D&D 5E WotC's Jeremy Crawford Talks D&D Alignment Changes

Jeremy Crawford has spoken about changes to the way alignment will be referred to in future D&D books. It starts with a reminder that no rule in D&D dictates your alignment.

Data from D&D Beyond in June 2019​

(Note that in the transcript below, the questions in quotes were his own words but presumably refer to questions he's seen asked previously).

Friendly reminder: no rule in D&D mandates your character's alignment, and no class is restricted to certain alignments. You determine your character's moral compass. I see discussions that refer to such rules, yet they don't exist in 5th edition D&D.

Your character's alignment in D&D doesn't prescribe their behavior. Alignment describes inclinations. It's a roleplaying tool, like flaws, bonds, and ideals. If any of those tools don't serve your group's bliss, don't use them. The game's system doesn't rely on those tools.

D&D has general rules and exceptions to those rules. For example, you choose whatever alignment you want for your character at creation (general rule). There are a few magic items and other transformative effects that might affect a character's alignment (exceptions).

Want a benevolent green dragon in your D&D campaign or a sweet werewolf candlemaker? Do it. The rule in the Monster Manual is that the DM determines a monster's alignment. The DM plays that monster. The DM decides who that monster is in play.

Regarding a D&D monster's alignment, here's the general rule from the Monster Manual: "The alignment specified in a monster's stat block is the default. Feel free to depart from it and change a monster's alignment to suit the needs of your campaign."

"What about the Oathbreaker? It says you have to be evil." The Oathbreaker is a paladin subclass (not a class) designed for NPCs. If your DM lets you use it, you're already being experimental, so if you want to play a kindhearted Oathbreaker, follow your bliss!

"Why are player characters punished for changing their alignment?" There is no general system in 5th-edition D&D for changing your alignment and there are no punishments or rewards in the core rules for changing it. You can just change it. Older editions had such rules.

Even though the rules of 5th-edition D&D state that players and DMs determine alignment, the suggested alignments in our books have undeniably caused confusion. That's why future books will ditch such suggestions for player characters and reframe such things for the DM.

"What about the werewolf's curse of lycanthropy? It makes you evil like the werewolf." The DM determines the alignment of the werewolf. For example, the werewolf you face might be a sweetheart. The alignment in a stat block is a suggestion to the DM, nothing more.

"What about demons, devils, and angels in D&D? Their alignments can't change." They can change. The default story makes the mythological assumptions we expect, but the Monster Manual tells the DM to change any monster's alignment without hesitation to serve the campaign.

"You've reminded us that alignment is a suggestion. Does that mean you're not changing anything about D&D peoples after all?" We are working to remove racist tropes from D&D. Alignment is only one part of that work, and alignment will be treated differently in the future.

"Why are you telling us to ignore the alignment rules in D&D?" I'm not. I'm sharing what the alignment rules have been in the Player's Handbook & Monster Manual since 2014. We know that those rules are insufficient and have changes coming in future products.

 

[FrogReaver]

If D&D 5e really will update the mechanics and flavors to be more inclusive

Have you ever considered that part of the backlash against these proposed changes is that a sizable segment of the player base is not feeling included by these changes?

 

[183231bcb]

I think it's a change that people who have been affected by racist stereotypes might notice. I'm a white guy in the US, so I have been fortunate enough to not be one of those people, so I'm just trying to look at it through their eyes, so I might be wrong- but I am pretty sure it is a step in the right direction. (Or rather, a step back in the right direction- I feel like 3e's "often/usually/always" alignment descriptors were already pretty close to what we're going to see.)

I know this post was from many pages back, but this thread is moving fast so I'm just getting to it now.

I don't see how 3e's often/usually/always would be an improvement. For starters, the Monster Manual said that members of an "always <alignment>" species aren't actually always of that alignment, which caused confusion for people who didn't read the MM carefully and thought "always evil" meant literally always with no exceptions.

But the bigger problem is that even the descriptors "often <alignment>" and "usually <alignment>" is that it conflated race, religion, and culture. A hobgoblin who lives in a society which encourages evil acts and worships an evil god is more likely to be evil than not. A hobgoblin who is a member of the evil supervillain's evil organization is also more likely to be evil than not. A hobgoblin who does not live in a mostly-evil society has no particular reason that we should expect them to be evil. The Monster Manual in 3.5, however, presents the statblock which supposedly represents an entire species and says they are "usually Lawful Evil."

Maybe one could argue that in a setting-specific book, if most members of a species live in one particular society or belong to one particular organization, then you could say that members of that species are often or usually a certain alignment. But even then, there's no reason to expect that (for example) drow who don't worship Lolth would have a tendency towards a particular alignment. And such species-wide generalizations make even less sense in a supposedly setting-neutral core book like the Monster Manual.

The best solution, IMO, is to reserve alignments for individuals and groups who are expected to share an ideology, and to leave alignments out of the statblocks that represent an entire species.

 

[Oofta]

...
Suppose hypothetically, 5% of the human population is exclusively gay. Oppositely, 5% of the human population is exclusively straight.

The majority of the human population is bisexual, on a continuum from mostly gay to mostly straight. You can move that line between gay and straight, back and forth, anywhere you want, depending on cultural expectations.
...

You're entitled to your view on this, but surveys in Western cultures find, on average, that about 93% of men and 87% of women identify as completely heterosexual, 4% of men and 10% of women as mostly heterosexual, 0.5% of men and 1% of women as evenly bisexual, 0.5% of men and 0.5% of women as mostly homosexual, and 2% of men and 0.5% of women as completely homosexual. [from wikipedia]

I will acknowledge that people tend to give answers to surveys that are what is expected, but saying that "a majority of people are bisexual" is not supported by what people identify as.

Which does not excuse intolerance in any way. I will however note that my limited personal experience is that D&D actually is quite welcoming of LGBTQ people. The percentage of players in personal and public games that identify as LGBTQ is probably been higher than the average population.

Anyway, can we go back to the never ending argument about alignment now?

 

[PsyzhranV2]

D&D suck as emulating anything not D&D; and WotC has wisely allowed D&D to be D&D rather than contort it to fit the genre.

The first part is definitely true. The second I'm not so sure of, because of how many people keep trying to make it work outside of the genre of "D&D as tautology". I don't know if this is just the audience not getting the memo, or if this is a more substantial failure of communication on the part of WotC's designers.

Just a thought - maybe that is part of D&D's secret to success. Be just specific enough to give people a starting point and be just generic enough to let them change whatever they don't like.

If we're looking at D&D as a product, as a brand? There's definitely a strong argument that can be made for that.

As a set of rules? I doubt it. Frequent arguments about RAW and RAI on this forum but also elsewhere on social media are testament to such.

I think we're all aware of how fond Jeremy Crawford is of giving total non-answers on Twitter. Somebody asks him a question about how the rules says something works, Crawford's answer usually amounts to nothing more than "Rule 0". Thing is, I think he's using Rule 0 as a shield for the shortcomings in the 5e rules system. He's abdicating his responsibility as a developer of the game, avoiding the task of defining the game and pushing that burden onto the playerbase. And this problem is exacerbated by the fact that like it or not, the genre of "D&D as tautology" has become saddled with the burden of being the "everything" game, where it's being used for things that it isn't built to do, and thus the cracks in the system start to show.

This is not to say that a designer must have every answer to every question about their game, or that the phrase "Make it your own" is automatically poison. But if that's all they ever say, then that starts to leave me wondering why I even bought their book in the first place. Why am I trying to "make 5e my own", instead of running FATE Core/Accelerated/Condensed or Savage Worlds or a hack of the PbtA engine, or one of the thousands of other games out there that would fit the concept so much better? Why are so many gamers and fledgling designers out there doing that and only getting more and more frustrated when they see it just doesn't work?

Well, there actually is an answer for that.

It's that D&D is the only game most people know.

 

[Mercurius]

@Mercurius

Suppose hypothetically, 5% of the human population is exclusively gay. Oppositely, 5% of the human population is exclusively straight.

The majority of the human population is bisexual, on a continuum from mostly gay to mostly straight. You can move that line between gay and straight, back and forth, anywhere you want, depending on cultural expectations.

Once upon a time, people believed that the earth was flat. But it became obvious the earth is more complex, a sphere.

Now it is obvious that human sexuality is complex and defies simplistic tropes.

So trying to explain to people who are in pain, why "heterosexual supremacism" is correct, is both incorrect and a waste of breath.



And I only spoke about orientation.

I dont really understand transgender, or how transgender fits into human sexuality. Transgenders are obviously part of humanity since prehistoric times, existing in every ancient culture. When hunter-gatherers split into feminine gatherers and masculine hunters, there were men who remained with the gatherers and women who went off with the hunters. Humans evolved this way because the adaption promoted the survival of the human species.

Whether I understand transgender or not, if a human who looks at first glance like a man tells they are a woman. I believe them. I take them at their word. Who am I to doubt them? They are as human as I am. Why would they bother saying something like that, if it wasnt true?

I am not black. I am unsure what the needs of the black communities are. But if what many black people are saying seems doable. Who am I to doubt them? I want to be an ally of black communities. Give black persons breathing room to be themselves, however they see it.

I agree with much of this, except the way that you depict the scale of human sexuality. It is far more weighted towards heterosexuality than homosexuality. Meaning, while there is a spectrum, there isn't even distribution. I do agree that a wider number of folks have varying shades of bisexuality, but there are far more people who self-identify as straight (or mostly straight) than as LGBT. And we're interested in self-identification, right? This isn't to say that I don't think LGBT people shouldn't be depicted--I do--but that it should be roughly commensurate with how people self-identify, adjusted to the specific community (to what degree that information is available).

And yes, "give black persons breathing room to be themselves, however they see it." I see this as one version of self-determination and self-advocacy. I have also heard people of a variety of demographics complain about the outrage of others outside their demographic. So, yes, I think we should be allies to all those who want equality, but we should also recognize that people within any demographic have a diversity of viewpoints. This seems to get lost in the discussion, unfortunately.

The other part that isn't much discussed is the psychological dynamic of taking offense, which is based upon how we interpret things, and how much weight we give it--in this context, fantasy ideas. I don't really think this is the right context for such a discussion, but it is a major component that should be accounted for, and likely explains why some are offended and others are not. Meaning, "taking offense" isn't simply the result of being part of specific demographic; it has a lot to do with one's psychology and personal experiences.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I think we're all aware of how fond Jeremy Crawford is of giving total non-answers on Twitter. Somebody asks him a question about how the rules says something works, Crawford's answer usually amounts to nothing more than "Rule 0". Thing is, I think he's using Rule 0 as a shield for the shortcomings in the 5e rules system. He's abdicating his responsibility as a developer of the game, avoiding the task of defining the game and pushing that burden onto the playerbase.

5e has emphasised the importance of the DM relative to 4e by using deliberately vague language. Some GMs like to make lots of rulings and write their own house rules. It may even be their favourite aspect of GMing. For such GMs, vague, or even outright bad, rules are actually a positive feature. I've seen it argued that one of the strengths of 1e AD&D is that its rules were so terrible and poorly explained* as to be unusable out of the box so you were forced to write your own.

*I still don't understand the initiative system!

 

[Haldrik]

@Oofta, @Mercurius,

If you want to see what human sexuality might look like without violence, censorship, and indoctrination, compare bonobos.

 

[Mercurius]

@Oofta, @Mercurius,

If you want to see what human sexuality might look like without violence, censorship, and indoctrination, compare bonobos.

Bonobos are great. But I'm not sure what this has to do with the topic at hand?

 

[Haldrik]

Bonobos are great. But I'm not sure what this has to do with the topic at hand?

Bonobos who are almost genetically identical to humans, are almost entirely bisexual. Perhaps there are 5% that are only gay and 5% that are only straight. But biologically and culturally, bonbos are bi.

 

[Oofta]

Bonobos who are almost genetically identical to humans, are almost entirely bisexual. Perhaps there are 5% that are only gay and 5% that are only straight. But biologically and culturally, bonbos are bi.

We aren't bonobos, chimpanzees or any of the other great apes.

You may think the world would be a better place if more people identified differently, but what does that have to do with D&D?