Do alignments improve the gaming experience?

[pemerton]

"Who are rules written for in games?" or "Should games include rules that could help shape the play of beginning players and give help to reign in the really bad ones... even if the long term better players will never need them?" or "Do we really need the rules to punish cheaters and encourage good RPing?"

Why do other types of games and sports have rules for punishing cheating if the good players we want to play with wouldn't do it? Did Gygax need to include the things about dealing with disruptive players if we've never needed them? Do RPGs really need a point buy system for ability scores (last 1e game and all the VtM games I've ever played the GM's trusted us to pick our scores and we didn't abuse them)? Should an RPG be designed around roles and niche protection if an experienced group of players already knows that?

These are good questions.

I see rules for games, in general, as having several functions. I'm not sure I can itemise them all. But at least two I can think of are this:

* to create parameters for choice that will be mentally, and perhaps emotionally, stimulating/engaging;

* to manage conflicts of interest between and within participants.​

The first of these is obviously highly subject to taste. Just focusing on RPGs, engagement in a typical game of Tunnels & Trolls (wacky spell names, ultra-random PC generation, rolling buckets of dice in combat) is generated quite differently from BW, even though the latter can also involve handfuls of dice.

The second is, I think, more amenable to analysis and design, at least in terms of identifying conflicts, although decisions about the best way to manage them will again be highly taste-dependent.

The most obvious conflict of interest in an RPG is that the typical player wants his/her PC to succeed in challenges, but the game is more interesting when the outcome is (i) unknown, and (ii) contains the potential of adversity. Hence the need for a GM. (Although what exactly a GM should be doing is different for different tastes/styles - contrast, say, Gygaxian "skilled play" with indie-style "scene framing" play.)

Points-buy for PCs is another example of managing conflicts of interest, though different games take different views on what is worth points (eg Burning Wheel makes disadvantages cost points, the underlying logic - as I see it - being that the increase these give to spotlight time for that PC's player is more salient than the burden it imposes on mechanical effectiveness).

Is playing a character who is not amoral or psychopathic - who follows some sort of code or adheres to moral requirements - a source of conflicts of interest? In Gygaxian play, I think the answer is "yes, it is", because skilled play depends in part upon a willingness to use any suitable tactic for victory (so-called "combat as war"), and having a code or moral commitments puts limits on this. Hence, in this sort of play I think it makes sense to have the GM police the players of such PCs to make sure that they stick to their codes. Arguably, such players also get a compensation in the form of a PC that is mechanically better (many see the paladin that way, though I personally have my doubts given the need to put a 17 in CHA and the higher XP costs). And whether or not you are a paladin, being Lawful and/or Good does give you other mechanical benefits, like access to healing magic from NPCs, better loyalty from hirelings and the like.

But I think in many, perhaps most, non-Gygaxian games there is no conflict of interest in playing a non-amoral, non-psychopathic character. (Indeed, in a lot of 2nd ed style play playing an amoral or psychopathic character is a good way to get hammered by the GM, not just through alignment rules but via 10th level town guards who lock you up in gaol etc.) Exactly how this relates to the "Hickman revolution" is probably a complex question, and I think there are non-Hickmanesque pathways (eg my own), but it is clearly connected to the idea that RPG play is in some important way linked to story and not just to self-aggrandisement. (Runequest is a pre-Hickman manifestation of this idea. Classic Traveller is interesting - should we see a world's Law Level as an alternative to alignment mechanics? But as one that can also underpin a change in the orientation of play from sheer self-aggrandisement to something involving world and story?)

At this point, it's not clear to me that alignment rules are needed to avoid cheating. (Though the history of the game shows they have come to be adapted for other purposes, most obviously being to serve a function for the GM in world-building and for the players in defining a personality to play to.)

Some of Gygax's broader advice about disruptive players I regard as completely misguided. Professional football needs rules for what happens (for instance) when one player punches another in the jaw, because it is a high (financial) stakes game where the standing temptation to lay out your opponents by way of physical violence is obvious. But when I was a kid playing football with my friends during school lunchtime, we didn't need a rule for that. Because no one was going to punch someone else out, and if they did the solution wasn't part of the game, but rather lay outside the game (eg calling a teacher, or perhaps punching them back).

Similarly, if you buy a Monopoly set or a chess set, it won't include in its rules what to do if someone steals money from the bank, or tips over the board in a fit of pique when they realise they are in a losing position. The rules take for granted that the participants are committed to the basic endeavour of playing rather than spoiling the game. Unlike in professional sports, the rules assume that playing the game is an end in itself, not just a means to some other (typically financial) end which then creates standing temptations to cheat.

I see RPGing the same way. The rules should be written on the assumption that the players of the game want to play the game as an end in itself. And the question with what to do with cheaters, or punchers, or board-tipper-overers is not itself part of the game rules. It's a social question that can be handled via social means.

If the game designers think there are bits of the game that are particularly likely to lead even normal reasonable people to want to cheat, or punch, or tip over the board, then that is a further matter. Perhaps those parts of the game should be flagged as problematic, and alternatives given. Maybe they should be eliminated? That's not obviously the case - for instance, part of what makes the temptation to punch in Australian Rules football particularly strong is that the game permits a high degree of reasonably violent conflict, and so - unlike soccer, say - generates circumstances where physical violence is already taking place, and a punch may not be that much of an escalation. But that's not necessarily an argument to reduce the physically aggressive nature of the game, which is a good part of its attraction as a spectator sport.

Perhaps it is inherent in Gygaxian play that players will want to cheat rather than be thwarted and frustrated by the GM's clever tricks and puzzles. So perhaps part of what makes the game interesting is also what makes it prone to generate cheating. (Like looking at the back of a riddle book to get the answers to the riddles.) Maybe this is what Gygax had in mind in at least some of his advice on how to handle disruptive players. (Though I still think "ethereal mummies" are just a hopeless technique - has any one (Gygax or other) ever used them in a way that worked?)

But as RPGing becomes (on the whole) less Gygaxian, do we still need such advice? At least it might be better if it was more closely connected to those features of play that make it necessary.

There is a whole other dimension of "disruptive play" which I don't necessarily think Gygax had in mind, but came to the fore in the 2nd-ed era, which is associated with players who want to jump the GM's rails or "disrupt the plot". But I don't think mechanical alignment is a very suitable way for controlling those players. (Though my sympathy for this whole playstyle is not really strong enough to make me suited for analysing its techniques with any sophistication.)

 

[billd91]

OK, so here's a new move: all those literary and mythical figures who are the inspiration for the paladin class - the ones who can pull holy swords from stones, who heal with a touch, whose mere presence lends inspiration to the followers and companions, who are warded by the divine from evil magic - are not actually paladins.

It's also totally immaterial. D&D took its inspirations and defined the paladin.

Each to their own, I guess, but I play paladins and clerics because I am moved by those stories and the themes they embody, and want to emulate or explore them in some way.

Oddly enough, so do those do us who use alignment mechanics too.

My objection to hypothetical questions is that - from you, from [MENTION=3400]billd91[/MENTION], from [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] - they are intended as these knockdown refutations. As if the only way to stop these outrageous travesties of morals and of genre is to wield the hammer of mechanical alignment. Yet you deny you wield any such hammer.

So if you don't encounter those hypotheticals despite not wielding a hammer; and if I don't get them, which I know I don't; then why do you keep mentioning them? What do you think their purpose is?

They kept coming up, as I saw them, because you kept dropping hints that you were judging a PC's actions based on whether or not they were crossing Vecna and imposing a consequence. And frankly the difference between doing that and judging an action based on alignment doesn't exist. It's a player crossing some line and the GM adjudicating the consequences.

 

[pemerton]

It's also totally immaterial. D&D took its inspirations and defined the paladin.



Oddly enough, so do those do us who use alignment mechanics too.

Who are you speaking for? [MENTION=6681948]N'raac[/MENTION] has just posted implying that when he wants to play a character inspired by Aragorn, or Arthur, he plays a fighter.

you were judging a PC's actions based on whether or not they were crossing Vecna and imposing a consequence. And frankly the difference between doing that and judging an action based on alignment doesn't exist. It's a player crossing some line and the GM adjudicating the consequences.

You assert this as if it were self-evident. And you don't even engage with the N-thousand words I have posted explaining my opinion on this point - including in the very post that you were replying to.

In my view, judging that a PC has upset Venca by thwarting him is not the same as judging that a PC's action is good or evil. I have explained why in some detail that I won't both to repeat, given you seem uninterested in it - except to reiterate that only one involves evaluative judgement, in the sense of judgement that pertains to matters of value or morality.

You can repeat until the cows come home that you don't care about that difference, or even that you can't see it, but that won't change my mind that the difference is real, and that therefore I find that mechanical alignment detracts from my play experience. (And just in case anyone thinks that I'm out on my own in thinking that the difference is real, I refer them to the bulk of twentieth century English-language writing on moral philosophy, plus a good chunk of the French and German writing also. For those who are interested in seeing the difference at work in a literary context, the existentialist authors are the most obvious to go to. My personal favourite is the Catholic existentialism of Graham Greene.)

 

[pemerton]

Some gods are infallible exemplars and/or upholders of certain values.

I think we all know the real world examples, so I don't need to go there.

In default 4e, I think the good and unaligned gods fit this description: Kord exemplifies and upholds prowess, courage, and also arguably honour. Corellon upholds beauty. Erathis upholds civilisation. And so on. Whereas for the evil gods this is more doubtful: secrecy is sometimes a value, for instance - see the current debates in some countries around the release of state secrets - but Vecna is not an exemplar of the value of secrecy. He is corrupted, and treats secrecy primarily as a means to his own power.

(No doubt individual groups and players might depart from these defaults. Perhaps a group regards Vecna as genuinely exemplifying the value of secrecy. In that case, the idea that Vecna is "evil" would probably do no work for that group's interpretation and application of the 4e cosmology in their game. Nothing wrong with that.)

Anyway, to continue: sometimes, probably typically, when a player plays a paladin or cleric of a god who upholds/exemplifies a value, the player thereby aspires in the play of his/her PC to have the Pc uphold/exemplify the value. This player's play, in virtue of this aspiration, expresses an evaluative response by the player to the situations that arise in play. My principle objection to mechanical alignment is that it obliges the GM to form judgements about the adequacy of these expressive and evaluative responses. And that is something I don't want to do, for much the same reasons that, in Pictionary, I wouldn't want a referee to vet the pictures players draw before they can be shown to the rest of the participants. It follows from this aversion on my part that I would not play the god as judging the character adversely, either - moving the terrain of judgement from metagame to ingame doesn't change the nature of the judgement, given that all participants understand that the god is an exemplar and upholder of the value at stake.

For instance, if I played Kord telling a PC worshipper of Kord that he was a coward, in circumstances in which the player of that PC regards his PC's conduct as brave, I am telling that player that s/he is wrong about what bravery requires: because it is an undisputed premise between us that Kord is an exemplar of bravery, and therefore knows it when he sees it, and similarly for cowardice. And this is what I don't want to do.

If a player him-/herself is expressing doubts (whether in or out of character) about whether or not his/her PC is adequately answering to the demands of the value that his/her god exemplifies, then I have no reason not to engage with that player, perhaps by playing the god in question. This will not require adjudicating the player's expressive and evaluative responses - in fact it takes as its starting point the player's own response to his/her earlier responses. Furthermore, doing this is likely to provoke more expressive/evaluative responses from the player, which - given that this is an important element of play for me - is a good and not a bad thing.

If a player, in character, has expressed the view that a god s/he serves upholds or exemplifies a certain value in a corrupt way, then playing that god as upset with the PC does not involve telling the player that s/he has a flawed conception of the value in question. In fact, it affirms his/her conception that the god is corrupted, and hence can't recognise the truth about the value when confronted by it (by way of the PC's conduct).

For instance, if a servant of Vecna releases some information, or keeps it secret from Vecna, because s/he believes that that is what true attention to the value of secrecy requires, it is not questioning or adjudicating his/her expressive/evaluative judgement to have Vecna be angry. It is affirming that judgement, as well as - in this case - the underlying judgement that Vecna's understanding of the value of secrecy is corrupted.

A fortiori, the previous case generalises to those cases in which the player of the character in question declares an action for the PC that s/he does not perceive as serving the value in question at all, or that s/he intends to thwart that being. Indeed, this applies even when the god in question is not perceived as corrupted.

For instance, if a player of a paladin of Kord has his/her PC run away, and makes it clear that in doing so s/he is being a coward, it is not questioning his/her expressive/evaluative judgement to have Kord be angry. It is affirming that judgement!

There are further questions about how, within the framework of the game's action resolution mechanics, anger might be manifested. 4e has its own norms in this respect, set out in its combat chapters, it skill and skill challenge chapters, and p 42 of its DMG. These mechanics have shown themselves, to me at least, to be very robust over 5 years and 25 levels of play; they also have a reasonably sophisticated interaction with the PC build rules. If anyone wants to have a serious discussion about how they differ from imposing permanent XP drain or class change, I'm happy to do that.

 

[Cadence]

Some gods are infallible exemplars and/or upholders of certain values. ... In default 4e, I think the good and unaligned gods fit this description: Kord exemplifies and upholds prowess, courage, and also arguably honour.

For instance, if I played Kord telling a PC worshipper of Kord that he was a coward, in circumstances in which the player of that PC regards his PC's conduct as brave, I am telling that player that s/he is wrong about what bravery requires: because it is an undisputed premise between us that Kord is an exemplar of bravery, and therefore knows it when he sees it, and similarly for cowardice. And this is what I don't want to do.

Based on previous posts, I thought you would have had Kord judge the character based on what Kord considered brave. (Similar to having some good/lawful/chaotic/evil god judge the character based on that gods particular flavor of good/lawful/chaotic/evil that probably disagrees with the flavors other gods would use so that the characters were free to disagree with that flavor.) But I hadn't pictured you making the gods infallible exemplars of things like bravery...

For instance, if a player of a paladin of Kord has his/her PC run away, and makes it clear that in doing so s/he is being a coward, it is not questioning his/her expressive/evaluative judgement to have Kord be angry. It is affirming that judgement!

And if he/she regularly bravely runs away with coconut-clattering minstrel in tow and makes it clear they think that running away has nothing to do with bravery...

Can any NPCs in the game even rationally question Sir Robin about it? The NPCs obviously can't appeal to Kord to find out with a commune spell because you wouldn't have Kord condemn the paladin. Couldn't the PC even do a commune to prove to the NPCs that Kord (who defines bravery) doesn't condemn the action? Does having exemplars who won't contradict a PC's player allow a really bad paladin player to redefine basic words?

And so if your group ever had a player join who did that, the solution is that either the reactions of the other PCs indicate that the player has lost their marbles and hopefully cajoles them into rethinking it, or the group just doesn't invite that player back? If they weren't invited back would the group be allowed to retroactively undo the universal equating of bravery with running away?

 

[pemerton]

Based on previous posts, I thought you would have had Kord judge the character based on what Kord considered brave.

Well, there's no difference, is there, because Kord considers the brave brave, and the cowardly cowards. But what is the order of explanation? That is the Euthyphro point: that Kord admires the brave because they are brave; it's not that we call them brave because Kord admires them.

This is also why I don't regard a paladin as comparable to a warlock. S/he hasn't entered into a pact, to please a god in return for power. S/he has pledged herself to upholding a value that is worth upholding, in the name of the god who exemplifies/upholds that value.

But I hadn't pictured you making the gods infallible exemplars of things like bravery

It's highly bound up with the actual course of play. That was part of the point of my parenthetical comment about Vecna - if a player wants to play Kord as more of a well-meaning oaf, and therefore his/her paladin of Kord is closer in relationship to the invoker of Vecna in my game, that's good though in my experience a little atypical. But my experience is that typically the player of a paladin wants to play his/her PC as an exemplar/upholder in service to an exemplar/upholder. That's why, for me, it makes no difference whether the alignment judgement happens at the metagame level ("Look where you've drifted on the alignment graph") or the ingame level ("Kord sends you a portentious dream") - either way it's judging the player's expression/evaluation, in play, in relation to the value in question, as inadequate. Which is the thing I don't want to do, for the reasons I've explained upthread.

And if he/she regularly bravely runs away with coconut-clattering minstrel in tow and makes it clear they think that running away has nothing to do with bravery...

<snip>

And so if your group ever had a player join who did that, the solution is that either the reactions of the other PCs indicate that the player has lost their marbles and hopefully cajoles them into rethinking it, or the group just doesn't invite that player back? If they weren't invited back would the group be allowed to retroactively undo the universal equating of bravery with running away?

This is another hypothetical.

Is there anyone who has watched the Holy Grail but doesn't understand it is a comedy? I've not met such a person - perhaps they exist, and perhaps a certain sort of RPGer is more likely to be among them? I don't know.

What do you do when you're playing a serious game, and someone brings in the PC "Fourwar": the Warforged Hybrid Warlord/Warden multi-class Warlock?

What do you do when you're playing a fairly standard game, that skirts around the edges of humanoid genocide, slavery and the like, and then you discover in the course of that that you have a player who thinks the 13th Amendment was a fraud, or who is a Holocaust denier?

Are these the sorts of issues, that of course can arise in any collective creative endeavour, that people are using mechanical alignment to resolve? If so, I'm certainly happy to learn how it works.

 

[Cadence]

This is also why I don't regard a paladin as comparable to a warlock. S/he hasn't entered into a pact, to please a god in return for power. S/he has pledged herself to upholding a value that is worth upholding, in the name of the god who exemplifies/upholds that value.

That's been my experience too.

What do you do when you're playing a fairly standard game, that skirts around the edges of humanoid genocide, slavery and the like, and then you discover in the course of that that you have a player who thinks the 13th Amendment was a fraud, or who is a Holocaust denier?

Are these the sorts of issues, that of course can arise in any collective creative endeavour, that people are using mechanical alignment to resolve? If so, I'm certainly happy to learn how it works.

Fair enough (and tying back into what the rules of a game should cover versus what the general social contract for all activities is designed to deal with). You are correct that I certainly wouldn't need alignment rules to deal with them appropriately.

Thanks for the food for thought.

 

[Cadence]

My brain is attempting to stop me from getting work done, and now I'm wondering if there are cases where having enforceable alignment rules have benefits in organized play/tournaments even if they don't in our regular games.

 

[pemerton]

I'm wondering if there are cases where having enforceable alignment rules have benefits in organized play/tournaments even if they don't in our regular games.

Perhaps. I don't know enough about contemporary organised play. In a classic tournament, alignment probably can do some useful things, but I suspect to do that it has to be used as a straitjacket. (By way of analogy, the Burning Wheel demo game "The Sword" uses PCs with pre-authored Beliefs, deliberately written so as to drive the PCs into the conflict with one another that the scenario depends upon.)

Fair enough (and tying back into what the rules of a game should cover versus what the general social contract for all activities is designed to deal with).

Saying a bit more in response to my own rhetorical questions, I could probably handle Fourwar even in a reasonably serious game; it seems about on a par with the background for the dwarf fighter/cleric in my game. The player of that PC, when asked to nominate a loyalty for his starting PC, and a reason to be ready to fight goblins, provided the following story: in the mountain dwarfholds every young dwarf serves in the military, and cannot graduate to independent adulthood until s/he has killed his/her first goblin. But for this particular dwarf, every time the goblins raided he was away from the frontline doing something else (delivering a message, peeling potatoes, or whatever - in later tabletalk this has been elaborated/distorted by other players into being on latrine duty). So as his peers, and those younger than him, passed through the ranks of the dwarven hosts, he continued to serve, more and more ignomiously. Until one day, with the aid of his mother, he deserted his post and set out on his own to find goblins to fight. (And then met up with some other like-minded ne'er-do-wells in a tavern . . .)

That backstory played little role other than providing a basis for some gentle mockery until 11th level, when the PC in question met up with some of the dwarves from his hold who had taunted him. They were a scouting party, who had travelled a long way from the dwarfhold in pursuit of some hobgoblins, and then had been badly hurt in an ambush from those same hobgoblins, reinforced by the hobgoblin army the PCs were tracking down. An angel of Moradin came to the injured dwarves, and told them that if they headed south for a day or so into the foothills, they would come upon a ruined manor house where they would find a cleric of Moradin to aid them. A few who could still walk duly did so, and came upon the PCs, including the dwarven fighter/cleric - whom the NPCs addressed, asking where the cleric of Moradin was that the angel had prophesied. When the dwarf PC answered that he was it, they laughed and mocked and asked where the cleric really was. It wasn't until the PC knocked them all on their arses with his polearm (mechanically, a fairly simple check in a skill challenge) that they believed him that he was the cleric to whom the angel had referred.

The PCs then went with the dwarves back to their injured comrades, did what healing they could, and led them to safety - although some more died tragically in another hobgoblin attack, fighting under the dwarven PCs' command, a couple survived and one of them, Gutboy Barrelhouse, remains that PC's herald. I've set this out in a bit of detail just to illustrate how something that is humorous, at least initially, can be incorporated into play even in a fairly serious game and actually contribute to, rather than detract from, the tone of play.

I could imagine Fourwar playing out in some similar way. Sir Robin I find harder, but who's to say what can and can't be done? This is why my response to these hypotheticals tends to be that they are meaningless without some actual play context that reveals (for instance) why a reasonable player has sincerely offered the view that running away exemplifies bravery rather than cowardice.

 

[pemerton]

N'raac, I found this on another thread:

So what are we really saying here? That a good player, who builds a PC to concept, should get a result which means his character is largely ineffectual when compared to a character optimized for pure mechanical effectiveness? To me, the system should reward concept building, not min/maxing. If flavourful, interesting concepts are sidekicks at best, then I think the designers have failed.

Given this, I don't really understand why you find it objectionable that (for instance) a typical paladin build should be mechanically more effective when played honourably rather than dishonourably.