Alignment - is it any good?

[Psion]

I don't think that is completely correct - the problem is the alignment prescriptions tied into character classes.

If you read the rest of the post you are responding to, you will see that I stated that I regard this as a flaw in class design, not alignment per se.

Funny how the two examples you pick out are the two classes from 3e that I consider too painfully specific in other ways as well.

 

[Lockridge]

Alignment is tricky isn't it?

One of the main designers/authors of 3E D&D is Monte Cook. I find it interesting that he kept alignment while in a corporate environment (WOTC) but, when he created his own system (Arcana Evolved), he threw alignment out the window and created a system that still works.

My own opinion is that if D&D is role-play, then alignment takes the point of view of preventing characters from changing. In a real world, people change. If we are just doing a one-shot then having a non-changing alignment might work but over the course of a game campaign which can last many years: a person/character changes.

Alignment should either be disregarded or viewed as a snap-shot in time only which can change (and should change without penalty - clerics and paladins being an exception but mainly because they are classes created in an alignment-based rules system).

Alignment gets in the way of role play because various people(players) have differing views of what actions a person with a certain alignment might take. We've all seen the argument between DM and PCs or PCs and PCs over "what your character would do". This slows down the game. Even if the character acts out of alignment - it is just human. People do this sort of thing.

 

[pawsplay]

Alignment is great for games which feature alignment. It can be useful for storytelling. It can also hamstring your games if it's not a moral universe that allows you to tell the stories you want to.

 

[pemerton]

Fantasy versions of Christian knights would probably be as just and good as they believed themselves to be, and would be fighting forces of evil that they could clearly Detect as such.

I said the same thing above: that in D&D heathens have to be replaced with Orcs and Demons. This is a plot quite unlike the Crusades, where the enemies were ordinary humans just like you and me.

And no, use of Alignment in D&D does not rule out 'plots' like the Crusades. It just involves a little bit of change.

Tolerable change is obviously a matter of degree. I think the changes that alignment forces upon the plot are so great that the plot has been replaced by another plot.

And what's the problem with assuming the average person to be neutral? There's nothing really in the rules that says most characters in a world are good-aligned or something.

<snip>

But D&D assumes the typical Player Characters to be heroes of at least slightly-good intentions.

I think that this is part of the problem with alignment - a lot of PCs actually default to behaviour that the system describes as Neutral, but the system (and its mainstream campaigns) assume that PCs default to Good. I think this is a recipe for conflict at the gaming table.

That doesn't mean D&D's alignment system sucks or doesn't model Earth well; it's not supposed to! It's supposed to model fantasy settings where good and evil are primordial forces that are clear-cut and opposed to one another! Real Earth has grey morality and nothing else. It's all a matter of personal opinions and majority opinions here. In D&D the moralities are forces of nature separate from the mere whims of mortals. Interpretation is still open to debate, but the alignments are somewhat well defined at least, and anything in D&D can be pegged with an alignment if someone just considers it sensibly enough and factors in other examples from the game.

I don't agree that on earth it's just a matter of opinion. I certainly don't agree that it's a matter of majority opinion. But I think political and moral conversation breaks the Code of Conduct, so I'll leave it at that.

As for the gameworld, I realise what alignment is meant to model. I don't think it does it all that well, because the real earthlings who have to implement it don't have access to the modelled fantasy world, so they deploy their ordinary (and competing) concepts of good and evil, and disputes break out.

It may be true that anything in D&D can be pegged with an alignment. So can any visible thing in the world be pegged with a colour. But not everyone always agrees on the colour (is it blue or purple? green or turquoise?). Likewise with alignment. The problem isn't necessarily that I can't peg it (though sometimes it's hard - witness the perennial question of paladins killing baby orcs) or that you can't peg it. The problem is that, at the gaming table, different people peg it differently.

And anyway, it appears that your opinion is just that DM Fiat should be the one and only truth forevermore in an RPG, and that nothing else matters.

Actually, my opinion is the exact opposite. It was KM who said that it comes down to GM fiat. I agreed, and said that this is another objection to alignment, because another reason why it is a source of conflict at the table.

And not everyone wants to deal with grey morality being the only morality in the game. Having to constantly struggle with our characters trying to gain acceptance as heroes and not pegged as homicidal maniacs is generally not fun on a daily/weekly basis. Generally, most gamers are not, in fact, masochists.

This is very true. But I think that alignment actually induces the problem, it doesn't alleviate it, because it brings the question "Is my character Good or Evil" to the forefront of the game. A game without alignment just lets the player play the character, and the NPCs and other PCs can respond to the character as s/he is played, without having also to worry about what moralising label gets applied. If the GM tells the player of the paladin that the gods have cancelled her PC's powers, he doesn't also have to tell her that she's been Evil. The player (as we do in the real world) can quite happily take the view that the god has made a moral error. Feeling might still be hurt, but I think it's not quite as confrontational and potentially upsetting as it is when alignment labels are involved.

 

[Plane Sailing]

If you read the rest of the post you are responding to, you will see that I stated that I regard this as a flaw in class design, not alignment per se.

Funny how the two examples you pick out are the two classes from 3e that I consider too painfully specific in other ways as well.

Oops! I did read all the post but somehow that bit just didn't register!

 

[pawsplay]

I don't see any reason why two LG armies couldn't have a war. Good creatures respect life, that doesn't mean they don't sometimes take it. Strictly reading, a good creature can seriously violate alignment tendencies if they remain, on the whole, quite good; a self-sacrificing, noble, upright person can be a ruthless genocidalist and still have a LG alignment.

Anything more demanding than that is in the realm of paladin conduct, religious strictures, exalted campains, etc.

And even so, two armies of palains could respectfully and honorably take each other's lives all day. They just can't engage in slaughter or dishonorable activities. And even if they did, their paladinhood is just an atonement spell away... large scale wars are rare enough I imagine this avenue is often considered when necessary.

 

[Shadeydm]

I think the biggest problem with alignments is that people tend to view them as absolute. IMO the only beings who are truely absolute in terms of alignment are the gods and other outsiders.
Sure there are extreme examples of alignments seeded here and there in the average campaign world but those are the exception not the rule.

 

[pemerton]

I don't see any reason why two LG armies couldn't have a war. Good creatures respect life, that doesn't mean they don't sometimes take it. Strictly reading, a good creature can seriously violate alignment tendencies if they remain, on the whole, quite good; a self-sacrificing, noble, upright person can be a ruthless genocidalist and still have a LG alignment.

A lot of people don't agree with the last sentence - especially because I think most would categorise a noble, upright but selfish and ruthlessly genocidal person as LE. It seems odd that the mere substitution of self-sacrificing for selfish makes the switch, given that the Evil of genocide pretty plausibly is much greater than the Good of self-sacrifice.

Which is not to say that you're obviously wrong (see the discussion of Vikings below). It's enough that the point is debatable - this is why I think alignment creates conflict, unless the situations in which that conflict will arise are simply kept out of the campaign (eg by making the genocide be one against Orcs and Demons, who are - for practical purposes - inherently evil).

two armies of palains could respectfully and honorably take each other's lives all day. They just can't engage in slaughter or dishonorable activities.

According to the SRD, "Good characters and creatures protect innocent life." This is hard to reconcile with paladins slaughtering one another - because if a paladin is not innocent, presumably s/he has lost his or her paladinhood.

I think the biggest problem with alignments is that people tend to view them as absolute. IMO the only beings who are truely absolute in terms of alignment are the gods and other outsiders.

This may be a problem, but it is one which is a result of alignment labels. I open a module, for example, and see an NPC labelled "Chaotic Evil". No other personality description is given. What am I meant to think? The SRD tells me that:

“Evil” implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master."

This doesn't exactly suggest that the Gnoll, while a bit vicious, loves coming home from a hard day's raiding to play catch with his whelps. It suggests that the Gnoll is an absolutely vicious b******.

Again, none of this is helped by the fact that Vikings, who are really (in their behaviour towards others) pretty indistinguishable from Orcs and Gnolls, are labelled in most campaign worlds (and in the 1st ed PH) as CG or CN. This suggests that it is enough, to count as non-Evil, that one is friendly at home even if vicious abroad. And this suggestion, in turn, reinforces the perception that Evil means absolutely evil, beyond redemption.

(Greyhawk gives it Vikings a helping hand by making the targets of their depredations - the Bone March and the Great Kingdom - Evil. This is another example of nerfing the real-life plot in order to make the situation palatable within the strictures of the alignment system.)

 

[I'm A Banana]

I rest my case that alignment is not common sense, and not simple.

This was based on me saying that it's not inherently good to slay evil, or evil to slay good, and Arkhandus saying that paladins should not be killing good people.

You do realize that these are not incompatible positions to hold? Anyone who "respects life" should probably not be killing good people. That certainly doesn't mean it won't happen, and it certainly doesn't mean that when it does, these people stop having a Good alignment. It just means that they'll avoid it when possible.

Arguing that Good people cannot kill Good people is like arguing that a Lawful person will never break a law. Good people recognize the value of life, just as Lawful people recognize the value of social order, but neither rules out conflict: lawful people can have problems with social order, and Good people can have problems with other Good people who both value each other's lives.

The example that leaps to my mind is General Leo. A noble soldier of his Emperor, he goes out and wages war to gain power for his nation and his ruler, to secure the Empire's place, and to serve as a continual bastion for learning, security, and hope in a dismal world far fallen from grace. He comes into opposition with a Prince, a defender of his people and a warrior of his home nation, who values his little dessert kingdom and who won't give it up to anyone without a fight.

Both are Good characters, D&D-wise. Both generally avoid killing others. But when the Empire's troops march down on the Prince's kingdom, the Prince goes to war. And when the Prince goes to war, General Leo's troops meet him there. Both kill in the name of Good, and neither's Good is diminished by their acts. They wish things could be different -- General Leo wishes the Prince would just surrender and do what is best for his people. The Prince wishes General Leo would just go away and let him govern in peace. But the reality of the situation demands that both shed each other's blood for the other's interpretation of what the ultimate Good is: Imperial expansionistic Good, or local feudal Good.

In response to me arguing that alignment isn't any more absolute than a Meyers-Briggs test:

But it is the entirety of the game's moral framework. And my point concerned the complexity of moral judgement, not the (potentially greater) complexity of psychological judgement.

The game doesn't need any greater framework to describe your character's morality than the real world uses to describe your pop psychology, though. Look at alignment as descriptive: it doesn't tell you what you are absolutely any more than your horoscope does. It describes tendencies and generalities, not specifics: Scorpios are secretive; Lawfuls honor order. That doesn't mean that Scorpios won't reveal certain things about themselves, and that doesn't mean that Lawfuls cannot break the law (nor does it state what, exactly, each individual may regard as secretive or ordered).

The astrologers don't need more than 12 symbols loosely interpreted to describe the entirety of all of humanity, personality-wise. Why should D&D need more than 9 to describe every D&D character, personality-wise? Much like astrology, it's a vague methodology at best. Maybe you're an elaborately honest Scorpio. Maybe you're a Lawful with a problem with authority (perhaps because you don't have it). Honesty doesn't make you not a Scorpio, and simply resenting the captain of the town guard doesn't make you not Lawful. It's much, much more general than that.

Btw, with respect to the Dire Bear, I think its ignorance excuses it. If it was an (intelligent) Giant Lynx the story would be different.

I'm not sure it would. Presumably, intelligent commoner raise hundreds of beasts penned in and held captive in an elaborate world of domestication, weaning them only for their meat, without becoming somehow Lawful Evil. And even the commoner who beats up goblins who enter his pumpkin patch isn't Good just because he whacks a few greenskins.

Good and Evil are more than what you kill. It's how you approach the entire world.

 

[pemerton]

Arguing that Good people cannot kill Good people is like arguing that a Lawful person will never break a law. Good people recognize the value of life, just as Lawful people recognize the value of social order, but neither rules out conflict: lawful people can have problems with social order, and Good people can have problems with other Good people who both value each other's lives.

The example that leaps to my mind is General Leo. A noble soldier of his Emperor, he goes out and wages war to gain power for his nation and his ruler, to secure the Empire's place, and to serve as a continual bastion for learning, security, and hope in a dismal world far fallen from grace. He comes into opposition with a Prince, a defender of his people and a warrior of his home nation, who values his little dessert kingdom and who won't give it up to anyone without a fight.

Both are Good characters, D&D-wise. Both generally avoid killing others. But when the Empire's troops march down on the Prince's kingdom, the Prince goes to war. And when the Prince goes to war, General Leo's troops meet him there. Both kill in the name of Good, and neither's Good is diminished by their acts. They wish things could be different -- General Leo wishes the Prince would just surrender and do what is best for his people. The Prince wishes General Leo would just go away and let him govern in peace. But the reality of the situation demands that both shed each other's blood for the other's interpretation of what the ultimate Good is: Imperial expansionistic Good, or local feudal Good.

I don't really understand this example. How does General Leo's aggressive war, which involves ethe taking of much innocent life, fit within the SRD definition of Good?

Maybe you're conceding that what Leo does is an Evil act, because he is driven by other considerations (eg his devotion to the Empire). But in that case, if Leo is a paladin he has just lost his paladinhood. So I still don't really grasp the example.

As you probably know, in international relations there is a reasonably popular theory of "democratic peace" - that democracies don't wage wars of aggression, and so won't come into conflict with one another. Now this theory is contentious, of course - for example, NATO waged war against Serbia when Serbia was (arguably) a democracy. Nevertheless, the theory has a certain plausiblity, and one is tempted to say that a state that wages aggressive war isn't really a democracy at all, because it is attempting to exercise power over a non-consenting population.

I'm not saying that D&D Good is strictly equivalent to democracy (although Gygax hints at this in the 1st Ed rules, when he says that Good is committed to life and happiness, thus echoing the Declaration of Independence). But I don't really understand how two parties, each of whom treasures innocent life, can come into conflict with one another.

To come at it another way: what makes Orcs evil, and thus legitimate targets of PC violence?

*Is it that they wage aggressive war? But so does Leo.

*Is it because they don't love their children? But other posters are saying that alignment is not absolute, and that Evil characters can still have friends. And anyway, even if Orcs don't love their children, how does that justify killing and robbing them (this certainly doesn't seem like it will help their children).

*Is it because they worship Evil gods? But this just postpones the question of what are the criteria for being Evil, and so doesn't really resolve the matter.​

So however I come at it, I can't really work it out.

Look at alignment as descriptive: it doesn't tell you what you are absolutely any more than your horoscope does.

<snip>

The astrologers don't need more than 12 symbols loosely interpreted to describe the entirety of all of humanity, personality-wise.

Again, I don't really get the example. I hope I'm not breaking the Code of Conduct by characterising astrology as nonsense. The reason, therefore, that it can't muster a set of complete and accurate descriptions is that it is false. And part of how we know it to be false is that the facts of human personality far outstrip the astrological labels.

Alignment, on the other hand, is meant to be true (in the gameworld). But if the moral facts outstrip the labels, then it will have been falsified (as astrology is). Thus the need (as I see it) to limit the moral facts which emerge in the gameworld, by steering clear of certain sorts of plot.

Presumably, intelligent commoner raise hundreds of beasts penned in and held captive in an elaborate world of domestication, weaning them only for their meat, without becoming somehow Lawful Evil.

There are two issues here. First, the domestic beasts presumably aren't intelligent, and thus aren't Good, and thus the commoners aren't keeping Good beings oppressed (presumably an Evil act).

Second, I just came back from lunch at a place with Meat is Murder posters on the wall. Whether or not vegetarianism is a moral duty is yet a further moral question which the alignment system doesn't really handle (1st ed OA dealt with it as an element of clerical codes of conduct, without going so far as to make it part of alignment per se).

Good and Evil are more than what you kill. It's how you approach the entire world.

Does this mean that alignment is intention and not action? Other posters on this thread have denied that claim. Further disagreement and complexity. Especially as nearly everyone, most of the time, and when acting with forethought, does what they think is best - it's just that sometimes they are wrong about it, and do a wicked thing rather than a good thing.

Or do you mean that killing is not the only relevant action? Agreed, but surely it is one of the most significant - after all, it's not coincidence that nearly everyone regards murder as one of the most serious crimes that can be committed.