Alignment of enemies in modules

[jasper]

....by 20th century Winsconsin insurance underwriters. .....just to legitimise the resulting killing and looting.

Winsconsin Insurance Underwriter
Frequency uncommon.
# appearing 1-100
Alignment Lawful Evil
AC 10
Hps 3.
Special attacks. Pen 1d4, Raise your rates (does 10d100 gp damage to your wealth).
Special defenses It averages man. Attacks on WIU which do more than 50% damage on die(dice) are reduce to average.
Special Avatars Flo white clothed goddess, child speak in tongues, etc.

 

[redrick]

For some players, that would be a moral quandary. If they have to fight and kill people who aren't bad guys and are just doing their job, simply in order to fulfill a contract, how are their own actions not evil? But if the people they're fighting are themselves evil and villainous, it's not such a dilemma.

I'd take the inverse of this. For me, presenting swaths of characters as de facto evil and therefor fair game for slaughter presents a real world moral quandary, in a way that two non-evil characters potentially killing each other over conflicting interests does not. I don't need every session of D&D to include a cut-scene flashback to the family, life and aspirations of every opponent killed in an encounter, but I'd rather the game be populated by characters understood to be acting on specific interests than simply My Role in Life is to Do Evil Things, So Killing Me and My Mother and My Kids Would Be the Morally Righteous Thing to Do.

I know there's a lot of the latter in D&D, but I do think RPGs are better when there is more of the former. That doesn't mean that you have to lay it out in bold letters every encounter, but it should be there in the subtext if player characters choose to engage it.

 

[S'mon]

I suggest changing the opponent alignment to N.

Personally I often find I end up RPing an NPC contrary to their written alignment, so then I go back and change what's written.

 

[pemerton]

For me, presenting swaths of characters as de facto evil and therefor fair game for slaughter presents a real world moral quandary, in a way that two non-evil characters potentially killing each other over conflicting interests does not.

<snip>

I'd rather the game be populated by characters understood to be acting on specific interests than simply My Role in Life is to Do Evil Things, So Killing Me and My Mother and My Kids Would Be the Morally Righteous Thing to Do.

Thanks - nice point, clearly put.

 

[Brandegoris]

Alignment is and always has been a broken/flawed mechanic. Its silly. No person in real life is static. We all fluctuate depending on circumstance and on what point we are in our lives, what age we are etc etc
I try and ignore alignment as much as I can in my games as it adds nothing but restrictions to the game generally and dumbs down complex characters

 

[Lylandra]

Alignment is and always has been a broken/flawed mechanic. Its silly. No person in real life is static. We all fluctuate depending on circumstance and on what point we are in our lives, what age we are etc etc
I try and ignore alignment as much as I can in my games as it adds nothing but restrictions to the game generally and dumbs down complex characters

I agree that it is too static and that two dimensions are simply not enough to offer an even basic layout of a character's morale. However, what most of us are discussing are actually lamentations on a very high level. We, who understand that it is perfectly possible for two paladins to get in a fight, that it is perfectly possible to have a good character kill a non-evil (or even good) character because he has someone to avenge, that it is even perfectly possible for an evil character to have close friends and loved ones, we would most certainly never need a construct called "alignment".

But there are other groups out there. Not only my beforementioned new players. There are groups who have "that player" who takes murder-hoboing too far despite playing a paladin. Who betrays his own party. Or who is labeled "good" but does so many "evil" deeds that he wouldn't qualify for that alignment any more. There are groups where a DM wants a certain tone ("evil campaign" or "heroes" or "thieve's guild") and ruling out certain alignments is the easiest way of making sure every player in his group understands what the campaign is about and what their characters should be like to fit in. Heck, even my group which has evolved a lot over the last few years used to have a (very nice!) player who occasionally wanted to switch characters and regularly wanted to inject evil characters into an otherwise heroic group.

Having a defined "value" (and I even toyed with alignment points at some time) that can be invoked and defined is a tool for a GM or a player to describe what is and what is not appropriate behaviour. Not that alignment should be static. I fondly remember a (Planescape) mercykiller PC who changed both alignment and faith over the events he had to witness during the Time of Troubles, who came to understand that justice can never be just without a compassion for others. At the end of the campaign, said PC became a famous, altruistic peacemaker and diplomat.

 

[Brandegoris]

I agree that it is too static and that two dimensions are simply not enough to offer an even basic layout of a character's morale. However, what most of us are discussing are actually lamentations on a very high level. We, who understand that it is perfectly possible for two paladins to get in a fight, that it is perfectly possible to have a good character kill a non-evil (or even good) character because he has someone to avenge, that it is even perfectly possible for an evil character to have close friends and loved ones, we would most certainly never need a construct called "alignment".

But there are other groups out there. Not only my beforementioned new players. There are groups who have "that player" who takes murder-hoboing too far despite playing a paladin. Who betrays his own party. Or who is labeled "good" but does so many "evil" deeds that he wouldn't qualify for that alignment any more. There are groups where a DM wants a certain tone ("evil campaign" or "heroes" or "thieve's guild") and ruling out certain alignments is the easiest way of making sure every player in his group understands what the campaign is about and what their characters should be like to fit in. Heck, even my group which has evolved a lot over the last few years used to have a (very nice!) player who occasionally wanted to switch characters and regularly wanted to inject evil characters into an otherwise heroic group.

Having a defined "value" (and I even toyed with alignment points at some time) that can be invoked and defined is a tool for a GM or a player to describe what is and what is not appropriate behaviour. Not that alignment should be static. I fondly remember a (Planescape) mercykiller PC who changed both alignment and faith over the events he had to witness during the Time of Troubles, who came to understand that justice can never be just without a compassion for others. At the end of the campaign, said PC became a famous, altruistic peacemaker and diplomat.

The absolute BEST system that ever tackled "Alignment" is the Pendragon RPG by greg Stafford. Insetad of Alignments you have about a dozen Traits. Each trait has its opposite
Example: Genrous is opposed by selfish. Both must add up to a TOTAL of 20 points so you may have a Generous score of 16 ( which automatically puts your selfish at 4). This means when you get into a situation where you are unsure how your character MIHT react you roll the d20 and if you get a 16 or less then you act generously, 17 or higher you act selfishly. You would tick selfish and at the end of the game session you would roll to see if you selfish went up ( this lowering your generous).
It 's a MUCH better interpretation of alignment and has a Definite set of rules so NO ONE gets confused. Great stuff

 

[tomBitonti]

Some of the alignment assumptions may reflect the default setting assumptions, for example, that PCs are from "civilized" towns, and vikings are from the uncivilized and barbaric regions, and any notion that said vikings have a code or any sense of honor is displaced by the predominant view that they are ravaging brutes who gleefully pillage and plunder. Then, correctly, a viking's alignment is CE.

From a modern sensibility, the townsfolk would be looked on at best as LE, but that is a very modern view. In the setting, the townsfolk would consider themselves LG.

There is a very large historical context at play here, one which really doesn't fit well with most games. I don't think that pushing hard at the definitions helps very much.

Notionally, what seems to work are:

0) There is no alignment, just factions and philosophies.

1) Alignment is present as a description, but is not a mechanical factor (for the most part; spell descriptors are a problem). A person can claim to be LG or NE or whatever, but that doesn't have a mechanical impact.

2) Arbitrary rules made by gods style. Then, you are LG if you follow rules made by a god which is labelled as LG. There is a presumption that a LG will mostly fit a modern sense of what that should mean, but only to a degree. The rules are fundamentally arbitrary.

Thx!
TomB