Do alignments improve the gaming experience?

[Bedrockgames]

This is exactly what @Bedrockgames has described upthread: the GM, as author of the gameworld, stipulates what counts as good in that gameworld. It is a fantasy morality that the players then explore.

In such a game, though, it makes no sense for a PC, in character, to deny that the cosmological good of that gameworld is really good. Or to escalate to the metagame level, the players, in participating in a game set up along these lines, have agreed to accept, within the framework of the game, the morality that the GM stipulates. And everyone understands that they are exploring that stipulated morality. Mishihari Lord makes basically the same point not too far upthread:

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I do think there is still room for a pc to disagree with the gods or the cosmology...it is just the powers of the universe can make their will known. But you could have a paladin who loses his powers following a difficult choice and believes his god was wrong to strip him of his abilities. One interesting question under the alignment system is whether evil views itself as bad. This gets a different answer depending on the GM, and in the case of D&D novels, the author. The dark elf trilogy sort of tried to tackle that question and walk a bit of a fine line there. Where for examlpe the dark elves are clearly evil, but their mythology regarding the outside world offers them some justification for killing surface dwellers. I am not saying that is the correct approach or it is devoid of any holes, but this is one of the fun features of dealing with alignment.

i ran tons of ravenloft and there was a bit more grey there in terms of alignment, yet the world responded to evil in a palpable way. Part of the reason for the grey stems from the mystery of the dark powers...no one really knows what they are, if they are good or if they are evil, and while evil is punished, it is also rewarded. The GM kind of needs establish a clear point of view to run a setting like that. But from the players perspective things are not nearly as clear, and there is room for them to debate good and evil.

 

[Cadence]

How did the paladin and cleric/monk reconcile this with their obligations? Well, the paladin already knew that, while the gods in heaven were mighty, and in some cases enlightened, and on the whole (at least he believed at the time) benevolent, they were not as capable of true enlightenment as humans, and were capable of error. <snip>

The point of the example (which turned out longer than I thought it would be) is to illustrate how, even when the gods and their servants are very actively involved in a game, it is still quite feasible to let the players take the lead in determining what counts as honouring the values of the gods/codes to which they are committed. It is also another illustration of a player deliberately setting up his PC as opposed to, or in conflict with, a particular divine entity, in which case I would regard it as a dereliction of my GMing duty not to have the entity respond in some fashion, such as in this case turning up to arrest the PC for violating heaven's edicts. I regard the two approaches set out in the two preceding sentences as both following from a more basic principle, namely of affirming and building upon the players' conceptions of what their PCs are and what they have done, rather than contradicting them.

All sounds perfectly reasonable for me based on how the game universe was set up in paragraph one and on wanting to have a fun game.

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So while I'm hoping to spend 100 % of my mental overhead on compelling, engaging, genre-consistent, immediate, physical fallout between PC and NPC, with respect to the physical world context at the macro and the context of the nuance of the exchange at the micro, I'm simultaneously distracted by considerations external to my GM principles:

- Does my sense of the disparity between PC action and deity dictates indicate that its so egregious that there should be immediate PC-build fallout?

I can understand mental overhead distracting you from what you want would be annoying. (The overhead of the various powers certainly annoyed me in that first 13th age session). The part that I have trouble relating to is that what you describe doesn't usually make me feel like I'm using mental overhead. It seems like it should be the equivalent of catching something strange in your peripheral vision -- you worry about it when you notice it.

- If there is immediate PC-build fallout, what form should it take? And how in the world do I make this manifestation not detract and distract from the exciting, climactic resolution of the unfolding conflict?

Lets say a character does something egregiously against social norms and not related to religion or character build. The party member is in the middle of a delicate argument/negotiation and suddenly decides to start denigrating the NPC using a tirade of profanity, or throws a mug of beer they were drinking in the NPCs face, or starts passing gas loudly and repeatedly. Does it take effort to notice its egregious? Do you ignore the egregious act because acknowledging it would detract and distract? Or does the obvious game reprecussion take place?

And what if the player of the PC disagrees (rightly or wrongly) with my take? Maybe they feel that, within some legitimate nuance, they are observing the dictates of their deity. That will exacerbate the situation dramatically (especially if it turns into a play-disrupting deliberation).

What if they try to justify the profanity laden tirade, food fight, or bodily functions as being a perfectly reasonable thing to have done in the situation?

One final note. Having my own (within the real world) conception of any aspect of a deity's domain (perhaps glory in battle or fighting with honour) has little bearing, the way I see it, on how my player may see their PC's connection with the same deity's domain (within the fictional high fantasy world) and their own general conception of their PC. I can be well-considered, a veritable bastion of intellectual profundity, on the topic and be utterly at odds with the player. If that is so, now I'm committing mental overhead on how to bridge that gap (if its even possible).

Do you answer your own concern?

I think you're running into my point here. In proportion to (a) the rigidity of the deity's dictates and (b) the insidiousness of the game's mechanics that are wedded to them (in this case PC build fallout due to cosmological - GM - interpretation of PC fealty to those dictates), the less "wiggle room" (as you put it) there will be to deal with heresy/behavior that may challenge orthodox (and earn PC build fallout due to cosmological - GM - interpretation of PC fealty to those dictates).

It seems like the solution is to just not have rigid deific dictates and/or to allow the players to enforce the punishments on themselves because they're good players. I'm fine with either of those. That would still avoid my biggest related annoyance -- having religious types who are granted the power to do miracles by the gods but who can never lose those powers no matter how badly they tick off their power granters (that really grates against my sense of order).

I apologize that I don't have the time to address your other post. I will attempt to do so in the future.

No worries, and thanks for all of the answers so far (I think you've hit lots of the things from the other post in this one). I kind of like...

I think our respective ships are running aground on the same rocky waters. In the titanic clash of setting (perhaps a meticulously built, GM-derived world that is their masterwork) vs player protagonism vs thematic conflict...what is paramount? Who is king of the hill and who is subordinate? <snip>

My guess is for "world builder" GMs or those heavily invested in pre-established setting canon, the players are the vehicle for the GM to watch how the model of their beloved setting responds to the players perturbing the initial parameters. They are performing "a model run" of the setting they are heavily invested in.

Then there are GMs who literally care only for what is on-screen and adlib setting only as is required to facilitate the thematic conflict that their PCs have built for. Low resolution setting (limited "pre-set paramaters") is a boon for them and high resolution setting and insidious ethos mechanics embedded in that high resolution setting are anathema to their preferred style (and product) of play.

Most GMs are somewhere in between. Personally, I am much, much, much, much closer to the latter rather than the former.

... and it seems to tie into some of the other threads going around on the nature of games.

I'd like to think that I'm somewhere in the middle. I like the world-building aspect a lot, and having some firm elements to the setting helps me think quicker on my feet and go along with what the players have set their characters up to do. But the whole point isn't for me to watch a model run of the world, its to give the players something they can really get into with their characters. So I'm fully willing to hack and slice things to make it fit better... within reason.

Could be I'm more world builder than I think and my players just never complain. Or maybe I'm more the other side... in most of the actual play situations that your "anti" side describes here, I don't picture the play going much differently if I ran the snippets in question. :::shrugs:::

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On another note -- having time to post a lot lately, I've noticed lots of threads where each "side" seems to go out of their way to read the worst into what the "opposition" is saying -- like modern politics. If opposing super-PACS were funding ads for the two sides in this argument to denigrate each other, would the two portrayals be something like: (a) DMs who build mazes for rats to run through and can't handle it when a rat tries to peer, or heaven forbid, climb over the edge, and (b) DMs who host story telling circles where no one is critiqued and everyone gets a participation trophy at the end?

 

[Manbearcat]

On another note -- having time to post a lot lately, I've noticed lots of threads where each "side" seems to go out of their way to read the worst into what the "opposition" is saying -- like modern politics. If opposing super-PACS were funding ads for the two sides in this argument to denigrate each other, would the two portrayals be something like: (a) DMs who build mazes for rats to run through and can't handle it when a rat tries to peer, or heaven forbid, climb over the edge, and (b) DMs who host story telling circles where no one is critiqued and everyone gets a participation trophy at the end?

Hitting the sack shortly but I just wanted to address this one right quick if I may.

As we well know, humankind is nothing if not tribal. Virtually everything we do betrays those instincts and our hobbies are certainly not free of this primal programming.

Personally, when I respond to most queries about varying playstyles, I'm not drawing primarily upon the words of what others are saying. I feel confident in saying that throughout the life of my GMing RPGs, I have held dear every single playstyle and creative agenda at one point or another, and practiced each of the techniques and championed the GMing principles inherent to facilitating them. When I comment on these things, I'm mostly drawing on that and considering past (and likely future given how aesthetic interests seem to wax and wane) incarnations of "my gaming self" with as much self-awareness as I am capable of mustering.

Beyond that, I suspect that your (a) and (b) were meant to be caricatures. But to be honest, I think they actually well capture the deepest end of the spectrum for both sides. I think there is a "my precious setting" inclination off the deep end on one side and a "freeform madness with no 'satisfying' protagonism because there is no authenticity to mechanical resolution" off the deep end on the other side.

 

[N'raac]

How did the paladin and cleric/monk reconcile this with their obligations? Well, the paladin already knew that, while the gods in heaven were mighty, and in some cases enlightened, and on the whole (at least he believed at the time) benevolent, they were not as capable of true enlightenment as humans, and were capable of error. And this, he decided, was an error, grounded in an overly-rigid application of karmic principles without regard to more fundamental questions of character and motivation (those personal elements that, as he saw it at least, are linked to enlightenment). The cleric/monk, a member of a very esoteric sect, had no problem reaching a comparable conclusion, that even the Lords of Karma had not fully pierced the veil of illusion as his sect aimed at.

Sounds like they were capable of deciding that the "cosmological good force" was not "good as they defined it". Or are we now saying that the Heavens are not those 25+INT/WIS exemplars of good who can never be mistaken as to what Good really is?

 

[pemerton]

Doesn't every game need pre-set parameters?

Good question. A game like Burning Wheel tries to pare these down to the minimum - GM/player negotiation as to core conceit/theme (in that game expressed to a significant extent via Beliefs players choose for their PCs, which is meant to be done in conjunction with other players and the GM as part of the negotiation), and then relationships/affiliations chosen by the players. The rest is expected to develop in play.

I'm hoping to run a BW game after my 4e campaign finishes (around the end of this year on current projections). If so, I will be using Greyhawk for my maps and some basic setting stuff, but expect to work out the details roughly along the lines that BW expects.

I've never tried fully-fledged No Myth, but my 4e game works with pretty light setting notes: at the moment (at 25th level, after 5 years of play) they are up to 7 A4 pages, or around 4,500 words. Plus there is stuff from the 4e rulebooks, like descriptions of the planes and gods. Of course there are pages and pages of encounter notes (hundreds of them, I imagine them) but I very rarely go back and reference them: their main setting-creation function is the enduring memories that I and the players have of what happened in them. (I'm sure that means that from time to time, when we misremember, contradictions creep in. My view is that a contradiction no one has noticed doesn't really matter.)

If opposing super-PACS were funding ads for the two sides in this argument to denigrate each other, would the two portrayals be something like: (a) DMs who build mazes for rats to run through and can't handle it when a rat tries to peer, or heaven forbid, climb over the edge, and (b) DMs who host story telling circles where no one is critiqued and everyone gets a participation trophy at the end?

On (b), I will certainly plead guilty to the following opinion: there is no reason it should be harder for a player, or require jumping through more hoops, to play an interesting cleric or paladin or monk than an interesting fighter or wizard or thief.

Some player, of course, want to work more closely with the GM in foregrounding PC background, choices etc - upthread I've talked about how that influences my reading of "light touch" treatment of different player's PC's familiars. But I think that that sort of choice should be largely independent of class/archetype choice. If someone wants to play a paladin or a warlock but have the god/patron be basically off-screen and not a GM thing, that is fine by me. If someone wants to play a wizard and have the wizard's guild be at the forefront and something that the GM uses to frame complications for their PC, that's fine by me too.

On (a), I have had the experience of being GMed along the lines you describe: GMs who for whatever reason (sometimes but not always connected to world-building desires) couldn't handle active players. It's not my favourite way to play the game. Mechanical alignment is somewhat orthogonal to this; or, at least, that sort of GMing doesn't need mechanical alignment to underpin it. (There are many other ways a GM can deprotagonise his/her players, invalidating their choices and/or their conceptions of their PCs, without using mechanical alignment. Having Elminster turn up is just one well-known example.)

 

[pemerton]

Sounds like they were capable of deciding that the "cosmological good force" was not "good as they defined it". Or are we now saying that the Heavens are not those 25+INT/WIS exemplars of good who can never be mistaken as to what Good really is?

This puzzles me. I am playing a game without mechanical alignment. So there is no "cosmological force of good". There are no "exemplars of good". There are active gods, and a banished god (Bastion of Broken Souls), and a dead god (Requiem for a God), and there are Lords of Karma, and a former Lord of Karma relieved of authority (the Ordainer, an RM NPC/monster, merged with aspects of Asmodeus and Demogorgon from the AD&D MM), and there are Storm Lords and Sea Lords (and a child descended from both, the love interest of one of the PCs and also a dragon), and there are animal lords, and former animal lords relieved of authority (including one of the PCs, as it turned out). And other beings too .

The players make their own judgements, in the course of playing their PCs, and act on them. In doing that, some of the players have the conviction that their PCs are serving the causes ("true enlightenment") to which they are devoted. I don't contradict them in that judgement. All the players also recognise that they are deliberately thwarting the constables of heaven enforcing the edict of the Lords of Karma. I don't contradict that judgement either! - which is to say, as the campaign unfolds they get more trouble from heaven.

I have attached to this post the chart that the players worked up over the course of the campaign, reflecting their understanding of connections between different entities as well as the PCs' relationship to them . (You'll see, for instance, that "heaven" is labelled "the so-called heavenly realm".) This chart couldn't be drawn up at the start of the campaign, by me or by them. The players don't themselves have control over most of that backstory, but as GM I am working it out in response to play. Some of the basic structures - the identities of the 9 immortals, say, or of the elemental giants - is known in advance. But the details that actually matter to play - like rivalries or alliance between various groups, or secret trysts that lie behind the birth of the dragon who is marked as a PC's "girlfriend" - are worked out during play, as the players direct their interest here or there and new ideas occur to me about how to introduce complications and maintain the pressure that will drive the game on. To borrow [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s phrase, that is the sort of thing on which I prefer to expend "mental overhead" when GMing a game. ( [MENTION=6701124]Cadence[/MENTION] might find the chart interesting also - it's hardly the product of no-myth play for the reasons I've just described, but it does illustrate the sort of campaign complexity I am happy to go to without having established things in advance.)

 

[pemerton]

I do think there is still room for a pc to disagree with the gods or the cosmology...it is just the powers of the universe can make their will known.

I'm not sure this necessarily follows though. Just because the cosmological force of "L/C/N good" defines what is "L/C/N good" doesn't then mean my character must believe the "good" action in any particular situation is always the best, right or correct action or that these cosmological forces are infallible

<snip>

Accepting that the morality of the campaign is as the GM stipulates does not mean that my character can not then question or even choose to go against that morality... It just means (in the same way a knight would have a code of chivalry laid out which he may or may not agree with and may or may not choose to aspire too) that there is a structure of what is "good" and a character can choose to agree with it, aspire too it, etc. or decide not to, with the accompanying consequences.

If it makes sense for a character, within the gameworld (ie not a player commenting at the table at the metagame level, but the PC, in character) to assert "the cosmological force of good is not good", then I am puzzled as to the sense in which that being is the cosmological force of good. They seem to be just another person (or quasi-person), with desires which others might admire or condemn, but not an objective moral power at all.

If alignment is handled in this way, I don't see how it can do the job [MENTION=128]Mishihari Lord[/MENTION] wants it to do, of putting moral disagreements to one side while the players play the game, because those disputes can just be reactivated by the PCs who query the will of the gods and "cosmological forces" on the basis of their players' moral judgements.

in the Elric stories by Moorcock one could easily look at the Lords of Law in relationship to the Lords of Chaos (especially in the earlier adventures of Elric) and assume they are a positive force... But as the stories progress we come to see that unbridled and unchecked the forces of Law are just as detrimental and destructive to humanity as Chaos is... Elric comes to realize this and though he started aligned to chaos, he then switches to law and finally he ultimately comes to serve the balance. Even though these powers are capable of granting and stripping their aid and power from him throughout the stories (and Arioch leaves him in dire predicaments more than a few times to teach him obedience) Elric is willing to make that sacrifice in order to do what he sees as the "correct" (though not necessarily good) action.

Sure, but the Elric stories are, in this respect at least, similar to REH Conan: modernist in tone and outlook, denying the existence of cosmological forces of good or evil and fluctuating between hints of nihilism and an embrace of a sort-of Nietzschean self-creation (including creation of value).

That can be fine for an RPG, but I don't see how that sort of cosmology has room for a paladin or a cleric. (Elric himself is, in D&D terms, a warlock or hexblade - he has made a pact. REH Conan has warlocks, sorcerers etc, but no paladins or traditional clerics.)

EDIT: correcting attribution of quote.

 

[Sadras]

This third way treats alignment as a role-playing challenge: the player chooses an alignment for his/her PC, and is then expected to stick to it. The GM frames situations that might make that hard, eg because they tempt the player to depart from alignment, for reasons of expedience such as earning more XP or treasure. But a good player sticks to his/her alignment; while a bad one, who departs from or (in the extreme case) changes alignment is penalised for that. (This approach seems to me to be articulated in the 2nd ed rulebooks, and there are hints of it in Gygax's rulebooks too.)

Well commentating on my group's style of play. Everyone has a chosen alignment - as far as I can tell most of the characters tend towards Good, choosing Neutral and Chaotic as a preference as opposed to Lawful, (besides the Dwarf who is Lawful Neutral) I'm guessing for that freedom and probably because they can relate as players to those alignments.

During adventures I might frame scenes, which might require of them to make moral choices, creating roleplaying challenges.
It could be so much as testing mortal allegiances, questioning their approach to humanoids and other creatures, having theological debates with (rogue - not the class) priests who are of the same flock but possess a different view or it could be as simple as tempting them to do something less than good (for power, prestige, love...etc).

I give experience points either way, for great roleplaying, poignant moments, character defining actions...etc
It is all good as long as the character's actions are believable/justifiable and if ever someone had to do something out of character they would be called on it, not necessarily by me, but by anyone at the table. It is very much an open forum.

As I have mentioned on my very first post in this thread, alignment is very much a descriptor for us. I mentally track the PCs alignment, it’s not something I consider continuously and therefore not much in the way of admin. I have an overall feel where they fit on the scale of evil-good. You may say the players are more aware of alignment than myself.
It is the reason why I do not view alignment as a straight-jacket.

What has surprised me a bit in this thread, though - especially over the last few hundred posts - is that those who I thought might be into this style of play (eg @Sadras , perhaps @N'raac ) seem to have repudiated one of its underpinnings, namely, the role of the GM in adjudicating player roleplaying. Which has left me somewhat puzzled as to how those posters are using alignment in their games.

I would say the extent of my adjudication would depend on the setting. In an earth-type setting I would be a lot more stringent. Since we are currently roleplaying in the D&D basic world, there appears to be a lot more flexibility with regards to Alignment based on the setting.

Well, to put it crudely, they can't. To explore values requires leaving open the answers to the questions like "What is the true nature of honour", "What does true honour demand", etc. Exploring the GM's conception of certain values presupposes that those questions have already been answered by the GM. Questions can't, at one and the same time, be both open and answered.

Given that the players are not very familiar with the world and the pantheon, there is a large element of discovery for both players and characters.

The impression I'm getting from some of the "alignment is not a straitjacket" posts is that the GM answers some of the big questions, but leaves the little questions open, and that is where the action of play takes place.

I suppose that is true.

This impression is reinforced by the number of recent posts saying "But whether or not to rescue the villain is not really an alignment question", or "Whether or not the druid should favour nature over civilisation is not really an alignment question" or "You solve the succubus problem by making her neutral and therefore, de facto, taking her outside the alignment mechanics." But if I am right about this - that the action is taking place in relation to questions that the GM's alignment rulings don't settle (snip)

Rescuing a villain is an Alignment question, the specific circumstances are just not one where I would adjudicate for a change in Alignment. Just because one does not enforce a change in Alignment or hand out "stick', does not mean Alignment adjudication does not exist.

The druid protecting the village against primal spirits would also in isolation not enforce an Alignment change. I feel this example was reaching if it expected any other answer.
If the Druid continually resorted into controlling, manipulating, negating the destructive energies of the primal spirits, then perhaps yes, that would indicate perhaps a predisposition for that Druid to ascribe to the tenets of Law. Then a case could be made.

As for the Succubus. This is an interesting one. Every now and again DMs throw out a Drizzt (a creature that should be evil, but is not). It questions if being evil/good is a nurture or nature phenomenon.
IMO the response to that question is for each individual DMs to answer, since they are the creators of their setting.

(snip) then I'm not sure what useful purpose mechanical alignment is serving, except perhaps to take some questions off the table.

For myself it provides a boundary for the purposes of roleplay immersion. I’m perhaps pedantic in that even though I might not have to deal with a breach of alignment, a limiting factor does exist (by having Alignment adjudicated) which coincides with how I view foresee the interaction of divine casters and the source of their divine power.
For instance: This limiting factor of alignment doesn’t permit one to ridicule the channelling divine energy to a mere mundane skill which can be learned by anyone, including one who possess an alignment opposing the source of divine force they are channelling.

Another purpose being that Alignment might also aid for story purposes.

I'm puzzled by the number of posts on this thread from the "pro-alignment" crowd which seem to evince an unwillingness to do the GMing work that the rules for mechanical alignment seem to clearly call for.

What exactly where you expecting from the pro-alignment crowd? DMs declaring punishments or forcing actions on every perceived indiscretion? Everyone plays differently, as we have seen from that Barbarian thread @Cadence posted, it does appear that, IMO, the straight-jacket kind of play does exist for whatever reason, but that is not my experience with Alignment.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

If alignment is handled in this way, I don't see how it can do the job [MENTION=128]Mishihari Lord[/MENTION] wants it to do, of putting moral disagreements to one side while the players play the game, because those disputes can just be reactivated by the PCs who query the will of the gods and "cosmological forces" on the basis of their players' moral judgements.

I think it helps here in that the argument is about a fantasy morality that no one really believes in rather than players' own moral codes. The former is much less likely to be a cause of acrimony than the latter.

(I love the cosmology shown by your chart, by the way)

I think the hardest part of the approach you're advocating is that it's very tempting as a player to redefine the morality your character follows on the fly to avoid problems, which destroys the value of a moral code. (In real life we just call this "rationalization" of course.) I know that it would take a constant, significant mental effort on my part to make sure that I don't do that, and I'd rather not go to the trouble. This is a big reason I'd rather have a DM-defined objective fantasy moral code for the game. I can see your method working very well with players who want to put in the effort though.

 

[Hussar]

What exactly where you expecting from the pro-alignment crowd? DMs declaring punishments or forcing actions on every perceived indiscretion? Everyone plays differently, as we have seen from that Barbarian thread @Cadence posted, it does appear that, IMO, the straight-jacket kind of play does exist for whatever reason, but that is not my experience with Alignment.

Well consistency would be nice. If alignment is a tool for judging character behaviour, then it would be nice if every example of actually using alignment to judge behaviour wasn't swept aside as an example of bad dming.

Can someone give an example of using mechanical alignment to judge character behaviour that is acceptable to the pro-alignment crowd?