D&D General The Problem with Evil or what if we don't use alignments?

[Cadence]

The problem is that you are telling my that a race of humanoids 125-200% the mass of humans can go around raiding constantly for wealth and food and not starve due to their lack of farms and not be genocided by a focused effort by noblemen to wipe them out.

I'm assuming you've met the rest of D&D (like halflings and dwarf weapon choices and the farm land is pints of light settings and surviving in the arctic... just to name a few recent threads) and and I just missed the clues that this was a joke?

 

[Minigiant]

I'm assuming you've met the rest of D&D (like halflings and dwarf weapon choices and the farm land is pints of light settings and surviving in the arctic... just to name a few recent threads) and and I just missed the clues that this was a joke?

Oh there is a lot of silly and nonsense in D&D.

But most of the evil races would not even function as described. That's before you see them as credible threats. Because they are Chaotic Stupid, Lawful Stupid, or Stupid Evil.

 

[Cadence]

Oh there is a lot of silly and nonsense in D&D.

But most of the evil races would not even function as described. That's before you see them as credible threats. Because they are Chaotic Stupid, Lawful Stupid, or Stupid Evil.

I was just thinking you could make it "most of the races" without the alignment modifier.

 

[FrozenNorth]

It avoids having the good working with the evil, for example...

Well, there are like 5 creatures in the MM that are good, and I suspect most DMs can figure out that angels and unicorns are Good without the MM hitting them over the head with an alignment.

And if a DM wants all servants of the gods to use the angel statblock, that’s awesome! And I would probably look askance at any player who said “Um, actually, angels are good so they shouldn’t be serving Malar”.

Edit. That came out a bit more dismissive than I intended. I apologize. My point is that many of the Good-aligned creatures in the MM, Volo’s and MtoF are pretty clearly signposted, and if a DM uses them differently, I don’t see that as a problem.

 

[Maxperson]

It doesn't really matter whether they're popular or not. Most of them still manage to not have alignments and their GMs deal with it just fine. And many D&D DMs also play or run in other systems and deal with it just fine.

Again, this is an Appeal to Popularity. It's a fallacy to say that just because all of these other things do it this way, D&D should too. D&D is not those games. D&D has alignment and it is a tool that absolutely should not be taken away from those who use it by those who don't like it. You don't like it, ignore it. It really is that simple.

 

[Cadence]

Well, there are like 5 creatures in the MM that are good, and I suspect most DMs can figure out that angels and unicorns are Good without the MM hitting them over the head with an alignment.

And if a DM wants all servants of the gods to use the angel statblock, that’s awesome! And I would probably look askance at any player who said “Um, actually, angels are good so they shouldn’t be serving Malar”.

Edit. That came out a bit more dismissive than I intended. I apologize. My point is that many of the Good-aligned creatures in the MM, Volo’s and MtoF are pretty clearly signposted, and if a DM uses them differently, I don’t see that as a problem.

I was trying to do a quick scan of things in some PF bestiaries to think about porting over... And there were a lot of things I didn't know in the last four!

 

[Mecheon]

I'm not saying you're stupid at all. I'm saying that alignment isn't monotonous if used correctly. I'm pretty darned smart, but there are tools in this world(many of them) that I just don't know how to use.

Y'know, I'm going to come at this from a different angle:

If alignment is so useful when used correctly, then why are there so many reports of people using it incorrectly? These go back decades, the alingment options. Lawful Stupid paladins and 'Batman is every alignment' are ancient memes for reasons.

If a tool is this easy to mess up with, then I'm going to very quickly start blaming the design of the tool than the people using it. Three people getting it able to work well doesn't excuse the fact three hundred have issues.

 

[Maxperson]

So what you're saying is, you are capable of making up anything but not motivation, unless there's an alignment attached.

No. Never said that.

So please go tell that to Cadence and Oofta, who have said "Are the other RPGs relevant to D&D? Are all of the other RPGs extant right now as popular as D&D?" and "Yes but if you look at the number of people playing TTRPGs, most people are playing a game with alignment because most people are playing D&D."

You mean their answers to you? You brought it up, not them. They decided to respond, but it's only you that is making the Appeal to Popularity.

Also, saying that something I did is a fallacy--which it wasn't, because I wasn't saying that more people play in games that have no alignment, just that most games don't have alignments--doesn't mean that the claim is wrong.

You are using the other games not having alignment as proof that D&D shouldn't. That's an Appeal to Authority and a fallacy.

So from your position as a DM, the orc hunters were monsters, not people/NPCs.

Generally, yes. Generally I use bad guys as encounters. I also use the term "monster" the way Gygax did. It equates to encounter. An encounter with NPC humans is a monster encounter. Same as any other race, species, rock, mineral or whatever.

But people kill orcs because they're orcs.

Okay. So what. That really has no relevance to this alignment discussion.

Please stop claiming fallacies until you learn what they actually do.

I'm well aware of what is a fallacy and what isn't. Stop using them and I will stop calling them out.

I have shown you the laziness, when it means that you are (a) treating all or most people of a specific race as having the same alignment, because the book says so, and (b) treating all people of a specific alignment as acting the same, which you did when you said what a chaotic evil creature would do when captured.

Yeeeeeaahh, (a) is not laziness, and (b) isn't anything that I have ever done. Including in my example of two possible ways a CE creature might respond.

You said "Are they generally a great enemy of all, or are they just another race with good and bad, if a more bad than other races."

If I said races, that was a typo. I meant alignments.

(This is also a good argument for getting rid of killing-based XP gain, but that's for another thread.)

And another game. You seem to want to make D&D into one of the other games you know about, so why not just play one of those?

You certainly didn't say you agreed with them. Your quote that I posted was the entirety of your response to them about it.

Bull! My original response to him was, "Mostly correct, except..." and then I went into another possible reason for the whatevers to go deep into the underdark.

And who said that the orcs you encountered in my hypothetical example were evil?

Answer: you did. When you assumed the orcs were evil.

Did you fail to see that I said, "I do the same thing, except..." indicating that I was talking about me and how I do things?

And do you think that it's a good thing

I personally couldn't care less. This is a game, not real life. What happens or doesn't happen to an imaginary race has no relevance to real world morality. As such, it's neither good, nor bad. It just is.

Alignment is a bit different, since it's based on Western morality. Whether it would be a good, neutral or evil act in game depends on how orcs are being run in that campaign.

You wrote: "Maybe he gives that answer and the PCs don't accept it and continue interrogation."

This, for a hypothetical orc that was out hunting game animals and got mad when you ruined the hunt.

Yes. For an already captured and interrogated orc. Not for the altered example that you gave. You changed the circumstances.

So which response do you pick?

And since there are multiple possible responses from which to pick, how is having Chaotic Evil in their stats better than having a sentence-long description that flat-out explains what they are like?

It doesn't matter which one I pick. It might be one of those two, it might be another reaction that fits within the CE alignment. And THAT'S precisely what makes it better than your descriptions. A specific alignment has many different actions and reactions that fit within it, so by knowing alignment, I have many different personalities and options at my fingertips. I'm not bound to one much narrower line of "Gets angry if hunt is stopped." Your line is good as an addition to alignment, but it sucks as a replacement.

You know what? Never mind. Umbran has already redtexted some people for being toxic, so I'm not going to continue in this thread.

I answer in order of thoughts and portions of a post, because of my ADD, so I didn't see this until the end. I will not respond to you again.

 

[Maxperson]

I realize it might be a break with tradition in this thread, but it feels like a little context might help.

Before I said what you quote me as above, you had appealed to something about numbers by bringing up the variety of different RPGs on the market that don't use alignment (I assume "vast majority" is an appeal to number).

That's what an Appeal to Popularity is. It's basically X is good or right, because all these others are doing it.

 

[Maxperson]

I'm sure WOTC has the data.

I mean we D&D fans have to be consistent. We can't say "WOTCC didn't add or change X because they have the data and the data states pro-change isn't the majority." AND "WOTC is changing Y but they don't have the data that Y needs changing nor that pro-change is popular."

Why would you assume that they have that data when they haven't done anything to get that data from the public?

Lawful Stupid Paladins, Flipfloping Druids, Destructive Chaotic Murderhobos, DMs stripping divine powers off of strict readings, Lolth Drow being a nonsense civilization, and CE savages being musclebound yet nothaving basic agriculture needed to fuel their raids have been examples of poor usage of alignment for decades.

They made Paladins have oaths, and some people have Oath Stupid Paladins. Strip alignment away and you still have "chaotic" murderhobos. There is no reading in the PHB that allows DM's to strip divine powers based on alignment. Lolth Drow still happens without alignment. Take alignment away and nothing changes unless you actually attend to the real problems.

Alignment is a tool with a poor instruction manual and many end up using it wrong and upsetting themselves.

How? It has no mechanical impact at all.

Why are D&D fans so anti-teaching?

Who said D&D "fans" are? You guys have been saying to get rid of alignment that it has no use, not that people should have better instruction. Perhaps if you had responded positively like that, instead of arguing to take alignment away for 30 pages, you'd have gotten a better response.

Oh and the problem with Orcs isn't the real world implications.

According to the people arguing in the other threads and WotC's response, that is the problem. They just then incorrectly blame it on alignment, rather than the lore write-up.