Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Samnell" data-source="post: 3746218" data-attributes="member: 130">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.</blockquote>

Verification