Monster Alignment

[I'm A Banana]

Maybe it's because I hate alignment and ignore it at every oportunity, allowing personalities of all types for everything and look at things in shades of grey, but what do you mean by this?

Making orcs Evil (or ar they Chaotic Evil, no idea, don't really care) isn't my cup of tea, either, but it doesn't make my game play any worse.

One more dragon statblock amongst several thousand statblocks?

Yawn.

One archetype of draconic good and benevolent power for use in my own games, in ways that reflect that archetype?

Yes please.

How is this not the point? We're talking about 10 characters in a stat block, that have no effect on the monster's mechanics or it's description- let alone the description of the NPC you would be creating to use in your game.

It's not the point because the question isn't "How can you make this work?" The question is "Why is it like this in the first place?", and there's a lot of problems with that, which cause a result that doesn't work as well as it could have.

Wizards should have taken the bold way and removed all alignments for game.

At this point, this would be more in-line with how the game has been. When "good" is only reserved for PC's, it looses all meaning and just becomes a way to distinguish (some) PC's from the monsters. It doesn't reflect heroic fantasy if the alignments are only superficial. The way 4e uses alignment is pretty dumb so far. Instead of killing the sacred cow, they just put it in a cage, cut off its legs, stuck a feeding tube in it, and called it a day. Put it out of its misery.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

But I don't want any unaligned metallics in Krynn.

Even the Othlorx metallics?

 

[wingsandsword]

Once, just once I would like someone to tell me why the old fluff was worthwhile beyond "it's the stuff I remember from my childhood".

Okay, here you go.

It's what makes D&D really D&D. It is what makes a game "Dungeons and Dragons" instead of Palladium Fantasy, GURPS Fantasy, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, or any one of dozens of other medieval fantasy RPGs. The mechanics of D&D change over time, but there has been this body of lore and meta-setting information that started in OD&D but really got going in AD&D 1e, and was developed vastly in 2e, and still expanded on in 3e.

There have been some incarnations of D&D that diverged from it, like Basic D&D with it's funky cosmologies, or some side-settings that diverged like the "Green book" historic reference series in 2e or Eberron in 3e, but there was always this constant core of lore and meta-setting information (baseline data settings are presumed to include or build upon unless explicitly stated otherwise), you could deviate from it for one setting or one sourcebook, but it was always there as the default constant. While the mechanics of D&D changed quite a bit, the "old fluff" was pretty constant.

4e tells us that we really weren't having fun with Lawful Good Gold Dragons (apparently it's more fun for them to be True Neutral, er "unaligned" so they can be killed with an easy conscience), the very existence of the alignments Lawful Neutral, Lawful Evil, Chaotic Good, and Chaotic Neutral (guess they were too confusing for some people), magic as we know it, the Forgotten Realms as we knew them, elves as we knew them, angels as we knew them, and that this is now what is D&D.

The game might be fun, it might be well designed, but it just doesn't feel like D&D anymore. That essential spark of continuity and identity has been destroyed. If there is absolutely no continuity in not only the game mechanics from edition to edition, but in the underlying settings then D&D is just a brand that the current owner plasters on a fantasy RPG of choice, and nothing more.

If it didn't have the D&D name on it, it would be unrecognizable alongside its predecessors, about the same as a car company taking a famous sportscar brand, making some new sturdy family sedan with some pseudo-sportscar styling and putting the old nameplate on it. Yeah, sure it says it's the 2009 Tigershark, and it's a very fine vehicle but if it wasn't for the nameplate on it you'd never guess what the name was but might think it was inspired by or copying from the original.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Once, just once I would like someone to tell me why the old fluff was worthwhile beyond "it's the stuff I remember from my childhood".

Twice in this thread already!

Man, there must be some non-nostalgic value somewhere in there.

 

[The_Fan]

With all the stink over unaligned gold dragons, I'm surprised no one has brought up the unaligned couatl. There it's justified that although they are virtuous, they take such an extreme long-term and single-minded view that mere mortals can easily get destroyed by their "greater good." Pretty creepy, that.

Note that there is one Good creature in the MM2, and it's one of the Deva.

 

[M.L. Martin]

You realize you're a one-man band when it comes to this particular issue/problem, right? And that nobody actually considers you a heretic or apostate or similar religious-flavored label? And that people have messed around with this sort of thing with regards to Dragonlance without being half as worried about it?

Cheers,
Cam

You missed the disclaimer, didn't you? Really, I stopped having more than a passing interest in DL years ago. But I still say that in the core W&H novels, most of the characters or institutions that would be "Lawful Good" in 4E terms (as opposed to just "Good') are painted in an unappealing light, in some cases to the point where they're supposedly Lawful Good but look more Evil. But it's really just more evident in DL--I believe it shows up in Greyhawk (Pholtus), the Forgotten Realms, Planescape, and even in Basic's archons. Even Ravenloft has a couple of NPCs who fit the model of "self-righteous, intolerant, persecuting 'Lawful Good'"--it's just that in the Land of Mists, they aren't allowed to claim the alignment outside of their own minds.

I'm open to correction on this point, but it seems that in every D&D setting that tries to elevate Balance or Neutrality, you can find at least some examples of Good being treated just as negatively as Evil, while still being considered objectively 'Good' by the game.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'm open to correction on this point, but it seems that in every D&D setting that tries to elevate Balance or Neutrality, you can find at least some examples of Good being treated just as negatively as Evil, while still being considered objectively 'Good' by the game.

There seemed to me to be a kind of "Law Bad, Chaos Good" thrust during 2e. Even Planescape had reflections of this, and it loved twisting with alignment:

The Harmonium were lawful. They wanted everyone to get along. Of course, they used force, and were painted as thought-police, cruel guardians of the "peace" who really just wanted to tramp out fun. Instead of people who actually wanted to emphasize co-operation.

The Xaositects were chaotic. They wanted to just go with the flow of the moment. Of course, this meant they were funny and amusing and random and cool, they could do some crazy stuff! Instead of dangerous unbalanced psychotics who would flay you alive just as soon as play tic-tac-toe with you.

I think this went kind of along with 2e's praise of elves as more awesome than anything. Not sure if it existed before then, but that's when I started to notice it.

 

[Obryn]

4e tells us that we really weren't having fun with Lawful Good Gold Dragons

Sigh.

I really, really wish this meme would die.

Nobody is saying you are not having fun playing your edition of choice. Nobody. Other people can disagree about what they do or don't find fun.

As soon as I see someone go down this line, I tune them out because I start to doubt they'll have anything productive to say.

-O

 

[Nivenus]

Yeah, I've made that observation too. In 2e-3e there seemed to be an emphasis that chaos was better than law. Witness the fact that many (perhaps most) of the most moralistic and popular heroes of the D&D settings were chaotic good. Lawful seemed to be the lame choice.

And now, in 4e, it's as if it's been completely turned on its head. Much as the developers may deny it, the fact that there are now only two good alignments - "Good" and "Lawful Good," imply that law is better, just as the two evil alignments "Evil" and "Chaotic Evil" imply chaos is worse. This, of course, gets a nice heaping bunch of help from the fact that the gods are supposedly lawful and the primordials supposedly chaotic - and the gods are obviously who were are supposed to be rooting for in the immortal/elemental eternal war.

 

[doctorhook]

Once, just once I would like someone to tell me why the old fluff was worthwhile beyond "it's the stuff I remember from my childhood".

Okay, here you go.

It's what makes D&D really D&D.

Your explanation is already off to a bad start.

It is what makes a game "Dungeons and Dragons" instead of Palladium Fantasy, GURPS Fantasy, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, or any one of dozens of other medieval fantasy RPGs. The mechanics of D&D change over time, but there has been this body of lore and meta-setting information that started in OD&D but really got going in AD&D 1e, and was developed vastly in 2e, and still expanded on in 3e.

There have been some incarnations of D&D that diverged from it, like Basic D&D with it's funky cosmologies, or some side-settings that diverged like the "Green book" historic reference series in 2e or Eberron in 3e, but there was always this constant core of lore and meta-setting information (baseline data settings are presumed to include or build upon unless explicitly stated otherwise), you could deviate from it for one setting or one sourcebook, but it was always there as the default constant. While the mechanics of D&D changed quite a bit, the "old fluff" was pretty constant.

Go on...

4e tells us that we really weren't having fun with Lawful Good Gold Dragons (apparently it's more fun for them to be True Neutral, er "unaligned" so they can be killed with an easy conscience), the very existence of the alignments Lawful Neutral, Lawful Evil, Chaotic Good, and Chaotic Neutral (guess they were too confusing for some people), magic as we know it, the Forgotten Realms as we knew them, elves as we knew them, angels as we knew them, and that this is now what is D&D.

Oh. This is going to be one of those posts.

We're here talking about alignment, and you're complaining about the changes to the Forgotten Realms?

The game might be fun, it might be well designed, but it just doesn't feel like D&D anymore.

This. Is. Profound. I have never heard this sentiment before, but I feel all the wiser for it. That's it, I'm giving up 4E forever! It can't be the correct D&D, because it doesn't feel right!

That essential spark of continuity and identity has been destroyed. If there is absolutely no continuity in not only the game mechanics from edition to edition, but in the underlying settings then D&D is just a brand that the current owner plasters on a fantasy RPG of choice, and nothing more.

If it didn't have the D&D name on it, it would be unrecognizable alongside its predecessors, about the same as a car company taking a famous sportscar brand, making some new sturdy family sedan with some pseudo-sportscar styling and putting the old nameplate on it. Yeah, sure it says it's the 2009 Tigershark, and it's a very fine vehicle but if it wasn't for the nameplate on it you'd never guess what the name was but might think it was inspired by or copying from the original.

Obviously you have no intention of discussing alignment, so I'm going to avoid further trouble and not respond to this flamebait anymore.

Finally, FWIW, you failed in your stated intention: not once in your post did even attempt to explain why the old fluff was worth keeping, barring the response that that's how it always was. Or maybe you think you succeeded, because you never actually mentioned "childhood". Bravo.