Five Alignments?

[hong]

Hong, brevity may be the soul of wit, but I'm trying to pack for a road trip to Austin and I'm not quite getting what you're saying to me.

Are you agreeing with or criticizing me?

I am taking issue with your statement

The 4Ed take doesn't seem to recognize that good can arise from chaos, or that evil can be spawned from law​

You can read the 4E system as saying that Lawful Good is a better, purer type of good than Good. You can also read it as saying that Lawful Good is a worse, more compromised type of good than Good. You can also read it as saying that Good people are chaotic by default, so there is no reason to give it a longer label; while Lawful Good is a special type of Good that is neither better nor worse, just different.

Furthermore, you can represent just as many practical viewpoints within the 4E system as before. You will not be able to represent characters who are supposed to be exemplars of a cosmological type of chaos (or law), but very few characters IME are like that. In practice, a chaotic alignment far more often correlates to chaos on a personal or political level, ie the kind of personality who is unrestrained or values personal freedom. You much more often have Tasslehoff Burrfoot than Elric. And Tas falls easily into the unaligned bucket, or G/E depending on how you view him. Heck, you could even view Elric himself as unaligned, even if those he serves are C/L.

And this makes sense. With things in 3E like chaotic spells and weapons, which have actual effects based on alignment, having them trigger off someone's personality simply trivialised the C/L axis. Better to cut down that axis, while at the same time acknowledging that some types of C/L characters -- (old-style) paladins, angels and demons -- are qualitatively different to most other Good or Evil characters, AND present in large enough numbers that they deserve special treatment.

3) I'm not making any judgement as to whether LG is the best kind of good or not, just that if you're going to break out special nomenclature for one kind of good (and likewise for evil), then other reference points need to be identified as well.

Why?

 

[lutecius]

And i think those star eating borg things are definitely LE.

the Necrontyr

 

[eyebeams]

The idea that ambiguity is a problem, is a problem.

Leaving aside the fact that there's something basically noxious, naive and stupid about making law-abiding behavior part and parcel of metaphysical goodness (seriously, leaving it aside -- who knows what LG is supposed to mean now?), several posters have demonstrated that it was possible to use the ninefold system just fine. The fact that every D&D player in the world would not agree on what CN, LN or whatever meant is irrelevant, though having a common opinion as a design goal perhaps speaks to a lack of confidence in D&D players ability to do face to face gaming. It really does seem like a bone to throw at DI subscribers.

Alignments were interesting because they worked on multiple levels: metaphysical (swords and planes of chaos), moral (freedom fighter versus good cop), religious (see Tweet's amazing exploration of alignments in his game) and more. These alignments read like clubhouse codes and tools to paint targets on people's heads. They seem to assume that the player base is stupid, or perhaps are intended as a Games Workshop-like firing of the fans to get some younger consumers breathing room away from spendthrift beardies. It's a terrible idea that even its defenders can only argue is just as good for some people. That's weak sauce.

Fact is, just as good for some, but not others, balances out to "bad."

 

[VannATLC]

Well, really, I think the morality of 40k is "Everything sucks because it is GRIM and DARK," but the ideal of the Imperium really is "Order is best. Law is best. Lawfulness is best. His Most Holy Emperor is better then all these combined, but that's because he IS all these combined."

Or, to simplify;

"A moment of laxity spawns a lifetime of heresy"

To be fair, the Emperor is truly Good, as far as I'm willing to determine it.

The last 10 thousand years of war are due to the Ecclesiarchy being turds.. not actually the Emperor's fault.

 

[Tervin]

Epiphany?

Well, from what I read it seems this is the basis of the five alignments, now that I have seenseveral sources and had a bit of time to think:

LG: Friend that you can trust to have your back
G: Friend
U: Stranger who can be friend or enemy, depending on what you pay the DM
E: Enemy
CE: Enemy that you can't get out of fighting

Very easy to play. Perhaps not very imaginative, but still...

 

[Family]

By jove that's brilliant, and succinct.

/I'm also plugging the idea that alignment is for NPCs, motivations are for PCs.

 

[Wormwood]

LG: Friend that you can trust to have your back
G: Friend
U: Stranger who can be friend or enemy, depending on what you pay the DM
E: Enemy
CE: Enemy that you can't get out of fighting

Brilliant.

Very easy to play. Perhaps not very imaginative, but still...

1. It's imaginative.
2. More importantly, it's freakin' useful.
3. It was worth wading through 16+ pages of alignment wankery just to read your post.

 

[Mercule]

Well, from what I read it seems this is the basis of the five alignments, now that I have seenseveral sources and had a bit of time to think:

LG: Friend that you can trust to have your back
G: Friend
U: Stranger who can be friend or enemy, depending on what you pay the DM
E: Enemy
CE: Enemy that you can't get out of fighting

Very easy to play. Perhaps not very imaginative, but still...

Are you sure it isn't:

G: Friend that you can trust to have your back.
LG: Friend who may value order more than your back.
U: Maybe friend, maybe enemy, depending on how you treat them.
E: Enemy that will screw you over even if you don't fight them.
CE: Enemy that likes a straight-up fight.

 

[Tervin]

Brilliant.
1. It's imaginative.
2. More importantly, it's freakin' useful.
3. It was worth wading through 16+ pages of alignment wankery just to read your post.

LOL. Thanks, I guess.

Thing is, I was being sarcastic. Cause if that is what it is, I think it is crap.

I do agree that it can be useful for casual gamers and new DMs, but it also means that us who sometimes want to be complicated weirdos need to go through every monster and NPC and redo the alignment to a code we can actually use. Which, seriously, is probably what I am going to do. Luckily I don't actually hate work like that.

 

[Tervin]

Are you sure it isn't:

G: Friend that you can trust to have your back.
LG: Friend who may value order more than your back.
U: Maybe friend, maybe enemy, depending on how you treat them.
E: Enemy that will screw you over even if you don't fight them.
CE: Enemy that likes a straight-up fight.

Stop that!

Now we are getting ambiguous already - and this whole system was made to get out of that.

(Or seriously, I guess your system is probably more in tune with the rules.)