Obviously, my preference would be to do away with alignment in the first place. If not, minimize the mechanical/narrative impact of alignment on the game.
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Best way to get the duelling example to end up breaking the group? Have the GM change the player’s alignment to LN while NPCs (including gods) engage in sketchy behaviour and maintain their Good alignment.
Agreed. Here's a thread I started on this topic, some time ago now:
Why I don't like alignment in fantasy RPGs
The issue in DL is that it presents itself as a Good vs Evil setting, but the novels keep on bringing up and trying to justify Non-Good actions by the Good gods.
Here is where we part ways, for two reasons.
First, many works of fiction present, as good, things that in real life would not be good, at least in the judgement of many audience members. Most often, this relates to the use of violence. It can also relate to the use of resources (eg Bruce Wayne could do far more good in the world by spending his wealth on public housing rather than fighting the Joker). But most audience members don't, for that reason, reject the works. Rather, they suspend certain parts of their moral judgement when engaging with the works, and suppose other things to be true (eg they suppose duelling to be morally permissible, as per the example I gave upthread).
I don't think DL stands out in this respect.
Second, and following on,
in the fiction the Cataclysm is not a non-good action. Rather, it's a type of legitimate punishment. Ignoring this is a type of misinterpretation of the book: it's like complaining about FTL travel in Star Wars or Star Trek. Entertaining the fictional proposition, even though it departs from what one believes to be true in the real world, is part of what it means to engage with the work at all.
If you're not prepared to do that, that's your prerogative. But it would obviously be unfair to attack authors, or fans, of Star Wars or Star Trek for being ignorant of basic physics. They're just pretending that FTL is possible, in their imaginary stories. Likewise it is obviously unfair to attack authors, or fans, of DL for thinking that genocide is permissible. They're pretending, in their imaginary stories, that collective punishment by way of divine retribution is a permissible thing. (And
@mamba has made several posts explaining the real-world cultural traditions that underpin this particular feat of imagination.)
Someone might think that space opera is, in a way, harmful, because it weakens audience's grasp of physical truth. Maybe that's true: and it would make Star Wars and Star Trek in some sense dangerous, but it still wouldn't show that those who enjoy them or engage with them are doing anything wrong. Likewise, someone might think that romantic fantasy, that invites its audience to suspend certain moral convictions for the purposes of engaging with the fantasy, is dangerous because of how it weakens moral sensibility. That still wouldn't show that those who enjoy or engage with those fantasies are advocating moral absurdities such as that genocide is morally permissible.
Someone upthread made an interesting comparison to Numenor in LotR.
That was me. I keep making it, because it is so obvious, and yet no one carries on about Adventures in Middle Earth or The One Ring in the same way they are carrying on about DL.
I think it is an interesting comparison, because my exposure to both settings is roughly equivalent.
I read LotR as a teen, and a second time as an adult. I only read the Dragonlance novels once, but I also read some of the short story collections. Both are settings where the principal dichotomy is a struggle between Good and Evil.
My recollection of Numenor is that Aragorn was a descendant of the Numenorean kings. Wasn’t aware Eru destroyed the continent or why.
Dragonlance? Destruction of Ishtar is pretty major, as is the fact that the Good gods have turned their backs on mortals. Paladine appears and justifies his actions. He claims that the Kingpriest was a good man despite much sketchiness on his part.
The result is that the sketchiness of the Good Gods is much harder to gloss over in Dragonlance than in LotR.
They are only "sketchy" if one rejects the permissibility of collective punishment by way of divine retribution. Of course the morality of the French Revolution does this - that was part of its whole point. But Dragonlance does not embrace the morality of the French Revolution. It doesn't
reject clerical obscurantism. It embraces it!
I mean, one of the key events in the stories is the discovery of discs bearing esoteric knowledge, left by the gods as a sign to humanity. A fictional world in which that is treated, not cynically as an REH Conan story might, but sincerely and with celebration, is not one where it then makes sense to apply modern norms and a human rights framework to this one event. Once you apply the human rights framework, the whole thing - clerical obscurantism, knightly orders committed to "My Honour is My Life" - all collapse in a screaming heap.
Accepting all that stuff which only makes the slightest bit of sense if one pretends that the French Revolution never happened, but then suddenly bringing the human rights framework to bear on this one particular bit of the story, just strikes me as a wild misinterpretation and profoundly incoherent.
