D&D 4E No evil gods in 4e?

[Kordeth]

But this:
Lawful Good - Good - Unaligned - Evil - Chaotic Evil
-> ??? I don't get it.

It's not a track, it's a quincunx. Picture Unaligned in the middle--you don't care strongly enough about the ideological concepts of "good" or "evil" to pick a side. That doesn't mean you're neutral or apathetic necessarily, just that you don't care to align yourself with either "faction," if you will.

To the right are two branches: Good and Lawful Good. Both are allied with the ideological concept of "good," but approach it through different avenues. Neither one is "more good" or "less good" than the other, both are equally "good."

To the left are the same two branches leading to Evil and Chaotic Evil. Same definitions as above, just reversed.

Personally, I think the reason people are confused is because of the fact that one branch on each "side" is simply called Good or Evil. The system becomes much easier to grasp if you replace the Good alignment with, say, "Individual Good" and label Individual Good and Lawful Good as the "good" alignments, and, I don't know, "Personal Evil" and Chaotic Evil" as the "evil" alignments.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Personally, I think the reason people are confused is because of the fact that one branch on each "side" is simply called Good or Evil. The system becomes much easier to grasp if you replace the Good alignment with, say, "Individual Good" and label Individual Good and Lawful Good as the "good" alignments, and, I don't know, "Personal Evil" and Chaotic Evil" as the "evil" alignments.

Hmmm.......

So it would be less confusing if you replaced "Good" with "Individual Good"? In my games, we call that "Chaotic Good".

Of course, I'm not sure what "Personal Evil" would mean, but I could easily see "Lawful Evil" opposing "Chaotic Evil".

Of course, then you have some folks say, "What if I am just evil or just good?" In my games, we call that "Neutral Evil" and "Neutral Good".

It seems to me that the option "Good" should correspond to "Neutral Good" and that they have effectively decided that "Neutral Good" and "Chaotic Good" are essentially the same thing. On the other side of the spectrum, it seems that the Powers That Be have also decided that Lawful Evil and Neutral Evil are the same thing. In fact, that's the gist I get from the "what's the difference between NG and CG anyway?" argument.

Wishy. Washy. Alignment. System.



RC

 

[pemerton]

If "Chaos" is assumed to be an aspect of "Evil", and law is presumed to be an aspect of "Good", that pretty much says anyone who opposes the law is evil -- and anyone who upholds it is good.

No. It tells us that there is an interesting subset of the Good who adhere to a code. And that there is an interesting subset of the Evil who are committed to the dissolution of order.

By "interesting", here, I mean "interesting given that we are playing a game in the genre of heroic fantasy".

Well, we haven't seen the new system yet. We only know the alignment descriptor names, not what they stand for.

The "Lawful" in lawful might no longer stand for "Upholding the Laws of the Land", nor is Chaos standing for "Breaking the Laws". Chaotic Evil means you're so frigging evil you want to destroy and break down everything, for your own selfish desires, not caring about the suffering you bring to others.
Lawful Good might mean you are wiling to fight for good and the well-being of every person, willing to institute order and societies to further these goals, possibly at the expense of your own.

Heaven forbid that WoTC might do something rational!

I always thought law/chaos was more interesting than good/evil. A party of mixed lawful and chaotic characters, all good, get into some very fun debates over the proper course of action, and lawful neutral, with its modrons and formians, was a very cool source of foes.

There is no reason to think that disagreements will go away simply because labels do. (Even in a one-party state there are still conservatives and progressives, and they still argue.)

But if the labels do not capture a disagreement that is both clear and interesting by the standards of the genre that is a good reason to purge the labels from the game.

 

[Orius]

However, most of those concerns are bunk. Chaotic things are not anarchists. They are inherently destructive. A person who has an internal code, of any sort, is NOT chaotic. They may care nothing for tradition, or laws, or social mores. But they are not chaotic. Chaotic = Insane.

I have to disagree.

I can see a chaotic person as someone who is always misplacing or losing things. Someone who has no concept of time and is always late. Someone who tends to make a lot of spontaneous decisions and do things on a whim rather than plan ahead. I know plenty of people like that, and frankly they drive me crazy, because I don't like chaos. I don't see any of them plotting to destroy the universe or join weird cults to bizarre gods because they're mad. Nor are they necessarily stupid; they might be quite intelligent, they just have no sense of order.

I don't really like this alignment system at all, and I'll agree with what others have said. But then I never had a problem with the distinctions between chaos, evil, good, and law. If they wanted to emphasize good and evil conflicts, then a good-neutral-evil system would have worked fine. If they wanted to completely rid the game of alignment debates, they should have dropped alignment entirely. This looks like an attempt to simplify the whole alignment debate while trying to appeal to the nostalgia of experienced gamers while doing neither. I don't see this ending alignment debates at all, but just introducing new ones.

I've said it before, the real problem with alignment debates in the past was that DMs used it to stomp on PCs, particularly paladins. This was even more true in the pre-3e days when the paladin was a significantly powerful class "balanced" only by its rarity in rolling scores using 3d6. If the DM felt the paladin was too powerful for the game, he'd throw some half-assed ethical dilemna his way and say, "Ooops, you commited and evil act. Now you're just a fighter." No wonder the system caused so many fights. If WotC wanted to get rid of this, they should have just dumped alignment altogether. That's what so many gaming groups have done in the past, and it apparently worked for them. What's the point of keeping a partial alignment system anyway if the alignment spells and such have been excised?

As for the whole evil gods thing: works for me. They're really a DM tool, and don't need to be in the PHB. I know some will say that it restricts evil PCs and parties, but as I get older, I think I agree more with WotC's and even TSR's view on the matter. I've had evil PCs in my groups before, and they were often trouble. Not all the time, but there were enough cases where the player would use an evil PC to screw around in a way that pissed everyone else off.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I have to disagree.

I can see a chaotic person as someone who is always misplacing or losing things. Someone who has no concept of time and is always late. Someone who tends to make a lot of spontaneous decisions and do things on a whim rather than plan ahead. I know plenty of people like that, and frankly they drive me crazy, because I don't like chaos. I don't see any of them plotting to destroy the universe or join weird cults to bizarre gods because they're mad. Nor are they necessarily stupid; they might be quite intelligent, they just have no sense of order.

This sounds more like a character flaw, then a philosophical alignment.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I have to disagree.

Me too.

IMHO, the difference between Law and Chaos is not the same as that between Good and Evil. Law and Chaos describe philosophies that place either the state or the individual as the primary recipient of rights. In a Lawful society, the individual may be subservient to the needs of family, guild, city-state, what-have-you. In a Chaotic society, existent social instutions exist primarily to give weaker members of society a measure of freedom similar to that held by the stronger members....even if that freedom amounts to nothing more than "Whatever you can take and keep is yours".

RC

 

[Hussar]

RC, I know for a fact that you really enjoy B/E D&D. Do you also consider that to be WWAS? After all, there's no good/evil axis in there at all. Only 3 alignments.

Repeating a question that was lost in the scrum.

I'm curious how this is a much worse alignment system than what came before.

 

[Orius]

This sounds more like a character flaw, then a philosophical alignment.

Hah.

I think another problem with the old alignment system is that too many people viewed each alignment as monolithic, having only a single personality type ever. But alignment isn't exaclty the same thing as personality. I can easy think of three CG characters who are all different. The first is disorganized like I described above. The second has a problem with authority figures, and hates being told what to do. The third is an independant sort who likes having the freedom to do things his own way. I'd consider each character chaotic good, and if they were run by players I wouldn't penalize them because they aren't all aping each other. Ok, granted the personalities are pretty one-dimentional and stereotypical, but that's how alignment is, it's supposed to be used to help establish a personality for the character. It's not there so the DM can tell you, "You can't do that, it's against your alignment," or force a fallen paladin by shoving goblin babies into an adventure or something.

Here's some more of my thoughts on the matter from the last big alignment thread I replied to a few months ago: http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=3971031&postcount=94

Anyway, I think WotC probably should have just scrapped the whole damn thing rather than prune it into this mess. This looks like it can still cause massive rules arguments, or everyone is just going to write Unaligned on their character sheets, in which case WTF is the point of having it at all?

 

[Hussar]

Heh, alignment arguments are fun though.

Orius, really, I think you nail it pretty well. If each alignment can cover such a very broad stretch of concepts and, in addition, many concepts can be described with several alignments, then alignment as a descriptive tool is pretty weak.

I remember a lengthy thread in the General forum dedicated to the alignment of House MD. We saw pretty much everything argued from Lawful Good to Chaotic Neutral and everything in between. And, you can make pretty decent arguments for all of them.

Hopefully with the new alignment system, each alignment will be distinct enough that it should make them a better descriptive term. Whether that happens or not remains to be seen.

 

[VannATLC]

Heh. There's an awesome poster of a guy wearing 'Anti-paladin' armour, which is basically a whole bunch of human babies strapped on.