Celebrim
Legend
...which demonstrates just how useless this is as an aid to roleplaying.
We're getting to the point of unsupported aphorisms offered as rebuttals, so I think I'll just have to agree to disagree.
...which demonstrates just how useless this is as an aid to roleplaying.
Nothing could be further from the truth. People dislike alignment because it is a simplistic and incoherent mess of morals/personality system that is hindrance to actually developing nuanced characters with interesting and conflicting motivations.
The thing is, the difference between a debate and an argument is that in a debate you are listening to each other and trying to respond, whereas in an argument you just repeat the same things over and over with no attempt address the arguments the other side has made or to prove and demonstrate your own. Debates are interesting and nuanced, and arguments become nothing but contradiction until they look like that skit where Bugs and Daffy argue over what season it is.
By this point in the thread, I've addressed almost every word in that simple unsupported contradiction. My lengthy arguments that the alignment system is not a personality system,
not a hinderance to nuanced characters with conflicting motivations, not incoherent, and not simplistic could be wrong but they are at least arguments. If you respond to me without any attempt to demonstrate why those arguments were wrong and just keep verbally stamping your foot over and over that you are right, well there isn't anything profitable left for us to say to each other. It's just really hard for me to take seriously the opinions of someone on the alignment system if they understand the system so poorly that they think it's a personality system. So yeah, if you want to write something that takes some effort on your part that either develops an argument against what I've written or else develops an argument of your own, then great. But otherwise, I probably won't respond further.
I am on the same side as you are. But you should stop trying to explain how good alignments are simply because of the following.The thing is, the difference between a debate and an argument is that in a debate you are listening to each other and trying to respond, whereas in an argument you just repeat the same things over and over with no attempt address the arguments the other side has made or to prove and demonstrate your own. Debates are interesting and nuanced, and arguments become nothing but contradiction until they look like that skit where Bugs and Daffy argue over what season it is.
By this point in the thread, I've addressed almost every word in that simple unsupported contradiction. My lengthy arguments that the alignment system is not a personality system, not a hinderance to nuanced characters with conflicting motivations, not incoherent, and not simplistic could be wrong but they are at least arguments. If you respond to me without any attempt to demonstrate why those arguments were wrong and just keep verbally stamping your foot over and over that you are right, well there isn't anything profitable left for us to say to each other. It's just really hard for me to take seriously the opinions of someone on the alignment system if they understand the system so poorly that they think it's a personality system. So yeah, if you want to write something that takes some effort on your part that either develops an argument against what I've written or else develops an argument of your own, then great. But otherwise, I probably won't respond further.
No, remove the word player and put group or table and there you have much better premise to work with.Yet the game has presented it as such. For example the third editions says:
Law implies honor, trustworthiness, obedience to authority, and reliability. On the downside, lawfulness can include closed-mindedness, reactionary adherence to tradition, judgmentalness, and a lack of adaptability.
Chaos implies freedom, adaptability, and flexibility. On the downside, chaos can include recklessness, resentment toward legitimate authority, arbitrary actions, and irresponsibility.
These are personality traits.
You're one of those people who have presumably over along time developed an internal mental model of the alignment that makes sense for you, and are thus attributing your personal rationalisations to the system, even though they're not actually present in it. We always see several such rationalisations in any alignment thread, a lot of people have them, and they often are different. That's because they're just a result of a Rorschach tests, people trying to see some sense and order in something that ultimately is just ill-though labelling of wargame factions that doesn't actually tell us anything useful.
If alignment actually conveyed information sensibly, people wouldn't constantly disagree about what it means. And this is just symptom of it's incoherence and failed attempts to naively simplify very complex matters. Is a reckless but honourable vigilante who breaks laws but has a personal code lawful or chaotic? No one knows, people won't agree, and any answer would be just misleading and result downplaying some of the nuances of the character. And of course the answer is completely unnecessary! We already knew what the person was like, we didn't need the alignment to tell us that.
As for your claims that it doesn't stymie moral conflict, that seemed to rely on weird "Good" is not good, interpretation, at which point I must ask why id we need to define "Good" in the first place? I literally do not understand what is gained by thinking in such simplistic terms, defining what's objectively good and what's objectively evil. Those are questions the players should be free to explore themselves, and come up with their own answers, "it's complicated" being a perfectly valid one.
Why? Why we need it in the first place? What does it matter if the players or the characters disagree? If we don't have the bizarre system that requires objective good and evil to be defined, such consensus is not necessary.No, remove the word player and put group or table and there you have much better premise to work with.
Yes, this means that the system will be a bit different from.one table/group to the other and even from campaign to campaign but that is exactly what makes it so great. The system is easy to bend, ply and adapt to each table/group.
The only weakness of the system is exactly this, it should be stated that the limits accepted by each tables/groups should be discussed at session zero or with any new players.
Do you have houserules? I knew it. So consider this a simple house rule.Why? Why we need it in the first place? What does it matter if the players or the characters disagree? If we don't have the bizarre system that requires objective good and evil to be defined, such consensus is not necessary.
I feel that some here have had bad experiences with the alignment systems because of either abusive DMs or the fact that the system is relatively vague and leads to confusion when no care is taken to put people on the same page.
So here, in this thread, it appears that we are simply talking with people that have been burned once too many times.
I have followed you argumentation very closely and I agree with everything you brought on the board.You are definitely right about all of that.
You are probably right about that too.
But the thought is not novel to you. I have had very much the same suspicion for pages now. Which is one of the reasons earlier in the thread I suggested that people instead of focusing on "Alignment is awful." express personal experiences of how they felt the alignment system had gone bad for them and steer the discussion toward "How do you avoid table problems with alignment." The problem with "Alignment is awful" or "Alignment is good" (to be fair) is that it's going to run head long into personal experience and ultimately as you note you are going to try to end up arguing that the personal experience people have had isn't the experience that they had. Those sort of arguments go nowhere regardless of the subject.