Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Homogenized Races?
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7636256" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>That's very hard to know. I can only be confident of what I've observed. Most logically, they weren't being dishonest with me as much as they were being unreflective on their own motivations. I can say that their stated beliefs did not seem to conform to my expectations regarding what would logically follow from those beliefs. That is, they didn't seem to play characters I thought were particularly nuanced and complex, much less that they were too complex to neatly fit on some grid for the purposes of certain spell effects.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Sure, but what if your estimation of the alignment that had the best mechanical effects (say "Lawful Good") conflicted sharply with your estimation of the alignment that had the most effective moves (say "Chaotic Evil"), and you decided that rather than attempting to argue with the DM that your pawn was Lawful Good despite the Chaotic Evil direction you were giving him, you just decided that the easiest approach was to claim the alignment system wasn't realistic.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>No, I get your point. However, much of 'acting' whether we are talking about performance acting or role-playing involves imagining being someone other than yourself, and that can include imagining having wants, beliefs, and motivations that are contrary to your own.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I see it as bowing out of the system only in a cursory sense, since 'unaligned' is really only a synonym for 'neutral'. In fact, it literally is such a synonym. I think that it served a purpose of letting players feel like they were opting out, but in fact 'unaligned' is just one philosophical justification for the alignment called 'neutrality'. To be neutral is to not be aligned, whether by a conscious philosophical choice or by indifference doesn't move you out of that part of the graph, just changes how willfully you are staying there.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Well, that depends on who is giving the test.</p><p></p><p>I think I should talk a bit about how I see WIS and INT interacting with alignment.</p><p></p><p>The higher the intelligence of the character, the more their alignment tends to require some sort of intellectual grounding. That is to say, the more they feel they need some sort of systematic justification for their beliefs. But alignment isn't the philosophical justification, but the practice of those beliefs. So you might have a low intelligence person who is intuitively self-centered and so acts to further their self-interest, but also intuitively recognizes that if they are a jerk then people won't be nice to them in return and that in the long run this will harm their self-interest. So even if that low INT person can't explain why they act like they do, they'll behave in a certain manner. A high intelligence person on the other hand will need to rationalize this behavior, both to themselves and to others, and so might (among many options) adopt the philosophical framework akin to Objectivism. In both cases, we might say that the person is Chaotic Neutral in that their moral framework is pretty much based entirely on (mutual) self-interest. (I don't mean to start a debate critical of that framework, it's just that CN is one of the easier alignments to provide clear cut examples for without grossly violating rules against discussing religion or politics.)</p><p></p><p>I don't really see 'Neutral' and 'Unaligned' as being anything but different degrees of having rationalized your belief system there in the middle of the grid. A high INT character that rationalizes that there is no good or evil in the world, but that everything is true from a certain point of view, and that in order for the world to continue there must be a balance between life and death, light and darkness is philosophically adopting a framework of 'Neutrality'. But a low INT character that simply is just trying to get by in the daily struggles of life without rocking the boat and paying no attention whatsoever to matters of morality is no less neutral than the high minded philosopher.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7636256, member: 4937"] That's very hard to know. I can only be confident of what I've observed. Most logically, they weren't being dishonest with me as much as they were being unreflective on their own motivations. I can say that their stated beliefs did not seem to conform to my expectations regarding what would logically follow from those beliefs. That is, they didn't seem to play characters I thought were particularly nuanced and complex, much less that they were too complex to neatly fit on some grid for the purposes of certain spell effects. Sure, but what if your estimation of the alignment that had the best mechanical effects (say "Lawful Good") conflicted sharply with your estimation of the alignment that had the most effective moves (say "Chaotic Evil"), and you decided that rather than attempting to argue with the DM that your pawn was Lawful Good despite the Chaotic Evil direction you were giving him, you just decided that the easiest approach was to claim the alignment system wasn't realistic. No, I get your point. However, much of 'acting' whether we are talking about performance acting or role-playing involves imagining being someone other than yourself, and that can include imagining having wants, beliefs, and motivations that are contrary to your own. I see it as bowing out of the system only in a cursory sense, since 'unaligned' is really only a synonym for 'neutral'. In fact, it literally is such a synonym. I think that it served a purpose of letting players feel like they were opting out, but in fact 'unaligned' is just one philosophical justification for the alignment called 'neutrality'. To be neutral is to not be aligned, whether by a conscious philosophical choice or by indifference doesn't move you out of that part of the graph, just changes how willfully you are staying there. Well, that depends on who is giving the test. I think I should talk a bit about how I see WIS and INT interacting with alignment. The higher the intelligence of the character, the more their alignment tends to require some sort of intellectual grounding. That is to say, the more they feel they need some sort of systematic justification for their beliefs. But alignment isn't the philosophical justification, but the practice of those beliefs. So you might have a low intelligence person who is intuitively self-centered and so acts to further their self-interest, but also intuitively recognizes that if they are a jerk then people won't be nice to them in return and that in the long run this will harm their self-interest. So even if that low INT person can't explain why they act like they do, they'll behave in a certain manner. A high intelligence person on the other hand will need to rationalize this behavior, both to themselves and to others, and so might (among many options) adopt the philosophical framework akin to Objectivism. In both cases, we might say that the person is Chaotic Neutral in that their moral framework is pretty much based entirely on (mutual) self-interest. (I don't mean to start a debate critical of that framework, it's just that CN is one of the easier alignments to provide clear cut examples for without grossly violating rules against discussing religion or politics.) I don't really see 'Neutral' and 'Unaligned' as being anything but different degrees of having rationalized your belief system there in the middle of the grid. A high INT character that rationalizes that there is no good or evil in the world, but that everything is true from a certain point of view, and that in order for the world to continue there must be a balance between life and death, light and darkness is philosophically adopting a framework of 'Neutrality'. But a low INT character that simply is just trying to get by in the daily struggles of life without rocking the boat and paying no attention whatsoever to matters of morality is no less neutral than the high minded philosopher. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Homogenized Races?
Top