"Narrativist" 9-point alignment

[Umbran]

I see pemerton has responded to something I wrote, despite having blocked him.

You seem to have fundamentally misunderstood the purpose and function of the EN World Ignore List.

You do not "block him", in anything like the senses seen in some social media sites. All the Ignore List does is make it so you don't see his posts. It puts no control on him whatsoever.

The intent of the function is to help you enforce a measure of self-control on yourself. If you find another poster aggravates you such that you engage in ways that you don't want, or that you run afoul of the mods, the function will remove their posts from your sight, and may help you avoid entering the conversation.

As a largely open forum, EN World does *not* support users telling other users where or what they may post. We give you tools that may help you control yourself, but not to control others.

So, officially - you are now asked to stop trying to tell pemberton (or anyone else) what he may or may not respond to. You posted to an open forum - *anyone* can respond to you. If that's not sufficient for you, I fear you will have to look to other forums to get the level of control you desire.

If anyone has questions or comments about this, please take it to e-mail or Private Message with a moderator or administrator. This discussion is not to be further derailed on this matter. Thanks, all!

 

[Manbearcat]

This seems right. Though "focused/pith" vs "broad/nebulous" I think can be a spectrum rather than a sharp contrast. (Especially when one considers not just the words used but the way the player actually approaches play over the course of a campaign.)

I see this as reinforcing the issue of ambiguity being about spectrum rather than sharp contrast. Playing through the local phase of the campaign gives the players a chance to focus/fine tune via play even if the descriptive language chosen is a bit amorphous.

So, to actualize it, what would you consider to be a quality set of descriptors for PCs?

Going to try my hand at a post with a little more meat here and answer AA's question (and further/clarify our conversation pemerton).

So Cortex +'s Smallville has always felt very much an evolution of Vincent Baker's Dogs in the Vineyard. There is a mechanical evolution there as both are "Dramatic Roleplaying Game Systems" and they have some overlap in thematic portfolio; exploration of the Values of Duty, Justice, Power, and Truth. The setting/backdrop is obviously enormously different and while the other two Values that Smallville explores (Glory and Love) can find their way into Dogs, they aren't inherent.

So then, onto Cortex Plus Hacker's Guide of DRPGs (p12, 157-160).

A game needs 6 Values that the players buy into universally. These are the settings "big ideals". Each PC has a die rating associated with each Value (1 @ d4, 2 @ d6, 2 @ d8, 1 @ d10). This die rating indicates the relative importance and prioritization of this Valuein the PC's ethos. Then you create a statement that reflects/explains the character's feelings about that Value. These statements will subtly change through the course of play and their die rating will change with them (stepped up or back). They need to be emotionally provocative and neither absolute or generic; eg d10 Duty My country comes before my king and his God. You use your Value dice when its statement is relevant to that action you're undertaking.

So my guess is that the Chaos vs Lawful game pemerton is going for would feature something like:


* Authority - about bringing down the establishment or bringing order to chaos.

* Community - about bringing people together, tearing them apart, or protecting what you've got against those would would undo it.

* Duty - about regiment, direct consequences, where failure means innocent people get hurt, and examining the need of personal freedom.

* Individuality - about rebellion and revolution, resisting control, sacrifice of the common weal for self-actualization.

* Justice - about balancing the scales no matter how grim/harsh the effort is to get there.

* Power - about where power comes from, about the underdog triumphing, or exerting control when necessary.


So take that Paladin in that example (with the Elf and the Ranger above). He might be something like:

d10 Authority The long arm of God's law connects to my torso.
d8 Duty My country comes before my king and his court.
d8 Justice No man, big or small, is beyond the chopping block.
d6 Power A lamed dog that's cornered will maul a healthy one twice his size.
d6 Community My men all have families that deserve to see them again.
d4 Individuality I love the look on a huckster's face when I lock him up.

We getting there, running in place, or are we further apart? Thoughts, etc?

 

[spinozajack]

Alignment is completely irrelevant in 5th edition anyway. Arguing about it is completely pointless, there isn't a single rule that uses it. I'll avoid such threads in the future.

I do think the ignore feature on Enworld is broken given that you still get notifications from ignored persons. That does not conform to the expectation as to what an "ignore" feature should do, to any reasonable degree. I do apologize to pemerton for posting in "his" thread and then lambasting him for responding to something I wrote. Still think it's absurd why anyone would do that, but whatever.

@Morrus, how about it, can you talk to your web scripters to filter out activity, mentions, quotes, from those on your ignore list so that is actually works properly? That's a bug.

A two-way ignore feature would be far better. It's the norm on virtually all social media, as Umbran correctly mentions. Why should Enworld be any different? On virtually every single other media, aside from D&D websites apparently, it is the norm that when you block someone they can no longer see what you write either. That is a proper ignore feature. I don't want to control anyone, I just want to choose who I converse with. That is my prerogative. A two-sided ignore would prevent many arguments. One wonders why D&D sites are so anti "two way ignore". It solves many problems. Many people on this site mention having blocked other users, it cannot be considered an insult only when I do it. I can name at least three other times in recent memory where I've seen people state they are adding or removing someone from a block. Seems to be accepted behavior here. I expect to be treated like anyone else. If someone says they ignore me, good, I'm happy for them. It's probably mutual anyway. One-sided ignore simply does not work, it's just the equivalent of blocking your ears when someone's talking to you, or putting a one way mirror with yourself in the interrogation room. The ignoree has full sight to keep the debate going.

 

[Umbran]

However, suppose the PC is a champion of a 'new order' which has overthrown this 'Lawful Evil' regime. Can he justify, to the population, his actions? Can he convince the people he wants to submit to the legitimacy of the new rulers that they ARE legitimate?

What has that got to do with nine-point alignment?

Take the words Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos out for a moment - your questions are still the same, which is an indication that the question of justifying to a people really isn't an alignment question at all.

And honestly, before you even bother trying to work alignment into such a question, you ought to worry about how much a new ruler has to care about justifying anything to people in a pseudo-feudal society before the printing press. This has less to do with alignment than it does sociology and practical politics.

 

[Umbran]

Alignment as a descriptor (whether for persons or societies) creates the same problem. If both LG and CG people truly exist at the level of description - ie both sorts of people are genuine affirmers or creators of wellbeing, because both genuinely good - then where is the moral conflict between LG and CG? Again, this sort of starting point tells us that both law and chaos can contribute to wellbeing.

As I noted upthread, we may not consider there to be a "moral" conflict. We can consider morals to be on the Good/Evil axis, and therefore orthogonal to Law and Chaos. The question is, then, how we make a non-moral conflict *interesting*.

But, hoenstly, we don't have to go there. I refer you to any (probably every) mundane television medical, legal, or police procedural series. Lawyers, police, and doctors in the real world are supposed to hold to strict ethical guidelines on very solid moral grounds. But, those same ethical rules occasionally mean individuals come to harm. And there, in simple, comes the question. It is the question between Kirk and Spock in Star Trek movies - Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one? That, in a nutshell, is the Law/Chaos question - what *is* wellbeing, and when, if ever, can the one be more important than the many?

But, I will also note a major issue of assuming the conclusion - you are speaking from the point of view that morality is based upon the "wellbeing" of people in life. Need I mention that for some real-world religions and philosophies, this is *not* the major question? I mean, for humans, real life is a mere century. If you have an afterlife for an eternity, or a scheme of reincarnation to higher states, you may have larger concerns than current wellbeing, or the very idea of "wellbeing" may not be so clear-cut, which then can then become rather more interesting as moral quandaries.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Going to try my hand at a post with a little more meat here and answer AA's question (and further/clarify our conversation pemerton).

So Cortex +'s Smallville has always felt very much an evolution of Vincent Baker's Dogs in the Vineyard. There is a mechanical evolution there as both are "Dramatic Roleplaying Game Systems" and they have some overlap in thematic portfolio; exploration of the Values of Duty, Justice, Power, and Truth. The setting/backdrop is obviously enormously different and while the other two Values that Smallville explores (Glory and Love) can find their way into Dogs, they aren't inherent.

So then, onto Cortex Plus Hacker's Guide of DRPGs (p12, 157-160).

A game needs 6 Values that the players buy into universally. These are the settings "big ideals". Each PC has a die rating associated with each Value (1 @ d4, 2 @ d6, 2 @ d8, 1 @ d10). This die rating indicates the relative importance and prioritization of this Valuein the PC's ethos. Then you create a statement that reflects/explains the character's feelings about that Value. These statements will subtly change through the course of play and their die rating will change with them (stepped up or back). They need to be emotionally provocative and neither absolute or generic; eg d10 Duty My country comes before my king and his God. You use your Value dice when its statement is relevant to that action you're undertaking.

So my guess is that the Chaos vs Lawful game pemerton is going for would feature something like:


* Authority - about bringing down the establishment or bringing order to chaos.

* Community - about bringing people together, tearing them apart, or protecting what you've got against those would would undo it.

* Duty - about regiment, direct consequences, where failure means innocent people get hurt, and examining the need of personal freedom.

* Individuality - about rebellion and revolution, resisting control, sacrifice of the common weal for self-actualization.

* Justice - about balancing the scales no matter how grim/harsh the effort is to get there.

* Power - about where power comes from, about the underdog triumphing, or exerting control when necessary.


So take that Paladin in that example (with the Elf and the Ranger above). He might be something like:

d10 Authority The long arm of God's law connects to my torso.
d8 Duty My country comes before my king and his court.
d8 Justice No man, big or small, is beyond the chopping block.
d6 Power A lamed dog that's cornered will maul a healthy one twice his size.
d6 Community My men all have families that deserve to see them again.
d4 Individuality I love the look on a huckster's face when I lock him up.

We getting there, running in place, or are we further apart? Thoughts, etc?

Hmmmm, interesting. I'm just trying to think what would be a way to work out a similar mechanic to map to basically that conceptual space in a D&D-like fashion. I've been really hacking on 4e lately, so my current iteration actually looks a LOT different from vanilla 4e (I wouldn't really even call it 4e anymore). I'm resurrecting an old idea me and another GM worked on a while back that was intended to raise some of the same questions Pemerton has raised, but given that I don't have 9 point alignment I've been fishing for a way to actualize the nature of the conflict.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

What has that got to do with nine-point alignment?

Take the words Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos out for a moment - your questions are still the same, which is an indication that the question of justifying to a people really isn't an alignment question at all.

And honestly, before you even bother trying to work alignment into such a question, you ought to worry about how much a new ruler has to care about justifying anything to people in a pseudo-feudal society before the printing press. This has less to do with alignment than it does sociology and practical politics.

Well, you may not have to justify yourself to the general public (a bunch of serfs) but nobody rules France without having at least a fair amount of support from the church, nobility, towns, etc. So yes, its politics, you could cast the thing in terms of other spheres of course, it was just one suggestion. Now, if the opinions of the various factions are established, then you can make it a political struggle cast in terms of moral and ethical issues. Its not an uncommon theme in history, and in a world where alignment is assumed to be a recognized and significant thing, I'd presume it would have even more weight.

But, I will also note a major issue of assuming the conclusion - you are speaking from the point of view that morality is based upon the "wellbeing" of people in life. Need I mention that for some real-world religions and philosophies, this is *not* the major question? I mean, for humans, real life is a mere century. If you have an afterlife for an eternity, or a scheme of reincarnation to higher states, you may have larger concerns than current wellbeing, or the very idea of "wellbeing" may not be so clear-cut, which then can then become rather more interesting as moral quandaries.

Yeah, that's a quite good point. Even in the real world there ARE different moral systems. The Chinese have very different ideas about things for example.

 

[Umbran]

Now, if the opinions of the various factions are established, then you can make it a political struggle cast in terms of moral and ethical issues. Its not an uncommon theme in history, and in a world where alignment is assumed to be a recognized and significant thing, I'd presume it would have even more weight.

It is not an uncommon theme in history for politics to be presented as moral and ethical issues. But how often is is really about morals and ethics, and how often is is about the socio-economics, rationalized as morals and ethics because it is easier to get people riled up about morals than about how much money a bigwig is going to get under the various possible regimes?

 

[pemerton]

A game needs 6 Values that the players buy into universally. These are the settings "big ideals". Each PC has a die rating associated with each Value (1 @ d4, 2 @ d6, 2 @ d8, 1 @ d10).

<snip>

So my guess is that the Chaos vs Lawful game pemerton is going for would feature something like:


* Authority - about bringing down the establishment or bringing order to chaos.

* Community - about bringing people together, tearing them apart, or protecting what you've got against those would would undo it.

* Duty - about regiment, direct consequences, where failure means innocent people get hurt, and examining the need of personal freedom.

* Individuality - about rebellion and revolution, resisting control, sacrifice of the common weal for self-actualization.

* Justice - about balancing the scales no matter how grim/harsh the effort is to get there.

* Power - about where power comes from, about the underdog triumphing, or exerting control when necessary.


So take that Paladin in that example (with the Elf and the Ranger above). He might be something like:

d10 Authority The long arm of God's law connects to my torso.
d8 Duty My country comes before my king and his court.
d8 Justice No man, big or small, is beyond the chopping block.
d6 Power A lamed dog that's cornered will maul a healthy one twice his size.
d6 Community My men all have families that deserve to see them again.
d4 Individuality I love the look on a huckster's face when I lock him up.

We getting there, running in place, or are we further apart? Thoughts, etc?

You Forge-y types, always mixing your mechanical chocolate with my vanilla narrativism! (Or is it peanut butter? - I get confused.)

I think that 6 might be a bit too many - in my (admittedly brief) experience GMing MHRP the 3 descriptors seemed about right; and Burning Wheel uses three beliefs (but also has traits and instincts filling something like the sam space).

In the Law/Chaos game, I would drop power and justice, leaving Authority (which can include tradition), Community (which can also include tradition, as well as family, friends, voluntary associations, etc), Duty and Freedom. I guess, then, at d10, d8, d6 and d4.

The paladin would have to be slightly amended:

* Authority d10 (The long arm of God's law reaches from my torso to every person, big or small);
* Duty d8 (My country comes before my king and his court);
* Community d6 (My men all have families that deserve to see them again);
* Freedom d4 (Even when I have them cornered, some fools keep on resisting).​

But I'm not sure how this would work in D&D, which doesn't have a Cortex-style dice pool. Maybe these could be used for 5-style inspiration triggers? Perhaps combined with Eberron-style action points - so the die can be used as a bonus on the d20 roll for the action declaration that engages/expresses the descriptor.

Thinking about the mechanics is now making me want to swap around my paladin: the Freedom should be d6 and Community d4.

 

[pemerton]

I will also note a major issue of assuming the conclusion - you are speaking from the point of view that morality is based upon the "wellbeing" of people in life. Need I mention that for some real-world religions and philosophies, this is *not* the major question?

Sure, but I'm working within the framework I set out in the OP, derived from Gygax's PHB and DMG. Those texts certainly do present goodness as a matter of wellbeing.

I refer you to any (probably every) mundane television medical, legal, or police procedural series. Lawyers, police, and doctors in the real world are supposed to hold to strict ethical guidelines on very solid moral grounds. But, those same ethical rules occasionally mean individuals come to harm. And there, in simple, comes the question. It is the question between Kirk and Spock in Star Trek movies - Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one? That, in a nutshell, is the Law/Chaos question - what *is* wellbeing, and when, if ever, can the one be more important than the many?

But what's up for grabs in these scenarios is whether choice A or choice B is conducive to the good. Whereas, if we start with a set-up which already assumes that both LG and CG are not only possible but actual states of affairs, we already know the answer: both A and B can be conducive to the good.

For instance, in Planescape it's just silly for a paladin to look at Olympus and complain about it on any sort of moral or ethical grounds, as Olympus fully realises the good just as much as the Seven Heavens do. Whereas, in the setup in my OP, I'm trying to make the whole focus be the viability of either plane - the LG think that individualism is not compatible with realising wellbeing, while the CG think it is essential. They can't both be right. (Or, at least, we can't assume from the get-go that both might be right.)