D&D General So how about alignment, eh?

[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."