Why I don't like alignment in fantasy RPGs

[Krensky]

I'm not sure about framing it this way, because for most D&D-layers, and for many other RPGers, to put alignment into the domain of "world building" is to put it into the domain of the GM - which is precisely what I am questioning.

Why? If you don't want the GM to get to make moral or ethical judgements about your character's behavior, don't play a character that requires him to. These are world building issues at their core. If the table does world building of this sort collaboratively, cool. If they leave it entirely up to the GM, they don't get to whine about it.

I think that it is first and foremost a gameplay issue. Once we have worked out what makes for a good game - and in my view, a game which encourages the GM to pass moral judgement on the players as part of administering the rules of the game is not a good game - we can then turn to the worldbuilding issue.

Have you honestly had problems with your players thinking that you're passing judgement on them and not their characters? Really? That sounds far more like a social issue then a rules or play issue.

It is completely possible to play a world in which (i) good is an expression of an irrefutable truth, and (ii) divine PCs obtain power from gods, and (iii) those gods care about their followers' behaviour, and yet in which the GM is not vested with power to enforce alignment rules. As I've said upthread, the way to achieve this result is to give the player the job of interpreting what good as an irrefutable truth means, and what his/her god wants. (If you have multiple players pf paladin PCs in your game, and they come into disagreement, things will get trickier. But I don't think you'll resolve those trickier issues by, in effect, inviting the GM to pick sides.)

Why the heck would I want to give the player the ability to determine whether or not they're living up to their moral codes? Especially when it's a balancing factor for the character. Be it a paladin or whatever. It's pretty much a license for the player to practice moral relativism for fun and profit. If the players don't like that the GM gets to pass judgement like this, they don't have to play a Paladin or Cleric or whatever.

Honestly, I don't get where you're getting this. The game places the GM in charge of running NPCs. Deities are NPCs. If the players swore an oath with a mortal lord, or made a pact with a demon, would you let them interpret whether or not they're living up to it?

 

[prosfilaes]

As I've said upthread, the way to achieve this result is to give the player the job of interpreting what good as an irrefutable truth means, and what his/her god wants.

Again, if I want to play story games, then I know where to find them. NPCs are controlled by the GM.

But I don't think you'll resolve those trickier issues by, in effect, inviting the GM to pick sides.

That's the job of the GM, to resolve in-game issues.

Except that if "good", as it's used in the alignment rules, doesn't mean "good" as it's used in a church sermon - if the word is really just a homynym - then why would anyone care about whether or not a party has evil PCs, or whether or not a paladin is departing from LG.

It's not just a homonym. It is a word that is borrowed from English terminology that has specialized meanings in English. We care about a paladin departing from LG because in the game world, that's where the paladin's power derives from. We care about whether a party has evil PCs, because history has shown roleplayers that a party with evil PCs tends to have certain issues.

Alignment gets its entire force from the fact that "good", as used in the alignment rules, is intended to carry the ordinary force of the moral term "good".

Fighter, and Wizard and Knight, and Level, and Charisma, and Wisdom are all words that have English meanings that get their force in D&D from their English meaning, and yet don't mean their English meaning. Just because you swing a mean mace, or even a mean sword doesn't mean you're a Fighter.

Yes, there has to be a working social contract at the table. But (i) it has to be among everyone - a GM can't just fiat it into existence, which is what the alignment rules posit

I don't think the alignment rules posit anything of the sort. Everything is up for discussion in the social contract. But once the game starts, the default D&D rules put all aspects of the game world in the GM.

If, downstream, the players disagree on what is to be done with the prisoners they can, if they're civil, probably resolve this without having to express any views over who, if anyone, is performing "evil" or "good" acts.

This blows my mind. The only reason not to slit their throats and take their stuff are moral (or political or legal, but not often in D&D). In real life as in the game, I'm going to take a position on this for moral issues and I'm going to state those issues as such in the discussion.

Which, for a divine PC, would include his/her god.

You get to play a cleric, not a god. That's not one of the negotiables here.

If you've managed to avoid that, good work! But in my experience you've been fairly lucky in that respect.

I've seen a lot of D&D play without that problem. 35 years of D&D seem to indicate that most people don't have game-killing problems with alignment.

 

[Mallus]

At it's core though, this is a world building issue.

If you prefer to frame it like that, cool. I co-created my group's last two homebrew settings, and was the sole DM for one campaign. I like to design worlds to accommodate as wide a variety of PC's as I can, and I leave the nature of those PC's up to their players.

If someone wants to play a faithful, benevolent Dudley Do-Right priest, fine.

If someone else wants to play a sinister, scheming priest of the same religion, also fine.

My job as DM is to challenge the players while they run the characters they choose to play. It's not my job to challenge them to play the characters they choose to play.

The relevant questions are:...

My relevant questions are:

What kind of character does the player want to play?

How can I help them play that character while simultaneously while maintaining the proper level of game challenge?

How does the way they play their character reflect back on/feed back into setting fiction as I wrote it? (ie, if someone decides to play heretic of a church I created, how do I situate the heresy in the larger world, and more importantly, want further adventures can I wring out of it?)

If you don't want the GM to get to make moral or ethical judgements about your character's behavior, don't play a character that requires him to.

My response to this is: as DM, don't feel you are required to judge/evaluate a PC's morals, just throw entertaining and challenging situations at them in response to where they go and what they do.

If the table does world building of this sort collaboratively, cool.

My response to this is: what DM wouldn't want this kind of collaboration in their campaign? Look, I love the settings I've designed. I really do (I'm so vain...). But as enamored of my own imaginative output as I am, when I comes time to actually run the game, I'm more interested in seeing how the players run with/reinterpret/generally eff with what I initially created.

Why the heck would I want to give the player the ability to determine whether or not they're living up to their moral codes? Especially when it's a balancing factor for the character.

I'm assuming a set-up like 4e where alignment isn't used as balancing factor.

It's pretty much a license for the player to practice moral relativism for fun and profit.

Aha... I think this explains our differences. I trust my players --which I should say are all old friends at this point-- will create interesting characters, so I give them "license" to create whatever they want. I've no need to police their character concepts, and am quite happy bending the details of world to accommodate them. I mean, for what does the game world exist, if not to house the characters the players choose to play?

 

[Sorrowdusk]

I can only think of one reason, but it's good one... doing so would result in an interesting character.

Allow me to sketch out two hypothetical PC's:

The first is a kind, faithful, parish priest, salt of the earth, who inadvertently becomes an adventurer, going on to fight not only malign forces but the secular political corruption gnawing at the heart of his mother church.

The second is a corrupt priest, a charismatic city-slicker, a born politician, determined to claw his way into the Neo-Papacy, no matter what the cost, even if the cost comes denominated in corpses bearing suspicious knife wounds.

I think both of these PC's would be fun to DM for. Heck, with the right players, they'd be fun to run at the same table. Both of them are, in their own way, archetypal. And both of them require a universe in which the gods do not flick the "off switch" on followers who stray.

SEE....thats the thing.

1. In Eberron setting where the gods are generally 'distant' (as in reall life) this would work. In Eberron you can have an LG paladin taking orders from a secretly LE leader whose the head of a LG church. You dont have to be within one alignment step of your god-your power comes ONLY from your faith-not your adherence to anything. You could in fact be a terrible person and still believe you are doing your LG gods work or lie that you are.

2. IMC currently this is not the case, you could attempt such a thing but you would would have to fake it wearing the holy symbol of the church, while actually surving another god or being a Blackguard unless you were an Ur Priest. IMC its no secret about what and whom the gods actually do and dont approve of. Now a priest of the LG church could certainly become misguided, but the moment he goes to lengths of killing some innocent person? BOOM. No powers, thats severe enough for severance. He would undoubtedly know he had done something wrong...unless he was THAT deluded as you see here:

Giant In the Playground Games
Giant In the Playground Games
Giant In the Playground Games

The other way to run a similar kind of scenario IMC would for the characters to not actually be clerics. Not everybody in a church or working for one is divinely empowered, it wouldnt be so obvious if they were another class. Furthermore almost every town can have a church, but they dont always have clerics.


OF COURSE-it is entirely possible to become corrupt by following an otherwise non-evil deities dogma overzealously as you may see in the case of Lawbringer Hemtose from the Exemplars of Evil Web Enhancement. The document on the villain is no longer availiable on wizards page, but its reproduced on this forum here, just do a ctrl+f and search for him or just scroll down. OH-and mind you despite the fact he's become a "bad guy" he is still in fact Lawful NEUTRAL! The PCs do NOT always have to fight Evil aligned enemies! Oh and Hemtose right hand man? A Gray Guard.

http://www.myth-weavers.com/showthread.php?t=26785

Here's a few excerpts

While clearly a villain, Lawbringer Hemtose does not see himself as such and in fact regards himself as one of St. Cuthbert's most constant followers -- a champion cut from the same cloth as the Judge who first set down the Law. What makes Hemtose a villain, though, is the zeal with which he pursues justice. It's common knowledge that followers of the god of retribution are anything but subtle when chasing down Lawbreakers, who are enemies denounced by the church of St. Cuthbert. Father Hemtose, however, seems willing to go to any length to hunt these fugitives down, even stooping as low as to employ assassins, thugs, and, some whisper, monsters. He adheres to a higher understanding of the Law, peering through the word to arrive at the Law's intent, and so long as the Law is upheld and balance restored, it matters not what methods he uses to bring his enemies to justice.

For the next few years, Hemtose used his cunning, his political clout, and his extensive understanding of the intricacies of the Law to climb the ranks of the church until he attained an important position in the court of a powerful duke. As the noble's principle advisor and confidant, Hemtose has become an insidious force in the land, spreading his presence like an inky stain. No town -- no hamlet -- is safe from his eyes and ears for his spies are everywhere, always watching, always listening for anything incriminating to pass along to their powerful master.

Hemtose is driven to enforce the Law, to ensure the balance is maintained and to punish transgressors of that Law properly. He uses whatever means are necessary, even if he must dirty his hands and those of his close servants to do so. He's not above spying or hiring unsavory mercenaries and savage monsters to bring his enemies to justice. He does what the situation demands and thinks nothing of bending or changing the rules to suit his needs.

Hemtose's obsession with law stems directly from his hunger of power. For as long as he can remember, he has always resented the station his brother inherited and rued his own useless life as the second son of a minor lordling. This resentment blossomed into lust for that which he could not have and so he turned his considerable talents to finding some way to achieve what was denied to him.

The church is the vehicle of his goals. It justifies his every action and through a show of piety and service, his status improves. Each heretic dragged back to his dungeons and put to the question is another opportunity at advancement. Those who confess their crimes nudge Hemtose one step farther, granting him fame, notoriety, and above all, influence.

 

[Mallus]

1. In Eberron setting where the gods are generally 'distant' (as in real life) this would work. In Eberron you can have an LG paladin taking orders from a secretly LE leader whose the head of a LG church. You dont have to be within one alignment step of your god-your power comes ONLY from your faith-not your adherence to anything. You could in fact be a terrible person and still believe you are doing your LG gods work or lie that you are.

I like the way Eberron handles religion/alignment. It's a smart design choice.

2. IMC currently this is not the case, you could attempt such a thing but you would would have to fake it wearing the holy symbol of the church, while actually surving another god or being a Blackguard unless you were an Ur Priest. IMC its no secret about what and whom the gods actually do and dont approve of. Now a priest of the LG church could certainly become misguided, but the moment he goes to lengths of killing some innocent person? BOOM. No powers, thats severe enough for severance.

All I can say is I'm not a big fan of this approach. It works against my goal, which is to create a game environment which can support the widest variety of potential stories and characters. I want a setting that can handle both the evil impostor and the priest whose methods and ambition make a mockery of the faith he ostensibly represents.

Put another way, I want the possibility of Good churches full of Evil people (who aren't secretly devil-worshipers). Because Good churches full of Evil people make for good stories.

Not that settings which only support Good churches full of secret-devil worshipers are bad per se, I just prefer to support both.

 

[Krensky]

If you prefer to frame it like that, cool. I co-created my group's last two homebrew settings, and was the sole DM for one campaign. I like to design worlds to accommodate as wide a variety of PC's as I can, and I leave the nature of those PC's up to their players.

Which is still a world building descision. You have decided to set up elements of the game world to support certain sorts of player characters. It's no different the saying, "I want gunslingers, so black powder and guns exist," and working back from there.

If someone wants to play a faithful, benevolent Dudley Do-Right priest, fine.

If someone else wants to play a sinister, scheming priest of the same religion, also fine.

And that goal or desire determines the answers to the questions I listed.

My job as DM is to challenge the players while they run the characters they choose to play. It's not my job to challenge them to play the characters they choose to play.

Seems like a meaningless distinction to me, but to each their own.

My relevant questions are:

What kind of character does the player want to play?

How can I help them play that character while simultaneously while maintaining the proper level of game challenge?

How does the way they play their character reflect back on/feed back into setting fiction as I wrote it? (ie, if someone decides to play heretic of a church I created, how do I situate the heresy in the larger world, and more importantly, want further adventures can I wring out of it?)

Those are completely different questions, not really related to world building. They're really more about running the game then designing a world.

My response to this is: as DM, don't feel you are required to judge/evaluate a PC's morals, just throw entertaining and challenging situations at them in response to where they go and what they do.

If a PC gains power as a result of a deal with a more powerful NPC, it's the GM's job to adjudicate that deal. If a Divine caster gains power by following the tenants of his faith, or a knight by upholding his oath of fealty, or a monk by following a stringent philosophy, or an infernalist by signing a pact with a devil I'd venture that it's generally accepted that it's the GM's job to decide how well the PC is living up to that deal.

My response to this is: what DM wouldn't want this kind of collaboration in their campaign? Look, I love the settings I've designed. I really do (I'm so vain...). But as enamored of my own imaginative output as I am, when I comes time to actually run the game, I'm more interested in seeing how the players run with/reinterpret/generally eff with what I initially created.

... I bet you thing this thread is about you. Sorry, coldn't resist. Anyway, not all GMs like collaborative world building. I personally don't have strong feelings on it, although when I'm designing a wold I hold final approval. Typically though, in my experience, most players don't have a lot of interest in it, especially on this level.

I'm assuming a set-up like 4e where alignment isn't used as balancing factor.

Most of my answers have there basis in my most recent play, which has been Fantasy Craft, but I've tried to keep it more generic then that. Alignment in FC is mostly a mechanistic and targeting element in the rules. It's up to the GM when building the world to determine the nature of alignments (including which ones exist and what they do), what they mean in society, how they interact with each other, if divine magic exists at all, etc.

And I'd argue that alignment, or rather religious dogma, does play a roll in 4e. The whole divine power source for instance. Or would you let a Cleric or the Raven Queen who started working for Orcus in play still claim he was a member in good standing with her church? Yes, the cleric's powers and such can be left intact, etc, just say their patron shifted to Orcus from the Raven Queen, but I'm addressing the non-mechanical aspects.

Aha... I think this explains our differences. I trust my players --which I should say are all old friends at this point-- will create interesting characters, so I give them "license" to create whatever they want. I've no need to police their character concepts, and am quite happy bending the details of world to accommodate them. I mean, for what does the game world exist, if not to house the characters the players choose to play?

Not really. You're assuming I don't have a similar relationship with mine. But as I said, by letting the players decide if they're living up to their churches tenants in a world where doing so gives them power (I'd guess almost every D&D world, Eberron and similar distant deity worlds are the exceptions here) means that to be consistant, you have to let them decide if the powerful NPCs they make deals with think the PCs are living up to their oaths, pacts, contracts, etc themselves.

Now, you like the more, mechanistic and distant deities ala Eberon. There's nothing wrong with that, in fact it's how my current home brew works. Regardless of why that descision was made for any give world, it's still a world building choice. You make it for maximum PC archetype access. Eberon made it to be different then the other campaign settings and to support a more pulpy feel (if I remember right). I made it because it fits in with the cosmology and metaphysics (or rather, the lack there of) of the world I've been building.

 

[Arlough]

It seems to me this is really a difference in game philosophy.
Basically, there are two types of D&D here that share rules but not goals.

Play-style

• Type A - Collaborative storytelling
  
  The story is being created as the game progresses. NPC's are people too, with all the complexities therein. This is a time to live out another life in a fantastic and magical environment.​
• Type B - Lawbringer Hemtose or How I Learned to Stop Negotiating and Love My Fireball.
  
  The die has been cast, the course has been set. A grand horde of foes stands before us and it's killin' time. A single man cannot change the world... until he is powerful enough to take on the Gods! Which is why we'd better be victorious today. Whether a dungeon crawl, or a pre-fashioned module, the path to greatness is clear. This is a time to be larger than life, and eat nachos with friends.​

Game Purpose

• Type A - The world is a stage.
  
  The purpose of the game is to explore the stories of a life yet unlived. The DM sets the stage, and plays all the non-narrative focused characters, as well as setting the tone. Then the players enter the scene and build both the story and the world around them, changing lives while living out theirs.​
• Type B - The world is an obstacle course to glory.
  
  The purpose of the game is to win. To go forth and conquer, and to be the greatest of all. No one will tell the tale of how you bartered down the price of that suit, but they will sing of you lopping the head off of a demon. Heroes are a good beginning, but we want to become Legends. The world is appropriately populated with adequate foes to propel the characters to mythical heights. But, beware, the same forces that built this world will take as much, if not more, pleasure in your failure as your success.​

DM role

• Type A - The DM is an entertainer and arbiter.
  
  It's the job of the DM to make sure the players have fun. He sets up the situation, and decides on rules, but ultimately his job is to see to it that the players have the opportunity to explore their characters, and discover their stories.​
• Type B - The DM is a foe.
  
  It's the job of the DM to try to create situations that the characters can't escape from, only to be thwarted by the ingenuity, cleverness, and raw character power of the players. Sure, it's 5 on 1, but that one has all teh power in the universe and a need to toy with some mortals. But, if they are clever enough, powerful enough, and most importantly lucky enough, teh players will live to fight on another day...against even more powerful foes.​

Of course much of this is also determined by the group you play in. But generally it seems that people gravitate to groups that play in the style they like.
In the one group, a player would most likely deliberately choose not to have his paladin use powers due to story reasons. No DM arbitration would be needed there, it would be handled as a "story first" type of scenario.
In the other group, winning is what is important, and thus the DM would have to enforce the rules strictly in order to uphold his side of the conflict.
Both are valid, yet profoundly different, ways of playing the same game. And, neither is really compatible with the other.

I agree that in my games, consequence is much more important than alignment, but I also admit that I have played in games where the DM needed a leash (trust arguement) to put on the players that were allowed greater power options.

In the instance of using material like BoED or BoVD, I would probably force the player to build a very strict moral code (good or evil) in order to even have access to the powers.

But then again, I wouldn't want to play with a player if I had to worry about him/her exploiting the rules, and if I was the DM of such a player, their character would have a heart attack the first time he said the word "technically" out of character.

 

[Krensky]

It seems to me this is really a difference in game philosophy.
Basically, there are two types of D&D here that share rules but not goals.

In the one group, a player would most likely deliberately choose not to have his paladin use powers due to story reasons. No DM arbitration would be needed there, it would be handled as a "story first" type of scenario.
In the other group, winning is what is important, and thus the DM would have to enforce the rules strictly in order to uphold his side of the conflict.
Both are valid, yet profoundly different, ways of playing the same game. And, neither is really compatible with the other.

Except for the last one, my games tend to be both your listed styles. The last one they lean heavily towards A, and sometimes achieving that requires a healthy dose of B.

Granted, I haven't had to "enforce" alignment for those classes involving it since junior high school.

 

[SSquirrel]

One of my friends always loved the Plethora of Paladins article from back in the late 1E days and he would always try and bring out of of the Paladin variants. I personally preferred the way Alignment was handled in Arcana Evolved. There are none. No Paladins either, but Champions fit a similar niche. The cool thing about Champions was that they could champion for a city, a country, an ideal, a god...whatever. As long as your DM could come up with a reasonable list of benefits at certain levels you could keep spreading that variety out

 

[pemerton]

Have you honestly had problems with your players thinking that you're passing judgement on them and not their characters?

I think you might have missed my point here. I'm not talking about a situation in which a player decides to play a PC whose values are different to the player's. This is fine (at least in principle - in practice, sometimes it can be a little tricky depending on the values in question).

I'm talking about a situation in which the player believes that what her/his PC did is good, but the GM insists that it is evil. This is not just the GM passing judgment on the PC. It it also the GM telling the player that s/he cannot tell good from evil behaviour in the circumstance in question.

It seems to me pretty obvious that this is a good part of the reason why arguments about alignment, both in play and on message boards, become so heated.

Why the heck would I want to give the player the ability to determine whether or not they're living up to their moral codes?

This is a misdescription. I am talking about the player determining whether or not his/her PC lives up to that PC's moral code. And why would I want to do that? Because it produces interesting gaming, and it doesn't start any fights.

Especially when it's a balancing factor for the character. Be it a paladin or whatever. It's pretty much a license for the player to practice moral relativism for fun and profit.

Well, in my OP I noted that in a hardcore gamist game things might be different, although I also suggested that personality disadvantages aren't a very good mechanism for balancing in a hardcore gamist game.

But the balancing point is also a bit of a red herring. Paladins in 3E are already one of the weaker classes. They don't need a personality disadvantage as a balancing factor. And in all the thread discussing CoDzilla, I've never seen it suggested that alignment constraints impose much balance. And the reason for this is pretty obvious, because if I want to play CoDzilla I just pick LN, TN or (perhaps) NG as my alignment and go from there. These are alignments that (in my experience) only rarely cause trouble at the table.

The game places the GM in charge of running NPCs. Deities are NPCs. If the players swore an oath with a mortal lord, or made a pact with a demon, would you let them interpret whether or not they're living up to it?

Perhaps, yes, depending on what else is at stake. If the player paid PC build resources to get that oath or pact, then definitely yes. (Again, subject to the proviso that if the whole point of the game is for the GM to use that oath/pact to throw adversity at the PC, then perhaps not - but this does not describe any edition of D&D as written, and I've never seen D&D used to play this sort of game, in part because alignment is a huge impediment to it.)