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

[Maxperson]

You know what also allows this? Not having the bloody alignment in the first place!

Which does not in any way prove that alignment has no meaning. It only means that you can choose to go through the effort to create a personality in a different manner if you want to. Which brings me back to....

Alignment is useful for many beginning players as a tool to help them with roleplay, and to the DM for playing monsters. If you don't need it, don't use it. Come up with your personality a different way.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Which does not in any way prove that alignment has no meaning. It only means that you can choose to go through the effort to create a personality in a different manner if you want to. Which brings me back to....

Alignment is useful for many beginning players as a tool to help them with roleplay, and to the DM for playing monsters. If you don't need it, don't use it. Come up with your personality a different way.

If it can mean anything person wants, it really is not a system. You might as well write 'Capricorn' or 'Hufflepuff' on your alignment line and extract whatever meaning that might have for you personally.

 

[Yaarel]

For me, I reduce the alignment system to something like:



. . . . . Share . . . . .
We . . . . . . . . . . . I
. . . . .Exploit. . . . .



. . . . . . . G . . . . . . .
L . . . . . . . . . . . . . C
. . . . . . . E . . . . . . . .

 

[Hexmage-EN]

And it is easy to value things on both lists. For example if I value a well defined democratic system guided by laws where diverse people with differing opinions can exists and matters can be freely and fiercely debated, am I lawful or chaotic or perhaps neutral? And if I am neutral, isn't it weird that by caring a lot about these values I am at the same category with those who are just apathetic about the whole thing?

I'd say Neutral with mildly Chaotic and Good tendencies, but I also think people too freely assign non-Neutral alignments when they should be reserved for extremes. Lawful individuals would find too much diversity of opinion a threat to the stability of the system that would lead to conflict and disorder, while Chaotic individuals would view the existence of a well-defined system as a potential threat that could turn into a tool of conformity and oppression.

I also think Unaligned should be separate from True Neutral.

 

[Maxperson]

If it can mean anything person wants, it really is not a system. You might as well write 'Capricorn' or 'Hufflepuff' on your alignment line and extract whatever meaning that might have for you personally.

Nice Strawman. It cannot mean anything the person wants and I never even implied that, let alone argued it. Feel free to write down Capircorn or Hufflepuff, but doing so has nothing to do with my argument.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Which does not in any way prove that alignment has no meaning. It only means that you can choose to go through the effort to create a personality in a different manner if you want to. Which brings me back to....

Alignment is useful for many beginning players as a tool to help them with roleplay, and to the DM for playing monsters. If you don't need it, don't use it. Come up with your personality a different way.

Personally, alignment inspires me to think and learn about other points of view that I previously was unware of and did not concern myself with. I've found myself more interested in learning about other ideologies, such as anarchism and anti-globalism, partially because I'm curious where they would fall on the alignment spectrum. I also took classes in Sociology once and learned a lot of concepts that I would characterize as Chaotic Good arguments against Law, and even though I don't hold a lot of those opinions myself I'd be interested in roleplaying a character who does. I'm aware of the negative perception of Chaotic characters and would like to craft one whose motivations are more understandable versus just being random.

 

[Mistwell]

I don't want to do that. But this is again one reason why having alignment in the game is a bad idea. Discussing it easily veers into discussion of real ethics and real politics, and that might be something you want to avoid at the gaming table.

The game has had alignment for nearly 50 years without this "problem" being a problem. I've never heard of arguments breaking out at gaming tables over alignment regarding "real politics." It's certainly not a problem so common you'd change rules over it. In fact, in all the discussions of alignment over the many years here at EnWorld it has not been a problem to discuss it with respect to real world politics dominating the conversation.

Has this been a problem at your D&D table and if so could you describe in broad strokes what happened?

 

[Mistwell]

If it can mean anything person wants, it really is not a system. You might as well write 'Capricorn' or 'Hufflepuff' on your alignment line and extract whatever meaning that might have for you personally.

Again, this hasn't been a common problem for the history of D&D. You don't see DMs commonly looking at monster alignments and thinking "Oh no, I have no idea what Chaotic Evil means relative to how a creature would behave, what should I do?"

We seem to keep coming back to this same issue: people say they get value from using alignment, you say you don't see how because it means nothing to you, people try to tell you how they use alignment, you tell them their use is too vague for you to gain value from it, and then repeat how it means nothing to you.

Which comes back to the fundamental individualism issue: it's not about you Crimson Longinus. A meaningful portion of people get value from it (the collective). You not understanding why or getting value from it in itself isn't an argument to remove it from the game. It's just an argument for you not using it in your games.

You've focused on ethics here so why not apply the ethics to your own circumstances for a moment. If the collective values X, and you don't value X, isn't the answer to include X for the greater good of the collective despite your dislike for X? Isn't you sacrificing it being in the game for the greater satisfaction of the whole precisely what you've been arguing is the most ethical thing?

 

[Alzrius]

The game has had alignment for nearly 50 years without this "problem" being a problem. I've never heard of arguments breaking out at gaming tables over alignment regarding "real politics."

The one time my group got into an argument about an intersection of gaming and real politics, it wasn't about alignment. Rather, it was that, while we all agreed that one of our senators (who looks like he's around a thousand years old) was some sort of undead creature, we couldn't reach a consensus as to what type. I said mummy, other people said lich.

To this day, it remains an unsettled question.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The game has had alignment for nearly 50 years without this "problem" being a problem. I've never heard of arguments breaking out at gaming tables over alignment regarding "real politics." It's certainly not a problem so common you'd change rules over it. In fact, in all the discussions of alignment over the many years here at EnWorld it has not been a problem to discuss it with respect to real world politics dominating the conversation.

I mean discussing real world politics is generally frowned upon or outright banned on must RPG forums so that kinda limits how much it can happen. But we have gone into that direction couple of times in this thread. It definitely happens.

Has this been a problem at your D&D table and if so could you describe in broad strokes what happened?

Not really, as I tend to play with my friends who have broadly similar political leanings than I do. Furthermore I don't use alignment, though I've played in games which had it. There was some such disagreement in the past, but it was so long ago that I can't recall specifics.