Understanding Alignment

[awesomeocalypse]

awesomeocalypse: Well, you seem to have conceeded everything that I thought might be contriversial or might cause you offense. I don't really feel like arguing ethics or theology with you, and this isn't the place, so I'm not going to be able to really respond to 90% of your post. Besides, with all my points being conceded to me, I'm not sure that there is a whole lot left to say.

You spend much of your time, indeed almost you entire response, not discussing alignment at all, but instead attempting to prove to me that morality is subjective and relative and hense that the game universe ought to match the real one as you percieve it.

But the very fact that we perceive it differently proves my point. You believe them to be objective, but your beliefs are no more objectively provable than my beliefs. In this world. However, in a system with alignment as a built in mechanic, then beliefs do become objectively provable.

That you held such belief and that such belief would tend to cause you to reject an alignment system was most of what I was trying to achieve. You really can't argue with that sort of position, so I won't try, but I would note how curious it is for you to be arguing for the non-existance of the alignment system when a character with your beliefs would fit so neatly inside it.

I would note that a nuetral character or perhaps a chaotic neutral character would look at the classic D&D cosmology and say the exact same thing, "Morality is subjective as far as we know.", and no one with in the classic D&D universe would be able to prove otherwise. All they would be able to do is prove is something like, "You can be smote with lawful energy", but this wouldn't prove that law was objectively better. The question of the way the universe works or should work doesn't disappear, it just changes how the question is phrased.

Except I in no way see myself as neutral, or chaotic for that matter. In my opinion am a good person, and I do the best I can to act good as I perceive it. I have no way of knowing whether my perception of what is good is accurate, but I nevertheless act as though it is (although I try not to be too self-righteous about it).

However, there are people who would say that, for example, because I engage in pre-marital sex (which I don't consider to be immoral), or because I don't attend church or because I vote a certain way that I am an evil person. They might be right. I don't think they are, but who knows?

However, in this case, I do rather think I understand it. The only times I've seen these sorts of metagame arguments was when the DM sprang some interpretation on the player without warning, "Because you did that new alignment is X, lose a level.", or some equivalent. And, the player's contrary arguments in such disputes were all proxy arguments of, "Well, if I'd known that was the consequence, I wouldn't have done it, can I have a take back?"

No, my issue is not that this mechanic can be imposed as a surprise, it is that it can be imposed at all. I have no more interest in the DM teling me how to act based on his perception of good/evil before the fact than after.

Even if I grant that, so what? If I play in a game world where the fundamental philosophical dynamic of the world is different than the one I believe the world I live in has, that's not abhorent to me either - that's interesting.

Fair enough. For me, it takes the story too far outside the bounds of the sort of stories I'm looking to tell through D&D, or really, that I enjoy at all.

Again, so what? At worst, you would find yourself in the cosmic equivalent of being a dissident to the laws of a nation who found those laws immoral, but in this case it would be the very nature of the universe which you found immoral. If it is 'Good' that you find immoral, may I introduce you to one explanation for the attractiveness of 'Neutral Evil'.

If thats how you want to play, as a dissident to some objective universal law, go for it. Myself, I like campaigns and characters that are as human and real as I can make them, and I find that difficult to do when the game pushes me to define a universal moral law, because that is so completely at odds with how the real world operates.

You don't strike me as someone who easily bows to authority.

I'm not that much of a rebel, believe me.

Actually, I've been talking about a world that I think mimics life. It's your world of purely subjective truth that would not mimic life as I know it, and while I find it interesting I find it less interesting than a world that does not know whether truth is subjective or objective and is fighting to determine the outcome of these questions.

Really? Then prove my view wrong. If you can, I'll concede an objective morality, but I'm betting you can't. I'm betting all you can do is assert your beliefs, just as I can assert mine, which is all any of us can do. Unless, of course , if we were D&D characters. Then one of us would be right, because the universe/dm would say so.

I don't know that this is necessarily a useful debate to have. it sounds like you have entirely opposite ideas of what constitues an enjoyable roleplaying experience, so I doubt we're going to get much further. Keep on trucking with alignment, and I'll go without.

 

[Celebrim]

But the very fact that we perceive it differently proves my point.

I'm afraid it doesn't. I could be percieving the Sun to rise above the shoulder of the Earth, but my perception that that is what is happening - however convincing the evidence of my senses - wouldn't mean that that is what is happening. The fact that different people percieve different things only establishes differences in our perceptions. It doesn't establish a difference in the thing percieved.

You believe them to be objective, but your beliefs are no more objectively provable than my beliefs. In this world. However, in a system with alignment as a built in mechanic, then beliefs do become objectively provable.

No, they remain just as unprovable in the classic D&D cosmology as they do in this world, you just have to divorse your thinking from your experience of this world. In this world, we can prove the existance of gravity and electromagnetism (actually, we can't actually do even that much, but let's not go there). In the other world, we can prove the existance of law, order, good, and evil as primal forces of the universe, but just as we couldn't in this world prove that the world ought to have gravity and that a world with a particular gravitational constant is the best of possible worlds, so the inhabitants of the other world couldn't provide proof that good was better than evil, or law better than chaos, nor could they prove that the world as it existed was the best of all possible worlds or that the particular champions of each cosmological principle both deserved authority and issued wise and benevolent decrees. All they could establish is that such things were, but establishing that such things are is (you may find this hard to believe from your perspective) a relatively unimpressive thing in itself. If you can allow me to stray into religion just for a second, for a non-believer in a religion the key hurdle - the key element of faith - is percieved to be believing that a particular diety exists. For a believer though, this is such a small thing that it barely qualifies as faith at all, and the real crux of the matter could be said to be believing that said god is good (or cares, or can be persuaded, or whatever it is you believe about its relationship to you). For inhabitants of this other world we imagine, the relatively trivial aspect of believing that a deity or Good exists is stripped off, and we are left with demonstrating the far more important point that 'Good' is good and that a particular way of relating to the universe is the right way to do so.

The reason I find your description of the 'right' way to do it ironic is that you don't dodge around this point as far as you seem to think that you do. From my perspective, I'm describing a universe where morality objectively exists, but objectively the central question of morality can't be answered. Whereas from my perspective, you are describing a universe that already gives all the answers.

Except I in no way see myself as neutral, or chaotic for that matter.

Of course not. And in the imagined cosmology, the devils of hell may percieve themselves as Lawful and Evil as an objective fact (because they have such information), but still percieve that they are in the right and that their cause is the correct one. In fact, we can expect that every intelligent being of every alignment also imagines that their cause is the correct one and to be able to provide some sort of reason why this is so, otherwise we would not really expect anyone to hold that view.

No, my issue is not that this mechanic can be imposed as a surprise, it is that it can be imposed at all. I have no more interest in the DM teling me how to act based on his perception of good/evil before the fact than after.

Yes, I know. I gathered that from before my first responce to you. That that was the case was very much my intended point, I just didn't expect you to concede it.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

When alignment is a mechanic, it necessarily renders the DMs conception of good and evil an objective facet of the universe. When alignment is not a mechanic, it says so very little about who a person is that it does nothing but waste character sheet space.

It is a well-noted drawback of alignment that it DOES require that the DM make his interpretations clear to the players before alignment becomes an issue in-game. And once again, alignment may say nothing to YOU about a character, but I and many others have been using alignment without great difficulties to do just that for about 30 years now. Your insistence that it is not useful in this regard is therefore a demonstrable UNTRUTH.

Did the fact that Tolkein didn't have a two-word descriptor like "neutral good" in his head when he created Gandalf inhibit in any way his ability to create an interesting and fully realized character with a clear sense of personal morality? And if he had had it, would it have added anything at all?

Nothing about alignment - with the unfortunate exception of those elements which are tied directly to in-game effects - dictates that a player MUST use it to guide his characters choices. I can put NG on my character sheet at the time of creation and never consider it again. If the DM has any smarts he'll never make an issue of whether my character conforms to any precise "definition" of NG. As long as my character is portrayed reasonably and with reasonable consistency his alignment does indeed serve ME, the player, no particular purpose.

On the other hand, I might use that alignment as a CONSTANT reference to assist me in deciding why my character takes or refrains from certain actions. Prof. T. might not have needed alignment to help him create Gandalf. SOMEONE ELSE MIGHT. Why do you insist that this tool that people have used for 30 years - even with mixed results - is USELESS? Just because it is useless to YOU doesn't make it useless to everyone else as repeated testimony has shown.

In my experience, games with alignment tend to either

a.) devolve into "team good takes on team evil"

And this is badwrongfun and not to be tolerated in anyone elses game?

b.) move quickly into heavy roleplay in which alignment was almost immediately forgotten as people got into playing a fully realized, complex character

In which case alignment is not really a problem for those players. Yet it's still there for players who are NOT into heavy roleplay or for some reason are incapable of it.

How could you even pretend that this means anything? "Good" is no more a useful descriptor of the sum total of someone's actions than it is of their philosophy or religion.

"Good" isn't intended to be a descriptor of the sum total of someones actions, nor the beginning and end of their philosophy and religion. It's supposed to be a USEFUL descriptor, not an absolute one.

Melodrama is a subset of drama. Drama as distinct from melodrama is all drama that cannot be considered melodrama, that is, conflict which does not simply break down into clear camps of objective good and evil.

Can you explain again why breaking down into clear camps of objective good and evil is not to be tolerated by anyone in a game of D&D?

This should only ever happen if alignment serves some mechanical function though, or if the DM is actuvely intending to create some sort of morality play, in which case he's essentially rendering alignment mechanical anyway by tying metagame benefits like "success" or "failure" to whether you conform to his personal idea of good and evil.

That is exactly what I'm against. If I present the players with two sides, each with greivances that could be looked on as legitimate, I have no intention of penalizing or rewarding them for siding with one or the other. In fact, I'd prefer that they are unsure of who to side with, that they have to argue it out between each other, that they really have to get into their characters head and think about what matters to them and where this dilemnda falls on their personal scale.

You say that you like to use D&D to explore morality. I say I like to play D&D where morality is much less of a non-issue. You say alignment gets in the way of playing the game the way you like. I say alignment is of ASSISTANCE to myself and others in playing the game the way WE like. You suggest that alignment's in-game effects promotes a scenario where a DM creates morality traps. I suggest that a bad DM can and will do that with or without alignment.

Alignment most certainly can be misused and abused by DM's and players alike. Still doesn't mean that it cannot be used legitimately and appropriately.

And I revel in the paladin's ability to do that, and then for the peaceful and scholarly wizard to declare him a self-righteous, zealot brute, and to have that disagreement stand as a legitimate and interesting conflict, rather than for the paladin to be able to say, 'well, I still got my powers beeyatch, guess that means I'm right--I *am* good. Objectively."

And the scholarly wizard might just be looking at his own alignment when he makes that declaration.

 

[MrGrenadine]

That is exactly what I'm against. If I present the players with two sides, each with greivances that could be looked on as legitimate, I have no intention of penalizing or rewarding them for siding with one or the other. In fact, I'd prefer that they are unsure of who to side with, that they have to argue it out between each other, that they really have to get into their characters head and think about what matters to them and where this dilemnda falls on their personal scale.

There's absolutely nothing in the alignment system that prevents the characters from doing what you describe. Further, there's nothing in the system that says two Good groups cannot be in conflict, or two Evil groups. It isn't like you get a team jersey and pick a side and have to conform to that team's dogma, (within reason of course).

In fact, a character of any alignment or no alignment, given the situation of a conflict between two groups with legitimate grievances, would probably approach the situation in exactly the same way--gather as much information as possible, and then make the decision that sits best with him or her--which may include doing nothing at all, or aiding both groups.

Have you seen the movie Yojimbo? Its a great example of the situation you describe, with all the nuances I think you'd appreciate--and yet the story and its characters could exist comfortably in a world that included the nine alignments.

And I revel in the paladin's ability to do that, and then for the peaceful and scholarly wizard to declare him a self-righteous, zealot brute, and to have that disagreement stand as a legitimate and interesting conflict, rather than for the paladin to be able to say, 'well, I still got my powers beeyatch, guess that means I'm right--I *am* good. Objectively."

Thats just bad RP, and certainly doesn't reflect my experience with using alignment or prove that the system is faulty. Bad RP happens in games without alignment structures as well.

 

[awesomeocalypse]

I'm afraid it doesn't. I could be percieving the Sun to rise above the shoulder of the Earth, but my perception that that is what is happening - however convincing the evidence of my senses - wouldn't mean that that is what is happening. The fact that different people percieve different things only establishes differences in our perceptions. It doesn't establish a difference in the thing percieved.

But our perceptions, and logical deductions based on those perceptions, are all we have.

No, they remain just as unprovable in the classic D&D cosmology as they do in this world, you just have to divorse your thinking from your experience of this world. In this world, we can prove the existance of gravity and electromagnetism (actually, we can't actually do even that much, but let's not go there). In the other world, we can prove the existance of law, order, good, and evil as primal forces of the universe, but just as we couldn't in this world prove that the world ought to have gravity and that a world with a particular gravitational constant is the best of possible worlds, so the inhabitants of the other world couldn't provide proof that good was better than evil, or law better than chaos, nor could they prove that the world as it existed was the best of all possible worlds or that the particular champions of each cosmological principle both deserved authority and issued wise and benevolent decrees. All they could establish is that such things were, but establishing that such things are is (you may find this hard to believe from your perspective) a relatively unimpressive thing in itself. If you can allow me to stray into religion just for a second, for a non-believer in a religion the key hurdle - the key element of faith - is percieved to be believing that a particular diety exists. For a believer though, this is such a small thing that it barely qualifies as faith at all, and the real crux of the matter could be said to be believing that said god is good (or cares, or can be persuaded, or whatever it is you believe about its relationship to you). For inhabitants of this other world we imagine, the relatively trivial aspect of believing that a deity or Good exists is stripped off, and we are left with demonstrating the far more important point that 'Good' is good and that a particular way of relating to the universe is the right way to do so.

To claim that calling one side "good" and one side "evil" doesn't impose a value judgement on those sides strikes me as disingenuous in the extreme. Moreover, if I believe a certain viewpoint is correct, I don't want to have to accept that this viewpoint is "evil" and get stuck arguing why "evil" is good. I'd rather just skip the labels and move right onto evaluating each side on its own merits, without all the "good hat/black hat" labelling.

The reason I find your description of the 'right' way to do it ironic is that you don't dodge around this point as far as you seem to think that you do. From my perspective, I'm describing a universe where morality objectively exists, but objectively the central question of morality can't be answered. Whereas from my perspective, you are describing a universe that already gives all the answers.

No, I am describing a universe in which the answers are no more or less knowable than the answers in are own universe. Every complaint you level against the system I propose can be levelled against the world as it actually is.

Of course not. And in the imagined cosmology, the devils of hell may percieve themselves as Lawful and Evil as an objective fact (because they have such information), but still percieve that they are in the right and that their cause is the correct one. In fact, we can expect that every intelligent being of every alignment also imagines that their cause is the correct one and to be able to provide some sort of reason why this is so, otherwise we would not really expect anyone to hold that view.

"I'm evil but I think evil is good" sounds like something a 14 year old goth would say. Compared to capitalism and communism, or christianity and islam, or pro-choicers and pro-lifers, or israel and palestine, or democrats and republicans, or any other issue I can think of that jumps out at me as actually presenting interesting moral questions, and by comparison "do you think good is good or do you think evil is good?" seems, frankly, infantile.

Yes, I know. I gathered that from before my first responce to you. That that was the case was very much my intended point, I just didn't expect you to concede it.

You deduced from my multi-page wall of text detailing my loathing for alignment that I didn't like alignment? Brilliant, Holmes. And how clever of you to manuever me into admitting the point I've been making over and over again.

It is a well-noted drawback of alignment that it DOES require that the DM make his interpretations clear to the players before alignment becomes an issue in-game. And once again, alignment may say nothing to YOU about a character, but I and many others have been using alignment without great difficulties to do just that for about 30 years now. Your insistence that it is not useful in this regard is therefore a demonstrable UNTRUTH.

Hooray for you. if we ever sit down to game together, maybe this will actually matter to me.

Nothing about alignment - with the unfortunate exception of those elements which are tied directly to in-game effects - dictates that a player MUST use it to guide his characters choices. I can put NG on my character sheet at the time of creation and never consider it again. If the DM has any smarts he'll never make an issue of whether my character conforms to any precise "definition" of NG. As long as my character is portrayed reasonably and with reasonable consistency his alignment does indeed serve ME, the player, no particular purpose.

So you admit that alignment as a mechanic is "unfortunate".

On the other hand, I might use that alignment as a CONSTANT reference to assist me in deciding why my character takes or refrains from certain actions. Prof. T. might not have needed alignment to help him create Gandalf. SOMEONE ELSE MIGHT. Why do you insist that this tool that people have used for 30 years - even with mixed results - is USELESS? Just because it is useless to YOU doesn't make it useless to everyone else as repeated testimony has shown.

Which is why it should never be a mechanic. I have no problem with you using whatever tools you like to play however you want. I'd just prefer that those tools don't become a mandated part of the game for the rest of us.

And this is badwrongfun and not to be tolerated in anyone elses game?

No, but by making alignment a mechanic you render it the default. If it is merely flavor, then those of us who don't find it useful can discard it.

In which case alignment is not really a problem for those players. Yet it's still there for players who are NOT into heavy roleplay or for some reason are incapable of it.

It most certainly is a problem if the game involves mechanics whereby alignment will continuously rear its ugly head.

Can you explain again why breaking down into clear camps of objective good and evil is not to be tolerated by anyone in a game of D&D?

"Not to be tolerated" =/= "it shouldn't be imposed via mechanic, and assuming it isn't, then I will personally never use it in a game."

 

[tuxgeo]

Adding more "W"s:

Perhaps the difficulty in understanding alignment comes from using the same words that we use in our internal value systems to also describe the extreme points of the alignment axes. I therefore propose an alternative:

Everything goes better with more "W"s; with wthat in mind, I propose a neww version wof Alignment: The Moral axis runs fromw Goowood to WeEvil, and the Ethical axis runsw from Lawfulw to Chaowtic.
This way, when we are talking about the "Goowood" alignment, we know right away that it could be different from any real-world moral "Good," simplyw based on thew evidence that it's spelled differentlyw; and the extremesw of WeEvil, Lawfulw, and Chaowtic would behave inw a similar fashionw. What do youw think?

(Of course, there will always be the malcontents who prefer to add more "R"s instead -- chiefly the Pirates, I would suspect. Foo!)

 

[Ariosto]

Except we don't all need to agree for the alignment system to work, unless we all play in the same campaign--which we don't.

Obviously, the Good-Evil/Law-Chaos system is robust enough to handle multiple interpretations, and can be willfully ignored by those who wish to use no alignment system or some other system.

But just because some folks don't understand it, or like it, or use it, that doesn't mean its not a valid and useful system.

A lot of D&D was originally like that by design.

Well, here it is: the last D&D supplement. ... we've told you just about everything we can. From now on, when the circumstances aren't covered somewhere in the books, wing it as best you can. As we've said time and time again, the 'rules' were never meant to be more than guidelines; not even true 'rules.'

 

[Ariosto]

One interesting thing is that Supplement IV did not as a rule indicate alignments!

(Of course, those would presumably have been merely Law, Chaos and Neutrality.)

Although Gygax introduced the Good-Evil axis and related planar cosmology in The Dragon, those really came into their own with the AD&D books.

 

[Ariosto]

Empire of the Petal Throne replaced Law and Chaos with Good and Evil, in context a very strange choice!

The two pantheons, openly and civilly co-existing in Tsolyani society, are understood in that society as championing Stability and Change respectively. Rather than a single standard of morally good conduct, there is a concept of propriety in accordance with one's station and cultic devotion (which might be quite opposed to another's duty in matters of chastity, human sacrifice, relationships with the undead, etc.).

Religious affiliation is also keenly political, and imperial intrigues come more freely to blows in the mazes of the underworld, so the practical really outweighs the philosophical and psychological theorizing.

 

[Voadam]

The discussion is about "killing someone just because they are evil". Hussar says that this is unrealistic and that any real world example ended up being labled evil by historians.

Thing is, that is not the case. Nazis are the more prominent examples of "Team Evil" and so far no historian labled the allies as villians becuase they killed Nazis for being Nazis.

Another examples would be the crusades where. While there are some historians would say that the christians were the real villians, the majority don't lable them as villians for killing muslims.

There are of course many example where Hussars statement would fit, but unlike those examples "Team evil" really is evil, something which makes this different than the real world examples were "Team evil" was just propaganda.

The crusades. Are you seriously suggesting there was an unambiguous Team Evil and Team Good in the crusades? Or are you just asserting that the majority of historians don't consider the christian killing of muslims in the crusades as more villainous than killings in most other wars generally?

I'm pretty sure that both sides thought they were Team Good versus Team Evil at the time. I don't really see an objective basis for our saying either one was though.