Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9739133" data-attributes="member: 4937">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.</blockquote>

Verification