D&D 5E Do you find alignment useful in any way?

[Cadence]

Should I be answering, Yes - it gives me something to debate about on ENworld?

I mean, "any way" is a pretty low threshold. It's certainly not equivalent to useful, all things considered and is quite consistent with but on balance I find it more of a problem than its worth.

I agree it's fairly low, and apparently? I didn't write the poll question.

The classic 1e-3.5e Law-Neutral-Chaos at least gives the Elric DM something to build on for the outsiders and their champions. The 5e is at least suggestive.

I certainly agree with you though that all of the past systems seem sub-optimal for the various purposes folks want them for.

 

[transmission89]

I think it's a little patronising for you to frame those who disagree with you as those in need.

But in any event, 9-point D&D alignment is of little use to running an Elric-style game. The Lords of Law and Chaos in Elric are not correlated with good or evil, and Law and Chaos in Elric don't particularly stand in as proxies for character personality and social organisation in the way that is being suggested in this thread as the main use for alignment.

EDIT: To speak more frankly, the idea that deciding what a hateful hermit Meazel might do based on the fact that a book labels it NE, or deciding which chromatic dragons might live in the City of Brass based on whether a book labels them CE or LE, is somehow giving voice to the epic conflict of Law and Chaos as depicted in the Elric stories, is a proposition that I can't really take seriously.

Nothing will be deleted. No books will be removed from the marketplace. Certain texts may cease to be published in the future - that's commercial decision-making by a private publisher, not censorship!

But this thread isn't even, concretely, about what should WotC publish?

It's about does alignment bring anything useful to the game?

There is a need suggested when one selectively ignores elements of what is being said that runs counter to the point.

You keep critiquing my responses around the literature, comparing it directly to the sources when I’ve not stated at any point that these are replicated one for one. I’ve said numerous times they are inspirational sources for the pastiche that D&D presents. Of course it won’t fully replicate the stories of Elric, but the idea of alignment was from those stories. So maybe it did need spelling out in order to hopefully stop the misrepresentation of what is being said.

The same misrepresentation is being applied here to what is being talked about when it’s coming to censorship. Of course, no one is arguing the wotc police are going to storm into your house and remove it, nor are they saying that current printings will change. What they are saying and are justifiably concerned will happen is what already happened, the creative directions TSR initially took as a response to the Satanic panic.

Not labelling that as censorship and instead referring to it as private corporate commercial decisions is disingenuous if those decisions have been made under duress from interest groups. The same happened with the comic code and destroyed a level of creativity in that time and ironically given what is being argued for here, also hurt up and coming minority artists.

@Aldarc, to be clear again, the argument is not “anybody who doesn’t like alignment wants censorship”. I’m saying the usual debates of alignment are also being co opted into that option. I absolutely appreciate and understand there are a variety of viewpoints and reasons as to why you might not like and want alignments, same as those in the pro camp. I can appreciate and respect a difference of opinion on that level. I will not accept the reason for removal to be “we fear it may be harmful for others” and will treat that particular reason with the absolute contempt it deserves.

 

[Cadence]

EDIT: To speak more frankly, the idea that deciding what a hateful hermit Meazel might do based on the fact that a book labels it NE, or deciding which chromatic dragons might live in the City of Brass based on whether a book labels them CE or LE, is somehow giving voice to the epic conflict of Law and Chaos as depicted in the Elric stories, is a proposition that I can't really take seriously.

I'm inclined to agree on the hermit, but for the Dragons it feels like it ties in to how they're viewed. Are they just some creature that lives in the world, or are they more fundamental like the outsiders (where the LE of Devils and CE of Demons seem fundamental to me)? From the fundamental side, I wonder who would be more likely to run into trouble with the harsh laws of the place if living there, a CE Red Dragon or a LG Gold Dragon. I picture the former lacking impulse control while the later might be able to work within the system to further it's ends. But I guess in that case I also don't know why either would put up with a bunch of evil laws and choose to live in the city as opposed to somewhere else on the plane.

 

[pemerton]

You keep critiquing my responses around the literature, comparing it directly to the sources when I’ve not stated at any point that these are replicated one for one. I’ve said numerous times they are inspirational sources for the pastiche that D&D presents. Of course it won’t fully replicate the stories of Elric, but the idea of alignment was from those stories. So maybe it did need spelling out in order to hopefully stop the misrepresentation of what is being said.

I don't agree with what you've said here.

The Elric stories do not present a world in which each intelligent being has a canonical alignment from which their typical behaviour can be inferred; nor in which each human or near-human society conforms to a canonical alignment from which the basis of its social organisation can be inferred.

And that's before we even get to the question of why would the 9 points invented by Gygax be that canonical alignment?

And to approach it from the direction of D&D play, rather than the literature: I've played a lot of D&D. I've read a lot of D&D products. I've never seen a product or had a play experience in which the use of alignment generated a fiction that broadly conformed to the Elric stories. Perhaps B2 KotB comes closest, but the Lords of Law and Chaos don't seem to me to be implicated in B2.

The main use of alignment I see is the one being touted in this thread: as a personality shorthand for NPCs and creatures.

The main absurdity of alignment I see is also one being touted in this thread: using alignment to group NPCs and creatures into teams on the basis of like alignment (as in the City of Brass example) even though there is nothing about them (their fiction, their established place in the multiverse, etc) that would suggest such teams beyond the slapping on of an alignment label. Eg what do Slaads have in common with Olidammara? Nothing that I can see. What do the Mezzodaemons on the Vault of the Drow have in common with Meazels? Nothing except that both are nasty. Would it make any difference to the way Meazels figure (by default) in D&D to change them from NE to CE? None that I can see. 4e made both Slaads and Mezzodaemons CE with no loss to their role in the fiction that I observed. And all CE means in 4e D&D is originates in elemental chaos and is a force of furious destruction.

The same misrepresentation is being applied here to what is being talked about when it’s coming to censorship. Of course, no one is arguing the wotc police are going to storm into your house and remove it, nor are they saying that current printings will change. What they are saying and are justifiably concerned will happen is what already happened, the creative directions TSR initially took as a response to the Satanic panic.

Not labelling that as censorship and instead referring to it as private corporate commercial decisions is disingenuous if those decisions have been made under duress from interest groups.

To the best of my knowledge, the "Satanic panic" was driven by people who were not players of RPGs and had little interest in RPGing other than to suppress it.

To the best of my knowledge, the current debate around the politics of FRPG material is driven almost entirely by people who are players of RPGs and who care deeply for the hobby. I don't think anyone who is not a RPGer really cares - at least, I've seen no evidence that they care.

Equating the second to the first strikes me as absurd. To suggest that participants in a hobby are engaged in censorship when they, as consumers of privately produced cultural products, express preferences for the sort of culture they would like to consume, is just silly.

 

[pemerton]

for the Dragons it feels like it ties in to how they're viewed. Are they just some creature that lives in the world, or are they more fundamental like the outsiders (where the LE of Devils and CE of Demons seem fundamental to me)?

I don't think D&D gives a canonical answer to this question. It's further complicated by the fact that, at least traditionally, the ruler of all Chromatic Dragons is herself an archdevil, or the equivalent thereof (I'm thinking of Tiamat, ruler of the 1st layer of Hell and herself LE, not CE).

I don't know what exactly 3E D&D did with Tiamat, but I'm assuming she stayed LE and was still the ruler of all evil dragons. In 4e she is a god in her own right, independent of the Hells. And whether or not a dragon could handle life in the City of Brass isn't really something to which its alignment tag would give an answer.

Perhaps 5e is different from earlier versions in presenting a more unified and coherent conception of how dragon alignment, other-planer alignment, Tiamat, Efreets, demons and devils all fit together. But I've never really seen any evidence of that.

 

[transmission89]

I don't agree with what you've said here.

The Elric stories do not present a world in which each intelligent being has a canonical alignment from which their typical behaviour can be inferred; nor in which each human or near-human society conforms to a canonical alignment from which the basis of its social organisation can be inferred.

And that's before we even get to the question of why would the 9 points invented by Gygax be that canonical alignment?

And to approach it from the direction of D&D play, rather than the literature: I've played a lot of D&D. I've read a lot of D&D products. I've never seen a product or had a play experience in which the use of alignment generated a fiction that broadly conformed to the Elric stories. Perhaps B2 KotB comes closest, but the Lords of Law and Chaos don't seem to me to be implicated in B2.

The main use of alignment I see is the one being touted in this thread: as a personality shorthand for NPCs and creatures.

The main absurdity of alignment I see is also one being touted in this thread: using alignment to group NPCs and creatures into teams on the basis of like alignment (as in the City of Brass example) even though there is nothing about them (their fiction, their established place in the multiverse, etc) that would suggest such teams beyond the slapping on of an alignment label. Eg what do Slaads have in common with Olidammara? Nothing that I can see. What do the Mezzodaemons on the Vault of the Drow have in common with Meazels? Nothing except that both are nasty. Would it make any difference to the way Meazels figure (by default) in D&D to change them from NE to CE? None that I can see. 4e made both Slaads and Mezzodaemons CE with no loss to their role in the fiction that I observed. And all CE means in 4e D&D is originates in elemental chaos and is a force of furious destruction.


To the best of my knowledge, the "Satanic panic" was driven by people who were not players of RPGs and had little interest in RPGing other than to suppress it.

To the best of my knowledge, the current debate around the politics of FRPG material is driven almost entirely by people who are players of RPGs and who care deeply for the hobby. I don't think anyone who is not a RPGer really cares - at least, I've seen no evidence that they care.

Equating the second to the first strikes me as absurd. To suggest that participants in a hobby are engaged in censorship when they, as consumers of privately produced cultural products, express preferences for the sort of culture they would like to consume, is just silly.

You’re still not understanding what the point was if you’re talking about what the stories contained and such. I’ve repeated, reframed and italicised and now bored of repeating it. I’m not going to debate you on this point any more.

You see absurdity in alignment, that’s fine, you do you and run it differently at your table. That’s what it’s always been about. Live and let live, you want to customise that baseline D&D experience, fill your boots.

So you’re saying that because the difference is this time the vocal faction comes from inside the hobby rather than outside it means it’s completely not comparable? It’s not the call for preferences in the product from the wider consumer base that’s the problem. Again, you keep conflating my points. I’m totally ok with that (I mean, personally, I don’t agree with those calls, but whatever, they’ll go where the market is). It’s the statements being made that certain aspects are harmful to others (focusing here on alignment) with very little evidence to support that I take umbrage with.

The exact same argument is being made just dressed differently:

Mcarthyism: “comics are harmful to others”
BADD:”D&D is harmful to others”
Jack Thompson et al: “video games are harmful to others”

That this time, the call is coming from a vocal subset of gamers from within the hobby means that the two are not equatable? Now that is absurd.

 

[Malmuria]

To the best of my knowledge, the "Satanic panic" was driven by people who were not players of RPGs and had little interest in RPGing other than to suppress it.

To the best of my knowledge, the current debate around the politics of FRPG material is driven almost entirely by people who are players of RPGs and who care deeply for the hobby. I don't think anyone who is not a RPGer really cares - at least, I've seen no evidence that they care.

Equating the second to the first strikes me as absurd. To suggest that participants in a hobby are engaged in censorship when they, as consumers of privately produced cultural products, express preferences for the sort of culture they would like to consume, is just silly.

This is a really important point. I think for a lot of people alignment and more importantly the lore around humanoid characters and monsters does not do the work for many people's games as it used to do. People are playing as tiefling, drow, orcs and they want those characters to have a variety of possible backgrounds. DMs want to build worlds where Orcs are not default (in some ways this is an extension of gygaxian naturalism). These desires a partially motivated by a discomfort with the idea of intrinsically evil humanoids and also for the sake of variety. Wotc is responding to customer demand (and I have a feeling the focus will be on the humanoids, vs demons/devils etc). And not because they are an ethical entity or anything; they are aware that there might be gap between press coverage and actual customer demand and will react accordingly.

It is unfortunate that individual people feel implicitly called out by these concerns and changes; that's not a healthy dynamic. But conversely, to say that people who want something different from the products they are buying are simply of a "vocal minority" or "twitter mob" or akin to a fundamentalist christian with no actual interest in the game (and plenty of real world power, especially in the 80s) can be taken as dismissive and diminishing.

 

[transmission89]

This is a really important point. I think for a lot of people alignment and more importantly the lore around humanoid characters and monsters does not do the work for many people's games as it used to do. People are playing as tiefling, drow, orcs and they want those characters to have a variety of possible backgrounds. DMs want to build worlds where Orcs are not default (in some ways this is an extension of gygaxian naturalism). These desires a partially motivated by a discomfort with the idea of intrinsically evil humanoids and also for the sake of variety. Wotc is responding to customer demand (and I have a feeling the focus will be on the humanoids, vs demons/devils etc). And not because they are an ethical entity or anything; they are aware that there might be gap between press coverage and actual customer demand and will react accordingly.

It is unfortunate that individual people feel implicitly called out by these concerns and changes; that's not a healthy dynamic. But conversely, to say that people who want something different from the products they are buying are simply of a "vocal minority" or "twitter mob" or akin to a fundamentalist christian with no actual interest in the game (and plenty of real world power, especially in the 80s) can be taken as dismissive and diminishing.

Again to restate, because I’m really concerned that the nuance of what I’m saying is being missed here.

People want to play all kinds of races and such? Great, you do you. There’s currently a consumer demand for that stuff? Great, again, not my cup of tea, but they’re going to go where the market is. I will never attack that. I will grumble in a grognardly fashion as has been the way of the hobby since it’s inception. I am not labelling anyone who wants change as a vocal minority, Twitter mob, that’s dismissive and diminishing of my position.

There has always been traditionalists and progressives within the game (I use these terms without their political meanings, im referring to ideas about the game as it stood, stand and should be). This has been constantly shown and reflected since the game‘s inception and can be seen in old dragon magazine forum debates, the move to 3e and beyond, the birth of the OSR movement. It’s all been on that quest for the perfect game for you and your table. You can quite happily switch between these two groups as a gamer depending on what particular aspect or mechanic of the game you are discussing.

But just a section of the traditionalist camp has been co opted by strong reactionary, borderline to actual alt- right groups, so too has a section of the progressive side been co opted within this moral panic. The ones that have straight up called for bans on this very site (I won’t list them), Reddit etc for any opinion that will deviate from this new accepted norm.

I am not framing anyone who just wants a change or disagrees with my view on the game as comparable to BADD. I’ll repeat, because apparently this keeps getting lost. I AM NOT SAYING THAT.

But I’ll also not pretend that there is not a chilling, stifling atmosphere at the moment within the industry around both of these extreme ends. I will happily call out actual racist bull, and hate speech whenever I see it, just as I will around misinformed views providing fuel to knee jerk reactions to avoiding imagined offence.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I agree with everything you say in this post.

I've never seen a product or had a play experience in which the use of alignment generated a fiction that broadly conformed to the Elric stories. Perhaps B2 KotB comes closest, but the Lords of Law and Chaos don't seem to me to be implicated in B2.

B2 is probably closer to Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions than Moorcock's Eternal Champion series. In both B2 and 3H&3L the Law/Chaos divide is racial and geographic. In both, Chaos surrounds the realm of Law and constantly threatens it. Both worlds are bipolar, with Law being good and Chaos evil. One difference is that Andersonian Chaos represents a more fundamental threat to the natural order -- it seeks to bring the whole Earth under a perpetual twilight.

Moorcock's universe is tripolar -- both Law and Chaos are undesirable if taken too far. On the most obvious reading, the Balance is the only true good. However Moorcock can also be read as rejecting all banners, ideologies, and gods, even the Balance. The Law/Chaos divide isn't strongly racial though the Melnibonéans, Elric's race, are allied with Chaos. Both sides are in constant conflict throughout the Multiverse, without any clear frontier or a sense that any place belongs to one side in perpetuity. Law or Chaos conquer entire planes and the opposition takes them back. An exception is the city of Tanelorn, which is of the Balance.

B2 The Keep on the Borderlands (1980) Gary Gygax:

The Realm of mankind is narrow and constricted. Always the forces of Chaos press upon its borders, seeking to enslave its populace, rape its riches, and steal its treasures. If it were not for a stout few, many in the Realm would indeed fall prey to the evil which surrounds them.​

Three Hearts and Three Lions (1953) Poul Anderson:

Holger got the impression that there was a perpetual struggle between primeval forces of Law and Chaos. Humans, except for occasional witches and such-like, were, consciously or unconsciously, on the side of Law; the Middle World, which seemed to include such realms as Faerie, Trollheim, and the Giants, was with Chaos — was, indeed, a creation thereof. Wars among men, like that now being waged between the Saracens and the Holy Empire, were due to Chaos; under Law, all men would live in peace and order, but this was so alien to the Middle Worlders that they were forever working and scheming to prevent it and to extend their own shadowy dominion.

If Chaos wins, it may be yon twilight will be laid on all the world, and no more o' bricht sunshine and green leaves and flowers

The world of Law, of man, is hemmed in with strangeness, it is like an island in the ocean of the Middle World. North of us live the giants, south of us fire-demons. Here we are close to the eastern edge of the world, and know well of such places as Faerie and Trollheim.

The mighty rolling of hoofs, uncounted hoofs raging over the world, the sound of shrieking and of blown horns, the death-like rattle of arms. "It is the hosts of Chaos," he said. "All of them, riding forth to whelm the world of man."​

 

[Aldarc]

@Aldarc, to be clear again, the argument is not “anybody who doesn’t like alignment wants censorship”. I’m saying the usual debates of alignment are also being co opted into that option. I absolutely appreciate and understand there are a variety of viewpoints and reasons as to why you might not like and want alignments, same as those in the pro camp. I can appreciate and respect a difference of opinion on that level. I will not accept the reason for removal to be “we fear it may be harmful for others” and will treat that particular reason with the absolute contempt it deserves.

I'm puzzled as to whether I missed something in the conversation, because I'm not entirely sure why you are directing this part at me.