Would you allow this paladin in your game? (new fiction added 11/11/08)

[pemerton]

I agree - and if the Paladin can do that and still retain his powers, it just means there is a LG power higher than the Pantheon that is granting them, and that approves of his actions. Perhaps that power is the LG Alignment itself as a cosmic force.

Well, in the campaign I described it was "the Buddha of the Pure Land in the West" - whatever exactly that means (the paladin in question wasn't very intellectual, and so the metaphysics never really had to be worked out - though the paladin's conception of the Pure Land Buddha was rather different from the esoteric monk who sought to emulate the Five Infinite Buddhas; and also presumably was different from the Emperor of Heaven, who was also a fully enlightened Buddha).

But my point still stands - as far as play was concerned, it was the player, not the GM, who determined what was required conduct for a paladin honouring his reverence of the Buddha and his commitment to those values.

 

[Kobold Boots]

Well, in the campaign I described it was "the Buddha of the Pure Land in the West" - whatever exactly that means (the paladin in question wasn't very intellectual, and so the metaphysics never really had to be worked out - though the paladin's conception of the Pure Land Buddha was rather different from the esoteric monk who sought to emulate the Five Infinite Buddhas).

But my point still stands - as far as play was concerned, it was the player, not the GM, who determined what was required conduct for a paladin honouring his reverence of the Buddha and his commitment to those values.

ok so provided I got this whole back and forth right.

The guy you replied to was making a comment about the D&D game system and the rules of the D&D game system in terms of paladins.

You replied with something that while frankly is awesome, by your own admission wasn't D&D, but Rolemaster.

Why are we having this conversation on the D&D board and why is your point valid, above two points considered?

Fair question.. no horses in the race myself.

 

[pemerton]

The guy you replied to was making a comment about the D&D game system and the rules of the D&D game system in terms of paladins.

You replied with something that while frankly is awesome, by your own admission wasn't D&D, but Rolemaster.

Read my post four above this one. The whole campaign I described could have been run, for all relevant purposes, in AD&D, 3E or 4e. No change to 4e would be required. The only change to AD&D and 3E that would be required would be to ignore mechanical alignment - something that thousands of D&D players have been doing for more than 30 years, and that I have been doing since reading Dragon 101 over 25 years ago. Most of the resources I was using - Freeport, Requiem for a God, Bastion of Broken Souls - were written for D&D.

The contention was made that it is impossible to have moral content matter in a game if the player, rather than the GM, is the author of that morality. My response is that that is not true - it is not true in D&D (all you have to do is drop mechanical alignment) and it is not true in general.

 

[Kobold Boots]

Read my post four above this one. The whole campaign I described could have been run, for all relevant purposes, in AD&D, 3E or 4e. No change to 4e would be required. The only change to AD&D and 3E that would be required would be to ignore mechanical alignment - something that thousands of D&D players have been doing for more than 30 years, and that I have been doing since reading Dragon 101 over 25 years ago. Most of the resources I was using - Freeport, Requiem for a God, Bastion of Broken Souls - were written for D&D.

The contention was made that it is impossible to have moral content matter in a game if the player, rather than the GM, is the author of that morality. My response is that that is not true - it is not true in D&D (all you have to do is drop mechanical alignment) and it is not true in general.

Well, all that is fair and good except for one point.

You had to change the basis of his argument in order to make your point. Therefore the example fails based on initial premise.

If you play D&D RAW, you can't ignore the mechanical functions of alignment. You can do anything you want once you execute GM fiat, but that's not where I read his position as coming from.

For the record, I'm a rules liberalist and I separate godly intent from axiomatic alignment as well as separate godly power from the gods themselves. So I'm down with what you're saying, it's just not a fair response to his point given the boundaries he's approaching the matter from.

 

[S'mon]

as far as play was concerned, it was the player, not the GM, who determined what was required conduct for a paladin

Bloody hippies.

This is all very well for those Indie Hippy Games, but it ain't no D&D!

 

[Jackinthegreen]

Well, all that is fair and good except for one point.

You had to change the basis of his argument in order to make your point. Therefore the example fails based on initial premise.

If you play D&D RAW, you can't ignore the mechanical functions of alignment. You can do anything you want once you execute GM fiat, but that's not where I read his position as coming from.

The original question of "does this work by RAW?" has been questioned and it's evolved a bit. Most agree that by the exact rules the paladin probably wouldn't exist, but most also agree that Cedric is a great character and it is a shame he wouldn't be able to. Which leads into the question of whether the rules themselves are even worth going by strictly if it limits interesting characters and roleplay opportunity when that's a central part of the game.

In short, the initial premise appears to no longer be valid. Yes, it seems a bit like moving the goalposts, but we've also realized that the game is more interesting (and tends to work better) when the goalposts are moved, the field expanded, etc.

 

[Kobold Boots]

The original question of "does this work by RAW?" has been questioned and it's evolved a bit. Most agree that by the exact rules the paladin probably wouldn't exist, but most also agree that Cedric is a great character and it is a shame he wouldn't be able to. Which leads into the question of whether the rules themselves are even worth going by strictly if it limits interesting characters and roleplay opportunity when that's a central part of the game.

In short, the initial premise appears to no longer be valid. Yes, it seems a bit like moving the goalposts, but we've also realized that the game is more interesting (and tends to work better) when the goalposts are moved, the field expanded, etc.

Understood.

That said, "working better" and "we've" are broad strokes. I'd argue that culturally, the game worked better the way it was written, when it was written. The changing morality of our society creates a situation where goalposts need to be moved to satisfy the majority of the people posting here.

The character as written would be allowed into my setting and campaign world because of its cosmology. The other captain strongjaw paladin would be too. I just think that in more conventional D&D campaigns it's not a paladin, but a knight with a calling and a couple of healing trinkets which would be more interesting anyway.

 

[pemerton]

I'd argue that culturally, the game worked better the way it was written, when it was written.

Dragon #101 is September 1985 - a decade after D&D's original publication, and over 25 years ago.

And alignment had been questioned before then. And not all versions of D&D have mechanical alignment of the same force as AD&D or 3E (eg B/X, and I believe OD&D, is less definite on exactly what, if any, the mechanical meaning of alignment is - to the extent that in an early White Dwarf Lewis Pulsipher was advocating the introduction of rules to make alignment more mechanically significant).

To pick up (if obliquely) on [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION]'s most recent post, Nietzsche was writing a century earlier again, and Hobbes more than two centuries before Nietzsche! It's hardly radical in 1974, or 1985, to suggest that aesthetic creations aimed at exploring moral questions will do better if the participants are allowed to express their own conceptions rather than having their imagination held in check by an external conception of what is morally permitted.

 

[Kobold Boots]

Dragon #101 is September 1985 - a decade after D&D's original publication, and over 25 years ago.

And alignment had been questioned before then. And not all versions of D&D have mechanical alignment of the same force as AD&D or 3E (eg B/X, and I believe OD&D, is less definite on exactly what, if any, the mechanical meaning of alignment is - to the extent that in an early White Dwarf Lewis Pulsipher was advocating the introduction of rules to make alignment more mechanically significant).

To pick up (if obliquely) on [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION]'s most recent post, Nietzsche was writing a century earlier again, and Hobbes more than two centuries before Nietzsche! It's hardly radical in 1974, or 1985, to suggest that aesthetic creations aimed at exploring moral questions will do better if the participants are allowed to express their own conceptions rather than having their imagination held in check by an external conception of what is morally permitted.

Obviously you feel strongly and are interested in debating the matter I'm presuming and/or presenting.

You're also good at moving an argument to suit your point of view. I am not so interested. Therefore, in closing:

1. Mechanical alignment is part of D&D from 1st ed AD&D on as far as I can tell. Therefore if you're playing by the rules as written, there's none of this moral questions stuff going on. The DM determines black and white, shares it with the players and that's it. It's pretty clear that the axis of good and evil is meant to be standard American good and evil from the time period the game was written in. It wouldn't be before then, or after then and each version of the game would have morality covered by its own time period.

2. If you don't want to roll that way, cool. That's part of the GM fiat thing.

Either way, just because people want to chat about cultural relativity or have spent oodles of time reading authors that focused on sociological and psychological issues in their time, does not mean that anyone's game or this thread needs to be about those things. In fact, to some it over-complicates that which does not need to be complicated.

We cool?

 

[S'mon]

Dragon #101 is September 1985 - a decade after D&D's original publication, and over 25 years ago.

And alignment had been questioned before then. And not all versions of D&D have mechanical alignment of the same force as AD&D or 3E (eg B/X, and I believe OD&D, is less definite on exactly what, if any, the mechanical meaning of alignment is - to the extent that in an early White Dwarf Lewis Pulsipher was advocating the introduction of rules to make alignment more mechanically significant).

Not having Alignment in the game is one thing. A small step from RAW.
Not having Paladins subject to an External-to-the-Player code is a much bigger step away from RAW. Letting the player decide on his power source's morality IMO means you're turning your game away from Gamist/Sim to Dogs in the Vinyard style story-creation Narrativism.