Do alignments improve the gaming experience?

[Celebrim]

I understand your position

Well, you may be ahead of me in that then.

You can use Pale Rider and Preacher as your exemplar for a Dog.

Well, you certainly can, but I can't and still believe that the Dog has the moral authority of the Lord of Life.

But not all Dogs are goings to be (nor should they be) infallible or anywhere approaching it.

Of course not. But that statement I think means something different to me than it does to you. The greatest saint is still further below infallibility, than he is above the greatest monsters of history.

No I am not a nihilist, an existentialist, nor a postmodernist. Not even close. And I absolutely don't "hate Faith."

I wasn't really referring to you.

Some of the things you've said are getting really, really personal and it takes an amazing amount to offend me. We're at the point where if you said that to me in real life and implied some of those disrespectful things in your last two posts, then you better have a stout chin and be able to throw hands to back up those words.

Friend, after having 'come out of the closet' like I just did, and listed the sort of exemplars I just did, what ever would make you think that if you put up fists on such a matter, I wouldn't just put my hands in my pocket and lead with my chin - stout or not?

 

[sheadunne]

Thanks for clearing your point up, it was unclear to me since it seemed you were claiming the that the idea that the divine classes had internally granted as opposed to externally granted power was based on 3.x

I would argue that it's not "granted" at all, but rather accessed through focus (be that mediation, contemplation, prayer, etc). But again, it's just my interpretation and a way to reconcile the conflicting perspectives of divine magic in 3x. It's more of a fluff thing than anything else and doesn't really do much to deal with my issues with a lack of mechanics, since one could easily argue that a deity could cut off that access in much the same way they could stop granting spells if that were the way I rolled.

I tend to ignore the issue entirely when playing 3x/PF (as I do with many of the mechanic lacking spells/feats/abilities that exist in 3x/PF). I've been lucky enough to game with players who haven't pushed the envelop on "codes." (in terms of manipulating the system). They tend to take them because they want to RP them. Back in the day though, it came up on occasion, but I was much worse at communication back then. And when it comes to alignment, I simply say that only creatures hailing from the planes (outsiders mostly) or that have auras as a result of classes, radiate alignment and are affected by alignment based spells.

That said, I'd much rather have the gap closed.

 

[Sadras]

For me it's simply a different view of the deity and the source of divine magic/powers/abilities in D&D. For me, the followers of gods (paladins, clerics, etc) get their powers through faith and not through any direct act by the deity. Their source of power is through belief. This belief is internal and not subject to being turned off by deities (they don't have the power to shut it off, but they do have the power to appear and kick butt I suppose, although why they would bother I have no idea). A DM controlling a deity really has no impact on whether divine magic happens. It happens because the person believes and those beliefs focus the magic into effect. When the follower questions himself (by say breaking his oath), that focus is lost and his magic and powers wain. Paladins and clerics believe more strongly in the divine than other characters. This is why they use holy symbols as a focus for their magic, it helps to channel their belief into effect.

This is based on 3x. 2e had some other notions about divine magic.

Never claimed that it was. It based of the 3x notion of divine forces (not deities) powering spells (law and good in the instance of paladins), the idea of ethics and moral beliefs limiting spell selection, the power of faith to turn undead, the notion of a paladin meditating rather than praying for spells, and not having to be devoted to a deity to gain spells.

Yeah, I'm not going to agree on this mostly because on page 33 of 3.5e there is a little section called Ex-Clerics:
"A cleric who grossly violates the code of conduct required by his god loses all spells and class features....He cannot thereafter gain levels as a cleric of that god until he atones."

More-ever forget your take on 3e just look at the canon novels of two very important D&D settings:
Dragonlance (remember the King Priest of Ishtar - Cataclysm); and
Forgotten Realms (Ao banished the gods to roam on Toril - Time of Troubles)
It was the gods themselves that provided divine power to divine casters.

You have every right to interpret the rules/source of divine magic as you so wish for your campaigns, but your interpretation is highly different to D&D lore.

 

[pemerton]

what is the difference between a knight and a paladin? Because when I have these discussions with you and pemerton I find that I often feel in your minds there is no difference, but in most editions of D&D there most certainly is.

You are correct that I don't regard D&D's mechanical implimentation of the paladin - and particularly the mechanical alignment aspect - as definitive. If I did, then I would be contradicting myself when I said that I find alignment mechanics an obstacle to the play of paladins and similar religious PCs.

D&D didn't invent the paladin as an archetype. It has a long history, going back to medieval history and medieval romance. Arthur, Lancelot and Galahad are literary examples. So is Aragorn ("the hands of the king are the hands of a healer"). The crusading orders provide something of a historical model, at least in their self-conception if not (always) in their reality.

Not all knights are paladins, because some are greedy, some are married (not an absoluted bar - a king can be married but still a paladin - but at least an indicator), some are self-serving, etc. The knight who raised Arthur, for instance, was not a paladin because while he was a nice guy his first loyalty was to family, not to the divinity and its demands.

A paladin is a knight who has been called by the divine, who is touched by the grace of the divine, and who is answering that calling.

I feel you reject the notion that the GM controls those external sources.

In my case (not necessarily [MENTION=27570]sheadunne[/MENTION]'s) that is correct. As I posted upthread, when a player chooses to play a character who has a calling, the GM does not have sole authority over the content or meaning of that calling, or of the one who has issued it.

The player gets a stake in the deities, his home town, his parents, etc. Can the character veto, say, the death of a loved one, the razing or conquest of his home town or the loss of his heirloom/enchanted bow on the basis these are “central to his conception”?

You'd need to tell me more about the context. They could certainly object very strongly to such a thing happening off-stage without any discussion - in my view that would be bad GMing, and hence I wouldn't do it. I think the advice on handling relationship in Burning Wheel is a sound starting point for these sorts of things.

Could you please define what exactly PC "conception" encompasses??

You have similarly not responded to my earlier question of where “PC conception” ends. His deity/church/philosophy must always accept his actions, unless he decides they must not (the Paladin who accidentally took a life).

N'raac, your second sentence is incoherent, because the first occurence of "he" refers to the PC, and the second occurence refers to the player of that PC. If you won't draw any distinction between player and PC, how are you expecting me to explain a playstyle to you that depends upon drawing such a distinction?

As to "conception", in this discussion I am talking about the players' conception of his/her PC as acting properly or improperly. And I am saying that if the player conceives of his/her PC as having done the right thing, and then the GM overrides that conception by declaring the character to have fallen, that is quite different from (as in [MENTION=19675]Dannyalcatraz[/MENTION]'s example) the proselytising priest being banished.

N'raac keeps mentioning that perhaps the paladin or cleric's god has made an error, but to me that makes no sense: first, because a traditional paladin (not D&D tradition, but actual literary and cultural tradition) is devoted to a power who is incapable of error; and second, because within the D&D tradition the paladin is devoted to a being who is an incarnation of law and good, lives on a plane that is infused with law and good, and has mental stats at least in the mid-to-high 20s (varying somewhat with edition). Such a being does not make errors as to what proper conduct requires.

So the GM declaring the paladin to have fallen, in circusmtances where the player's conception is of the PC having acted properly, is in effect telling the player that their conception of their character is mistaken due to their error in moral judgement.

(Obligatory defensive footnote: I'm not interested in being told about players who just want their paladin to be able to torture innocent children for fun. As I said upthread, I guess these players exist because people keep worrying about their pernicious effects on the game, but I don't know any and if I did wouldn't play with them. I am talking about how alignment is an obstacle to my actual play in my actual experience, and one feature of my actual play is that my players are sincere in their playing of their PCs - if they take a decision on the grounds that it's the proper thing for their character to do, they are sincere about that.)

In the typical game milieu, how many immortal beings with staggering INT and WIS live in all of the Outer Planes? I suggest the player and the PC may have discovered that LG is not what the PC considers proper to do.

This is the approach that I described upthread as either cynical, or alternatively the approach of Conan-esque moral self-creation. It is an approach in which, in my view, the very notion of a paladin makes no sense, because the universe itself has no fundamental moral orientation, but rather is uncaring and indifferent.

If a paladin, who has pledged his or her life to all that is good and holy, suddenly finds him-/herself rejected by it, then either s/he is in the same situation as Job - but I would never put a player through that unilaterally - or alternatively is in the same situation as the protagonists in Lovecraft stories, of having discovered that his/her whole conception of the universe was radically mistaken. At which point s/he never would have been a paladin at all, and there would certainly be no such thing as "falling" - there would be nothing against which the idea of "falling" could even be measured!

(Another sidenote: if one approaches paladins in this way - as simply contracted agents of team Celestia - then it makes absolutely no sense that the other teams don't have similar contracted agents. This is not my conception of the paladin.)

If one chooses as an archetype, Archer, and he picks the necessary feats and abilities which would enhance his skill as an Archer. If that Archer drops his bow for a sword, the system punishes him through the mechanics for not sticking to his archetype.

Dropping your bow for a sword isn't the same as the GM telling you that your bow is suddenly, for the rest of the game, replaced by a sword. I wouldn't do that either. If a player builds an archer, and wants to keep playing an archer, than I will keep framing scenes that make life ineresting for that archer PC (and hence make it possible for the player to engage the game on his/her chosen terms, namely, as an archer).

The Paladin character’s views deviate from his deity? This is a HUGE challenge to the beliefs of your character. I thought the game was all about challenges.

<snip>

Now, I would not disagree that we could use a mechanic which enables the Fallen Paladin to replace his lost mechanical abilities with new abilities, just as we would likely allow a cleric to change deities and retain his abilities with any relevant changes such as domain spells, granted powers and favoured weapons. Perhaps the Paladin gets to replace his Paladin levels with Fighter levels over a similar timeframe, becoming a character with the mechanical abilities befitting his level. But he does not get to dictate what “LG” or Paladinhood, mean.

I don't see the challenge. Or rather, I don't see the challenge that fits with my approach to RPGing.

I mean, here is one way to challenge my players: keep tilting the table as they try to roll their dice. But that is not a challenge of the sort I'm interested in in RPGing.

Here is another way to challenge may players: "OK, today everyone is to pass their character sheet one chair to the left - surprise, each of you is playing someone else's PC!" That would be a challenge - particularly in my game, where the PCs are 24th level 4e characters, each with a long list of mechanical resources to draw on. But that's not the sot of challenge I'm interested in in RPGing either. (Though I'm sure it would be good if I was coaching my players for some sort of tournament play.)

Here is another way to challenge my players playing paladins: either do A rather than B in the current situation, or else you're going to have to rebuild your PC in a way that you don't want to. But no one has yet told me why I would want to do that, or why it would make the game more enjoyable either for me (do I enjoy telling my players that they have to rebuild their PCs unless they play them how I want?) or my player (if s/he wanted to play a fighter wouldn't s/he have just made one, or if s/he wanted to rebuild as a fighter wouldn't s/he have talked to me about it?).

The paladin's restrictions throughout the previous editions have primarily served to make sure this doesn't happen as far as the paladin's code goes.

<snip>

you seem to regard the code as something the paladin can disregard and still be a paladin, I don't think I do.

There seems to be some confusion. I trust my players to play their paladins (and similar divine characters), and to choose whether or not to adhere to the code, and - if their paladin breaks the code - to play this out (as I described upthread with the paladin who let himself be beaten into the ground by a demon).

If my players choose to have their characters disregard the code, this gets played out. Narrative consequences of the sort [MENTION=27570]sheadunne[/MENTION] mentioned in the abstract, and of which I've given a concrete example, get played out. If the player wanted to rebuild his/her PC in some way, that would happen. (It hasn't yet, but the opposite has: the player of the wizard, who had multiclassed into invoker, rebuilt his PC as an invoker following a resurrection experience that brought him much closer to his patron gods).

There seems to be a default assumption underlying many of these posts that it is hard for the player of a paladin to stick to the code. I think this is probably true in a Gygaxian game - hence my reference, upthread, to the original role of mechanical alignment as a type of disadvantage mechanic in "step on up" play: being LG was harder, but if you could stick to it you could get benefits, like easier access to healing and hirelings.

But in my sort of game the player of the paladin doesn't have any greater (or lesser) challenge than the player of the assassin - both will find themselves (and their PCs) framed into situations that generate pressure and force them to make choices. Either is free to evolve their character in the ways that make sense to them within the context of the game.

In my experience, those against a moral/psychological descriptor don't like it as it doesn't affect the roll-play and might supposedly limit their characters on the role-play which to me is an indication that they prefer the roll-play.

Whereas in my experience, alignment descriptors are used as an "out" for not addressing genuine moral questions in play (eg the morality of killing, which is a big part of typical D&D play), and also as a type of additional constraint in what is defacto, if not overtly advertised, "step on up" play (eg can I rob the whos-its and gain possession of their widgets while still persuading the GM that I'm not evil, because s/he runs a "no evil PCs" game).

It's probably not wise for either of us to generalise too much from our necessarily limited experiences.

 

[pemerton]

I have never received an answer on how far “fail forward” can go. It is impossible, apparently, for the character to be removed from the game by banishment.

You say this like it's some sort of shocking revelation. But how would you possibly think that the GM unilaterally excluding a PC from the game was consistent with "fail forward"? With forward like that, who would need backward?!

Can the character die, which also removes the character from the game?

Not in a fantasy game it doesn't. In my 4e campaign there has been one "TPK". Only one of the PCs was definitively dead (having been caught in friendly fire that reduced him below negative bloodied hit points). I asked the players - including that one - whether they wanted to keep playing their PCs or not. All but one did.

So 3 PCs awoke in a goblin prison cell, to the smell of a 4th PC - the half elf - roasting on a spit. In the cell was a strange drow (the new PC replacing the half elf). The dead paladin wasn't in the cell - his body was laid out on an altar by the hobgoblin shaman, who was using it as the focus for a ritual to summon the dead PC's dead nemesis from the Shadowfell - but what the shaman hadn't counted on was that the Raven Queen would send the paladin back to deal with the nemesis once again!

There have been 4 instances of single PC death. On each occasion the PC came back some way or other, in accordance with the wishes of the player.

Or does Fail Forward means that each failure must ultimately be resolved in a manner where the character is able to try, try again?

Events happen. Losses occur. If the PCs don't rescue the sacrifice due to their own cowardice (yes, it really happened) then that is on them. But if the player takes the view that the story of the PC is not done, and if the campaign itself is ongoing, then the PC can be reintegrated - I've given you some examples above.

Again, you write as if this is some great shock. But what do you do when one of your players' PC dies? Tell them not to bother turning up to the next 3 years of sessions until the campaign is over?

In different playstyle, of course, death matters because (i) the goal of play is to build a strong PC, and (ii) death obliges you to start again with a weak PC. But I don't play a Gygaxian, "step on up" game. Having your PC killed doesn't mean you "lose the game". It means that the story has changed in some way. Something you care about in the fiction might have changed. But you don't have to drop out of the campaign.

 

[Manbearcat]

I think you've made a strong case for Roland Deschain being a knight or knightly when using D&D as basis, which is what we are discussing... but not for him being a paladin in the D&D sense... I don't think there's any question that Roland throughout the stories doesn't hold himself to a higher and purer state of law and good than those around him. He has a code (though IMO it's not really well defined)... which is what a knight has but he does not possess the attributes of a paladin. Let me ask you a question, IYO what is the difference between a knight and a paladin? Because when I have these discussions with you and @pemerton I find that I often feel in your minds there is no difference, but in most editions of D&D there most certainly is.

@Imaro , I'll think on that and try to put something together for you that is coherent. Off the cuff, Divine Spark informing your ethos, abilities and quest is definitely the primary line of demarcation.

You are correct that I don't regard D&D's mechanical implimentation of the paladin - and particularly the mechanical alignment aspect - as definitive. If I did, then I would be contradicting myself when I said that I find alignment mechanics an obstacle to the play of paladins and similar religious PCs.

D&D didn't invent the paladin as an archetype. It has a long history, going back to medieval history and medieval romance. Arthur, Lancelot and Galahad are literary examples. So is Aragorn ("the hands of the king are the hands of a healer"). The crusading orders provide something of a historical model, at least in their self-conception if not (always) in their reality.

Not all knights are paladins, because some are greedy, some are married (not an absoluted bar - a king can be married but still a paladin - but at least an indicator), some are self-serving, etc. The knight who raised Arthur, for instance, was not a paladin because while he was a nice guy his first loyalty was to family, not to the divinity and its demands.

A paladin is a knight who has been called by the divine, who is touched by the grace of the divine, and who is answering that calling.

I'm going to have limited time in posting (if at all) over the next few days so I'm just going to be expedient and take the opportunity to C&P pemerton's expansion on what I've written above as we're clearly of the same mind (as per the bold). If I need to break something out further down the line, I might do so.

On Roland specifically, the divine line of demarcation and calling was ka (the metaphysical force that touches the very few and those of his order specifically); duty and destiny. Only one of the line of Eld (Arthur) or possessing a sign of line of Eld (Excalibur; Roland's guns) would be able to open the door at the foot of the tower (of which ka was directing him toward).

And generally, the expansion above by pemerton are precisely my thoughts on it.

 

[N'raac]

And finally, I'll throw something out there about "who gets to judge", specifically about the grey areas in a specified moral code or set of oaths. Unsurprisingly, I come down on the same side of the affair as @pemerton and @sheadunne .

I’m clipping the well thought out analysis. What that says to me is not that adherence with the Code, Alignment or what have you should not be done, but that it should be done reasonably. Where a judgment call exists, it should give the benefit of the doubt to the player. If, in fact, players are playing reasonably, then a situation where they violate their code to the extent that they jeopardize the character’s status should be both rare and one where the player is aware that the character is, or likely is, crossing a line.

And finally, no, I don't think the player's patron or deity is "mine" and I don't think I should feel uniquely informed of that deity's will or machinations. I guess my position (perhaps out of orthodox but I hold it without flinching) is that if a player's sword arm and intestinal fortitude is their own to command, then the guiding will (especially the details of their Knightly Quest) and divine offerings of a patron or deity should be likewise vested to the player.

So, since the patron deity is not yours, is it OK for me to bring in my Paladin whose code says no enemy shall be allowed to live, his line should be snuffed out forever and all who have served him should be put to the sword? How about “forced conversion at swordpoint, by torture if need be, followed by execution to preclude recanting or backsliding”? This differs from Johnny in that the character’s motivations and beliefs do not shift with out of character interests, but are consistently played.

These clearly are extreme examples. However, if your statements that this is 100% the player’s call, then I believe that character must be accepted as a Paladin whose actions are consistent with his code. They would not fly in my game. If they would not fly in yours, then there is some GM judgment involved, and the question is not one of absolutes, but of degree.

One other aspect you hit on is the rest of the table, and I think consultation with the rest of the table is very relevant. If the table considers the actions reasonable, or even if they are divided, that seems a much less clear call than where every0one’s jaw hits the table due to the inappropriateness of the action.

Your comment on mechanics is one I alluded to earlier in that the original Paladin was pretty clearly superior to the Fighter, and becoming a Fighter was a step down. The classes have been balanced better, if not perfectly. Hence my comment that the Paladin should be allowed to replace his mechanics rather than lose them, just as a fallen cleric might well be able to take up service to a deity more consistent with his new outlook.

In my experience this is not assumed to be true by a large number of DMs. Or players. This is my big aversion to playing paladins, or frankly, even to their inclusion in the game. The way the paladin code and alignments are generally interpreted by most people I've gamed with stands in direct and blatant opposition to the implicit social contract that governs what is the player's bailiwick and what is the GM's.

I think the disagreement rather is one of what that implicit social contract allocates to the player and the GM in the case of a Paladin. I can support “I do not want my character’s actions judged by someone else, so I will play a different class”. I cannot support “I don’t want my character’s actions judged by someone else, so no one should be allowed to play such a class”.

You'd need to tell me more about the context. They could certainly object very strongly to such a thing happening off-stage without any discussion - in my view that would be bad GMing, and hence I wouldn't do it. I think the advice on handling relationship in Burning Wheel is a sound starting point for these sorts of things.

You have indicated that the character’s code is central to his character conception, and cannot be judged externally to remove the player’s conception that his character makes correct moral judgments. Not that he cannot fall off-stage, but that he cannot fall unless he agrees the character will fall/has fallen.

Do you extend the same to other aspects the player claims as important to his conception of the character? He gets to decide the views of his deity. Why does he not get to decide the views of the prince, the laws of the land, the success of his friends and family, etc.? I do not see this line your posts suggest you perceive so clearly.

As to "conception", in this discussion I am talking about the players' conception of his/her PC as acting properly or improperly. And I am saying that if the player conceives of his/her PC as having done the right thing, and then the GM overrides that conception by declaring the character to have fallen, that is quite different from (as in @Dannyalcatraz 's example) the proselytising priest being banished.

The Paladin derives his powers from devotion to an ideal. Why can he not be judged by that ideal, just as he can be judged by the Prince?

N'raac keeps mentioning that perhaps the paladin or cleric's god has made an error,

I have said no such thing. I have said that the Paladin’s values have deviated from those of the patron being of Law and Good. Perhaps, in pursuit of the greatest good (respect for life, say) he has excessively compromised the Law. He has expressed the values of NG, rather than LG, and to him that is indeed proper conduct. To his deity, strictly LG, it is not. And so his deity withdraws its support. Neither character nor deity has made an error – they have discovered a difference in their values.

but to me that makes no sense: first, because a traditional paladin (not D&D tradition, but actual literary and cultural tradition) is devoted to a power who is incapable of error;

Such a power does not exist in any D&D world, or any of the polytheistic religions, historical or imagined, which I see in any D&D world, so it is an irrelevancy to D&D.

and second, because within the D&D tradition the paladin is devoted to a being who is an incarnation of law and good, lives on a plane that is infused with law and good, and has mental stats at least in the mid-to-high 20s (varying somewhat with edition). Such a being does not make errors as to what proper conduct requires.

Here you make no sense to me. Does this mean a character following the tenets of NG, CG or LN must, perforce, be considered to follow improper conduct? Which LG entity, one who values justice over mercy, or one who values mercy over justice, espouses the truly proper conduct? I don’t think Robin Hood fits the LG mold, but my first thought in reading his legend is hardly “improper conduct”.

(Obligatory defensive footnote: I'm not interested in being told about players who just want their paladin to be able to torture innocent children for fun. As I said upthread, I guess these players exist because people keep worrying about their pernicious effects on the game, but I don't know any and if I did wouldn't play with them. I am talking about how alignment is an obstacle to my actual play in my actual experience, and one feature of my actual play is that my players are sincere in their playing of their PCs - if they take a decision on the grounds that it's the proper thing for their character to do, they are sincere about that.)

Here again, is it an absolute (“Spare the Rod and Spoil the Child” being one of my Paladin’s tenets; a disagreement over whether the actions of that child in-game leave him truly “innocent” or not; the player’s decision must ALWAYS be deemed morally correct behaviour for the Paladin) or a question of degree? To the latter, I extend the player a lot of scope, and if I am to err, I prefer it to be on the side of the player. I do not believe any situation exists where the Paladin has no valid choices, and most allow him many valid choices. But some are pretty clear, and these tend to be obvious in play.

If a paladin, who has pledged his or her life to all that is good and holy, suddenly finds him-/herself rejected by it, then either s/he is in the same situation as Job

By definition, if he is rejected, he has not met his pledge. We are discussing who judges whether he met that pledge. Job is not a scenario I would see played out in a game.

Here is another way to challenge my players playing paladins: either do A rather than B in the current situation, or else you're going to have to rebuild your PC in a way that you don't want to.[/.quote]

Your presentation of constant GM override to the player’s judgment is as much or more an extreme as the suggestion a Paladin’s player would have him cheerfully torturing innocent children.

There seems to be a default assumption underlying many of these posts that it is hard for the player of a paladin to stick to the code.

I don’t think that is necessarily true – I think it is posters like you suggesting that upholding the code will result in constant disagreements and Paladins falling despite sincere player belief they have behaved in accordance with their code.

You say this like it's some sort of shocking revelation. But how would you possibly think that the GM unilaterally excluding a PC from the game was consistent with "fail forward"? With forward like that, who would need backward?!

Not in a fantasy game it doesn't. In my 4e campaign there has been one "TPK". Only one of the PCs was definitively dead (having been caught in friendly fire that reduced him below negative bloodied hit points). I asked the players - including that one - whether they wanted to keep playing their PCs or not. All but one did.

So, basically, the answer is as I have said. Fail Forward means no loss of true severity to the player can ever occur and rather than “GM tells a story” play we have “Player tells a story” play.

You Events happen. Losses occur. If the PCs don't rescue the sacrifice due to their own cowardice (yes, it really happened) then that is on them. But if the player takes the view that the story of the PC is not done, and if the campaign itself is ongoing, then the PC can be reintegrated - I've given you some examples above.

That sacrifice, if important to player conception of character, should not occur, should it? Why is the deity under domain of the player, but the mentor is not? Would the same be the case if we replace “mentor” with “familiar”, “animal companion” or “cohort”? I am unclear where you see this bright line differentiation.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

And I am saying that if the player conceives of his/her PC as having done the right thing, and then the GM overrides that conception by declaring the character to have fallen, that is quite different from (as in @Dannyalcatraz 's example) the proselytising priest being banished.

I disagree.

In both cases, the player conceives of their PC as having done "the right thing", and in both cases, a superior- the Prince; the divine- responded to the action saying, "You have erred, here is your punishment." In those cases that I have personally seen, there was a GM warning of what they are risking in this situation before the PC action occurred, so that player and GM could discuss the matter fully, so that each side understood the "why" of the other's position.

As I have said before, it is the GM's job to decide how the rest of the world reacts to the actions of the PCs. Which means that if the warning "Do X, and Y shall occur" is given and the PC does X, the GM must have Y occur.

All that said, I'm of the position that when a player wants to play a character such as a D&D Paladin- whose moral and ethical choices could potentially backlash on the character- there should be pre-game discussion as to the PC's concepts of right and wrong and his relationship with his divine patron.

...just like I'd have a discussion with the guy playing a Good aligned Drow in a campaign in which Drow are nearly universally reviled.

...or the guy in a HERO game whose PC is loaded down with four "Hunted" disadvantages at 14- as part of his build.

...or the person who is playing a Vagabond in a RIFTS game where everyone else in the party has MDC armor & weapons

 

[Serendipity]

I think the next time I run D&D using alignment I'm just going to run it as a space on the character sheet for the player to put down whatever they want to use to describe that. Like character name.

 

[pemerton]

You have indicated that the character’s code is central to his character conception, and cannot be judged externally to remove the player’s conception that his character makes correct moral judgments.

<snip>

Do you extend the same to other aspects the player claims as important to his conception of the character? He gets to decide the views of his deity. Why does he not get to decide the views of the prince, the laws of the land, the success of his friends and family, etc.? I do not see this line your posts suggest you perceive so clearly.

You keep saying these things like they're these amazing "gotchas". But I've already posted, upthread as well as in other threads in which you have read my posts, that I might. Tell me more about the context.

In my current 4e game, the player of the dwarf got to decide the norms and social requirements of dwarven society. The player of the drow got to decide that there exists a drow secret society dedicated to Corellon, and to the undoing of the sundering of the elves. These social structures, external to the PCs in question, are not solely, or even primarily, mine to control or make decisions about. They are primarily the players'.

Why is the deity under domain of the player, but the mentor is not? Would the same be the case if we replace “mentor” with “familiar”, “animal companion” or “cohort”? I am unclear where you see this bright line differentiation.

I don't understand - I didn't say anything about any mentors.

But I don't know what makes you think I would treat a mentor or a familiar differently. As I said to [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] upthread, I regard the "relationship" mechanics and guidelines from Burning Wheel as a reasonable starting point. The NPC in question, if integral to the players' PC build, is not the sole property of the GM.

The Paladin derives his powers from devotion to an ideal. Why can he not be judged by that ideal, just as he can be judged by the Prince?

<snip>

Neither character nor deity has made an error – they have discovered a difference in their values.

<snip>

Such a power does not exist in any D&D world, or any of the polytheistic religions, historical or imagined, which I see in any D&D world, so it is an irrelevancy to D&D.

In both cases, the player conceives of their PC as having done "the right thing", and in both cases, a superior- the Prince; the divine- responded to the action saying, "You have erred, here is your punishment."

If the paladin is devoted to an ideal, and the ideal repudiates him/her, it follows that s/he has not lived up to it - ie is in error.

If the paladin is serving an entity, and the entity repudiates him/her, then if the entity is infallible in its judgement - which is the default status of the entity to whom a paladin is devoted (eg Arthur, Aragorn) - then again it follows that the paladin is in error. This is the fundamental difference from the Prince - the player of the priest can simply conclude that the Prince is in error.

If I'm now being told that, in fact, D&D and its alignment mechanics don't actually permit me to play a paladin devoted to a being of infallible moral judgement, for me that is just another strike against alignment. Because as soon as I drop alignment, there is no obstacle at all to playing this sort of paladin in the game. (And in fact it is considerations of this sort that are brought to bear by the author of "For King and Country" in Dragon 101 in arguing that a certain sort of game is better off without alignment mechanics.)

As to the way you poke and prod, I believe (though if I am wrong someone please correct me) that 3.5 makes it clear that you as the DM should warn the player when they are about to do something that is against their code, so it's very similar to what you have described above, only instead of beating around the bush... the DM just comes out and says it.

I think I forgot to answer this upthread.

I think there is a big difference between the GM saying "If you do A rather than B then your PC will be rebuilt in a different and probably downgraded way" and the GM speaking with the voice of the PC's conscience, or pride, or familiar, or whatever, in order to increase the experienced intensity of the stakes. I am not trying to make the players choose one way or another. I'm just trying to make them care more about what's going on in the fiction, so they feel the choice more.

I think "not beating around the bush" and just saying "Are you sure you want to do that evil thing?" I think is pretty much the opposite - it's more like trying to direct the player's choice but not actually heightening the emotional vibrancy of the decision-making experience.

So, basically, the answer is as I have said. Fail Forward means no loss of true severity to the player can ever occur and rather than “GM tells a story” play we have “Player tells a story” play.

Unless by "loss of true severity to the player" you mean "having the player be substantially mechanically weakened relative to the other participants in the game", I don't see why you conclude that. I already gave the example of the PCs whose cowardice led to them failing to rescue one of those whom they were trying to save. The players don't tell that story - their choices within the context of the GM's framing, plus the action resolution mechanics, lead to that.

Here is another example of the players not getting what they wanted. And it involves two paladins:

the PCs took as prisoner a cleric of Torog, whom they had fought once before, when she was part of a hobgoblin raid on a village. Although the PCs won that earlier battle, the cleric managed to escape - the PCs tried to chase her down on a behemoth captured from the hobgoblins, but the players failed the skill challenge and the PCs therefore found themselves thrown from the beast when it had trouble negotiating a steep ridge.

The capturing of the cleric took place some time after midnight. The PCs had to meet the Baron of the town at dawn. The PCs wanted to interrogate their cleric captive before that meeting, and had a few hours in which to do so. They decided to conduct the interrogation in the beer cellar of the inn in which their (now defeated and dead) enemy had his apartments - no openings for the cleric to teleport out of (and they knew she could teleport from the two times that they had fought her).

The party's "social" team consists of a drow sorcerer/demonskin adept with very strong Bluff and good Intimidate, a tiefling paladin of the Raven Queen with good Diplomacy and Intimidate, and a wizard/divine philosopher (who serves Erathis, Ioun, probably Vecna although it's a bit amiguous, and in the past at least has served the Raven Queen) - this last character has reasonable Diplomacy, and has a 1x/enc "Charm Person" cantrip that lets him use Arcana in place of a Bluff check.

There are two other PCs. One is a ranger/cleric who has good perception, zero social skills, and whose player is interstate on sabbatical - so that character was given the job of guarding the stairs. The other is a dwarven fighter/warpriest of Moradin, who has poor social skills but who (due to the way previous events have played out) is the "leader" of the party in the town they are in - he is "Lord Derrik", "Lord of the Dwarfholme of the East" who is accepted by the Baron as a peer.

As the interrogation began in the beer cellar, Lord Derrik was sent upstairs, to the enemy's apartments, to do a thorough search and also to drag all the furninture in the rooms over the top of a teleportation circle that they had found (to stop bad things teleporting in). In over 20 years of GMing, this is the first time I remember the players doing the whole "send the paladin (or in this case, the fighter/cleric of Moradin) to another room while we interrogate the prisoners" thing.

But anyway, it worked. With the sorcerer taking the lead (with Bluff), the (actual) paladin offering support (with Intimidate and a bit of Diplomacy) and the wizard joining in too (using Diplomacy, and Charm Person to make one crucial Bluff role), they managed to persuade the captive cleric to talk. I ran the persuasion as a skill challenge (requiring 8 successes before 3 failure), the idea being that once they had persuaded her then she would answer whatever questions she could without any more rolls being required from the players. (The rationale for this was that persuading her, and the way that played out and the consequences of it, was likely to be interesting - but that once the persuasion itself was sorted out, I was very happy to just let the players have a whole lot of fairly central plot information, that they've been trying to figure out now for many months of play.)

The crux of the attempt to persuade her was that she had no objection to suffering (being a cleric of Torog) but that she didn't want to die; but also if she did die, she was very confident that her soul would not go to the Raven Queen but straight to her divine master. At first the captive tried to bargain for a safe passage in return for providing information; and she indicated that she would be willing to swear oaths not to return to her life of warfare and consorting with hobgoblins, as part of a deal to spare her life. But it became clear fairly quickly that the PCs - particularly the paladin of the Raven Queen, who is fairly fanatical about exacting vengeance for the deaths of innocent villagers caused by the cleric and her raiding hobgoblins - were not prepared to agree to this.

The wizard threatened her with death and resurrection as an undead corpse which he would then interrogate at his leisure (and he showed her some documents detailing necromantic rituals to back up this threat), but the force of this threat was a little blunted by the objections coming from the paladin of the Raven Queen.

The captive herself then started insisting that Lord Derrik (whom she, like everyone else in the town, was treating as the leader of the party) guarantee that the Baron would not execute her. (The grounds on which she might be executed were many - levying war against the town would be the most obvious one.) The drow sorcerer, through subtle manipulation (and an excellent Bluff check) managed to persuade her that this would be done, although no such actual promise was given - it was more that he worded things in such a way that gave her the impression that the undertaking was understood by all to have been given. And neither the wizard nor the paladin did anything to contradict the impression that had been created on her part. And thus she started spilling the beans - of which she had many to spill.

And then at about this time the player playing Derrik decided he had had enough of watching the others go at it, and so decided that Derrik had finished sorting out the furniture upstairs and was coming back downstairs to see how things were going. The ranger on guard had been instructed to try and dissuade Derrik from coming down, and he made a half-hearted attempt, but a PC whose player is absent is never going to persuade a PC whose player is present and wants to get in on the action! So Derrik came in.

He was very pleased to see the captive talking, and being so cooperative. And she was very pleased to see him, explaining that she was glad that he (through his agents) had promised to persuade the Baron to spare his life. At which point Derrik almost started pulling out his beard in frustration (and I think the player might not have been following all that was going on also - the session was a couple of weeks ago and my memory is a bit hazy, but I think Derrik's player may have been doing some child wrangling while Derrik was not in the action - and so he was a bit surprised and frustrated also!). But being a warpriest of Moradin, and a dwarf of his word (even if given carelessly by others!) he could not go back on a deal that she had so obviously been made to believe had been struck, and had relied upon in exchange for giving up her information.

Derrik did try to weasel out of things a bit by saying "he would do his best to persuade the Baron to spare her life", but the captive pointed out that the Baron owed his life and his town to Derrik, and Derrik was therefore in a position to extract the guarantee of mercy, not merely ask for it. And so when the PCs then met up with the Baron at dawn, the first thing Derrik did after pleasantries had been exchanged was to hand over the prisoner while explaining that he had promised to her that her life would be spared. And as she had foreseen, the Baron had no choice but to comply with Derrik's request.

So Derrik (and Derrik's player, at least somewhat) was upset that a prisoner had been spared whom he thought ought to be tried and justly punished - because the interrogators had been careless in making promises that they shouldn't have. The drow was upset that Derrik had instructed him to lead an interrogation, and then come in and mucked it up before it had reached its conclusion (which I think the drow envisaged being a swift execution so that Derrik need never know of the duplicitous means used to extract the information). The paladin was upset that someone who deserved death, and who had brough death to so many undeserving, was being spared. I'm not sure what the wizard thinks of the situation.

As GM, I felt obliged to compound the situation by reminding the players that Torog is also the god of jailers, and hence that the prisoner was likely to have a reasonably good time in prison, or even a good prospect of getting herself out of prison. This just made everyone even more upset!

Not everyone plays a game in which the main aim is to get bigger numbers on your PC sheet, and the main consequences of not getting what you want are smaller numbers. For me, the numbers generated by way of PC build are simply a mechanical device for interacting with the fiction, and the growth in those numbers is a type of pacing device that gradually ramps up the fictional stakes. That's why I describe my game as not being Gygaxian in its orientation.