D&D 5E RIP alignment

[Justice and Rule]

Um. I'm very clearly arguing that it's NOT lore. LOL

Right. Alignment. Not the lore.

Except that alignment informs the lore. Like, you can't argue that alignment isn't lore because it is. If it wasn't lore, then it's useless as a quick tool because it'd represent nothing.

Wrong. Much of that lore has nothing to do with CE, including being savages. The lore is that way, because they are supposed to be a bad guy race.

I mean, most of that lore has to do with being Chaotic Evil. That's part of the problem with associating a whole alignment with a race, especially when you have lore associations with certain alignments, like Chaotic Evil being largely reserved for savage barbarians.

That doesn't make them the same. You can write 1000 different pieces of lore, some racist and some not, for every alignment. A piece of racist lore has nothing to do with alignment, because you can just as easily write a non-racist version.

Sure, but it just so happens that Chaotic Evil stuff relates more to barbarians and monsters than others. It's almost like that alignment is a shorthand for a certain kind of lore.

Attacking the person and not the arguments the way you have with your condescension and dismissiveness just shows how weak your counter arguments are.

I mean, I'm not attacking someone, I just think it's funny that they are defending something that clearly comes off less as an actual defense and more of a stalking horse for D&D being changed in general. To me, that's what this whole argument is about: not about alignment, but about people not wanting D&D to change for a variety of reasons. And before you try and get away with it no, it's not because I think anyone is a racist. But I expect that line of thought plays into it.

Evil isn't part of your equation. You associated using a whip with slave-ownership. I pointed out over a dozen whip users in video games who aren't. In fact, more of them fall into the female dominatix trope than the slave-owner one.

But you keep on thinking Link and Simon Belmont are symbols of slavery or something. Guess we should cancel Super Smash Brother's next.

I said that it's associated with slavery and slave ownership, and even your TV Tropes link said as such. From that comes a link to "domination", which several of your video game examples play into (Ivy and Franzsika, for example).

That doesn't mean all of them do, especially with video games using whips as a mobility device, but that doesn't remove the association and that a good portion of the people on that TV Tropes list plays into those ideas.

And hey, "cancelling". We get to the root of things. Making changes means something is "cancelled", thus we can't let that happen, right?

 

[guachi]

And I’ve played with multiple who do have a problem with them. So who’s anecdotal evidence wins? Neither. I’ll go with what non-white gamers say when they write about racism in gaming and fantasy.

I started playing D&D in 1983 at the age of 9 while I lived in Montana. The next year I played with someone who was a member of the Crow tribe. He saw Orcs (and other humanoids) as Germanic barbarians. And you don't get much more Aryan than that.

I have a dim memory of a conversation that went something like this:

"You don't think they are trying to make humanoids look like Indians?" (It was 1984 so Indian was still acceptable)
"Nah. If they were Indians they'd clearly be the good guys"

 

[SkidAce]

I have my views on alignment, but this thread shows that one of the major reasons that maybe alignment should go away is because people use it to try and force and argue other people into accepting their views as "correct" ones.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yeah, I never new Indiana Jones was a slaver. Puts a whole new spin on the movie.

Now who's the one being all adorably condescending?

Pot, I'd like to introduce you to my carbonized friend, Kettle.

 

[Justice and Rule]

Now who's the one being all adorably condescending?

Pot, I'd like to introduce you to my carbonized friend, Kettle.

Hey now, at least I'm not making weird strawman arguments with my adorable condescension. You gotta give me that.

 

[Helldritch]

Oooooofffffff
Alignment is not dependent on lore but lore is up to a certain point. LE for example, can be played in certain ways but all these way will have common ground such as orderly society, harsh punishments for transgressions, no respect for life and so on.

The lore on two different LE societies will be very different. Maybe one is a mercantile society where money rules everything and anything is acceptable as long as you don't get caught while the other is a martial society bend on world domination.

I started playing D&D in 1983 at the age of 9 while I lived in Montana. The next year I played with someone who was a member of the Crow tribe. He saw Orcs (and other humanoids) as Germanic barbarians. And you don't get much more Aryan than that.

I have a dim memory of a conversation that went something like this:

"You don't think they are trying to make humanoids look like Indians?" (It was 1984 so Indian was still acceptable)
"Nah. If they were Indians they'd clearly be the good guys"

I have had similar experiences around the same times.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Dragonlance is also worse without alignment, so much of its themes are wrapped up in the balance of good and evil.

As per Ravenloft and Planescape, the Dragonlance we knew is dead, prepare yourself for the "reimagined" version you never asked for.

 

[Justice and Rule]

Oooooofffffff
Alignment is not dependent on lore but lore is up to a certain point. LE for example, can be played in certain ways but all these way will have common ground such as orderly society, harsh punishments for transgressions, no respect for life and so on.

Chicken or the egg? I mean, do you write the lore then put on the alignment, or vice versa? But both are linked, regardless.

The lore on two different LE societies will be very different. Maybe one is a mercantile society where money rules everything and anything is acceptable as long as you don't get caught while the other is a martial society bend on world domination.

Alignment on societies is... always weird. Not that I haven't used it on that before, but once again that really depends on what you think "Lawful" is.

 

[teitan]

Chicken or the egg? I mean, do you write the lore then put on the alignment, or vice versa? But both are linked, regardless.



Alignment on societies is... always weird. Not that I haven't used it on that before, but once again that really depends on what you think "Lawful" is.

See I think that is where it is most important, because it is a decent shorthand for understanding the way the government there works. We know UNDOUBTEDLY that there are societies in the real world where wholesale murder of homosexuals is performed by the governing body itself. That is undoubtedly evil. A government run by a lich? Evil. Drow society with it's slaves, turning a blind eye to crimes if you are not caught even though they know it was you? Evil. Worshipping a demon lord in the Abyss? Evil. Nazis? Evil, plain and simple. The Arthurian Camelot? Undoubtedly Lawful good.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

I really don't think that this was a change being "demanded" by "Gen Z" gamers or whatever else.

Demanded by Twitter, maybe, but Twitter is itself a small echo-chamber of like-minded individuals pushing their own barrows and corporations tend to bow to hysteria there because corporate culture is inherently cowardly.

In truth, there is no credible reason to believe teenagers or twenty-something-year-olds were interested in D&D, cracked open the Monster Manual saw "chaotic evil" and then were turned off in horror, not when most of them had spent years sharing "alignment" memes online.

I game regularly with a large group of what posters here would probably call "poc" gamers and not one of them has seen themselves in orcs, since they aren't violent, hulking steppe raiders swinging axes and worshipping a one-eyed god. And anyone suggesting whips are racist would be laughed out of the room.