D&D General If the Alignment system itself had an Alignment, what Alignment would it be?
- Thread starter Swarmkeeper
- Start date
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Correct answer wasn't listed: Chaotic Evil. So I said Avocado.
Lawful, you say? Then why is it every edition tells us something different, and usually at least somewhat inconsistent, with previous editions? Why does the Book of Exalted Deeds contain totally-not-poisons that are perfectly safe for Good people to use? Why do people repeatedly read direct instructions that alignment isn't supposed to be a straightjacket, and then immediately start applying it as a straightjacket? Why are there 17 outer planes? It's got "rules," sure, but those rules are incredibly arbitrary, enforced haphazardly, and absolutely riddled with dumb exceptions and weird contradictions.
Alignment, as it appears in D&D, is fundamentally insane and often destructive. It doesn't behave with any consistency (despite its many fervent claims to the contrary), except that it consistently messes up things for an awful lot of players. It has directly supported both bad-faith DM arguments and bad-faith player arguments. Would such arguments still happen without it? Some of them, I'm sure, but I don't for a second believe that all of them would have.
Lawful, you say? Then why is it every edition tells us something different, and usually at least somewhat inconsistent, with previous editions? Why does the Book of Exalted Deeds contain totally-not-poisons that are perfectly safe for Good people to use? Why do people repeatedly read direct instructions that alignment isn't supposed to be a straightjacket, and then immediately start applying it as a straightjacket? Why are there 17 outer planes? It's got "rules," sure, but those rules are incredibly arbitrary, enforced haphazardly, and absolutely riddled with dumb exceptions and weird contradictions.
Alignment, as it appears in D&D, is fundamentally insane and often destructive. It doesn't behave with any consistency (despite its many fervent claims to the contrary), except that it consistently messes up things for an awful lot of players. It has directly supported both bad-faith DM arguments and bad-faith player arguments. Would such arguments still happen without it? Some of them, I'm sure, but I don't for a second believe that all of them would have.
Don Durito
Hero
WOTC really ought to release revised core books in either 2023 or 2025.
Just to screw with everyone's expectations.
Just to screw with everyone's expectations.
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EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
QuentinGeorge
Legend
But 2024 is the 40th anniversary of The Forest Oracle, an event that surely needs some sort of commemoration.
QuentinGeorge
Legend
This thread degenerated into an alignment argument on the first page! Is that a record?
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Nah. I've seen them degenerate into alignment arguments in the very first post. Not even the first reply, the first post. Because cognitive dissonance is part and parcel of alignment, it seems!
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Turns out I can't math, because D&D was first published in 1974.
BUT. Here's the funny thing.
50 in base 10 = 42 in base 12. So we can have BOTH a 42₁₂-year anniversary and a 50₁₀-year anninversary on top of The Forest Oracle's 40th. Hooray math! Letting you do silly things since ~3400 BC. (In base 10.
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