Do alignments improve the gaming experience?

[billd91]

(Also, in relation to my original comment: how could two Benthamite LG nations be at war? Just use Commune to get an answer to the factual question of how to settle the dispute between them so as to maximise their collective welfare. To the extent that they keep fighting, it turns out they're not really LG after all!)

Because war isn't about answering questions, ultimately, it's about achieving political goals. For what it's worth, I think it unlikely for two LG nations to be in a violent war against each other - trade war, however, or at other political loggerheads, sure. All you need is for them to have substantially different interests and those can be based on natural resources, other aspects of geography, differing priorities between being lawful and being good...

 

[Hussar]

So that there are weapons (including character classes) armed for the fight between good and evil. Sure, you can use fireballs and all that, but having a spell specially target something evil is that much better for a campaign in which that particular opposition is important.

But that really only applies to 3e. Alignment based damage isn't really part of any other edition outside of very few spells like Holy Word.

 

[S'mon]

I agree that is a possible reading. To me, it doesn't help alignment, though, to point out that it is incoherent: that a LG PC is, qua good, committed to respect for rights while at the same time, qua LG, committed to denying rights as "nonsense on stilts".

Which creates an oddity I noted upthread: that some of the greatest proponents of the rule of law (Kant, the founders of the American Republic, etc) end up being CG. Whereas the so-called LG types end up being, at best, instrumentalists about the rule of law, but potentially far more supportive of a modern administrative state approach, with its sacrifice of a traditional rule-of-law approach in favour of benevolent flexibility.

In other words, I don't dispute your analysis but it's not saving alignment for me!

We are in agreement (not unusually ) - I just think it's very funny that the Natural Law-yers
like Locke are Chaotic Good, and the Utilitarians like Bentham are Lawful Good!

In my 4e campaigns, Alignment is on PC sheets but is basically never discussed, players are freee to play their PCs as they see fit, while I play the gods as NPCs with their own views, often with rather subtler characterisations than in the source material (Bane and Shar are personal favourites...) This has enabled actual moral discussion as part of the drama of the game, and created a much more satisfying experience than GM-mandated morality. I'd even say that players seem to play (eg) Lawful Good better if they don't feel they have the GM breathing down their neck.

I think my view is that Alignment seems to be a useful descriptor for the GM when setting up likely conflicts in the setting and as a shorthand guide to likely NPC behaviour - Evil Hobgoblins
vs Chaotic Evil Orcs, say - but players seem to do better without it as a controlling force over their PCs.

 

[pemerton]

In that paragraph, I suggest two mutually exclusive choices as being equally valid.

<snip>

I find it sufficient to look to these choices, assess that they fit within the bounds of reasonableness for the alignment in question, and move on.

Are you willing to accept that there is at least one GM in the world - namely, me - for whom the task you have described is undesirable, and an impediment to enjoying the game? (And perhaps more than one, if [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] are also in agreement.)

I don't understand how you reiterating what you enjoy doing with alignment is meant to make me enjoy it.

I have never seen alignment constrain role playing when applied in our games.

In that case, what work is it doing? If players never make decisions based on considerations of alignment - whether they would violated alignment requirements or not - then what work is it doing in the game? The only examples you've given me of using alignment so far would be ones in which the GM overrides a players' view as to the moral permissibility of an action. That doesn't strike me as a great facilitator of players debating the moral merits and demerits of the options before their PCs, but perhaps I've missed something.

If I am going to play an honourable man in an RPG, I want to be able to have as meaningful effect on the fiction as any other player of the game.

“Meaningful” is not a synonym for “desirable”.

As I used it, "meaningful" is a synonym for "desired", along these lines: if I am going to play an honourable man in an RPG, my desires for the way the events of the game unfold should be just as likely to be realised as those of any other player.

What if the player does not agree whether a certain feat, spell, class, magic item or race is good for the game?

Good question!

In general I'm not a huge fan of unilateral GM rules changes, but there are conflict of interest issues here - the player has an interest in maximising the mechanical effectiveness of his/her PC - which are not present in the case of alignment. There is no mechanical benefit to being dishonourable, nor is there any mechanical penalty for being honourable.

Isn’t loss of the goodwill of the King also a loss? The character has less resources to draw on.

Changes in fictional positioning, in my game at least, have a very different character from changes in mechanical effectiveness. A clever player can easily leverage new fictional positioning (eg having angered the king, you now draw support from the rebels). Whereas losing mechanical effectiveness is simply that - a loss in mechanical effectiveness.

I mean, either it doesn't matter - in which case why do it - or it does matter, in which case what is the justification for doing it?

Because I am not playing a Gygaxian game. Mechanical effectiveness is a means to an end, of shaping the fiction. It is not an end in itself. Changing the fiction is meaningful in and of itself, for aesthetic reasons, which have nothing to do with whether a player is able to exert more or less control over the fiction.

In the context of the example of play I gave, turning on Venca matters because it is a dramatic moment in the fiction; an expression of commitment (or absence thereof); a pivotal moment in the unfolding story. It's irrelevant to its significance that it results in the PC being stronger or weaker.

I’m seeing a suggestion the player was influenced by the evaluative judgment of other players (although they apparently look the other way about existing service to Vecna).

And? Why would a player not be influenced by what other players think of him-/her (putting to one side conditions such as autism)? D&D is particularly ill-suited to Byronic individualism, because it presupposes party play. But I don't see how this bears at all on the use of mechanical alignment.

So what if we change the facts a bit

<snip>

Is it OK for him to decide that, while both honour and righteousness demand the King’s Justice be carried out, it would be inconvenient for me to have to deal with Lucann afterwards, so I’ll take the politicially expedient choice instead? Screw honour.

Who knows? You posit these scenarios as if they can be answered outside the context of play. Whereas the whole thrust of what I'm saying is that they can't be.

The issue of intraparty dynamics, in particular, is a complex issue in D&D play. Would my decisions about how to play Thurgon be influenced by the real-life consideration that [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] is trying to play Lucann, and I don't want to put too big an obstacle in his way? Absolutely. Do I want Manbearcat interfering in that and making me lose levels or PC abilities for trying to be a reasonable player? Absolutely not!

In this particular context, what if I decide that my Commandant who was seduced and killed by the dryad was thereby displaying his own weakness? And that what honour really requires is standing by my comrade Lucann, and what service to the Iron Tower really requires is re-establishing those ancient pacts between humans and elves, to which Lucann and the dryad have the key? There's any number of ways of going, none of which I think need to be predetermined, and in respect of which I don't need the GM to hold my hand.

“Honour” may demand actually following the orders the PC is given, even when the PC does not wish to do so.

That is uncontentious but seems irrelevant to mechanical alignment. I already posted a lengthy example of actual play upthread, in which a PC had to keep a promise given in his name (by the other PCs) even though he didn't want to. Why did the player play his PC that way, even though he didn't want to have to keep the promise either? Because he is committed to playing his PC a certain way. He doesn't need me as GM interfering with, or adjudicating, that commitment.

If the cosmic forces are real, palpable things in game (the 3e alignment extract hits this nicely), then they are “physical moral consequences”.

<snip>

In any case, you have now made the judgement that Vecna is not pleased. How is that so different from the judgement that the Paladin’s source of power is not pleased?

<snip>

you clearly evaluated the player’s actions through the lens of the deity, Vecna’s, perspective

No one playing my game - certainly not the player of that PC, nor the PC him-/herself - regards Vecna as a moral authority. He is an opportunistic archlich who worked his way to godhood and now seeks to accrete further power. (The dwarf PC takes much the same view of the Raven Queen - though she was a dead sorcerer when she ascended to godhood, rather than an undead one - but that is obviously more contentious at the table.)

Judging that Vecna is not pleased therefore has no implications for the player's own evaluative situation. To put it another way: that his PC is an exemplar of necromantic secret-keeping (which is roughly what Vecna is the god of) is no part of the player's conception of his PC. The player and I have actually had interesting discussions about the PC's theory of where Vecna has gone wrong in his understanding of the significance of secrets, treating them as ends in themselves rather than as frequently important means to independently valuable ends.

The situation for a paladin is completely different, for the reasons I gave not very far upthread in a reply to Umbran. The source of a paladin's power is, almost by definition, a moral exemplar. For that source to be displeased means that the paladin has erred. The situations are fundamentally different, for me at least. (For this player and this PC, it's not clear what god might have that status. Probably Ioun, and perhaps also Pelor. Once I would have said Erathis, but I don't think so any more. The PC has changed.)

Nor is a player choosing a path different from that of his LG patron and being penalized for it obliging the player to form the view that his PC erred. We have said as much, repeatedly, upthread.

I know you have asserted that repeatedly upthread. From that repeated assertion, I learn something about your conception of a paladin, and of a paladin's relationship to a divinity. From my point of view, I find it hard to see, on that conception, how a paladin differs from a warlock, but then I've often seen posters who suggest that warlocks are really variant clerics, and so perhaps they share your view of paladinhood.

But the fact that you have a conception of paladinhood radically different from mine doesn't change my view. I think there is a fundamental difference between entering into a pact, and answering to a calling. The PC who angered Vecna was not called to Vecna's service. Vecna's values are not part of the player's conception of his PC; as I have explained above, the PC thinks Vecna is fundamentally flawed in his conception of the nature and value of secrets. The player, in choosing the Raven Queen over Vecna, did not think he was giving effect to any Vecna-ish values. Having asked the player to choose between two gods with which he is allied, and imposing a consequence as a consequence of that choice, to me at least has nothing in common with telling a player who takes him-/herself to be playing a called servant of a moral exemplar that in fact s/he is doing it wrong.

That you see no difference doesn't mean that I don't. It just tells me that you don't care about the same things in game play as I do. Which I already knew.

So we’re no longer discussing the philosophy of whether the GM’s judgments should, or should not, be permitted to alter the abilities of the PC’s. We are now only discussing the degree to which the GM should be able to apply a penalty to the PC.

You might be. I'm not. Judging that the PC has pissed someone off is not judging that they have acted well or properly; it's simply extrapolating consequences from the fictional positioning. (For instance, we're playing a game set in 1920s Italy. I judge that you're PC has pissed of Mussolini. You might reasonably take that to be a good reason to have your PC continue to act as s/he has been.) The judgements I am talking about are evaluative judgements, that I talked about upthread in introducing the notion of "evaluatively meaningful decision".

Why could the player not decide that Vecna places great value on this servant, and as such will bestow even greater powers, since what he has given to date has not sufficiently tempted him to put a greater priority on service to Vecna?

Nothing is stopping him. He has the same PC build options, and the same item wish list options, as everyone else at the table.

I would expect that Paladin who falls from grace also gains advantages in some form or another.

This is why I said upthread that I think 3E's Blackguard rules for fallen paladins are an improvement, although I would prefer it to be decided by the player rather than the GM whether or not the paladin has fallen.

I like the analysis of Thurgon undertaken by [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] earlier. To me, this is the means to express alignment. These are the values and beliefs of the character. To me, that makes him LG (whether clearly or on balance). The GM can now assess whether his views are consistent (maybe the character straddles LG and LN, so we discuss that, clarify the values and beliefs of the character and agree where he fits on the continuum). Having done so, provided the character is played consistent with those values and beliefs, his alignment should be pretty clear. And he should have a pretty good idea that chucking honour for expediency may create an issue.

Do you mean this?

*When the usurpers are overthrown, and the proper succession reestablished, then peace will come to the land.

*When the world is in chaos it is no wonder so many are easily misled - but I can lead them back to righteousness.

*Like all cowards, the dragon feeds on weakness. I will oppose it with strength.​

Those beliefs were authored by me, as part of the PC creation process. (Manbearcat asked for 3 beliefs, a la Burning Wheel. In my own 4e game I asked players for one loyalty, and one reason to be ready to fight goblins.)

Having authored my beliefs, I am not interested in the GM assessing whether they are consistent! In fact, I would expect the GM to frame situations that push them into conflict (eg by having one of the usurpers turn out to be a bulwark against the chaos of the dragon). That's the main point of writing 3 belief in the Burning Wheel style: to give the GM multiple levers to manipulate.

 

[pemerton]

Alignment is part of the setting.

That's a matter of taste and mechanics. For those of us who don't run with mechanical alignment because we don't like it, it is not part of the setting. Furthermore, for many of us, the GM is not the sole arbiter of the setting.

Even according to the 2nd ed AD&D DMG, which both you and [MENTION=6701124]Cadence[/MENTION] have cited upthread, the GM is not the sole arbiter of the setting.

I guarantee you a fair number of players look at ways to optimise their character builds mechanically, which is not wrong, but that reflects a predisposition to choose on mechanics rather than the concept of a character and that is normal given that D&D is still a game.
Given that a class such as a paladin is arguably more conceptual in nature than most of the other classes (less gamist), it requires boundaries of a conceptual nature which might otherwise be broken by munchkinist/gamist tactics.

I appreciate that you state your reasons for liking alignment clearly. I have restated them more than once upthread, and I hope I haven't got them too wrong - it's certainly not been my intention to misrepresent or unfairly describe you. (I believe I have mentioned you every time, so that if you feel I have got you wrong then you can correct me.)

As I have posted upthread more than once, the concern you state in this paragraph that I have quoted is not one that I share. In my game, I see no evidence that the player of a paladin gains a mechanical advantage by choosing to be dishonourable. Hence there is not the sort of conflict-of-interest that you describe. Hence I have no need to be an external arbiter of the player's choices as to how his/her PC behaves.

I get the impression from his posts that [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s circumstances are much the same as mine.

 

[S'mon]

(Also, in relation to my original comment: how could two Benthamite LG nations be at war? Just use Commune to get an answer to the factual question of how to settle the dispute between them so as to maximise their collective welfare. To the extent that they keep fighting, it turns out they're not really LG after all!)

Can the Commune spell do that per RAW in any edition? I think I'd have a hard time as GM presenting true omniscience. Looking at the version in the Pathfinder Core book it just puts you in touch with your deity and you get their opinion as a yes/no answer or 5-word phrase "within the limits of the entity's knowledge". So if British Clerics in 1973 during the Icelandic Cod War Commune with Britannia over how best to ensure future cod supplies to British fish & chip shops, they won't necessarily get
"let Iceland win" - Britannia might not know that the EEC Common Fisheries Policy would eventually result in collapse of North Sea cod stocks, leaving the well-managed Icelandic fisheries as a vital cod reserve.. And realistically, given human nature, the British Clerics might not even ask that question. More likely they'd ask "How do we win the Cod War with Iceland?" - and get a truthful answer that
would lead to British victory and thus no cod for my supper forty years down the line.

 

[pemerton]

if what you state above is true then alignment should be trivially easy for you to ignore... All you have to do is tell the paladin player to write LG on his sheet and never judge him.

I'm not Hussar, but let me respond.

(1) That's what the players in my 4e game have done.

(2) That's playing without mechanical alignment. The next step, of course, is to not bother to write in those labels that do no work.

The key disconnect here seems to be Good and Evil as cosmological forces. The character (or the player) is not judged against my personal standard of Good or Evil, but against the standard set by those cosmological forces, as described in the game rules, and as interpreted, possibly even modified as house rules, by the GM.

this is the heart of it for me. D&D assumes a cosmology that isn't subjective to individual character's feelings or preferences. If each player gets to decide whether his paladin is doing the right thing, then the whole sense of a real cosmology like that starts to fall apart for me.

setting what the Cosmic Alignment Judge thinks helps set the tone of the game.

I don't know if I see a disconnect. I do see a difference of preference, and also perhaps of metaethical inclination.

For me, the notion of "good" as a "cosmological force" interpreted by the GM is like the game rules that say "In this game geometry is Euclidean but pi = 3, and also it is possible to square a circle with compass and ruler". I can read the words but they don't actually describe a scenario I can make sense of. In the case of the weird geometry, perhaps if I could understand it I might enjoy it - it might be gently Lovecraftian. But in the case of "cosmological forces", to the extent that I do understand it I don't want it. Apart from anything else, why are they being labelled "good" and "evil"? Why not just call them Team A and Team B, if they're not actually intended to instantiate the values that those words describe? If the Cosmic Alignment Judge of goodness is not actually good, then in what sense is that being a judge of goodness at all? S/he's a judge of some other value, or perhaps - depending on how s/he is being played by the GM - of no value at all.

We all have our likes and dislikes in games. You rule out of your game what you don't like, I'll rule out of my game what I don't like. I'm pretty sure you'll understand that, "I don't personally like it," is not a sound basis for arguing to eliminate a design element.

Who is arguing for the elimination of alignment. All I've been doing - and as I read him, at least, all [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] has been doing - is explaining why alignment is an impediment to my play experience, and elaborating on that explanation in reply to some posters who have told me that I'm wrong about that.

Does my rewrite in #652 above address some of that issue? (Doing a recompilation of some PF rules, and if there's an easy way to address that concern it might be something for me to include).

I will reply, but this thread has grown quicker than I can keep up with it! Also, I couldn't XP your post 668, but that doesn't mean I didn't like it!

 

[pemerton]

A game doesn't need to emphasize something for it to be important to some of the players at your table.

<snip>

So if you take out objective alignment in D&D because your campaign doesn't emphasize my rationale for playing, and I am a player in your group, to me that is still an important part of why I am there, and the sudden loss of alignment disrupts my sense of the game.

OK. But you're not playing in my group. So what's wrong with me not using mechanical alignment? And how does this bear on whether or not it has been, or would be, an impediment to my play experience?

 

[pemerton]

I think my view is that Alignment seems to be a useful descriptor for the GM when setting up likely conflicts in the setting and as a shorthand guide to likely NPC behaviour - Evil Hobgoblins vs Chaotic Evil Orcs

As a shorthand personality/politics descriptor for NPCs I don't mind it all, especially in the sort of "bright palette" cosmology that default 4e inclines towards. I also agree with you that some of the gods (like Bane) lend themselves well to more subtle shading, at which point the alignment descriptor is at best a simplistic starting point.

For similar reasons I much prefer classic L/N/C alignment to AD&D-ish 9-point alignment. I think it serves that same potentially helpful descriptor role - Where do these guys fit in the cosmological struggle? - while leaving plenty of scope for GM elaboration and nuance as required.

Can the Commune spell do that per RAW in any edition?

Perhaps not. Still, I think it is somewhat telling that the only basis for war between two LG countries can be epistemic obstacles to determining whose control over what resources would better facilitate their collective welfare. That doesn't sit well with the idea that they might be "mortal enemies" for instance, as opposed to (say) trade rivals.

As well as your cod example, I think this analysis could be further developed by exploring the collapse of the Concert of Europe and the (re-)emergence of Franco-Germany rivalry in the latter part of the 19th century, and the way that rivalry unfolded and then was in some senses at least ameliorated in the 20th century. But that might violated board rules against politics. Also, I'm not sure either is an acceptable candidate as a LG nation.

Because war isn't about answering questions, ultimately, it's about achieving political goals. For what it's worth, I think it unlikely for two LG nations to be in a violent war against each other

Isn't that agreeing with me, then? If you're LG - and therefore Benthamite in the way S'mon described - you don't have any political goals other than the greatest good of the greatest number. There is no glory, no honour, no "place in the sun". (Hence Weber's dismissal of utilitarianism as a morality for shopkeepers!)

 

[Manbearcat]

Are you willing to accept that there is at least one GM in the world - namely, me - for whom the task you have described is undesirable, and an impediment to enjoying the game? (And perhaps more than one, if @Hussar and @Manbearcat are also in agreement.)

I am in agreement and then some. Alignment, and its knock-on effects that interact with PC build resources, have only ever served to make the game maddening for me to run. Whats more, I 100 % feel that the very inexact process of evaluating shifts is beyond me and requires more mental devotion than I would like to give it, thus stealing some of my in-game "computing power" (and out of game time) that I would like to spend elsewhere. Given how confident I am as a person, and how I feel about myself evaluating alignment, I suspect I would find it very difficult to be a PC under a GM in such a circumstance.