Do alignments improve the gaming experience?

[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?

The player and the character are not the same though. The player, and the gm may well all understand at the table that the character is violating the terms of his alignment, but the player may decide the character doesn't feel that way at all. Again, characters do not have the okayers handbook. They dont know all the setting conceits that the group does. So yes, we may in fact posit a setting where the gods are infallible, alignment is objective, and the judgments of the gods are always in accord with the alignment they represent (though i dont think this is the only way to approach objective alignment). But the characters do not know that is how the world is structured. And they probably are not walking around using terms like Chaotic Good or Lawful Evil. They just know that Ogard god of liberty and compassion, delrives his holy warriors of powers when they violate any of the 22 Laws of Ogard. I think most followers of ogard who break those laws and lose their powers would believe they were wrong to do so. Bnt i have had players present very believable positions in those circumstances where their character (not the player) disputes the gods decision. Again this can be for a wide variety of reasons, everything from the character's alignment is slowly changing and he is starting to agree with the tenets of another faith, to the character doesn't fit neatly into the alignment categories, to the character believes the cosmos shouldn't be the way it is, that his circumstances are special and an exception should have been allowed, to the character is deluded, arrogant, crazy, misguided by false teachings, etc. These reasons for the charcater believing other than his god in this case, totally work for me. And they are also in keeping with a lot of the movies and books i read where you have characters who reject their fate or reject the prnouncements of the gods (I was just watching a version of Legend of Condor Heroes where Yang Kang basically is motivated by this sort of thinking). I find that interesting and fun play.


That said, if you or Pemerton can't accept that logic, it is totally fine. I don't want to force you guys to accept what b accept in my games. Everyone has a different meter of believability for these sorts of things. All i can say is i have been gaming this way since the late 80s, with several different groups of people, most of them quite intelligent in my estimation, and this never presented a problem for anyone at the table. So for me, this works absolutely fine. If it doesn't work for others, I advise them not to avoid using this approach.

 

[Cadence]

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.

We've been down this aisle before. By RAW in 1e, 2e, 3/3.5, and PF, it is the DMs job. If you play those games and don't enforce it, then you either decided to delegate it and have players that are good enough that it works fine for them to police themselves, or you house-ruled it away. Both of which are fine.

If I remember right, didn't someone on the anti-side even say they'd hope the players would play their character losing powers if they failed to live up to how their deity thought they should? (Would that mean player enforced deity expectations was fine?)

Didn't (almost?) everyone on the pro-side say they'd never needed to enforce the alignment rules because their player either didn't break alignment or could enforce it themselves? (Would that mean that player enforced deity expectations was fine?)

 

[Bedrockgames]

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?

First, i wasn't really endorsing any type of judment against characters in that poste. But i can respond to this question.

Just to be clear here, this is getting into my own way of using the game, just like scene framing reflects your own preferences, not neccesarily the default assumptions of the rule bookks. So just keep that in mind in my response, because i realize paladins and alignment do not operate this way exactly according to the rules.

My feeling is that more important than whether a paladin's or cleric's alignent in these situations is their relationship to their god. In my settings, you dont lose you spells (or get spells you were not expecting) because you broke from the bullet list of your alignment. You don't lose your smiting ability because you violated being lawful good. You lose these things because you violated tenets of your faith (whoch probably reflect the alignment closely) or angered your god in another way. I see the gods as very big characters in the setting. This is specific to clerics and paladins because for me, it just makes moresense that their powers come from their deity in some way and the deity gramts those abilities based on the character's standing in its estimation. So a chaotic neutral deity who normally encourages followerss to spread nasty rumors about the other gods, might react with anger and strip a character of powere if that character decides to spread terrible rumors about the chaotic nuetrtal deity (nothing in chaotic nuetral prohibits this, but it is clearly blasphemous and disrepectful to the god). I also should say, i allow holy warriors/paladins if any alignment (they just each have different codes of conduct).

All that said, i dont view this as something to spring on the players as a surprise for your own amusement. I view it as part of playing the character of the god consistently. I am not looking for opportunities to strip characters of their power. So most gods will make their will clearly known in a number of ways. But a misunderstanding between the god and character could certainly arise in the right circumstances.

 

[Sadras]

Didn't (almost?) everyone on the pro-side say they'd never needed to enforce the alignment rules because their player either didn't break alignment or could enforce it themselves? (Would that mean that player enforced deity expectations was fine?)

Yup. On this basis one could make the case that either the pro-side is either not playing the alignment rules stringent enough or that the anti-side is incorrectly perceiving the alignment rules to be quite stringent.

Considering the pro-side all appear to play the same way (at least in this thread - last 60 pages since I have been following), the former does not appear plausible, as surely you would require at least one within the pro-side to play alignment (as a straight-jacket) as perceived by the anti-side.

Given the above, one would come to the logical conclusion that the anti-side is perceiving the use of mechanical alignment incorrectly.

 

[Bedrockgames]

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.

That isnt what i am saying. A good god wont commit evil, or intentionally perform an act with evil results. But a character can still make a flawed assesment of the situation and mistake evil for good. I also added, in my own games (apart from how these things are generally done) I enjoy fallible deities, who can be incorrect in their judgment of a player character's behavior due to a personality flaw or imperfect knowledge. So i might have a god who is 95% in accord with lawful good, but has one weaknessthat doesnt fit the alignment. Or alternatively, the god may enforce additional rules that have nothing to do with alignment at all, and just reflect its personal preferences. Again though, this is just how I run some of my games, and i consider it non standard alignment use. The reason is I bekieve cosmology and setting are imprtant and will alter parts of the rulesto fit it (so i may have different ryules for elves or monks in a particular setting). Alignment is no different. I will alter how alignment works to fit the setting. But i still play in games with much more standard useage of alignment, and at various points in the discussion that is what I was defending. But I felt this other approach, where you have a blend of cosmic alignment forces and falllible gods who are the best, but not the perfect, exemplars of these forces, was relevant.

 

[N'raac]

According to your play style of course. 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. If my LG character is pulling a 24 and torturing prisoners to save someone (or something) then I would never consider my character to be actually LG.

Then again, I wouldn't start torturing with that character since it would be out of character. It would be like Superman starting to torture people.

Now, let’s assume we are not playing a solo game, and that there are other characters in the game, some or all of whom are also (or profess to be) LG. One of these considers it quite appropriate to “pull a 24 and torture prisoners to save someone”. In fact, he even asserts that your character’s refusal to do so means that he cannot truly be PG, as the Greatest Good for the Greatest Number requires we gain this information quickly, which can only be done by torturing it out of this one person. Sucks to be him, but the greatest good for the greatest number absolutely requires he do so.

You raise your Superman case, and he asserts that Supes has never been placed in a situation where there was no other way, and he would do the same thing if he were, or if he would not, that just shows he’s not REALLY LG. Maybe he’s NG because he can’t bring himself to any compromise of Good to one individual to serve Good for the Greatest Number. Then he yanks some DC Archives off the shelf with the Golden Age Superman threatening to drop someone from a substantial height if his questions aren’t answered (the Superman morality has changed over the years, a point also made above, although the general populace is most familiar with the Big Blue Boy Scout Silver/Bronze Age Superman).

So you, the player who can never be wrong about his character’s beliefs and how they accord with alignment, are 100% certain that torturing the prisoner is violating the LG alignment, and the other player, who also can never be wrong about his character’s beliefs and how they accord with alignment, is 100% certain that torturing the prisoner is the only choice which does not violate the LG alignment. Where do we go from there?

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.

In that 24 example, the character (and the player) may well conclude that this Cosmic Good is all fine, and my preference would have been for there to be another way, but there was not. I’d do it again – at least in this case, the ends justify the means. He has decided, perhaps, that Lawful good is not, after all, the best alignment you can be because it allows compassion to interfere with the greater good. Perhaps he has decided that, in fact, Lawful neutral is the best alignment you can be because it means you are reliable and honorable without being a zealot about compassion, and will do what is needed to TRULY deliver the greatest god for the greatest number, where those G characters are too mired in their compassion for those who don’t deserve it to take the necessary action for those who most merit protection and respect.

Maybe he even becomes LE, like that monk who feels some people sacrifice any right to life or dignity by their actions.

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.

It is a compromise of one tenet of Good (not killing or hurting others) in the course of upholding another (defense of the innocent). Cutting that person down in the street because, maybe, he might resort to violence is a very different context from defending the innocent from his attack.

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

You provide an excellent example above.

Obviously 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.

Where striking a person down in the street is much more likely an evil act, the same act in the defense of an innocent person is mitigated. Whether that moves it to Good, or only out of Evil, is questionable. I would say that the killing has lost its Evil character, moving it to Neutral, and the defense of the innocent is a Good act, making the entirety of the act Good on balance. Overall, the character is upholding Good and not committing Evil, so an appropriate act for a Paladin.

A better act might well be talking the attacker down, or defeating him without killing him. Superman would certainly manage one of the two. But then, he’s Superman. The Paladin may not be so clearly superior to his foe as to be confidently able to achieve those results before the innocent is harmed. Now, if the attacker is a low level shopkeeper with a dagger, and our Paladin is 15^th level and can easily prevent any loss of life (and he is aware of all of these facts), then the situation changes again.

Let’s take a different tack. The culpable attacker has also made an enemy of a black hearted villain. As the attacker charges the innocents, that villain steps from the shadows, and cuts the attacker down. “Let that be a lesson to all who would cross me.” Is he now Good because he saved the innocents, or does the motive behind his act change its character? I would lean to the latter.

To reiterate, context is important.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Yup. On this basis one could make the case that either the pro-side is either not playing the alignment rules stringent enough or that the anti-side is incorrectly perceiving the alignment rules to be quite stringent.

Considering the pro-side all appear to play the same way (at least in this thread - last 60 pages since I have been following), the former does not appear plausible, as surely you would require at least one within the pro-side to play alignment (as a straight-jacket) as perceived by the anti-side.

Given the above, one would come to the logical conclusion that the anti-side is perceiving the use of mechanical alignment incorrectly.

It is also important to keep in mind, this has been a long discussion, with all kinds of hypotheticals being raised, and people responding to each other with huge, multipost quotes. Inconsistencies, unclear statements and the like are bound to creep in when that is the case. I am not going to hold a poster to something they said in passing on page twenty, just because it seems to cohtradict something they said on page 40. People are firing off responses, and in these kinds of discussions its where each side is asking a line of questions to "clarify" the other's position, answers wont be perfect. Ultimateky people are attemtping to describe how they use or do not use alignment in play. If you keep drilling down on either side you are bound to find issues you can point to...doesn't mean that method isn't working for them in practice. That is why i keep saying this part of the debate ended several pages back. There is only so much clarity we can offer to those who feel there is an inherent contradiction in our approach. At a certain point you just have to disagree and move on.

 

[Grydan]

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.

... eh?

If my players are telling me what kind of monsters they want to fight, and what sort of rewards they want then my response is "Awesome!". Far better to know what they're interested in seeing than making stabs in the dark.

And when I'm on the other side of the screen, I definitely make sure the DM knows what I'd like to see, because that means I'm more likely to enjoy the experience.

As far as 18 point ability scores and point buy go ... how dare the players want to play the characters they want to play, eh? Back in the good old days, if you wanted to be a paladin you had to wait for the rolls that LET you be one. None of this new-fangled "playing characters you enjoy playing, for the fun if it". What do these kids these days think this is, a game or something?

Sorry, but I play the game to have fun, and as far as I can tell, so do the people I play with. As choosing to place an 18 in an ability has never, in my experience, impeded someone's ability to roleplay, or reduced anyone's enjoyment of the game, I'm a little unclear on why people choosing to do so is supposed to be somehow a bad thing.

If you're trying to link "players, given the opportunity, will choose stats that are unlikely to be randomly generated" with "players, given the opportunity, will act in ways contrary to their character's stated beliefs" ... I find that rather a stretch.

 

[Manbearcat]

If I remember right, didn't someone on the anti-side even say they'd hope the players would play their character losing powers if they failed to live up to how their deity thought they should? (Would that mean player enforced deity expectations was fine?)

Notable alignment implications and enforcement in my games over the years:

1) AD&D game - Ranger, when cornered by the urban authorities, turns evil after holding hostage and subsequently murdering a powerful merchant. This was correct GMing. The player of the PC had long intended to switch sides and this was the catalyst.

2) AD&D game - Paladin fell due to continuously administering his own ideas of social and criminal justice rather than observing the decrees of the land's governing authorities. In one memorable offense, he stopped the public flogging of an infamous thief and vandal (a street urchin who would steal food, give it out to locals in need, and then scrawl large, overt messages on the granaries to shame the local lord as an immoral hoarder), informally stripped the local constable and his deputies of all of their powers, and eventually he seized lands rightly owned and gave them to the meek. He had a "Robin Hood Complex". We were young (early teens). This player thought he was doing the correct thing. He fell as a result and the player had a conniption fit. This was correct GMing on my part.

3) 3e game with a Monk. Again, this character was all shades of chaotic. I advised him going in what the expectations of his alignment were. There was no chance he was going to be able to follow the tenets of Lawful as per 3.x as they run 100 % contrary to this player's personal behavior and the few characters he played were just iterations on the same free-spirited, reckless, counterculture, legitimate authority subordinating theme. He picked up a level of Rogue when he got locked out of Monk and died (in-game) shortly thereafter.

4) All of the various alignment detection spells in 3.x and having to commit to inane, world populating prep and alignment hiding contingencies to functionally play at all. The Paladin in my 3.x game (he did not fall and is one of the few players I still play with) was particularly obnoxious with At-Will Detect Evil (quite possibly my least favorite ability in the history of all games). After dealing with the pervasiveness of 4 and its affect on play (making many tropes utterly untenable except through the use of eye-roll-inducing, ham-handed GM tactics) and (unfun) GM-workload, I will never run another game with alignment as a central factor of play. Not ever. I (lovingly) run 1e megadungeons and that is it.

Now, I play with a very small group of players who share my creative agenda, genre and playstyle preferences. There is little worse than running a game for an incoherent table and/or players who have no idea what they want out of play, cannot, or will not, analyze these things to give clear voice to them, yet feel that their intellectually lazy, visceral (not cerebral) reaction should be interpreted by me (cerebrally) and given legitimate credence. People talk about "player entitlement" around here. That is the only "player entitlement" I've ever born witness to. The right to have negative feelings about something, have no idea why they have them so be unable to communicate them, passive-aggressively take them out on me or the group at large, and expect (through that childish behavior) to have their unspoken, unevaluated angst be understood by others, empathized with, and given legitimacy.

 

[Bedrockgames]

that is it.

Now, I play with a very small group of players who share my creative agenda, genre and playstyle preferences. There is little worse than running a game for an incoherent table and/or players who have no idea what they want out of play, cannot, or will not, analyze these things to give clear voice to them, yet feel that their intellectually lazy, visceral (not cerebral) reaction should be interpreted by me (cerebrally) and given legitimate credence. People talk about "player entitlement" around here. That is the only "player entitlement" I've ever born witness to. The right to have negative feelings about something, have no idea why they have them so be unable to communicate them, passive-aggressively take them out on me or the group at large, and expect (through that childish behavior) to have their unspoken, unevaluated angst be understood by others, empathized with, and given legitimacy.

While i agree with you that disruptive players are not a good thing, and childish behavior is a problem, i dont really see it stemming from failure self analyze playstyle. In fact, I find people who are not entrenched in rpg theory or filled with a point of view taken from online message boards are generally more open minded and easy to game with than those who have very strongly held opinions about the way they like to game. Even in myself, largely due to the ideas i have been exposed to through online discussino and my own self assesment, i really have to turn it off at the table....otherwise i would be the one disrupting things. In the end, i am usually a bit happier with a table where the players have a wide variety of tastes and preferences. This is obviously something of a side issue, but i am not so sure incoherence in design or at the table is a bad thing.