What Did Alignments Ever Do For D&D?

[Celebrim]

Being a three-dimensional human being isn't an alignment...

Nor is it the antithesis of one. And to a large extent, I think something like alignment - whatever you wish to call it or think the best name for it is - is what makes a person 'deep' as opposed to shallow. Shallow is what we call people who lack that characteristic. It is the character in a character. It is the sometimes hidden depth of a person. I don't pretend that humans exactly map to 9 alignments or that there are only two axis much less only these two axis. But I do think that its as meaningful (or meaningless) as Myers-Brigg tests or Keirsey temperment sorters, and trying to measure something more interesting.

Which is to say that I think that fantasy games need to have something of the sort, and D&D alignment is as good as any I can think of.

But to the extent that someone would grant some validity to a Myers-Briggs indicator, no one would need claim that it meant that there were only 16 personalities on the whole planet or that because we could sort people such that anyone we so sorted was two-dimensional. The same sort of things are true of alignment.

so I'm not sure how you'd tell your DM is such.

No, you aren't.

Unless you're seriously trying to bring forth the idea that you can tell what morals a person has judged on how if they use a silly black and white team system in their magical imaginary elf game.

I didn't say that. I merely said that I could tell from their temperment what sort of alignment that would be likely to gravitate to in play. I have very clearly tried to divorse my discussion of it from judging someone's morality on that basis, and I've even gone so far as to suggest that even if we could clearly from the system label someone's morality it wouldn't necessarily mean we'd confirmed or denied their moral worth to any degree. In other words, if we are serious about the matter, we do have to entertain the idea that black is white and white is black (as it were).

If I had made the claim that I could tell after I'd got to know a person what sort of temperment that they'd self select when taking a Myers-Brigg personality test, that would hardly be worthy of (or likely to prompt) your derision - even if you personally did not take much stock in the value of such things. This claim is in my opinion no more extraordinary or unusual than that. I'm not saying that it gives me in especial insight into what we might call someone's 'real' alignment. I don't know that at all, because real tests of a person's true moral worth are rare and hard to come by. I just know that its possible to predict the alignment a person will tend to self-select, and that I find that interesting and at times humorous.

 

[tuxgeo]

This. Alignment, for me and in groups I've played with (as DM and/or PC), has been a flavor thing.

It is a guideline to behavior and belief, sometimes taken into account with personality. < snip>

My understanding on Alignment was always that it was a guideline to the character's ethics (do you choose/follow law or chaos? Do you lie? Will you cheat? Is violence or torture acceptable? In certain circumstances? For your own benefit? For someone else's benefit?) and morals (do you act for good or evil? Do you act in your own interests? Will you act for others? Do you enjoy/abhor suffering?).

There are other clues, as well:
1. Would it make sense to your character to hear someone described as being "disgustingly healthy?" (Does your character ever find health to be disgusting? Would your character ever seek to make a "disgustingly healthy" person less healthy by any means, such as poison or stress or exhaustion or infection or addiction?)
2. Suppose your character hears someone say, "Let no good deed go unpunished!" Would that seem sensible? Would your character take it as a joke -- as being irony or sarcasm? What if some person your character knew always acted in ways to punish good deeds, seemingly as a matter of policy or matter of course? Would your character approve of that?
3. Is trust always misplaced? Does your character look for opportunities to betray trust? Does your character enjoy being around people who are offended or amused by an insufficiency of cynicism? Is your character most comfortable in a "watch your back or die" environment?
4. Charitableness: Is any evidence ambiguous? Is every statement equally provable? Who should have the burden of proof, and who gets the benefit of the doubt? Is it wiser to doubt everything; or are there some situations where the cost of acquiring proof could be prohibitive? Can eyewitnesses ever be believed by anyone who was not physically there? Does the absence or availability of any other possible proof matter?

Those are also alignment questions, though they do not appear on any online tests that I have seen.

Saying everyone is just Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic (in olden days) OR everyone is just Good/Neutral/Evil (like, I hear, it is now) doesn't work for me. It is simpler but not, I think, more accurate.

I think the 9 options are adequately diverse to develop various character types with any "3 dimensional" nuance or "character development" you want. A LG or True N or CE guy can be cynical or idealistic and can waver or change or grow. That's not a matter of alignment.

This: "waver or change or grow." Yes. Alignment drift can happen, and that fact adequately (IMHO) provides sufficient protection from any tendency that an alignment system might have to discourage or dissuade character development and growth.
(Do you want your PC to grow in another, fuller direction? If you do, then describe that growth and change as you will; but also describe the shift of the character's alignment as you do so. That just adds to the change, instead of detracting from it.)

 

[tuxgeo]

< snip> it's precisely those people who hate alignment the most which are most offended that I might credit it with some kernel of truth. My beliefs in that regard are experimental. It doesn't take me very long after getting to know someone for me to predict which alignments that they'll gravitate to in play, and for those that I have ended up playing with I have nearly 100% accuracy in this internal prediction.

(I don't really want to go into the method for fear of killing the thread, but here's a hint. Consider it axiomatic that Tolkien is Lawful Good without judging whether 'law' or 'good' is worthy or correct, taking it merely as labels for a particular mode of thought and behavior and not necessarily affirming that mode's moral correctness. I choose Tolkien mostly because he is so well described (and self-described at that), so well known, and because he has already couched his thought in fantasy terms - but really we could use anyone as a starting point. Given that, what particular thing could we look for in a person's philosophy that would allow us to arrange them in the other points of the grid. If you know enough Tolkien, that should give you enough to go on.)

Apparently I don't know enough Tolkien, because that doesn't give me enough to go on. I agree with not going further into any such method out of respect for the thread; but do you have a blog or a treatise somewhere online where you explicate this in greater detail?
If not, would you create one? Some might find it to be of interest.

(Gondor was lawful and good without a king, so a ruler isn't the missing piece. The ents were good without government. The dwarves were lawful without helping others much. I am having trouble seeing the missing clues.)
[Quote edited for enhanced vorpalness. ]

 

[Sunseeker]

I always liked alignments, they gave a general guideline for where your character should fall in relation to society. While I disliked some of the strict alignment requirements for some classes, they were useful at preventing idiotic combos like "paladin warlocks" or other obvious-good obvious-evil class hybrids.

From a rules perspective, they added unnecessary complications, but from an RP perspective, I think they were useful. Just not really well explained.

As it's been stated, the problem was that nobody could agree on what "good" or "evil" really was. So taking them out of the rules-end of the game allows for everyone to just relax and use their own moral compass to define that. Which is nice, but like politics, when you have no wrong answers, then neither do you have any right ones.

 

[evildmguy]

As a kid playing DND, alignments were a thing that caused arguments. Each of the other kids playing had an idea of what being an alignment meant but when the DM and player couldn't agree, it caused an argument. The reason we (my particular group) did that was because we tried to make alignments be something they weren't, which is absolute indicators about the character.

As I have gotten older, I think alignments are exactly like the Briggs-Myers personality indicators, only with morals in them. Nothing wrong with that. They are a starting point, a quick and dirty way to say something about a character but they aren't an all encompassing view of that character, no more than knowing that I'm an INTF tells you generic things about my personality.

I appreciate shades of gray a lot more, almost too much in terms of moral relativism, and like that an alignment is a starting point, not a straight jacket on how a character must act. I prefer good characters being played at my table but don't shy away from adults wanting to play unaligned/CN characters and see where it goes. Heck, sometimes I see if I can get them to make their characters heroes and sometimes I tempt them to have their characters be evil! As long as it's fun.

I personally think Exalted did this best with their virtues. (Compassion, Conviction, Temperance, Valor) Further, they have some good game mechanics to go with them. Again, I wouldn't use them as a straight jacket myself but at least they are well defined in what they mean.

Good discussion!

 

[TarionzCousin]

Alignments helped form the basis for the Outer Planes--which were and still are very cool.

 

[Merkuri]

This: "waver or change or grow." Yes. Alignment drift can happen, and that fact adequately (IMHO) provides sufficient protection from any tendency that an alignment system might have to discourage or dissuade character development and growth.
(Do you want your PC to grow in another, fuller direction? If you do, then describe that growth and change as you will; but also describe the shift of the character's alignment as you do so. That just adds to the change, instead of detracting from it.)

I once created a PC who's purpose in life was to change alignments. She began play as Lawful Neutral, but had been cursed by the Silver Flame (it was an Eberron game) and the curse could only be broken when she "became worthy of the Flame." In other words, she had to become Lawful Good.

She had the "lawful" part down pat, but just couldn't quite get the "good" part. She was always trying to do good deeds not because she thought they needed doing but because she wanted to rack up karma. She had this sort of, "sigh, we have to save another baby from a burning building?" attitude.

 

[cattoy]

The only alignment that counts is the one you practice when nobody's watching.

 

[TarionzCousin]

The only alignment that counts is the one you practice when nobody's watching.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Many years ago I was playing 3e and I had a friend who wanted play a Pale Mater, a prestige class that gave wizards more abilities to control undead. The class required a non-good alignment. I don't allow evil alignments in my game, and the player chose chaotic neutral. Things were going along fine until, at the request of a very bad efreeti (not that the PC or the player knew that), the PC killed a helpless innocent person. The player and the PC both knew he was helpless and innocent. Afterwords, outside of the game, I was talking to him that it was an evil act. He was surprised because, to his character, it wasn't evil. I explained to him that good and evil in the campaign world were real forces in this world and were objectively identifiable. This shocked him.

A co-worker overhead this and said the idea of good and evil being forces of nature was unrealistic, he could see law and chaos being forces of nature, but not good and evil. I told him it was fantasy world. I'll never forget his sardonic response "And a very fantastic world it is."

For me, this shows the awesomeness of Alignment: that there are objective moral forces in this fantasy world. That the characters are judged not by their own intentions or their own justifications, but by rules that lie outside of them, in the world itself. That there is a force you can feel and say, "This is Goodness," or "This is Law."

That adds such a grand level of fantasy to the game.

I think 3e had the approach the best overall. I'm not sure what 4e really gains by taking the "Lawful" out of Evil and the "Chaotic" out of Good. Though I appreciate "Unaligned" as a contribution, because not everyone wants to pick a side in the ongoing cosmic struggle (even if it is just another name for True Neutral).