Authenticity in RPGing

[pemerton]

As I said, this was in a MUCH earlier stage of our gaming. IIRC the conclusion was something along the lines of "OK, this kind of works, alignment is now basically just an element of the framing, part of the puzzle, behave THIS way or pay a price to behave some OTHER way.

This is what very classic alignment looks like to me: being chaotic or evil opens up a certain space of action declaration but in exchange for costs (worse reaction and loyalty adjustments; less access to healing magic).

I think that by the mid-80s it's doing something pretty different, close to what Baker described in the text I quoted.

So, for a LONG LONG time there was the "Oh, just write your alignment down, its nothing but a play aid" phase, which treats it like just another background element "Yeah, I'm EVIL!" but you could just basically do whatever. There might be consequences, but they were purely fiction, alignment change penalties and such weren't a thing. That pretty quickly evolved to "don't even bother to write it down..." Frankly I don't remember if people did or didn't put down an alignment in our 4e games. Probably it got filled out on CB simply because it would keep nagging you, but 4e works pretty much like we did, you can write it down, but it doesn't actually have any mechanical game significance.

I mean, if I run a 4e game now, people can say whatever about alignment, as GM I don't really care... I don't think it would be BAD for some NPC to bring it up in terms of their ethos and preferences, but its not materially different from something like a town that hates wizards.

Alignment in 4e, or "just write it down", is different from what Baker describes and from what I mentioned in the OP - as it is not GM-enforced.

 

[aramis erak]

I wonder how useful a human resource professional would be in Traveller...

Depends. If it's a mercs game? Quite. Bonuses to determining the actual skills of potential hires and new hires.

 

[aramis erak]

Alignment in 4e, or "just write it down", is different from what Baker describes and from what I mentioned in the OP - as it is not GM-enforced.

It can be; in many cases, it has been.
It's been variable how GMs approach it from early on; by 1981, many were ignoring it, many paid some lip service to it, many were enforcing it with just the XP penalties for violating it, and a few tracking it.

DragonLance Adventures for AD&D 1E provided a tracking mechanism for the good/evil axis; not a few, myself included, used that mode for both axes. I traced the graph in the back of the core onto graph paper. Marked them on the graph.

Force & Destiny uses a not very good tracking of a single axis morality. (As written, it's hard to not climb.)

 

[pemerton]

It can be; in many cases, it has been.

I don't think that 4e D&D makes any provision for GM enforcement of alignment. And I think @AbdulAlhazred, in describing a "just write it down" approach to alignment, is similarly meaning that there is no GM enforcement.

DragonLance Adventures for AD&D 1E provided a tracking mechanism for the good/evil axis

Yes. Gygax had a similar idea with the character alignment graph in his PHB. I would consider this a version of GM-enforced alignment.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This is what very classic alignment looks like to me: being chaotic or evil opens up a certain space of action declaration but in exchange for costs (worse reaction and loyalty adjustments; less access to healing magic).

Well, I think it was, in our case, acting as something directly analogous to an environmental constraint. So, it would have been something like "Sure, the good-aligned fighter can gut the orc child, but he knows that by the canon of Atur this is an evil act and he'll be inflicted with punishment for violating Atur's commandments (which he has opened himself up to by declaring his Lawful Goodness at the start of play)." Its no different from "and you decide to walk off the cliff, take 4d6 falling damage!" I'm not saying anything about it being good or bad for RP. OTOH, looked at that way the player is clearly responding to a piece of fictional position by, say, sparing the orc child. Now, I agree that said action may be speaking less to the character's moral position than to his sense of self-preservation! We did tire of this sort of play fairly quickly as far as I recall, certainly by the early '80s.

As for the 'trade offs' in mechanical terms... meh, I pretty much recollect that when we played our 'evil campaign' where everyone was a humanoid, the general consensus was that healing was a perfectly fine option, as long as it furthered your own ends.

I think that by the mid-80s it's doing something pretty different, close to what Baker described in the text I quoted.

Alignment in 4e, or "just write it down", is different from what Baker describes and from what I mentioned in the OP - as it is not GM-enforced.

Well, exactly. As I say, we just gave up on any sort of milieu where the concept was that some 'force' or other might punish you from on high for this or that action. Now you are more free to examine actual moral questions, for instance, that arise out of situations in play vs ones that arise out of some universal determination that certain actions will garner you hurt or not. It was an incremental improvement that D&D itself took MUCH longer to arrive at that we did (like, by 1986 at the latest, as I am 100% certain we thought OA and Alignment were not compatible at all whatsoever, lol).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Depends. If it's a mercs game? Quite. Bonuses to determining the actual skills of potential hires and new hires.

I detect some Schlock Mercenary leaking into our peanut butter flavored Ovalquick, errrr RPG discussion

 

[aramis erak]

I don't think that 4e D&D makes any provision for GM enforcement of alignment. And I think @AbdulAlhazred, in describing a "just write it down" approach to alignment, is similarly meaning that there is no GM enforcement.

Yes. Gygax had a similar idea with the character alignment graph in his PHB. I would consider this a version of GM-enforced alignment.

Indeed... the 4E DMG1 includes no RP-based XP, only overcoming encounters, combat, and quest.
Only clerics and paladins have clear mechanical rewquirements; those are in the PHB.
Given no other levers, the GM imposing restrictions on alignment violations is the only viable rules driven approach given just core 3 books.

It does note in a variety of the sample encounters in the DMG that various bits are affected mechanically by alignment... so the level of enforcement isn't nil in the rules, just very, very low.

 

[clearstream]

Not all players, nor even all RPGs, have players play as others than themself. A few (Trauma, End of the World series) in fact make playing oneself the default assumption. (Trauma's English version includes a number of tests and forumulae.)

Would you say then that the personal authenticity of a player can be seen in RPG play in the case that the player is playing themself?

I think the OP means to include RPGs in which players are normally not playing as themselves, such as Blades in the Dark or Apocalypse World. So that is what my comments relate to, although it perhaps does shed some light to think about playing-as-self in this context.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I don't think there is any enforcement of alignment in 5e either. Mechanically alignment interacts with couple of magic item and one monster and one spell. It does basically nothing and thus it is super easy to remove.

 

[clearstream]

So the more the GM provides the motivation, the less the players will, which is what you think will reduce authenticity of the kind you describe? I think that makes sense if I’ve followed correctly.

Following on what @AbdulAlhazred has written, I feel motivation can arise in two senses, one of which inspires rather than stifles.

In one sense, which perhaps you are thinking of, the GM says what the character thinks. For example, they say "As a revolutionary dark elf you won't do X" or they say "As a revolutionary dark elf you must do Y."

In the sense I am thinking of, a "motivation" is simply that: "a reason or reasons for acting or behaving in a particular way." My character learns that there is an arcane tower to the west, so they have a reason to go west. They don't have to do so. Our imagined game world could contain entities who embrace certain principles and expect their followers to do the same. If my character is such a follower, then they know those principles. GM does not say what I have to do about that, but perhaps is happy to describe the penance imposed on followers who stray. My character thus has reason to adhere to our order's morality (as handed down by our god), but does not have to do so.

I haven't played Spire, but I read that "Spire is a roleplaying game about desperate revolutionary dark elves caught up in a secret war against the high elves, or aelfir, who rule the towering city of Spire." I don't assume the intent is to say what characters think or do as "desperate revolutionary dark elves" - that's up to the players. Perhaps the campaign that I briefly outlined above is about our characters' struggles against our order's dogmatic constraints... just as those dark elves are struggling against the high elves in Spire. In both cases, our play benefits from the presence of motivations (in fact, it's hard to see why we would do anything without them!)

Motivations in the first sense are stifling. In the second sense they are inspiring... and, I moot, essential.