Allegiances and Alignment

[Nifft]

The Truth

Is Truth either Lawful or Chaotic? I'm pretty sure it's neither Good nor Evil, but I can't figure out if it's a force of Order or one of Change. I'm leaning towards Chaos/Change, but could easily be swayed into beleiving it's Neutral.

-- Nifft

 

[Celebrim]

I'm not sure you can have an allegiance to The Truth, since various people are going to have differing opinions on what the Truth is, and every alligaince is in general an allegaince to the truth 'as you see it'. You could have an alligaince to 'The Pursuit of Knowledge' or to 'The Scientific Method' or to 'A Code of Honesty'. That is to say, you could have an allegaince to a certain means of discovering the The Truth, or to the discovery of The Truth as an ethical good in and of itself, or in stating The Truth as you saw it.

But, since you ask, don't you know, it is a force of Good and Liberty: 'The Truth Will Set You Free'.

(But first it is going to piss you off, and then it is going to hurt really bad. Then you are going to have to decide whether you really like this thing called freedom, and whether you might not prefer the comfort of your chains.)

 

[seasong]

Some of those allegiances are more important than others. I won't die to keep B5 from being disperged, but I'd certainly die to protect my wife. Do we need allegiance heirarchies? Do we need to assign weights to allegiances?

No more than we need to assign hierarchies or weights to Good/Evil and Lawful/Chaotic. How do you differentiate between someone who believes in the sanctity of law and will follow it, but who won't die to preserve it... versus someone who will?

Personally, I'm asking the players to select only those allegiances that their character feels most strongly about.

understanding of greater complexity than D&D's system, but in the end I think you'd still end up with people having debates over whether or not someone was being true to his allegiance.

No more than we have debates over whether someone is being "good" or lawful" already. At least in my group (and IME), if the GM feels that the player is stepping out of character (on issues of alignment or any other thing), s/he asks the player if the behavior is accurate to the character. The player then either changes it, or affirms it.

Take the often debated example of a Paladin. Does it really make it any simplier to say that a Paladin must have an allegiance to a code of honor (law), and a set of benevolant moral virtues (good)? Aren't we still going to debate what that means and where the lines between just and unjust, honorable and dishonorable lie?

And? Allegiances don't change the paladin much, but they sure give a nice handle for a rogue and ranger, who is otherwise rather mistreated by the current alignment system.

 

[Celebrim]

seasong: My point is simply to play devil's advocate admist all these people heralding this as a giant step forward, and say instead, that no, really there is not alot of difference between the two systems. So you've sliced the pie a little more finely. You still have to agree on the principles, and you still have plenty of indefinate and undefined areas. If anything, you've just given everyone more to disagree on.

Nor have you really added anything that wasn't there to begin with. You've just labeled it. And the main advantage of that is that you help new players find it.

I've never found the Rogue or Ranger to be mistreated by the current alignment system. The only thing that might help the Rogue out is that you can explicitly have an allegaince to two conflicting moral principles, thereby defining the things you won't do despite the things that you do do. But really, that isn't a big step up from a player with complex limits and balances on his moral principals playing a nuetral rogue.

Remember, my point is not that this system is worse (or better), but merely that it is no better.

"How do you differentiate between someone who believes in the sanctity of law and will follow it, but who won't die to preserve it... versus someone who will?"

Well, yes, exactly.

 

[seasong]

We're in agreement, then .

 

[LostSoul]

If you try it out, please let us know how it worked out and what obstacles you ran into.

I don't use alignments in my game - anything "supernatural" (undead, aberrations, magical beasts, celestials) is Evil. (The PCs haven't yet discovered that "good" angels and such will show up as Evil.) So far, everything has worked just fine. I even have a Paladin in the game, and there have been no problems there, either.

 

[Gizzard]

The nice thing about the alignment system is that it "works" right out of the box. (By "works" I mean that no system of philosophy is going to be airtight; flesh out your system of allegiances and you'll see the same sort of problems -- note the discussion above about "truth"). So the alignment system is something that the DM can explain to the players in about 30 seconds and they'll understand it in general.

Personally, I like the allegiance system; I try to keep my players characters to following the "dogma" of their gods rather than judging their alignment. But the only reason why this works is because someone has gone the extra mile to spell out these dogmas.

If you say "You are a Paladin who has allegiance to the god Tyr", this means absolutely nothing without a description of Tyr. If you say "You are a Paladin who has an allegiance to the LG god Tyr" you're right back where you started with the alignment system in the first place. Its only when you start fleshing out the world by writing a paragraph about how Tyr feels about specific things that you've advanced beyond the alignment system.

My point is - the allegiance system is good, but its only as good as the extra work you put into it.

 

[Nifft]

I'm not sure you can have an allegiance to The Truth [...] But, since you ask, don't you know, it is a force of Good and Liberty: 'The Truth Will Set You Free'.

The sort of "The Truth" I'm thinking of is the kind which reporters purport to pursue -- which could be anything from Watergate to celebrity trivia.

So far, Chaotic Good and Chaotic Neutral are the front runners.

Of course, this is mostly just for me to figure out which races / classes will be most "reporter-like", based on alignment stereotypes.

-- Nifft

 

[Celebrim]

Purport being the critical word there. I don't think many reporters have a great love of the truth. They have a devotion to ratings, and selling subscriptions, and notorioty, and advancing thier careers. The truth they pursue is 'the story' and often has little or nothing do to with telling the truth. The Truth is usually complex and an objective truth is often unpalattable. The more likely you think it would be that the truth would be something you'd like, the more likely it is that the truth won't be what you expect it to be. The truth makes people uncomfortable and should be avoided if you want to maintain your audience, a point in which Barbara Walters, Donahue, and Rush Limbaugh are really no different. What people really want is validation of thier beliefs. It is far easier to scandalize, sensationalize, and criticize than it is to sell The Truth - much less discover what that truth is in the first place. And, reporters recieve far more respect from thier collegues when they do these things than when they tell the truth, if only I suspect because it shows their colleagues for the shallow knowledgeless people that they are.

(I should say that the main thing that endears Rush to me above Barbara is other journalists hate him.)

I'm not even sure that reporters have much devotion to the notion of free speech. Most I've spoken too or heard seem to think that freedom of speach is a right that belongs exclusively to themselves, and are quite offended when some outsider speaks out - especially to disagree with them. So, when they defend freedom of speech, what I think they are usually defending is thier own careers.

So yes, if you mean Truth as journalists use the word, I'd agree with the Chaotic Nuetral assessment.

 

[ced1106]

Getting rid of alingmenst will effect your D&D game. How will you handle the alignment restrictions of classes? Howe will you handle the Evil and Good descriptors of spells? How will you handle the alments charged weapons? Will you redo all the gods aligments and give them Allegiances as well?

Gods **following** alignments?? Never!

My viewpoint is that gods dictate the behavior of their followers. Do Christians, Jews, and Muslims ask themselves if they're Lawful Good? Heck, no! They ask themselves if they follow the prescribed behavior of their religious systems.

Good and Evil now become more nebulous and flexible. Some religions equate Evil with "not being my religion". Others will equate Good with "behavior that this religion condones". Paladins and Clerics are finally religion-specific (and can go whack each other now).

Gods, being Gods, provide more flavor to a world than the rigid bars of alignments (which everyone seems to argue about, anyway). Might be "interesting" to have a party member whose God changes allegiances like we do socks ("Oh, so you're a Chaotic character with a Chaotic god?").


Cedric.
aka. Washu! ^O^