D&D General Why do people like Alignment?

[Necropolitan]

If everyone in the table ended up not following the premise of the campaign then the premise of the campaign must be wrong then . Sure if 1 or two are against it then it's fine to reprimand them fromnot following the path, but if everyone's pushing left then left is where the campaign will go.

That's completely false.

The DM is the one running the campaign, the DM decides which way it goes.

If you don't like how the DM is running the campaign and can't convince them to change it then find another DM.

Instead you're trying to force DMs to run campaigns they don't want to run.

 

[Celebrim]

I was just wondering, if you were to add a third axis to D&D alignment, what would it be? Nature/Civilization?

There is several ways you could go. Hawk/Dove is an example. Do you think that violence is a preferred approach to getting what you want, or do you think there are stronger and more preferred approaches to violence. That's kind of obvious at the level of say Neutral Good, where 'Dove' might equate to pacifism and 'Hawk' to evil must be resisted and the innocent protected by any means. But it exists even in alignments like Chaotic Evil as a distinction between say a mugger and a con artist, or in Lawful Evil as the distinction between a mastermind and a valiant but ruthless and merciless knight. Does the LE ruler see the highest order of the state as being at peace (however ruthlessly trespasses against order are punished) or at perpetual war? That is, does LE necessarily believe it must have an enemy? Could you trust a LE nation state next to you to be a good neighbor or would they always been looking for an excuse to invade and conquer through violence (as opposed to more 'missionary' efforts or colonization or cultural hegemony).

But I'm pretty sure there are diminishing returns to how many axis you add, and there will be I think a gradually drift once you get away from big archetypal themes toward things that are more like personality traits than core values. There is also going to be a problem when you deal with whether or not an axis is fully independent of the other one. Neutral Evil I've ignored for a reason, because it's very hard to see how different NE characters distinguish themselves on any other axis. Once you have total destruction and nihilism and wanting to watch all things burn as a core value, it's hard to have a lot of meaningful distinction. I suppose you could have a Nature Neutral Evil that only wanted to destroy Civilization and a Civilization Neutral Evil that only wanted to do destroy Nature and where Neutral Neutral Evil meant it all had to go? But then my Hawk/Dove presents a problem, because how do you talk Nature to death?

 

[Clint_L]

That's completely false.

The DM is the one running the campaign, the DM decides which way it goes.

And that's not tyrannical?

What about if you play D&D as a cooperative game where the players and DM are responding to each other? I agree that, at a certain point, if a ruling is needed then it works well to have the DM make it. But in terms of the way the story is going, I always have a lot more fun, as a forever DM, when the players surprise me and the stories go in directions I had never anticipated.

I recognize that this is a personal choice issue, but D&D works perfectly well when the DM is not the sole author. This is at the heart of why I have never liked alignment, even as a kid playing 1e: to me it feels like the DM telling players how to play their characters. My aversion to it is almost automatic. But also, I think it is a weirdly contrived way to make characters, and not at all how actual writers do it, and in terms of ethics it is a completely subjective system - basically just virtues ethics as defined by the DM by way of Gary Gygax.

 

[Necropolitan]

What about if you play D&D as a cooperative game where the players and DM are responding to each other?

That doesn't mean the DM can't tell you "No."

It's not 'tyrannical' to tell you "No."

Forcing DMs to run campaigns they don't want to or have players they don't want is what's actually 'tyrannical.'

This all comes down to an inability to accept "No" as an answer.

 

[Lanefan]

I think the answer to the thread title's question's has now emerged:

Q: Why do people like alignment?
A: So they can assign Neutral Evil as the default alignment of all DMs.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'm glad you agree that alignment is bad.

Mod Note:

Civility is highly valued on ENworld; this confrontational style of post is a good example of the opposite. Do better going forward, please.

 

[Nikosandros]

And that's not tyrannical?

No? I mean, it is a style of play. The 5e campaign that I'm playing in currently (which is nearing its conclusion) is being ran - more or less - with this style and neither I, nor the 5 other players feel that the DM is a "tyrant".

What about if you play D&D as a cooperative game where the players and DM are responding to each other? I agree that, at a certain point, if a ruling is needed then it works well to have the DM make it. But in terms of the way the story is going, I always have a lot more fun, as a forever DM, when the players surprise me and the stories go in directions I had never anticipated.

Another fine way of playing, to be sure. There are many. Not every style will be appropriate for every group or for every campaign, of course.

 

[pemerton]

It's not 'tyrannical' to tell you "No."

Forcing DMs to run campaigns they don't want to or have players they don't want is what's actually 'tyrannical.'

This all comes down to an inability to accept "No" as an answer.

To me, it seems to come down to a desire not to want to waste one's leisure time.

I mean, the GM you're talking about isn't accepting "no" either - presumably because they are determined to spend their leisure time doing whatever it is they want to do with their setting/campaign.

ever since 3e, there's been this sort of class struggle with regards to the agency of players vs. the authority of the DM. You give players more agency, DM's gripe that their ability to run the game has been eroded. You give the DM more authority, players will spread horrible tales about tyrannical DM's.

I personally don't see 3E as any sort of watershed here. I saw endless railroading and bad GMing back in the AD&D days, because that was when I spent a lot of time in a club environment. I was part of a group that overthrew a terrible, railroading GM; I recruited multiple players into my group who were looking for something other than conventional railroading play; I left another game because of railroading by the GM, and based on what I heard the game ended not long after I left.

At least as I've observed it, there is nothing edition-specific about players wanting to contribute in a meaningful way to the shared fiction and (if the rules are in contention) the rules that are used to coordinate and generate that fiction.

 

[pawsplay]

Modern versions of D&D and it's "D&D-alike cousins" seem to veer further and further away from the alignment system- I can admit, I don't really miss it, as I've never had a positive experience with it as a mechanic. Even in older versions of D&D, while the cracks in the system were never officially addressed, you'd often see NPC's with "tendencies" towards an alignment other than their own, showing that people are often more complex than can be placed on the C/L+E/G axes. Yet on the player side, mechanics were very firm that thou shalt not act outside of one's alignment, like a commandment from on high, from xp penalties to the loss of class abilities!

I hated that. I have always liked alignment in the way it makes D&D a morally realistic universe, while not actually settling the question of what the "best" way to behave is. It's clear that demons and devils are Evil, essentially; yet it's interesting not every act has to be an evil one. Alignment opens the door for smiting, corruption, blessing, and so forth. I don't like spells or abilities that make detecting an alignment trivial, or the idea a human person could be absolutely assigned an alignment. Categories are for outsiders, fiends and elementals; mortal creatures should be a beautiful admixture.

 

[James Gasik]

To me, it seems to come down to a desire not to want to waste one's leisure time.

I mean, the GM you're talking about isn't accepting "no" either - presumably because they are determined to spend their leisure time doing whatever it is they want to do with their setting/campaign.

I personally don't see 3E as any sort of watershed here. I saw endless railroading and bad GMing back in the AD&D days, because that was when I spent a lot of time in a club environment. I was part of a group that overthrew a terrible, railroading GM; I recruited multiple players into my group who were looking for something other than conventional railroading play; I left another game because of railroading by the GM, and based on what I heard the game ended not long after I left.

At least as I've observed it, there is nothing edition-specific about players wanting to contribute in a meaningful way to the shared fiction and (if the rules are in contention) the rules that are used to coordinate and generate that fiction.

I probably shouldn't have said 3.e was the turning point because it was a new edition...it was more that a lot more players were in contact with one another at that time thanks to the internet. Suddenly people were sharing notes about, well, everything.

Just one example of what this brought about: if you could time travel back to those halcyon days, just about any DM advice thread will inevitably lead to "are you running the game as written and observing WBL?", leading a lot of people to think that not running the game as written was wrong.

Suddenly players were arguing with their DM's about their rulings and house rules, and especially "why is my character poor? I should have +1 armor by now!". There are lots of other things going on at this time that threw gasoline on the fire, and players feeling like their DM's weren't playing fair vs. DM's who felt like their authority was being encroached was suddenly very out in the open.