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

[Celebrim]

Backstory?

As I said in my post, backstory doesn't tell you things that alignment does. The definitive example here is that each of the Seven Sentence NPCs in the classic Dragon Article could be of any of the nine alignments, have the same backstory, and yet be because the variance in alignments be completely different NPCs.

I find it really odd that anyone playing an RPG would see their character as a "pawn."

It's by far the most common stance in traditional play. Games like D&D, CoC, Star Wars, GURPS, etc. generally default to pawn stance among most players. I won't venture claims about other "modern" game systems as you call them only for lack of experience sufficient tables that make me comfortable stating what is normal. But I will say that at Cons, Pawn stance is most common across all the game systems I've tried to expose myself to.

That just defeats the whole purpose of playing an RPG.

There is no one purpose of playing an RPG. There are probably a dozen or so reasons to play one, and most players have multiple goals in playing an RPG. Many of those goals are not only enabled by pawn stance but potentially hindered by it. If you sit down with a whole group of players whose primary goal is challenge, and you start playing as if the whole goal of play is narrative or self-expression, you are likely to cause table conflict.

And contrary to your assertion, most RPGs do not need anything like alignment.

So you say, yet you give no indication behind your opinion and you seem to think I'm not familiar with a wide range of RPGs.

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.

Thirty pages of backstory does not necessarily tell me anything about your character's alignment. Alignment is not even remotely a replacement for backstory nor is backstory a replacement for alignment.

 

[Tonguez]

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.

I mostly play Fate, so I encourage players to word them like character Aspects to inform play and earn points (inspiration)

 

[Belen]

I am not sure I care other than my rule of no evil PC’s in my games. Few people properly play LG vs NG vs CG.

It mattered a bit more when Paladin’s were required to be LG but that went away too.

It may serve as a good resource for a player trying to conceptualize a characters personality but that seems it.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

I didn't play 4th Edition but liked they way it handled alignment by giving us the "Unaligned" option. It was a better solution than my own which incorporated a third fanatic/apathetic axis and resulted in 27 alignments (although all 9 of the apathetic alignments were essentially the same as "unaligned").

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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." Most systems tend to do something in this regard intending to encourage that mindset using tools that the designer believes are important to the genre. For example, VtM uses humanity, willpower, nature and demeanor as tools which are intended to - if used properly - create something other than a pawn mindset in the player.

D&D's system is iconic and rich as any other and well suited to D&D's big fantasy scope with clashes of archetypal forces in the world. It also tells us something about the character that a typical seven sentence backstory doesn't.

I've never found it all that rich in most cases. What would you say makes it so? I find the Vampire/Werewolf/etc. stuff dramatically more rich, because it aims at something simultaneously more concrete and yet harder to exclusively quantify.

That isn't to say I dislike it--as noted above, I think it has a place--I just see it as particularly flat, at least the way most GMs run it. It's a rare, rare GM that can make it richly engaging.

I find that most people's problems with alignment comes from some combination of DMs using it to play the PC for them, or because they disagree with the concept of objective morality (even though this fits nicely in the alignment grid), or because they really want to play the character in pawn stance and don't like anything suggesting its anything but the highest level of play to do otherwise. In my experience, it's almost always possible to work out from how the character wants to play the character where the character is going to fit into the grid and just say, "Ok, your idea that the ends always justify the means or that there is nothing objective about morality is a common belief system in the campaign world and it corresponds to X."

I'm very much a fan of objective morality myself, so I guess that means I have to fall into the former camp, but I'm not really sure how. My issue with the way alignment is usually done is that it's functionally treated like team jerseys, except the GM vacillates between 100% pure team-jersey mode and pretty strident "no no no, it really MEANS something to be <Evil/Good/whatever>". This results in either constantly vacillating, or outright capricious implementation, where sometimes it's coded objective morality woven into the universe itself, and other times it's the color of explosions you make and which team you root for. That, to me, looks less like "GMs using it to play the PCs for them" and much more like "it's an allegedly rigorous standard that is anything but rigorous."

And I find it's always possible to get people to accept alignment on their character sheet by framing everything about it as reward and not punishment, the same way that say WoW reframed the penalty for playing more than 8 hours a day as a bonus to playing the first 8 hours of the day and even though it was the same thing people loved one and not the other.

An...interesting take. Particularly when the way alignment is used in D&D is, extraordinarily frequently, exclusively as a source of punishment for incorrect behavior.

What exactly rewards alignment? 3rd edition Paladins and Clerics weren't rewarded, it was the constant Sword of Damocles over their heads. Aligned weapons were no reward, since they cut both ways. Aligned spells, likewise. So...what's the reward perspective here? I'm genuinely coming up empty on this one.

 

[payn]

I mostly play Fate, so I encourage players to word them like character Aspects to inform play and earn points (inspiration)

Not familiar and I looked it up. It sounds like aspects are like BIFTs. One example I saw was "sucker for a pretty face" which seems rather specific to me. I suppose after numerous sessions as GM id have 4 or 5 of these aspects memorized as players use them. Though, something like this seems hard to shoehorn into every session. Or, I just have trouble seeing how its used widely in the game.

Do you have examples?

 

[cbwjm]

I liked it more when it had effects tied to it, I even used it ages ago when running an old thunder rift adventure where anyone who was evil (originally chaotic) would set off a defence in a wizard's sanctum.

3e had various effects such as weapons that dealt more damage to evil or needing a weapon attuned to good to overcome damage resistance which I thought was a nice addition.

Now, I tend to use alignment more as a general descriptor if I use it at all. For instance, I had an order cleric who was very lawful so it was just added as a general descriptor of the character like "Lawful, stern, honest". It can still kind of be used in this way (helps to give a general idea of how an NPC will act when DMing) but it's no longer required and I typically don't bother with it when rolling up a character.

 

[bloodtide]

I use Alignment in the Cosmic Sense of Multiuniversal Philosophy. I see a lot of the Alignment problems coming from the more mortal nitpicking. The Cosmic Alignment does not care about such small things.

In the game it is very useful to have vague Good vs Evil vs Law vs Chaos. PCs start as unaligned, and then form an Alignment as they role play.

 

[Reynard]

Not familiar and I looked it up. It sounds like aspects are like BIFTs. One example I saw was "sucker for a pretty face" which seems rather specific to me. I suppose after numerous sessions as GM id have 4 or 5 of these aspects memorized as players use them. Though, something like this seems hard to shoehorn into every session. Or, I just have trouble seeing how its used widely in the game.

Do you have examples?

It's important to note that you usually have to spend a Fate Point (metacurrency) to use an aspect, so they don't come up every roll.

Suckered For A Pretty Face is interesting because that sounds like a Trouble -- a kind of Aspect the GM can use to.Compel you to do something (and giving you a Fate Point in the process). So, in a spy game, a beautiful woman can come up to that character to distract them. The player might play along naturally, or the GM might offer them a Fate Point to play along.

 

[Reynard]

Not familiar and I looked it up. It sounds like aspects are like BIFTs. One example I saw was "sucker for a pretty face" which seems rather specific to me. I suppose after numerous sessions as GM id have 4 or 5 of these aspects memorized as players use them. Though, something like this seems hard to shoehorn into every session. Or, I just have trouble seeing how its used widely in the game.

Do you have examples?

Another example is a gunslinger with Deadeye as an Aspect. Almost purely built for improving their to hit rolls. And that's fine, because again they don't just get a blanket +2 all the time. They have to pay a resource for it.