D&D 5E The Multiverse is back....

[I'm A Banana]

Really? Do you actually need alignment labels to decide that a paradise of peace and happiness is good (small g, not the alignment descriptor) and a plane of unending torment and pain is evil?

Again, depends on the perspective. Someone with the view that there are people who deserve eternal punishment as a form of cosmic justice would view all those torments as evidence of the cosmos's goodness. Someone who thought that peace and happiness is just laziness and idleness dressed up would see those worlds as foundationally corrupt. These are all valid perspectives in PS as it is, and abandoning alignment wouldn't disrupt those beliefs.

There are "nice" planes. "Pleasant" planes. Planes that look like they'd be comfortable. But you can't call that morally good any more than you can call a pleasant mountain pasture in this world morally good. It's just aesthetically pleasing. Which removes some of the power of tweaking alignments. In PS with alignments, you can see that moral Goodness is (currently) exemplified by these planes, and thus draw some parallels with your behavior, knowing that if you adhere to their (arbitrary) codes in life, you'll get paradise forever in death. Which means that if you view the place as an enabler of idleness and sloth, you have as your enemies people who know -- and can cast spells to confirm! -- that they're Good. They can try and say you're empirically wrong. Of course, they don't realize that you're a PS PC, and so will wind up changing the planes based on what you know to be good, upending their incorrect understanding.

But, the thing is, without the alignment framework, it doesn't make sense to have only three "good" planes and three "evil" planes (obviously subdivided after that). There could be an infinite number of either, each one fitting within the belief framework of those that go there.

Well, functionally, in any PS campaign, you have an arbitrary number of whatever planes you want. It's not a setting about map exploration, I'd wager very few campaigns hit every layer of every plane. A given game only uses a relevant subset for their own purposes (that subset that most challenges the PC's beliefs, really). The planes (and parts of planes) that any individual campaign sees are based in the needs of that campaign. Those different flavors of good and evil functionally exist like five different colors of chromatic dragon exist: so there's a variety in your worlds and antagonists. Not because it somehow makes "sense." What makes sense is up to the PC, after all! There is no inherently right or wrong numbers or maps of planes.

Without alignments, that doesn't really change. You could keep the great wheel. Even have "alignment theory" as a possible explanation for it. Or you can ditch it. Or you can keep alignments and ditch the great wheel since it was ever "only a model." Or whatever. PS isn't fundamentally a game about maps and good guys vs. bad guys. A Sensate who had never been to Pandemonium still wouldn't believe it exists, and in the map THEY draw, you don't have Pandemonium.

If someone is 60% good, 40% evil, 60% chaotic and 40% lawful, where do they go when they die? How far along the axis would you have to be to go to your "proper" afterlife? And does worship have any place in that? I could certainly worship a LG god with those percentages - does that mean I go to the LG plane when I die?

Without alignments, none of that matters. With alignments, none of that matters in play. In PS, it only matters where you believe you belong, and if you believe differently than others.

 

[Elderbrain]

The thing is, an evil thing done for an ostensibly good reason wasn't really done for a good reason at all. In other words, the Harmonium members think there is a good reason to forcibly brainwash people, but they are wrong that there is such a reason.

Similarly, the Harmonium members think that they value good, but in fact they don't - their actions show a disregard for good (mosty the dignity and respect aspects of it).

If, in fact, their actions was properly supported by a good reason, then it wouldn't be evil! Likewise, if it did in fact express a proper valuing of good, it wouldn't be evil.

Again, this is about their beliefs. But not their actions. Their actions aimed at the non-voluntary conversion of people to a new value-set. That is inherently evil, in orthodox D&D terms, because disrespecting those people and their dignity.

Sure. But similarly, if orcs tried to get their goodies by bargaining and begging for charitable donations, they wouldn't be evil. That doesn't show that killing and looting aren't inherently evil, just because they are aimed at a goal (self-enrichment) which might be permissibly pursued by other means.

Right. I completely agree that the ends do not justify the means. I was only trying to indicate that even in a world where there are Commune spells, Detect Evil and the like, it is still possible for (initially) well-meaning people (or people who THINK they are well-meaning!) to err morally. For that matter, who's to say that a character couldn't dispute the results of a spell (i.e. "This spell says what I plan to do is evil, but it's for the greater good, so the spell must be wrong!") After all, other things are disputed in D&D canon by characters, for instance the divinity of the Powers. The Faction known as the Athar flatly denies that the gods are really gods. It admits their existence, sure, but insists they are merely very powerful beings and not true divinities. Likewise, I can see a Paladin refusing to accept that Elysium and Arborea are fully as Good as Mt. Celestia, regardless of what his spells and granted abilities indicate (of course, if his deity told him so, he might have to relent, but still...) Just because a rule in the game tells us that, say, Mt. Celestia is equal in goodness to Arborea, doesn't mean that characters in the game have to accept this as truth (of course, they may.)

In any case, some of those Harmonium members definitely STARTED OUT with Lawful Good alignments, so even if their actions caused them to change to Evil, I'd dispute the notion that doing Evil somehow "proves" that the characters in question were never Good to begin with. Evil is a slippery slope, and a body doesn't have to fall all the way down in one go... he can get there gradually. Or to put it another way, one Evil act doesn't necessarily instantly change a character from LG to LE, or even from LG to LN. It depends on the severity of the act. So it is not literally true that a Good character can never commit a Evil act and still remain Good, despite the fact that the act itself is Evil.

 

[pemerton]

And that in essence is what most sword and sorcery heroes are adventuring for, because there's something they prefer and they want it.

Sure. Which is to say, by 9-point alignment standards they're either evil (per Gygax, "purpose is the determinant"; per d20SRD, they "have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient") or perhaps neutral, if they don't kill willy-nilly, but are prepared sacrifice the well-being of others to the pursuit of their own goals.

What S&S characters don't do is try to transform the cosmos such that their self-aggrandizement is acknowledge by others as morally desirable! The general tone of S&S is cynical, even nihilistic - it's not about moral wish-fulfillment, about convincing the cosmos that you were acting morally all along!

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Wait so LN and CN didn't exist in AD&D? If they did then how could chaos and law only be defined in terms of means towards good or evil?

Of course they exist. But they are (obviously) not good! LN characters make the moral error of favouring a means - organisation - over valuable ends - human wellbeing. But they are not actively malevolent as devils are. Mutatis mutandis for chaotic neutral.

lawful neutral, chaotic neutral, and neutral characters can take part in a good-aligned adventure (which is the default sort) with relatively little trouble

That's because their moral flaws are modest rather than serious (were they serious, the characters would be evil!).

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They're likely to disagree over all sorts of things. Is is better to work within a corrupt system to change it for the better or to rebel against it?

That look's to me like a disagreement about the efficacy of means, though, not a disagreement about vaue. Or, if the CG person thinks that the LG person who works with the system is participating in corruption, then the CG person is judging the LG person to not actually be good! Which in the real world makes perfect sense - anarchists and revoutionaries make those sorts of judgements about Fabians and "sell-outs" all the time - but seems to be precluded within the 9-point alignment system, which tells us that the LG person is good, not evil.

Because they don't all agree on what it means to be "evil" or "good." They don't share a belief. ("An ordered society is essential for true evil!" / "No! One must be free to choose evil for oneself!")

But the "good" people don't share a belief either: you, [MENTION=71756]Nivenus[/MENTION], and some others have just been arguing as much for mutiple pages.

The point is, there are more fiends - who think that there is nothing wrong with a life devoted to carnage and the destruction of others - than nice people - who think that lookin out for others is part of a worthwhile life - yet that majority opinion hasn't acquired the label of "good". I don't really understand why not.

Evil only has this definition because that is what people think it is. Change the way people think, and slaughter your way to sainthood!

My whole point is that the fiends, who are a majority, already think this. So why has the definition of "good" and "evil" not changed already?

Why do I have to get non-fiends to agree with me? Do the beliefs of the fiends somehow not count?

Depends upon what paladins and monks think of themselves, and what the general mass of the multiverse thinks about them, I suppose.

My point was that a paladin, as an archetype, has no place in a gameworld in which what counts as good is a function of mortal belief. Such a world has no place for notions of providence - no place for the notion that true good might be rekindled no matter how dark the situation - yet the idea of providence is utterly crucial to the paladin archeypte. (In LotR, for instance, which is proably the best-known fantasy story to express the relevant notion of providence, the numbers of orcs, Southrons etc who think that Sauron is on the right side is irrelevant to the moral value of Sauron's endeavours.)

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The Greeks believed that if you treated a guest poorly, the gods would punish you. That it was a horrible act. If that world functioned by the "belief makes reality" mantra and had alignments, this would mean that this was literally true, and is literally true only because people believed it to be the case.

The Greeks - well one of them, Plato - also presented the well-known argument in the Euthyphro, that the value is prior to belief, because otherwise belief and conviction would be arbitrary. If nothing has value but for being the object of belief and desire, then there is no reason to belief and desire one thing over another.

This is [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s point (at least as I read it). As I've said upthread, there are philosophical responses available to the argument of the Euthyphro, of which Nietzsche's is only one. But those responses have implications that are hard to deal with in a fantasy RPG context. And I'm certainly not seeing anyone on this thread actually deal with the Euthyphro issue - that is, I'm not seeing anyone expain why, within the "belief makes value" framework, choosing one thing rather than another, aligning with one faction rather than another, is not completely arbitrary.

Alignment is designed as a tool for morally unambiguous cosmological conflict, and PS takes that framework and twists it so that it is morally ambiguous and about your personal philosophy. Believing alignments are objective is a hallmark of the Clueless, just another thing that "standard fantasy characters" don't realize the "truth" of (the truth that PS uses as part of its own unique take on what D&D is).

My take-away from this is that Planescape is for someone who wants to run some sort of non-cartoon-morality campaign, but for whatever reason won't just jettison the system of mechanical alignment.

In PS with alignments, you can see that moral Goodness is (currently) exemplified by these planes, and thus draw some parallels with your behavior, knowing that if you adhere to their (arbitrary) codes in life, you'll get paradise forever in death

Alignment seems to be adding nothing to this. There is a place where people follow an (arbitrary) code, and if you comply with that code you will go there when you die. What does it add to say that, for now, that place is labelled "good"? What does this have to do with the word "good" as used in ordinary English, or even the word "good" as defined in AD&D and 3E materials (ie by reference to human rights/weal/dignity)?

I'm not seeing that the Planescape take on alignment is actually adding anything to the game. For instance, it's not introducing any "moral ambiguity" that can't already be achieved just by letting players make the choices for their PCs without the GM (or adventure author) telling them which choice is good and which evil.

I suppose we're quibbling over semantics on this point, but the idea of a moral grey area to me is a place where the morality is not clear-cut, where good and evil are not able to be told apart at a glance. That certainly includes a world where good and evil are capable of changing their definitions. If the only choice is between two clearly good things (honor or justice?), it's just a matter of martyrdom -- enduring suffering for a good result.

I don't understand your comment about martyrdom.

In the Quiet American, Fowler must choose between loyalty to his friend (Pyle), and stopping the carnage his friend will infict. There is also the mixed motive of jealousy in relation to Phuong. There is no ambiguity here that loyalty and stopping carnage are both good things, and jealousy a failing. But the right choice is not clear cut. And the notion of martyrdom has no work to do at all.

Likewise in the example of play that I posted, where the choice was between honour (keeping a promise made in one's name) and justice (ensuring that a villain receives the punishment she deserves). Both honour and justice are good things, but the right choice between them is not clear cut. And the notion of martyrdom has no work to do at all - in the exampe of play that I linked to, who do you think is being martyred?

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What does the Elemental Chaos represent if not chaos?

I mean, without alignment, those planes can't rightly be called good planes any more, can they?

Really? Do you actually need alignment labels to decide that a paradise of peace and happiness is good (small g, not the alignment descriptor) and a plane of unending torment and pain is evil?

I'm with Hussar here!

The Elemental Chaos being a place of chaos has nothing to do with the D&D alignment system. The word "chaos" is bearing its ordinary English meaning. The Elemental Chaos is a place of roiling matter and energy, the raw material of creation. The notion combines tropes drawn from the D&D Elemental Planes and Limbo as described by Jeff Grubb, with tropes drawn from various mythological/religious sources.

It's not as if the words law, chaos, good and evil had no use in every day life, morals, theology etc before D&D appropriated them for its particular purposes!

I suppose you could just eject alignment entirely, but, then, once you do that, the Great Wheel stops making a lot of sense.

Right. The Great Wheel is a geographic expression of the alignment graph. It makes no sense without it! (For instance, without alignment there is no reason to favour the Great Wheel over the Astral Sea as a model of the heavens.)

 

[Hussar]

To be fair though Pem, there's also no reason not to.

 

[Imaro]

Sure. Which is to say, by 9-point alignment standards they're either evil (per Gygax, "purpose is the determinant"; per d20SRD, they "have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient") or perhaps neutral, if they don't kill willy-nilly, but are prepared sacrifice the well-being of others to the pursuit of their own goals.

Yes in REGULAR AD&D/D&D 3.x etc. they might be... of course one would have to heavily weigh all of their actions so a simplistic judgement like the one you present here (based on one characteristic isn't necessarily accurate) also could you clarify as to whether you are speaking to the Planescape setting or to the base alignments/cosmology/rules as found in default AD&D/D&D you seem to jump back and forth between them but they are not the same thing... and it's making this discussion with you hard to follow and parse.

What S&S characters don't do is try to transform the cosmos such that their self-aggrandizement is acknowledge by others as morally desirable! The general tone of S&S is cynical, even nihilistic - it's not about moral wish-fulfillment, about convincing the cosmos that you were acting morally all along!

Well certain incarnations of the Eternal Champion have certainly transformed the cosmos into their concept of what would be "good" (specifically Elric) so I definitely think that can be something a character could try in Planescape and still stay true to the genre... I also think trying to re-define good through convincing/changing the cosmos is certainly in the vein of weird fantasy (remember I said Planescape was a mix of the two genres not pure sword and sorcery)... so I'm not seeing the issue... In fact the only problem I see is you presenting a very specific type of change as "the" change all characters want to enact.

Emphasis Mine... When did this become what Planescape is about anyway? Trying to convince the cosmos I acted morally... is only one very narrow goal that you have presented as the end all and be all of every character in the setting and the particular method you're presenting to re-define an alignment is only one very narrow way of doing that as well... You do realize this is not THE goal in Planescape right?

 

[Imaro]

Of course they exist. But they are (obviously) not good! LN characters make the moral error of favouring a means - organisation - over valuable ends - human wellbeing. But they are not actively malevolent as devils are. Mutatis mutandis for chaotic neutral.

You realize this doesn't address my point at all... You claimed law and chaos in AD&D were only defined as means towards good and evil... which is wrong. They are defined independently of good and evil and all you're doing is stating that above, one can be LN and favor law over good or evil... I never claimed they were good, or evil but instead they were independent of it... and you seem to be backing me up here, so what is it are they independent or a means to good and evil?

 

[Imaro]

The point is, there are more fiends - who think that there is nothing wrong with a life devoted to carnage and the destruction of others - than nice people - who think that lookin out for others is part of a worthwhile life - yet that majority opinion hasn't acquired the label of "good". I don't really understand why not.

My whole point is that the fiends, who are a majority, already think this. So why has the definition of "good" and "evil" not changed already?

Why do I have to get non-fiends to agree with me? Do the beliefs of the fiends somehow not count?

Citation please... I am genuinely curious about where this is stated... I always thought the default was that humans were the most numerous race across the multiverse, but I readily admit I could be wrong.

 

[I'm A Banana]

But the "good" people don't share a belief either: you, [MENTION=71756]Nivenus[/MENTION], and some others have just been arguing as much for mutiple pages.

The point is, there are more fiends - who think that there is nothing wrong with a life devoted to carnage and the destruction of others - than nice people - who think that lookin out for others is part of a worthwhile life - yet that majority opinion hasn't acquired the label of "good". I don't really understand why not.

The only thing you have to accept to understand this is that most believing beings (many fiends included!) have the belief that fiends are evil. If one were to take some sort of complete planar census, one would find that more believing beings believe that fiends are evil than believe that they are good. In my usual running of PS, the "What's so bad about evil?" perspective is especially prominent. "Call it evil if you like, I just think it's fun!", says the vrock in the middle of tearing apart an Outlands village. "Evil? I suppose so! Ah, well," says the hydroloth as she strokes the head of her mind-slave. "Yes. Evil. There is no other path to strength," says the erinyes as she takes aim with her bow.

That situation isn't permanent. If the PC's decide they want to change it, they might find the arguments of the fiends subtly changing. The amnizu lays down her whip, and raises an eyebrow. "Compassion? Friend, if life is suffering, then all compassion does is prolong that suffering, deceiving people, making them feel that life really isn't so bad. No. Better they know the truth, yes? Better they know the harsh reality than that they imagine that life can be anything but this torment. I torture people, yes, and I feel good about that, because I am reminding people of what the truth of life is. It is you delusional do-gooders who are truly the cruel, here."

It's not inherently less desirable to be called evil in PS than to be called good, so I don't see any reason why most of the uncountable numbers of fiends would have a real problem with that label. The Lawful ones might have a strict definition of what evil is that they then meet! The Chaotic ones would not object to anyone calling them anything! I don't accept the premise that more fiends believe they are good than believe that they are evil -- it's just a label in PS.

In aggregate with the rest of the reasons, I have no trouble accepting evil fiends as the current "starting point" for PS.

My whole point is that the fiends, who are a majority, already think this. So why has the definition of "good" and "evil" not changed already?

Why do I have to get non-fiends to agree with me? Do the beliefs of the fiends somehow not count?

I don't accept the premise that the fiends already all think this. There's no clear reason for them to believe that they have that label. There's no reason for most them to deny the label of "evil," and thus have spells and planes know that label. They count, they just have no real reason to believe that they should be all called "good." "Good" doesn't describe anything they see as valuable, worthy, and desirable.

I also don't accept the premise that the fiends outnumber all of the other creatures in creation. They might outnumber the forces of "good," but that's a long way from outnumbering all other creatures in existence. And the influence of the belief matters, too -- maybe it's just harder for folks to accept that torture is the path to truth than it is for them to accept that being fed and happy and smiling with their friends is a path to truth, so the idea of fiends being good has little influence outside of certain groups of fiends. Functionally, in play, these numbers are all "infinite" anyway.

My point was that a paladin, as an archetype, has no place in a gameworld in which what counts as good is a function of mortal belief. Such a world has no place for notions of providence - no place for the notion that true good might be rekindled no matter how dark the situation - yet the idea of providence is utterly crucial to the paladin archeypte. (In LotR, for instance, which is proably the best-known fantasy story to express the relevant notion of providence, the numbers of orcs, Southrons etc who think that Sauron is on the right side is irrelevant to the moral value of Sauron's endeavours.)

Whatever one believes to be good could certainly be rekindled no matter how dark the situation. If one believed that the code of the paladin created goodness, then no matter how dark the situation, that light could shine on that paladin. Heck, the idea that the paladin (and other paladins!) believe that to happen is nearly a guarantee that it will for the PC's.

The Greeks - well one of them, Plato - also presented the well-known argument in the Euthyphro, that the value is prior to belief, because otherwise belief and conviction would be arbitrary. If nothing has value but for being the object of belief and desire, then there is no reason to belief and desire one thing over another.

This is [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s point (at least as I read it). As I've said upthread, there are philosophical responses available to the argument of the Euthyphro, of which Nietzsche's is only one. But those responses have implications that are hard to deal with in a fantasy RPG context. And I'm certainly not seeing anyone on this thread actually deal with the Euthyphro issue - that is, I'm not seeing anyone expain why, within the "belief makes value" framework, choosing one thing rather than another, aligning with one faction rather than another, is not completely arbitrary.

I'm not here to debate Plato and Nietzsche. All I can say is that PS presents a setting in which personal belief makes truth, and reality is contingent on what other people believe to be reality. The point of bringing up the notion of Greek hospitality as Chaotic Evil and then changing to not really a thing that decides cosmic alignment was to demonstrate how belief even determines what alignment is. Belief that a thing is evil makes it so. Belief that a thing is not evil makes it so. In absence of a strong belief, other people define this for you. With a strong belief (which every PS player character should have!), you get to define that for others.

In fact, the idea of a strong belief being unique to the "protagonists" in the setting is worth harping on, as it is another reason that fiends might be considered evil (and just accept it as The Way Things Are) -- most fiends don't have any more strength of conviction than most turnip farmers, and have no greater capacity to question their lot in life than any other NPC. It's the PC's (and their antagonists) that shape the planes by having beliefs that become revolutionary. That fiends are evil could be thought of as the influence of a great idea whose original proponent is long gone from the planes, but whose echoes still persist. If a fiend wants to change the belief of the planes...well, that fiend makes a good PC or antagonist in PS!

My take-away from this is that Planescape is for someone who wants to run some sort of non-cartoon-morality campaign, but for whatever reason won't just jettison the system of mechanical alignment.

Alignment seems to be adding nothing to this. There is a place where people follow an (arbitrary) code, and if you comply with that code you will go there when you die. What does it add to say that, for now, that place is labelled "good"? What does this have to do with the word "good" as used in ordinary English, or even the word "good" as defined in AD&D and 3E materials (ie by reference to human rights/weal/dignity)?

Again, I don't think the alignment is definitional, but rather utilitarian. Planescape is for someone who wants to run D&D without cartoon morality, and it uses alignment to do this by showing how alignment isn't an objective truth, but rather a subjective belief. If you're coming from a typical FR or GH or DL D&D game, that's going to be an unexpected twist, and it will set you up to question other things that seem "permanent" (like, say, the map!). Planescape doesn't NEED to use alignment to do this, I feel (you can have a PS game without alignment, the most iconic PS game needn't use alignment to function, it just needs people to accept the malleability of everything), but it chooses do, and that choice is a rational one, with some benefits. And some costs -- one of the sticking points seems to be folks who aren't able to easily accept PS's re-definition of what alignment is! For me personally, I'd happily drop the alignments from a game with a player who was having trouble with them being in a setting of subjective opinion, but I certainly don't think it's a necessary prerequisite to making sense of the setting.

What it does is treat the D&D notion of "good" that prevails in the setting's starting point as something that the PC's can change if they disagree with it.

I don't understand your comment about martyrdom.

Just that choosing between two good things isn't introducing ambiguity about what's good and what's evil, it's just asking what good is more important. So you will have to make some sacrifice. So you are a martyr -- sacrificing something you think as good for something you think is a GREATER good (your choice is: what is the greater good?). That doesn't really match what I'd label as ambiguous morality. It's a different aesthetic.

Right. The Great Wheel is a geographic expression of the alignment graph. It makes no sense without it! (For instance, without alignment there is no reason to favour the Great Wheel over the Astral Sea as a model of the heavens.)

Since in PS, good and evil is a matter of opinion, even without alignment, the Great Wheel is still just what people think good and evil are, layed out in a map.

 

[TwoSix]

If the belief changes, so does the reality.

Man, the '90s were a good time for belief in consensual reality in RPGs, between Planescape and Mage: the Ascension.

 

[Imaro]

Man, the '90s were a good time for belief in consensual reality in RPGs, between Planescape and Mage: the Ascension.

Don't forget Unknown Armies as well....