Philosopher
First Post
(I'm reposting this from The Piazza.)
I read an interesting article today, called "Would you give you life for your group?", which reports on preliminary research on the psychology of group loyalty and what might make people become willing to sacrifice their lives. Basically, researchers found that certain people are "fused" to (or identify with) certain groups, and that they are thereby willing to make sacrifices for those groups, but not others. No, I do not find this surprising - what interested me was that they're beginning to investigate the details and the underlying psychology. In any case, the second thing that occurred to me as I read the article is an application to D&D.
Despite the title of this thread, I'm not really wondering if gamers would sacrifice their lives for the game. Rather, I have a suggested change/addition to the alignment system. (Yay, another alignment thread!) Let's take Jasper Blueberry, a character I once played. Jasper was a pyromaniacal evoker and a halfling supremacist. Because he was a racist and had a theory to "justify" his racism, I started off playing him as Lawful Evil, which I felt fit this style of racism best. He enjoyed setting non-halflings on fire (very evil in that regard), but never would have harmed a halfling. In fact, he was even willing to make sacrifices for halfling communities. If you only ever saw him interacting with halflings, you might have even judged him to be Lawful Good.
What occurred to me is that maybe it could make sense for an individual character to have several alignments, each of which describes how the character behaves with respect to certain in-groups and out-groups. For example, Jasper would be Lawful Good with halflings, and Lawful Evil with non-halflings. You can imagine a person who is Neutral Good towards the people in her village (willing to go out of her way to help them), and merely Neutral to outsiders (nothing against them, might be friendly enough, but wouldn't take risks for a stranger). A thieves' guild could be Lawful Neutral with respect to its members (they are all expected to follow the rules and will be treated impartially), and Chaotic Evil with respect to the rest of the city (disregarding their laws and their well-being). A barbarian might be Lawful Good within his tribe (he honours the traditions), but Chaotic Neutral when among civilized folk (he does not follow their mores or standards of decency). An individual dwarf might be Lawful Good towards fellow dwarves (always performing her duty for the good of the clan), Neutral towards elves (tolerating them, although not overly fond of them), and Chaotic Evil towards orcs (attacking them on sight, refusing to negotiate).
If alignment is a useful guideline in figuring out how an individual will act towards others, and since people don't always act the same way towards all groups of people, this could be a useful short-hand for summarizing, say, an NPC's expected behaviour.
Thoughts?
I read an interesting article today, called "Would you give you life for your group?", which reports on preliminary research on the psychology of group loyalty and what might make people become willing to sacrifice their lives. Basically, researchers found that certain people are "fused" to (or identify with) certain groups, and that they are thereby willing to make sacrifices for those groups, but not others. No, I do not find this surprising - what interested me was that they're beginning to investigate the details and the underlying psychology. In any case, the second thing that occurred to me as I read the article is an application to D&D.
Despite the title of this thread, I'm not really wondering if gamers would sacrifice their lives for the game. Rather, I have a suggested change/addition to the alignment system. (Yay, another alignment thread!) Let's take Jasper Blueberry, a character I once played. Jasper was a pyromaniacal evoker and a halfling supremacist. Because he was a racist and had a theory to "justify" his racism, I started off playing him as Lawful Evil, which I felt fit this style of racism best. He enjoyed setting non-halflings on fire (very evil in that regard), but never would have harmed a halfling. In fact, he was even willing to make sacrifices for halfling communities. If you only ever saw him interacting with halflings, you might have even judged him to be Lawful Good.
What occurred to me is that maybe it could make sense for an individual character to have several alignments, each of which describes how the character behaves with respect to certain in-groups and out-groups. For example, Jasper would be Lawful Good with halflings, and Lawful Evil with non-halflings. You can imagine a person who is Neutral Good towards the people in her village (willing to go out of her way to help them), and merely Neutral to outsiders (nothing against them, might be friendly enough, but wouldn't take risks for a stranger). A thieves' guild could be Lawful Neutral with respect to its members (they are all expected to follow the rules and will be treated impartially), and Chaotic Evil with respect to the rest of the city (disregarding their laws and their well-being). A barbarian might be Lawful Good within his tribe (he honours the traditions), but Chaotic Neutral when among civilized folk (he does not follow their mores or standards of decency). An individual dwarf might be Lawful Good towards fellow dwarves (always performing her duty for the good of the clan), Neutral towards elves (tolerating them, although not overly fond of them), and Chaotic Evil towards orcs (attacking them on sight, refusing to negotiate).
If alignment is a useful guideline in figuring out how an individual will act towards others, and since people don't always act the same way towards all groups of people, this could be a useful short-hand for summarizing, say, an NPC's expected behaviour.
Thoughts?
