[i]This[/i] is my problem with alignment

[fusangite]

Well, the "operational function"...or the intent, in easier terms

Not to be too picky here but I really don't mean "intent" when I say "operational function" -- operational function is what a thing causes regardless of the intent behind it. For instance, the British imperial legislation stating that a fee should be paid to anyone who brought a Beothuk Indian to their colonial office in Newfoundland was intended to cause the assimilation of the Beothuk. But because of the way the law was exectuted, unforeseen by parliament, it resulted in the total extermination of the Beothuk. So, if you don't mind, I'd like to hang onto the more polysyllabic term for two reasons: (a) because I am interested only in the effect of the rules on play and (b) I don't think that speculating about the writers' intent will be especially helpful to this discourse.

Going back to your original problem, the thing about chaotic alignment barring people from forming a group to support their plans...

I did not argue that chaotic people do not form groups; I argued that chaotic groups function less efficiently than lawful groups, sometimes dramatically so. Furthermore, this is not just true of collectives; the description of the Chaotic Evil alignment makes it pretty clear that this alignment handicaps you as an individual too. The rules clearly state that chaotic people can act collectively and go so far as to describe the less efficient ways that they do so.

By the way, thanks, generally, for your contributions to the thread so far. Your insertion of new terminology and a new voice has been really helpful here in moving our discussion past the things on which it has been snagged for the past three pages.

 

[JackGiantkiller]

We seem to have gotten past certain fundamental miscommunications, and that can only be considered beneficial to our long term purposes.

When, as a DM, you are playing a CE character, how do you ensure that they are in fact CE, if you don't follow the descriptions of CE given in the rules? If the NPC is intended (as above) to be a CE demon worshipper, and thus less acceptable to the aforementioned demons if he does not live down to their ideals...how does one emulate that *under the rules as written* if the description of the CE alignment is specifically written so as to make their actions less efficient in the long run, and even in the short run...in other words, how can evil possibly ever win?


Which brings to mind a thought: The writers of D&D wanted, specifically, to penalize Chaotic and Evil actions, perhaps subconciously, because they are products of a modern society where being seen as law abiding is equated directly with being good, and because Good must by its very nature be better than evil, or it's hard to call it good...

Whereas in Rl evil wins, a lot, because it is usually more efficient and pragmatic than Good, and the neutrals are staying out of it.

 

[swrushing]

[/QUOTE]

When, as a DM, you are playing a CE character, how do you ensure that they are in fact CE, if you don't follow the descriptions of CE given in the rules?

Ok, to star off, as Gm i am playing a character. Saidn character has background and personality and to some degree a role to perform in the story being told, most likely he is a foil for a given pc. His choices of actions are made based on that character.

He is given an alignment reflective of that personality and those choices he "has made" as stated in his background.

The description of CE traits are a guideline, they are very useful for looking at a character and determining his alignment, based on the choices already made by him.

Again, its not "i am CE so i have to do this", but rather "i did this and this and this and who boy did i do that in spades. I am CE."

If the NPC is intended (as above) to be a CE demon worshipper, and thus less acceptable to the aforementioned demons if he does not live down to their ideals...how does one emulate that *under the rules as written* if the description of the CE alignment is specifically written so as to make their actions less efficient in the long run, and even in the short run...in other words, how can evil possibly ever win?

Skipping the philosophy about "is evil supposed to win" in games i run often it is the case that evil is less encumbered than good. Evil doesn't worry about helping peasants, it just exploits them. Evil doesn't have its clerics heal old ladies that are just "drains on society" or anything that good people are won't to do in spite of it not being 'efficient".

Thats just for starters. i wonder where i put my od "life in the day"... i did a doc once listing the daily life for two villages, one next door to an orc held "evil overloard" and once next to a peloric city. it was an example to give people an idea of the differences between good and evil in more down to earth terms.

Which brings to mind a thought: The writers of D&D wanted, specifically, to penalize Chaotic and Evil actions, perhaps subconciously, because they are products of a modern society where being seen as law abiding is equated directly with being good, and because Good must by its very nature be better than evil, or it's hard to call it good...

Whereas in Rl evil wins, a lot, because it is usually more efficient and pragmatic than Good, and the neutrals are staying out of it.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

By the way, thanks, generally, for your contributions to the thread so far. Your insertion of new terminology and a new voice has been really helpful here in moving our discussion past the things on which it has been snagged for the past three pages.

First off, thanks for making me feel like I'm actually helping an interesting discussion go along. I have to get a better grasp on the D&D alignment system myself right now, as one of my players actually has taken his first level in the paladin class last game, that's why I'm interested in alignment discussions here at the moment.

Not to be too picky here but I really don't mean "intent" when I say "operational function" -- operational function is what a thing causes regardless of the intent behind it. For instance, the British imperial legislation stating that a fee should be paid to anyone who brought a Beothuk Indian to their colonial office in Newfoundland was intended to cause the assimilation of the Beothuk. But because of the way the law was exectuted, unforeseen by parliament, it resulted in the total extermination of the Beothuk. So, if you don't mind, I'd like to hang onto the more polysyllabic term for two reasons: (a) because I am interested only in the effect of the rules on play and (b) I don't think that speculating about the writers' intent will be especially helpful to this discourse.

No no, it's quite okay to be picky..."intent" and "operational function" are two different expressions after all.

Let me try to make clear what is giving me some..well, not problems, but maybe wrong associations...when I read the words "level of operational function", "proscriptive" and "rational player"
When you talk about a "level of operational function", it always makes me think of a level of D&D where only the bare rules as written interact with each other, like some kind of clockwork mechanism, without any room for interpretation. I don't know if that's what you mean, but it's the impression I get.

"Proscriptive" to me simply has the association of, in this case a rule, forcing my character to take certain actions because he fits into this rule...like forcing him to act in a certain way because he has a certain alignment, and not in any other way. That's why I tried to differentiate between "proscriptive" and "descriptive" To take a simple example: drowning. A human being, without any technical or magical support, is not able to breathe water, in fact it will die from suffocation if it tries, effectively drown. Is drowning "proscriptive" now, forbidding the act of trying to breathe water, or is it "descriptive", telling you the consequences of trying to breathe water without forbidding it? I agree, for many it's one and the same...but there's enough people every year actually drowning voluntarily...proving it's not forbidden, only deadly. I apologize in forehand to anybody who might feel uncomfortably touched by this example, it's not meant as such. This can be compared to the extreme alignment example, the paladin. For a paladin, all his class features are a natural function of his being a paladin..like breathing for a human being. He is not forbidden to in an evil manner...he will simply cease being a paladin.

When you mention "rational players", I wonder who that might be. If a player tells me his character is acting in such and such way because his alignment makes him, I can only say he's got the concept wrong, because alignment doesn't enforce behaviour, it adjudicates what has happened. Of course, an alignment restriction on a character class means the character will lose that class' powers if he acted a certain way...but it doesn't keep the character from doing it anyway? The point with those alignment restricted character classes is that they come with a built-in set of motivational rules that explain what a druid, monk or paladin is, why he's got special powers, and where they come from..and what happens if you break those "behaviour rules".

Hope you don't mind me clarifying why I was trying to make the difference between "proscriptive" and "descriptive". I'm sure it wasn't your intention, but your posts made it kinda sound like you see alignment and characters like robots that are preprogrammed. In fact, it's the respective classes giving a rough preprogramming, in my opinion.

I did not argue that chaotic people do not form groups; I argued that chaotic groups function less efficiently than lawful groups, sometimes dramatically so. Furthermore, this is not just true of collectives; the description of the Chaotic Evil alignment makes it pretty clear that this alignment handicaps you as an individual too. The rules clearly state that chaotic people can act collectively and go so far as to describe the less efficient ways that they do so.

Dunno if you read my example of a chaotic and a lawful group forming up, and how I see the inner workings. I don't know either if you think it a valid example, but in my eyes, both groups sounded pretty efficient to me...in different ways, granted, but I bet both groups would fulfill their objective. I admit, both were good in alignment. With chaotic evil, you always run into the problem that you try to form a group of people that only mainly care for themselves, look out for their own greatest profit without scruples, and that don't care for given words, authority of others or set rules.

The moment I realized that the alignment mechanic was broken was when I was playing a Chaotic Evil duke whose objective was to open the gates to the Abyss under the city which he ruled. I realized that in order for him to rationally and efficiently achieve his goal, I would have to change his alignment. This seemed absurd; if he wasn't Chaotic Evil, why would he be opening the gates to a plane that was and not, say, to Hades, the plane with which he was aligned?

I'm curious as to why you thought you'd have to change his alignment for him to achieve his goal in a rational and efficient manner? Rational and efficient are usually also points of view influenced by one's personality, what one views as "rational" and "efficient", right? Try to get into that duke's mind first, taking into account that his personality has caused his alignment to become chaotic evil, and from that point of view, try to see what methods he would think of as "efficient" to achieve his goals...and I'm pretty sure you'll find a few, too.

 

[swrushing]

1. Universal Declarative Statements
These are declarative sentences that make unqualified statements about alignments, such as "law" implies honour, trustworthiness, obedience to authority and reliability." These statements in my opinion are always true. They are written using the same grammatical structures as rules like the description of the feat Cleave.

snip

So, in my reading of the Chaotic Evil alignment, it is always true that:

Originally Posted by PHB
A chaotic evil character does whatever his greed, hatred and lust for destruction drive him to do. He is hot-tempered, vicious, arbitrarily violent and unpredictable… His plans are haphazard, and any groups he joins or forms are poorly organized.

Here is the catch, the thing you either miss or keep ignoring, that statement was NOT "unqualified". It was VERY qualified by this statement in the intro to the nine alingment laundry list

Each alignment description below depicts a typical character of that alignment. Remember that individuals vary from this norm, and that a given character may act more or less in accord with his or her alignment from day to day. Use these descriptions as guidelines, not as scripts.

pay particular attention to the "each alignment description below..." part which sets the scope, tells you what this is qualifying.

This turns that laundry list (from which you cite the ce one) from "it is always true" (your take) to "typically" and "more or less" and "exceptions to the norm exist" and from "rule" or "script" to "guidelines".


One cannot take the CE list as "it is always true" by unless one simply decides to ignore the qualifiers given above for those very alignment trait lists.

yes, the DnD writers knew how to use english, and thus theu knew that a qualifiying statement specifically referring to a list below it applies to that list, and that means they do not have to repeat that qualifier again and again and again in each element of the list.
Same thing here. The entire list of the nine alignments traits is QUALIFIED by the above passage.

To ignore that statement and try then to treat those nine descitions as unqualified and always true is a misread of the rule, not an expression of it.

 

[fusangite]

Three issues:

1. English

yes, the DnD writers knew how to use english, and thus theu knew that a qualifiying statement specifically referring to a list below it applies to that list, and that means they do not have to repeat that qualifier again and again and again in each element of the list.
Same thing here. The entire list of the nine alignments traits is QUALIFIED by the above passage.

Then why did they use any modal language at all? What was the function of the conditional and modal language they employed? Why were the descriptions not composed exclusively of declarative statements?

2. Predictive function?

Another question for those who are fans of alignment=past actions, do you feel that alignment has any predictive function? If so, how do you balance this predictive function with the unfettered free will of aligned creatures? It seems to me that one of the ways that the alignment mechanic is made operational is that one aspect of its descriptiveness is to predict future actions as well as to quantify past acts.

3. The always descriptor?

Again, a question for those who see alignment as wholly non-proscriptive. If you were running a PC in a planescape game who played an outsider with always in their alignment descriptor, how would you handle this?

 

[fusangite]

Let me try to make clear what is giving me some..well, not problems, but maybe wrong associations...when I read the words "level of operational function", "proscriptive" and "rational player"
When you talk about a "level of operational function", it always makes me think of a level of D&D where only the bare rules as written interact with each other, like some kind of clockwork mechanism, without any room for interpretation. I don't know if that's what you mean, but it's the impression I get.

Well, I am a firm believer that mechanics should help people not hinder them in playing unique, three-dimensional, colourful characters. In my ideal world, you wouldn't need to struggle against the rules to do this. In general, I'm really happy with the way D&D provides structure with flexibility so that the rules mechanics aid you in being creative. So, when I find a part of the rules that don't do that, I speak up about it.

I think if you saw my campaigns, they would disabuse you of any notion that I somehow play out of the book without creativity. The last D&D campaign I ran did not look very much like the kind of game world the PHB expects one to have and yet, aside from placing a couple of classes off-limits to players for technological, cultural and environmental reasons, I did not have to change one single rule or enforce it less rigorously, except for alignment.

One of the great things about D&D is that you can apply the rules to the letter and still produce widely diverse campaigns in very different kinds of settings. So, I don't see a conflict between being rigorous about the rules and being highly creative and flexible -- until it comes to alignment.

Excepting alignment, the rules basically leave no room for interpretation but they don't purport to define things about your setting, its culture, its peoples, its myths, its metaplot, etc.

"Proscriptive" to me simply has the association of, in this case a rule, forcing my character to take certain actions because he fits into this rule...like forcing him to act in a certain way because he has a certain alignment, and not in any other way. That's why I tried to differentiate between "proscriptive" and "descriptive"

Don't misunderstand me. I understand how you are reading the term. Dr. Nuncheon expressed it very well. This is why I distinguished between the level of definition and the level of operation so that we could be clear about the way that proscription is working.

When you mention "rational players", I wonder who that might be.

What I mean is this: a rational player is a player who does not make choices that the rules function to proscribe. He does not cause damage to his character for no possible in-game reward.

So, when I refer to this "rational player" I am referring to an individual who has a bunch of barbarian or paladin levels and chooses to govern his conduct so that he does not lose the advantages of these levels in exchange for no discernable reward.

Of course, an alignment restriction on a character class means the character will lose that class' powers if he acted a certain way...but it doesn't keep the character from doing it anyway? The point with those alignment restricted character classes is that they come with a built-in set of motivational rules that explain what a druid, monk or paladin is, why he's got special powers, and where they come from..and what happens if you break those "behaviour rules".

While it might be true that the letter of a particular paladin code is precisely equal to lawful good conduct, more likely than not, there is no precise equivalency. There will likely be ways the paladin can violate alignment restrictions without violating the code and vice-versa. The same is probably true of most monastic orders. I cannot even fathom how not having "neutral" in one's alignment somehow corresponds to ceasing to venerate nature or its representative deity. Then we come to the barbarian who has no formalized code at all. Also, if alignment is not an additional restriction, why would the authors of D&D be so redundant as to describe a single thing as though it is two separate things?

Hope you don't mind me clarifying why I was trying to make the difference between "proscriptive" and "descriptive". I'm sure it wasn't your intention, but your posts made it kinda sound like you see alignment and characters like robots that are preprogrammed. In fact, it's the respective classes giving a rough preprogramming, in my opinion.

Nope. Operating within defined limits is not the same as acting like an automaton. Let's look at being an Orthodox Jew, for instance: following the Law as outlined in Exodus and Leviticus. No one would argue that by virtue of being an Orthodox Jew one functions like an automaton. One can have very strict proscriptive rules in one's life and still assert a unique identity.

Dunno if you read my example of a chaotic and a lawful group forming up, and how I see the inner workings. I don't know either if you think it a valid example, but in my eyes, both groups sounded pretty efficient to me...

I think you can show situations wherein, in performing some tasks, lawful and chaotic characters are equally efficient. I have never asserted that chaos is a disadvantage in every situation. Just certain important ones.

Rational and efficient are usually also points of view influenced by one's personality, what one views as "rational" and "efficient", right? Try to get into that duke's mind first, taking into account that his personality has caused his alignment to become chaotic evil, and from that point of view, try to see what methods he would think of as "efficient" to achieve his goals...and I'm pretty sure you'll find a few, too.

I did try this of course. I would but they would not objectively be efficient. Essentially, the only way I could do this in the way your suggest is that in order to conform to the description of his alignment, I would have had to have him work in a very inefficient way and delude himself into thinking it was efficient. Basically, I wanted my PCs to have an intelligent worthy adversary who could win the essentially good uninformed people of the city over to his side without using enchantment spells. I wanted to build an NPC who was subtle, duplicitous, scheming, highly effective in building alliances and currying favour. Such an adversary was incompatible with the Chaotic Evil alignment descriptor.

 

[swrushing]

[/QUOTE]

Three issues:
Then why did they use any modal language at all? What was the function of the conditional and modal language they employed? Why were the descriptions not composed exclusively of declarative statements?

the qualifying statement was made once, and specifically stated to apply to the following list. thus they did not need to repeat it every time.

Another question for those who are fans of alignment=past actions, do you feel that alignment has any predictive function? If so, how do you balance this predictive function with the unfettered free will of aligned creatures? It seems to me that one of the ways that the alignment mechanic is made operational is that one aspect of its descriptiveness is to predict future actions as well as to quantify past acts.

No. it has no predictive function for "specific singular events.
Yes, it has predictive functions for broader trands over time.

You can predict that mobs of ogres will tend to fight among themselves, especially when not threatened by outsiders, but you cannot predict that they will do so specifically tomorrow, or the day after, or next tuesday.

worth reminding: guidelines, not scripts.

However, to be precise, these are not "alignment" traits, alignment is not predictive, but rather "the characters' traits". "ogres typically behave such and such" is what makes them predictable in some sense, not "alignment x is such-n-such... makes them predictable"

Repeating, in a general sense, so-n-so is predictable because so-n-so tends to do ABC, and that leads so-n-so to be of a given alignment... TRUE.

Repeating, in a general sense, so-n-so is predictable because so-n-so is alignment X and that leads so-n-so to tend to do ABC. FALSE.

3. The always descriptor?
Again, a question for those who see alignment as wholly non-proscriptive. If you were running a PC in a planescape game who played an outsider with always in their alignment descriptor, how would you handle this?

here you may be simply confused.

the always descriptor is ONLY an indication of how many of a given race are of the alignment. It is not a limit on action..

MM pg 12 under "always even goes do far as to explain "it is possible for individuals to change alignment, butsuch individuals are unique or one in a million exceptions."

so they even leave alignment change as possible for these always guys.

Now, i don't know squat about planescape campaigns and frankly have never had an outsider PC with alignment descriptor, so if this is how far we need to drive things in search of an actual problem, it really doesn't seem like a big problem to me.

However, if i were to allow a outsider PC and the player wanted to switch alignment, i would have little issue IN A VERY GENERAL SENSE (ie assuming it made sense character wise and story wise and wasn't just some cheesy end around) to let him be or become one of those one in a million exceptions.

 

[billd91]

What I mean is this: a rational player is a player who does not make choices that the rules function to proscribe. He does not cause damage to his character for no possible in-game reward.

So, when I refer to this "rational player" I am referring to an individual who has a bunch of barbarian or paladin levels and chooses to govern his conduct so that he does not lose the advantages of these levels in exchange for no discernable reward.

I think your definition of rational player is a bit flawed. A rational player would play a character such that there is discernable reward to the PLAYER and not necessarily to the character. The benefit doesn't have to be in-game at all if the player derives more enjoyment out of playing in that particular way. This may be one of the barriers to you really grokking the descriptive (not proscriptive) alignment argument.

I think you can show situations wherein, in performing some tasks, lawful and chaotic characters are equally efficient. I have never asserted that chaos is a disadvantage in every situation. Just certain important ones.

The same is true for lawful characters, though. While a meritocratic-oriented chaotic group might take longer to find the best leader, the lawful hierarchically-oriented group may have a harder time removing an ineffective leader put there by privilege rather than ability. And both chaotic and lawful government types might have excessive bureaucratic inefficiency, the former because of too many committee meetings and the latter because of too much over-defined specialization and compartmentalized levels of administrative oversight.
It's probably possible to spin just about any situation so that it favors the chaotic over the lawful and vice versa.

I did try this of course. I would but they would not objectively be efficient. Essentially, the only way I could do this in the way your suggest is that in order to conform to the description of his alignment, I would have had to have him work in a very inefficient way and delude himself into thinking it was efficient. Basically, I wanted my PCs to have an intelligent worthy adversary who could win the essentially good uninformed people of the city over to his side without using enchantment spells. I wanted to build an NPC who was subtle, duplicitous, scheming, highly effective in building alliances and currying favour. Such an adversary was incompatible with the Chaotic Evil alignment descriptor.

You should have thought up the description of what the evil noble has done and is like before you picked the alignment and then picked the alignment that best characterized your description. That said, the character you describe could be CE, or any of the evils, though CE isn't the strongest descriptor yet. Now you should ask yourself questions about that character that would narrow down his specific alignment. How does he feel about the current structures of power? Would he keep them with himself at their head or would he plan on a more single, autocratic approach? Or would he be pragmatic about the nitty-gritty and not be predisposed to either approach? Why does he do what he does? Questions like that.
Now, it's possible to pick the alignment first and then generate a description based on the alignment chosen, but as pointed out before, those descriptions in the rules aren't the be-all end-all of how that alignment must be played, just samples.

 

[fusangite]

the qualifying statement was made once, and specifically stated to apply to the following list. thus they did not need to repeat it every time.

So, if everything was modal/conditional in the descriptions anyway, why did they specifically use modal/conditional language 17 times? If they do not need to repeat it, why do they do so 17 times but apply conditional and modal language to only a portion of the total text?

No. it has no predictive function for "specific singular events.
Yes, it has predictive functions for broader trands over time.

I understand that. Every second post you accuse me of asserting that this is about single events and not collections of events. At no time have I ever said that we were talking about isolated events and I have stated on more than 10 occasions that I am specifically not talking about isolated events.

We are talking about behaviour not single actions. Behaviour is the aggregate of individual actions over time. We have all agreed repeatedly that this thread is about behaviour.

Repeating, in a general sense, so-n-so is predictable because so-n-so tends to do ABC, and that leads so-n-so to be of a given alignment... TRUE.

Repeating, in a general sense, so-n-so is predictable because so-n-so is alignment X and that leads so-n-so to tend to do ABC. FALSE.

Again, I'm getting rather cross. We are not arguing about the definition of alignment. We are arguing about its operational function. I do not care about alignment on a definitional level -- I am only interested in how it causes people to operate.

The above statements are not operationally true if you concede, as you just did, that alignment has predictive value. If a monster with a Lawful Evil alignment is in no way predisposed to act in a Lawful Evil way, what you say above is true. But you have just conceded that NPCs with a particular alignment are predisposed to maintain this alignment.

the always descriptor is ONLY an indication of how many of a given race are of the alignment. It is not a limit on action..

MM pg 12 under "always even goes do far as to explain "it is possible for individuals to change alignment, butsuch individuals are unique or one in a million exceptions."

And you're employing this quotation to refute what I am saying? I suppose we could make this thread about one in a million situations but what would be the point?

However, if i were to allow a outsider PC and the player wanted to switch alignment, i would have little issue IN A VERY GENERAL SENSE (ie assuming it made sense character wise and story wise and wasn't just some cheesy end around) to let him be or become one of those one in a million exceptions.

Good. Now we're getting somewhere.

Now we get to the general point I was making. While your theory of alignment only "describing" a PC's past and not acting on the individual's future or restricting their choices does not violate the letter of the rules, I think there are a number of reasons to suspect that this is not the most likely interpretation of the rules. If you work with the alignment mechanic the way I initially read it, it applies in the same way to every creature in the D&D universe. To run the alignment rules the way you suggest, the following things happen at the operational level:
(a) alignment functions to restrict choice for some PCs and not others
(b) alignment functions radically differently for PCs and NPCs in that it is predictive for NPCs but not for PCs
(c) creatures with the always alignment descriptor interact differently with the mechanic from other PCs and NPCs

While your solution buys a lot of free will without violating the letter of the rules, you can see that it is by no means the obvious way to do things, what with the rules never actually saying to run alignment the way you do.