D&D General So how about alignment, eh?

[EzekielRaiden]

What do folks who use alignment think about the DM stepping in like this? I tend to think it was justified, given that they were playing a campaign with alignments more strictly built into the setting.

I strongly dislike it, and would not do this. Moral consequences don't require "your character is fundamentally different, doesn't matter what you think." Becoming known for betraying allies (even if they are allies of convenience), having deities who turn you away because you did evil things, etc.--that kind of thing has been more than enough for my game.

Modern players tend to believe more that they are fully in charge of their characters. See any discussion about warlocks and their patrons.

Of course they are. The patronage thing is only relevant in the form of really awful mechanics like "ah, you didn't pray to the four directions this morning, now your character sucks forever." It's stupidly, egregiously, punitively harsh for no reason other than to be egregious and punitive.

Everything else can--and should--be handled with, y'know, actually managable processes and actions, not sudden, instant, from-on-high (or, I guess, from-on-low, given most warlock patrons) declarations of irrevocable change.

Matt never said she was playing her character wrong or demanded she play her character differently. Alignment is descriptive, not prescriptive.

Sure he did. He was telling her, "You thought you were playing Good, but you were actually playing Netural. Better luck next time, enjoy your permanent disbarment from tons of stuff until you cross the magical, invisible line that fixes things again!"

The problem with these sorts of declarations isn't that alignment can change (because any functional system thereof should permit that.) It's that it is sudden, coming from a near-total lack of communication, and instantly enforced. Had this been a clear and explicit pattern, with clear warnings beforehand, then sure, have at it. But most alignment-loving DMs I've seen never do that. They spring it on an unsuspecting player who's simply done a few things they thought were fine but the DM did not, and the latter never spoke of it until it crossed an invisible, unstated line.

This, incidentally, is a big part of why I'm so thoroughly skeptical of things like "invisible rulebooks" and "the rules are just suggestions" and the like. Because way, way, WAY too many DMs simply refuse to communicate for whatever reason.

I still find alignment a useful lingua franca in the sense that when I say "no chaotic evil or neutral evil" characters, it sets a pretty clear table rule.

I just say "no evil." Easy enough, and "evil" as a term has existed for a long, long time before any of this "alignment" business.

But that is also an argument FOR alignment.

It absolutely is not. There are PLENTY of ways to drive actually substantial discussion, rather than the trivial nonsense "discussion" that alignment almost always fosters when it gets discussed at all. Gods and devils, contracts, keeping one's word, curses/geasa, reputation, all sorts of things.

There are other mechanical ways to accomplish the same thing, but alignment has worked fine for me for over 35 years.

Okay. It's worked extremely poorly for a ton of people for more than 35 years.

Mechanics.

Actual mechanical repercussions for the PC's actions.

Which, again, aren't actually present (though I know you've already recognized this.)

Not at all. They're playing the character perfectly well. However, due to patterns of in-game character behaviour established during that play, the external/universal perception of that character no longer agrees with the character's (assumed) perception of itself as reflected by what's written on the sheet. In these cases, the universal perception almost* always trumps the internal pereception.

This is just a fancy way of saying "you've been playing wrong, time to suffer for it!" You literally admit this in your final sentence: there is an "external/universal perception" and it is the correct one essentially all of the time. That's literally telling people there is a right way to play!

Yet it seems there's some (many? I am not one of them) here who are ready and willing to have that conversation any time a player has a character turn Evil: "No Evil PCs here - you're playing it wrong."

Can't have it both ways.

Sure I can, because my reason isn't "I am restricting this alignment." As I have made clear many, many, many times in the past, my reason for saying, "Please don't play evil PCs" is I can't run a good game for evil characters. It has nothing to do with playing Moral Policeman and everything to do with, "I want to offer you the best experience I can, and I can't offer a good experience for evil characters. That's a me problem, but I can't change it."

 

[RareBreed]

civil war is morally grey because it's funamentally a good vs good movie, or at least neutral vs neutral/good vs neutral, but opposed through law vs chaos, iron man himself being chaotic inclined but aligning with the side of law because he recognises his unstructured methods have too much collateral damage and the cap being a lawful-seeming individual advocating for chaos, i don't think cap is actually an especially lawful individual he just gives that impression because working for SHIELD and the military and the other govenment organisations facilitate executing his moral values of helping people but when push comes to shove steve rogers has consistently picked chaos over law to pursue his ideals, repeatedly lying about his age and identity to try enlist, going AWOL to rescue the soldiers from the german camp, helping bucky escape from getting arrested because he was his friend and picking to be a criminal vigilante rather than not be able to help someone from being tied up by red tape.

Well,this is precisely why I don't like these alignment descriptors.

You yourself say that Captain America isn't exactly Lawful, even though Cap kind of epitomizes the Paladin ideal (minus following a God). On the other hand, Tony Stark may seem to be Chaotic. He's wild, carefree and does his own thing.

And yet, it was Tony who wanted the heroes to obey a new law. A law that required heroes to register themselves and it was Cap who opposed this.

 

[Vaalingrade]

The movie didn't quite do the comics justice, but the Avengers: Civil War movie was kind of a moral "grey" area, and why the heroes were fighting against each other.

The comics were terrible and absolutely had a clear and obvious evil side.

It's just that that side was the one the executives expressly thought was the good side. Because comics executives.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

And yet, it was Tony who wanted the heroes to obey a new law. A law that required heroes to register themselves and it was Cap who opposed this.

IMO, if you're going to have alignment at all, you have to have LG characters who can declare opposition to evil laws. And I dunno about you, but having to be on a government registry because you belong to a minority group sounds morally questionable at best. (I'm well aware of the Selective Service, and I oppose its existing form: either it should be gender-blind, or it shouldn't exist. There is a felony that I can commit as a man, solely because I am a man, which no woman can commit, solely because she is not a man. That's morally wrong.)

 

[Clint_L]

So, not to go too "grad school" on the discussion, but the issue I see is that alignment relies on what are essentially deontological ethics, meaning that there are supposed to be universal rules about what is right and what is wrong, full stop, no grey areas. Immanuel Kant argued that you could determine what was right or wrong (good or evil) by seeing if the principal had universality. For example, to determine if it was okay to lie, you had to imagine a universe in which everyone lied all the time, whenever they felt like it, and nothing anyone said could ever be trusted. If such a universe seems like a bad idea, then that logically means lying is wrong. Always. Full stop. No exceptions. In fact, intending or wanting to lie is wrong, even if you don't go through with it. No grey areas. Kant called this the categorial imperative.

Kant felt that ethics were as cut and dry as mathematics. Literally, as both were derived from the same logical principals. As a result, Kant utterly rejected consequentialist ethics. The notion that right or wrong depended on the outcome of an action was anathema to everything he believed, where right and wrong is inherent in the action itself.

The obvious objection is that a system of ethics that never takes context or consequences into account turns out to produce really terrible results in lots of fairly typical situations. Another objection is that it turns out the people are super complicated and so something that one person thinks must be universally obvious turns out not to be. Deontological ethics are simple, and people are super complicated.

That's where the alignment system falls apart. It relies on the supposition that there is some kind of universal definition of good and evil, law and chaos, from which morality can be derived. But to see why that isn't the case, just look up some of Gary Gygax's own statements about what sorts of actions could count as lawful good (hint: most of us would probably not make a case for public torture and infanticide, but he did!). So inevitably you get all these arguments about what is "really" good when the DM and the player have different perspectives, because of course they do.

I recognize that most of the time folks just use alignments in a kind of broad sense, so these arguments are avoided. But D&D players being D&D players, the arguments do come up, and they can get pretty intense.

On principal, I don't like alignments because I don't think they add anything to creating an interesting character, I think they are logically unsound, and I think they are an attempt to impose one person's moral compass over other people. And from a pragmatic perspective, they are not needed. You can have factions without them (the real world has no shortage of factions), and you can create interesting characters without them. Fiends can behave fiendishly without an alignment label, and saints can be saintly. If alignments ever had a purpose, that purpose is long past.

 

[Maxperson]

That's where the alignment system falls apart. It relies on the supposition that there is some kind of universal definition of good and evil, law and chaos, from which morality can be derived. But to see why that isn't the case, just look up some of Gary Gygax's own statements about what sorts of actions could count as lawful good (hint: most of us would probably not make a case for public torture and infanticide, but he did!). So inevitably you get all these arguments about what is "really" good when the DM and the player have different perspectives, because of course they do.

Except that isn't the case. In Gygax's game those things were lawful good as part of a universal definition of what lawful good is. In my game it wouldn't be. Just because that DM over there has a different universal definition of law or evil, doesn't mean that universal definitions don't exist. They just mean that different DMs will set different definitions for their personal games.

You are correct that this is where many, if not most alignment arguments come from, though. The DM just can't make the players aware of where all actions fall and so there will be differences of opinion there.

That's the main reason I don't like alignment to have mechanical teeth. We can have differing views without causing any sort of friction. There's no point in my saying, "Hah! That's evil!!" or "Your alignment is now LN, not LG." if there's nothing mechanical attached to it.

I recognize that most of the time folks just use alignments in a kind of broad sense, so these arguments are avoided. But D&D players being D&D players, the arguments do come up, and they can get pretty intense.

I haven't seen any of these since 3e, and then far fewer than in 1e/2e. This is because mechanical consequences have been declining over the editions. I've seen none in 5e at all. Outside of forum arguments anyway.

and I think they are an attempt to impose one person's moral compass over other people.

This hasn't been the case since at least 5e, and maybe 4e. Without a house rule placing some sort of mechanical consequence or penalty for alignment deviations into the game, it doesn't matter what the DM says or does about alignment. There's no way by RAW for the DM to impose that way.

And from a pragmatic perspective, they are not needed. You can have factions without them (the real world has no shortage of factions), and you can create interesting characters without them. Fiends can behave fiendishly without an alignment label, and saints can be saintly. If alignments ever had a purpose, that purpose is long past.

This much is true. Like I said earlier in the thread, I don't give a fig what the PC's alignment is, or even if he has one. The world is going to be looking at the PCs actions and responding(or not) to those. For the PC side of things it's simply a tool in the chest for a player to use if he wants to.

 

[RareBreed]

The comics were terrible and absolutely had a clear and obvious evil side.

It's just that that side was the one the executives expressly thought was the good side. Because comics executives.

Yeah I have to admit, I liked neither Civil War nor Incursion in the comics. While it was supposed to be morally debatable, I personally found it a bit stomach churning and wanting to scream at the writers. I actually stopped reading Marvel comics for awhile because of those two story lines.

I also find it somewhat amusing that one of the least favorite MCU movies for most people was The Eternals, and yet it's in my top 3. I'll try to be very ambiguous not to spoil anything, but I liked it precisely because of the moral dilemma.

 

[Oofta]

Except that isn't the case. In Gygax's game those things were lawful good as part of a universal definition of what lawful good is. In my game it wouldn't be. Just because that DM over there has a different universal definition of law or evil, doesn't mean that universal definitions don't exist. They just mean that different DMs will set different definitions for their personal games.

You are correct that this is where many, if not most alignment arguments come from, though. The DM just can't make the players aware of where all actions fall and so there will be differences of opinion there.

That's the main reason I don't like alignment to have mechanical teeth. We can have differing views without causing any sort of friction. There's no point in my saying, "Hah! That's evil!!" or "Your alignment is now LN, not LG." if there's nothing mechanical attached to it.

I haven't seen any of these since 3e, and then far fewer than in 1e/2e. This is because mechanical consequences have been declining over the editions. I've seen none in 5e at all. Outside of forum arguments anyway.

This hasn't been the case since at least 5e, and maybe 4e. Without a house rule placing some sort of mechanical consequence or penalty for alignment deviations into the game, it doesn't matter what the DM says or does about alignment. There's no way by RAW for the DM to impose that way.

This much is true. Like I said earlier in the thread, I don't give a fig what the PC's alignment is, or even if he has one. The world is going to be looking at the PCs actions and responding(or not) to those. For the PC side of things it's simply a tool in the chest for a player to use if he wants to.

I agree. Alignment is just a tool for me to use as I see fit. It's useful for a quick 10,000 foot view of a monster's or NPC's thought process and how they're going to react. Honor a deal? Someone that's lawful will. Someone chaotic will just shrug and say "I lied". A devil will abide by the contract, although they may point out that you violated subcontract D in subsection 32 because they're evil and you didn't put your initial on it the line indicated.

In addition, despite all the "what-about-isms" and advanced philosophies that always come up, most people are in the same general ballpark of what alignment means with people I actually play with. But as long as I use it consistently when I run monsters, as one aspect of that monster? I don't see an issue with it. We don't have to agree 100%, although in experience in real life I've agreed 80% which is close enough.

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

I like the 10 motivations in Shalom Schwartz's values system - self-direction, stimulation, hedonism, achievement, power, security, conformity, tradition, benevolence, and universalism.
They do map relatively nicely to the nine D&D alignments.
"Real" Alignments?

In my Primeval Thule game there are nine major gods, each corresponding to one of the motivations (after combining conformity and tradition).

 

[Hussar]

Matt never said she was playing her character wrong or demanded she play her character differently. Alignment is descriptive, not prescriptive.

Then she would be totally unreasonable for being upset by the change, right?

No. I strongly disagree. When you tell someone “your character is alignment x not y” you are telling them they are playing their character wrong.

 

[Lanefan]

Then she would be totally unreasonable for being upset by the change, right?

No. I strongly disagree. When you tell someone “your character is alignment x not y” you are telling them they are playing their character wrong.

Where I don't map those two bolded bits to be at all equivalent, assuming the character has been in play a while.

Actions (and in some cases words) define a character's alignment. If you've got LG written on your sheet yet your PC's secret night sport is killing otherwise-innocent town guards, there's a clear disconnect between three views on that PC's alignment:

The player thinks it's LG because that's what's written on the sheet.
The other players/PCs think it's [whatever its prior in-play actions suggest]
The DM (and, thus, the deities/universe/etc.) think it's NE or CE due to the secret activities only the DM and player know about.

Who is right here? Answer: the DM.

 

[Oofta]

...
Yet it seems there's some (many? I am not one of them) here who are ready and willing to have that conversation any time a player has a character turn Evil: "No Evil PCs here - you're playing it wrong."
...

I don't allow evil characters for many reasons. I've been in games that allowed it in the past and some of the things the characters did and how the players described them were disturbing. Along the lines of "I grasp her around her throat strongly enough to silence the screams and then slowly choke her to death while watch the light fade from her eyes." among other things. I lasted 1 session in that game. I also simply don't enjoy TV shows where the main protagonists are evil. While I don't have HBO, I wouldn't The Sopranos even if I did.

If I'm not enjoying the story we're telling and the character's actions in that story, I won't be a good DM.

If I were to go Biblical for a moment and define Evil as repeated violation of any of the seven deadly sins, and then ban Evil characters, there very likely wouldn't be any characters left in the game. And my game has a lot of characters in it!

Greed would strip out most of them right away. Lust would catch a few of the remainder. Gluttony might pick off a couple more (all of them Hobbits!), as would Wrath.

The only one that wouldn't be a problem is Sloth - by nature, adventurers are a pretty non-slothful group of people.

So, no evil characters, you say? Never gonna happen.

I'm going to disagree with this as well. Greedy doesn't define evil, it's the level of greed and what you do to satisfy that greed. Someone greedily collects gems? Okay, are they paying for them or providing a service to earn them? Shoplift a few gems now and then from a crooked jeweler? Murder an otherwise innocent person in their sleep to get the gem?

An greedy PC can be good (or good enough for me to not care what their alignment is if it's a character's PC), it's their level of obsession and what they are willing to do to satisfy that greed. There's nothing wrong with lust as long as it's mutual, gluttony is again a matter of excess and are you taking food from those that are starving*? Wrath? Are we talking about overwhelming rage and killing anyone and anything that gets in our way? Or is it hunting down and killing the BBEG that destroyed your village when you know their identity without a doubt and there is no other way to stop them from continuing their murder spree?

I don't expect my player's to run PCs that are saints. I just don't want to deal with or listen to them describe things I would find truly objectionable.

*Not to mention that gluttony as a sin always kind of sounded like an excuse to fat shame people to me.

 

[Lanefan]

I don't allow evil characters for many reasons. I've been in games that allowed it in the past and some of the things the characters did and how the players described them were disturbing. Along the lines of "I grasp her around her throat strongly enough to silence the screams and then slowly choke her to death while watch the light fade from her eyes." among other things. I lasted 1 session in that game.

That's a bit over the top. Was the same level of description applied to more typical combat scenes? Some DMs run that way - I had one once who liked to narrate every combat hit in sometimes-gory detail...which was fine for a while but eventually became tiresome when he ran out of new ideas on how to narrate inujries and wounds....

I also simply don't enjoy TV shows where the main protagonists are evil. While I don't have HBO, I wouldn't The Sopranos even if I did.

Where The Sopranos is one I've been meaning to take a look at for some time now (I don't have HBO either but I think it's out on hard copy, and believe it or not there's a video rental place three blocks from my home).

I'm going to disagree with this as well. Greedy doesn't define evil, it's the level of greed and what you do to satisfy that greed. Someone greedily collects gems? Okay, are they paying for them or providing a service to earn them? Shoplift a few gems now and then from a crooked jeweler? Murder an otherwise innocent person in their sleep to get the gem?

Murder an otherwise innocent dragon in its sleep to get a whole lot of gems and gold? Yep.

An greedy PC can be good (or good enough for me to not care what their alignment is if it's a character's PC), it's their level of obsession and what they are willing to do to satisfy that greed. There's nothing wrong with lust as long as it's mutual, gluttony is again a matter of excess and are you taking food from those that are starving*? Wrath? Are we talking about overwhelming rage and killing anyone and anything that gets in our way? Or is it hunting down and killing the BBEG that destroyed your village when you know their identity without a doubt and there is no other way to stop them from continuing their murder spree?

I don't expect my player's to run PCs that are saints. I just don't want to deal with or listen to them describe things I would find truly objectionable.

*Not to mention that gluttony as a sin always kind of sounded like an excuse to fat shame people to me.

I'm not a fan of the seven deadlies as moral definers either, I just threw the example in here to give a different perspective.

I don't want 'em to be saints either and, honestly, I'd get real bored real fast if they were. If they want to be evil and steal from the peasants (or each other, it's allowed) or slit the throats of captured prisoners*, who am I to stop them in the meta-game? In-game, sure, there could easily be consequences - including an alignment audit - but in-game is where the consequences should ideally stay (note that I view alignment as an in-game thing).

* - or sell them into slavery, as did a party I once ran... @Lorithen might remember that one.

 

[Staffan]

i don't think cap is actually an especially lawful individual he just gives that impression because working for SHIELD and the military and the other govenment organisations facilitate executing his moral values of helping people but when push comes to shove steve rogers has consistently picked chaos over law to pursue his ideals, repeatedly lying about his age and identity to try enlist, going AWOL to rescue the soldiers from the german camp, helping bucky escape from getting arrested because he was his friend and picking to be a criminal vigilante rather than not be able to help someone from being tied up by red tape.

When I wrote my previous post where I indicated Jean-Luc Picard (at least TNG-era), the Doctor, Emperor Palpatine, and James Bond as paragons of LG, CG, CE, and LE respectively, my first thought was to use Captain America as the paragon of LG. But then I realized the same thing you do: Captain America is loyal to the ideals he believes his nation should have, not to the state or any particular organization within it as such. When their ideals align, Cap is very comfortable working with SHIELD and the like, but when not he has no problem opposing it. At the same time, he sees states and organizations as useful things to get things done, and figures that abiding by the law is a good first reaction unless there are extenuating circumstances. I'd say Captain America is pretty close to the ideal of Neutral Good.

The only one that wouldn't be a problem is Sloth - by nature, adventurers are a pretty non-slothful group of people.

Really? What about all the complaints about the 15-minute (or is it 5?) workday? Sounds pretty slothful to me!

 

[CreamCloud0]

Well,this is precisely why I don't like these alignment descriptors.

You yourself say that Captain America isn't exactly Lawful, even though Cap kind of epitomizes the Paladin ideal (minus following a God). On the other hand, Tony Stark may seem to be Chaotic. He's wild, carefree and does his own thing.

And yet, it was Tony who wanted the heroes to obey a new law. A law that required heroes to register themselves and it was Cap who opposed this.

I don’t really see how it’s all that complicated, stark while chaotic on the individual level recognised the need for greater law in the execution of good, it is comparable to a chaotic character aligning themselves with the side of cosmic law over the battle for cosmic good.

I think the cap comes off as more lawful than he actually is because he’s so good, it is the good thing to do to obey the law and be a well behaved citizen but as I said earlier when push comes to shove cap prioritises being good over being lawful.

Just because you are one alignment does not mean you cannot recognise the benefits of other, even opposing alignments.

Also I think it’s good that 5e got rid of the lawful requirement for paladins, while dedicating yourself to certain concepts is vaguely lawful in theory there’s basically nothing saying how you have to go around supporting those values.

 

[Clint_L]

If I'm not enjoying the story we're telling and the character's actions in that story, I won't be a good DM.

Oh, I totally agree with this, but for me it has nothing to do with any alignment system. We just agree up front with what we are comfortable with. Although I happen to enjoy horror movies and violent action films sometimes (and I loved The Sopranos), that's not my thing when I'm playing D&D (Dread or Call of Cthulhu are another story, but even there "torture porn" levels of violence are not to my taste). And I really don't enjoy running a story where the PCs are running around being violent murder hoboes for no reason. It's just not for me. I like my PCs to basically be the heroes.

With my student campaigns, it's straightforward: we run "PG" rules as far as content goes. Home games can get a bit edgier but the folks I play with have similar sensibilities to me (I mean, I'm married to one of them), so we all have a pretty good sense of what folks are comfortable with.

 

[Clint_L]

They were still factions.

I'm not sure what you mean - are you suggesting that alignments predate D&D? I scanned the Chainmail rules and couldn't find any mention of alignment. Factions were only described along historical geo-political lines. I have always read that Gygax brought them into D&D from reading the novels of Michael Moorcock and Poul Anderson, not from his war-gaming roots. Is this incorrect?

 

[Reynard]

I'm not sure what you mean - are you suggesting that alignments predate D&D? I scanned the Chainmail rules and couldn't find any mention of alignment. Factions were only described along historical geo-political lines. I have always read that Gygax brought them into D&D from reading the novels of Michael Moorcock and Poul Anderson, not from his war-gaming roots. Is this incorrect?

I'm not sure of the relevance. D&D wasn't by definition a roleplaying game in its first incarnation because they did not yet know what it was. Alignments were absolutely factions. It defined which forces of the universe you were, uh, aligned with. It did not describe personality (but may have defined morality; these aren't synonyms).

Again, as The Elusive Shift shows, it did not take long for that to become a thing and the debates started.

You have to remember the community was still trying to figure out what they had.

 

[Hussar]

Who is right here? Answer: the DM.

Hard pass.

 

[Lorithen]

I don't want 'em to be saints either and, honestly, I'd get real bored real fast if they were. If they want to be evil and steal from the peasants (or each other, it's allowed) or slit the throats of captured prisoners*, who am I to stop them in the meta-game? In-game, sure, there could easily be consequences - including an alignment audit - but in-game is where the consequences should ideally stay (note that I view alignment as an in-game thing).

* - or sell them into slavery, as did a party I once ran... @Lorithen might remember that one.

Yup, or to quote what became the informal motto of that specific character of mine: "Stop taking prisoners. Start taking inventory."