Alignment and Party Dynamics

[Doug McCrae]

if your friends and the DM don't want you to play a Chaotic Evil assassin then maybe you shouldn't

Maybe? You definitely shouldn't.

 

[ptolemy18]

I would say your characterization is actually very atypical of 1e play.

I don't know what Gary Gygax's feelings are about it, but over half the D&D games I've been in (although not the most recent six-year D&D3.x campaign I played in) have been filled with people playing "evil" or at least "pragmatically evil" characters. In my experience, PLENTY of gamers want to break stuff, rob people, kill things, get away from moral restrictions. Look at the typical behavior of the gaming group in "Knights of the Dinner Table" -- that's pure D&D.

Now is someone gonna come along and say "No, this is bad gaming, stop it?" I dunno if that would accomplish anything. I think that if people are being jerks OOC and preying on newbies and PKing newbies and so on, then obviously it's bad. BUT if the whole group wants to play an evil game, or is cool with there being inter-party conflict, then it's totally fine. And in my experience lots of people want to play evil games, or at least what I would consider evil -- bearing in mind that I see "killing orc prisoners" as evil. If you're going to do ruthless things, just frickin' embrace the evil... I despise "the end justifies the means" in RPGs because it reminds me of everything I hate in real life.

 

[ptolemy18]

Maybe? You definitely shouldn't.

D&D isn't about creating the "ideal team to face the challenges." It's about people playing the characters they want to play.

Obviously a nice gamer doesn't want to make obnoxious character choices just for the heck of it, but this is up to each individual gamer and group to decide. Personally, if I am good friends OOC with someone, then if they want to play a character who doesn't get along with my character, that's totally cool. It's all about whether people at cool with it OOC. As long as that is the case, in-character struggles are fine, in fact, they can be very fun, as long as no one is getting mad OOC.

 

[ptolemy18]

I dislike alignment as a cosmological force that defines planes and results in creatures with detectable alignment tags.

It's not something I absolutely love, but I like it because it is something unique to D&D. For ambiguous morality I can play pretty much any other RPG in existence.

 

[FourthBear]

It's not something I absolutely love, but I like it because it is something unique to D&D. For ambiguous morality I can play pretty much any other RPG in existence.

To me, the issue of moral ambiguity isn't really the issue. I love playing D&D with black-and-white hats, clear divisions between Good and Evil. I stopped paying attention to alignment in D&D ages ago, except when used by another DM. The vast majority of my campaigns center around heroic bands of characters facing off against villains that are clearly Evil and who Must Be Stopped. I just dislike the results of detectable, objective alignment in the game world. It does all kinds of crazy things when I try to apply it to the game world at large.

I don't oppose alignment in Planescape, where it's a central part of the campaign. I do think that it feels extraneous and tacked on the vast majority of other D&D settings (the Realms, Krynn, Eberron, Spelljammer, Al Qadim, you name it). Most campaigns generated for D&D even in 1e-3.5e don't really apply alignment as a central concept, except in a dusultory way. This indicates to me that it shouldn't be in core D&D.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Hypothetical question 1)

You, ptolemy18, wish to play an evil PC. All the other players want it to be a non-evil game, ie no evil PCs. What do you do?

Hypothetical question 2)

Same as above but the DM feels the same way as the other players.

 

[Scribble]

I'm garnering ideas for a new campaign.. One of the ideas is to sort of use the allegiances system in PHB II in place of Alignment. I hope Wizards does something similar.

That way you have a more (in my opinion) realistic way of character motivation...

 

[cthulhu_duck]

The possibility of alignment being optional is probably the most exciting thing I've heard about 4th edition. In my opinion the real reason they might be doing this is that it's impossible to determine alignment since everyone has different views on what good and evil are.

And I see this as another "We can't fix this set of rules, so let's just throw them out" decision.

I feel that the rules could state clearly what good and evil deeds are. What lawful and chaotic deeds are. If you play alignment as "Alignment is determined from your actions" as opposed to "Alignment is your intention, actions don't matter so much" then alignment can be made to work.

The problems I see are mostly when someone declares their character as one of those aspects - good, evil, lawful or chaotic, and then plays something completely different. They insist that their alignment is however what they have written down, typically because of some game rule that requires their character to be of that alignment, and if their alignment isn't that, it impacts their enjoyment of the game (never mind the fact that they aren't playing the way they're supposed to).

Removing alignment restrictions I don't see as a bad thing (I'm happy with differing alignments for Paladins/Holy Warriors, and Clerics whose alignment doesn't need to be tied to that of their god) - but the rumoured removing of alignment entirely worries me.

 

[WyzardWhately]

Maybe neither the character's intentions or actions should have much to do with the alignment as written down on the sheet. Imagine, if you will, the great Powers of Law and Chaos, Good and Evil. They sit across from each other at the great gaming-table of the gods. They move their pawns about the surface of the worlds, and sometimes between the worlds. Each one has a great many pawns indeed.

Now. Focus on an individual Pawn. Let's say a pawn of the power of chaos and good. That individual pawn need be described in no way as either chaotic or good. He could be an oppressive commissar who cares for nothing but the letter of his iron-fisted code of law. But, in his ultimate destiny, he will end up serving the cause of chaos and good. Perhaps because his excessive actions drive the people to revolt, perhaps because he is so blinded by his creed that he ignores the insurgents in his own household. In any case, he is a pawn of the powers of good and chaos, and he serves their whims regardless of what he might think or intend. But when he levels up, becoming another of fate's darlings in the form of increased ability to cheat death and force his desires upon the world, it's Chaos and Good that have made that investment in him.

The player would write 'chaotic good' on his sheet, and if anyone hit him with a Lawful weapon he'd get the shock of his life when its magic harmed him.

I experimented with this idea a couple times.

 

[Hussar]

Honestly, I'd rather go back to the old Basic/Expert single axis alignment. Lawful (as expressed as an impulse towards organization) and Chaotic works pretty well for describing most actions. If you remove the very loaded terms of good and evil from the mix, a lot of alignment problems go away.