D&D General So how about alignment, eh?

[BRayne]

No-one prevented Vex from stealing stuff. Laura had full control over her character. There was just a consequence in the world from doing so. And it's not like the change affected anything mechanically (although it might have done so down the line, when they started getting involved with divine stuff).

They fought a rakshasa while her alignment was neutral so she did miss out on bonus damage there.

 

[Lanefan]

Alignment is a great descriptive tool, but as anything else, it fails miserably.

The days of "but that's what my character would do," alignment restricted classes, Helm of Opposite Alignment (or whatever the hell it was called,) failing paladins, and all the other associated garbage that came with it should be swept up and incinerated.

Then sweep them over here, please, as all of those are things I like in a game.

The mistake people make with alignment is treating it as a straitjacket. It isn't. But I want (some) alignment-restricted classes, aligned items and places that feel.work differently for some characters than others, fallen paladins, forced alignment change, and all that. But I also want it possible for a character to change its own alignment slowly as an organic part of its story/development, thus I won't punish such unless it's obviously being done only for meta-advantage.

 

[Lanefan]

Not to make everything about Critical Role, but at one point of Campaign 1 Matt Mercer forced an alignment change on Laura Bailey's character Vex'alia, moving her from chaotic good to chaotic neutral. This was in reaction to a number of things, but primarily Vex stealing a coveted magic item, a flying broom, from a trusting ally. Laura Bailey was not best pleased by this, or so it seemed, and the event definitely spurred some conversations about the role of the DM in "policing" alignment. Mercer is a bit of an old-school DM, but I don't think we would see him handle the situation the same way today.

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.

The DM stepping in announcing the change is over the top, but the DM quietly making notes that don't agree with what it says on the character sheet is not only more than fair game, it's essential. She'll find out the hard way that she's slipped when some Goodly item rejects her or when someone casts Know Alignment and tells her what she pulls as.

 

[Lanefan]

Modern players tend to believe more that they are fully in charge of their characters.

Sure, but they're not in charge of how other characters - or the universe in general - perceive them. And that's where alignment matters: in how other people and things perceive you. What do people get from you when they cast Know Alignment? Does the evil-consecrated ground bother you or not? Does the Good-aligned sword accept you or reject you or bite you? And so on.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Then sweep them over here, please, as all of those are things I like in a game.

The mistake people make with alignment is treating it as a straitjacket. It isn't. But I want (some) alignment-restricted classes, aligned items and places that feel.work differently for some characters than others, fallen paladins, forced alignment change, and all that. But I also want it possible for a character to change its own alignment slowly as an organic part of its story/development, thus I won't punish such unless it's obviously being done only for meta-advantage.

So... to fix the problem of it being a straitjacket is to keep all the parts that make the straitjacket onerous and frustrating?

 

[Hussar]

See the Vex example illustrates exactly the problem with alignment.

And the problem is enforcement.

Because when you as DM tell a player, “your alignment is changed” or “that good aligned item doesn’t work for you” then you are telling the player that your understanding of their character is the right one and they are wrong.

That’s a conversation that very rarely goes well. Doesn’t matter if you are 100% right and can cite a hundred examples. You are telling a player that they are playing their character wrong.

And that’s a conversation that should never, ever be had.

 

[Andvari]

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

 

[Aldarc]

TLDR: I personally dislike alignment as Personality Type (e.g., MBTI, astrological sign, etc.) for PCs and monsters; however, I enjoy alignment as Moorcock-style Cosmic Factions, especially when it is done well.

I dislike having Good/Evil as a separate axis from Law/Chaos, because (IME) the former conflict tends to greatly trivialize the latter.

I like 4e's alignment setup (i.e., LG, G, UA, E, LE) as that resonates more with (1) the World Axis setting's Chaoskampf themes, and likewise (2) it fits fairly well IMHO with the worldview and mythos of ancient Mediterranean cultures (again, the Chaoskampf motif) and how wickedness leads to cosmic disorder, chaos, and the unmaking of the created order, which is regarded as "good."

I also like Law vs. Chaos alongside Balance/Neutral/Unaligned. It makes for a more interesting conflict, especially in the absence of good vs. evil to fall back on.

 

[RareBreed]

I use the 9, but I don't.

In early AD&D, when I was not even a teenager yet, I decided that alignment is weird. People argued about whether some was this alignment or that, nobody could agree on anything, and it seemed weird that we tried to reduce everyone to just 9 different buckets. So, I eliminated it. I realized Magic was the only place where the mechanic of alignment mattered, and for the most part it was clerical magic. So, I decided that evil was going to be what the God that granted the magic thought was wrong, and good was what that God thought was right. And it functioned incredibly well in AD&D, 2E and 3E ... once you got used to it.

I was in your boat. I too played AD&D before I was even a teenager and also felt like alignment was odd, though I couldn't put my finger on it. By the time I got to my teens, I didn't like it at all.

The problem was new players that had played in other games took a bit to drink the Kool-Aid. I had the same conversations over and over and over and over and over and over and over .... until people had played with me for a bit and understood. I just got tired of that conversation, so when 4E came back with their simplified buckets of alignment I put it back into my game.

I think it infects players perceptions more than just with D&D. The kool-aid also made some of my players scratch their heads why other game systems didn't have it. This is why I rue the stranglehold that D&D has on the TTRPG ecosystem.

I think that an alignment system in this day and age is kind of beyond the pale. If the argument about making Orcs not fully "evil" was to get away from stereotyping about "races", is the problem with the stereotyping of races, or is it also fundamentally with the classification of alignment along 3 axes? I'd be just as concerned with calling a race Neutral Good...because what does that even mean to be Neutral Good?

If the argument is that alignments give color and "it's just a game", I would say that there are better alternatives. When I bought Pendragon around 1984 I think, I found their Principles system infinitely better than D&D alignments. Even the short lived The Riddle of Steel's Passion mechanic was far superior to an alignment system. I can't think of any game (that isn't a D&D derivative like Pathfinder) made after the mid 80s that even has an alignment system. That D&D has carried it forward for almost 50 years is telling. It is telling to me, because I think D&D has maintained this because it has existed inside an echo chamber for so long.

 

[Oofta]

See the Vex example illustrates exactly the problem with alignment.

And the problem is enforcement.

Because when you as DM tell a player, “your alignment is changed” or “that good aligned item doesn’t work for you” then you are telling the player that your understanding of their character is the right one and they are wrong.

That’s a conversation that very rarely goes well. Doesn’t matter if you are 100% right and can cite a hundred examples. You are telling a player that they are playing their character wrong.

And that’s a conversation that should never, ever be had.

Which is why I don't know my player's PC's alignment and don't care. I ban evil characters, but that has little to do with any alignment system. I simply don't care for antiheroes and don't want to run a game for villains so I let people know before they join my game that it's off the table. But if someone has LG on their character sheet but everything they do is CN (a bit self centered but not cruel while making their own rules, not chaotic insane), I don't care.

Alignment is there for the player to use as an aid to roleplaying and putting themselves into someone else's thought process and view of the world if they find it helpful.