Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aurumvorax" data-source="post: 5709747" data-attributes="member: 87266">I did not say this is how you play D&D.  I said this is how D&D is written.  If you play the game differently, good for you.  Pretty much no one plays the game as written.  If alignment has never got in the way then you're ignoring alignment as a mechanic.  In AD&D, alignment was supposed to be tracked and monitored.  If you didn't do this, you weren't playing the rules as written.  Like I said above, I don't know a single person (ever) who played the game to the letter and there's nothing wrong with this at all.Why are animals okay but intelligent creatures aren't?  What if the monsters are neutral?  If someone said "There's a shiny ring in a bear's cave" is it okay to kill the bear and take the ring?  Even if the denizens of a dungeon are evil, what crimes did they commit?  Can we justify killing someone because they may do something wrong at some point in the future?Is it really different?  If the treasure doesn't belong to the monsters who live there then it doesn't belong to the adventurers who are trespassing.  Why do human concepts of ownership apply to non-human creatures?  Some animals, like apes and birds, like shiny things and will naturally collect them.  Are they still free game?  Will you kill the animal to recover the treasure even though technically it's no one's?  Why is alignment based on human perception but at the same time based on planar alignment?  How can a human claim dominance over another creature's land and this somehow be okay but when a monster claims human land this is wrong?Key word there, trying.  Everyone tries to play their alignment but eventually they'll fall.  I don't need rules to create moral dilemma.  On the contrary, when using strict alignment I find people are more "morally convenient" than not.  This is how "Lawful Good" and "Chaotic Neutral" acquired the names Lawful/Chaotic Stupid.  Some people choose these alignments as justifications for their actions.  "I'm a paladin and I kill evil in the name of good regardless of its crimes!"  "I'm chaotic neutral, I do whatever the hell I want without reason WOO HOO!"You're right, it's not a straightjacket.  It's 9 straightjackets.  The book tells me exactly what it considers good/evil/lawful/chaotic.  Toss in classes that require alignment and spells with evil descriptor and you'll see how alignment, when played as written, will choke you no matter which one you're wearing.  I love how 2E goes on to say that alignment is an aid to roleplaying and should only be used in that manner.  In the next section, it calls alignment a "tool, not a straightjacket" followed by changing alignment imposes penalties.  An aid to roleplaying that carries mechanical penalties if you don't do it properly?  Huh?We are playing a different game which is fine because no one plays RAW.I can't tailor the game to everyone's taste.  Or rather, I can by instead refusing to employ the RAW at all.  Instead of creating a game that's half-moral dilemma, half dungeon-crawl I simply won't penalize the party for wiping out the goblins without learning about their dilemma because that's what I expect them to do.  Again, you and I both know there are atrocities in the world but do we blame each other for not selling our worldly possessions and working at a soup kitchen?  No.  Should I blame the characters because they chased away a hungry, desperate band of goblins with no where else to turn?  Nope.  Now if they had a helpless, crying goblin at their mercy and they took turns slowly hacking it apart, that's deliberate.  I know what the players are thinking when they do that.</blockquote>

Verification