Do alignments improve the gaming experience?

[Ratskinner]

Before I get started here, I just want to point out that I'm not recommending that D&D adopt Fate's aspect system, at least not as simply a replacement for alignment. IMO, by the time you've fully implemented aspects into D&D...you've gutted the remainder of D&D so much that you'd have been better off starting with Fate and converting it to a d20 resolution mechanic. Using some kind of limited aspects as many tried to do with 3.x at various times just ends up falling flat for me. YMMV. I'd also point out that aspects were just one suggestion (granted, the one I'm most familiar with).

[/QUOTE]

Let's start there then. Yes, they are broader in scope in that an aspect can represent something other than a belief or ethos but a particular aspect is actually narrower in scope. One complaint I'd accept about the alignment system is that it is so broad that it really requires something (often some things) laid on top of it in order to really be descriptive for a particular character. Lawful in particular just screams for the need of some sort of allegiance descriptor. Yes lawful, but to what order?

And alignments avoid that? The very point of replacing the Alignment system with aspects would be to replace wishy-washy useless descriptors like "Lawful" with something much more distinct and telling about the character...like "devoted to the Order of St. Egregious". Saying "We'll use aspects instead of alignment" and then taking aspects like "Lawful" would be pointless. Without the context of knowing what the DM or his cosmology intends by the alignment terms they only seem to form a trap for players of the "sensitive" classes.

But what I won't accept is the notion that Aspects resolve the 'table conflicts', 'GM fiat', and disempowerment complaints that mark the core of what seems to trouble people about alignment.

I'm not sure about the notion of Aspects as divorced from the surrounding Fate construct. I mean, I really can't say. Within Fate, though, these problems (at least as alignment generates them in D&D) are all but unheard of. I say that with scientific scepticism, because the only time I recall having ever witnessed such a problem discussed on any Fate community has been in response to theoretical questions from D&D players who were considering Fate. That is, they were so used to alignment causing these issues that they had difficulty conceiving of it working better with aspects. I cannot recall ever seeing a thread or comment that something like typical alignment problems has ever happened during actual Fate play. I couldn't say how well that success would translate to a limited implementation of aspects like you seem to be envisioning for D&D.

To go point by point (at least within Fate):
"Table conflicts" - The standard process for creating characters in Fate obviates this in practice. You don't really make up your character's aspects in a vacuum. So if something is unclear, then it can be clarified before play.
"GM fiat" - Fate includes a method (the compel) for the GM to make your aspects work against you, but you get Fate points to drive the plot forward later. So, when the paladin's code (Follow the code of Egregius) calls him do something that seems otherwise foolish, he gets the reward for accepting that challenge and living up to his code. Both the player and the GM are encouraged to both point out and seek for ways for this kind of thing to happen. Even better, we don't have to define the code beforehand! The compel is an offer not a bludgeon. In the traditional parlance, the GM says "Are you sure that the code of Egregious doesn't demand that you help them?" while holding up a Fate point token to tempt the player. The player is free to either accept the point (and act accordingly) or to buy off the GM by paying a token. The whole character doesn't become dysfunctional simply because the GM and player disagree on what's "right" for the character to do.
"disempowerment" - By default, in Fate, St. Egregious may not have even existed in the gameworld until the player wrote that aspect down.

To the extent that you can have alignment arguments, to the extent that you play in groups that are going to behave that way, you can equally argue over whether or not an Aspect applies to a situation and whether or not it works for or against the character. This is especially true if your Aspects are actually dealing with anything more serious than, "My hammer hits things hard."

If you say, "Well in practice that doesn't become a problem...", then I say, "Well in my experience, alignment isn't problem either."

The difference being that its not just me...that is, you just don't see threads like this about Aspects on any of the Fate forums that I frequent (which I think is all of them). I can't recall one ever. In part, I think its because of the fact that aspects actually do something in the game, and the GM can push your aspect (called a compel) without disempowering the character at all.

Which is not to say that aspects are perfect mechanics by any means, they just have a different set of limitations. Ones that don't seem to impact play as negatively, and that get better the more familiar the group is with using them.

Well, yeah. But that's like saying Aspects, other than the mechanics that rely on them, don't actually do anything.

Not really, although I may not have been as clear as I might have been. An aspect (at least any worth their ink) should tell you significant and interesting things about the character, they define what the character is (at least within Fate). An aspect is "always true". Therefore, it can define what character A or character B might be able to attempt or do with any of the skills. You could remove compels, invokes, and Fate points from Fate, and aspects would still serve that function. Writing "NN" in the alignment spot for a DnD character tells me virtually nothing about them. Even "LG" really doesn't tell me all that much. So if you remove the spells, items, etc. from D&D...how much meaning does alignment still have? Those other parts are handled by things like class, ability scores, and (recently) backgrounds in D&D.

But you are neglecting something that alignments do that aspects don't. In FATE, everyone's aspects are their own individualized disconnected descriptors. If we look at alignments like aspects, what you have is aspects that immediately put themselves in relation with all the other aspects that are out there. We could model this in FATE with mandatory aspects from lists that mutually contradicted each other. So yes, there are 'teams' involved here. There is a tendency to see the teams as meaningless distinctions, but didn't we just define the teams in terms of aspects? And don't you already agree that aspects aren't meaningless?

I can't imagine why I'd adopt aspects...and then neuter them as you suggest. To do so defies the concepts upon which aspects are built! You cannot simple rename "alignments" "aspects". Previously in this thread, I mentioned the team creating power of alignments. I can assure you of a few things: 1) its not universally desirable 2) it is the father of the paladin slicing orc babies up, and 3) it could easily be recreated in Fate with aspects...although one character at a time.

Besides, try to translate the above scenarios into FATE with the same crunch they have in D&D. Take the alignments out of the scenarios, and you know what - problems of fiat, subjectivity, and DM arbitration don't go away. Aspects are doing something for you, but not quite the same thing, and they don't eliminate the problem that you and others supposedly care about the most.

I assume you mean the ones in your previous post. First, I must say that many of these represent peculiarities within D&D that are artifacts of the existence of alignment in the first place. That is to say, these examples exist because of alignments, alignments do not exist to serve these situations.

1) There is an intelligent sword that blasts any non-good that holds it for 2d6 holy damage. The player has been consistently taking stances that the DM/cosmology would judge non-good in defiance of what is written on his character sheet. Should the intelligent sword judge the character's alignment as non-good?

Neither alignments nor aspects particularly "solve" this problem AFAICT. However, to replicate a similar thing in Fate, you would write the sword up as an "extra" with a Holy Blast skill/power, and aspects to give it the personality and function that you wish.

2) A good aligned outsider is tasked with guarding a portal. Its instructions are to only allow characters with pure hearts through the doors, and it judges this with a 'detect good'/'know alignment' type spell where the character's alignment must be above some threshold of strength. The PC is nominally good aligned but has anything but rigorous in acting out the beliefs expected of a good creature (he's regularly using poison, casting animate dead almost daily, torturing prisoners to obtain information, killing captives when convenient, flagrantly lying to everyone he meets, cheating merchants with illusions, burning down orphanages to kill individual villains without risking his own neck, etc.). Should the player expect to be passed through the portal without needing to fight the outsider?

The angel has an appropriate aspect or stunt: Can weigh the hearts of men. He does so. If this is cause for contention. because of aspects that the PC has, the situation is no different than the D&D situation. (Notably, the broader rules for Fate have mechanics for handling this sort of thing as a "social" conflict.)

I feel compelled (pun intended) to point out that this quandry seems to me to point out a weakness of the alignment system. Namely, it says NG on the sheet, but that's just because nobody remembered to change it...the existence of the alignment system is the source of this problem, not the solution.

3) An evil cleric casts "Blasphemy". Does it effect the PC or not? What happens when you get players advocating for whatever alignment descriptor is convenient at the time? If PC argues that the sword doesn't blast him because he retroactively colors his acts with the tincture of good, can later be allowed to retroactively color his acts with the tincture of evil when that gives him a mechanical benefit? Does the DM never get to judge?

Without a construct like alignment existing in the game, spells like Blasphemy would be written entirely differently. How aspects would interact with this would depend greatly on the extent to which they were implemented in the rules. Basically, its impossible for me to respond to this one within that specific context. Within the Fate Core context, and barring some extra magical extra system, the evil cleric would likely have created a situational aspect that he then invoked to harm the PCs. However, Fate is not strict in this regard and there are several possibilities for achieving a very similar if not the same narrative for a blasphemy-like spell.

4) In a certain dungeon, the DM places an evil altar and its associated solid gold sacramental implements. They clearly radiate evil and magic, and the DM places a note in the text that if the altar and implements are destroyed then good aligned members of the party gain a small XP bonus (say 300 XP). But, if the implements are used to perform a sacrifice, then evil aligned members of the party gain a small XP bonus (say 10 x the HD of the thing sacrificed). After proceeding with a course of action, who gets the XP bonus? Does the course of action also imply alignment drift? For example, even if a Paladin doesn't expect an XP bonus for sacrificing to the god of pederasty, does the act itself constitute an alignment violation? Is the DM allowed to make that judgment?

Okay so that's a couple questions all posed by the same scenario. As above, a system without alignment would be constructed differently. To create a similar situation within Fate Core, the Altar would basically be a mini-character. The GM could construct it to place things like "touched by <the god of pederasty>" or "tainted by the dark altar" as a temporary aspect on the PCs, and even use it to haunt the PCs later, creating a longer story line. If all you wanted was to have something reward evil characters and punish good ones...then just give it aspects to reflect that. The fact that those rewards take the form of XP in your example is a D&Dism.

It's supposed to promote looking at problems poised in the game through some frame work other than, "What can I do to get the most loot/XP at the lowest risk to myself?" And I might note that it isn't clear that Aspects really do that, since you get rewarded for making them relevant, what Aspects could be argued tend to do is treat ethical questions as another instance of meta-game pragmatism - "What should I the player choose to maximize my chance of success in this situation?" There is something to be said for choosing to do something with no expectation of reward at all, simply because you believe it the right thing to do (for the character).

Common misconceptions about aspects abound here. You only gain Fate points from your aspects when you have taken the hit for it. That is, you have been compelled or had one invoked against you. The other portion of "making them relevant" is no different than a fighter swinging a sword or a wizard casting a spell instead of vice-versa. Getting an aspect compelled is precisely Fate's mechanism for representing the character acting in accord with what they believe is the right thing to do (although it can often mean other things, as well).

This is the sort of statement that just makes it impossible to discuss this. I've so many characters that grew out of looking at the question, "What would a character be like if he intellectualize the concepts of an alignment and strived to live by that ethos?" When you say, "I've never seen it", it makes me feel like we lack sufficient common experience to even communicate.

I dunno. I don't think any of the alignments have ever represented anything specific enough to be called an "ethos" to me. Maybe they describe families of ethoses(?) ethoi? But if your suspicion is correct, then isn't that a strike against alignments? Doesn't it indicate that an alignment simply isn't specific enough to clarify such things about the character? Can you not envision similar explorations of character without the alignment system? IME, such things almost always take place in the context of a much more formed and specific ethos than I have ever seen described for any D&D alignment. To paraphrase myself earlier, I would think that 40 years has been plenty of time for us to sort this sort of thing out...if it actually worked.

 

[Hussar]

i am saying the rules either cede it or they dont. Our choice is made when we decide what system or what optional rules to employ. I agree alignment is subjective. But i am fine, acknlowledging that and giving the GM the power to decide what good or evil mean in a setting. For me that is more enjoyable play than if the players views are able to shape it on a case by case basis (at least in a game l ke d&d where you have a cosmology where good, evil, law and chaos are actual things with powerful entities persuing those agendas).

If you don't have this experience, then you don't. But i think the point is people are chiming in ans saying what they want or they dont want. You don't want alignment. Cool enough. That is your opinio. Mine is I want alignmnt with GM adjudication. No idea what we will end up getting in next. Presumably whatever they decide is based on playtesting and will make the majority of fans happy.

But, it's not case by case. That presumes that there wouldn't be consistency. The player makes a character with a specific and specified moral compass. As the player plays his character, it's up to the player to make sure that his actions are consistent with the character he made and with his interpretation of the moral compass of that character.

IOW, acting in a purely expedient manner and ignoring your character sheet is bad play.

To me, it comes down to two things. One, I am perfectly capable of playing my own character and I don't feel that I need the DM to police my play. Two, as a DM, I do not feel it is my job to police how you play your character. I trust you enough, as a player, that you will be able to play your own character without my over sight.

 

[Bedrockgames]

But, it's not case by case. That presumes that there wouldn't be consistency. The player makes a character with a specific and specified moral compass. As the player plays his character, it's up to the player to make sure that his actions are consistent with the character he made and with his interpretation of the moral compass of that character.

IOW, acting in a purely expedient manner and ignoring your character sheet is bad play.

To me, it comes down to two things. One, I am perfectly capable of playing my own character and I don't feel that I need the DM to police my play. Two, as a DM, I do not feel it is my job to police how you play your character. I trust you enough, as a player, that you will be able to play your own character without my over sight.

I get that you want something different than me,and that is cool. But i do not see this as an issue of trust or policing. It is more about how i want aliignment to feel in the game. Judments about morality are subjective, but i want my D&D settings to feel like good and evil have objctive weight. They are real, and exist beyond my character. I find having everyone decide for themselves what constitutes good or evil, is less effective at creating that sense of a real cosmic ought than having it adjudicated by a single person as the consistent source of judgment.

 

[Hussar]

I get that you want something different than me,and that is cool. But i do not see this as an issue of trust or policing. It is more about how i want aliignment to feel in the game. Judments about morality are subjective, but i want my D&D settings to feel like good and evil have objctive weight. They are real, and exist beyond my character. I find having everyone decide for themselves what constitutes good or evil, is less effective at creating that sense of a real cosmic ought than having it adjudicated by a single person as the consistent source of judgment.

Except when you have a single person who does not share your judgement. Also, you are presuming that a given DM will be more consistent than any given player. Granted, overall, he should be more consistent than the group, but, on a one to one level, there's no reason to think that the DM will be more consistent in his interpretation of alignment than you will.

Additionally, you presume that the player has to define morality during play. Why is this not being decided during character generation? It is now an objective value, known to everyone at the table. The only difference is, your definitions apply to your character, not the DM.

Like I said, I don't like the idea of telling players that they don't know what good or evil actually is. It's far too close to discussing religion for my taste.

 

[Bedrockgames]

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Like I said, I don't like the idea of telling players that they don't know what good or evil actually is. It's far too close to discussing religion for my taste.

But that isn't what I am doing. I am saying let one person determine what good and evil mean inside a fictional fantasy setting . It isn't real world good and evil, it's what Malledhyr the God of Clouds and Sunshine says is good. The point is having a source external to me or my character make these judgements, not impose a real world moral philosophy on me by the GM. This is make believe, I can imagine a world where good and evil do not match my own personal views.

I am with you, not interested in the GM being there to moralize me on religion or ethics. That isn't what this is about.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Except when you have a single person who does not share your judgement. Also, you are presuming that a given DM will be more consistent than any given player. Granted, overall, he should be more consistent than the group, but, on a one to one level, there's no reason to think that the DM will be more consistent in his interpretation of alignment than you will.

aste.

I think a single player could be more consistent than the GM. The issue is you want one person being the judge, so it is consistent for the group, otherwise you have (potentially) 3-6 competing views on what constitutes lawful good or chaotic evil. This is set in a world where there are cosmic moral forces who make their will known. So for me, it's important those judgments be somewhat consistent and feel like they are actually coming from outside the characters. Again, preference, but that is what I like.

 

[N'raac]

I replied in post 42. In that post, after describing some episodes of actual play which I believe fall under the description "situations that the alignment system really can't handle", I said that "My own view is that nothing would have been added to that arc of play (which unfolded over several years) by having me, as GM, assign an alignment to the gods (and thereby foreclose the issue of whether their decisions and agreements were good or bad) and then judging the behaviour of the PCs (including the paladin PC) by reference to that labelling of cosmological forces."

This is equally true in D&D. No one in standard alignment-governed D&D regards Asmodeus as a source of morally correct behaviour: after all, he is evil. Likewise no one regards Sauron's path as one of goodness. He is evil too.

So is Asmodeus maybe Good in your game? Can I have my Paladin be a devoted servant of the High Moral Path of Asmodeus? Or has someone made the judgment call in advance that the Raven Queen is Good and Asmodeus is Evil? if so, how can we tell, when any action taken by the PC's may be Good or Evil, based on the moral code that only they may define?

This makes no sense to me. My table doesn't use alignment rules, so the notion of "violation" doesn't come up. Yours is the table - as far as I can tell from your posts - which is full of players who declare as actions for their PCs that they torture peasants and rip the throats out of children, or who would do so but for having written LG at the top of their PCs sheets; and who, in so writing and thereby forsaking torture and brutal murder as permissible modes of action, fiind themselves tackling the challenges of the gameworld with one hand tied behind their backs.

Your assessment of my players is about as reasonable as me asserting that you, yourself, must be an egomaniac who, if trusted with any power to actually adjudicate the game, will use it only in the most arbitrary fashion and override any choice the players may have to play their characters. This is, after all, the extreme "wrong" of the alignment system which you decry, just as I present the extreme example of the players being able to set their own moral choices with no adjudication. I don't believe you're the egomaniac you portray the worst case scenario GM as. Don't assert my players are the worst case scenario of a game without alignment simply because I support it as a useful tool.

My players just play their PCs. The reason that their PCs don't, as a general rule, engage in torture or brutal murder is because they conceive of their PCs as decent people, and decent people (obviously) don't act in such ways. What do alignment descriptors add to this?

Why is this "obvious"? I thought appropriate actions were not obvious, so the player must be allowed to apply whatever moral judgement he sees fit, and this moral judgment would become that of the code he follows, be that the Raven Queen or the Demon King.

You haven't actually told me what this adds to the game. Why does it make the game better? Why is the game hurt if one player (and his/her PC) thinks that vengeance against the unconscious hobgoblins is morally required, another that it is permitted, and another that it is forbidden?

If all three are telling me "And this is the One True Way under the Code of the Raven Queen, who grants my Holy Powers", it hurts any semblance that the Raven Queen is granting power to her followers based on any actual moral precepts.

Not at all. On the contrary, given your obvious concern with playes who play torturers and murderers, I can only assume that you have many players who lie about their character's personalities and moral inclinations!

I'm not sure, but you seem to be asserting that in D&D's alignment system evil can be good. Or something like that. I'm not 100% sure, but it's not changing my mind about the coherence or utility of the alignment system.

I am not the one arguing that each player may independently decide whether their character's actions are, in fact, Good or Evil.

I can't fully answer this question, as it is against board rules.

Then let us confine our discussion to the fictional game world, and not bring real world religions such as Christianity into the discussion. The lack of direct Divine intervention and granting if divine powers to mortals seems to render the real world a very different place to that inhabited by Paladins and Clerics in any case.

Argument is resolved via the full suite of action resolution mechanics - free roleplay, skill checks and challenges, combat. If a character turns out to be "wrong" - as in, at odds with the Raven Queen - then what happens would depend on context. If it were the demigod, perhaps he becomes his onw cult leader. If it was the Marshall of Letherna, perhaps he allies with Kas and tries to make himself master of the Shadowfell. If it was the invokers, perhaps he allies more fully with Vecna, or one of his other patrons.

So what happens to the character whose powers are granted due to his devotion and service to the Raven Queen, when he is determined, after many game sessions, to have opposed her wishes routinely throughout his adventuring career? Do we conclude she is unaware of these actions by the servant she favours with divine gifts? So much for that 25+ INT and WIS!

 

[Bedrockgames]

Additionally, you presume that the player has to define morality during play. Why is this not being decided during character generation? It is now an objective value, known to everyone at the table. The only difference is, your definitions apply to your character, not the DM.

because unless you have a comprehensive list of all possible events and circumstances, many cases will come up requiring an on the spot assessment. That is one reason why people argue over alignment. The alignments are described as objective things, but people disagree over how they apply to specific cases.

 

[N'raac]

I think a single player could be more consistent than the GM. The issue is you want one person being the judge, so it is consistent for the group, otherwise you have (potentially) 3-6 competing views on what constitutes lawful good or chaotic evil. This is set in a world where there are cosmic moral forces who make their will known. So for me, it's important those judgments be somewhat consistent and feel like they are actually coming from outside the characters. Again, preference, but that is what I like.

It so often seems like those not wanting "a single person, the GM" making these calls actually want to be the single person making these calls. Ultimately, if there is a cosmological "good" and "evil", someone must define the terms. If there is not, then by all means let the dice fall where they may to determine who was ultimately "moral" and who was not, with no preconceived notions in that regard. What I am seeing, however, is not that there are no preconceived notions, but that many gaming groups share the preconceptions that are really important to them, and chafe at anyone being able to reject their interpretations on other issues. Thus "we never have players whose characters would do that and still be claimed to be decent people", yet "we cannot have a single standard setter for what a decent person is or does".

 

[pemerton]

Ultimately, if there is a cosmological "good" and "evil", someone must define the terms. If there is not, then by all means let the dice fall where they may to determine who was ultimately "moral" and who was not, with no preconceived notions in that regard.

This is wrong for two reasons, one meta-ethical and the other to do with RPG design and play.

(1) In the real world of English speaking moral philosophy, the most common meta-ethical view is that there is "cosmological" good and evil. Different philosophers have different understandings of this - various forms of Aristotelianism are probably the most common, then various forms of Kantianism, then consequentialism, with Platonist approaches brining up the rear. But the idea that moral value is not objective, or related semantic ideas such as meta-ethical expressivism, are minority views.

Yet almost none of these philosopher take the view that "someone must define the terms". After all, electrons exist as "cosmological" entities but no one had to "define the terms". Electrons are there, independent of definition, and discovering their nature is a task for human inquiry. Most philosophers who believe in objective morality would see value in a different way (and even the contemporary Kantian "constructivists" still don't frame "construction" in terms of definition - the relevant constructions are concerned with the real requirements of collective rationality, not anyone's stipulated requirements).

(2) Something can be objective within the fiction of an RPG, and yet not be predetermined at the table. This can be easily seen by considering examples from other fictional works: for instance, within the fiction of Star Wars it is objective whether their were an odd or even number of dials on all the control panels of the Millenium Falcon, but as far as I know no one actually knows the answer to that, because there is no definitive presentation of all of the Falcon's control panels within any narrated episode that is part of the fiction.

So in an RPG, presumably there is an objective fact of the matter within the gameworld whether my PC's father was left or right handed, but I myself have never played a game where that objective fact came to light. (Heck, in most games, for most PCs, the objective fact of the father's age, or name, never came to light.)

Now when we are playing an RPG, and some piece of fiction isn't known and needs to be decided, there are various techniques for working that out. One tried and true technique is to employ the action resolution mechanics. Suppose a group of epic PCs, all servants of the Raven Queen, confront their mistress and proceed to debate some point of morality with her. From the fact that, as a matter of play, her views are determined in part by the way the dice fall, it doesn't follow that her views were not predetermined within the fiction. Any more than, from the fact that we learn how many orcs are in the patrol by rolling dice on a wandering monster table, it follows that within the fiction they were "Schroedinger's orcs."