do you acknowledge and agree that it is possible someone might FULLY UNDERSTAND your point while still DISAGREEING with it?
Not really, no. I don't really accept that someone can understand my claim that alignment is an impediment to my play experience yet disagree with it. Because how would you know better than me what I enjoy in RPGing? How would you know better than me what is the nature of my experience? How would you know better than me whether or not it is a burden on my enjoyment of the game to use a mechanic that obliges me to judge whether or not my players' play of their PCs adheres to some evaluative standards that I am stipulating and applying?
You might understand my claim but be puzzled by it. But I don't see how you could have any evidential basis for denying it!
I maintain that the "great moments in role playing" you cite as being impossible if we use alignment are perfectly possible in games where alignment is used
I have never disputed that those fictional events, or similar ones, might not arise in someone else's game. In an extreme railroad, for instance, the GM might simply bring them all about via fiat and dominant narration.
But that doesn't prove that I would enjoy the railroaded game! What you sneeringly dismiss as my "great moments in roleplaying" are fond memories for me not simply because of the fiction that was created but because of the manner, the dynamics, the experience of its creation. The surprise. The shock. The tension. The horror. And all those things - the emotional response that make roleplaying a pleasure for me - would be different were mechanical alignment in play. As you yourself indicated upthread, I would have to do things like decide whether or not the PC who sacrificed his friend and companion was evil. And I've told you that having to make that judgement as part of refereeing the game undermines my pleasure in the game. So unless you think I'm lying about that, you yourself have to concede that, for me, the use of mechanical alignment would be an impediment to my play experience.
The mantra of yourself and Hussar seems to be "trust the players". But trust extends both ways - why is there no expectation that trust be extended to (and earned by) the GM?
I am predominantly a GM. So, by his own testimony, is [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]. At least in my case, and I suspect in his also, my distaste for mechanical alignment does not spring from a lack of self-trust!
As I have mentioned several times, although you have not really acknowledged let alone engaged with it, one major pleasure for me in playing RPGs is seeing the players play their characters. This includes expressing and acting upon their evaluative conceptions of what it is fitting for their characters to do. I don't want to interfere with that. Hence I don't use mechanical alignment, which mandates that I interfere, by forming a view on whether or not the actions of the PCs are fitting from an evaluative point of view.
"Horrific Alignment Violations"
This, by the way, shows that you are missing my point. It's not about whether or not certain conduct would be an alignment violation. It's the fact that using alignment requires me to ask that question at all, to think about things in that way.
These examples seem to move further and further away from the setting of role playing games, but perhaps I have missed something in the movie itself. Can you clarify for me which of Rick, or Ilsa, or Victor Lazlo, or Captain Renault, or Ferrari you perceive as a cleric or Paladin who is empowered by one or more Deities or Philosophies of Justice, Righteousness and/or Purity with divine powers and grace, such that the moral evaluation in question might carry a significant mechanical implication?
I don't accept the premise of the question, because when I play D&D
the moral evaluation of the conduct of a cleric or paladin PC does not carry a significant mechanical implication. That's a huge part, though not all of, not using mechanical alignment!
So asking whether Rick's conduct is honourable or not is no different from asking whether the paladin PC's conduct is honourable or not. Everyone can have an opinion; the player - as author of the PC - gets to actually write the character, though.
I think the player makes the decisions for his character. He does not decide how those decisions fit into the broader world in which he lives, so he does not judge whether those actions are Good or Evil, Lawful or Chaotic.
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He does not get to redefine the Universe
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A statement that this is not what "the cosmos", "the deity", or even "the GM" or "the table" believes, and that as such proceeding jeopardizes the character's alignment, Paladinhood and/or standing within the Church of the Holy and Merciful Deity of Justice and Righteousness seems not to be out of order here.
When I play D&D, the evaluative properties of a PC's action are not part of the universe. They are not part of how a choice fits into the broader world in which the PC lives. "The cosmos" does not have an opinion. That's part of what it means to play a game without using mechanical alignment!
The player has his PC flatter a dragon; it turns out that the dragon is pleased. That is an example of the player's decision for his PC fitting into the broader gameworld. It is determined by way of the action resolution mechanics.
But whether it was good or bad, fitting or improper that the player flatter the dragon; that is a metagame matter. It is something on which each particpant is free to form a view, and to which each participant is free to respond. Including the GM, of course: perhaps the next time the PC meets an angel, it chides him or her for flatterig the dragon! And of course, if the player remains confident that his/her PC did the right thing, s/he can choose to have his/her PC chide the angel back. That flows from the fact that each participant is free to evaluate and respond.
So that thing that you say does not seem to be out of order
is out of order in my game. For the reasons I've given.
in pemerton's game, there would be no judgment of whether it was or was not good and moral.
You claim not to make any moral judgment on the action, but the simple fact you perceive the action as one which would merit such judgment indicates you have, in fact, evaluated it.
Of course I've evaluated it, in the sense of forming an opinion! But not in my role as referee. Not as part of the mechanical adjudication of the player's action. An onlooker might evaluate it to, but that wouldn't have any meaning from the point of view of the game rules.
Good implies respect for life and law includes respect for order. Does that mean a Paladin can't exist in a nation which has capital punishment?
I think you intend the question to be rhetorical, but my response is Why not? If a player wants to play a paladin with the conviction that capital punishment must be stamped out because it's an evil, why would I want to stop that?
Were the actions justified in the eyes of the character? Obviously. Were they justified in the eyes of the player? Maybe
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It seems you disagree. You seem to be of the view that this fellow, waving the corpse of the newborn in the air as its life's blood drips down his chin, should retain his Holy Aura gifted him by the Gods of Honour, Benevolence and Righteousness.
It doesn't strike me as obvious that the character thinks what s/he did is justified. But that's probably a tangential point.
The puzzle for me is why you think my opinion as GM is more important than that of the player. You seem to suppose that the player thinks what was done might have been unjustified. If that's so, why not let the
player play out the consequences? And if the player really does believe it's justified, why is it so important that I override that opinion? How would that improve my game, in light of the play preferences I have expressed?
I would say more accurately that I suppose the ability of each player to independently define "good" as "whatever I want my character to do" and "evil" as "whatever I do not want my character to do" to indicate a moral vacuum in which the game takes place.
Tolkien gets to decide what counts as admirable for Aragorn, and gets to make his case. If you don't like his book - and many don't - write a critical review of it. If you don't like how I'm playing my PC, respond! I don't see what's so puzzling.
I mean, imagine you're in a book club. Reading LotR. And one person is arguing that Aragorn is a noble character, because he dedicates his life to a higher purpose, at great personal cost (eg to his romance with Arwen, to his material welfare), and sees it through. Another argues that Aragorn isn't admirable at all, except in some superficial and sentimental way, because the purpose for which he struggles is essentially reactionary. The book club doesn't need a referee to tell everyone which of these two pariticpants is right. They talk about it. They respond. Perhaps they let it go. Perhaps they decide to read some REH Conan to get another perspective on kingship within the fantasy genre. That's what playing an RPG is like, for me at least.
Is the bookclub a moral vacuum? I'm not seeing it. Likewise the RPGing.
Remaining true to your principals can, and often should, have a cost.
For a PC to remain true to his/her principals may often have a cost, yes. This is a staple of drama. But it doesn't follow that
playing a PC who remains true to his/her principles should be more costly (= less fun? I'm not sure what the accounting unit is for hobby gaming) to the player. It wasn't more costly for Tolkien to author the bits about Aragorn, who stayed true to his principles, than the bits about Saruman, who did not.
I do see a lot of predestination in the whole plotline, which is not what I typically see in a good game. Do you see Siegfried has having an alternative choice of being a lawful servant of the Gods? Do you perhaps perceive Wotan empowering him as a True Servant of the Primal Order?
I don't know what you mean by "True Servant of the Primal Order".
I also don't see why predestination can't be a very important part of an RPG plot. It seems likely, in my current 4e game, that the whole raison d'etre of the deva/invoker's long existence is to do something significant with the Rod of Seven Parts. Of course, what exactly that might be isn't clear yet because the game is still going, but that doesn't mean that whatever it ends up being wasn't, within the fiction, predestined!
The author does not create characters from vacuum. He has a vision of the character, with history and upcoming events which fit within his story for the character.
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It is a well realized character who "authors himself", and it happens only when the author has a well-realized character whose "preconception of what [the character] is (or is not) capable of."
I don't see anything here about descriptors. And the bit about preconceptions seems to imply that a character who is authoring him-/herself could never do anything that the author didn't anticipate from the outset.
Imaro, it seems we have been playing the game HORRIBLY WRONG all these years.
There seems to be some confusion here. And perhaps some projection. I'm not saying, and have never asserted, that alignment is not valuable to your play experience. I have simply asserted that it is an impediment to mine. And you are the one trying to tell me that I'm wrong about that.
