Quote from: rawma;840748What's your opinion of the factions in the D&D 5e Forgotten Realms setting?

The Factions aren't really part of the Alignment system, more groups of individuals with similar goals, which may have the same alignment as other members of the Faction.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;841062The Factions aren't really part of the Alignment system, more groups of individuals with similar goals, which may have the same alignment as other members of the Faction.

Sure, we know it's not part of the alignment system because everyone can actually agree what it means to be in a particular faction, and we don't need peculiar contrived social conventions to explain why people don't magically detect your faction and kill you for it.

I asked about it because it seemed to align () with what RPGPundit preferred for alignment; "less codified rather than more, more reactive rather than proscriptive, and not necessarily tied to morality", although its scope is much less and of course actual alignment still exists in Forgotten Realms. I had assumed that he had reviewed at least one of the D&D 5e campaign books, which describe the factions, but apparently not. (They're in the Adventurers League Player's Guide PDF, if anyone wants to look at them without buying a book.)

I like alignment in the original, wargame-style context of lining up on one side or another of a campaign's central conflict. Are you with or against Napoleon, the Roundheads, the Steward of Gondor, the Egg of Coot, or whatever may be relevant?

The main significance is that it gives you allies as well as enemies when you introduce a new player-figure to a campaign in the grand style.

The later evolution into an awkward abstract round hole for particular psychological square pegs seemed nothing but trouble.

Granted a specific ethos, as in Chivalry & Sorcery or Land of the Rising Sun, a sort of good-evil (or noble-ignoble) linear spectrum -- a scalar value rather than a set of exclusive boxes -- can work well.

In Tekumel, there is on one hand a pretty clear cut religious and political opposition between the devotees of Stability and Change (respectively called inaccurately Good and Evil in the original EPT).

On the other hand, there is a common concept of honorable/noble vs. dishonorable/ignoble conduct, albeit some specifics vary depending on factors analogous to those pertaining to Indian jatis ("castes"). What matters above all is fidelity to one's clan (or equivalent), with propriety of social-class hierarchy protocols coming a close second.

Obviously there are relationships to personal ethos: adherents of wanton Dlamelish have somewhat different expectations of their daughters than worshippers of chaste Avanthe, and a predominantly military or scholarly clan will have different priorities than one mainly of craftsmen or peasants.

An individual's temperament may be very much in or out of agreement with these expectations, however. Indeed, internal and fraternal conflict may be key to the interest a given persona presents.

Quote from: rawma;841110Sure, we know it's not part of the alignment system because everyone can actually agree what it means to be in a particular faction, and we don't need peculiar contrived social conventions to explain why people don't magically detect your faction and kill you for it.

I asked about it because it seemed to align () with what RPGPundit preferred for alignment; "less codified rather than more, more reactive rather than proscriptive, and not necessarily tied to morality", although its scope is much less and of course actual alignment still exists in Forgotten Realms. I had assumed that he had reviewed at least one of the D&D 5e campaign books, which describe the factions, but apparently not. (They're in the Adventurers League Player's Guide PDF, if anyone wants to look at them without buying a book.)

The problem in thinking that is that you can have, for example, good aligned people in the Zhentarim faction.  Some poor scmuck for example, who goes out and feeds the homeless and helps those less fortunate, but still good people, can pick up information and send to their supervisor, thinking that they're just 'part of the gang'.

Or you can have an LE character part of the Order of The Gauntlet, using them simply to bolster his reputation.  Yes, he does do 'good' deeds, but his methodology and reasons for doing so are less than benign.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;841178The problem in thinking that is that you can have, for example, good aligned people in the Zhentarim faction.  Some poor scmuck for example, who goes out and feeds the homeless and helps those less fortunate, but still good people, can pick up information and send to their supervisor, thinking that they're just 'part of the gang'.

Or you can have an LE character part of the Order of The Gauntlet, using them simply to bolster his reputation.  Yes, he does do 'good' deeds, but his methodology and reasons for doing so are less than benign.

I guess I don't see why these are problems. It is explicit that the factions can work together, regardless of their differing goals. There's no alignment requirement (although organized play allows evil characters only if they're lawful evil, and only in the Lords' Alliance and Zhentarim factions).

I only think Alignment makes sense in a game world (or moral cosmology) where the axes of your alignment system are significant in some way, and the "monsters" and people of your world organize themselves into corresponding buckets. Which for me is never unless I'm playing D&D, which I almost never choose to do, or GURPS Myth.

Even in GURPS Myth (which has a strong explicit Dark and Light conflict which maps directly to races and factions), I don't feel a need for an Alignment system. Each race or faction or individual still has a description which leads to their behavior. Dark tends to mean you're part of an undead army led by necromancer types who are actively trying to kill off most of the world (or you've been corrupted into serving them), and Light tends to mean you're willing to fight back against forces trying to destroy all life.

So I prefer game systems that have no such thing, and that only specify similar things when they have a consistent cause in the real world, such as a cultural, religious, spiritual, tribal, familial, or personal origin, not a universal one.

I see Alignment as an attempt to apply a universal moral framework upon everything and everyone, which if it were seriously applied in the real world, I would see as at best a gross oversimplification, mistake, or projection of ignorance, and at worst a kind of bigotry/intolerance where one moral system's taxonomy is believed to be absolutely true, or at least valid enough to pigeon-hole and accurately describe everyone's behavior. It reminds me of how much political discussion describes people and stances by mapping them to one or two vectors (left/right) and how politicians and their corruptors use this to focus people on an struggle between these camps that provides a convenient distraction from issues and from the overall corruption of the whole system.

I wouldn't categorize myself or anyone I know as fitting any D&D (or Palladium or whatever) Alignment system. I also don't think real evil in the world works the way such Alignment systems tend to describe them.

I think the Lawful index is slightly less problematic, but I wouldn't call Chaotic an alignment. Seems to me that some people have a form of GURPS Honest or Lawful traits or mindsets (either from rational choice, experience, or culture/upbringing), many people have a greyer version of that (picking which laws they follow or not for whatever reasons), some people have gotten into various unlawful behavior to one degree or another, which can snowball, and some people actually have some sort of chaotic personality (which might or might not include certain types of legal violations), and some people have mental problems, such as the oh-so-common child-abuse/neglect-sociopath combo, or the abused-self-destructive combo.

I prefer to have good character-oriented roleplayers who will explore such things as players, without having to stat out most of the details, unless they fall into a clear disadvantage category, or they're sworn to an official code of honor (Catholic Priest, Hippocratic Oath, or Palladin of Order of the Golden Gonads, etc).

In Arrows of Indra and Dark Albion alike (and FtA!, for that matter), alignment is made to really matter.  Probably in Arrows more than the others, mechanically speaking; but in Albion it's extremely important socially.