Geriatric Grumbling

[Pierce_Inverarity]

I think he's a classic chaotic neutral, if a bit on the bloodthirsty side.
DB

Murder has got to be an evil act no matter how you slice it and Swearengen committed and ordered the murders of several people.

Getting carried away with violence is something which frankly happens to a lot of people who are fighters. It's something you have to struggle with, in order to overcome the natural fear, many people replace it with a certain battle madness, or a lust for the fight.

I entirely agree with the internal struggle. In fact, his real LG character is shown by that struggle, although he did bring it to the brink.

This is a LG person. An adult conception of a LG person as opposed to an oversimplified comic book, DnD conception.

I couldn't agree more. If more people saw this as LG, Paladins, would become a lot more popular.

Agreed, though again, why shouldn't an evil character feel honest affection for someone? Can't an evil individual be nuanced?

Absolutely, I think it's the best way to give villians dimensions. I guess too often I and most others make the mistake of viewing alignments as monolithic.

I still think that alignment does create rigidity, and not just the fact of alignment, but the mechanical aspects in game. Even if I ascribe some good qualities to a villian, alignment detection spells subvert much of the drama of discovering this. A character that only see's Cy Tollivers interactions with his Madame and with his employees (except for the one who got smallpox and was left to die in the woods!) might think he's a pretty decent guy. A PC who can detect alignment won't be fooled.

Again, isn't this westernizing or modernizing or christianizing? DB

Maybe with the opium, and the point about whiskey is well taken, but he's not merely disposing of corpses, he's aiding and abetting murders. To me that's evil.

do so, by all means.
DB

Quick palladium alignment cheat sheet:

Good alignments: (life and freedom highest priority)
Principled- respects authority and law
Scrupulous- distrusts authority

Selfish (not necessarily evil) alignments:
Unprincipled- selfish and greedy, but will work in groups, won't betray friends
Anarchist- selfish and greedy, dislikes groups, will betray friends

Evil alignments:
Miscreant- Lie, cheat, murder for goals or pleasure
Aberrant- keeps word of honor, loyal to friend, but murders and tortures to achieve goals.
Diabolic- evil for the sake of being evil

I don't necessarily think this is better than DnD alignments, but it is an example of alignments without the Law/Chaos aspect, which is really a hold over from the Michael Moorcock Eternal Champion novels that I never thought translated well into game terms.

 

[Pierce_Inverarity]

I really think how "mature" it is is based on the adventures and the people you play with, not the system. It is basically a neutral system in that respect. But I voted for more "mature" D&D, over 30, just to indicate that I'd like to see it head in that direction. Maybe it is already there.

I mostly agree, but I think there are two key mechanics touched on previously that could be improved. First, a better and more diverse non-combat conflict resolution system. Something beyond bluff, diplomacy and intimidate. Second, alignment seems to me to be a sticking point. Not just that fact of alignment, but the way in which it relates to the game such as detection spells.

Also, some of the flavor issues aren't minor and the trend is towards more fantastic, with the paladins mounts being the most egregious example.

Don't get me entirely wrong, I love a good hack and slash game, I just don't want every game to be a hack and slash game.

 

[d4]

Principled- respects authority and law Lawful Good
Scrupulous- distrusts authority Chaotic Good

Anarchist- selfish and greedy, dislikes groups, will betray friends Chaotic Neutral

Miscreant- Lie, cheat, murder for goals or pleasure Chaotic Evil
Aberrant- keeps word of honor, loyal to friend, but murders and tortures to achieve goals. Lawful Evil
Diabolic- evil for the sake of being evil Neutral Evil

I don't necessarily think this is better than DnD alignments, but it is an example of alignments without the Law/Chaos aspect...

i disagree -- other than Unprincipled, the Palladium alignments seem IMO to just be standard D&D alignments renamed. (and Palladium is missing a few that D&D has.)

i'm not just basing this opinion on the short descriptions you gave above -- i used to play a whole lotta Palladium (Palladium fantasy, Rifts, TMNT, etc.) back in the day, so i'm quite familiar with how the system details their alignments.

 

[Taneel BrightBlade]

Change the maturity level!?! I will never let you I summon a volcanoe to protect the maturity level!!!
seriusly as I can be I don't want to change the maturity level... sorry had to remove a sword from my hand. More combat discriptions would be fine though no problem with violence
PS:age 13

 

[Drifter Bob]

Anarchist- selfish and greedy, dislikes groups, will betray friends

I could think of a lot of more mainstream political classifications which would fit this description far better.

I agree with a great deal of what you said, but this is just horrible. They need to come up with a different term. There is such a thing as an anarchist, and they are the opposite of what is written here.

You should look up the definition of anarchism in a good, non-abridged dictionary. Palladium should be ashamed.

Anarchism : the replacement of organized government by the free association of voluntary cooperative groups

I've met plenty of anarchists in my life and I'd have to say they are among the very few people these days who are neither selfish nor greedy and won't betray friends.

Someone with 'fnord' in their sig ought to know better!

I don't necessarily think this is better than DnD alignments, but it is an example of alignments without the Law/Chaos aspect, which is really a hold over from the Michael Moorcock Eternal Champion novels that I never thought translated well into game terms.

I actually like the law versus chaos dynamic, I think it fits with many of the struggles in the periods of European History where the myth and historical events are drawn on that are the basis of DnD.

Looking at history alone, the Romans justified their conquest with the claim that they brought law and order. Thousasnds of years later, the Vikings were considered a threat to that same order, and in the Rennaissance, increasingly autocratic kings approached the level of Imperial Roman power even while free cities such as Venice and upstart peasants as in Switzerland and Bohemia thwarted the will of the kings in the name of freedom.

I do think as implemented though, alignment is problematic. There needs to be a nother layer of nuance, or a whole different approach. I actually find that the former works ok.

I also agree that alignment detection spells are a bad, bad, bad thing

DB

 

[diaglo]

I also agree that alignment detection spells are a bad, bad, bad thing

some one must have agreed with you.

they got rid of the spell Know Alignment.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

I'm honestly expressing my opinion of the results. You on ther other hand seem to be lashing out defensively. Let me ask you a question: Do you use house rules?

No, I'm lashing out in irritation at myself for wasting effort on this. But, yes, I do use house rules. Not the ones you seem to think I should be using to have a "mature" game, but I have a number of them. Dodge gives a flat +1 bonus to AC against everyone (simplifies bookkeeping). Half-orcs don't have a -2 to intelligence, as they really were too weak for a PC class in a game that does something other than kill things and take their stuff. I've also played all manner of games with the orc and kobold racial traits. I've made it a skill check to ID items and detect magic, as it seems silly to have the wizards preparing spells to do that. If they have an elaborate understanding of magical principles, they should be able to work these things out in other ways. And it freed up our wizards to diversify their spell selection without having to blow a day to go into "study mode."

With my first campaign as DM, I played with detect evil and other alignment stuff. This was based on my experience with groups who used them as a crutch and/or their only moral compass. My solution was to make one detect alignment spell available to divine casters, and it worked more like Bruce Willis' detection ability in "Unbreakable." i.e. they got flashes of the person's history and motivations, but not a lot to go on, and it was a full-round action. It didn't last long as a rule, and I went back to a simple core rules system for two reasons, 1) it was a nightmare to come up with unique and representative images every time it was used, and 2) it wasn't necessary. I had assembled a much more mature group than I had ever gamed with before. They don't run off and kack everything that detects as evil. They chase down the complex motivations of complex characters. It's refreshing to see it in person. This board has been telling me for years that there were in fact people out in the world who played that way. I just couldn't find any of them in real life. So I took one other disaffected player, and we created a bunch of them from a few of our non-playing friends.

Which leads me back to the point... the rules aren't the problem. The biggest problem with D&D is the people you generally have to play with (the majority of this board excluded, as far as I can tell, thankfully).

First, not a gripe. This is IMO defensiveness again. Like I said before, like it or not (and I'm sure, most DnD players dont like it and would want everything to stay exactly as is) DnD WILL change. A DnD 4E WILL come out. The only question is then, how it will change. Making a suggestion for areas which could use improvements when this change is inevitably made is not a gripe . Labeling it as such is just a facile way to dismiss it.

Outstanding. I hope it changes quite a bit. There's always room for improvement. But the fact of the matter is that you're suggesting that wizards needs to put out a book that is guaranteed to be unprofitable to fix a problem that almost no one is having and you could fix yourself with 3 or 4 house rules.

How do you answer Oourphs points...?

Very much the way deadguy did. My players know how the rules work, and it fosters trust among us that I won't screw their characters over for the sake of my plot. They know what the DC is to perform tasks under normal conditions and can therefore intelligently decide courses of action for their characters, knowing that I will adjust the DC in a consistent and fair way. The only one besides myself who has played before, like me, played with GMs who would set DCs on a whim and favor certain players and all that nonsense. They know I won't show favortism, even with my fiancee sitting at the table, because my rules are transparent to them.

Besides, I'm trying to get all of them trained up in the rules, so I can take a turn on the other side of the DM's screen. It's been a long time since I played as a character.

 

[Ourph]

On the question of where to put sample DCs: I would most vehemently disagree that they deserve only to be in the DMG! As a player I need some idea of how the numbers on the character sheet relate to actual game play. Without knowing what a skill score means in comparison to what is required to achieve objectives, I have no idea just how good my character is, only a relative level of skill in comparison to other PCs.

IMO, players should develop a sense of how capable their character are in actual game play by playing the game, not by reading their chances for success in the rulebook before they've even generated their character. Like I said, coming into the game with a preconceived notion of how effective your character is going to be just leads to frustration when the DC you expect isn't the DC you have to beat.

Note that I am not saying that there can't be factors unknown to the characters - but that the characters (and thus the player) need some idea of what they think the difficulty is.

This I wholeheartedly agree with. My problem is that I see players getting their ideas of what they think the difficulty is from the books, rather than from the DM (who is really the final arbiter and the only accurate source of information). Far too many times while running a 3rd ed game I've had players go ahead with an action thinking they know all the information about what kind of difficulties they are facing, despite the fact that they haven't really communicated with ME about what's going on or how difficult a specific action might be. I think the sample DCs being so readily available to players tends to discourage player/DM communication, which inevitably leads to misunderstanding and conflict. The best course of action for a player is to always communicate with their DM about how difficult their character thinks a specific task might be before they attempt it. Want to jump that 10ft gap, don't assume the DC is that listed in the book, because the DM may be taking into account modifiers you're unaware of unless you ask (ex: run up to jump is over broken, stony ground +4 to DC, edge of the chasm is wet and slippery stone +2 to DC, ceiling in jumping area is relatively low +2 to DC). So while you're thinking the DC for a 10ft Jump is 15, it's really 23. You won't know for certain what the numbers indicate, but if you talk to the DM about your action before you do it you'll have all the information and likely (at least if I'm running the game) a warning that, despite the short distance it's going to be a very difficult jump.

I am afraid I have seen too many DMs that use this rules 'secrecy' as an excuse to manipulate the game unfairly.

So the answer to bad DMs is to turn all players into ruleslawyers?

 

[Pierce_Inverarity]

You should look up the definition of anarchism in a good, non-abridged dictionary. Palladium should be ashamed.

Well now, I wouldn't go that far. Could have used a better name, but after all, it's only a name...

Funny thing about the internet, you never know when you're talking to a discordian or when you're talking to a charter member of the Bavarian Illuminati or worse, a fundamentalist agnostic of the Old Order.

Anarchism : the replacement of organized government by the free association of voluntary cooperative groups

I've met plenty of anarchists in my life and I'd have to say they are among the very few people these days who are neither selfish nor greedy and won't betray friends.

Really? An anarchist? Was he a bomb throwing anarchist or a non-bomb throwing anarchist? Cuz here in my part of 'merica where we don't have no bridge dictionaries, we think they're all bomb throwing. Yea, and they all wear black overcoats and skulk away in the night like Sacco and Vanzetti.

Someone with 'fnord' in their sig ought to know better!

I never trust anyone who sees fnords.

 

[Drifter Bob]

Outstanding. I hope it changes quite a bit. There's always room for improvement. But the fact of the matter is that you're suggesting that wizards needs to put out a book that is guaranteed to be unprofitable to fix a problem that almost no one is having and you could fix yourself with 3 or 4 house rules.

I find this rather incredible. Can you explain to me how adding some role playing bonuses to Bluff checks, granting experience points for actions other than killing monsters, and changing the alignment system is going to guarantee that the next WOTC book would be unprofitable? Or was it just raising the possibility of making the game more mature which is going to guarantee it's doom?

Btw, I wouldn't call 1/4 of the members of ENworld "almost no one"

DB