Alignment myths?

[ruleslawyer]

It is I that should ask you to be forebearing of me, since you've brought such a learned quote to the discussion whereas I have mangled with half remembered thoughts the good Bard's stanzas.

You have made a better quote than mine, and more to the point. You may be right that I was half remembering my Montaigne, but the quote that I was thinking of was from Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2 where the players have arrived at court.

"Polonius: My lord, I will use them according to their desert.

Hamlet: Odd's bodikin, man, better: use every man after his desert, and who should scape whipping?"

For the benefit of our reader's who don't come to English as a mother tongue, loosely translated into the modern that reads:

Polonius: "My lord, I will provide for them according to what they deserve."
Hamlet: "By God's shirt, man, better: provide for every man what they deserve, and who would escape being flogged?"

So, the Montaigne better makes the strong point I was trying to make, and for that I don't pardon you, I thank you.

You're welcome; and thanks for finding the Bard's own quote! (Funny, I'm actually just beginning Act II in my most recent rereading of Hamlet; I'm about two pages away from the passage you quoted!)

As to alignment detracting from/adding to the game: I think that a messageboard discussion is unlikely to provide good evidence of how something quite this role-playing oriented and different from group to group actually comes out in play. It's possible to discuss mechanics in the abstract, but discussing alignment in the abstract tends to lead us down this philosophy line. I think that if a group has a mutual understanding of how alignments work, they can be very powerful in creating a concrete sense of good and evil, and rewards and punishments thereof, in the game.

That said, I think that alignments could just as easily be chucked; one will still have good and evil in the game, after all. I've played and GMed characters with strict codes of honor and a strong devotion to charity and righteousness in Star Frontiers, Shadowrun, and CONAN!, to name a few.

 

[Raloc]

However, just as often I find that there is a good deal of profit in reexaming thoughts which are first instincts are to dismiss as absurd. For example, for the last two or three pages there have been a seemingly endless parade of posters posting variations on the theme of:

Personally, I think you made up your mind and refused to see the illogic of your own argument. You're claiming that every actor should bear moral culpability for the consequences of every other action in existence (either that, or you're putting some arbitary cap on the measurement of consequences after the act, which is also absurd) It's not a long shot to call that "absurd" since it makes no sense whatever(not to mention it would render alignment 100% unplayable, as the DM would be calculating the consequences of every PC action indefinitely).

By your own stated reasoning though, every action should bear the moral weight of every consequence it causes. The reason this is absurd is that if this were the case, you would spend infinity calculating the weight of the action(since it can have innumerable unforseen consequences, and realistically, you could not even sum them all, since you *can't* know them all(unless, of course, you happen to be some sort of omniscient deity and can know the exact cause of every motion in reality for all eternity? If not, your argument makes no sense.)). Consequences are inextricably linked together. Either you're arbitrarily limiting what you claim is the right way to judge an action (by summing the consequences of it, and applying the weight to anyone involved in the action(s) which caused them) or you're confused and really don't understand what you're claiming. Which is it?

 

[Celebrim]

Personally, I think you made up your mind...

Ahh, yeah. You stole the words right out of my mouth.

 

[Raloc]

I'll just assume that means you agree to the absurdity of your argument as well then.

 

[happyelf]

It's popular to bash alignment, but really it's not such a bad concept. It's just a 2d scale to plot your character on, and you cna mve them around as muhc as you and the GM like. Most of the criticisms i've hard about alignment are either complete nonsence, or due to wierd ideas about alignment that the game doesn't support anyway.

There are also a lot of dodgy assumptions and cliches about things like "shades of grey" and moral ambiguity that get in the way of not ony alignment, but good characterisation. To hear some people talk about "shades of grey", you'd swear nobody ever did anything without a selfish motive, or that there weren't people in the real world who can be described as benevolent, or kind, or even evil. Sure, they're not flawless or some kind of static archetype, but no decent character should be, either.

The reality is that a game or story indulging in the "shades of grey" cliche tends to have far more repetitive and cliche characterisation than one that does not.

There are various extensions of this fallacy. For instance the idea that Paladins are stupid zealots, or that Lawful Good characters should be hidebound and intolerant. No, that's clearly LN, LG people are good, wich means they're reasonably tolerant and compassionate.

 

[Felix]

Felix, I agree with your entire post, but I wanted to clarify this first sentence because it seems to be a sticking point with alot of the debate.

Whether or not the consequence of killing the child makes the woodsman's act evil, it doesn't necessarily follow that the woodsman is evil because the act was (if it was)*. Alot of people seem to be hearing one when the other is said, as if one was the inescapable conclusion of the other.

*And for that matter it doesn't necessarily follow if the act was not evil, that the woodsman isn't.

Oh, I'm constraining myself to the morality of the act itself; it will have consequences on the character, but will not in and of itself determine the woodsman's alignment.

 

[Felix]

Evil is Evil because of choice, not because of results; disabuse yourself of the idea that including intent into morality necessitates that the moral system is slack.

Actually, in the D&D cosmology, it's both. There are actions that are, by definition, evil regardless of the intent. Casting spells with the Evil descriptor comes to mind.

[Evil] spells are a perfect example of choice and understanding. The caster knows that casting the spell is Evil. The caster understands that casting the [Evil] spell will further his journey to perdition. And yet he still does it. Though he may attempt to do good through his casting, he still knows that he does Evil by casting it.

I don't see that alignment spells cause a problem with the choice, understanding, and act combination to determine alignment.

---

By the by, you mentioned torture in your post; I believe evil can come from good (or neutral) acts, like the boy killed by the woodsman. Would it not follow that good can also come from evil (or neutral) acts? This is possible, but only if the consequences of the act do not determine the morality of the act itself. Torture is indeed evil; the product of that evil act could very well lead to some good consequences. At least, simply because the act is evil does not mean that no good will come of it.

 

[Thurbane]

IMG, we use alignment as a loose guideline, and as a mechanic for spells and effects (Protection From Evil etc.). When running a PC or NPC, I focus a lot more on developing a coherent personality than abiding by or tracking an alignment stat...

 

[Celebrim]

[Evil] spells are a perfect example of choice and understanding. The caster knows that casting the spell is Evil.

I don't think that necessarily is true, or at least, if it is true it makes for much more interesting gaming if it is not. I think you are confusing character and player knowledge. The player might (or might not) know that Animate Dead has an Evil descriptor, but even if the player does, it doesn't necessarily follow that the character does. Sure, if the player is wise, educated, and instructed by good hearted teachers, he'll probably recognize a spell on a page as being of a dark and foul sort of magic - but I don't think that it is necessarily the case that he will, and I can think of at least one TSR publication (and a well written on at that) from very late second edition that uses that to very good effect - 'Bastion of Faith'.

And I've used that to good effect in my own gaming. This is another case where hiding the rules from the player can lead to profoundly more interesting gaming. I had a character who played a young Wizard. As part of my hooking them into the setting/party, I RPed with the character that his master and mentor, a kindly but somewhat feeble old urban 'hedge wizard' had just been murdered, leaving the young mage with only his starting funds, some ragged spell books, and a few items of minor magical value. Unbeknowst to either the player or the character, the death was the result of arcane turf warfare between two of the large wizarding guilds in the city. The character was in the campaign later approached by the faction that had murdered off the old wizard, a group of mages of a necromatic bent who were secretly really evil SOB's. The cozening words, promises of training and help, and friendly disposition the player joined up, somewhat oblivious to my sometimes not so subtle hints that these were the bad guys which would have been picked up by anyone that had been an experienced gamer. It wasn't that he was RPing badly, quite the contrary. He didn't have any meta-game knowledge to go by, so he played the situation straight up (and though the other PCs were experienced enough to catch on, more importantly, they were experienced enough not to break character and act on OOC knowledge.) If everyone just knows that Animate Dead or whatever has an evil descriptor, you can't get into those situations, and I and the players would have been deprived of some very interesting and complex situations.

 

[was]

we don't use alignment much. no one ever agrees.