D&D General Why do people like Alignment?

[Celebrim]

I will say that, as a creative writing teacher, I have never heard of a single author who worries about "alignment" when creating a character. They worry about personality, wants, needs, flaws, and motives.

Well, I mean of course you won't hear "alignment" used. It's a technical term of art as used in D&D and broadly in RPGs - such as in Mass Effect where you can play as a Paragon or Renegade. So you really wouldn't expect it to be used outside this context.

And granted, I don't think "alignment" is a real-world thing, though I do think it raises questions that touch on a lot of real-world ideologies. And, likewise, the particular questions that D&D alignment provokes - things like "Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the ones?" - are best suited to be big fantasy settings and even more so if we are going to make alignment itself an in universe thing with representatives that can speak about it objectively.

But... I mean those "personality, wants, needs, flaws, and motives" don't tell us everything about the character. Motives are broad enough perhaps to address the issue, but I think you still need to address what were the characters "core values". If we know for example that the shop keeper is grasping and avaricious we still don't know the shop keeper's "alignment". We don't know the core values they hold, the guiding principles of their life, or their underlying ethos. We might think we do because the grasping shop keeper that always measures out every grain and pinches every penny is a stereotype that strongly suggests a set of core values, but it doesn't prove it. What proves it is things like does the shop keeper recognize his own vices? All that money that he's saving because for whatever reason he's learned the reality of want, how does he really dispose of it? Because I suggest to you that when we reach the end of the story and the trouble is here and money is needed for a good cause, then we will start to see what those core values are underneath the personality or the flaws.

Foundational beliefs are what alignment is really about. What is the character going to tend to do, when the chips are down and they are backed into profound decision that they need to make? What do they hold to be self-evident and so foundational that breaking it would be to break themselves? Because it's really only foundational beliefs that work against wants, needs, motives, flaws, personality and the like. It's only having something core deep down inside that gets you to look past your first instincts. And maybe the core values of a person are "I don't have to ever sacrifice my own wants and needs" or "I don't have to ever go against my own personality." and well, then that gives you a certain sort of person. That's a "personality trait" deeper than personality traits.

Whatever you want to call it, it's there and even if the great wheel doesn't capture reality perfectly, it's observable in reality and shows up in the better sorts of stories.

 

[Voadam]

Not surprising considering its origin was from a single author as a background to his stories.

D&D alignment comes from its use in both Anderson and Moorcock.

 

[Morrus]

I've edited out the [+] thread, as it serves no purpose here. "Let's not fight about it" is just SOP.

 

[AlViking]

This is a + thread, so I don't want to get into the may reasons I dislike alignment. It serves a valuable purpose for some, and that is enough to justify it in the game. I will say that, as a creative writing teacher, I have never heard of a single author who worries about "alignment" when creating a character. They worry about personality, wants, needs, flaws, and motives.

One way of describing a person's personality is to discuss their "frameworks", basically how they interpret the world around them. Two people can look at the exact same situation and view it totally differently, one may look at a guard hitting a citizen as enforcing proper respect for authority (LN) and another may look at it as an abuse of power and step in to stop it (CG). A third may look at it with no concern for the citizen and think about if they can use the distraction to their benefit (N).

Someone politically conservative is frequently going to view a situation very differently than someone who is politically liberal. But those political leanings and perspectives on the world are only one part of who that person is. So how I envision alignment working is that while it doesn't control how a person responds it colors how someone sees the world which changes how they will go about achieving their goals.

On the other hand I don't care what my player's alignments are other than that I don't want to run a game for evil characters.

 

[payn]

This is a + thread, so I don't want to get into the may reasons I dislike alignment. It serves a valuable purpose for some, and that is enough to justify it in the game. I will say that, as a creative writing teacher, I have never heard of a single author who worries about "alignment" when creating a character. They worry about personality, wants, needs, flaws, and motives.

Thats what makes alignment interesting, taking the BIFTs as you indicate here, and applying a general framework. Its taking one step back and looking at it culturally instead of individually. Its a great tool for writing a story for many characters, especially those with conflicting viewpoints.

Ninja'd by @AlViking