Morality and D&D?

[Samnell]

Alignment is a big factor in D&D, despite protests from numerous fans. The default setting for 3e (as well as 2e) assumes that good and evil are tangible forces in the world and that the PCs are on the side of good.

In default D&D, it seems to me, there are several assumptions that may not be shared by all players and DMs.

1) Morality is objective. That is to say not just that it's generally agreed-upon, but that certain issues are taken as moral or immoral on a cosmic level. Spells detect people who engage in them regularly differently, for example. We might call good, evil, law, and chaos substances which accrue and leave their marks in places where they oft pass. Magic sees these substances.

2) Morality is absolute. Some things in D&D are clearly meant to be, at least in the default setting, always wrong. Casting [evil] spells is an obvious and non-controversial example of something the rules perceive as wrong. Likewise, a [good] spell is always good.

DMs and players who disagree with one or both of these, for whatever reasons that are probably not ok to discuss due to rules about politics and religion, are going to have issues with alignment as presented in default D&D.

Related are some gameplay issues.

1) The alignments are not clearly enough defined. Even the description of Good in the Book of Exalted Deeds seemed rather vague.

2) Alignments are presented as binary. Most people seem to reject this implicitly and think in terms of chaotic neutral with evil tendencies or whatever, but per the rules you're either chaotic neutral or your not.

3) The game does not model well any way to talk about how someone is just barely good, or more lawful than another lawful person, unless you're an outsider or deity.

4) Many people seem to perceive alignments as permanent and absolute proscriptions for character behavior. That is to say, your alignment does not describe your average behavior over time but rather the whole body of your behavior. If you falter once, you aren't "really" that alignment. This is especially hard on paladins.

I don't feel very strongly at all about alignment and am at best luke-warm to the assumptions embedded therein, so I tend to downplay it in my games.

 

[Wombat]

My group threw out alignment a long time ago.

The problem with alignment for us was that it is used both as Variable Guidelines and Absolute Rules in D&D -- variable for players (and the occassional monster), absolute for spells and most monsters.

Take Detect Evil, for example -- what does this detect? Does it detect a recently heinous act? Does it detect a general disposition towards evil (or naughtiness)? Does it detect people, creatures, items that have utterly aligned themselves with Evil? If cast on a character labelled as Chaotic Evil whose most recent act was one of charity, would the character register? Does it detect all orcs? What if one orc in a group is actually Neutral Good -- does he register with the group or not register because of individual inclinations?

Alignment is an odd form of shorthand in the game, but satisfies neither on the absolutist end nor on the generalized/variable end for my group's tastes. We dropped it and never looked back.

 

[hong]

In default D&D, it seems to me, there are several assumptions that may not be shared by all players and DMs.

1) Morality is objective. That is to say not just that it's generally agreed-upon, but that certain issues are taken as moral or immoral on a cosmic level. Spells detect people who engage in them regularly differently, for example. We might call good, evil, law, and chaos substances which accrue and leave their marks in places where they oft pass. Magic sees these substances.

2) Morality is absolute. Some things in D&D are clearly meant to be, at least in the default setting, always wrong. Casting [evil] spells is an obvious and non-controversial example of something the rules perceive as wrong. Likewise, a [good] spell is always good.

DMs and players who disagree with one or both of these, for whatever reasons that are probably not ok to discuss due to rules about politics and religion, are going to have issues with alignment as presented in default D&D.

I don't think the absoluteness or objectivity is the issue. It's more that if the people in the group disagree on _which_ beliefs and behaviours are absolutely and objectively good or evil, then there's trouble. The paladin's player reckons killing the orc babies is good because it saves (human) lives in the future, but the DM reckons it's evil because, heck, they're babies. That sort of thing.

I, of course, circumvent this issue by banning orc babies.

 

[hong]

And you can't really solve this problem with a more detailed description of what's good and evil, given that such issues are among those most likely to strike close to people's personal beliefs about ethical questions. "What, the game says that killing orc babies is evil? That's a shortsighted pile of !" says the paladin's player. Or, "The game says that killing orc babies is good? I'm not playing a game that says it's good to be a murderer!" says the DM. Etcetera.

I circumvent this issue by banning paladins.