Do alignments improve the gaming experience?

[Nagol]

But all of these are from the perspective that the player wants to avoid the fight. Or significantly
changing the situation. Ie. the mother and child are not innocents.

I thought the issue was the player is going into the encounter but not getting Fate Points.

If the gm compels the PC into the encounter he gets a fate point. If the player chooses to engage the encounter, he gets a fate point.

What's the problem here?

The PC is in the encounter as soon as the situation is described; he sees the ogre menacing the family.

The player can choose how the PC will respond to the situation presented: he can try to negotiate, engage in social combat, physical combat, or attempt to use an Aspect in the environment to help resolve (if a Fate point is available). You don't get a Fate point for facing a situation.

You get a Fate point when an Aspect leads to a complication of the situation or the encounter resolution. Defender of Innocents aspect would more likely drive Fate point delivery when the innocents are tangential or irrelevant to the goal of the situation. For example, the PCs have finally cornered the BBEG and plan to take him down for good this time when suddenly a hapless bystander walks around the corner and into grave danger! The GM smiles and offers a Fate point if the PC tries to save the victim, but without the PC acting against the BBEG, he may be able to strike/escape/whatever. Another use might be if the PC is undercover/incognito and the GM offers a Fate point to save a victim at the risk of blowing cover.

The player may decide to activate Defender of Innocents to aid his attempt to deal with the ogre. That costs a Fate point rather than gaining one and provides a bonus to the roll.

 

[Imaro]

The most recent incarnations of Fate don't make much distinction between scene-framing and play. Determining the nature of the critter is part of play (or at least can be), consider the advice on p. 239 Fate Core (emphasis added):



It would be perfectly legit for a FP-less player to happen upon the situation with an Ogre guarding/theatening the innocents and suggest a compel for it to be a snake: "Are you sure it isn't a giant snake?" or better yet "Since I have Why did it have to be snakes?, are you sure that it isn't a big snake?"

There are a few things wrong with your example above...

1. this isn't the situation we discussed.
2. this still isn't creating an actual complication for the character, all he is doing is switching one monster out for another... How does this in and of itself complicate the situation?? (This is what is necessary, as so many have tried to explain in this thread, for a FP to be given)
3. Whether it's a big or little snake again doesn't matter unless it creates a tangible complication that wasn't in the situation as it stood before.
4. All the player is doing in the above example is trading out window dressing (one monster for another) not complicating things for himself.

It is true that context is critical here. I would say though, that having the additional aspect Defender of Innocents is plenty for me to conclude that the character's interest will lie in rescuing the victims (aspects are always true). The discovery of innocents to defend and the character taking up the challenge is the thing that happens narratively to earn the FP. That could happen as the character rounds the corner and spies them there with the snake, or it could have happened back in town when the character heard about these two getting nabbed by the bandits.

No, only if the defending of the characters in some way complicates the situation he already finds himself in... otherwise we are back at everytime a monster threatens anyone the player just gets FP's... He could compel himself using "Defender of the Innocents" to have to fight the snake to the death (and at this point cannot flee or get away without battling the snake, though I'd question why getting the innocents to safety wasn't his major concern...) that is a complication to the scenario since now he has no choice but to fight no matter what... but just being in a situation with a snake or with threatened innocents does not garner a Fate point. If you choose to play that way cool, but that is not how the books put forth that aspects and compels work.

That would be legit, IMO, and functionally no different from the scenario presented.

Legit yes, functionally the same... no... especially since I don't think how you're claiming aspects and compels work is legit by the rules.

 

[Imaro]

Makes sense. It seems to me that, within the broad parameters of Fate as you and @Umbran are presenting it, there are a range of ways in which the snake scenario could be handled - but that, provided you keep in mind the book's injunction to foster "awesome" play, few or none of those are going to involve the PC running away from the snake because the GM said so.

I think your interpretation of "awesome" play as it relates to Fate is wrong and doesn't fit with the paradigm of aspects in Fate. First you can have negative aspects in Fate and most games of Fate require that you have at least one negative aspect (called a trouble aspect). If you take a trouble aspect centered around a phobia of snakes... you have basically chosen that your character's weakness is an irrational fear of snakes and "awesome" play isn't awesome if it lets you squirm your way around or negate that fact. Playing upon that weakness and the bad things that happen because of it (like say your courage as a knight being called into question, by both you and others, when innocents are eaten by a giant snake and you ran instead of saving them) IS "awesome" play... unless of course awesome now means, play where weaknesses don't have a tangible effect on play. So I think if you have "Why'd it have to be Snakes" and the GM is offering you a Fate point if you flee form a horrific, gigantic snake about to gobble some people up... he's compelling that trouble aspect like he should be doing.

Makes sense too. In particular I agree about the functional equivalence. From the player's point of view, why should it make a difference when the GM decides that the innocent NPCs are threatened by a giant snake.

It's not functionally the same. It's not about when or if the GM decides the innocents are in danger... it's about whether that complicates matters for the PC (not sure how many times, by how many different people this has to be said). Even if the PC charges forward and engages the snake it is not a complication because the PC isn't forced to fight the snake, if things go bad the PC can still run, or can decide to grab the innocents and book it, etc. A complication would arise if the PC has no choice but to fight the snake (that's a complication[?b] for the PC in the encounter, or must run from the snake (another complication for the PC in the encounter), or has no choice but to get the "innocents" away from the snake even though he is on a time sensitive mission to save the entire kingdom(this is a complication added to the situation of him racing to save the kingdom and also demonstrates why the assumption that he will always run in and fight for innocents shouldn't take place).

 

[Bedrockgames]

So far, this thread has only convinced me to keep alignment but avoid Fate.

 

[N'raac]

So far, this thread has only convinced me to keep alignment but avoid Fate.

The last four pages certainly reinforce my belief that arguments arising from differences of opinion on aspects are no less likely than arguments from differences of opinion on alignment. While the consequences of an alignment issue may be more significant, the Aspect arises much more frequently, so that’s probably even odds for a heated debate. As well, every Fate character must have aspects in pretty much constant play to be effective, it seems, so every character is affected.

I suspect Fate players more quickly find groups whose interpretations match their own as the issue is constantly at the forefront, though.

 

[sheadunne]

So far, this thread has only convinced me to keep alignment but avoid Fate.

Which is kinda funny because it's convinced me in the opposite direction. And hence the thread was successful for both of us!

 

[N'raac]

Secondly, the backstory in question is hardly hidden. It's completely out in the open! If this were actually a discussion about a character pitch, we're discussing the backstory as part of the pitch. Where's the concealment?

You posted “the relevant passage”, then add a bunch more “relevant” details later. If those details were also “the rules”, why were they not part of the relevant passage? I don’t find it any more enjoyable to have the hidden backstory come out in some extended interchange over PC design. I’d much rather what my character does not know come out in play, actually.

I suspect if the same amount of time and effort were expended in discussing how a proposed Paladin or Cleric would interpret his alignment restrictions to ensure you and the player were on common ground, there would be no major surprises on alignment in play either.

I don't understand this. Your character is a paladin of the Raven Queen. His/her power comes from the Raven Queen. Where is the doubt?

When we discover, 15 levels later, that my interpretation of the RQ’s code was not correct (the other PC, with whom I disputed that code, turns out to be correct) I question why she kept granting those powers which I used to violate her wishes.

To “Moradin vs RQ”, that same tension can exist when we are confident in the viewpoints of both deities. Their servants will still not concur on how we should get things done, or perhaps even what things should be done.

 

[Celebrim]

But this isn't how Law and Chaos work in D&D.

But it isn't how it works out in the real world either. The CG and the LG may have some measure of mutual respect for each while each feeling the other is unwise and corrupted by a flawed ideology, and they may stay out of conflict with each other - until you put those values in conflict. In the same way, the soldier and the pacifist may respect each other right up until you put those values in conflict. I mean, haven't you ever seen the movie 'Sergeant York'?

At some point, people with strongly differing values do come into conflict in the real world. And at some point in the real world, when you put them under pressure, individuals and societies do invoke the 'enemy of my enemy' principle and decide which values they are going to compromise on. "Sure, he may be a thug, but at least he isn't communist..." or "Sure, he may be a thug, but he's fighting Hitler...", or whatever. Maybe law and chaos aren't the best axis to describe the tension of these choices, or maybe the real world has multiple axis or none, but that doesn't mean that in are fantasy setting the outcomes of assuming the law/chaos axis is part of the social understanding (and indeed is a real and tangible thing) produces results in the social or political spheres that are unbelievable.

The LG person doesn't take the view that the CG person is simply choosing a different value to pursue out of some range of equally good (or perhaps incommensurably good) options. The LG person regards the CG person as morally flawed.

To make this really personal, in the case of something like pacifism, I do consider this a sort of moral failing. Evil has to be confronted. You confront evil on the basis that the person is your fellow human, and with compassion for that person, which strongly moves one toward preferring a pacifist approach. But by taking an absolute stance against violence, you are at some point enabling evil. Further, you have ceased to choose life over death and instead have chosen the death of the nonviolent as preferable to the death of the violent. Pacifist societies exist at the sufferage of the violent societies that enclose them, tacitly allowing others to use force on their behalf so that they can maintain a false righteousness. I have great respect for the intentions of my pacifist brothers, but ultimately if you look at a figure like Ghandi and where advocating utter pacifism takes one morally, I consider it not only morally flawed but a very dark place.

So in the same way I can see this in myself (and also see that others my strongly disagree for reasons I find sympathetic and comprehensible), I don't find it hard at all to imagine the dynamics between LG and CG, or LG and LE. For example, I think you can see in analogy dynamics between LG and LE or CG and LG when you consider the respect figures like Robert E. Lee or even Erwin Rommel invoke even in (and maybe especially in) people who abhor the values that they were ultimately defending. This is particularly interesting in the case of say Robert E. Lee, whose 'lawfulness' (as it were) seems to have motivated him to defend an intuition (slavery) that he himself found morally repulsive.

Heck, in Planescape at least I think it's expected that the LG person might ally with the LE person to fight the CG person.

That makes no sense. It can't be both that the LG person regards the CG form of life as fully permissible, and regards the CG form of life as needing to be opposed.

I didn't say that the LG regards the CG form of life as fully permissible. I said that LG and CG could both find common values AND sharply disagree. So my question to you was, "If we can both have common values and sharply disagree IRL, what is unbelievable about representing morality with two axis?"

 

[Imaro]

So far, this thread has only convinced me to keep alignment but avoid Fate.

Yeah, IME... I have Fate and enjoy it upon occasion, but I am only ever willing to play it with certain people in my wider gaming group and so it tends to get limited play among us. I think to pull off a good game of Fate there has to be a lot of transparency, a lot of discussion, and like @Umbran said earlier... players who can suppress their natural gamist and/or simulationist desires and set narrativism as the driving goal of the game (which for my group especially as it concerns gamism has been hard to do). Even then in our last game, an urban fantasy one-shot based loosely upon the rules for White Picket Witches and using FAE... there were plenty of "discussions" during the game that mirrored D&D's alignment discussions since aspects are so open to interpretation... it's almost unavoidable, especially when using a free-form magic system based (at least partially) around aspects as well as when players get in a bad situation and they are trying to connect any and every aspect they possibly can to the situation in order to get a chance to invoke. Even keeping genre coherent was hard at times as our game started in a drama-horror vein similar to shows like "The Gates", "The Secret Circle", "Teen Wolf", etc. and by the end seemed to lean much more towards action-horror in the vein of "Blade" or "Vampire Hunter D".

EDIT: As a side note I will say that I think Fate reads much better then it plays (I remember being really enamored with it after my first read through, but after playing it a few times I wouldn't say it ranks anywhere near my or my groups favorite games to play)... but that's just my opinion

 

[Celebrim]

So far, this thread has only convinced me to keep alignment but avoid Fate.

I think I could be ok with Fate, especially as a player, but I generally dislike 'rules light' systems as a GM. I look at them somewhat as I would look on an incomplete requirements document as a programmer. It may be easier to read, but it doesn't take less time to understand and once you get down to the actual practice, what an incomplete rules document actually means is that the writer has shifted a good portion of the work and mental burden of writing the rules off to the person who actually has to run the game. I'd rather spend my time running the game, not patching the rules with a bunch of ad hoc rulings.

As a player, the fact that the rules are incomplete isn't my problem, and as long as the GM is reasonably competent and I'm having fun I'm ok. I probably hold my GM's to a lower standard than I hold myself to as a GM. Possibly this is because it is a real treat for me to get to be a player, sense I'm almost invariably asked to run games.