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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7636169" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>More or less exactly what I'm trying to convey.</p><p></p><p>My experience with, "Alignment is unrealistic. I can roleplay a more nuanced realistic character without it!" is that the more "realistic" "nuanced" characters where indistinguishable from Pawn Stance, in that the decision making process about "what this character would do" seemed to be basically "what do I need to do to win". Giving your pawn an alignment implied there were moves which might be practical at the moment, but which the pawn maybe ought not do. And the player simply didn't want the pawn to have an independent motivation or wants and desires of its own. </p><p></p><p>And that often ends up being a specific example of the larger subset of arguments I call "arguing against alignment by taking an alignment position". For example, one argument against alignment I consistently hear is, "Alignment isn't realistic because real world morality is subjective." Congratulations, you are Chaotic Neutral. Next.</p><p></p><p>In the case where someone tells me, "Alignment isn't realistic because morality doesn't exist" or isn't practical or is too simplistic or whatever, I tend to now tell them, "Just play a neutral." Because, one take on neutrality is simply that morality isn't a very important concern, that successfully surviving requires examining the situation, and moral extremes are to be avoided. And pawn stance, where the only overriding concern of the player is simply "winning the game" by any means necessary while not making more enemies than you need to (because that would detract from winning) tends to look a lot like that in practice.</p><p></p><p>I can think of two good arguments against alignment. One is that I've heard cases of DMs using it as an excuse for being a Director and telling the player how they should play their character, often by holding up a big stick such as loss of level or class. And the second is that some real world beliefs tend to seem incoherent if you try to place them neatly on the two axis alignment grid, and that ultimately what you end up with is representing something by analogy (the alignment system) that would be better to talk about directly (the thing itself). Derailing the exploration to try to classify which alignment the philosophy fits in for the purpose of D&D fantasy would run contrary to the presumed goals. But that tends to mostly be a problem if you are setting something in the real world, which D&D tends not to do.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7636169, member: 4937"] More or less exactly what I'm trying to convey. My experience with, "Alignment is unrealistic. I can roleplay a more nuanced realistic character without it!" is that the more "realistic" "nuanced" characters where indistinguishable from Pawn Stance, in that the decision making process about "what this character would do" seemed to be basically "what do I need to do to win". Giving your pawn an alignment implied there were moves which might be practical at the moment, but which the pawn maybe ought not do. And the player simply didn't want the pawn to have an independent motivation or wants and desires of its own. And that often ends up being a specific example of the larger subset of arguments I call "arguing against alignment by taking an alignment position". For example, one argument against alignment I consistently hear is, "Alignment isn't realistic because real world morality is subjective." Congratulations, you are Chaotic Neutral. Next. In the case where someone tells me, "Alignment isn't realistic because morality doesn't exist" or isn't practical or is too simplistic or whatever, I tend to now tell them, "Just play a neutral." Because, one take on neutrality is simply that morality isn't a very important concern, that successfully surviving requires examining the situation, and moral extremes are to be avoided. And pawn stance, where the only overriding concern of the player is simply "winning the game" by any means necessary while not making more enemies than you need to (because that would detract from winning) tends to look a lot like that in practice. I can think of two good arguments against alignment. One is that I've heard cases of DMs using it as an excuse for being a Director and telling the player how they should play their character, often by holding up a big stick such as loss of level or class. And the second is that some real world beliefs tend to seem incoherent if you try to place them neatly on the two axis alignment grid, and that ultimately what you end up with is representing something by analogy (the alignment system) that would be better to talk about directly (the thing itself). Derailing the exploration to try to classify which alignment the philosophy fits in for the purpose of D&D fantasy would run contrary to the presumed goals. But that tends to mostly be a problem if you are setting something in the real world, which D&D tends not to do. [/QUOTE]
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