Do alignments improve the gaming experience?

[Hussar]

Keep in mind we are in play style territory. This is how individual groups interpret alignment, gods etc. for me in my games things like a cleric's spells or a paladins abilities have to do with their personal relationship or covenant with their deity. So that would be subject to a gods personality to a degree. Know alignment would be more objective and not subject to error. Again though, I never said the deity is wrong. In the given example the deity might well be correct. I just don't object to the player deciding how his character feels about the god's judgment.

But, that's the problem. If the deity is correct, then the player (and the character) is wrong. They both can't be right. So, why would I, the player, do something that I KNOW is wrong?

And, again, this is problematic as well. How can a spell granted by the gods be more objective than the god his/herself? My cleric casts Detect Evil or Know Alignment and that gives a better handle on morality that a god?

 

[Hussar]

So let me make sure I understand the logical construct of morality in your play style...

No LG character's behavior could ever result in an alignment shift because all actions ever committed by the character would be believed to be LG by the character and thus would be LG because if the character believes he is acting in a LG manner that makes it LG...

With the caveat that the player was honest in his assessment that his behavior is actually consistent with his beliefs, yes. Now, this presumes that the player is mature enough to actually judge his own behavior, but, by and large, once you place the ball in the player's hands, in my experience, they will be far harsher judges of what is consistent with the beliefs of their character than I will be.

Yeah, that's definitely not my thing and it seems like you have some pretty circular logic going on here but hey if that's the morality you choose for your campaigns then whatever floats your boat.

It's only circular if the player is inconsistent. Then again, I don't see players being any more inconsistent than DM's.

So in your campaign the paladin is empowered and beholden to... himself?

How did you arrive at that. The character is certainly empowered and beholden to a given deity (or power or philosophy). However, the player is empowered to determine what that actually means instead of having it passed down to him from me. So, if the player thinks that Act X is good, then it's good and we'll play from there. It's not my job, or my wish, to police the behavior and dictate the morality of someone else's character.

Perhaps your character didn't know what he was capable of until something important enough to him was put at risk...

But, the player KNOWS, because you've told him, that his actions are morally wrong. There is no grey here. You've flat out told him that if he do X, then he will commit an evil act. How he feels about things is immaterial. Since the point of playing a morally strong character is to actually act morally, why would I abandon my morals? That's the whole reason for playing this character. If I wanted to play a character that isn't terribly concerned about morality, why on earth would I play a paladin or a cleric? That's WHY you play that character. Or, for me anyway, that's why I play those characters.

So, for me, there is nothing important enough to compromise that morality. If you tell me, in no uncertain terms, that X is evil, then my character will never do X. That's radically changing the story of my character. If I want to play a fallen character, sure, that's groovy. But, outside of that, I'm not too sure why a player would knowingly throw away his character like that.

Could you be more specific about exactly what version or incarnation of Superman we are talking about here... while I can't think of any that use torture off-hand... there are versions of Superman that do some questionable things, including murder in cold blood...

EDIT: Actually nevermind, I don't think characters with multiple versions and multiple writers are really good at being examples of specific consistent behavior.

Oh, please. We're really going to have an alignment wank about SUPERMAN? Even Superman isn't a decent enough exemplar of alignment? Holy crap. What would you consider a decent archetype for Lawful Good?

 

[Sadras]

For a case this much on the edge, I would want a discussion of the type of game we want to be playing, and we would hopefully have a group consensus as to the appropriate classification of the act, which could be Evil or Neutral depending on the game.

I tend to agree with you, there would definitely be a discussion at our table for this scenario. As for the paladin in my group, I definitely do not think the execution of the nightwatchman would be something he could swallow. We have already had a similar situation in our group, which I did mention upthread, where the PC Dwarvern cleric executed a wizard essentially because of her nationality (her people and the dwarves are historical enemies). The Dwarf is Lawful Neutral. Of course the Dwarf's actions were kept hidden from the Paladin.

 

[pemerton]

Do you mean in a particular circumstance, or consistently over one's entire life?

It's complicated, because the nature of the "can't" here is problematic.

I don't think we're talking about ideals that a person can't conceivably live up to (eg we're not talking about cat trying to live the moral life of a human). Nor are we talking about the "can't" of causal impossibility - I think we're assuming free will, so that the character is free to choose and able to act in accordance with those choices. But equally I don't think we're talking about the "can't" of "well, actually, I guess I could have if I'd tried harder but I didn't, aw shucks".

The "can't" means something like "can't reasonably" - so when we say the ideals can't be realised in the real world, we mean something like "the ideals can't reasonably be realised in the real world". Note that "reasonably" here is an obviously normative notion, and so we don't have any evaluation of this claim that is itself value-free; the person who does evil on the grounds that goodness can't reasonably be achieved in the real world may just have a misguided conception of what is reasonable. (The selfish often do, particularly when weighing costs to themselves.)

Anyway, what is reasonable, given the nature of reality, depends very heavily on that nature. I think the providential outlook of a paladin or saint is important here: it shapes that person's understanding of what reality consists in, and hence of what is reasonable. Weber is one of the best authors on this, I think, though he is coming from the atheistic side. In "Politics as a Vocation" he distinguishes the "ethics of absolute ends" and the "ethics of responsibility", and argues that a good politician will follow the latter and not the former ethic, because it would be a dereliction of political duty to commit the polity on the basis of the sort of providential conviction that underpins an ethics of absolute ends. (The politician, says Weber, must aim at good in this world, not good in some other circumstance that lies on the other side of providential judgement.)

Now we can first think about Weber from the point of view of a paladin. The Weberian outlook seems an obvious instance of evil (or neutral? a difficult label to work with, for reasons already given). It is certainly not good, because it tolerates doing wrong because of a perceived need to choose between evils that disregards the balancing of the scales that providence will take care of.

But now let's think about Weber from the point of view of someone who agrees. That person does not judge the paladin - committed to, and following, the ethic of absolute ends - to be good. The paladin's not necessarily evil, either - more like a fool or ingénue. (Weber in fact allows something like an aesthetic admiration for the paladin or the saint. But they are not to be permitted to be in charge of anything!) The ideals are fatuous, because the underpinning necessary to make them valid - namely, that providence will deliver - is fantastic, at best a naïve hope.

That's the sort of thing I had in mind when I said that "ideals that can't be achieved" entails "ideals that are fatuous". If the ideals can realistically be achieved, and are worth achieving, but are just hard, then it doesn't follow that they're fatuous. (This would be a common take among some practitioners of meditation aimed at the pursuit of genuine mindfulness - it's hard to do, much like running really fast is hard, but it is worthwhile in its payoff, and hence is not fatuous. But is also not something that can't realistically be aimed at, and perhaps achieved. It can be achieved, and it is reasonable to expect real people to aim at it.)

A further complication is that some ideals that are hard to achieve are ideals of the superogatory rather than the obligatory: the category of the superogatory would encompass many of the ideals of that religion you mentioned, and the reason for holding these ideals as superogatory and not obligatory may precisely be that living in the real world doesn't conduce to achieving them. (Some practitioners of meditation aimed at mindfulness might have this view of genuine mindfulness - it's worth all of us aiming at it, but we acknowledge that many perfectly good people will fall short.)

But if the paladin who falls short of ideas because they're not realistic is simply failing in the domain of the superogatory, then s/he has not committed an evil act, or even a neutral act - s/he has simply failed to perform the best possible act - and hence s/he will not fall. (Which is not the scenario that was presented, and that motivated my original comment about fatuous ideals.)

Sorry that's a long answer, but the connection between ideals and realism is a complicated one. (Random factoid: the phrase adopted by John Rawls late in his life, to describe his political ideals, was "realistic utopia".)

 

[pemerton]

The Lawful Evil Monk I gave as an example did almost exactly this -though he dismissed the spell more than argued about it. To him, the magic was obviously faulty; he lived his life tracking down murderers, rapers, thieves, etc., and punishing them. He hurt those who hurt innocent people. In his eyes, he was a good guy, and disputing that was nonsensical.

Unless I misunderstood, he was denying that whatever the spell labels as "evil" is really evil, in a context in which it is not a premise of the campaign world that there are objective cosmological forces whose conception of such matters is exhaustive of the notion of evil.

Yeah, you'd think that it'd go one way or the other. Either you play as I described my campaign (shades of grey within the alignment system... "is Good actually good?"), or you'd go for the more clear-cut, no-debate approach ("Good is good, and we all agreed to this definition"). It doesn't make much sense to mix the two. To me, at least. I can easily see running with the "shades of grey" style and having many characters (even PCs) that don't end up questioning things, but if you're going with the "no-debate" approach, then mixing them doesn't seem like it'd work out well.

On this I think we're agreed.

So, basically, if you want to be able to debate real-world morality in the game, there's still not a problem with saying "these things are Good and these things are Evil", in my experience, because you can still ask "but what is right and what is wrong?"

On this, though, we clearly have different preferences. I find retaining the label "good" for something that might rightly be repudiated is unhelpful, much like retaining the label "round" for something that has corners. Bracketing it as "D&D-ish good" doesn't really help me, either - I prefer to cut out the label and just talk about the ideals of the entity in question.

There is also the further question of who gets to adjudicate compliance with those ideals. For reasons I've already given at length upthread, I prefer that the player of a sincerely religious character have the prerogative of adjudicating what his/her ideals require. (I say a bit more about this below.)

The question then becomes how far down the slope will the characters go to pursue outcomes they consider best versus good.

This is an example of what I find confusing. Given that "best" means "most good", it seems somewhat contradictory to deny that the best is at least good.

if the GM is judging alignment, by way of fallible gods, it is still possible for the god to have made a bad judgement call.

I agree entirely.

Just to check - are you two saying that it is OK for a GM to strip a player's PC of paladinhood (or cleric-hood), even though the player did not have his/her PC commit an alignment violation, because the GM is RPing a fallible god?

(This is a variation of [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s question upthread.)

This seems to be very problematic. The mechanics make no allowance for the judgement of alignment to be fallible.

I also agree with this.

You know the act you are about to commit is not LG. As a character you don't define what is or isn't LG, that is defined by the cosmological powers

What does that "definition" mean? In what way is not just a stipulation that is applied more-or-less arbitrarily, action by action?

Up until the last ten or so pages of this thread, I always thought we were supposed to understand the "definition" as tracking a moral property - even if just an imagined, fantasy one. But now it seems that I'm being told quite the opposite - that it may not track any property at all. So how is it improving the game experience? Why not cut out alignment, describe the personalities of the gods, and have them bestow and withdraw powers more-or-less at will. Furthermore, why - on this account of alignment - is there anything remotely special about LG such that there cannot be non-LG paladins?

In my play style, choosing actions that are consistent with character beliefs would never result in an alignment shift since the player believes that his actions are in keeping with his alignment, and thus would actually be in keeping with his alignment. LG, to me, does not exist outside of the character..

So let me make sure I understand the logical construct of morality in your play style...

No LG character's behavior could ever result in an alignment shift because all actions ever committed by the character would be believed to be LG by the character and thus would be LG because if the character believes he is acting in a LG manner that makes it LG

No. That's not what Hussar posted, and I'm puzzled why this has to be corrected in just about every reply.

Hussar talked about the player's judgement that the character's behaviour is in keeping with the character's ideals. Not the character's self-evaluation.

And on this I share Hussar's preferences. If anything, the last ten or so pages of this thread have made me see less value in alignment, because one possible use I thought that had been indicated - of having the GM stipulate and adjudicate an objective morality for the purposes of the campaign - is now being repudiated by nearly all the "pro-alignment" posters, who seem to be saying that it is OK for good gods to do evil things, and be known by a PC (and the PC's player) to do evil things, and yet the PC still loses paladinhood because the god is fallible. From my point of view, that is drifting into very strange territory.

 

[pemerton]

If the deity is correct, then the player (and the character) is wrong. They both can't be right. So, why would I, the player, do something that I KNOW is wrong?

the player KNOWS, because you've told him, that his actions are morally wrong. There is no grey here. You've flat out told him that if he do X, then he will commit an evil act. How he feels about things is immaterial.

Agreed. This is my puzzlement in a nutshell - if the GM-stipulated alignment is objectively how things are in the gameworld, then it makes no sense to contest that. As I mentioned upthread, it's like arguing with a tape-measure.

How can a spell granted by the gods be more objective than the god his/herself? My cleric casts Detect Evil or Know Alignment and that gives a better handle on morality that a god?

I share your puzzlement.

“Morally justified” is not “good”. It is a departure from the tenets of good justified by other realities.

<snip>

It is, in isolation, non-good. That is not the same as evil.

How do you know these things?

Obviously few people think a world in which a person is killed by way of defensive violence is a better world than one in which a peaceful resolution was found. But on it's own that doesn't mean that it cannot be morally obligatory to perform an act of defensive violence, even a lethal act. (For instance, to prevent a culpable person killing an innocent person.) If the act is morally obligatory, then among other properties it probably has the property of being good in all the circumstances, in the sense of best instantiating the values that are worth pursuing. (After all, if it is morally obligatory to save the evil person then to do nothing would be to be derelict in one's duty - which, if that involves letting another die when one had a duty to intervene, looks like it might be evil.)

And what does the phrase "departure from the tenets of good justified by other realities" even mean? What are these "other realities"?

The only sense I can make of the phrase is that "it is an action that undermines, in one respect, a value - namely, the value of the life of the evildoer - because there is a permission, or perhaps a duty, to uphold a different value, or perhaps a different instantiation of the same value that is more worthy of being upheld - such as the life of the innocent." A person who makes the right choice about which instance of a given value to uphold, in circumstances where both instances cannot be upheld, looks like a good person to me.

 

[JamesonCourage]

Unless I misunderstood, he was denying that whatever the spell labels as "evil" is really evil, in a context in which it is not a premise of the campaign world that there are objective cosmological forces whose conception of such matters is exhaustive of the notion of evil.

The Monk was saying that the spell was obviously faulty, as he, as a person, "obviously is not evil." The PCs (and players) knew that the spell wasn't faulty, and they knew that this Monk acted in a way which earned him the Evil alignment. However, the debate for whether or not what the Monk did was right or wrong was left open if the players wanted to explore it (and they did).

On this, though, we clearly have different preferences. I find retaining the label "good" for something that might rightly be repudiated is unhelpful, much like retaining the label "round" for something that has corners.

This seems like a bad comparison. Rather than break it down and go down that rabbit hole, let's just see if we can talk without the comparison, rather than past one another.

Bracketing it as "D&D-ish good" doesn't really help me, either - I prefer to cut out the label and just talk about the ideals of the entity in question.

I get that. I have no problem with your preference -it's my general preference, too. (Again, my RPG has no morality equivalent mechanic in the game.)

However, I'm saying that I don't see how having a "D&D Good" and "D&D Evil" really hurts that exploration, either. My players did plenty of it during our game, and we used D&D Good and D&D Evil. At certain points, it actually led to them further questioning right and wrong, rather than stifle any sort of moral exploration.

Again, I don't mind you not preferring it (and I can relate to that), I just don't see how it necessarily conflicts with moral exploration or is somehow incoherent with that goal. If that makes sense.

There is also the further question of who gets to adjudicate compliance with those ideals. For reasons I've already given at length upthread, I prefer that the player of a sincerely religious character have the prerogative of adjudicating what his/her ideals require. (I say a bit more about this below.)

Right, this is also just a play style thing. I have no problem with your preference. I was just commenting on how D&D alignments don't necessarily conflict with moral exploration during game play, based on my personal experiences.

 

[Sadras]

And, again, this is problematic as well. How can a spell granted by the gods be more objective than the god his/herself? My cleric casts Detect Evil or Know Alignment and that gives a better handle on morality that a god?

Great question.
For me, it all depends on the cosmology of the setting. If we are using mythological gods (flawed), they usually are in charge of specific Domains which are non-Alignment based, Domains would include Strength, Agriculture, Weather...etc
These Gods might be selfish, proud, arrogant...etc
Even Athena the Goddess of Wisdom reflected how flawed she was with Arachne.
Alignment could then be seen as Ideals, cosmological force greater than the gods - perhaps similar to 4e style. The Gods themselves might have an alignment, but would not necessarily be custodians/guardians of the tenets of that alignment.
If your PC was too far removed from the alignment of your deity you would cease to have access to channel said deity's divine power.

If you are using Deities of Good/Evil Law/Chaos where they are the cosmological force of Good/Evil Law/Chaos in the world then technically such Deities cannot be wrong within their chosen Domains.

Then you possess a third group, which is a Mix of Domains. Deities who have domains of Good/Evil etc but also non-Alignment based Domains.
These Domains if the DM so wanted could then come into conflict with each other in specific situation which might create a "flawed existence" when adjudicating actions of mortals. A DM could also rule that even though they are Custodians of alignment-based domains they could still be flawed.

Both groups of Deities allow access to Divine Energy. Whether this Divine Energy is originates from Gods themselves or they are merely Custodians of it is again dependent on the cosmology of the setting. I believe both types have been covered by various traditional D&D settings.
So you as DM will decide if the Divine Energy is larger than the Deity or if the Deity the creator of the Divine Energy. That will provide you with insight into how Alignment Spells might work.

These are my quick ramblings and thoughts on the subject.

 

[Sadras]

Now, this presumes that the player is mature enough to actually judge his own behavior, but, by and large, once you place the ball in the player's hands, in my experience, they will be far harsher judges of what is consistent with the beliefs of their character than I will be.
It's only circular if the player is inconsistent. Then again, I don't see players being any more inconsistent than DM's.

I believe the response to this was covered before by @Imaro some time back, where it was mentioned (and this is definitely not as eloquently as he put it) that if players are so great and impartial - you should let them choose the monsters they wish to fight, the experience points and treasure items to be awarded (wishlists). We already let them point buy ability scores and just look at the number of 18's that characters now all possess.

There are gamists and there are role-players, its part and parcel of the hobby. You might argue your players are all mature and sincere which is fine, but they still have a predisposition to a degree of bias within the game when it comes to their characters, which they should, but which the DM does not possess. And that, IMO, makes him a better adjudicator than the players.

But, the player KNOWS, because you've told him, that his actions are morally wrong. There is no grey here. You've flat out told him that if he do X, then he will commit an evil act. How he feels about things is immaterial. Since the point of playing a morally strong character is to actually act morally, why would I abandon my morals? That's the whole reason for playing this character. If I wanted to play a character that isn't terribly concerned about morality, why on earth would I play a paladin or a cleric? That's WHY you play that character. Or, for me anyway, that's why I play those characters.

Ok we are going around in circles here.
@N'raac covered this some time back, if the action was so great, that it would be evil and of a degree where it would "insert punishment here" and perhaps even require an alignment change well then I doubt you would have a disagreement at the table. It would be fair to say, that the action would have questions attributed to it at least, the PC would have definitely had some doubt.
Some of the examples posted have reflected that doubt, so it is extremely unlikely the player would have been surprised.

I imagine most of the time, and this has been mentioned before, its the little continuous infractions that would have the DM address with the player that his character is slowly sliding down the alignment ladder.

 

[Bedrockgames]

But, that's the problem. If the deity is correct, then the player (and the character) is wrong. They both can't be right. So, why would I, the player, do something that I KNOW is wrong?

And, again, this is problematic as well. How can a spell granted by the gods be more objective than the god his/herself? My cleric casts Detect Evil or Know Alignment and that gives a better handle on morality that a god?

Again, very setting dependant. But alignment is a tangible thing. If someone is radiating evil, the spell will detect that. My own feeling is the spell's ultimate source may even be beyond the god that grabts it (remember, in my settings i tend to have greek like gods, very prone to personal quirks, with a vague, demiurge type force operating int he background above the gods themselves).

But I would also say to me, this gets into "overthinking it" territory. Ultimately what matters to me is the players have control of what their characters believe. If the gods rebuke them, even if the gids are right to do so, and the players decide the god is wrong, or there is a better way, that is their decision. They may be right or wrong depending on the circumstances. But i find this makes for better play, where the players feel very much inside and in control of their characters, while I am in control of the setting they inhabit. I am not worried so much about things failing under intense scrutiny after the fact (many things in a fantasy setting can easily be criticized in that way, just that we all accept the reality as it is unfolding.