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

[FrozenNorth]

One of my PCs has the bond "One day I will return to my guild and prove that I am the greatest artisan of them all."

That doesn't tell me much about how they'll go about achieving that goal. An evil PC may murder all the competition. A chaotic may outright cheat or bend the rules. A lawful character will play by the rules, although that may include some loophole or little used rule.

That's why I like alignment - it's an additional tidbit of information I can use. It doesn't even matter if anyone else agrees with me because it's a tool for my personal RP of that PC, NPC or monster.

You just said alignment was only a role-playing aid for the player. What does it matter to you as DM if a player feels that that Bond best reflects their character?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

There certainly are various interpretations. Another post before gave some other examples (including xenophobe) - I offered multiple different interpretations and they agreed they would all be described by that. Do you have anything from a few short descriptors up to a few sentences that wouldn't be ambiguous in some situations?

Probably not, but if a thing is not a pure subjective value judgement like good/evil it probably has better chances of telling us something useful. Also naming a specific characteristic or trait rather than super vague overarching category will make things less up to interpretation.

 

[Cadence]

Yeah, their products have not included alignment for a while. I'm really interested in seeing what they will do with it in the next or updated edition. I really hope that it will be gone for good.

I eagerly await threads about the abuses of TIBF and the horridness of the monster block descriptions once alignment is no longer a topic. (I assume someone will make a table listing all the monsters by alignment later the same day the new MM shows up for those who like it - and that it will, unfortunately to my mind, have them for humanoids listed by alignment too).

 

[Faolyn]

Why does it matter if people don't have exactly 100% agreement? I don't enforce alignment for my player's PCs. It's up to them whether they care about alignment.

In the real world, it's close enough.

Because if it's included in the PH, then it should have some sort of actual meaning behind it that everyone can point to.

 

[Cadence]

Probably not, but If a thing is not a pure subjective value judgement like good/evil it probably has better chances of telling us something useful. Also naming a specific characteristic or trait rather than super vague overarching category will make things less up to interpretation.

I'm guessing there will at least be fewer people who care about the interpretation of each one (if nothing else because there are more to split the attention among).

 

[Faolyn]

There certainly are various interpretations. Another post before gave some other examples (including xenophobe) - I offered multiple different interpretations and they agreed they would all be described by that. Do you have anything from a few short descriptors up to a few sentences that wouldn't be ambiguous in some situations?

That's not an answer to my question.

 

[Cadence]

Because if it's included in the PH, then it should have some sort of actual meaning behind it that everyone can point to.

Like hit point or armor class or intelligence or wisdom or...
;-)

 

[FrozenNorth]

Because it's more vague than alignment is. With CE I know that the pranks will be vicious and harmful. With CG I know that they will be harmless. With CN they can be harmless or perhaps an inconvenience, but won't be vicious. It's better to have both alignment and prankster than just prankster or just alignment, but if I only get one of the two, alignment tells me far more about how to play the creature than prankster would.

It really doesn’t. If you look at what the PHB says about alignment, it actually says very little. I think, by its nature, you are incorporating a bunch of what was said about alignment in 3.5 and earlier.

Which is kind of ironic, giving that it is those who don’t like alignment that have been repeatedly accused of being stuck in the past.

 

[Faolyn]

They are, because the description says that they are. The art doesn't match the description, making the artwork faulty.

Well, let's go to the source.

TSR - Q&A with Gary Gygax

This is the multi-year Q&A sessions held by D&D co-creator Gary Gygax here at EN World, beginning in 2002 and running up until his sad pasing in 2008. Gary's username in the thread below is Col_Pladoh, and his first post in this long thread is Post #39.

www.enworld.org

I mentioned "pig-like faces" to Dave Sutherland, and he took me far too literally as far as I was concerned.

They were supposed to be piglike (what with the tusks), not pig-folk, according to the guy who made them for D&D.

 

[Faolyn]

I believe Drizzt Do'Urden gives the lie to you little pantomime. I'm pointing specifically to the bit where you say TSR and WOTC rarely put any spotlight on evil humaniods who weren't followers of their evil gods. To which I reply, um, say what?

It's possible @Minigiant meant evil humanoid races, not individuals.