D&D 5E RIP alignment

[loverdrive]

On the topic of racism, I'm gonna try to kiss myself again.

Here's an excerpt from the GMing section of a system I'm working on:

"Of course, humans, the descendants of the First Men are special, but the Sun above unites all people against the Beast, horrible spawns of the Dark."

It’s a crapsack world, and the religion (at least, the only one you’re allowed to profess) openly plays favourites, so, of course there’s racism. But keep it tame.

“No dogs and greenskins” sign in all and every bar is cartoonish, boring and wears thin after five minutes. “Oh, that’s an elf, let’s burn him alive!” is stupid and the person playing an elf would be officially allowed to punch you in the face and kick you on the ground until your legs don’t work.

This is some deep naughty word, and all deep naughty word is more nuanced than cartoonish stereotypes. You don’t have to make everyone violent psychos to drive the point home. Make them patronizing, pitiful or suspicious. Then, from time to time pull out your aunt who posts naughty word on Facebook.

Your goal isn’t to make the PCs suffer for no reason, your job is to test their faith. Make them doubt the priests. Make them doubt themselves. Make them doubt the Sun.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

For what it's worth, I tend to put races in D&D into three camps, the common races (your PHB races), the rare races (those from supplements that aren't common but aren't evil) and the monstrous races (which are common, but due to thier nature were antagonistic).

Imagine for a moment that a group of adventurers an elf, a goliath, and an orc entered a podunk town in Faerun. Most of the locals know what an elf is; they're typically considered peaceful if not a little strange but generally dismissed as a threat unless they start causing problems. The goliath is strange; not many people have seen one or they might have heard stories about one, but not a whole lot is known about them. They are viewed with a little suspcion but given the benefit out the doubt. The orc though has a reputation that precedes him, and most people will react fearfully. He will have to do a lot to earn thier trust.

When I say "as common as", I mean the assumption will be that all three races now upon entering podunk will be given the same welcome. There won't be any reason to assume a goliath, an orc, or an elf are anything but normal adventurers and treating them with difference is frowned upon. The orc will have no stygma of violence to contend with, the goliath no aura of exoticism, the elf no common familiarity. All will be treated the same.

On the surface, perhaps. Dig deeper, though.

For example, compare a D&D species that averages 50lbs weight and tops out under 4’ in height or so to one that 8x more massive and roughly twice as tall. Personally, it bugs me that the latter wouldn’t be much stronger on average than the former.

That is a MUCH bigger difference than the differences due to sexual dimorphism present in pretty much any D&D species in any edition. (If D&D had a sentient species in which the genders were radically different- like ceratioid anglerfish or female Kzinti- there might be a point in gender-based stat mods for it. But you look at documented human history of athletics- even though we see differences, we ALSO see women today matching male performances of just a couple decades ago.

You don’t see 12 year olds anywhere near the powerlifting benchmarks of the 1990s.

Go through the other stats: a race described as being more dexterous, charismatic, intelligent, or durable than others should have that description modeled in its mechanics or those words have lost any meaning. It’s wasted ink and should be tossed along with the absent modifiers.

Also note that there’s a difference between stat limits (which used to be in the game) for gender and race and stat modifiers. The former is a floor or cap, the latter is not. A limit might prevent someone from playing concept X. A modifier is not likely to.

While these statements are unrelated, I think they both relate to the stylistic shift that @Remathilis described.

Namely, that the same camp that is interested in exploring personal struggles and internal relationships also largely don't care about verisimilitude, instead going for Rule of Cool/Drama/Funny. Sometimes in a mythic style, other times whimsical or farcical instead.

Or more pointedly, "verisimilitude is for dorks" - Nick Butler, creator of Tidebreaker.

Ask them (me) why a kobold can lift as much and hit as hard as a minotaur, and the answer will be "because it makes a good story" or "because it's hilarious". The narrativist shift in the newest generation of D&D play culture (no doubt perpetuated by the boom in streamed APs) means that a lot of players are apathetic (or even hostile) to the old school "realism" that some people in this thread have argued for, even before the discussion gets entangled in the metatextual analysis that drags D&D into the discourse of antiracism and postcolonialism.

 

[Remathilis]

It's more like racism helper. It adds moral justification and systematic endorsement of it to the game.

You can murder all the orcs you want because they are bad people and evil is in their nature, says the game with the help of alignment.

And blowing up the Death Star killed millions of hard-working government employees in an action akin to insurrectionist terrorism. You can use all sorts of framing devices to justify your POV, alignment was just a simple one.

 

[darjr]

Namely, that the same camp that is interested in exploring personal struggles and internal relationships also largely don't care about verisimilitude, instead going for Rule of Cool/Drama/Funny. Sometimes in a mythic style, other times whimsical or farcical instead.

eh, I think you'll find them all over the place. Me being one counter example. I don't think this navel gazing will prove out to be generally true.

Or more pointedly, "verisimilitude is for dorks" - Nick Butler, creator of Tidebreaker.

who?

 

[overgeeked]

And blowing up the Death Star killed millions of hard-working government employees in an action akin to insurrectionist terrorism. You can use all sorts of framing devices to justify your POV, alignment was just a simple one.

Well, according to George Lucas, the Empire was based on the US and the rebels were based on the Vietcong. Makes for some interesting implications.

 

[Oofta]

On the topic of racism, I'm gonna try to kiss myself again.

Here's an excerpt from the GMing section of a system I'm working on:

First, I'm not sure what that has to do with the current discussion one way or another. Second, what you describe is a very specific campaign.

Last, and not least, what you describe is a very narrow goal and approach to achieving that goal. I do not give a flying squirrel's furry butt about deep philosophical questions when I'm running my game unless the players seem to want it. In my current campaign I'm setting up a moral dilemma for one of my players because I know they'll enjoy it. But others would not so I'm not going to force my preference on them. For most of my players? It's funtime escape from reality and that's fine.

In the same way, I'm not forcing my attitudes on alignment on anyone else nor would I want to. Don't find alignment useful? Ignore it and nothing about the game will change other than that you will throw away something that can be a useful tool. Just because an impact driver works better than my electric drill for screwing together boards it doesn't mean that I have to have an impact driver.

 

[tetrasodium]

Well, imagine, you're sipping beer, reading an adventure module and prepping notes. There, this guy is mentioned in passing, like "Inside a tavern is only one person, Aqarys Baltabay, (LN human)". Cool, now you need to stop for a moment and think "who the hell is this guy?". You continue to read: "Few moments after the PCs buy their drinks, a group of bandits from the Fiends gang barges in, being rude and naughty word".

"Ok, now how that Aqarys guy is gonna react", -- you think. The answer is, I don't have a clue, figure it out. Put work into it.

Now, imagine the same guy being introduced as Aqarys Batlabay (human, law-abiding, "please, leave me alone"). Or Aqarys Baltabay (human, good cop, no-nonsense attitude). Now you don't have to put any work, you pretty much have all the answers.


Now let's flip a couple of pages back and talk about scale broader than one guy.

"There is a bitter rivalry between the Southern Circle gang (mostly humans, CE) and the Red Tigers gang (mostly humans, CE)". The only possible reaction is "WTF, it should be explained later". And then it isn't. "What a moron wrote this", -- you'd think and I'd agree.

Now, in alternate reality version of this adventure it instead starts as "There is a bitter rivalry between the Fiends gang (mostly humans, drug-crazed, violent, numerous) and the Red Tigers gang (mostly humans, disowned war criminals, sadists, close-knit)". Even if the moron who wrote it never elaborates further, it's still something substantial to work with.


Like, yeah, alignments are shorthand, but they are very, hm, lossy shorthand -- one that blurs too much details, and, more importantly -- fail to highlight what's important and what's not. The fact that gnolls live in close-knit packs and value their bloodkin is at least as important as the fact that they kill and enslave people with zero remorse. And then there are different shades of evil and different shades of chaos....

Well obviously the problem is that you didn't know to jump from page 42 act1 scene1 to page 187 & 235 where a writeup for bubba mclain & the local brewery has an offhand three word side note tucked in about each of those for you to pull together

Really? I expect a Planescape product within the next year and a half, given all the Sigil bits they keep dropping in books.

I expect they will, but planescape does not have a good history of respecting the differing baselines & lore of other settings within those settings so I kinda dread it too but can remain hopeful that wotc can manage to dialback the planescape clobbers all.

 

[Maxperson]

Well, according to George Lucas, the Empire was based on the US and the rebels were based on the Vietcong. Makes for some interesting implications.

Lucas likes to retcon things. I don't take much of what he says at face value.

 

[overgeeked]

Lucas likes to retcon things. I don't take much of what he says at face value.

He’s been saying it since early versions of the Star Wars script in 1973.

 

[MGibster]

Maybe we should be pondering that. They're people, not mindless robots. Even actual droids aren't mindless robots.

Sure. I don't know if D&D is the best venue to ponder such questions though. I'm in for a game of relatively lighthearted fun not a serious examination of the ramifications of normalized violence.