Do alignments improve the gaming experience?

[Manbearcat]

Agreed. This relates to my post two above yours (number 1027): I'm puzzled by the number of posts on this thread from the "pro-alignment" crowd which seem to evince an unwillingness to do the GMing work that the rules for mechanical alignment seem to clearly call for.

I often hear that D&D doesn't need to be saved from "poor GMing" because there isn't an epidemic of "bad GMs". Nonetheless, I keep seeing calls of "well that is just bad GMing" on various, punitive, interpretations of cosmological fallout (of which I've seen manifest in real life...by real people...who certainly don't consider themselves poor GMs). I've had these conversations with plenty of GMs in real life and it seems that almost every long term GM I know is significantly more strict (and I guess worse) in their GMing than the general populace on ENWorld. I can tell you precisely what they would say (as I've heard one iteration of another many times before). They would say something akin to "If alignment has no teeth, from an adjudicative sense, and must be milquetoast in proportion to the punitive nature of the fallout (on the the player at the table by way of their PC's losses), then what is the point?"

That character above would have been an ex-Druid. Plain and simple. Plenty of reasonable (good) GMs would have asserted that as fact just as plenty of reasonable people will assert all sorts of various nuance within the L <==> N <==> C continuum which would give rise to Paladin's falling. It is not poor GMing. And if it is poor GMing, then we better reexamine the population density of "bad GMs" that we must create D&D rulesets around.

 

[pemerton]

Several posters in the thread seem like the type I wouldn't want anything to do with DMing, so it might not be worth reading unless you want to feel a lot better about your own gaming group.

In any case, I'm kind of curious how the other pro-mechanical-alignment folks would view the act it question

I just read through the thread quickly, and my sympathies lie mainly with the OP, for two reasons.

First, the OP seems to have had his PC perform an action which is completely reasonable within the basic framework of the game, completely true to character, and utterly predictable by any GM. Whether it's "good" or "evil" seems irrelevant to me. (And I can't imagine anyone classifying it as "lawful" and thereby a threat to the PC's status as a barbarian.)

Second, within the framework of the morality of self-defence I think the OP has a lot going for him also. The biggest issue is the use of lethal force, which is arguably disproportionate to the threat posed, but D&D is so casual about the use of lethal force - and pre-modern societies also tended to be more casual about it than modern societies - that I don't really feel the force of objections along those lines. (I mean, PCs are expected to invade orc fortresses and use lethal force all the time, without worrying about questions of proportionality.)

It is true that the threat to the OP's PC comes from a town guard, but it's clear from what the OP says that, for that PC, the town guard do not play a social role that gives their threats a special status in relation to him. The guards are, relative to the barbarian, asserting an authority that is not actually grounded in social reality. (For an interesting discussion of this in real life, I recommend the paper by Martin Krgyier and Rober van Krieken in Robert Manne's Whitewash.)

Thought it was also interesting that someone provided a relevant Conan excerpt from "Queen of the Black Coast"

That is a fictional rather than an actual historical example of the phenomenon I mention in the previous paragraph, but it makes the same point. I cited that passage in a seminar in 2012 to try to illustrate, in a pithy way, the notion that the authority of the law depends in a certain respect upon the actual fact of social uptake, and cannot be grounded simply in an abstract claim to rational authority.

 

[Campbell]

Let's take this from another angle. I'm not going to wade into specifics of any given edition of the game.

My fundamental issue with prescriptive personality mechanics (Alignment, WoD Humanity and Nature, SWSE Force mechanics, L5R Honor, GURPS personality flaws) is that they define the conflicts that game should focus on for you. They encourage morality rules lawyering by tying character behavior to specific rewards and denying specific benefits. What I enjoy about tabletop RPGs in particular is their capacity for a GM and their players to work together to determine what is at stake. I don't want to feel like I'm fighting against the tide for not trying to game these systems that encourage avoiding conflict rather than pushing play towards it.

When I sit down to create a character my first step is establish their belief systems, where they fall short, and how their beliefs clash with each other and the world around them. In the Scion game I'm currently playing in I play Reinhardt, a scion of Baldur. Reinhardt grew up in the streets of Berlin after his mother abandoned him, and at the start of play was a burgeoning thrash metal singer with severe anger management issues. The core conflict with the character is that he wants to make his no longer absentee father proud of him, but also despises being tied to him. He desperately wants to become his own man and is willing to fight whatever is in his way to do so. He views himself as a hero and leader, but constantly lashes out in anger at those around him despite the fact that he's a capable tactician and leader of men when he is in control of his faculties.

Thing is I don't actually want to know for certain whether or not he is living up to ideals of Aesir, but Scion's personality mechanics keep popping up. Now that we've reached demigod level and a squadron of 5 Valkyries have been sent to observe him to see if he is capable of leading einherjar in battle come Ragnarok I'm personally much more interested to see if he can prove his heroism to them then if he is acting in accordance with his game mechanic defined virtues. It is an unnecessary distraction away from the events of play which is where I want my focus to be.

I give my ST a lot of credit here. He does a good job of minimizing the impact of the rules, but it feels like a cloud hanging over my head.

 

[D'karr]

Stumbled across an example of a player/DM alignment dispute over at Paizo's boards: http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2qqzl?Is-Killing-always-evil . Several posters in the thread seem like the type I wouldn't want anything to do with DMing, so it might not be worth reading unless you want to feel a lot better about your own gaming group.

This example you showed from the thread is yet another example of a situation in which mechanical alignment would impede/hamper the play experience of our games. What does it matter that the act is deemed "evil" or not? The relevant play is going to be the "roleplaying" circumstances/consequences of the actions. So to what extent is the "mental overhead" or "mechanical process" to arrive at a conclusion of "evil" in any way useful? Mechanical Alignment rapidly falls short of any real relevance to what is happening in game. The length of that thread also shows that the "mental overhead" is clearly not trivial or even "reliably objective". There might be as many "alignment conclusions" on that thread as there are participants, and not all of them are going to even be in the same ballpark.

With mechanical alignment the only reason I would be going through the mental exercise is to determine if, as a DM, I'm going to "force" an alignment shift for the Barbarian character. What heft does that really add to the situation? In what ways do mechanical alignment rules improve that situation?

Now, don't get me wrong - I'll grant that the situation is quite ridiculous, and basically 2 dimensional. I don't think that it would even come up in any of our games. I see it more as an example of "very immature play", by which I mean play by very new or young players. But with mechanical alignment I don't think it is anywhere that uncommon in a game like D&D, which as a base premise has almost always been a game of "murder-hobos". I think I have seen examples similar to this one possibly hundreds, if not thousands of times on threads everywhere.

From the standpoint of non-mechanical alignment the DM and the players in that group don't have to bother calculating whether that action was evil or not. The action simply is, roleplay consequences follow. I see no benefit to what a ruling by mechanical alignment actually adds, or improves, in that situation.

 

[N'raac]

To explore values requires leaving open the answers to the questions like "What is the true nature of honour", "What does true honour demand", etc. Exploring the GM's conception of certain values presupposes that those questions have already been answered by the GM. Questions can't, at one and the same time, be both open and answered.

If the GM already has a clear, certain conception of “honour”, then where is the mental overhead several posters have indicated is required in adjudicating alignment? The GM **knows** what Honour means, at least in his game. If that mental overhead is, in fact required, then both player and GM are exploring what honour might mean in this game.

The impression I'm getting from some of the "alignment is not a straitjacket" posts is that the GM answers some of the big questions, but leaves the little questions open, and that is where the action of play takes place.

I think that’s fair. That is also consistent with the statement often made that “we don’t really need alignment because none of our characters take actions blatantly out of step with their professed beliefs/alignment”. The big picture seems well understood, at least in those games.

To your next comment, I see three separate issues, albeit not without their similarities.

This impression is reinforced by the number of recent posts saying "But whether or not to rescue the villain is not really an alignment question"

To some extent, it is. However, to some extent, the tone of the game also enters into the picture. As an extreme example, if the tone of my game is “Saturday morning cartoon”, then Good pretty much prohibits hurting, much less killing. That “slay the Evildoers” Paladin does not fit in this game.

But that’s not D&D, right? Well, it was the only D&D TV series produced to date, wasn’t it? How much killing did those characters do? Not the game I want to play, but one possible, if extreme, tone.

A game with a tone more in keeping with your (WAY) upthread Lancelot reference has a much more “life is cheap” tone to it, and killing town guards may be quite OK. That seems more in keeping with the vision expressed by the CN barbarian in the linked Paizo thread.

I think that places less reverence on life than the setting of the dial in the by the book 2e and 3e alignment descriptions, where “respect for life” is a hallmark of Good. That said, clearly there is considerable room for compromise on that ideal in the typical “smite the evildoer” D&D game.

"Whether or not the druid should favour nature over civilisation is not really an alignment question"

It’s not. It’s really not. It does not place Good and Evil values in opposition. It may be closer to a Law versus Chaos conflict, but it doesn’t zone in on that specifically. In a game where Nature versus Civilization is a primary theme, alignment doesn’t really serve to reflect where participants stand in that regard. In a game whose theme is largely Nature versus Civilization, I do have to question the play example where Primal Forces continue to empower one who has now become a clear Servant of Civilization. We have reduced those Primal Forces to abilities which can be tapped by anyone who knows the right phrases and hand gestures, rather than a Force empowering its servants to pursue its objectives. Just like “the cleric’s spells and the Paladin’s powers may never be taken away, and in fact new ones can be granted, regardless of their adherence to the tenets and goals of the beings ostensibly granting them their powers” invokes, to me, a “right rituals tap into power whether the power source likes it or not” vibe, rather than a “servants of a higher power” vibe.

In fact, a similar question could be asked of the Eye of Vecna. Is it just a power source (whoever plunks the thing into their skull gets these powers to use as they see fit), or is it a channel by which Vecna may reward or punish its wielder for serving or thwarting his goals? The former seems more consistent with “tap into the power source – you don’t have to serve that source’s goals” and the latter more consistent with “serving a higher power” theme.

That, to me, could be a very real dividing line between a “magic item” (taps into arcane power which is there for the taking to any who know how to access and manipulate it) and an “artifact” (provides a link to a higher power, and can never be fully under its wielder’s control).

or "You solve the succubus problem by making her neutral and therefore, de facto, taking her outside the alignment mechanics."

I don’t think we’re “making her neutral”. If she is not evil, then she is not evil. The question of whether Demons are creatures of pure evil which are beyond redemption is a campaign question. However, if the answer is “yes, that is what Demons are”, then why would any rational being trust one, however benevolent her present behaviour may seem? And, if she draws her powers from Pure Evil, should she retain them if she is straying from that path? I would say she should be held to at least the same standard as the Cleric, or even the Paladin, retaining his powers.

That is not how it looks to me. The way it looks to me is that I described an event that, in play, struck all relevant participants as obviously permissible within the rules. Some posters then stated that it was impermissible, and I referred in more detail to relevant rules elements to show that they were wrong.

The way it looks to me is that your players trust you to interpret, apply and depart from the rules in a manner which will make an exciting, enjoyable game for all participants. To me, that’s vastly superior than a group which lacks that trust in the GM, leaving him unable to depart from the strict rules mechanics for any reason. To reiterate, I do not accept that your game is run strictly by “the rules”. That does not mean I deny it is a well run game, enjoyed by its participants. The latter is far more important, so I do not understand the obsession of trying to get us to agree that the “rules as written” are being strictly applied.

In 4e, there is no fundamental difference between an enduring -5 penalty to a certain category of actions, and an enduring failure to regain an encounter power. And as far as mechanical impact is concerned, the -5 penalty is quite likely to be more severe. This is because one typical encounter power is one which permits a +5 to a certain category of skill check. Losing that power, for some extended period, is therefore tantamount to a -5 penalty to a check once per encounter. Whereas a lingering -5 penalty is (obviously) the equivalent of a -5 penalty to every relevant check while the penalty endures.

4e always strikes me as very mechanistic across the board. Would it require a skill challenge to determine that a PC who has always been loyal to the local Baron receives a +2 bonus to interaction with those loyal to the Baron, and a -5 penalty to interaction with those who oppose him? That is, he would find it easier to obtain aid from the Baron’s Sergeant at Arms, but more difficult to persuade rebels to share the location of their base or the identity of their leader? That, to me, is what the bonus and penalty set out in the example you provided implies.

Perhaps an aside (something this thread clearly has stayed away from to date…), but if we move beyond the escaped slaves’ example further down the chain, and a skill challenge includes interaction with slaves (now with a -5 penalty), does that penalty influence the classification of such rolls (ie they would be Moderate without the penalty, but since we walk into the situation with that penalty, they are now Hard)? I don’t know the answer, however if the challenge is still “moderate” whether or not you have a -5 penalty, the penalty seems much more one of mechanics.

The notion of "what the cosmological force of Good perceives as being good" strikes me as incoherent. It is the force of Good - it doesn't have an opinion about what goodness is. It instantiates goodness!

If it prizes “respect for life” above all, and I think capital punishment is valid, then my “Good” and that of “Cosmological Good” clearly differ. Alternatively, if its “Good” is “all who follow evil must be stricken from the Earth”, it seems unlikely to accord with “Good” as we perceive it in the modern world. Again, my example of the sword-wielding Paladin who is following his cosmological “Good” being a pretty poor fit as “Good” in 21st century North America. Or, for that matter, Lawful, as he metes out justice as a vigilante, rather than making a citizen’s arrest and turning his foes over to face the justice of the land.

Here again, I come back to the tone of the game. If that is intended to see the Druid as a Priest of Nature, then this character clearly does not fit that mold, does she? She becomes the “baby killing Paladin” within the setting. That tone is clearly not desired in your game, but I think we are back to “all power sources are amoral – if you know how to access them, you can use them”. With that in mind, why can’t a knowledgeable individual tap into Divine, Arcane and Primal power sources equally? They’re all just power sources, like AC current, DC current and thermal energy. They don’t question what they are used for, they just act as directed by the user.

Now, that definitely requires some means of transitioning that Druid to some other power source, not just leaving the Druid with a bunch of dead levels, rendering the character worse than dead (the dead can be revived, but the lost powers can neither be reclaimed nor revised). But I find it something of a disconnect that “I strike you with the raw, primal power of the very Nature whose tenets I have abandoned” less than satisfying.

I just read through the thread quickly, and my sympathies lie mainly with the OP, for two reasons.

First, the OP seems to have had his PC perform an action which is completely reasonable within the basic framework of the game, completely true to character, and utterly predictable by any GM. Whether it's "good" or "evil" seems irrelevant to me. (And I can't imagine anyone classifying it as "lawful" and thereby a threat to the PC's status as a barbarian.)

I find myself back to tone. I agree that there’s no question the Barbarian is moving towards Law in his actions, so the only question is Good versus Evil. If the first response of an individual to any inconvenience is lethal force, that does not strike me as “respect for life”, so Good is clearly out. If the person’s favoured , if not only, means of dealing with any inconvenience is “strike to kill”, it seems reasonable to classify that as Evil. One Evil act does not make the person Evil, but a continued trend? Yeah, just lashing out at anything that annoys you strikes me as a Chaotic Evil force of destruction.

I do agree that DD is pretty cavalier about the use of lethal force. If the tone of the campaign is one where the character is stuck in a “kill or be killed” choice, selecting lethal force seems much more understandable. What I don’t know is what the result of negotiation with, or surrender to, this guardsman is likely to be. Is that a death sentence? Then lethal force becomes a much more reasonable choice. However, I think the “Heroes” we envision as Good (or even Neutral) would be more likely to seek to bluff their way out, disarm the guard, subdue him, or distract him and flee than to run him through and leave him dead on the cobblestones.

We’re seeing the example without context, though. I believe the Guard was presented as a Paladin. What action would he, an exemplar of Good in this setting, have taken against the PC’s? If, on finding the stolen object, he would dispense summary justice in the form of execution without further ado, “respect for life” seems much less relevant to “Good” than in the standard D&D setting, so my interpretation of lethal force used against him would also change.

And here is where we come back to the views of that “Cosmological Good” not necessarily matching my own views of “good” in plain English.

 

[Cadence]

Given that, I attempted to engage the conversation with an "in spirit" analogue to pre-4e alignment (* code/ethos QC by GM, homage to 4e's power sources - specifically with respect to how alignment constraints mandate being in accords with the ideals of those sources, lest the power source be turned off -, and generic Druid tropes). However, I think I can provide a (brief) breakdown of where troubles would have arisen for our play if the game was played under the auspices of 3.5. That is below the quoted text that provides *

Alright, so let us just pretend for a moment that 4e has all of the trappings of mechanical alignment and that Druids are a Divine character (rather than Primal) and could have their power font "turned off".

How I would think about it - noting that I'd never really questioned using mechanical alignment until this thread and have never found it a detriment in play myself (in that no one I've played with has ever done something egregious enough to make me question their alignment).

Case 1:
(a) It is established that druids are divine characters who are granted their powers from their unity with, and reverence for, nature where that unity is disrupted by going to the extremes of LG, CG, LN, or CN or not revering nature.
(b) The player decided to play a character of that class
(c) In the course of play the character stops revering nature, likes civilization just as much as nature, and move towards LG, and the player recognizes these changes in the character.

If (a) has been established as an axiom of the game, then shouldn't the player whose character gets to (c) voluntarily start having all their nature granted powers fail without the DM even needing to intervene? To me, the player not role-playing as if their powers are being gradually shut down seems in the same family as a player trying to have their magic-user attempt to cast spells with no penalty while wearing armor, the paladin killing babies for fun and thinking they get to keep their powers, or the player of a deafened character having them knowing what's being said around them. In all those cases the player seems like they are trying to _cheat_ in the sense of not playing the game by its rules. If the player tried to ignore the casting penalty for armor, would you as DM make them take the penalty (or stop playing with them)? I don't see how it is different if the player recognizes (a) as a rule and recognizes that they are violating it.

I would expect that the DM and player would work something out for the player to maintain some slightly altered powers by shifting their allegiances to a different divinity/power (become some sort of unique cleric/druid/divine-caster type).

Case 1.1:
I agree (quite readily based on several anti-alignment posters previous posts) that it gets more complicated if we change (c) and the player doesn't recognize that they are shifting away from nature and are shifting towards an extreme alignment. Then it gets into the DM having to either point that out to them or to ignore it. That seems to go with your (3). I completely get the argument about not wanting the DM to have to enforce things that can be tied to a value judgement - things like the differences between LG and N (with LG tendencies) or what it means to revere and work for nature. I assume you would enforce things that don't have a value judgement - say a player isn't using their armor penalty as an arcane caster because they were forgetting to do so or because they found it annoying?

Case 2:
(a) It is established that druids are divine characters who are granted their powers from their unity with, and reverence for, nature where that unity is disrupted by going to the extremes of LG, CG, LN, or CN or not revering nature.
(b) The player would like to play a druid but has a character idea where their aliegence is split between a god of nature and a god of civilization, has a different stance on nature, and a world view that might not fit with N.

In this case I would think they would bring that idea to the DM. If having a special druid archetype or alternate version of the druid didn't do violence to the setting, then I would expect the DM to help the player up a custom character class to fit their vision of the characters. (For example, in last years 1e game the DM let me switch out my thief's pick pocket and open locks for ranger tracking.) If the proposed class modification doesn't fit the established world at all, I wouldn't expect the DM to go with it any more than I would expect them to allow an elf in an agreed upon all human campaign, allow fire-arms in an agreed upon bronze age one, or let the player unilaterally decide to use some psionic supplement to introduce those to the game.

On all points 1-3, there is a problem for play in my game. This character's body of work wouldn't have panned out. Its evolution would have been tortured or rendered null. And all the while I would have had to spend mental overhead on the adjudicating the cosmological fallout. Those, singularly and certainly together, equal "harmful to my (and my players) preferred table aesthetic and play."

I think I would like a distinction between (i) having alignment/codes of honor and their having effects on the characters and (ii) how they are enforced. I don't find (i) to be that much different than many other restrictions placed on players and their characters in the game. The difference I see is in (ii) with the judgement required of the DM if they are the enforcers and how some DMs find it objectionable to insert disagreements on values into the game and/or how much mental overhead is used up for some DMs in monitoring such things if they are the enforcer.

If a game doesn't want (i), that's fine -- you've just redefined how divine casters work in your game and they're different from RAW. It just makes no sense to now say your playing a "3.5 D&D Druid" ... you're playing "a house-ruled druid that gets rid of the connection to nature". People house-rule things all the time.

If you go with (i), then you could put (ii) in the hands of the players and not the DMs, and if the whole table notices the paladin thinks killing babies is good then you stop playing with them instead of intruding to strip their powers. For me, I don't find (ii) to take much mental overhead and (until reading this thread) didn't find it any different from enforcing the armor wearing caster penalty.

I don't agree that Case 1 above necessarily means this character's body of work would have been negated -- unless they insisted they were a perfectly good druid still or the DM refused to work on a rebuild with them.

 

[Cadence]

I just read through the thread quickly, and my sympathies lie mainly with the OP, for two reasons.

First, the OP seems to have had his PC perform an action which is completely reasonable within the basic framework of the game, completely true to character, and utterly predictable by any GM. Whether it's "good" or "evil" seems irrelevant to me. (And I can't imagine anyone classifying it as "lawful" and thereby a threat to the PC's status as a barbarian.)

This example you showed from the thread is yet another example of a situation in which mechanical alignment would impede/hamper the play experience of our games. What does it matter that the act is deemed "evil" or not? The relevant play is going to be the "roleplaying" circumstances/consequences of the actions. <snip> There might be as many "alignment conclusions" on that thread as there are participants, and not all of them are going to even be in the same ballpark.
<snip>
I think I have seen examples similar to this one possibly hundreds, if not thousands of times on threads everywhere.

I agree that even if it was evil, a single act that is arguably justifiable shouldn't be enough to move an alignment even if you're using the 1e Gygaxian rules... and that changing to evil doesn't seem like it should have that much of an effect on the character.

I just thought it was interesting because, even after 1000+ posts, this thread didn't seem to have many actual in-play examples where the play actually turned into DM/Player disagreement over alignment interpretation and blew up... and that I think reasonable arguments could be made about whether the act in question was CN or not.

My comment about "posters I wouldn't want to play with" wasn't related to whether it was reasonable to think this would be counted as a CN act for the barbarian ... but more about whether a min-maxed low Int CN Barbarian is a good choice for the game sessions I envision and whether I want to be in a room with people who think that shooting police officers trying to arrest you for a crime you committed in real-life modern America isn't something that should be thought of as an evil act.

Now, don't get me wrong - I'll grant that the situation is quite ridiculous, and basically 2 dimensional. I don't think that it would even come up in any of our games. I see it more as an example of "very immature play",
<snip>
The action simply is, roleplay consequences follow. I see no benefit to what a ruling by mechanical alignment actually adds, or improves, in that situation.

Agreed. I wonder how upset the Barbarian's player will be if the Paladin's order chooses to respond with a level of force needed to deal with a seemingly rabid dog of emmense power. Granted Conan got away clean... but he was superbly competent relative to his world, and not level 4 in a world designed to challenge characters up to level 20. Live by the min-max die by the min-max. (The nicer, but more rail-roady, thing to do would be to have the order investigate enough to see that the Barbarian thought he was in the right and give him the choice between execution or doing a quest as restitution. Then when he weaseled out of that have them nuke him.)

< Insert agreement with @N'raac 's remarks at the bottom of #1035. >

 

[Manbearcat]

[MENTION=6681948]N'raac[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6701124]Cadence[/MENTION], I'll try to evaluate your posts in full and post a response in the coming days. However, I just want to clarify a few things:

1) The primary issue that this character would have is a heretical deviation from classic "nature veneration" orthodoxy. As I advised in the prior post, this character's philosophy evolved away from a strict demarcation of "natural" and "unnatural", homogenizing the two into one "all things are natural" pool. For instance, there is a tendency to move the machinations and industry of beings of higher/more refined cognitive functions (eg humans and the infrastructure of civilizaton), who apply reason (rather than primal instinct) to solve problems and/or progress, from "natural" to "unnatural." In the case of the Druid, this separation is an artificial one contrived, ironically enough, by the same higher/refined cognitive function that produces the "reason" that produces civilization. By her way of seeing it, the axiom of "only the strong survives" is not upset by human civilization's encroachment on "natural habitat." It is "natural" to dominate territory, create better/more efficient means for survival/perpetuation of species, whether it be erecting manufactured shelters or slaughtering the youth (and not consuming them) of competitors for prey. By her way of thinking, "Civilization (and all of its trappings deemed "unnatural by cannon)" is just as "natural" as the primal fury of a pack of lions murdering (not consuming) a cheetah and her cubs. Those of higher cognitive function have great responsibility in being stewards to assure as much mutual survival/perpetuation of species as possible. They, and what they manufacture/create, are not outside of the natural order. They are inherently a part of it. Hence, homogenization of "Civilization" with "Natural Order" and the idea that raw, unchecked natural order is more of a destructive force with no awareness of, nor effort towards, stewardship of "all things natural."

2) This evolution of ideals within an orthodoxy has no place within an alignment system. There is orthodoxy and there is heresy. There is LN and there is LG. If orthodoxy and alignment were malleable, moving targets, they would be pointless. But they are not. Observation of this cannon is embedded in thie system. As such, this evolution is impossible, even if the final product (heresy) may be aesthetically and functionally in-line with a non-D&D "veneration of nature."

Long story short, evolved ideals as heresy (even if still "playing for the same team") and ideals at extreme tension that must be prioritized become a poison pill where alignment is mandate. Unsurprising, outside of just fun, high fantasy romps, these sort of "morality plays" are primarily what I'm interested in producing in play (if such weighty topics are going to be tangled with at all).

 

[Campbell]

I think part of the crux of the issue to me is that I have very little interest in exploring fantasy morality. The second the thematics of the game stop reflecting genuine human concerns is the second I lose interest. The reason I like Blood and Smoke and loathe Vampire - The Masquerade is that Blood and Smoke's Humanity mechanics are all about your character's connection to their specific human life and what it means to let go of that rather than Mark Rein-Hagen's conception of what it means to be human.

I just started to dig into Edge of the Empire's rules for force users and I thought it might be of interest to this discussion. When a force user uses a force power they roll a number of force die equal to their force rating. It's assumed that most force users are generally decent people (light side) and they can only use the white force dots that show up on the dice to power their abilities. They can elect to give into the dark side from time to time and utilize the dark force dots but that represents going against their destiny which utilizes the group's destiny pool freeing it up for GM use. Players can elect to inform the GM that they are embracing the dark side at any time which reverses the situation with their force dice. This is purely a matter of fictional positioning - the powers available are the same.

Of course just because I'm not personally interested in chewing scenery doesn't mean I think it's a flawed mode of play, just one I'm not personally interested in.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I'm late to the party as usual, and needless to say, I'm not going to read 1000+ posts, but here's my 2 bit.

1) Having alignments improves the game by getting players to think about the morality of their actions, which adds depth to play.

2) Alignments give a universal standard that players can agree on for moral issues. I play with folks from differing religions and with varying political views, and unsurprisingly we have some pretty fundamental disagreements about the morality of some actions. Alignment gives something we can work with in game without argument.