D&D General Why do people like Alignment? (+thread)

[Distracted DM]

I like alignment as a cosmic force, inspired by Moorcock's eternal champion etc. I do find it useful as a rough shorthand for NPCs, but that could be served by a sentence about their personality as well, or how some other games do it: an adjective and a noun. "Inquisitive Scamp," "Amenable Host," etc.
A5E did a good job with it, I feel. Most creatures don't have alignments, except for what we'd called "Outsiders" in 3e. Fiends, celestials, etc. Powerful clerics etc. can get alignments as well.

Of course, I also like alignment having a function... certain spells, effects, etc. relying on/affecting creatures that have them, or sentient magic items having conflict etc. with them.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Alignment started out simply as Faction. In AD&D it morphed into a moral and ethical description, which later got subsumed into an attempt to describe personality. It is important to remember what was happening in the broader TTRPG world at the time: more and more games were claiming (sometimes succeeding) to deliver on the ROLE-playing part. Even the original Fantasy Heartbreaker Palladium built their alignment system specifically around beliefs and personality traits. One need only go back the Dragon magazine forum pages to see how different people understood and used alignment differently.

I was never a big Planescape fan, but I think that setting helped re-establish Alignment as primarily about factions. Alas, PS was late in 2E after its death, 3.0 seemed to double down on the moral, ethical, and descriptive aspects of Alignment. By 5E, alignment is neutered mechanically and pretty strongly reviled, or at least ignored.

I prefer alignment to represent one's place in the metphysical universe -- kind of like a zodiac sign. I think it should come with some real mechanical weight for it to matter, to. But as it is, we mostly ignore it in our 5E games.

I strongly prefer the faction concept of alignment. Even using the nine-point system I see it that way, like Planescape. Alugnment isn't individual moral acts. It's about what cosmic force with which you choose to align, IMO.

 

[Stormonu]

I’ve never been big on the Law/Chaos axis*, but I definately can get behind the Good/Evil portion. As many others have said, it’s great shorthand for me as a DM to give me a starting point for fleshing out motivation and personality. Doing more than a caricature means going beyond alignment, but it’s a starting point.



* I didn’t understand the “Lawful” axis until I met my wife, who is unequivocally the poster child for Lawful Nuetral, to a point when we played the Star Wars RPG, everyone in the group agreed she could play a protocol droid without even trying (and did it pretty well).

 

[Reynard]

Forgive me for the segue, but this was always my issue with evil deities and those who serve them. If, in a D&D world, you know Gods are real, you can see their powers manifest by Clerics, and you know darned well that Asmodeus makes him home in a literal Hell, why would any sane person choose to worship an evil god?

I would think that, were an afterlife confirmed to exist, you'd want to make sure you got into one of the good ones...

Put simply: people like to think of themselves as the exception. "Sure, Orcus murders 99% of his worshipers, but I am part of the 1% that will be granted immense infernal power and made a prince among demons!"

 

[Voadam]

Forgive me for the segue, but this was always my issue with evil deities and those who serve them. If, in a D&D world, you know Gods are real, you can see their powers manifest by Clerics, and you know darned well that Asmodeus makes him home in a literal Hell, why would any sane person choose to worship an evil god?

It makes a big difference on what the afterlife is like.

If it is 4e D&D where Asmodeus lives in Hell, is a real god with powered clerics, and death sends you to the Shadowfell before moving on to the unknown it makes no difference on your afterlife if you worship him or a good god.

In Dante's Hell, where sinners are eternally punished it is set up to be a disincentive to evil.

If you turn into a D&D 3e style outsider when you die you might want to hang out with succubi for eternity rather than lantern archons.

Evil gods might offer actively attractive afterlives as rewards for their faithful. The Eternal BDSM Club for Loviatar followers or Forgotten Realms Tyranny God Bane might give entire dominions to his followers as their afterlife.

 

[Clint_L]

Alignment is something that if you don't have you usually have to invent. It need not be D&D alignment in the classic 3x3 grid, but it needs to be something that says explicitly on the character sheet, "This playing piece is meant to be more than just a pawn with a move set."

Backstory?

I find it really odd that anyone playing an RPG would see their caracter as a "pawn." That just defeats the whole purpose of playing an RPG. And contrary to your assertion, most RPGs do not need anything like alignment. Most modern RPGs give you guidance on how to create backstory. Alignment is useful for players who struggle with that (see my previous post), but it's demonstrably not essential for most.

 

[Tonguez]

I didnt mind 3e's big cosmic Evil and Good, or Elrics ideas of Law and Chaos but applying it to human behaviour is dumb, I much prefer Traits, Bonds and Ideals.

 

[payn]

I didnt mind 3e's big cosmic Evil and Good, or Elrics ideas of Law and Chaos but applying it to human behaviour is dumb, I much prefer Traits, Bonds and Ideals.

How have BIFTs been implemented at your table? My experiences were they ended up being insignificant because the GM gave up early trying to remember the specifics of 4-5 different characters. I had higher hopes for it, but nobody I played with used it to any effect.

 

[Clint_L]

I didnt mind 3e's big cosmic Evil and Good, or Elrics ideas of Law and Chaos but applying it to human behaviour is dumb, I much prefer Traits, Bonds and Ideals.

And Flaws.

 

[Lanefan]

As others have said, alignment is a useful shorthand for PC and NPC alike.

Where I really like it, though, is with things like consecrated areas in the setting (who gets affected, and how), aligned magic items (who is this sword gonna bite and who will it accept), detection - and obscurement! - of alignment, and balancing the cosmology.