Do alignments improve the gaming experience?

[Hussar]

If you cannot tell if your players are being sincere or not N'raac, I suggest talking with them out of game.

 

[pemerton]

In my campaign, there is a morally-laden cosmological question at issue - heavenly order vs primordial chaos. I don't think the alignment mechanics have anything to say to it at all, because the alignment mechanics do not tell me whether law or chaos is more desirable (and I do not see why a LN character should oppose a CN one any more than a peanut-butter eater should oppose a chocolate-eater)

I don't quite grasp how we have an order versus chaos conflict, if the lawfuls and the chaotics get along fine. Conflict implies they don't get along so well.

I don't quite follow your comment. As I said, I don't understand why a LN character - say, a stereotypical monk - should oppose a CN one - say, a stereotypical bard - any more than a peanut-butter eater should oppose a chocolate eater. They might have the odd snipe at one another, and they never dine together! But they're hardly going to go to war, are they?

But what does the prospect of "lawfuls and chaotics getting along fine" have to do with a conflict between heavenly order and primordial chaos? My game does not have lawfuls and chaotics. It has gods and primordials (and their various allies, servants and devotees). The basis of their conflict has nothing to do with one being a monk and the other being a bard. It is grounded in their incompatible attempts to impose their wills upon the world - incompatible because they want to do fundamentally different things with it.

It is also inconsistent if the action is categorically Evil for PC 1 and definitively Good for PC 2.

This is highly contestable for at least two reasons. First, it assumes without argument that morality is not personal in any way - whereas many moral traditions (especially pacifist ones) require particular group members or role-holders to be under moral obligations that do not generalise across others. Second, it assumes without argument that various forms of moral subjectivism and relativism are false.

If the player decides his basically decent character decides to take any given action, we must accept that the action is benevolent and decent, since the PC's moral code calls for such and he can never be outside that moral code without player consent.

You seem not to understand what it means not to use mechanical alignment. That means that there is no adjudication of the PC's morality. There is no such thing as an action being inside or outside the character's moral code, as far as the game's mechanics are concerned.

If a player decides that his/her "basically clever" character dives headfirst into the volcano in order to do some wacky thing with the lava, we are not obliged to judge that as clever. Nor are we obliged to judge otherwise, either. (Maybe there really was some wild genius behind the wacky plan.) Deciding whether a PC is clever or not is not part of the adjudicative framework of the game.

Whether we slap the NG label on the character or simply allow the player to say his character is a decent fellow who does the best that a good person can do, is devoted to helping others and works with legitimate authority but does not feel beholden to them - he believes in doing what is good without bias for or against order, we still have a description which we cannot gainsay.

What do you mean that "we cannot gainsay it"? Other participants in the game can gainsay it however they want. They can, in character, have the characters they control speak to the PC. They can, out of character, hurl abuse or dice at the player. It is no different from the player who describes his PC as clever but is regarded by other participants as a fool.

But none of these judgements have adjudicative significance.

Who judges whether the choice is based on expediency or sincerity?

If you cannot tell if your players are being sincere or not N'raac, I suggest talking with them out of game.

Hussar's reply is pretty good.

I'd add: players who are insincere, and are playing in a group where the general expectation is sincerity, are comparable to players who cheat on their dice rolls, in the sense that the proper response is not one that occurs within the context of play, and involves adjudicating actions. It is a completely outside-of-play response, where you work out whether or not this person is a good fit for the sort of game you want to play in.

OK, so maybe that doesn't add much to Hussar's point!

where the player decides, the PC is de facto immune.

The player deciding is *not* de facto immunity. I have chosen, as a player, for some very bad things to happen to my character, up to and including death. If it fit the mood and the story I spoke to the GM and asked for bad stuff to happen. And I play with a fair number of people that would do the same.

In addition to Vyvyan Basterd's point, I would point to freeform social resolution, which I believe remains pretty popular among D&D players. In free from play of that sort, no one (PC or NPC) gets persuaded of anything except as a result of talking things out and then deciding how the character in question would react.

That doesn't mean that no NPC ever persuaded a PC of anything, nor vice versa.

Could this be good role playing? Sure. Would it mean immediate alignment change? Why should it?

I don't know - I'm not the one who uses alignment.

You seem to frequently switch between having no idea how alignment works, as you don't use it, to being expert in its usage to determine how others would apply it and how that application would detract from your enjoyment of the game. Which is it?

Allow me to paraphrase, then: I don't care.

(Although I also don't know. The situation is radically underspecified. Presumably there is a possible state within the framework of mechanical alignment where a character is so close to the precipice that any evil act, no matter how modest, will result in the loss of good alignment. Given that in asking the question you haven't given me any of this contextual information, how am I supposed to answer it? Or to flip it around: for all you know about the PC as played in my game it should have led to immediate alignment change, because the PC was already really close to that precipice.)

 

[pemerton]

Some stuff about how default 4e works

So if my character wants a very specific item of treasure, can he simply toss away whatever else he finds until the GM gives him what he wants?

You are running together the character with the player. It is the player who provides the GM with a wishlist, not the character (who does not even know the GM exists, unless you're playing a break-the-fourth-wall style of game).

The weirdest thing about this, for me, is the player of a paladin even framing the discovery of poison as a discovery of treasure! Why is that treasure, for a paladin?

From the GMing point of view, the game is built around the assumption of so many parcels per PC per level. If the player of the paladin, for whatever reason, does treat the poison as a treasure then there's one of the parcels placed!

If you don't play in this way - if you make treasure an actual reward, for instance, as opposed to simply another aspect of player resources that accrues through play - then you are pushing back towards Gygaxian play. Which will of course push players towards expedience in the play of their characters. At which point mechanical alignment makes sense to me, as I first stated back in post 9 (though I personally am poor at GMing Gygaxian play and don't enjoy it much as a player).

********************************

As to loss of hp being comparable, we've danced that dance more than enough, I think. Do the hit points just vanish with no mechanics behind their removal, or are they based on actual rolls failed by the player, or succeeded at by his enemies.

Hit point loss can occur for all sorts of reasons. For instance, a player might spend a healing surge to activate an ability of some sort (whether freeform or via a pre-specified power). A player might declare an action - like jumping into some dangerous terrain - that results in hit point loss if it succeeds but not if it fails (because the action having failed, the PC remains stuck in safe terrain).

There are all sorts of ways hit points can be lost beside failing a roll or having an enemy succeed at a roll. This is particularly significant in the adjudication of a skill challenge, because in a skill challenge only the player's roll, so the GM often has to introduce consequences for declared actions by reference to the fictional situation, with player successes modulating those consequences but not necessarily eliminating them all (eg the example from Mike Mearls in DMG2 that I posted upthread, where a consequence for success in helping recapture slaves is a penalty on subsequent Diplomacy checks made to charm slaves).

Once again, I feel that your comments display your unfamiliarity with some of the core techniques for adjudicating 4e, and particularly skill challenges.

You have consistently provided rules quotes on the consequences of failure to support the adjudication being simply part of the rules

By way of repetition (4e DMG 2, p 101, author Mike Mearls):

If the characters capture the slaves, they gain a +2 bonus to all skill checks involving guard patrols . . . but take a -5 penalty to all checks involving slaves and those sympathetic to them​

Although personally I had worked out the relevant principles of adjudication well before I read this example. So that this example came to me not as a revelation but as an instance of what I already knew to be the case.

while steadfastly refusing to indicate what roll the player failed to result in a negative consequences you imposed

The player didn't fail a roll. Failing a roll is not a necessary condition of suffering a consequence.

What is key is that the player elected not to make a roll: he did not try to contest Vecna, and thereby run the risk of losing control over the flow of souls. Rather, he took modest pleasure (both in character and for real) in the fact that his plan had worked: he had successfully got the benefit of the Eye of Vecna for some time, while setting up his familiar as a buffer between himself and Vecna's malign influence.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=6668292]JamesonCourage[/MENTION], you seemed mildly curious about the general tone and dynamics of the thread.

Here is a recent post in which I am told that I don't have enough evidence to know whether or not using mechanical alignment would be detrimental to my play experience (together with my reply, a very modest contribution to epistemology and the philosophy of science):

Absent the same play with and without alignment, and a comparative study, we have no evidential basis for any specific element adding to, or detracting from, play.

Are you being punched in the face right now? I assume not - yet presumably you are confident that if that were being punched right now, it would detract from your current experience.

I don't need a double-blind controlled study to know what things do and don't detract from my play experience. It's not that inaccessible. I have played with alignment. I have played without. I know what it's about. I know that, and also why, I don't enjoy its impact upon a game.

As I said in a part of my earlier post to which you did not respond, for any given set of ingame events, it is possible to achieve them via GM railroading. Yet such railroading would not be fun (for me, at least). It would be a detriment to my play experience. Which underscores my point, that the quality of a play experience is not dependent just upon the sequence of ingame events but also the experience of making choices, expressing emotions, experiencing these in others, etc, etc. The use of alignment changes the context and hence the nature of those choices, expressions and experiences in ways that I prefer them not be changed.

 

[Imaro]

Yes. I would say it is the single most prominent strand in the posts in this thread from @Imaro and @N'raac. It crops up in others' posts also.

I'm still waiting for an example of this (if it's the single most prominent strand in my posts shouldn't be hard to find plenty of examples)... since IMO you are mistaken.

 

[pemerton]

I'm still waiting for an example of this (if it's the single most prominent strand in my posts shouldn't be hard to find plenty of examples)... since IMO you are mistaken.

Here are two that I found in a couple of minute's reading around about the late 500s:

The problem with the trust your players argument is that it ignores the fact that ultimately D&D is a game, a game where a player is advocating for their particular character. It is not a game where death only happens if the player agrees, it is not a game where you are constructing a "story" and it is not a game where individual awards, treasure, etc. are meaningless. Thus there is plenty of impetus for a player to do what is convenient/best/optimized/etc. for their character...

I mean if I trust my players and they are all there to participate in a challenging but fun fantasy adventure... well shouldn't I trust them to select appropriately challenging monsters for themselves and shouldn't I trust them to set appropriate DC's for themselves? I mean if I can trust them to follow the edicts and code of a particular deity or cosmological force without advocating for themselves when it becomes easy or (in their minds) necessary for their characters survival... Why shouldn't I trust them to select appropriate treasure for their victories, or anything else in the game? Yeah, as you can probably tell, I'm not really buying the "player trust" argument.

there are literally hundreds if not thousands of fantasy role playing games that don't have alignment in them much less alignment with a mechanical effect. In fact I am hard pressed to think of a game outside D&D (Besides clones) that uses alignment, in a way that directly impacts the game. This, IMO and regardless of how minimal people try to paint alignment in earlier editions (which I generally disagree with but will leave that argument for another thread), is a true D&D-ism and I'm finding it hard to sympathize with those claiming it should be taken out of the game when there are so many other games without alignment. This is one of those things where I feel like if you want alignment gone or morally subjective paladins... then perhaps you are looking for a different "story" than the one D&D has been designed (out of the box) to facilitate for the majority of it's run.

 

[Imaro]

Here are two that I found in a couple of minute's reading around about the late 500s:

Where in these posts am I even commenting about you specifically? I am expressing my particular views on a certain stance... or are we now at a point where, on a discussion board I have no right to post a dissenting opinion concerning alignment in relationship to yours? If so what are we discussing?


EDIT: Just so we have some context here, this is what you claimed I have been doing...

I find it quite interesting to hear how others might be playing the game differently from me. I find it frustrating (and a little bit affronting, although not all that affronting - but that was the verb that was put into play by some of the posts I was replying to) to have posters try to tell me that if only I knew how to use alignment properly than I would find it to improve my experience.

And you were asked this...

Out of curiosity, has this happened by the major players in this discussion? I don't know if it's happening or not, I just know that I never saw it when I poked my head in, but that was only for maybe one page every 10-15 that went by.

No where in the posts you quoted am I telling you that you don't understand alignment or if you used it properly it would improve anything... I am expressing my views concerning the "trust your players" argument that was presented and the claim of what the "D&D story"/should alignment be removed stance. So again please provide an example of what you claim I have been doing...

 

[N'raac]

I don't quite follow your comment. As I said, I don't understand why a LN character - say, a stereotypical monk - should oppose a CN one - say, a stereotypical bard - any more than a peanut-butter eater should oppose a chocolate eater. They might have the odd snipe at one another, and they never dine together! But they're hardly going to go to war, are they?

But what does the prospect of "lawfuls and chaotics getting along fine" have to do with a conflict between heavenly order and primordial chaos?

The last seems to presuppose a conflict between Law and Chaos that goes beyond simple sniping. If Chaos is actively seeing to undermine Law, and vice versa, in an epic fantasy manner, them simply getting along seems unlikely. How many members of the Fellowship of the Ring thought that maybe Sauron might be a good choice to run the world, so perhaps we ought to give him a chance? Really, that's just politics, right? I mean, I like Aragorn, he's a great guy and fun at parties. But he doesn't really have the political experience to run the North, does he? Whereas Sauron has centuries of experience.

My game does not have lawfuls and chaotics. It has gods and primordials (and their various allies, servants and devotees). The basis of their conflict has nothing to do with one being a monk and the other being a bard. It is grounded in their incompatible attempts to impose their wills upon the world - incompatible because they want to do fundamentally different things with it.

So one wants a Lawful world and the other a Chaotic world, or so I presume. Would not a Lawful character lean to a Lawful world, and a Chaotic character to a Chaotic one? Now, most games I see focus largely on Good/Evil, and Law/Chaos does tend to play out much as you suggest - a bit of occasional sniping, and perhaps the occasional debate regarding tactics.

This is highly contestable for at least two reasons.

Again, not interested in real world history and philosophy of ethics. Once these are tangible forces, many of the questions go away, in no small measure because the assumption of those active forces implements many of the assumptions you cite. I don't need giants to abide by the cube/square law, dragons whose flight and breath weapons can be scientifically duplicated or real world ethical philosophy to play a fantasy game. I don't care that the geography could not exist, that the sociology is all wrong, that those economics could not exist (much like inflation and unemployment could not both be high under pre-1970's economic theory), that the political science is all wrong or that no society could make ends meet under this system of taxation. YMMV.

You seem not to understand what it means not to use mechanical alignment. That means that there is no adjudication of the PC's morality. There is no such thing as an action being inside or outside the character's moral code, as far as the game's mechanics are concerned.

It has been repeatedly stated that the PLAYER defines whether any given action falls within the PC's moral code, so we are assuming all actions are within his moral code. Where a character's abilities are derived from adherence to a moral code, the lack of any negative consequence for a given action presupposes those action were not inconsistent with that moral code ("Hey, Samson, get a haircut!") It seems more correct to say that there are no mechanical consequences for actions within or outside the character's moral code, which removes any need to adjudicate it.

What do you mean that "we cannot gainsay it"? Other participants in the game can gainsay it however they want.

He still has all those powers and abilities gained and maintained by his ongoing state of grace within his moral code. That seems pretty persuasive evidence, comparable to a mechanical alignment system's use of a Detection spell.

In addition to Vyvyan Basterd's point, I would point to freeform social resolution, which I believe remains pretty popular among D&D players. In free from play of that sort, no one (PC or NPC) gets persuaded of anything except as a result of talking things out and then deciding how the character in question would react.

This removes all characters from any binding social mechanics. Resolution is at the whim of the player or the GM. "No matter how persuasive your character is, you can never persuade the innkeeper to part with a free drink" may not fit with some player's concept of their suave, persuasive character, so we remove some character concepts from the game by eliminating any social mechanisms. On the flip side, nothing prevents every player describing their characters as highly persuasive if no investment of character resources in mechanical persuasiveness is required.

While that is not my preferred approach either, it is at least consistent. "The PC can never be swayed without the player's consent,. but NPC's are subject to diplomacy rolls" grants the PC's an ability NPC's can never have, an approach which has never sat right with me.

Some stuff about how default 4e works

You are running together the character with the player. It is the player who provides the GM with a wishlist, not the character (who does not even know the GM exists, unless you're playing a break-the-fourth-wall style of game).

The weirdest thing about this, for me, is the player of a paladin even framing the discovery of poison as a discovery of treasure! Why is that treasure, for a paladin?

From the GMing point of view, the game is built around the assumption of so many parcels per PC per level. If the player of the paladin, for whatever reason, does treat the poison as a treasure then there's one of the parcels placed!

It's treasure if it can be used to accomplish his goals of defeating the Tyrant Duke, so we're into a circle game.

So the Paladin smashes the vials to the floor - "Vile poisons - such a dishonourable villain who would stoop so low." You owe me a different treasure package, GM. "Gold and gemstones! The love of money is the root of all evil. Leave it lie in the filth it leads men to." You owe me a different treasure package, GM. Here's the short list of things my character is not morally opposed to taking as 'treasure'.

Hit point loss can occur for all sorts of reasons. For instance, a player might spend a healing surge to activate an ability of some sort (whether freeform or via a pre-specified power). A player might declare an action - like jumping into some dangerous terrain - that results in hit point loss if it succeeds but not if it fails (because the action having failed, the PC remains stuck in safe terrain).

There are all sorts of ways hit points can be lost beside failing a roll or having an enemy succeed at a roll. This is particularly significant in the adjudication of a skill challenge, because in a skill challenge only the player's roll, so the GM often has to introduce consequences for declared actions by reference to the fictional situation, with player successes modulating those consequences but not necessarily eliminating them all (eg the example from Mike Mearls in DMG2 that I posted upthread, where a consequence for success in helping recapture slaves is a penalty on subsequent Diplomacy checks made to charm slaves).

Once again, I feel that your comments display your unfamiliarity with some of the core techniques for adjudicating 4e, and particularly skill challenges.

Neither the comments by others more versed in 4e nor your own quotes from the rules leave me any more confidence that you were playing "by the book". Your own quotes have all referred to "consequences of failure", yet no failure has been identified. In any case, I find the question of whether it was "by the book" pretty much moot. You're not running alignment by even the 4e book, are you? Why is it in any way important that you be perceived to have run things "by the book"? Clearly, you ran a game that both you and the player enjoyed - who cares whether it was "by the book"?

By way of repetition (4e DMG 2, p 101, author Mike Mearls):

If the characters capture the slaves, they gain a +2 bonus to all skill checks involving guard patrols . . . but take a -5 penalty to all checks involving slaves and those sympathetic to them​

Seems like something that applies to all characters, not specific ones who have specific allegiances. Got any where a penalty is specifically applied to a Paladin or Cleric for violating honour or the tenets of a deity, an invoker for ticking off one of his sources of power or a Warlock for breaching his Pact?​

The player didn't fail a roll. Failing a roll is not a necessary condition of suffering a consequence.

Yet all your rule cites refer to consequences of failure. If he did not fail, then the result could not have been a consequence of failure, could it?

 

[N'raac]

If you cannot tell if your players are being sincere or not N'raac, I suggest talking with them out of game.

IO

IOW, change any behaviour I might find undesirable by outside the game sticks rather than in-game sticks. Ultimately, I believe the player is sincere in playing his character in a manner he believes will result in the most fun from the game. Either his fun is compatible with the rest of the group's fun, or it is not. In the latter case, something needs to be changed. If the player views each and every possible effort towards a compromise that makes the game fun for everyone as "a stick", then we are not going to find a solution that works for everyone, are we?

I've certainly seen the occasional player who views the GM as an adversary, and any negative consequences, in game or out, applied to his actions, any adjudication which does not go his way and any possible failure in the game to be "a stick" used by the GM to "bludgeon the players". I'm uncertain why such players keep playing at all - it seems like that would be a very negative experience - but I have no desire to have them in my game. But that goes far beyond alignment rules.

 

[pemerton]

If Chaos is actively seeing to undermine Law, and vice versa, in an epic fantasy manner, them simply getting along seems unlikely.

<snip>

So one wants a Lawful world and the other a Chaotic world, or so I presume. Would not a Lawful character lean to a Lawful world, and a Chaotic character to a Chaotic one? Now, most games I see focus largely on Good/Evil, and Law/Chaos does tend to play out much as you suggest - a bit of occasional sniping, and perhaps the occasional debate regarding tactics.

I can't tell if you're agreeing with me or not - you post all this stuff which looks like it's intended as rebuttal, then say that L/C plays out mostly as I describe. So in whay way am I wrong?

Any way, I think your bit about "lawful worlds" and "chaotic worlds" puts the cart before the horse. If you actually look at the personalities, why would the monk and bard be in conflict except for occasional sniping or practical jokes played by the bard on the monk? What does the monk want that the bard objects to? - even the bard doesn't object to the occasional quiet moment of meditation.

In 4e, the Primordials want to undo the world and remake it. The Gods want to preserve the world within the Lattice of Heaven. The explanation for their conflict is not that one is disciplined and the other unruly - in 4e Thor would side with the gods just as much as Heimdall or Tyr would.


**************************************

It has been repeatedly stated that the PLAYER defines whether any given action falls within the PC's moral cod

What do you think this means for play? It's like saying the player defines his/her PC's eye colour - it's not a statement about mechanics or adjudication, because there is no mechanical alignment.

Where a character's abilities are derived from adherence to a moral code, the lack of any negative consequence for a given action presupposes those action were not inconsistent with that moral code

I think you're missing the bigger picture. A player might assert that his/her PC's power derives from being honourable. But the other players, and/or their PCs, can look at the PC's conduct and deny this. For instance, in my own game the player of the paladin of the Raven Queen (mostly in character, sometimes out of it) routinely denies the claims of the fighter/cleric of Moradin to be acting in a truly honourable way; and the player of the dwarf (generally in character) characterises the paladin as a worshipper of an evil god.

Because my game does not use mechanical alignment, there is no need to resolve this disupte as a comonent of the procedures of play. Is the paladin of the Raven Queen an honourable knight whose power derives from uprightness? Or the deluded servant of a power-hungry god-sorcerer? There is no mechanical answer to this question. It is a thematic question posed by, and addressed by, actual play. Different participants naturally respond to it in different ways.


********************************

"The PC can never be swayed without the player's consent,. but NPC's are subject to diplomacy rolls" grants the PC's an ability NPC's can never have, an approach which has never sat right with me.

The PC, like the NPC, has the capacity to persuade others. The player, unlike the GM, has a mechanical resource available.

These are quite different things.

The tradition of different resolution mechanics for PCs vs NPCs in respect of social conflicts also goes back a long way: in AD&D, for instance, NPCs but not PCs roll reaction on a random table, make morale checks to see if they are afraid or not, and make loyalty checks to see if they keep their word or not.


***************************************

It's treasure if it can be used to accomplish his goals of defeating the Tyrant Duke, so we're into a circle game.

So the Paladin smashes the vials to the floor - "Vile poisons - such a dishonourable villain who would stoop so low." You owe me a different treasure package, GM. "Gold and gemstones! The love of money is the root of all evil. Leave it lie in the filth it leads men to." You owe me a different treasure package, GM. Here's the short list of things my character is not morally opposed to taking as 'treasure'.

Are you describing? Projecting? What actual play examples do you have in mind.

Also, why are you supposing that it is the character who authors the wish list? That is something the player does.

If the player of the paladin wants build resources that will help him/her defeat the tyrant duke, why would s/he choose poison as one of those resources? S/he would ask the GM for something befitting his/her character conception. And why would it have to be looted. Virtually none of the treasure in my 4e game is looted. It is bestowed as gifts by allies or by the gods, or is created by the PCs themselves.

Your own quotes have all referred to "consequences of failure", yet no failure has been identified.

My quote from the DMG 2, p 101, does not refer to consequences of faiure. It refers to a -5 penalty consequent upon success.

Seems like something that applies to all characters, not specific ones who have specific allegiances.

It only applies to characters who help the guards recapture escaped slaves. How is that not a specific allegiance?


*********************************

not interested in real world history and philosophy of ethics. Once these are tangible forces, many of the questions go away

I don't understand how you arrive at the conclusion in the second sentence without using real-world reasoning.