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

[Mistwell]

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.

Please tell me it was Senator Alan Cranston of California? Because we had that same debate over him! I went lich, though I can see the argument for mummy.

And note to mods: this sounds like politics but this Senator hasn't been alive for over 20 years (he was born in 1914) and it has nothing to do with his politics. In fact, I don't have any idea what his politics were. I just know he looked like a lich. Or mummy. Or maybe revenant?

 

[Mistwell]

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.


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.

So, has no real history of being a problem. The "history in this thread" has been you though so that's not a history of a game problem because that would be quite the tautology if you making a problem in a thread about X makes it a wider problem for the entire game because you made it a problem in a thread. Not something you'd change a game to "solve" really then right?

 

[Maxperson]

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.

Some look like turtles, one looks like Grandpa Munster, yours looks undead. Sounds right.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

Even Max who likes it admitted that it can mean differnt things to differnt people. So that certainly means it is not an useful way to convey information. Alignment proponents claim that alignment is simultaneously so flexible that people can interpret their character's alignment how they want but those two letter will tell the GM how to run a monster. This is simply a logical impossibility, both can't be true.

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?

There was someone in this thread (or some thread) who found AD&D's different weapon damage tables against giants useful. Someone somewhere will always find anything useful, but cluttering game with all sort of nonsense with the caveat that 'if you don't like it don't use it' is not a good way to design games. It leads to the game being bloated incoherent mess. I am advocating for what I see as good and coherent game design here. Furthermore I don't see having your preferred elf game mechanics as an ethical issue. Only aspect of this that has actual ethical dimensions are the certain unfortunate implications of species-wide alignments and more broadly issues with sorting people into those who are objectively good and objectively bad.

 

[Cadence]

Even Max who likes it admitted that it can mean differnt things to differnt people. So that certainly means it is not an useful way to convey information. Alignment proponents claim that alignment is simultaneously so flexible that people can interpret their character's alignment how they want but those two letter will tell the GM how to run a monster.

Give me any brief description you want, and I bet I can quickly conjure a situation where your brief description doesn't tell me what the monster will do. That feels more like the nature of being brief than about alignment in particular. Do you never describe a food by country of origin, politician by political party, or weather outside by how overcast it is? All of those certainly leave much to the individual to wonder about, but also feel useful for drawing the picture.

 

[Maxperson]

Even Max who likes it admitted that it can mean differnt things to differnt people.

Yes and no. Yes it can mean a variety of things. No it cannot mean anything like you try to portray me as having said. All of those limited various ways of playing lawful fit into the lawful category that is easily understood by those who actually want to try to understand it. It's very much more understandable than you are making it out to be.

 

[Mistwell]

Even Max who likes it admitted that it can mean differnt things to differnt people. So that certainly means it is not an useful way to convey information.

No. That's not what that means. Something can mean different things to different people and you can convey useful information that way.

Your sentence would eliminate all art in the world of all kind if it were true. It would mean all music, all paintings, all photographs, sculpture, theater, everything artistic in life conveys nothing because it can mean different things to different people.

It's OK for a element of a game to convey different things to different people, and still be of value for the game over all.

Alignment proponents claim that alignment is simultaneously so flexible that people can interpret their character's alignment how they want but those two letter will tell the GM how to run a monster. This is simply a logical impossibility, both can't be true.

It is true though. But, let's be clear. When you say it cannot be true, and others say that's how they've been using it, you're calling them a liar. If you disagree, tell me how you're not calling people a liar when they say they've been successfully using it that way and you say it cannot be true?

There was someone in this thread (or some thread) who found AD&D's different weapon damage tables against giants useful. Someone somewhere will always find anything useful, but cluttering game with all sort of nonsense with the caveat that 'if you don't like it don't use it' is not a good way to design games.

Right, we only go with the elements which a meaningful number of people find useful. Which includes alignment. See every poll ever taken on the topic, which always shows a minimum of what I think we can all agree are a "meaningful number" of people. Which makes it "not nonsense."

It leads to the game being bloated incoherent mess.

The game has been the most successful version so far, and it's not commonly called a bloated incoherent mess because alignment was in it. So that's empirically false.

I am advocating for what I see as good and coherent game design here.

I have yet to see your replacement system?

 

[Oofta]

Please tell me it was Senator Alan Cranston of California? Because we had that same debate over him! I went lich, though I can see the argument for mummy.

And note to mods: this sounds like politics but this Senator hasn't been alive for over 20 years (he was born in 1914) and it has nothing to do with his politics. In fact, I don't have any idea what his politics were. I just know he looked like a lich. Or mummy. Or maybe revenant?

To keep politics out of it, is Mick Jagger really Skelator? Inquiring minds want to know!

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Yes and no. Yes it can mean a variety of things. No it cannot mean anything like you try to portray me as having said. All of those limited various ways of playing lawful fit into the lawful category that is easily understood by those who actually want to try to understand it. It's very much more understandable than you are making it out to be.

The problem is that as you note both 'lawful' and 'chaotic' can have various traits, and the alignment does not tell you which of those traits the creature actually has. If a creature is lawful, this doesn't tell you whether they're law abiding, honourable or organised and methodological or perhaps all of those things. And same applies to chaos and of course people can have traits from both law and chaos. Like if a person has Lawful trait A and chaotic trait D are they lawful or chaotic? Who knows! A character with the exact same traits could be described either as lawful or chaotic. How on Earth is this an useful system?

 

[Krachek]

I think that we should step back to what alignment is : a game mechanic that help predict or decide character action in a fantasy world.
Versus reality I think it´s not much better than hit points, AC, or skill bonus.