment context then much of the problems go away. Good people are those who are committed to, and/or who pursue (alignment is an amorphous mix of purpose and deed), good things. In his PHB and DMG Gygax is (deliberately, I think) very inclusive here - he includes as good upholding rights, and pursuing valuable things like truth, life and beauty, and also pursuing the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

A bit late to the party on this one, but...a big problem with this is that "good" is what almost all people identify THEIR chosen values as.

It is "good" for a Catholic nun to recommend chastity instead of contraception, just as it is "good" for a Catholic nun to collect alms for the poor. It is "good" for a radical socialist to advocate the violent death of any and all individuals harboring anti-revolutionary sentiment, just as it is "good" for a radical socialist to advocate economic and social justice for the disenfranchised. It is "good" for the ca. 1350 AD Aztec to want regular human sacrifices to ensure that the moon does not consume the sun and end the world, just as it is "good" for that same Aztec to want sustainable farming practices in harmony with the land upon which they live.

It's not that "people are treating the good alignment as not necessarily good," but rather that humans pretty much always start off with the assumption that how they've structured and understood their values IS what "the good" is. Moreover, that any other structuring and understanding of "the good" is a distortion, duplication, or dilution thereof. It is EXTREMELY hard for most people to fully dissociate "the way I specifically choose to behave" from "the way all people should choose to behave."

Like, let's look at your example listed stuff. "Truth, life and beauty, and also pursuing the greatest happiness for the greatest number." That's pretty clearly Millsian utilitarianism: you have articulated that happiness is the utility standard by which morality should be judged, and strongly implied the existence of incommensurate "lower" and "higher" forms of happiness (e.g., no amount of the happiness that comes from sleeping really well can ever meaningfully compare to the happiness that comes from understanding universal truths or having seen sublime natural scenes, hence why you highlighted truth and beauty specifically.) But that's a fundamentally consequentialist ethic, and one committed to a specific standard: happiness. What if someone chose productivity as their standard? Or aesthetic beauty? You'd be down to a fundmental conflict over what "the good" means--something that has plagued philosophy basically forever. (Two and a half thousand years, bare minimum.)

That's the reason that you get people saying, "Hey. Maybe it'd be better if we just...tried not to do this whole 'good/evil' thing." Because nobody views themselves as being Evil--even many of the people history now views as its worst monsters. Did Stalin view himself as Evil when he purged the kulaks, and thus directly created famine conditions for millions of his own people? I doubt it; he almost certainly genuinely believed that he was fighting the enemies of the Party and the People, that he was fighting against those who championed injustice and oppression. Indeed, he might even argue that he was pursuing "the greatest happiness for the greatest number" by eliminating a (relatively) wealthy class that, with their wealth and resources redistributed, would lead to more people having essentially-equally-happy lives.

Note that I am not actually arguing that I don't believe in objective good--I do. The problem lies more in that most people will see themselves as Good no matter what they do, even if you DO give an explicit and highly detailed definition of what "Good" is. And if most people will see themselves as Good, when (presumably) many of them are actually objectively-Evil, how should we address that? For many, the answer is "stop focusing on the label Good/Evil, which will be interpreted separately, and instead classify based on what values a person actually expresses."

 

[pemerton]

@EzekielRaiden

I am familiar with debates in moral philosophy. I work as an academic philosopher and lawyer.

It's not correct to say (or imply) that truth, beauty and life are values only on a consequentialist account: they are values for nearly all theories of value. That was my point, that Gygax's definition of good includes all the main values of typical moral outlooks: Benthamite greatest good of the greatest number; human (or, as he put it, creature) rights; truth, beauty and life; self-actualisation.

If you want a game in which debates about which moral theory is really correct, then D&D's alignment system is pointless and will do nothing but get in your way, because player X will assert that such-and-such is good while player Y will disagree.

But if you are happy to put those debates to one side - which mostly means letting all the participants follow their moral common sense - then the alignment system can frame an interesting question, namely, about the relationship of particular means (ie law and chaos) to the ends of good.

This is what elves and dwarves (for instance): elves think that the dwarven penchant for tight-knit communities and rather rigid social hierarchies is a threat to the good, because of the tendency of such social arrangements to lead to the powerful pursuing their own selfish ends (and perhaps, also, those at the bottom feeling resentment and hence also pursuing selfish rather than good ends); whereas dwarves think that the lack of social organisation in elvish communities means that individuals do not get the support and social structure they need to achieve their own wellbeing and help bring about the wellbeing of others.

This actually makes sense of alignment conflict; whereas a mere preference for tight or loose social organisation does not, because the conflict can be entirely avoided by those of each preference just forming their own distinct communities! (This is also why Planescape doesn't make sense. Why should those in the Seven Heavens be bothered by those in Olympus, if they're all living well each in accordance with their preferred social arrangements?)

Now suppose a GM has read (let's say) Durkheim on Suicide, and has decided that the dwarves are right and the elves are wrong because loose social organisation leads to anomie and hence serious and widespread unhappiness. That would be an example of what I posted above, of "a particular game or campaign setting or whatever is set up so that this question about means is already answered". In that case, as I posted, alignment once again becomes pointless.

But just as, in FRPGing, we suspend other ordinary causal judgements, so I think it makes sense to suppose that we can suspend our ordinary judgements of social causation and hold the means-end question open. Which is quite different from a game that invites us to suspend our ordinary moral judgements and pretend that bad people are good. (That can also be done, but is quite a different and I think more demanding request for a game to make.)

I think a lot of discussion about alignment suffers from trying to relate alignment to questions in moral philosophy - which is absolutely hopeless, as is shown by the fact that no serious philosopher has ever used or taken up Gygax's categories - rather than asking what can alignment bring to the play of the game. The idea that it can be used to foreground a dispute about means to the end of goodness (understood quite capaciously, as I've said) is an attempt to answer that particular question.