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Alignment - is it any good?
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 3526245" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>Arkhandus, thanks for the reply. A lot of what you say I agree with, there's just a couple of points I wanted to pick up, to try and explain a bit more why I see things a little differently.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Without wanting to offend anyone's religious sensibilities, I'm happy to agree that the historical crusaders were not miracle-workers. They were real people. If we wanted to stat them out in D&D terms, we'd therefore use classes like Rogue, Fighter, Aristocrat etc.</p><p></p><p>But that's not exactly how they saw themselves. The Knights Templar, for example, saw themselves as holy warriors. They lived under a rule drawn up by Bernard of Clairvaux, widely acknowledged by his peers as the most important monk of his era in western Christendom. They believed that carrying the relic of the True Cross would bring them blessings in battle. If I want to play a fantasy RPG in which I model these beliefs, then I'm going to want to make some of the Christian clergy clerics, some of the Templars paladins, etc (think about how Ars Magica might handle it - at least some of the crusaders had True Faith).</p><p></p><p>Furthermore, at least according to Catholic teaching of the time, fighting in the crusade really was sufficient to earn redemption from sin. So if we want a game that reflects the world-view of the participants (rather than our own, more sceptical, beliefs) it won't do to say that the crusaders are really Evil, and going to the Abyss.</p><p></p><p>But nor do I want to cast the Muslims as Evil. That would be absurd. Apart from anything else, it makes no sense for them to have only blackguards and not paladins - because a blackguard thinks of himself self-consciously as a scheming villian, whereas Saladin had the same sort of self-image as Richard the Lionheart, that is, as a noble, generous and chivalrous warrior, fighting a holy fight.</p><p></p><p>So we are left with Good vs Good. But for the reasons I gave in response to KM, I find Good vs Good very hard to envision. I thus find that alignment stifles the plot. (For a more extended version of this argument, see "For King and Country" in Dragon 101 - in my view one of the best ever Dragon artilces.)</p><p></p><p>Another example, if the crusades doesn't work for you, could be Arthur versus the Saxons, or the Saxon kings versus the vikings. Some of the Saxon kings were reputed to have healing powers, and D&D has tended to model Arthur, Lancelot, Galahad etc as paladins. But this creates pressure to characterise the Saxons or Vikings (depending on the campaign) as Evil, which is implausible.</p><p></p><p>Its always an option, of course, to drop the alignment-drive divine casters from a historically-influenced D&D game. But I've always found it much easier to drop alignment (which I don't like) and keep the classes (which, on the whole, I do like).</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>This is probably where we have a more fundamental disagreement - though I find your "dunno" telling. Because it suggests what I strongly affirm: that alignment doesn't make any difference.</p><p></p><p>What stops PCs playing rapists and murderers? In my experience, because they don't want to play such characters. They typically want to play either heros, scoundrels or Conan-esque mercenaries, but not psychopaths.</p><p></p><p>To put it another way: if a player doesn't care that s/he is playing a psychopath, why should s/he care if his or her character is labelled Evil? Why is alignment change a threat? In AD&D 1st ed it cost XPs, but if that's the case why not just start with an Evil character?</p><p></p><p>If the answer is, because only Good PCs get healing from the NPC clerics, etc, then we can handle this just as well without alignment: only nice people get healing from the NPC clerics. If the concern then is that PCs will secretly do wicked things, while maintaining an innocent facade, that looks to me like the starting point for a great campaign - though look out, PCs, when all is revealed and the wrath of the church finally falls upon you!</p><p></p><p>Or is alignment really a tool for GMs to berate players - "Don't have do that wicked thing because if you do you'll change alignment to Evil! And I don't GM Evil PCs." I suspect that this is a common use of alignment - the GM uses it to force players to fit his or her conception of the gameworld, even if this is at the expense of the players' conceptions of their PCs - but if this is what a game has come to then (as your post says, and as I agree) there seems already to be a deeper problem of adverserial GM-player relations</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 3526245, member: 42582"] Arkhandus, thanks for the reply. A lot of what you say I agree with, there's just a couple of points I wanted to pick up, to try and explain a bit more why I see things a little differently. Without wanting to offend anyone's religious sensibilities, I'm happy to agree that the historical crusaders were not miracle-workers. They were real people. If we wanted to stat them out in D&D terms, we'd therefore use classes like Rogue, Fighter, Aristocrat etc. But that's not exactly how they saw themselves. The Knights Templar, for example, saw themselves as holy warriors. They lived under a rule drawn up by Bernard of Clairvaux, widely acknowledged by his peers as the most important monk of his era in western Christendom. They believed that carrying the relic of the True Cross would bring them blessings in battle. If I want to play a fantasy RPG in which I model these beliefs, then I'm going to want to make some of the Christian clergy clerics, some of the Templars paladins, etc (think about how Ars Magica might handle it - at least some of the crusaders had True Faith). Furthermore, at least according to Catholic teaching of the time, fighting in the crusade really was sufficient to earn redemption from sin. So if we want a game that reflects the world-view of the participants (rather than our own, more sceptical, beliefs) it won't do to say that the crusaders are really Evil, and going to the Abyss. But nor do I want to cast the Muslims as Evil. That would be absurd. Apart from anything else, it makes no sense for them to have only blackguards and not paladins - because a blackguard thinks of himself self-consciously as a scheming villian, whereas Saladin had the same sort of self-image as Richard the Lionheart, that is, as a noble, generous and chivalrous warrior, fighting a holy fight. So we are left with Good vs Good. But for the reasons I gave in response to KM, I find Good vs Good very hard to envision. I thus find that alignment stifles the plot. (For a more extended version of this argument, see "For King and Country" in Dragon 101 - in my view one of the best ever Dragon artilces.) Another example, if the crusades doesn't work for you, could be Arthur versus the Saxons, or the Saxon kings versus the vikings. Some of the Saxon kings were reputed to have healing powers, and D&D has tended to model Arthur, Lancelot, Galahad etc as paladins. But this creates pressure to characterise the Saxons or Vikings (depending on the campaign) as Evil, which is implausible. Its always an option, of course, to drop the alignment-drive divine casters from a historically-influenced D&D game. But I've always found it much easier to drop alignment (which I don't like) and keep the classes (which, on the whole, I do like). This is probably where we have a more fundamental disagreement - though I find your "dunno" telling. Because it suggests what I strongly affirm: that alignment doesn't make any difference. What stops PCs playing rapists and murderers? In my experience, because they don't want to play such characters. They typically want to play either heros, scoundrels or Conan-esque mercenaries, but not psychopaths. To put it another way: if a player doesn't care that s/he is playing a psychopath, why should s/he care if his or her character is labelled Evil? Why is alignment change a threat? In AD&D 1st ed it cost XPs, but if that's the case why not just start with an Evil character? If the answer is, because only Good PCs get healing from the NPC clerics, etc, then we can handle this just as well without alignment: only nice people get healing from the NPC clerics. If the concern then is that PCs will secretly do wicked things, while maintaining an innocent facade, that looks to me like the starting point for a great campaign - though look out, PCs, when all is revealed and the wrath of the church finally falls upon you! Or is alignment really a tool for GMs to berate players - "Don't have do that wicked thing because if you do you'll change alignment to Evil! And I don't GM Evil PCs." I suspect that this is a common use of alignment - the GM uses it to force players to fit his or her conception of the gameworld, even if this is at the expense of the players' conceptions of their PCs - but if this is what a game has come to then (as your post says, and as I agree) there seems already to be a deeper problem of adverserial GM-player relations [/QUOTE]
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