D&D General Alignment experiment

[the Jester]

So if I, to pick an example far enough removed to not cause its own debate, have my character eat smooth peanut butter because I think it is right and good to eat smooth peanut butter and the DM feels it's clearly evil to eat non-crunchy and thus deems my character evil... then I don't think that's a fun situation at all.

This is an area where clear communication is very important. If a pc's powers rely on them holding to a moral path, I like to spell out what that path looks like so we're on the same page as much as possible. I have, for instance, lists of what various cultures in my campaign hold as vices and virtues, and similar lists for many of the religions in my game. If the holy order tells your paladin that torture is forbidden, well, you can't say you weren't warned if torturing someone gets you in hot (spiritual) weather.

 

[Steampunkette]

But players aren't actors performing other people's stories.

They're the ones making the decisions for their characters, which the DM is sitting in moral judgement of.

So if I, to pick an example far enough removed to not cause its own debate, have my character eat smooth peanut butter because I think it is right and good to eat smooth peanut butter and the DM feels it's clearly evil to eat non-crunchy and thus deems my character evil... then I don't think that's a fun situation at all.

Edit: also, I NEVER said anything about a value judgement on the technical skills of playing the game. It's always been about the DM sitting in moral judgement.

... That's how the game has -always- been played.

Players have their characters act how they think they should, DM decides whether it fits within their alignment and then deals with the result of any miss-match.

Back in the early editions you'd get XP penalties for going outside your (Proscriptive) alignment. Later it just became more common to change a character's alignment to better reflect how they're being played.

3rd edition even had morality books to teach players and DMs how good and evil worked so people would be on the same page.

But if your morality is so out of whack with your DM's morality that what you think is good is his idea of evil then holy crap, friend, get away from that DM!

 

[Vaalingrade]

... That's how the game has -always- been played.

Players have their characters act how they think they should, DM decides whether it fits within their alignment and then deals with the result of any miss-match.

Back in the early editions you'd get XP penalties for going outside your (Proscriptive) alignment. Later it just became more common to change a character's alignment to better reflect how they're being played.

That's the problem. That's why I hate it.

3rd edition even had morality books to teach players and DMs how good and evil worked so people would be on the same page.

Things like lying, having piercings and being fat, but NOT torturing someone into Goodness, being a living plague that only hurts people you hate or being undead with the serial numbers filed off.

The BoXDs were the worst 3e books even ahead of Savage Species for a reason.

But if your morality is so out of whack with your DM's morality that what you think is good is his idea of evil then holy crap, friend, get away from that DM!

People have different views on morality. If we could just leave it out of game entirely, it would be a shining city on a hill of gaming and enjoyment. I game with a diverse group and there's very little difference between 'immoral', 'amoral' and 'evil' in a lot of peoples' reckoning.

I've got a buddy who is maximum Gygax in terms of how to treat 'evil' monsters. We get along fine when he runs games because he has neither the inclination nor the mechanical backing to punish me for not murdering orcs or killing villains I convert to make sure they can't backslide. As much as it pains him, I still took over that kobold settlement and converted them to a medieval Army Corps of Engineers.

On the flipside, I similarly don't have a stick to beat him with when he plays a guy who shows no mercy to his enemies even if I personally find it distasteful. Not that I'd use it if I was given one.

 

[Maxperson]

The BoXDs were the worst 3e books even ahead of Savage Species for a reason.

They were really bad, but the absolute worst was the Magic of Incarnum. I found a few tidbits to use in the other books, but not one shred of use from Incarnum.

 

[Fenris-77]

This thread is why alignment isn't a thing any more. Too much judgment, not enough love,

 

[Vaalingrade]

They were really bad, but the absolute worst was the Magic of Incarnum. I found a few tidbits to use in the other books, but not one shred of use from Incarnum.

Eh, Incarnum had solid ideas with poor execution and WAY too much insistence that everything be blue themed for some reason.

The BoXDs took a bad idea and digivolved it to Ultimate with stunningly myopic flavor and design piled on by the desperation to appeal to the edgelord who wanted 'Mature' content with just disgusting stuff like the unicorn horn and the belt that let you strap children to yourself.

The closest runner up IME was Tome of Magic purely for introducing a class that gets less capable as it levels as a Now Shut Up to people who wanted a skill caster.

 

[Steampunkette]

The idea that judgement and interpersonal conflict over opinions of morality and other weighty topics are things to always be avoided are heartbreaking to me.

This -very- conversation sparked a long discussion, last night, over Discord while playing Diablo 2 wherein my husband and I talked about morality, alignment, philosophy, and how those things do or don't line up around the gaming table. As an example he brought up a Curse of Strahd game I played in where we went to Van Richten's Tower. I was playing a Vistani character and Van Richten's Tiger wanted to do it's thing.

The party managed to -subdue- the creature, rather than kill it. But any time it saw my character or another Vistani it started getting bloodthirsty and aggressive, so my character killed it, on the grounds that it was literally trained to murder Vistani and we had no way to ensure the Vistani would be safe while it lived.

One of the other party members got SO UPSET about how "Evil" I was being in the moment that they quit the game after nearly an hour of declaring that killing a "Defenseless" Animal was the height of immorality. Killing an animal that had been trained to perform an ethnic cleansing was evil because -maybe- it could be reformed at some point in the future by someone who wasn't us 'cause we had to deal with Strahd's BS. And the danger it posed within that unspecified period of time in the hands of someone who might not be able to control it perfectly was worthwhile to keep an animal alive no matter how many people might be killed.

We talked about that and various other examples of morality in gaming for about an hour and a half and hadn't really "Resolved" the conversation when we shrugged, turned off our computers, and cuddled on the couch watching Beastmaster 3: The Eye of Braxus before heading to bed for further cuddling and sleep.

To be clear: He disagrees with me. He thinks alignment should just be an idea of what your character "Should Be" or what you're aiming at, and the DM changing your character's alignment to better represent who your character is based on your actions kind of sucks since it no longer gives a target to aim at, but a label of current position. I'm a descriptive alignment person, he's an ideal alignment person.

 

[Voadam]

The idea that judgement and interpersonal conflict over opinions of morality and other weighty topics are things to always be avoided are heartbreaking to me.

I don't think the idea is that these are things to always be avoided, I think the general idea is that tying mechanical game penalties to not playing a certain way is generally a bad idea. Separately some issues are so hot button for specific people that it is either avoid them or expect it to blow up things.

You can have cool morality discussions and arguments in character or out of character with lots of people about killing genocide animals, but attaching xp penalties to picking one side of the argument or the other sets up dynamics and pressures to either do things that one specific way or take a mechanical hit.

For the classic case of the paladin it is particularly galling to think you are playing heroic good and have someone judge your actions as not so in a way you disagree with, and then they hit you with a loss of powers to represent that you are wrong on morality to the point that heavenly forces reject you. If you want to play a moral hero it is annoying to have your choice be to conform your play to a view of morality you disagree with or be penalized for playing your view of a heroic character.

Some find that the tough external moral standard that is hard to meet and the risk of falling are the cool parts of the paladin concept, and some like playing through a falling scenario or falling and redemption scenario that is backed up by mechanics, but for many it leads to unpleasant dynamics for D&D play.

As for people finding some things unacceptable to the point of quitting a game, while some issues are more likely to be hot button issues than others and should be approached with that in mind, it is going to be an individual and context specific thing in general.

 

[Steampunkette]

I certainly agree, @Voadam, that cutting the mechanical penalties was pretty smart on the part of WotC. I always thought it was heavy handed Proscription rather than Description, which is how I've always played alignment. Even as a child.

And the morality disagreement is what I actually -liked- about the BoVD and BoED. They gave us clear rules on what was good and evil, creating a foundation that everyone at the table could understand. Yeah, it was weird that they made a lot of the evil magic items into nipple-piercings or whatever for maximum shock value... but the actual discussion of good and evil acts made for an interesting read on what WotC considered moral or immoral.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I don't feel like the BoXDs made any concrete statements -at all-.

They contained some essays by one guy trying desperately to explain why a couple of things were evil without any real exploration and Just So explanations (Undead are evil because they are powered by entirely neutral negative energy... but positive energy coming into the world isn't good for... look we just want undead to be Evil, okay?), implied that a lot of deviation from the norm is evil because evil is into feeding, starvation, bod mods, bugs and... cancer (ugh) without actually saying they're evil and then turning to the BoED, they straight up take everything they call evil directly besides lying (!!!) and make it good by saying it only targets evil people - poison, disease (did you know that going to work with a cold is evil?), brainwashing (which D&D weirdly never ever calls out as evil), torture, and undead -- but especially murder (serial killers are okay if they pick the right targets. Someone on the team watches Dexter and reads Punisher).

I do appreciate that being a Furry is EXPLICTLY Good though. And that succubi get a pass from being murdered in their bed if they love each other. Very progressive of WoTC.