Do alignments improve the gaming experience?

[Hussar]

Ok, not sure how your experiences in any way have any bearing on mine, but I get it you don't play with a regular group on average more than a year or two... I have to ask though, if these groups don't stay together (especially with modern technology like skype, virtual tabletops, and google hangout)... could there be deeper issues than alignment at play here?

And again, where is this assumption that I've only ever played with the same group since I entered the hobby coming from? I've never made such a statement.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...e-the-gaming-experience/page151#ixzz2zJZf8cfs

Heh, I'll ignore the implications here.

For one, remember the timeline I'm talking about. Remote gaming has only been around or the past ten years or so. The previous twenty years, that hasn't really been an option. By the time remote gaming was around, I'd moved at least eleven times and three continents.

Once I settled down here in Japan, remote gaming is my only way of gaming. But, again, there's been all sorts of players come through the games. Welcome to remote gaming.

To put it another way, in college, I belonged to five distinct long term groups, each lasting more than a year. That would be about forty to fifty different players in four years.

I never said you played with the same group. But, I suspect, that your groups have been a LOT more stable than mine, simply because most people's groups have been more stable than mine.

I look at my current group, which is about the longest surviving group I've played with. In the past two years, we've lost two players and gained three more. Our current DM and his wife, who also plays, is about to have a baby in a few months, which will likely see a serious change in the group, yet again. So, over a three year period, it's entirely likely that my entire group will have changed at least once.

I'm always jealous of groups that manage to stay together so long. It's such a rarity IME.

 

[Imaro]

Heh, I'll ignore the implications here.

For one, remember the timeline I'm talking about. Remote gaming has only been around or the past ten years or so. The previous twenty years, that hasn't really been an option. By the time remote gaming was around, I'd moved at least eleven times and three continents.

Once I settled down here in Japan, remote gaming is my only way of gaming. But, again, there's been all sorts of players come through the games. Welcome to remote gaming.

To put it another way, in college, I belonged to five distinct long term groups, each lasting more than a year. That would be about forty to fifty different players in four years.

I never said you played with the same group. But, I suspect, that your groups have been a LOT more stable than mine, simply because most people's groups have been more stable than mine.

I look at my current group, which is about the longest surviving group I've played with. In the past two years, we've lost two players and gained three more. Our current DM and his wife, who also plays, is about to have a baby in a few months, which will likely see a serious change in the group, yet again. So, over a three year period, it's entirely likely that my entire group will have changed at least once.

I'm always jealous of groups that manage to stay together so long. It's such a rarity IME.

At the end of the day your experiences with alignment are your experiences with alignment, but unlike you I'm not questioning whether you're opinions from said experiences are valid due to number of people, group consistency or whatever... you decided to question mine. Again, like I said earlier IME, the types of blow-out, game-breaking, group ending arguments about alignment that I am assuming you and [MENTION=61501]Pickles JG[/MENTION] experience don't happen with the various people I have played with, at most I've seen a discussion take place that is usually resolved pretty quickly. Maybe it's a regional thing or something, I don't know but all I can do (like you) is state my experiences.

 

[N'raac]

The fact this thread is 150 pages long is illustrative of why IME alignments diminish my gaming experience. This sort of debate over honour or paladins codes or what is evil crop up at the table & do not in anyway enhance the experience, especially as we are retreading the same ground we were covering 30 years ago.

The length of the thread seems equally indicative that many gamers have found these issues do not crop up at the table and detract from the gaming experience to the extent that many of us find it beneficial to eliminate alignment either. If there were some consensus to be reached, either that alignments are beneficial or detrimental on the whole, it would have been reached well before 30 year or 150 pages had passed.

It's funny because I don't take this thread as illustrative of anything that happens at the actual table. In other words I spend more time by magnitudes arguing with people on the internet about alignment than I ever have at the actual table... YMMV of course.

My experience as well, but then if our experience was that alignment causes disruption, stress and heartache at the table, we'd likely view it differently.

Well, of course you have Imaro. Presumably you play with people who agree with your play style. So, it becomes pretty easy to not have these arguments. In groups where these arguments do crop up, it's generally because of incompatible play styles and the group doesn't last long enough. Someone walks.

That's hardly restricted to matters of alignment. Seems to me you've commented on several issues in other threads which would cause you to walk, or consider walking, which had nothing to do with alignment. That may well be more indicative of how easy it is to get incompatible playstyles when one's group is not stable, and from your comments, your gaming groups have been highly unstable over the years. Alignment is far from the only possible incompatibility. I'm pretty sure you hypothetically walked from my table plenty of times in prior threads with no mention of alignment.

Incompatible play styles seems like a much bigger and broader issue than liking or disliking alignment.

Agreed above.

But then from your posting history, I also haven't had the type of experiences with bad DM's that seem to shape alot of your views...

I'd like to rephrase that "GMs with playstyles incompatible with yours". Otherwise I agree, but given how easily one call [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] disagrees with becomes "always taking the interpretation that screws the players the most", I'm reluctant to believe all those GM's he's gamed with were as consistently horrible as they are presented in these threads.

 

[Hussar]

N'raac it's hardly one call though. From our conversations I've disagreed with virtually every example you've put forward because our playstyles are so different. You and [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] believe in a much, much more DM driven game than I do.

 

[N'raac]

[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] Sure - I would say alignment one aspect of that ("the GM will adjudicate my character's consistency with his stated alignment"), and not a separate rules issue. I think alignment is an issue where you are likely to have a confrontation with a GM who does not necessarily rule in your favour, not the cause of your confrontations with a GM who believes in "a more GM-driven game", to use your terminology.

 

[Hussar]

[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] Sure - I would say alignment one aspect of that ("the GM will adjudicate my character's consistency with his stated alignment"), and not a separate rules issue. I think alignment is an issue where you are likely to have a confrontation with a GM who does not necessarily rule in your favour, not the cause of your confrontations with a GM who believes in "a more GM-driven game", to use your terminology.

Sigh. You do realize that I've almost exclusively DM'd for years right? That most of the alignment issues I've seen were either the other way around (me using alignment as a means of governing player behaviour) or in the cases where I was a player, seeing problems as a third party.

I learned my lesson early. In games where the DM views alignment as a corrective tool, I just avoid alignment based characters. Solves the problem. As a DM I learned that alignment causes far more problems than it solves and thus for years I've largely ignored it.

Funnily enough, doing so has resulted in being able to play very successful evil campaigns, which has been a lot of fun. Anti heroes is something that I could never get to work under alignment rules.

 

[N'raac]

Sigh. You do realize that I've almost exclusively DM'd for years right? That most of the alignment issues I've seen were either the other way around (me using alignment as a means of governing player behaviour) or in the cases where I was a player, seeing problems as a third party.

I learned my lesson early. In games where the DM views alignment as a corrective tool, I just avoid alignment based characters. Solves the problem. As a DM I learned that alignment causes far more problems than it solves and thus for years I've largely ignored it.

I will suggest, rather, that, as a DM you learned that alignment as you ran it (which, from your comments, seems to be "a big stick with which to dogmatically whack the players") causes far more problems than it solves and thus for years you've largely ignored it. I would agree that, if alignment could be run only as you have described your vision of how it must be run, it would be bad for the game and best removed. Where I do not agree is that it can only be run your way, or ever should.

 

[jsaving]

I've been in two campaigns where alignment became a problem. In one, the DM would routinely move PCs to an evil alignment for even the tiniest selfish act, best encapsulated by a particularly memorable moment in which the entire adventuring party was unexpectedly blinded/deafened by their own cleric's holy word (cast to deal with invading bandits who had overrun their camp). In the other, the DM saw Chaos as a sinister/selfish adjunct to Evil and made it his personal mission to punish PCs who professed a Chaotic Good alignment, which he saw as a logical impossibility.

On the other hand, I've seen plenty of campaigns where the traditional two-dimensional alignment system has enriched rather than detracted from the role-playing experience. A particularly memorable arc featured an uneasy alliance between LEs and LGs attempting to prop up a highly centralized state while simultaneously fighting amongst themselves about how much compassion its laws should show. Arrayed against them was a CE/CG alliance whose members feared each other almost as much as the LE/LG state they were seeking to overthrow, with various back-channels between LG/CG and LE/CE operating throughout the conflict. We spent more time talking than fighting in that campaign, but a good time was had by all.

 

[S'mon]

On the other hand, I've seen plenty of campaigns where the traditional two-dimensional alignment system has enriched rather than detracted from the role-playing experience. A particularly memorable arc featured an uneasy alliance between LEs and LGs attempting to prop up a highly centralized state while simultaneously fighting amongst themselves about how much compassion its laws should show. Arrayed against them was a CE/CG alliance whose members feared each other almost as much as the LE/LG state they were seeking to overthrow, with various back-channels between LG/CG and LE/CE operating throughout the conflict. We spent more time talking than fighting in that campaign, but a good time was had by all.

I would think this would have worked much better with a one dimensional L-N-C axis.
With 2-axis, "How much compassion should the laws show?" is already answered for you
by the Alignment system - the system tells you that whatever the LG say (presumably 'lots of compassion') is morally right; whatever the LE say is morally wrong.
This kind of debate is only interesting if both sides have strong moral claims, rather than
slapping an Evil alignment on Dirty Harry because he wants to blow away the bad guys -
presumably the 'other' bad guys (CE vs his LE).

 

[pemerton]

With 2-axis, "How much compassion should the laws show?" is already answered for you by the Alignment system - the system tells you that whatever the LG say (presumably 'lots of compassion') is morally right; whatever the LE say is morally wrong.

Yes. This has been part of my point for most of this thread.