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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5432844" data-attributes="member: 42582">Except that if &quot;good&quot;, as it's used in the alignment rules, doesn't mean &quot;good&quot; 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.Alignment gets its entire force from the fact that &quot;good&quot;, as used in the alignment rules, is intended to carry the ordinary force of the moral term &quot;good&quot;.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 and (ii) quite a bit can be left to be resolved downstream. 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 &quot;evil&quot; or &quot;good&quot; acts. Alignment forces this sort of evaluation into the game.And I've disputed the first part of this quote, and thereby offered a reason against its second part. I've given examples of other NPCs who, in my view, ought not to be under the GM's sole control - namely, NPCs which a player has payed character building resources to bring into the game. Which, for a divine PC, would include his/her god. Or any other NPC with whom a PC has made a pact. (This might be different in a game in which the job of the GM is to use the pact NPC to create antagonism for the player - but in traditional D&amp;D, where said antagonism is simply switching off the PC's power, that won't do.)Fair enough. But what prompted my OP was a post in which a GM was asking for thoughts on why a game had derailed, and then in the report of play signalled multiple instances in which s/he has used alignment as a stick to beat one of the players around the head, after having (as GM, and via ingame situations) posed moral dilemmas to that player. This is the sort of dysfunctional play to which, in my view, alignment rules are overly conducive. If you've managed to avoid that, good work! But in my experience you've been fairly lucky in that respect.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 5432844, member: 42582"] 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. 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". 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 and (ii) quite a bit can be left to be resolved downstream. 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. Alignment forces this sort of evaluation into the game. And I've disputed the first part of this quote, and thereby offered a reason against its second part. I've given examples of other NPCs who, in my view, ought not to be under the GM's sole control - namely, NPCs which a player has payed character building resources to bring into the game. Which, for a divine PC, would include his/her god. Or any other NPC with whom a PC has made a pact. (This might be different in a game in which the job of the GM is to use the pact NPC to create antagonism for the player - but in traditional D&D, where said antagonism is simply switching off the PC's power, that won't do.) Fair enough. But what prompted my OP was a post in which a GM was asking for thoughts on why a game had derailed, and then in the report of play signalled multiple instances in which s/he has used alignment as a stick to beat one of the players around the head, after having (as GM, and via ingame situations) posed moral dilemmas to that player. This is the sort of dysfunctional play to which, in my view, alignment rules are overly conducive. If you've managed to avoid that, good work! But in my experience you've been fairly lucky in that respect. [/QUOTE]

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