TheRPGSite

What the tin says.

The first problem is with making an alignment based of Order (Law) and Chaos, those aren't moral choices per se, imagine you're in Nazi Germany, there's an order/law that puts Jews, Gypsies, Gays and other people the government deems undesirable into concentration/extermination camps. A revolt (chaos) would be  good thing as long as you don't target innocent people. On the other hand obeying the law (following orders anyone?) would be a bad thing.

So they should have started with Good vs Evil and no, you can't be neutral here, you can be mostly one or the other falling occasionally on the other side because you're only "human".

From there you could, if you wanted, felt it was needed (I don't) add Order and Chaos to give I don't know what to the characters.

To me it feels mostly as a straight jacket than a good tool unless you're going for the Black and White view of the world, very valid option for your setting in my eyes.

Now let the lynching begin. :cool:

Alignment is a gross simplification of human behaviour, trying to distill a load of virtues and vices down to two words.

The best version of alignment I've ever seen is the list of traits from Pendragon, something like that could be repurposed to be a list of virtues and vices suitable for DnD.

The version I see in practice has Lawful Preachy, Neutral Greedy, Chaotic fuckwit and Evil Bastard.

Lawful preachy is virtuous and demands others be virtuous too, also convinced of their own rightousness.

Neutral greedy doesn't care much as long as there's cash in it.

Chaotic fuckwit will just do random shit with no rhyme or reason. (Can you tell I don't like chaotic characters)?

Evil bastard does things for their own advantage and / or to cause harm for fun.

Doesn't it originate from Gary Gygax's objectivism? I'm not judging the man if he was, it's just what I heard.

Regardless if it is broken, in its broken elements D&D created a neat cosmology that is its own.

People just aren't that tidily put into buckets.  But, for a certain stream of fantasy logic it works okay.  I always assume the human range doesn't extend out as far as the supernatural range.  Most supernatural beings would consider all mortals neutral.

But then my Hobgoblin Rogue Kitten "Kitten: ferocious killer, huge teeth, sharp claws yes?" had "selfish bastard and race traitor" as his alignment.  He sold out his own people out of spite for personal gain and would do it again in a heart beat.  Of course, Kitten was fun because he play'd dumb and used his hobgoblin accent to lull people into thinking he was a harmless idiot.  He also carried a spear and wore leather armour and claimed to be a fighter.  Maybe neutral evil, he was a bad guy.  He wouldn't hurt anyone for cruelty though, he gets paid to be cruel or he's not cruel at all, "everyone's trying to get you to work for free 'cause you're a hobgoblin so you gotta hold your ground or nobody's gonna pay you."

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1132805Doesn't it originate from Gary Gygax's objectivism? I'm not judging the man if he was, it's just what I heard.

Regardless if it is broken, in its broken elements D&D created a neat cosmology that is its own.

Wasn't he a deeply religious man? I think I red somewhere this was true, no judgment either way, but the fact that it remains a broken shit holds true.

Quote from: Altheus;1132798Alignment is a gross simplification of human behaviour, trying to distill a load of virtues and vices down to two words.

The best version of alignment I've ever seen is the list of traits from Pendragon, something like that could be repurposed to be a list of virtues and vices suitable for DnD.

The version I see in practice has Lawful Preachy, Neutral Greedy, Chaotic fuckwit and Evil Bastard.

Lawful preachy is virtuous and demands others be virtuous too, also convinced of their own rightousness.

Neutral greedy doesn't care much as long as there's cash in it.

Chaotic fuckwit will just do random shit with no rhyme or reason. (Can you tell I don't like chaotic characters)?

Evil bastard does things for their own advantage and / or to cause harm for fun.

Interesting, will try and find that list without expending money nor sailing the high seas Har mate!

AD&D alignment, regardless of how it developed, imitates the mythic archetypes, and thus it accurately represents all human experience.

Law is civilization/known in both its protective (LG) and tyrannical (LE) forms. Chaos is the creative (CG) and destructive (CE) aspect of nature/unknown. Then you have the hero (NG -- Jesus/Marduk/Horus) that emerges to restore the balance between known and unknown when things go wrong -- note that in the description, the NG alignment is favorably disposed towards both law and chaos. The opposite of the hero is the adversary (NE - Satan/Set/Sauron). And finally there is the primordial chaos (N) from which everything emerges.

Most commonly, LG is the protective benevolent father, while LE is the tyrannical father. CG is the benevolent mother who creates life, while CE is the destructive Oedipal mother that devours her own children. NG is the hero, while NE is the trickster. N is the Ouroboros.

Thus you have all of the archetypes of mythology and story:

Benevolent/malevolent Father
Benevolent/malevolent Mother
Hero/Trickster
Ouroboros

ALL human experience can be understood in those terms. ALL stories can be broken down into those basic components.

Ideologies are quasi-religions based on partial truths and are thus fundamentally false as they distort the human experience. For example, in SJWism, or Leftism, the world consists of the tyrannical Father (white racism/male despotism) and the benevolent Mother (innocent non-whites/benevolent women). Conservative ideologies flip it into the benevolent Father (white civilization/male protection) vs the malevolent Mother (evil non-whites/promiscuous women). Those ideologies are CE and LE respectively.

For a religion to be true, ALL of the archetypes must be present because they represent the totality of human experience.

One must remember that alignment is NOT 9 points, it is a graph with blurry areas between each alignment, which are ideals. The real work of the DM is not to define the alignments, but to judge where the boundaries are.

Good and evil are wholly apprehensible in terms of God and Satan. Think of all those who are good as Christians, think of all those who are evil as Satanists, and everyone else is in the grey area between the two, the original state of humanity before knowledge of good and evil existed. This is fairly simple. Watch any good movie like the original Star Wars or westerns from back in the day.

Law and chaos are wholly apprehensible in terms of sex. Sex in itself is chaotic, as it represents the ultimate individual impulse. Marriage is lawful because it seeks to harness that impulse and constrain the individual for the benefit of the community. So, CG would be individuals frolicking at an orgy (creation), CE would be gang rape (destruction), LG is marriage in its ideal form (protection), and LE would be sexual slavery used strictly for the purpose of of creating more soldiers and workers (tyranny). N is the origin in the sexual behavior of animals and other organisms.

So on and so forth. Every human experience can be broken down into the archetypes.


Also, consider this: the natural tendency for civilizations is to circle clockwise around the alignment graph. Chaos and destruction, raiding and pillaging (CE) lead to a desire for a strong, tyrannical leader to protect everyone (LE). Once the chaos of nature is controlled there is a push for human rights (LG). Once everyone is safe, there is a push for liberty and the free expression of every individual (CG). Society then descends into decadence and self-indulgence and society collapses back into chaos (CE). And the cycle begins again. There are of course mini-cycles within the greater cycles.

However, it is not a circle, but a spiral. As time goes on, civilizations tend to move outward from the center (N, the beginning) as good becomes more good and law become more lawful. Compare the legal system of today vs the Ancient world -- it is capable of much more good, but also has a greater capacity for evil. Good is much better defined than in the Ancient world or the Middle Ages (read the Catholic Catechism), and after WWII the world came to a consensus regarding human rights. So over time lg become LG, ce becomes CE, and so on.

I like the original D&D alignment quite a bit; the whole Law/Chaos divide separates humanity from monsterdom. When the Good-Evil axis got incorporated, it made A LOT less sense, transitioning from some sort of universal struggle to personal morality, which is why it breaks down.

Warhammer incorporated good/evil better, I think, with the one axis alignment system: Chaos – Evil – Neutral – Good – Law

While I enjoy the cosmic struggle between Law and Chaos, my favorite alignment system is probably the one used in the Palladium System. It holds more true to me that people can be Good, Selfish, or Evil.

Quote from: Cloyer Bulse;1132814AD&D alignment, regardless of how it developed, imitates the mythic archetypes, and thus it accurately represents all human experience.

Law is civilization/known in both its protective (LG) and tyrannical (LE) forms. Chaos is the creative (CG) and destructive (CE) aspect of nature/unknown. Then you have the hero (NG -- Jesus/Marduk/Horus) that emerges to restore the balance between known and unknown when things go wrong -- note that in the description, the NG alignment is favorably disposed towards both law and chaos. The opposite of the hero is the adversary (NE - Satan/Set/Sauron). And finally there is the primordial chaos (N) from which everything emerges.

Most commonly, LG is the protective benevolent father, while LE is the tyrannical father. CG is the benevolent mother who creates life, while CE is the destructive Oedipal mother that devours her own children. NG is the hero, while NE is the trickster. N is the Ouroboros.

Thus you have all of the archetypes of mythology and story:

Benevolent/malevolent Father
Benevolent/malevolent Mother
Hero/Trickster
Ouroboros

ALL human experience can be understood in those terms. ALL stories can be broken down into those basic components.

Ideologies are quasi-religions based on partial truths and are thus fundamentally false as they distort the human experience. For example, in SJWism, or Leftism, the world consists of the tyrannical Father (white racism/male despotism) and the benevolent Mother (innocent non-whites/benevolent women). Conservative ideologies flip it into the benevolent Father (white civilization/male protection) vs the malevolent Mother (evil non-whites/promiscuous women). Those ideologies are CE and LE respectively.

For a religion to be true, ALL of the archetypes must be present because they represent the totality of human experience.

One must remember that alignment is NOT 9 points, it is a graph with blurry areas between each alignment, which are ideals. The real work of the DM is not to define the alignments, but to judge where the boundaries are.

Good and evil are wholly apprehensible in terms of God and Satan. Think of all those who are good as Christians, think of all those who are evil as Satanists, and everyone else is in the grey area between the two, the original state of humanity before knowledge of good and evil existed. This is fairly simple. Watch any good movie like the original Star Wars or westerns from back in the day.

Law and chaos are wholly apprehensible in terms of sex. Sex in itself is chaotic, as it represents the ultimate individual impulse. Marriage is lawful because it seeks to harness that impulse and constrain the individual for the benefit of the community. So, CG would be individuals frolicking at an orgy (creation), CE would be gang rape (destruction), LG is marriage in its ideal form (protection), and LE would be sexual slavery used strictly for the purpose of of creating more soldiers and workers (tyranny). N is the origin in the sexual behavior of animals and other organisms.

So on and so forth. Every human experience can be broken down into the archetypes.


Also, consider this: the natural tendency for civilizations is to circle clockwise around the alignment graph. Chaos and destruction, raiding and pillaging (CE) lead to a desire for a strong, tyrannical leader to protect everyone (LE). Once the chaos of nature is controlled there is a push for human rights (LG). Once everyone is safe, there is a push for liberty and the free expression of every individual (CG). Society then descends into decadence and self-indulgence and society collapses back into chaos (CE). And the cycle begins again. There are of course mini-cycles within the greater cycles.

However, it is not a circle, but a spiral. As time goes on, civilizations tend to move outward from the center (N, the beginning) as good becomes more good and law become more lawful. Compare the legal system of today vs the Ancient world -- it is capable of much more good, but also has a greater capacity for evil. Good is much better defined than in the Ancient world or the Middle Ages (read the Catholic Catechism), and after WWII the world came to a consensus regarding human rights. So over time lg become LG, ce becomes CE, and so on.

LOL, born a catholic, have read that and their bible and also the protestant one.

You might be able to describe everything using those archetypes, doesn't mean they translate well into the game without becoming a straight jacket for the character, a list of what you can't do instead of what you can do.

I insist, as an atheist, if you're gonna have alignment in a pseudo medieval setting it has to be based on the dichotomy between Good and Evil, Since those are the moral questions, Order, Chaos or Neutrality can't come first (and I don't use them at all) since they aren't moral choices per se.

Quote from: arcanuum;1132819While I enjoy the cosmic struggle between Law and Chaos, my favorite alignmenst system is probably the one used in the Palladium System. It holds more true to me that people can be Good, Selfish, or Evil.

Isn't selfish a vice tho? I would say it falls under Evil and not in the middle.

Quote from: Brad;1132817I like the original D&D alignment quite a bit; the whole Law/Chaos divide separates humanity from monsterdom. When the Good-Evil axis got incorporated, it made A LOT less sense, transitioning from some sort of universal struggle to personal morality, which is why it breaks down.

Warhammer incorporated good/evil better, I think, with the one axis alignment system: Chaos – Evil – Neutral – Good – Law

Which is the same as in modern versions of D&D no?

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1132822Which is the same as in modern versions of D&D no?

D&D uses two axis, Warhammer is one.

LG NG CG
LN  N  CN
LE  NE CE

vs.

Law-Good-Neutral-Evil-Chaos

Basically Law is an extreme form of Good, I guess. Also, most people are Neutral because they're self-interested.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1132805Doesn't it originate from Gary Gygax's objectivism? I'm not judging the man if he was, it's just what I heard.

Regardless if it is broken, in its broken elements D&D created a neat cosmology that is its own.

Exactly. Let's not forget how from the "broken" D&D aligment they created Planescape - one of most complex philosophical (in a good sense) settings around.

Anyway Nazi Germany should be lawful evil - maybe the best embodiment ever of the concept.

Quote from: Brad;1132817I like the original D&D alignment quite a bit; the whole Law/Chaos divide separates humanity from monsterdom. When the Good-Evil axis got incorporated, it made A LOT less sense, transitioning from some sort of universal struggle to personal morality, which is why it breaks down.

Warhammer incorporated good/evil better, I think, with the one axis alignment system: Chaos – Evil – Neutral – Good – Law

Even though i dont like it as a game, i like the language age of sigmar uses for this

Death - Order - Destruction - Chaos

Death is extreme order where nothing ever changes, and destruction is more...hedonistic i guess, its like violence for the sake of violence.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1132821Isn't selfish a vice tho? I would say it falls under Evil and not in the middle.

In the context of the Palladium system being Good means you will be out for helping others and not necessarily breaking the law to do so. Selfish characters are the likes of Han Solo or at the other extreme being like Jack Sparrow from Pirates of The Carribean. Evil characters are either Aberrant or Miscreant. Aberrant characters are akin to Lawful Evil characters in D&D. Miscreant characters are the worst offenders in all of the worlds they inhabit.

100% agree with the tin, and haven't used alignment since after the first one or two years of running my own games. Back in the early 90's. I used to enforce alignment at first (particularly cuz some classes had alignment restrictions and presumably some of their class abilities were supposed to be balanced out by alignment requirements), but that just led to disruptions in my campaigns (caused mostly by me). I eventually realized that alignment were too subjective and unworkable as absolutes, particularly from a game play PoV, so I simply decided to get rid of them (along with Paladins, since they relied too much on alignment restriction to balance their class benefits) and let everyone play however they wanted.

Law and Chaos in particularly are tricky concepts, because they rely too much on context to determine what is "lawful" or "chaotic". And characters of either alignment can easily have traits that arguably belong to the opposite. A rebellious/anarchistic character, in particular, can be completely loyal to their family and friends (a lawful trait), or rigidly dedicated to a particular ideal (more lawful traits), while being completely opposed to a tyrannical system and dedicated to its destruction (chaotic). But what happens if that character wins out and overthrows the tyrannical government, then institutes a system founded on the principles of liberty and opposition to slavery, where he/she becomes a leader and lawmaker? Does the rebellious (and by extension "chaotic") character now become "lawful" because he/she writes the laws of the land, or do they remain "chaotic" due to their dedication to liberty? What if they become a champion of their new government and starts waging wars on other governments to impose their ideals on neighbors they don't approve of and "liberating" those lands by imposing their new government's rules on them? And what about the "knights" of that government, who rigidly uphold its laws and fight on its wars?

I simplify all these questions by simply stating that "alignment" is completely irrelevant and what actually matters are what actual values a character have, or what their personality traits are. I don't care if the character identifies as "lawful" or "chaotic". I care that among their personality traits they are: 1) Loyal to friends and family; 2) Oppose Tyranny and Slavery, 3) Are dedicated/loyal to their new government, etc. Those are the traits that are actually relevant in actual RP, not whether the character has behaved "lawful" or "chaotic" enough to still remain on either alignment, or to pretend that they're somehow "neutral" because they have conflicting traits (at least from the PoV of D&D alignment), when in reality they have strong stances and opinions on all of this stuff, so by definition can't be neutral.

And while some might argue that certain attitudes are inherently "lawful" in D&D terms, even if the character operates outside the law, such as mafia types who still follow the "rules" of the underworld, that's entirely a "Well, that's just, like, your opinion...man" philosophical discussion that is guaranteed to bring a game session to a screeching halt rather than have any actual practical application in gameplay, unless everyone at the table just agrees with each other like mindless drones. Which is why alignment doesn't work. Even if you can argue on its favor the reality still remains that what constitutes X or Y alignment is a matter of opinion and you can't effectively enforce that in actual play. So they completely fail as role-playing tools in practice.

Quote from: Slambo;1132828Even though i dont like it as a game, i like the language age of sigmar uses for this

Death - Order - Destruction - Chaos

Death is extreme order where nothing ever changes, and destruction is more...hedonistic i guess, its like violence for the sake of violence.

Link to game..? Never heard of it.

Quote from: arcanuum;1132832In the context of the Palladium system being Good means you will be out for helping others and not necessarily breaking the law to do so. Selfish characters are the likes of Han Solo or at the other extreme being like Jack Sparrow from Pirates of The Carribean. Evil characters are either Aberrant or Miscreant. Aberrant characters are akin to Lawful Evil characters in D&D. Miscreant characters are the worst offenders in all of the worlds they inhabit.

Yeah, Palladium alignment is realistic...it tries to actually pigeon-hole PCs into categories real people might actually be in. Was always partial to Aberrant because I'm a hardcore Dr. Doom fanboy...yes a terrible person, but you can respect the dude.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1132794What the tin says.

The first problem is with making an alignment based of Order (Law) and Chaos, those aren't moral choices per se, imagine you're in Nazi Germany, there's an order/law that puts Jews, Gypsies, Gays and other people the government deems undesirable into concentration/extermination camps. A revolt (chaos) would be  good thing as long as you don't target innocent people. On the other hand obeying the law (following orders anyone?) would be a bad thing.

So they should have started with Good vs Evil and no, you can't be neutral here, you can be mostly one or the other falling occasionally on the other side because you're only "human".

From there you could, if you wanted, felt it was needed (I don't) add Order and Chaos to give I don't know what to the characters.

To me it feels mostly as a straight jacket than a good tool unless you're going for the Black and White view of the world, very valid option for your setting in my eyes.

I think a missing piece in your analysis might be the question of which law "Lawful" applies to. I think Reckall was getting at this idea:

Quote from: Reckall;1132827Exactly. Let's not forget how from the "broken" D&D aligment they created Planescape - one of most complex philosophical (in a good sense) settings around.

Anyway Nazi Germany should be lawful evil - maybe the best embodiment ever of the concept.

Shrieking Banshee did too:

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1132805Doesn't it originate from Gary Gygax's objectivism? I'm not judging the man if he was, it's just what I heard.

If D&D clerics are Christian with the serial numbers filed off, for example, a Lawful cleric could hardly obey God's law and Hitler's simultaneously (and remain in good graces with God, anyway). Lawful/Lawful Good obeys some larger law of morality that may or may not align with human law (Jesus was quite the human lawbreaker if I remember right), whereas Lawful Evil has an internal consistency that contrasts it with Chaos and uses the law like a tool to further its own selfish ends.

I guess in other words, rather than necessarily being a straight jacket, it's a layer with defaults. I suspect most western players are going to default to a Judeo-Christian feel of "Lawful" with some amount of leaning on the laws of man, but if you wanted to introduce an alternative guiding morality layered overtop the laws of the land, you could. I think that idea comes out a little bit both in the LE deities as well as in the Eldritch/Cthulhu mythos.

I dunno. Just spitballing. Not a theologist or a philosopher.

Quote from: insubordinate polyhedral;1132836If D&D clerics are Christian with the serial numbers filed off, for example, a Lawful cleric could hardly obey God's law and Hitler's simultaneously (and remain in good graces with God, anyway). Lawful/Lawful Good obeys some larger law of morality that may or may not align with human law (Jesus was quite the human lawbreaker if I remember right), whereas Lawful Evil has an internal consistency that contrasts it with Chaos and uses the law like a tool to further its own selfish ends.

I guess in other words, rather than necessarily being a straight jacket, it's a layer with defaults. I suspect most western players are going to default to a Judeo-Christian feel of "Lawful" with some amount of leaning on the laws of man, but if you wanted to introduce an alternative guiding morality layered overtop the laws of the land, you could. I think that idea comes out a little bit both in the LE deities as well as in the Eldritch/Cthulhu mythos.

I dunno. Just spitballing. Not a theologist or a philosopher.

Law in this case would be the Laws of God (capital G), not some sort of old school Catholicism where there's a hierarchy of leadership between man and God. Actually, that would be some interesting gaming...a Paladin going against the Church because he literally knows the Truth as he's inspired by God.

Quote from: Brad;1132838Law in this case would be the Laws of God (capital G), not some sort of old school Catholicism where there's a hierarchy of leadership between man and God. Actually, that would be some interesting gaming...a Paladin going against the Church because he literally knows the Truth as he's inspired by God.

Joan of Arc, for example?

Quote from: Brad;1132826D&D uses two axis, Warhammer is one.

LG NG CG
LN  N  CN
LE  NE CE

vs.

Law-Good-Neutral-Evil-Chaos

Basically Law is an extreme form of Good, I guess. Also, most people are Neutral because they're self-interested.

This also the 4e D&D alignment system. Lawful Good was just a more extreme form of Good and Chaotic Evil was just a more extreme version of Evil. There were no Chaotic Good or Lawful Evil alignments in 4e.

Quote from: insubordinate polyhedral;1132839Joan of Arc, for example?

Real-world example, yeah. Joan of Arc would be a pretty cool solo Paladin campaign.

If I remember correctly Alignment was created in DnD as a way to stop the original Asshats from trolling their own party.  No you can not betray and rob Bill because you have a Good character.  Oh you have an Evil character, well guess he is an NPC now sorry.

The whole Law - Chaos axis appears to be ripped from the Elric books and then when smashed together with Good - Evil gives us the ADnD Alignment.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1132820You might be able to describe everything using those archetypes, doesn't mean they translate well into the game without becoming a straight jacket for the character, a list of what you can't do instead of what you can do.

I think you are describing the difference bwteen Ethics and Morality, a list of Commandments would be a particularly Lawful thing to want from your Alignment.

Quote from: Brad;1132838Law in this case would be the Laws of God (capital G), not some sort of old school Catholicism where there's a hierarchy of leadership between man and God. Actually, that would be some interesting gaming...a Paladin going against the Church because he literally knows the Truth as he's inspired by God.

Paksenarrion is always my go to example, except that she was never tied to the Church to begin with.

Quote from: Shasarak;1132847If I remember correctly Alignment was created in DnD as a way to stop the original Asshats from trolling their own party.

The Law and Chaos alignments come originally from Chainmail. They were basically the factions that each player used to build their army, with Neutral troops fighting on either side. When Arneson started playing his Blackmoor game, he treated it as simply as a good/evil axis where Chaos were the baddies and Neutral was described as selfish.

I wouldn't say that Gygax added Good and Evil axis in AD&D. It was more like he renamed Law & Chaos to Good & Evil and then added a Law and Chaos axis on top of that.

But you're basically right in that enforcing Alignment was a way to prevent players from getting all the benefits of being Good (i.e good people don't try to kill them) while acting evil when nobody was looking. The question is whether or not it was "You're Good therefore you can't do that" or "If you do that you're character will become Evil". The XP penalty for changing alignment was simply a method to prevent players from switching sides back and forth whenever it was advantageous to do so.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1132794The first problem is with making an alignment based of Order (Law) and Chaos, those aren't moral choices per se, imagine you're in Nazi Germany -

I must have missed the bit in the DMG where they talked about running medieval fantasy campaigns in mid-20th century Europe.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1132868I must have missed the bit in the DMG where they talked about running medieval fantasy campaigns in mid-20th century Europe.

   And one of the two sources that inspired the Law/Chaos alignment axis, Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions (which also gave us the paladin and the troll), identifies the Nazis with Chaos.

God not this old fallacy thread... again.

I use Law / Neutral / Chaos in my OD&D. FOR ME, alignment is not about morals, but about how your PC views the value of civilization. A Lawful character champions civilization, even warts and all. A Neutral may be more interested in "doing good", or being selfish, or just surviving and being left alone. A Chaotic sees no true value in civilization. It's a sucker's game to them.  

Yes, Lawful characters will often obey "evil orders" and that's a feature, not a bug. That's why Neutral exist as a choice. However, when seeking the help of civilization, a Lawful character has an advantage.

And Chaotic leaders exist because warlords can often rise in power within civilization. And some may even be more successful as leaders since they aren't bound by law, tradition or cultural mores. But they can't be trusted by their subjects.

Here's what I tell my players:
Pick Lawful if you like being trusted and you're cool with moral conundrums.
Pick Chaos if you like being an outsider and you're cool with being distrusted.
Pick Neutral if you don't care about alignment.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1132868I must have missed the bit in the DMG where they talked about running medieval fantasy campaigns in mid-20th century Europe.

It's called a simile, a metaphor...

Quote from: Omega;1132878God not this old fallacy thread... again.

I agree.

Alignment is a fallacy! :p

Geeky, another reason I use Law vs. Chaos instead of Good vs. Evil is that players for whatever reason feel the

It is interesting that Gamma World 1e does not have alignments. TSR kept that concept only within D&D.

It's especially interesting if alignment did evolve due to "asshats at the table." Why would that behavior exist in D&D, but not GW?

Anyone know why Jim Ward didn't include alignment in GW?

Quote from: Reckall;1132827Exactly. Let's not forget how from the "broken" D&D aligment they created Planescape - one of most complex philosophical (in a good sense) settings around.

For me the real genius of Planescape was making so the planes can be easily associated to abstract concepts like madness, apathy, rage, stasis, movement, glory, etc. Which makes them more interesting than the original (and shallow, IMO) model.

Quote from: Brad;1132835Link to game..? Never heard of it.
 

Age of Sigmar is what replaced Warhammer Fantasy.

It had one of the worst launches of any game ive ever seen

Its did recently get an RPG in Soulbound but i havent looked at it.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/303936

Imo its not a very good setting but it does have some cool models,.

This is a game that abstracts a lot of things. Hit points, armor class, levels, all that jazz.

Alignment is a convenient shorthand for abilities and spells to key off of, and a way to determine the general attitude of an NPC with a simple two words.

Aside from that, I take it as a declaration of the character's general attitude towards law/order good/evil. Not a set-in-stone you-must-act X at all times thing.

The prime example is the dick GM who strips a Paladin of his powers with some assinine "Gotcha!" alignment test.

A lawful character should be able to break the rules occasionally without the GM going "Gotcha!". Or a good character gets into a morally murky situation and does something shady without that dick GM going "Gotcha!"

I'm not going to argue that there's a right way to play, and that everybody better use aligment or I'll come over and beat them with a DMG. Admittedly, alignment rarely even comes up in my games. I just have a philosophy about how to apply it if it ever does.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1132895Geeky, another reason I use Law vs. Chaos instead of Good vs. Evil is that players for whatever reason feel the

It is interesting that Gamma World 1e does not have alignments. TSR kept that concept only within D&D.

It's especially interesting if alignment did evolve due to "asshats at the table." Why would that behavior exist in D&D, but not GW?

Anyone know why Jim Ward didn't include alignment in GW?

"...players for whatever reason feel the..." The What?

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1132884It's called a simile, a metaphor...

And it's a shitty one. Any roleplaying game tries to represent some particular kind of world, and its mechanics are built around that. Complaining that D&D's alignment system does not simulate 20th century morality is like complaining hit points and saving throws don't simulate infectious diseases - that's not what it's for.

As Ratman says, it's an abstraction. As are all elements of all games.

Quote from: Itachi;1132897For me the real genius of Planescape was making so the planes can be easily associated to abstract concepts like madness, apathy, rage, stasis, movement, glory, etc. Which makes them more interesting than the original (and shallow, IMO) model.

I also liked the idea of having various factions based around various philosophies dealing with different takes on the nature of reality. Not only did I like the idea of factions in general, and having clearly defined groups that were prevalent in the setting, characters could belong to and added an additional layer of intrigue to the setting. But I also loved how none of these factions seemed to imply or be built around any specific alignment. Even when some of them might impose certain alignment restrictions, the underlying idea behind the faction wasn't about alignment, but some attitude or belief about the nature of reality or its purpose that transcended alignment itself.

Granted, some of them may have been silly or not very deep, but the core idea itself was pretty good. And it helped reinforce that the theme of the setting wasn't about alignment, but rather belief. And the biggest draw of the planes wasn't alignment (which was completely secondary even when related to the nature of a plane), but the wacky nature of the planes and the weird stuff that could go on in them.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1132909And it's a shitty one. Any roleplaying game tries to represent some particular kind of world, and its mechanics are built around that. Complaining that D&D's alignment system does not simulate 20th century morality is like complaining hit points and saving throws don't simulate infectious diseases - that's not what it's for.

As Ratman says, it's an abstraction. As are all elements of all games.

The complaint isn't that alignment doesn't simulate 20th century morality, but that it's subjective garbage that doesn't actually aid RP (what it purports to do) but rather hinders it by becoming a straight jacked and getting in the way. You could get rid of it and it would not affect game play in any way, save for a few alignment-specific spells and such that you could also easily remove as well. Try removing HP, and you better get ready to design something new in its place because as garbage as HP can also be, at least they do something objectively useful and necessary in the game. Alignment, however, is useless fluff. Which how 99% of game that aren't D&D can operate without it, or even a substitute for it.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1132909And it's a shitty one. Any roleplaying game tries to represent some particular kind of world, and its mechanics are built around that. Complaining that D&D's alignment system does not simulate 20th century morality is like complaining hit points and saving throws don't simulate infectious diseases - that's not what it's for.

As Ratman says, it's an abstraction. As are all elements of all games.

Because that's exactly what I'm saying...

Are you this stupid and dishonest always or just on days that end in a Y?

Quote from: VisionStorm;1132912The complaint isn't that alignment doesn't simulate 20th century morality, but that it's subjective garbage that doesn't actually aid RP (what it purports to do) but rather hinders it by becoming a straight jacked and getting in the way. You could get rid of it and it would not affect game play in any way, save for a few alignment-specific spells and such that you could also easily remove as well. Try removing HP, and you better get ready to design something new in its place because as garbage as HP can also be, at least they do something objectively useful and necessary in the game. Alignment, however, is useless fluff. Which how 99% of game that aren't D&D can operate without it, or even a substitute for it.

It's worst than that, if anything I'm saying it doesn't simulate medieval morality at all, back then it was Good or Evil, Black and White God vs the Devil.

I think the self proclaimed high-minded hack isn't high-minded at all but a total hack.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1132895Anyone know why Jim Ward didn't include alignment in GW?

I would guess that the reason is probably because he did not want Gamma World to be as successful as DnD.

I mean there was everything else, even Yeti Swarms.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1132912The complaint isn't that alignment doesn't simulate 20th century morality, but that it's subjective garbage that doesn't actually aid RP (what it purports to do) but rather hinders it by becoming a straight jacked and getting in the way. You could get rid of it and it would not affect game play in any way, save for a few alignment-specific spells and such that you could also easily remove as well. Try removing HP, and you better get ready to design something new in its place because as garbage as HP can also be, at least they do something objectively useful and necessary in the game. Alignment, however, is useless fluff.

Just so that I can get this argument straight, Alignment is useless subjective fluff that does not affect game play in any way and at the same time is a straight jacket that gets in the way.

Yeah, thats a real head scratcher that one.

QuoteWhich how 99% of game that aren't D&D can operate without it, or even a substitute for it.

99% of games can operate without it and none of them is as popular as DnD.

Coincidence?

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1132794What the tin says.

The first problem is with making an alignment based of Order (Law) and Chaos, those aren't moral choices per se, imagine you're in Nazi Germany, there's an order/law that puts Jews, Gypsies, Gays and other people the government deems undesirable into concentration/extermination camps. A revolt (chaos) would be  good thing as long as you don't target innocent people. On the other hand obeying the law (following orders anyone?) would be a bad thing.

So they should have started with Good vs Evil and no, you can't be neutral here, you can be mostly one or the other falling occasionally on the other side because you're only "human".

Were all Germans the same alignment during WW2?  I would say no, and yet you could easily classify the country as a whole as being LE.  Could you have LG characters acting within it?  What about famous ones like Oskar Schindler or Erwin Rommel you could advance an argument that they were LG.  Certainly they were not killed when Indy opened the Arc of the Covenant.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1132874And in one of the two sources that inspired the Law/Chaos alignment axis, Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions (which also gave us the paladin and the troll), identifies the Nazis with Chaos.

Nazis are definitely Chaotic. Their whole Will To Power, Vitalist ideology is highly Chaotic. They were also Chaotic in their interpersonal dealings.

As you might guess, I much prefer single-axis Alignment, if it's used at all.

Quote from: Shasarak;1132918Oskar Schindler or Erwin Rommel you could advance an argument that they were LG

One of these is not like the other!!! :D:D:D

Quote from: S'mon;1132920One of these is not like the other!!! :D:D:D

Greetings!

Indeed. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was a very unusual and principled man and warrior, as well as a dignified and honourable commander. Upon hearing news and confirmation of Erwin Rommel's death, Britain's Prime Minister Winston Churchill paid Erwin Rommel quite a eulogy. I've read that many people in Britain at the time also lamented Erwin Rommel's untimely death. I think that is an extraordinary tribute, especially more so while still engaged in the war, too. Of course, I have read so many applauding accounts from everyone in North Africa that faced against Rommel, and of course his own soldiers as well, that the man had a legendary status as a soldier of distinguished character and honour. Rommel was also singularly popular here in the United States as well, and quite admired by many of our professional soldiers and commanders--some of which who read Rommel's book before the war began, such as General George Patton, of the United States Army. I think President Roosevelt made some remarks also about the tragedy of Erwin Rommel's death. Fascinating man that Rommel was, and in some ways, so entirely out-of-place in World War II.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Yeah, but I'd peg Rommel LN/N not LG/L; he wasn't much of a Nazi but nor by any account a principled opponent of Hitler per se; morally he was a regular German officer. Schindler spent his personal fortune to save lives.

I'd say the same about Von Stauffenberg - he tried to blow up Hitler because Hitler was a loser, for what the Nazis were doing to Germany (getting her destroyed), not for moral qualms about what they'd done to others.

I think it was one of the Dirty Dozen films where the Americans assassinate a Rommel/Stauffenberg analogue in order to keep Hitler alive, knowing that Hitler's incompetence was their best asset!

I thought the consensus was that the Law-Chaos axis was lifted from Moorcock's books.  Is that no longer the case?  I found the idea really interesting when I read them as a kid, a kind of alternate system to conventional good/evil morality that highlighted the really alien thought processes of Elric and other inhabitants of that multiverse.  I think a D&D game with this  balance as the primary focus would be really interesting.  It is a morality of a sort, but just not one that we use.

As to D&D alignment, I don't think it's either a straitjacket or useless when used properly.  It's useful as a touchstone when deciding how to play your character, and for figuring how magic interacts with various NPCs.  It isn't perfect, but who cares?  Nothing in an RPG is ever entirely perfect.  And if it's a straitjacket, you're doing it wrong.  It's best used as a guide, not a set of commandments.  I like the systematic nature of the system, and it's such an integral part of D&D that it's not the same game without it.

That said, it isn't my favorite alignment system.  I much prefer the labels from TMNT.  They're not as comprehensive, but they do represent the genre pretty well.

And for the game I'm writing now, I just went with an optional set of precepts.  You write some of your character's values in order of priority and that's it.  No mechanical effects, just a list to help you remember how you want to play your PC.

And I have to say that I find this discussion comforting.  Many things about the world have changed or are going crazy, but as long as we're still arguing about alignment I have at least that one constant in my life.

Quote from: Mishihari;1132930I thought the consensus was that the Law-Chaos axis was lifted from Moorcock's books.  Is that no longer the case?  

I think it's generally accepted now that Moorcock was influenced by Poul Anderson, and EGG by both.

D&D alignment has always worked fine for me and my groups, but probably because we accept it as a simple D&D game mechanism (sort of a shirts/skins team system) and don't expect it to model, explain, explore, etc any of the complexities of real life. Clearly it would fail miserably under that sort of impossible test.

Quote from: Shasarak;1132918Were all Germans the same alignment during WW2?  I would say no, and yet you could easily classify the country as a whole as being LE.  Could you have LG characters acting within it?  What about famous ones like Oskar Schindler or Erwin Rommel you could advance an argument that they were LG.  Certainly they were not killed when Indy opened the Arc of the Covenant.

Schindler yes LG, Rommel not so sure of that.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

I postulate that IF you knew what they were doing to the Jews and did nothing you're evil.

Quote from: S'mon;1132919Nazis are definitely Chaotic. Their whole Will To Power, Vitalist ideology is highly Chaotic. They were also Chaotic in their interpersonal dealings.

As you might guess, I much prefer single-axis Alignment, if it's used at all.

   Agreed. I think the 'Nazis as Lawful' comes largely from a superficial reading of both Law (human law and organization rather than order, reason, and civilization) and the Nazis (militarism and sharp uniforms seem 'Lawful').

   Of the various D&D alignment systems, I'm fine with single-axis Law/Chaos, single-axis Good/Evil, and even 4E's variant. The 9-point system is the weakest, partially because I find 'Chaotic Good' a somewhat silly concept and partially because no one can seem to agree which axis gets more weight. There are hints in early material that Law and Chaos was supposed to be the focal point, with Good and Evil introduced for things like 'on the side of civilization, but ruthless and self-seeking' (LE) or 'more whimsical and unpredictable than malevolent' (CG--I think you can see this in Basic's characterization of genies as Chaotic).

  EDIT: All that said, my favorite 'alignment' system is probably Castle Falkenstein's. :)

Quote from: Shasarak;1132917Just so that I can get this argument straight, Alignment is useless subjective fluff that does not affect game play in any way and at the same time is a straight jacket that gets in the way.

Yeah, thats a real head scratcher that one.

Damn, you got me! Alignment is a useless restriction, so I guess it does kinda sorta affect game play in some way. Assuming that you take it seriously and enforce it in your game (like you're supposed to in the case of some classes, despite it supposedly being only a role playing "tool"). But it's an unnecessary restriction with no bearing on core game mechanics like combat, health, task resolution, etc. It's a secondary component that can be removed without affecting the central game rules beyond just "now you don't have a subjective restriction we can all stop the game every 15 minutes to argue about," so by removing it you can finally focus on actual game play and actual RP, instead of fretting about whether or not you RPed your stupid alignment "correctly" according to someone else's subjective opinion at the table.

Quote from: Shasarak;113291799% of games can operate without it and none of them is as popular as DnD.

Coincidence?

I'm sure that the reason why noobs with no concrete notion of D&D are lining up to play the game has nothing to do with name recognition or the chance to play mighty adventurers fighting mythical monsters and doing heroic stuff, but to be told by someone else that they're playing their alignment "wrong" and watch the game grind to a halt as an argument breaks out about what being X or Y alignment actually means. Not only does correlation totally imply causation, but some completely secondary component of the game that people have been heatedly arguing about for decades is obviously the reason for its success.

Quote from: Shasarak;1132918Were all Germans the same alignment during WW2?  I would say no, and yet you could easily classify the country as a whole as being LE.

Quote from: S'mon;1132919Nazis are definitely Chaotic. Their whole Will To Power, Vitalist ideology is highly Chaotic. They were also Chaotic in their interpersonal dealings.

I'm glad that alignment is such a useful tool that's not completely subjective nonsense that we can all agree that Nazis were obviously Lawful Evil, erm... I mean Chaotic.

And yes, I've seen documentaries that imply that Nazis were a complete clusterfuck trying to please and anticipate Hitler's every whim, which could totally (arguably) make them Chaotic. But they were also trying to spread their rule across Europe and enforce a completely totalitarian regime, which could also quite reasonably be argued to be Lawful (Evil), which is the polar opposite of Chaotic. So it can't possibly be both.

Except it can, because alignment, as defined in D&D, is utter contradictory nonsense with no workable implementation in real life, practical terms. And people, and even governments and regimes, in real life are more complicated than either "Lawful" or "Chaotic".

So which of the two would Nazis be? Neither, because alignment is useless. And just like neither and both could apply in real life, so could neither and both apply in the game. Because there are no objective guidelines so there's no way to accurately say "this is Lawful; this is Chaotic" during game play.

I tend to identify a need to impose your own will on the world with Chaotic. Lawful would want to create ordered systems. Chaos is only liberty for the strongest individual, whereas Law can create 'ordered Liberty' for all.

Like I said, L-N-C in its older conceptions makes sense to me. Enlightenment Liberals and Traditionalist Catholics are Lawful. Nazis and Communists are Chaotic. SJWS and the Alt-Right are Chaotic. :D  Traditionalists tend to Lawful, but some extreme Reactionaries may lean more Chaotic. Aggressive Militarists lean Chaotic. Neo-con 'Global Transformationists' lean Chaotic. Laissez-faire liberals and conservatives lean Lawful.

The English Civil War and the American War of Independence had a pretty even alignment spread on both sides. Maybe in the latter the US Rebels & Whigs were slightly more Lawful than their Loyalist & Tory opposition.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1132947I'm glad that alignment is such a useful tool that's not completely subjective nonsense that we can all agree that Nazis were obviously Lawful Evil, erm... I mean Chaotic.

And yes, I've seen documentaries that imply that Nazis were a complete clusterfuck trying to please and anticipate Hitler's every whim, which could totally (arguably) make them Chaotic. But they were also trying to spread their rule across Europe and enforce a completely totalitarian regime, which could also quite reasonably be argued to be Lawful (Evil), which is the polar opposite of Chaotic. So it can't possibly be both.

Except it can, because alignment, as defined in D&D, is utter contradictory nonsense with no workable implementation in real life, practical terms. And people, and even governments and regimes, in real life are more complicated than either "Lawful" or "Chaotic".

So which of the two would Nazis be? Neither, because alignment is useless. And just like neither and both could apply in real life, so could neither and both apply in the game. Because there are no objective guidelines so there's no way to accurately say "this is Lawful; this is Chaotic" during game play.

Um... Is Neutral Evil not an option?

Quote from: VisionStorm;1132911I also liked the idea of [Planescape] having various factions based around various philosophies dealing with different takes on the nature of reality. Not only did I like the idea of factions in general, and having clearly defined groups that were prevalent in the setting, characters could belong to and added an additional layer of intrigue to the setting. But I also loved how none of these factions seemed to imply or be built around any specific alignment. Even when some of them might impose certain alignment restrictions, the underlying idea behind the faction wasn't about alignment, but some attitude or belief about the nature of reality or its purpose that transcended alignment itself.

Granted, some of them may have been silly or not very deep, but the core idea itself was pretty good. And it helped reinforce that the theme of the setting wasn't about alignment, but rather belief. And the biggest draw of the planes wasn't alignment (which was completely secondary even when related to the nature of a plane), but the wacky nature of the planes and the weird stuff that could go on in them.

Yep, you just expressed the matter better than I did. Planescape could have been "The game where factions and planes are alignments" but instead it is became "The game where factions are discrete philosophic views, and planes are discrete concepts", which is so much more interesting.

The setting even hints at the possibility of dropping alignment altogether and retain only the individual concepts. The very model of the Great Wheel, according to the books, is just that, a theoretical model used by the scholars of Sigil. The planes could be rearranged however one sees fit, and in fact another model is cited (the chinese) that does that, arranging everything as a single mega-plane where individual planes are spread on without visible order. Of course the default game system (AD&D) precludes that, as it's firmly (unfortunately IMO) tied to Alignments. But nothing that a tweak by the players couldn't fix.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1132943Agreed. I think the 'Nazis as Lawful' comes largely from a superficial reading of both Law (human law and organization rather than order, reason, and civilization) and the Nazis (militarism and sharp uniforms seem 'Lawful').

   Of the various D&D alignment systems, I'm fine with single-axis Law/Chaos, single-axis Good/Evil, and even 4E's variant. The 9-point system is the weakest, partially because I find 'Chaotic Good' a somewhat silly concept and partially because no one can seem to agree which axis gets more weight. There are hints in early material that Law and Chaos was supposed to be the focal point, with Good and Evil introduced for things like 'on the side of civilization, but ruthless and self-seeking' (LE) or 'more whimsical and unpredictable than malevolent' (CG--I think you can see this in Basic's characterization of genies as Chaotic).

  EDIT: All that said, my favorite 'alignment' system is probably Castle Falkenstein's. :)

So what I said from the start? You're either Good or Evil.

By the way Law is a poor substitute for Order, which is what represents the polar opposite of Chaos.

Mind you, this is only speaking about Medieval or Pseudo-Medieval settings, In other settings it might make sense to shift to a more nuanced POV or to remove any sort of "Alignment" all together.

As for reason, while I appreciate the importance of, I think Empiricism is a much better tool to create and foment Law, Order and Civilization.

The problem with Neutral in any axis you can dream of is (as far as I know) that in game terms it means you give exactly the same importance to either extreme, why? because to give exactly zero is Nirvana, and IMHO as implemented in the games (again as far as I know) it's a poor man's imitation of it.

The second problem is they started (for whatever reason) with Law (A poor substitute for Order IMHO) vs Chaos, and like I said from the start those aren't moral choices per se; so IMHO they should have started with Good vs Evil. And, unless you're an objectivist or a libertarian Selfish is a vice and not a virtue, especially when talking theology, I know exactly one religion that posits selfishness as a virtue and I very much doubt any of my detractors in this thread would say they're in agreement with the Satanic Temple (Which took many of it's pointers from objectivism and libertarianism to construct it's commandments).

Quote from: S'mon;1132948I tend to identify a need to impose your own will on the world with Chaotic. Lawful would want to create ordered systems. Chaos is only liberty for the strongest individual, whereas Law can create 'ordered Liberty' for all.

Like I said, L-N-C in its older conceptions makes sense to me. Enlightenment Liberals and Traditionalist Catholics are Lawful. Nazis and Communists are Chaotic. SJWS and the Alt-Right are Chaotic. :D  Traditionalists tend to Lawful, but some extreme Reactionaries may lean more Chaotic. Aggressive Militarists lean Chaotic. Neo-con 'Global Transformationists' lean Chaotic. Laissez-faire liberals and conservatives lean Lawful.

The English Civil War and the American War of Independence had a pretty even alignment spread on both sides. Maybe in the latter the US Rebels & Whigs were slightly more Lawful than their Loyalist & Tory opposition.

Agree that SJWism is Chaotic, but I think the Good/Evil axis helps distinguish the good-hearted "useful idiots" like Alexis Ohanian Sr. (CG) from the truly hateful ones (CE).

Quote from: S'mon;1132948I tend to identify a need to impose your own will on the world with Chaotic. Lawful would want to create ordered systems. Chaos is only liberty for the strongest individual, whereas Law can create 'ordered Liberty' for all.

Like I said, L-N-C in its older conceptions makes sense to me. Enlightenment Liberals and Traditionalist Catholics are Lawful. Nazis and Communists are Chaotic. SJWS and the Alt-Right are Chaotic. :D  Traditionalists tend to Lawful, but some extreme Reactionaries may lean more Chaotic. Aggressive Militarists lean Chaotic. Neo-con 'Global Transformationists' lean Chaotic. Laissez-faire liberals and conservatives lean Lawful.

The English Civil War and the American War of Independence had a pretty even alignment spread on both sides. Maybe in the latter the US Rebels & Whigs were slightly more Lawful than their Loyalist & Tory opposition.

Yeah, but this still relies on your subjective opinion and interpretation of alignment, and offers no workable solution that could consistently be applied without consulting you about what you think X or Y group's alignment should be. A lot this is still very contradictory, with Lawful being both ordered yet still (potentially) promoting 'liberty', Chaotic being rebellious, yet (possibly) totalitarian, and Traditionalists being lawful and chaotic at the same time. I wonder were "peace and love" hippies would fall in this paradigm.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1132949Um... Is Neutral Evil not an option?

The Nazis were so neutral in their approach that the greatest powers of the day, even disparate powers like the US and the Soviets, were compelled to come together to stop their neutrality from forcefully spreading across the world. And any time you ask anyone who plays D&D what alignment the Nazis were they will almost invariably tell you "Lawful Evil", unless they're actually familiar with history and the inner workings of how Nazi officers operated, on which case they might (possibly) tell you they were Chaotic. It's only when someone like me, who is dead set against alignment, points out these obvious contradictions that some defender of alignment might step in and claim "neutrality" rather than accept that maybe the reason that it's so difficult to pinpoint the exact alignment of the Nazis is because alignment doesn't work. But no one would ever suggest that Nazis were "neutral" in any other scenario because there's nothing about the forceful and totalitarian ways that Nazis operated or about their ideology that was actually neutral. They were the living embodiment of the expression "you can't be neutral on a moving train".

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1132955The problem with Neutral in any axis you can dream of is (as far as I know) that in game terms it means you give exactly the same importance to either extreme, why? because to give exactly zero is Nirvana, and IMHO as implemented in the games (again as far as I know) it's a poor man's imitation of it.

The second problem is they started (for whatever reason) with Law (A poor substitute for Order IMHO) vs Chaos, and like I said from the start those aren't moral choices per se; so IMHO they should have started with Good vs Evil. And, unless you're an objectivist or a libertarian Selfish is a vice and not a virtue, especially when talking theology, I know exactly one religion that posits selfishness as a virtue and I very much doubt any of my detractors in this thread would say they're in agreement with the Satanic Temple (Which took many of it's pointers from objectivism and libertarianism to construct it's commandments).

Alignment does not have to be linked to some trite interpretation of the words "law" and "chaos". It works better when they're treated as factions, to whom descriptive labels have been applied. Instead of law representing some cartoonish literalist platonic view of order, you have two opposing sides. They each have a complex and not completely coherent set of beliefs, one of which is better described using the term "law" and the other of which is described using the term "chaos".

That frees you from the philosophically nonsensical attempt to define what "law" and "chaos" mean, in some abstract and universal sense. Which never works, because there are many mutually incompatible ways to associate certain behaviors or ideas with law and chaos, so your interpretation will be based on your own cultural context and preferences. It also frees you from the need to impose that level of abstraction on the behavior of individuals, which is always absurd because people are driven by human motivations, not vague abstract concepts. Instead, it allows you to define a rational and plausible world view and philosophy that can be summarized using one of the two words, and a second one, in opposition, that at least loosely fits the other word.

Alignment become an alignment, an affiliation with one side. Not some weird philosophical exercise that contorts behavior in inhuman and irrational ways.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1132954So what I said from the start? You're either Good or Evil.

By the way Law is a poor substitute for Order, which is what represents the polar opposite of Chaos.

   No argument there, although I think there's room for Neutrality for ordinary folks who 'don't get involved' most of the time but are generally benign. Gandalf, Tom Bombadil, and Sauron are the examples I like to use for a three-point system. "Law/Order" and "Chaos" can be good if one wants to emphasize the cosmological or give it a bit of a twist, but then, I'm the sort who thinks that at the higher levels of reality, the options boil down to "In His will is our peace" and "Non serviam!"

  As I said, I think 4E's system was pretty good for allowing distinction between the 'Honorable and code-bound good' (Superman, Captain America, Obi-Wan Kenobi) and the 'not quite so rules-oriented, but still generally good' (Batman, Spider-Man, Qui-Gon Jinn) on one side, and the 'criminal or tyrant vs. nihilist' (Luthor or Sauron vs. the Joker or Morgoth) on the other. The only thing I thought it was missing was the 'honorable but ruthless' point, which could be contained easily enough as a flavor of Evil.

Quote from: Pat;1132962Alignment does not have to be linked to some trite interpretation of the words "law" and "chaos". It works better when they're treated as factions, to whom descriptive labels have been applied. Instead of law representing some cartoonish literalist platonic view of order, you have two opposing sides. They each have a complex and not completely coherent set of beliefs, one of which is better described using the term "law" and the other of which is described using the term "chaos".

That frees you from the philosophically nonsensical attempt to define what "law" and "chaos" mean, in some abstract and universal sense. Which never works, because there are many mutually incompatible ways to associate certain behaviors or ideas with law and chaos, so your interpretation will be based on your own cultural context and preferences. It also frees you from the need to impose that level of abstraction on the behavior of individuals, which is always absurd because people are driven by human motivations, not vague abstract concepts. Instead, it allows you to define a rational and plausible world view and philosophy that can be summarized using one of the two words, and a second one, in opposition, that at least loosely fits the other word.

Alignment become an alignment, an affiliation with one side. Not some weird philosophical exercise that contorts behavior in inhuman and irrational ways.

I can pretty much agree with all of this. Though, at that point I would question the use of the "Law/Order" and "Chaotic" labels, as opposed to proper names for each faction. But I can see how someone might be able to use "Law" and "Chaos" as inspiration to build these factions around, especially from a simple "It's a game!" point of view. But treating "alignment" as affiliations to explicit in-game factions is far more workable in game terms than trying to wrestle with philosophical concepts at the game table and hatch out arguments about which alignment means what.

There's nothing inherently subjective about "I belong to Team A" or "screw Team A, they treated me wrong. I belong with Team B now". Since Team A and Team B (Law vs Chaos) are concrete factions that inarguably exist in the world. It's merely a matter of which team you choose to align yourself with.

Quote from: Pat;1132962Alignment does not have to be linked to some trite interpretation of the words "law" and "chaos". It works better when they're treated as factions, to whom descriptive labels have been applied. Instead of law representing some cartoonish literalist platonic view of order, you have two opposing sides. They each have a complex and not completely coherent set of beliefs, one of which is better described using the term "law" and the other of which is described using the term "chaos".

That frees you from the philosophically nonsensical attempt to define what "law" and "chaos" mean, in some abstract and universal sense. Which never works, because there are many mutually incompatible ways to associate certain behaviors or ideas with law and chaos, so your interpretation will be based on your own cultural context and preferences. It also frees you from the need to impose that level of abstraction on the behavior of individuals, which is always absurd because people are driven by human motivations, not vague abstract concepts. Instead, it allows you to define a rational and plausible world view and philosophy that can be summarized using one of the two words, and a second one, in opposition, that at least loosely fits the other word.

Alignment become an alignment, an affiliation with one side. Not some weird philosophical exercise that contorts behavior in inhuman and irrational ways.

Except we're talking about the simulation of a Medieval or Pseudo-Medieval world, in which your very nuanced and enlightened point of view would surely find you at the stake.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1132967I can pretty much agree with all of this. Though, at that point I would question the use of the "Law/Order" and "Chaotic" labels, as opposed to proper names for each faction.

They can still make sense, within a cultural context. Say you have a mythology with gods and titans. The gods are associated with humanity and civilization, the protection of cities, the defeat of monsters, and gifts of knowledge. Each city has a patron, and there are legends of different gods teaching humans different skills, like smithing or agriculture. The titans are associated with the untrammeled wilderness, the monsters from without, barbarians at the gate, and the throwing down of city-states and empires by both force from without and corruption from within. You could easily say the gods are on the side of Law, and the titans are on the side of Chaos. And since we're talking about two divine factions, this alignment has a metaphysical basis. You could detect alignment, smite the opposition, and so on.

But that's not because Law and Chaos mean something, in a cosmic, absolute sense. It's because the dichotomy between two factions of divine beings has a metaphysical weight. But the manifestation and interpretation is defined by their culture, and a different culture might have gods and demons and a mythology that define law and chaos differently. Marduk vs. Tiamat, or the Aesir and Vanir vs. the Jotuns, could be different dynamics. Though if you really want all those in the same setting, it's true you probably want to come up with unique names for all the sides, instead of confusing things by calling a bunch of different and unrelated factions "Chaos".

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1132968Except we're talking about the simulation of a Medieval or Pseudo-Medieval world, in which your very nuanced and enlightened point of view would surely find you at the stake.

D&D is a 99.99% modern world, with a thin veneer of medieval trappings.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1132963No argument there, although I think there's room for Neutrality for ordinary folks who 'don't get involved' most of the time but are generally benign. Gandalf, Tom Bombadil, and Sauron are the examples I like to use for a three-point system. "Law/Order" and "Chaos" can be good if one wants to emphasize the cosmological or give it a bit of a twist, but then, I'm the sort who thinks that at the higher levels of reality, the options boil down to "In His will is our peace" and "Non serviam!"

  As I said, I think 4E's system was pretty good for allowing distinction between the 'Honorable and code-bound good' (Superman, Captain America, Obi-Wan Kenobi) and the 'not quite so rules-oriented, but still generally good' (Batman, Spider-Man, Qui-Gon Jinn) on one side, and the 'criminal or tyrant vs. nihilist' (Luthor or Sauron vs. the Joker or Morgoth) on the other. The only thing I thought it was missing was the 'honorable but ruthless' point, which could be contained easily enough as a flavor of Evil.

So Neutral isn't an alignment? But a refusal to engage in the war?

So, If I understood you correctly, All the innocent victims are neutral because they aren't fighting evil? What about the monsters that stay home to cook? Are those neutral too? Even if they eat human babies?

Quote from: Pat;1132970D&D is a 99.99% modern world, with a thin veneer of medieval trappings.

Yep, which is why you have 99.99% of the trappings of the modern world. LOL You're trolling me at this point.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1132960Yeah, but this still relies on your subjective opinion and interpretation of alignment, and offers no workable solution that could consistently be applied without consulting you about what you think X or Y group's alignment should be. A lot this is still very contradictory, with Lawful being both ordered yet still (potentially) promoting 'liberty', Chaotic being rebellious, yet (possibly) totalitarian, and Traditionalists being lawful and chaotic at the same time. I wonder were "peace and love" hippies would fall in this paradigm.



The Nazis were so neutral in their approach that the greatest powers of the day, even disparate powers like the US and the Soviets, were compelled to come together to stop their neutrality from forcefully spreading across the world. And any time you ask anyone who plays D&D what alignment the Nazis were they will almost invariably tell you "Lawful Evil", unless they're actually familiar with history and the inner workings of how Nazi officers operated, on which case they might (possibly) tell you they were Chaotic. It's only when someone like me, who is dead set against alignment, points out these obvious contradictions that some defender of alignment might step in and claim "neutrality" rather than accept that maybe the reason that it's so difficult to pinpoint the exact alignment of the Nazis is because alignment doesn't work. But no one would ever suggest that Nazis were "neutral" in any other scenario because there's nothing about the forceful and totalitarian ways that Nazis operated or about their ideology that was actually neutral. They were the living embodiment of the expression "you can't be neutral on a moving train".

Neutral Evil is still evil. You seem to forget that there are two aspects to the 9 alignments. Most that opposed the Nazis did it because of the evil there, not because of their leanings toward law or chaos (onthat axis, I find them generally neutral while still being unquestionably evil).

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1132972Yep, which is why you have 99.99% of the trappings of the modern world. LOL You're trolling me at this point.

No, that was quite serious. D&D philosophy, alignment, characters, the relations between different social classes, even things like the size of streets, the number of inns, and the general state of hygiene in the cities have more in common with modern examples than they do with medieval reality or mindsets. A lot more. The reason for that, of course, is the writers are all modern people. The medieval aspects are a layer of paint slapped on deeply-ingrained modern assumptions.

I think that's why you have a problem with alignment. If you want something like alignment to make sense, you either have to adopt a culturally relativistic view; or you have to get into the mind of someone from that time, and then change the parts of D&D's implied setting that don't make sense in that context. It's the mish-mash of both that cause the conflicts.

Quote from: Pat;1132970D&D is a 99.99% modern world, with a thin veneer of medieval trappings.

This.

Quote from: Pat;1132969They can still make sense, within a cultural context. Say you have a mythology with gods and titans. The gods are associated with humanity and civilization, the protection of cities, the defeat of monsters, and gifts of knowledge. Each city has a patron, and there are legends of different gods teaching humans different skills, like smithing or agriculture. The titans are associated with the untrammeled wilderness, the monsters from without, barbarians at the gate, and the throwing down of city-states and empires by both force from without and corruption from within. You could easily say the gods are on the side of Law, and the titans are on the side of Chaos. And since we're talking about two divine factions, this alignment has a metaphysical basis. You could detect alignment, smite the opposition, and so on.

But that's not because Law and Chaos mean something, in a cosmic, absolute sense. It's because the dichotomy between two factions of divine beings has a metaphysical weight. But the manifestation and interpretation is defined by their culture, and a different culture might have gods and demons and a mythology that define law and chaos differently. Marduk vs. Tiamat, or the Aesir and Vanir vs. the Jotuns, could be different dynamics. Though if you really want all those in the same setting, it's true you probably want to come up with unique names for all the sides, instead of confusing things by calling a bunch of different and unrelated factions "Chaos".

Yeah, that's kinda what I meant. I can see how the themes of Order vs Chaos would play out in that scenario, cuz one group of supreme beings represents the constructive forces and structures of civilization, while the other represents the chaotic primordial mass that the universe was built from and the wild side of nature. But even then, team order could be called the Olympians and team chaos could be called the Titans to keep with the Greek themes. Team Olympians would be the gods of order and civilization (though, some individual gods, like Ares and Aphrodite, could be arguably "chaotic" in the sense of being unruly), while team Titans would be the gods of chaos and untamed nature.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1132973Neutral Evil is still evil. You seem to forget that there are two aspects to the 9 alignments. Most that opposed the Nazis did it because of the evil there, not because of their leanings toward law or chaos (onthat axis, I find them generally neutral while still being unquestionably evil).

No, most that opposed the Nazis did so because the Nazis gave them no choice. The US tried to stay out of it, but the Nazis were so out of control it became a question of "we either end them now or they're gonna rule us later". It wasn't just that they were "evil", it was that you were either with them or against them (another expression they were the living embodiment of), which is the opposite of neutrality. There's nothing "neutral" about totalitarianism, and there has arguably never been a group human history (with the possible exception of the Soviets) more associated with the word "totalitarian" than the Nazis. Not even the Catholic church was more totalitarian than they were.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1132976Yeah, that's kinda what I meant. I can see how the themes of Order vs Chaos would play out in that scenario, cuz one group of supreme beings represents the constructive forces and structures of civilization, while the other represents the chaotic primordial mass that the universe was built from and the wild side of nature. But even then, team order could be called the Olympians and team chaos could be called the Titans to keep with the Greek themes. Team Olympians would be the gods of order and civilization (though, some individual gods, like Ares and Aphrodite, could be arguably "chaotic" in the sense of being unruly), while team Titans would be the gods of chaos and untamed nature.

Yep, but you'll note I didn't mention any gods by names, or specifically say Greek or Olympian, and my titan was lower-case. That's because we're talking about the Law/Chaos alignment axis in D&D, which by default doesn't have gods, legends, or anything specific. It just says Law tends in one direction, and Chaos in another, and applies those labels. The rest is all implied, or left to the players and DM to define or not define, to whatever degree and in whatever direction they choose. Interpreting that in a pseudo-Olympian context is one option, and being concrete can help people wrap their heads around it, but that degree of specificity is not necessary for the concept. All D&D really says is there's Law and Chaos, and you should pick a side or stay neutral.

Note, since alignment is defined as factions, this also allows for contradictions, like Prometheus (a titan) giving fire to humans, but being punished by the gods. Because it's not about Prometheus' morality or justifications, it's about sides, which includes things like race/ethnicity (him being a titan), jealousy, usurping perceived prerogatives, and different interpretations and different ways of weighing, assessing, and even conceiving of things like betrayal and forgiveness; and all that can matter far more than end goals and abstract ideals.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1132979No, most that opposed the Nazis did so because the Nazis gave them no choice. The US tried to stay out of it, but the Nazis were so out of control it became a question of "we either end them now or they're gonna rule us later". It wasn't just that they were "evil", it was that you were either with them or against them (another expression they were the living embodiment of), which is the opposite of neutrality. There's nothing "neutral" about totalitarianism, and there has arguably never been a group human history (with the possible exception of the Soviets) more associated with the word "totalitarian" than the Nazis. Not even the Catholic church was more totalitarian than they were.

You don't appear to understand that the "neutral" in neutral evil is only in regards to taking a lawful vs. chaotic approach to doing evil. It has nothing to do with being neutral or passive towards others. I now believe that much of your crusade against alignment stems from a lack of comprehension.

I can agree with some of what VisionStorm is saying here, I became disenchanted with d&d alignment a long time ago, not because it's an abstraction, but because it's a useless one when you try to apply it to any real-world historical situation, or even to a half-way satisfying fantasy situation.

My take on the Nazi "alignment" is, before they came to power and they were street thugs and rioters, mostly chaotic evil. They thrived on disorder, required it, demanded it.

After they came to power, they effectively controlled and "became" the law. They were the new order, so their interest was in order. Sort of. So almost lawful evil by definition. And in the night of the long knives they purged many of the most chaotic elements in the party (the perpetual revolution brigade) along with the last lingering elements of "socialism." So lawful evil for sure, right?

 But no. From Kristallnacht to the battle of Berlin, Goebbels remained a powerful voice for sheet nihilistic mindless destruction. The essence of chaotic evil. Even Hitler created the most chaotic management structure ever at the highest levels of government, and he did it deliberately. He continued to need chaos.

And what about the gauleiters in the party? Mostly just corrupt gangsters, out to feather their own nests. The essence of Neutral evil.

Maybe Geeky Bugle is right, evil is the only common thread here. The law-chaos spectrum is totally unsatisfying.

Maybe I should add that I can somewhat agree with Pat about the utility of alignment as rival cosmic factions. If you go with that it does force you into a particular "cosmic factions" setting that I grew disenchanted with, but that's okay, it's not nonsensical in fantasy and great if that's what you want.

Alignment as personality and behaviour has never appealed to me though, even from the beginning.

Quote from: Pat;1132974No, that was quite serious. D&D philosophy, alignment, characters, the relations between different social classes, even things like the size of streets, the number of inns, and the general state of hygiene in the cities have more in common with modern examples than they do with medieval reality or mindsets. A lot more. The reason for that, of course, is the writers are all modern people. The medieval aspects are a layer of paint slapped on deeply-ingrained modern assumptions.

I think that's why you have a problem with alignment. If you want something like alignment to make sense, you either have to adopt a culturally relativistic view; or you have to get into the mind of someone from that time, and then change the parts of D&D's implied setting that don't make sense in that context. It's the mish-mash of both that cause the conflicts.

So the alignment is broken, glad we can agree.

Alignment is a lot like hit points and Armor making you harder to hit in one respect:  It only works when zoomed out to the about the right level of abstraction.  It's a very rough short-hand for "Team A versus Team B" as others have said.  Zoom in more than that, it develops fault lines that a given group may or may not be able to ignore.

I do think that even when keeping alignment appropriately high level, it does need to be customized to the setting.  If there aren't heavy movers and shakers in the campaign world with which a player can "align", then it is kind of pointless.

Alignment: Among the oldest narrative, keyword-based (non-)mechanics around.

Quote from: Zirunel;1132983I can agree with some of what VisionStorm is saying here, I became disenchanted with d&d alignment a long time ago, not because it's an abstraction, but because it's a useless one when you try to apply it to any real-world historical situation, or even to a half-way satisfying fantasy situation.

My take on the Nazi "alignment" is, before they came to power and they were street thugs and rioters, mostly chaotic evil. They thrived on disorder, required it, demanded it.

After they came to power, they effectively controlled and "became" the law. They were the new order, so their interest was in order. Sort of. So almost lawful evil by definition. And in the night of the long knives they purged many of the most chaotic elements in the party (the perpetual revolution brigade) along with the last lingering elements of "socialism." So lawful evil for sure, right?

 But no. From Kristallnacht to the battle of Berlin, Goebbels remained a powerful voice for sheet nihilistic mindless destruction. The essence of chaotic evil. Even Hitler created the most chaotic management structure ever at the highest levels of government, and he did it deliberately. He continued to need chaos.

And what about the gauleiters in the party? Mostly just corrupt gangsters, out to feather their own nests. The essence of Neutral evil.

Maybe Geeky Bugle is right, evil is the only common thread here. The law-chaos spectrum is totally unsatisfying.

Maybe I should add that I can somewhat agree with Pat about the utility of alignment as rival cosmic factions. If you go with that it does force you into a particular "cosmic factions" setting that I grew disenchanted with, but that's okay, it's not nonsensical in fantasy and great if that's what you want.

Alignment as personality and behaviour has never appealed to me though, even from the beginning.

Lets talk "Cosmic Factions", which one is neutral? How many are there? Is the neutral one really neutral? I mean it never takes a side on the conflicts of the other factions.

Cosmic Factions IS Good vs Evil, for the religious ones it's God vs the Devil. And since the game tries to use the alignment as a sort of moral code, Order vs Chaos don't work because those aren't intrinsically moral choices as my own detractors have demonstrated. A moral choice IS Good vs Evil whatever the factions on each side are. Order can be good or evil, same for Chaos.

So, unless we're proposing "Cosmic Factions" that are both Good and Evil each and every one of them... Their choices and who do you pledge allegiance to (alignment) are again reduced to the dichotomy of Good vs Evil.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1132982You don't appear to understand that the "neutral" in neutral evil is only in regards to taking a lawful vs. chaotic approach to doing evil. It has nothing to do with being neutral or passive towards others. I now believe that much of your crusade against alignment stems from a lack of comprehension.

So you do exactly 50% of Chaos and 50% of Order in your life... I'll say it again, Neutral is a very pale shadow of Nirvana, embracing the duality, the opposites and stop fighting any of them and recognize them as two sides of the same coin.

In game you'd need to become a tally machine, to keep track of how many times you acted Chaotic and Orderly to maintain the perfect balance. Does that model any sort of real person?

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1132985Alignment is a lot like hit points and Armor making you harder to hit in one respect:  It only works when zoomed out to the about the right level of abstraction.  It's a very rough short-hand for "Team A versus Team B" as others have said.  Zoom in more than that, it develops fault lines that a given group may or may not be able to ignore.

I do think that even when keeping alignment appropriately high level, it does need to be customized to the setting.  If there aren't heavy movers and shakers in the campaign world with which a player can "align", then it is kind of pointless.

Correct in one respect, it is "Team A vs Team B". Now, innocent civilians (those not engaged in the conflict) are civilians, but, are they really neutral? If Team B comes to town do they give them shelter and food? If Team B is known to be in the forests nearby do they go invite them to town or do they call someone from Team A?

In order for it to work as it should (Team A vs Team B) you can't have really neutral parties, unless you posit (like my old DM) a truly powerful Dragon that took a territory and by virtue of it's power the conflict stays outside of his lands, and you could even ask to be let in if you renounced to the fight. Of course if you then reverted you wouldn't last long and your punishment would be exemplar. In his Kingdom you could find almost all the races (the more intelligent ones) living in tolerance of each other.

But his neutrality only worked because his power was such no one short of a God would dare challenge him, and as long as he really stayed outside of the conflict helping no one the sides were happy to let him be.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1132988So you do exactly 50% of Chaos and 50% of Order in your life... I'll say it again, Neutral is a very pale shadow of Nirvana, embracing the duality, the opposites and stop fighting any of them and recognize them as two sides of the same coin.

In game you'd need to become a tally machine, to keep track of how many times you acted Chaotic and Orderly to maintain the perfect balance. Does that model any sort of real person?

That's wrong. Neutral doesn't have to be perfectly balanced, nor does it have to be an active "pro-neutral" stance. Neutral can simply be a lack of strong bias toward either direction.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1132990That's wrong. Neutral doesn't have to be perfectly balanced, nor does it have to be an active "pro-neutral" stance. Neutral can simply be a lack of strong bias toward either direction.

So a "Neutral" that isn't really Neutral... Lack of strong bias doesn't mean zero bias, it just means you have less bias towards one or the other, making you (in religious terms) a mostly good or mostly bad sinner.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1132988So you do exactly 50% of Chaos and 50% of Order in your life... I'll say it again, Neutral is a very pale shadow of Nirvana, embracing the duality, the opposites and stop fighting any of them and recognize them as two sides of the same coin.

In game you'd need to become a tally machine, to keep track of how many times you acted Chaotic and Orderly to maintain the perfect balance. Does that model any sort of real person?

If you imagine that is what "Neutral" on your character sheet means then I can see why you are not very impressed with Alignment.

Luckily for the rest of us, that is not what Neutral means.

On the most basic level "True Neutral" can represent the natural world, animals, weather and other mindless organic forces like Volcano's and Earthquakes.  On the Civilisational level it could mean that you just dont care about any of the factions or it could mean that you dont have any firm beliefs to guide your life.

Gygax wrote a series of books that detailed the cosmic clash of Devil vs Demons and the Neutral Evil Daemons interfered to stop either side from gaining too much power.  Infact the main character Gord was supposed to be the Neutral Champion but because Greyhawk is such a shit show of evil he only had to fight agianst evil to act as a blancing force.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1132992So a "Neutral" that isn't really Neutral... Lack of strong bias doesn't mean zero bias, it just means you have less bias towards one or the other, making you (in religious terms) a mostly good or mostly bad sinner.

I don't care about your religious add-ons; they're a you thing not a D&D thing. In D&D, neutral has long been a middle ground for those uncommitted to either side, and most humans (as but one example) tend toward neutral. Old school druids took the odd approach to a strict middle ground approach, but that wasn't the default.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1132908"...players for whatever reason feel the..." The What?

LOL!!! A whole chunk of my post vanished! D'oh! Sorry I didn't catch that.

Here's what I actually meant.

Geeky, another reason I use Law vs. Chaos instead of Good vs. Evil is that players for whatever reason feel the Good vs. Evil dynamic DEMANDS inter-party combat. It's Team Good vs. Team Evil and the only interaction with the opposite team involves rolling for initiative. And I totally get that!

I've done the "Good guys must work with the Bad guys because Bigger Evil" one-shot scenario, but that makes little sense for week after week in a campaign.  

Law vs. Chaos doesn't seem to trigger than same PvP reaction in players.

As I'm a big fan of alignment (its an easy shorthand), I encourage players to roleplay their choice at the table, and in general, a mixed table of L/N/C alignments creates interesting interactions and tensions without auto PvP. But of course, that's not what I want in every campaign. I'm happy for my Good vs. Evil campaigns to be a unified table of stalwart heroes.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1132997LOL!!! A whole chunk of my post vanished! D'oh! Sorry I didn't catch that.

Here's what I actually meant.

Geeky, another reason I use Law vs. Chaos instead of Good vs. Evil is that players for whatever reason feel the Good vs. Evil dynamic DEMANDS inter-party combat. It's Team Good vs. Team Evil and the only interaction with the opposite team involves rolling for initiative. And I totally get that!

I've done the "Good guys must work with the Bad guys because Bigger Evil" one-shot scenario, but that makes little sense for week after week in a campaign.  

Law vs. Chaos doesn't seem to trigger than same PvP reaction in players.

As I'm a big fan of alignment (its an easy shorthand), I encourage players to roleplay their choice at the table, and in general, a mixed table of L/N/C alignments creates interesting interactions and tensions without auto PvP. But of course, that's not what I want in every campaign. I'm happy for my Good vs. Evil campaigns to be a unified table of stalwart heroes.

This can also give the "enemy of my enemy shares my alignment" bit where, for example, the Age of Sigmar Stormcast Eternals are the paragons of Order. They fight Chaos...along with other Order-aligned forces like the murder-cult wytch aelves and the soul-stealing fish aelves.

Quote from: Shasarak;1132916I would guess that the reason is probably because he did not want Gamma World to be as successful as DnD.

I envy your knack for tossing grenades into discussions!

Do you believe Alignment has been pivotal to D&D's success? If so, please explain.

Personally, I don't know. Do you feel Alignment has helped the success of Warhammer and Palladium's games?

I enjoy alignment as the shorthand for a PC's core values, but I've enjoyed plenty of RPGs without alignment.

Quote from: Shasarak;1132917Just so that I can get this argument straight, Alignment is useless subjective fluff that does not affect game play in any way and at the same time is a straight jacket that gets in the way.

All depends on the GM.

As a GM, I expect Paladins to be Lawful Good paragons 24/7/365 because YOU - not me, not anybody else, just you - choose to play a Paladin. If I'm running a game with Paladins, they get social advantages beyond other PCs because hot damn, everybody knows you can trust that Paladin. The rest of the adventurers may talk about being good guys, but the Paladin literally glows with divine grace. In exchange for those social bonuses, you must adhere to LG - ESPECIALLY when it sucks to adhere to LG.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1132988In game you'd need to become a tally machine, to keep track of how many times you acted Chaotic and Orderly to maintain the perfect balance. Does that model any sort of real person?

There was an edition of Elric/Stormbringer that had you track your status of Law vs. Chaos. I don't think it added anything to the game. In a Moorcock RPG setting, most people are Unaligned and only those who pledge themselves to certain gods then take on the alignment of their chosen gods.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1132997LOL!!! A whole chunk of my post vanished! D'oh! Sorry I didn't catch that.

Here's what I actually meant.

Geeky, another reason I use Law vs. Chaos instead of Good vs. Evil is that players for whatever reason feel the Good vs. Evil dynamic DEMANDS inter-party combat. It's Team Good vs. Team Evil and the only interaction with the opposite team involves rolling for initiative. And I totally get that!

I've done the "Good guys must work with the Bad guys because Bigger Evil" one-shot scenario, but that makes little sense for week after week in a campaign.  

Law vs. Chaos doesn't seem to trigger than same PvP reaction in players.

As I'm a big fan of alignment (its an easy shorthand), I encourage players to roleplay their choice at the table, and in general, a mixed table of L/N/C alignments creates interesting interactions and tensions without auto PvP. But of course, that's not what I want in every campaign. I'm happy for my Good vs. Evil campaigns to be a unified table of stalwart heroes.

If I may insert an anecdote from my current campaign.  My group of (Good) players rescued a young Red Dragon that was going to be sacrificed and then decided to "adopt" him, even while knowing that he is an Evil creature.  On the other hand another NPC asked them to capture some people that he could use as Slaves and that was an instant initiative roll.

In other words, it can depend on how annoying the Evil people are.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1132982You don't appear to understand that the "neutral" in neutral evil is only in regards to taking a lawful vs. chaotic approach to doing evil. It has nothing to do with being neutral or passive towards others. I now believe that much of your crusade against alignment stems from a lack of comprehension.

Except that you have yet to make the case for "neutrality" in the "Law/Chaos" axis of alignment. All you have really said is "but neutrality!", "but you forget about neutral", "I believe Nazis are neutral evil", etc. Reason given to justify this: 0.

It is simply "but neutral in the Law/Chaos axis exists, therefore if we can't figure out if a group of overt, totalitarian rampaging lunatics is Lawful or Chaotic, then they must obviously be Neutral". When neutrality is supposed to imply moderation, and there was nothing moderate about the Nazis or any form of totalitarianism.

Neutral Evil is supposed be the covert, subtle "work behind the scenes, stab you in the back when no one's watching then go back to my business like nothing happened" kind of "evil". Not the overt, rampaging lunatic, "my way or the highway, and everyone we don't like is getting thrown in a gas chamber--and we're making a huge spectacle of it, going through everyone's house and forcing everyone to report back to us" kind of evil. That shit is not "neutral" evil.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1132989Correct in one respect, it is "Team A vs Team B". Now, innocent civilians (those not engaged in the conflict) are civilians, but, are they really neutral? If Team B comes to town do they give them shelter and food? If Team B is known to be in the forests nearby do they go invite them to town or do they call someone from Team A?

In order for it to work as it should (Team A vs Team B) you can't have really neutral parties, unless you posit (like my old DM) a truly powerful Dragon that took a territory and by virtue of it's power the conflict stays outside of his lands, and you could even ask to be let in if you renounced to the fight. Of course if you then reverted you wouldn't last long and your punishment would be exemplar. In his Kingdom you could find almost all the races (the more intelligent ones) living in tolerance of each other.

But his neutrality only worked because his power was such no one short of a God would dare challenge him, and as long as he really stayed outside of the conflict helping no one the sides were happy to let him be.

Neutral is (usually) not highly motivated to get involved for alignment reasons.  As in, I'm mostly neutral about alignment discussions when they verge into real world religion, ethics, etc. :) . I'll read them for amusement, and occasionally have 2 pennies to contribute.

That in no way says that motivation can't change in given circumstances.  Recall that the original Law versus Chaos thing (in Chainmail, I think) said that the "law" side couldn't hire "chaos" side troops and vice versa. However, a great deal of troops were neutral and thus available for either side.  Given a "neutral" town near the conflict, any or even multiple of these would be sticking to their alignment:

- Staying out of it as much as possible.
- Going with the side that offered them the best deal.
- Hiring out mercenaries to one or even both sides.
- Housing mercenaries for one or the other without otherwise committing.
- Throwing in freely with one side or another because it seemed to be in their best interests.

And so forth.  Of course, since the town is made of individuals and possibly multiple sub factions, they are going to have their own slant on things. But keep in mind that even if the town is mostly in agreement, they can still go with either side.

Basically, "alignment" isn't the only motivations that characters have.  Sometimes alignment trumps other motivations.  More often than not, it informs them.  Sometimes, the other motivations are strong enough to set the alignment temporarily aside--maybe even the start of the alignment changing.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1133003Except that you have yet to make the case for "neutrality" in the "Law/Chaos" axis of alignment. All you have really said is "but neutrality!", "but you forget about neutral", "I believe Nazis are neutral evil", etc. Reason given to justify this: 0.

It is simply "but neutral in the Law/Chaos axis exists, therefore if we can't figure out if a group of overt, totalitarian rampaging lunatics is Lawful or Chaotic, then they must obviously be Neutral". When neutrality is supposed to imply moderation, and there was nothing moderate about the Nazis or any form of totalitarianism.

Neutral Evil is supposed be the covert, subtle "work behind the scenes, stab you in the back when no one's watching then go back to my business like nothing happened" kind of "evil". Not the overt, rampaging lunatic, "my way or the highway, and everyone we don't like is getting thrown in a gas chamber--and we're making a huge spectacle of it, going through everyone's house and forcing everyone to report back to us" kind of evil. That shit is not "neutral" evil.

Neutral Evil is consistently Evil. It is not consistently Lawful or consistently Chaotic.

That's it. Neutral Evil has no requirement to be subtle (nor to be overt).

As I only use L/N/C, Neutral exists in a dual role. First, its for players who really want "Unaligned", aka no alignment, perhaps no strong moral convictions. Second, it exists in the setting for cults and gods whose focus isn't about civilization.

Quote from: Shasarak;1133002If I may insert an anecdote from my current campaign.

You may.

Quote from: Shasarak;1133002My group of (Good) players rescued a young Red Dragon that was going to be sacrificed and then decided to "adopt" him, even while knowing that he is an Evil creature.

Is Evil a choice or innate in your campaign? AKA, can that Red Dragon change its alignment?

In my game, those players just invited a time bomb into their midst. The scorpion will be true to itself.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1132987Lets talk "Cosmic Factions", which one is neutral?

There would be no "neutral" faction in this scenario (other than maybe mercenary bands or some such). It would just be the two cosmic factions, and "neutral" parties would simply not align themselves with either faction. They could be criminals, normal people who just want to be left alone, or mercenaries willing to fight for whichever side is willing to pay them the highest.

I don't really see factions as "alignment" in the D&D sense because it's not really about morality, but about taking sides between two groups, or working for whichever pays you better that week. One group could be "good/beneficial" for one culture or the people of one region, but "bad/detrimental" for another, or completely irrelevant for yet a third. It's all relative and a matter of relationships with either faction.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1132995I don't care about your religious add-ons; they're a you thing not a D&D thing. In D&D, neutral has long been a middle ground for those uncommitted to either side, and most humans (as but one example) tend toward neutral. Old school druids took the odd approach to a strict middle ground approach, but that wasn't the default.

But it is a religious issue in the game! The Gods of Order vs the Gods of Chaos!

Quote from: HappyDaze;1133008Neutral Evil is consistently Evil. It is not consistently Lawful or consistently Chaotic.

That's it. Neutral Evil has no requirement to be subtle (nor to be overt).

So it's basically "conveniently" evil. Not "convenient" in the sense that they do what's convenient for them, but in the sense that you can just conveniently slap that label to anything without bothering to define exactly WTF constitutes "neutral" evil in particular, as opposed to other kinds of evil that are too stupid to just conveniently identify as "neutral" evil and still do whatever they want without regard Law or Chaos, like neither of those things matter. Almost like something making the OP's point that the Law/Chaos axis is completely irrelevant and unnecessary.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1132997LOL!!! A whole chunk of my post vanished! D'oh! Sorry I didn't catch that.

Here's what I actually meant.

Geeky, another reason I use Law vs. Chaos instead of Good vs. Evil is that players for whatever reason feel the Good vs. Evil dynamic DEMANDS inter-party combat. It's Team Good vs. Team Evil and the only interaction with the opposite team involves rolling for initiative. And I totally get that!

I've done the "Good guys must work with the Bad guys because Bigger Evil" one-shot scenario, but that makes little sense for week after week in a campaign.  

Law vs. Chaos doesn't seem to trigger than same PvP reaction in players.

As I'm a big fan of alignment (its an easy shorthand), I encourage players to roleplay their choice at the table, and in general, a mixed table of L/N/C alignments creates interesting interactions and tensions without auto PvP. But of course, that's not what I want in every campaign. I'm happy for my Good vs. Evil campaigns to be a unified table of stalwart heroes.

Do you agree that Law/Chaos was a shorthand for Good/Evil? I seem to remember it even says so in the 0e.

By all means, do play as you wish and use whatever works for you and your players. I'm inviting discussion not telling anyone they're having badwrongfun.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1133005Neutral is (usually) not highly motivated to get involved for alignment reasons.  As in, I'm mostly neutral about alignment discussions when they verge into real world religion, ethics, etc. :) . I'll read them for amusement, and occasionally have 2 pennies to contribute.

That in no way says that motivation can't change in given circumstances.  Recall that the original Law versus Chaos thing (in Chainmail, I think) said that the "law" side couldn't hire "chaos" side troops and vice versa. However, a great deal of troops were neutral and thus available for either side.  Given a "neutral" town near the conflict, any or even multiple of these would be sticking to their alignment:

- Staying out of it as much as possible.
- Going with the side that offered them the best deal.
- Hiring out mercenaries to one or even both sides.
- Housing mercenaries for one or the other without otherwise committing.
- Throwing in freely with one side or another because it seemed to be in their best interests.

And so forth.  Of course, since the town is made of individuals and possibly multiple sub factions, they are going to have their own slant on things. But keep in mind that even if the town is mostly in agreement, they can still go with either side.

Basically, "alignment" isn't the only motivations that characters have.  Sometimes alignment trumps other motivations.  More often than not, it informs them.  Sometimes, the other motivations are strong enough to set the alignment temporarily aside--maybe even the start of the alignment changing.

But you're reverting now to Chainmail, which isn't part of the discussion, we're talking about D&D where Law/Order are shorthand for Good/Evil and are eminently and obviously religious since you have gods from both sides.

You even have classes that must follow the Lawful/Chaotic code to a T or loose their powers.

If the inherent conflict is among gods this makes the alignment issue a theological one (in world, I care little for IRL theology), and by extension, given a Medieval/Pseudo-Medieval setting, a moral one.

So a "Neutral" individual is one that put's his religious values, his morals side for profit/personal gain. Which doesn't really sound like something a good person would do from a POV of a Medieval/Pseudo-Medieval population.

Quote from: Shasarak;1132994Gygax wrote a series of books that detailed the cosmic clash of Devil vs Demons and the Neutral Evil Daemons interfered to stop either side from gaining too much power.  Infact the main character Gord was supposed to be the Neutral Champion but because Greyhawk is such a shit show of evil he only had to fight agianst evil to act as a blancing force.

There's a interesting idea. Usually in fiction "evil" is proactive and "good" is reactive. IE every saturday morning cartoon where the bad guys have a crazy plan and the heroes have to stop them.

What would a neutral campaign versus good look like? It's easy to come up with reasons for them to oppose "evil", but why would they oppose "good", without making the "good guys" (I'm running out of quotation marks) seem "evil".

Quote from: Spinachcat;1133009As I only use L/N/C, Neutral exists in a dual role. First, its for players who really want "Unaligned", aka no alignment, perhaps no strong moral convictions. Second, it exists in the setting for cults and gods whose focus isn't about civilization.




You may.




Is Evil a choice or innate in your campaign? AKA, can that Red Dragon change its alignment?

In my game, those players just invited a time bomb into their midst. The scorpion will be true to itself.

Exactly, you do get it.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1133014So it's basically "conveniently" evil. Not "convenient" in the sense that they do what's convenient for them, but in the sense that you can just conveniently slap that label to anything without bothering to define exactly WTF constitutes "neutral" evil in particular, as opposed to other kinds of evil that are too stupid to just conveniently identify as "neutral" evil and still do whatever they want without regard Law or Chaos, like neither of those things matter. Almost like something making the OP's point that the Law/Chaos axis is completely irrelevant and unnecessary.

It is irrelevant and unnecessary because from the word go it was shorthand for Good/Evil, IF I remember correctly it even says so in the 0e.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1133001I envy your knack for tossing grenades into discussions!

Do you believe Alignment has been pivotal to D&D's success? If so, please explain.

Yes I do think that things like Alignment and Dungeons have been pivotal to DnD success because they give a new player an instant idea of what they are supposed to do when they play.  You are wearing the White Hat and you are going down to kill and loot the Black Hats.  Why?  Because they are Bad and you are Good.  Does Gamma World have that same simplicity for a new player?

Plus of course DnD is Fantasy which has a much wider audience compared to Gamma Worlds Sci Fi roots.

QuotePersonally, I don't know. Do you feel Alignment has helped the success of Warhammer and Palladium's games?

I enjoy alignment as the shorthand for a PC's core values, but I've enjoyed plenty of RPGs without alignment.

I dont follow Warhammer very closely but to my point of view it just looks a Miniature War Game that ripped off an RPG skin from DnD.

Palladium "Alignments" always seemed like a random grab bag of traits that just seemed arbitrary and non sensical with titles that did not seem to map to anything.  I mean what is the difference between Principled (Good) and Scrupulous (Good)?  Not sure and can not tell from the titles.

QuoteAll depends on the GM.

As a GM, I expect Paladins to be Lawful Good paragons 24/7/365 because YOU - not me, not anybody else, just you - choose to play a Paladin. If I'm running a game with Paladins, they get social advantages beyond other PCs because hot damn, everybody knows you can trust that Paladin. The rest of the adventurers may talk about being good guys, but the Paladin literally glows with divine grace. In exchange for those social bonuses, you must adhere to LG - ESPECIALLY when it sucks to adhere to LG.

Personally if I was playing a LG Paladin then I would detail my own Oath rather then relying on the DM interpretation.  But do other Players even do backstories now?  The biggest problem always seems to boil down to a disagreement between what the Player is imagining and what the DM is imagining so anything you can do to get on the same page is good.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1133017There's a interesting idea. Usually in fiction "evil" is proactive and "good" is reactive. IE every saturday morning cartoon where the bad guys have a crazy plan and the heroes have to stop them.

What would a neutral campaign versus good look like? It's easy to come up with reasons for them to oppose "evil", but why would they oppose "good", without making the "good guys" (I'm running out of quotation marks) seem "evil".

The first one that I can think of is the King Priest in Dragonlance which essentially looks like what would happen if SJWs got their wish with increasing absurd purity tests and purging of the unclean.

The second one is the backstory to Dark Sun with racial cleansing of the non human races.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1133009Is Evil a choice or innate in your campaign? AKA, can that Red Dragon change its alignment?

In my game, those players just invited a time bomb into their midst. The scorpion will be true to itself.

Yes I think that creatures can change Alignment but not randomly.  It would have to be because of the players actions.  Dragons are intelligent creatures capable of acting to their own benefit.

So maybe it will be a time bomb or maybe not.  I did have a thread Advice: Evil Allies and other Shenanigans (https://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?42120-Advice-Evil-Allies-and-other-Shenanigans) regarding it but there was not much response.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1132987Lets talk "Cosmic Factions", which one is neutral? How many are there? Is the neutral one really neutral? I mean it never takes a side on the conflicts of the other factions.

Cosmic Factions IS Good vs Evil, for the religious ones it's God vs the Devil. And since the game tries to use the alignment as a sort of moral code, Order vs Chaos don't work because those aren't intrinsically moral choices as my own detractors have demonstrated. A moral choice IS Good vs Evil whatever the factions on each side are. Order can be good or evil, same for Chaos.

So, unless we're proposing "Cosmic Factions" that are both Good and Evil each and every one of them... Their choices and who do you pledge allegiance to (alignment) are again reduced to the dichotomy of Good vs Evil.

Don't look to me for a full-throated endorsement of d&d alignment. As I said, I grew disenchanted quite a while ago.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1133012But it is a religious issue in the game! The Gods of Order vs the Gods of Chaos!

Only in some settings. Many don't follow that at all.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1133014So it's basically "conveniently" evil. Not "convenient" in the sense that they do what's convenient for them, but in the sense that you can just conveniently slap that label to anything without bothering to define exactly WTF constitutes "neutral" evil in particular, as opposed to other kinds of evil that are too stupid to just conveniently identify as "neutral" evil and still do whatever they want without regard Law or Chaos, like neither of those things matter. Almost like something making the OP's point that the Law/Chaos axis is completely irrelevant and unnecessary.

Good & Evil are irrelevant to the Lawful Neutral Modrons and the Chaotic Neutral Slaadi. It's a nine-alignment system and you're trying to force it into a two-party viewpoint. As I see it, that's a fault of your expectations more than the alignment system.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1133001As a GM, I expect Paladins to be Lawful Good paragons 24/7/365 because YOU - not me, not anybody else, just you - choose to play a Paladin. If I'm running a game with Paladins, they get social advantages beyond other PCs because hot damn, everybody knows you can trust that Paladin. The rest of the adventurers may talk about being good guys, but the Paladin literally glows with divine grace. In exchange for those social bonuses, you must adhere to LG - ESPECIALLY when it sucks to adhere to LG.

So what happens in your game if the Paladin ever encounters a trolley problem? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfIdNV22LQM)

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1133038So what happens in your game if the Paladin ever encounters a trolley problem? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfIdNV22LQM)

The trolley problem is usually simple in a fantasy game.

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Quote from: GeekyBugle;1133019It is irrelevant and unnecessary because from the word go it was shorthand for Good/Evil, IF I remember correctly it even says so in the 0e.

At least based on the Rules Encyclopedia, they say:

QuoteLaw (or Lawful)
Law is the belief that everything should follow an order, and  that obeying rules  is the natural way of life. Lawful creatures will try to tell the truth, obey laws that are fair, keep promises, and care for all living things.

If a choice must be made between the benefit of a group or an individual, a Lawful character will usually choose the group. Sometimes  individual freedoms must be given up for the good of the  group. Lawful characters and  monsters often act in predictable ways. Lawful behavior is usually the same as "good" behavior.

Chaos (or Chaotic)
Chaos is the opposite of Law. It is the belief that life is random  and that chance and luck rule the world. Laws are made to be broken, as long as a person can get away with it. It is not important to keep promises,  and lying and telling the truth are both useful.

To a Chaotic creature, the individual is the most important  of all things. Selfishness is  the normal way of life, and the group is not important. Chaotics  often act on sudden desires and whims. They have strong belief in the power of luck. They cannot always be trusted.  Chaotic behavior is usually the same as behavior that could be  called  "evil."  Each individual  player must decide if his Chaotic character is closer to  a mean, selfish "evil" personality  or merely a happy-golucky, unpredictable personality.

So basically it kind of a mishmash of both.

Quote from: Shasarak;1133025Yes I do think that things like Alignment and Dungeons have been pivotal to DnD success because they give a new player an instant idea of what they are supposed to do when they play.  You are wearing the White Hat and you are going down to kill and loot the Black Hats.  Why?  Because they are Bad and you are Good.  Does Gamma World have that same simplicity for a new player?

I have never met a single new player that wasn't instantly confused by D&D's alignment system, myself included. And I was introduced with Basic D&D, which only had 3 alignment. But those alignments were the crux of the issue, which is to say the Law/Chaos axis--albeit, Basic used a mishmash of both, but still called them the confusing "Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic". Which I did not know WTF that was about, and neither has a single person I've introduced to the game.

The guy introducing me, of course simplified it to Lawful = Good and Chaotic = Evil, which made it easier to understand, but I still didn't like the association between Law and Good. I think I asked if Chaotic could be good, cuz it sounded cooler.

Nobody outside of those who play D&D knows what that is. And the 9 point alignments of AD&D onwards are even more confusing. I seriously doubt alignment has helped D&D any, and you don't need alignment or to explicitly write something in your character sheet to go mindlessly slaughter "bad" guys and take their stuff. People tend to do that by default in every game I've played.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1133036Good & Evil are irrelevant to the Lawful Neutral Modrons and the Chaotic Neutral Slaadi. It's a nine-alignment system and you're trying to force it into a two-party viewpoint. As I see it, that's a fault of your expectations more than the alignment system.

No, I just don't buy the bullshit notion that the Nazis, or any totalitarian group for that matter, can be "neutral". Because "totalitarian", by definition, is about absolutes, which is the opposite of neutrality. And the motivations of the Nazis weren't about promoting evil, but about control, which places their totalitarianism in some place other than the moral Good/Evil axis, even if they can ultimately be considered "evil".

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1132984So the alignment is broken, glad we can agree.

From your perspective. From the other perspectives I described it can work fine. But that's why alignment is so hard to talk about; people try to impose their own morality, instead of stepping back, or accepting an alternative morality.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1133049No, I just don't buy the bullshit notion that the Nazis, or any totalitarian group for that matter, can be "neutral". Because "totalitarian", by definition, is about absolutes, which is the opposite of neutrality. And the motivations of the Nazis weren't about promoting evil, but about control, which places their totalitarianism in some place other than the moral Good/Evil axis, even if they can ultimately be considered "evil".

I gave you the example of the Lawful Neutral Modrons. These guys are all about totalitarian order without care whether that order achieves good or evil. I also mentioned he Slaadi, poster children for Chaotic Neutral. They are about promoting total chaos without concern for good or evil. You may not buy the "bullshit notion" of this, but it's been in D&D for decades.

While we're at it, the Daemons/Yugoloths are Neutral Evil personified. They are no less evil than Demons or Devils, and they pursue their evil ends without any concern for whether it promotes order or chaos (that's just an incidental).

By your description, you make the Nazis sound as though they (as a generalization) are an example of Lawful Neutral intent that became Lawful Evil in practice.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1133049I have never met a single new player that wasn't instantly confused by D&D's alignment system, myself included. And I was introduced with Basic D&D, which only had 3 alignment. But those alignments were the crux of the issue, which is to say the Law/Chaos axis--albeit, Basic used a mishmash of both, but still called them the confusing "Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic". Which I did not know WTF that was about, and neither has a single person I've introduced to the game.

The guy introducing me, of course simplified it to Lawful = Good and Chaotic = Evil, which made it easier to understand, but I still didn't like the association between Law and Good. I think I asked if Chaotic could be good, cuz it sounded cooler.

For a Basic player no you can not have Chaotic being Good because that is too confusing to grasp easily, but if you are an Advanced player then yes certainly you can have a Chaotic Good Character.

QuoteNobody outside of those who play D&D knows what that is. And the 9 point alignments of AD&D onwards are even more confusing. I seriously doubt alignment has helped D&D any, and you don't need alignment or to explicitly write something in your character sheet to go mindlessly slaughter "bad" guys and take their stuff. People tend to do that by default in every game I've played.

If the Players are "doing it be default" then maybe they really are grasping alignment easily.  Maybe you could say intuitively even.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1133001I envy your knack for tossing grenades into discussions!

Do you believe Alignment has been pivotal to D&D's success? If so, please explain.

Personally, I don't know. Do you feel Alignment has helped the success of Warhammer and Palladium's games?

I enjoy alignment as the shorthand for a PC's core values, but I've enjoyed plenty of RPGs without alignment.




All depends on the GM.

As a GM, I expect Paladins to be Lawful Good paragons 24/7/365 because YOU - not me, not anybody else, just you - choose to play a Paladin. If I'm running a game with Paladins, they get social advantages beyond other PCs because hot damn, everybody knows you can trust that Paladin. The rest of the adventurers may talk about being good guys, but the Paladin literally glows with divine grace. In exchange for those social bonuses, you must adhere to LG - ESPECIALLY when it sucks to adhere to LG.




There was an edition of Elric/Stormbringer that had you track your status of Law vs. Chaos. I don't think it added anything to the game. In a Moorcock RPG setting, most people are Unaligned and only those who pledge themselves to certain gods then take on the alignment of their chosen gods.

Greetings!

Doing what is right and good, even when it is uncomfortable or dangerous to do so. Indeed, I am often reminded of the sobering account of how during World War II, in the Pacific fighting against the Japanese Empire, an American submarine had been on patrol, fighting. During one of these engagements, several Japanese Destroyers closed against the American submarine. The U.S. Navy submarine sank several Japanese transport ships, and I think a Destroyer or two as well. Despite the U.S. Navy crew's incredible bravery, skill, and tenacity, they became unexpectedly outnumbered, and were depth charged continuously. The American submarine rose to the surface, and in the desperate night-fighting that ensued, fired all of its last remaining torpedoes, and was fighting with its deck cannon and machine guns. Realizing that the Japanese Destroyers were continuously closing the distance, and escape was impossible, the U.S. Navy Sub Commander ordered his crew into life boats, and to abandon ship. In the dark, they would likely elude the Japanese Destroyers, and be rescued by American forces in the morning. This action occurred in 1944. The U.S. Sub Commander, Commander "Mush" Morton as I recall, had all of his crew safely off the submarine, thanked them and blessed them, and saluted them.

Commander "Mush" Morton then dropped the hatch down, and went down with the ship. The U.S. Navy Commander remained on board his damaged and burning submarine to ensure the destruction of a top-secret Magic Decoding machine on board used to decipher Japanese Naval Codes. The U.S. Navy Commander ensured the destruction of the decoding machine, and died going down with his submarine into the depths of the dark Pacific, also ensuring that the Japanese would not be able to salvage the U.S. submarine, or recover the decoding machine.

Commander "Mush" Morton was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honour, and given the highest praise by his men who had served with him since the beginning of the war, in 1941. The men admired and respected their Commander as a man of faith, honour, discipline, integrity, and absolute loyalty.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, indeed.

The safety and lives of his crew, and the security and victory of America was more important than his own life, which he sacrificed willingly with steely and heroic resolution, and an unwavering commitment to his sacred duty.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1133015Do you agree that Law/Chaos was a shorthand for Good/Evil? I seem to remember it even says so in the 0e..

Absolutely. That's how it was explained in the Red book, even with pictures. I don't have my OD&D nearby so I can't confirm, but I'm pretty sure that Law and Chaos were just Good and Evil until the 9 alignments were created.

The Swords & Wizardy Wiki fully goes Law = Good, Chaos = Evil
https://www.d20swsrd.com/for-players/characters/alignment

There is ZERO reason you can't play OD&D with just Good / Neutral / Evil...or dropping alignment entirely. Heck, even "Detect Evil" is really "Detect Foes". "Protection from Evil" could easily become "Protection from Extraplanar".

And many groups really want to play Heroes vs. Monsters and want that as the default group assumption. That's totally cool and I can appreciate that. I've talked to many players who enjoy my games with moral conundrums as a one shot, but at home campaigns, they really want the comfort of Good vs. Evil as a contrast from the horrid grayness of real life.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1133015By all means, do play as you wish and use whatever works for you and your players.

I shall! :)

Quote from: Shasarak;1133025Yes I do think that things like Alignment and Dungeons have been pivotal to DnD success because they give a new player an instant idea of what they are supposed to do when they play.  You are wearing the White Hat and you are going down to kill and loot the Black Hats.

Wouldn't that be better served by Good / Neutral / Evil as the alignment choices?

How does the 9 alignment options support that?

Quote from: Shasarak;1133025Does Gamma World have that same simplicity for a new player?

Somewhat. It's all about survival. The default intro is you come from a tribe of mutants and humans which is in trouble. You represent the best of the tribe and need to wander off into the scary world to unearth Ancient goodies to benefit the tribe. Try not to die!

Quote from: Shasarak;1133025Personally if I was playing a LG Paladin then I would detail my own Oath rather then relying on the DM interpretation.

I'm all good for proactive players, but as you know, they're few and far between.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1133038So what happens in your game if the Paladin ever encounters a trolley problem? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfIdNV22LQM)

They do their best to save the most, then atone for their failure.

I've sent the goblin army at the city, but let the PCs discover a village they thought safe was being targeted by slavers taking advantage of the goblin attack. In that instance, the PCs decided to let the slavers take the village to focus on the city. Their Lawful goddess withheld any cleric spells in punishment until the PCs hunted down the slavers and rescued the villagers. She couldn't care about their moral quandary because she's an inhuman deity of pure Law.

Greetings!

I'm also reminded of another episode that illustrates the "Lawful Good" alignment in a vivid manner. During World War II, again in the Pacific, the campaign on the Island of Guadalcanal was being fought by the United States Marines against the forces of the Japanese Empire. The Marines were barely holding on. If the Japanese Navy could reach the island with several powerful convoys full of supplies, weapons, and reinforcement troops, the U.S. Marines would be slaughtered to the last man, and the Japanese would conquer Guadalcanal, which would place them in a commanding position against America and Australia, throughout the region. Guadalcanal was a naval and amphibious turning point in the South Pacific. The Battles of the Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal were the turning points in the Pacific War. A subset of the Guadalcanal campaign, was the Battle of the Solomon Islands, a naval battle which was connected to our victory in Guadalcanal. The naval battle was *THE* battle to stop the Japanese convoys to Guadalcanal.

The U.S. Navy was outnumbered, and arguably the Japanese Navy were more experienced and more skilled. There were no aircraft carriers primarily involved in the battle, which endured for like a week straight. Each force had several battleships, heavy and light cruisers, and destroyers. What ensued was a naval hand-to-hand gun battle that occasionally came face-to-face, a hundred yards separating enemy war ships. Torpedoes swimming at close range, naval guns, even small deck guns, blazing away at point blank range, day and night, non-stop. Oil and fire everywhere in the roiling seas about. Ships burning, and being blown apart. Men bleeding, screaming and dying in the dozens and hundreds, every day, and every night. None of the Japanese ships retreated, as they pressed the attack. They knew, too, that the campaign on Guadalcanal depended on them getting through, no matter the cost. Likewise, the U.S. Navy threw everything we could scrape up in the region, to save the U.S. Marines on Guadalcanal.

Thousands of American sailors of the United States Navy died during that battle, from young seamen, to Admirals and Captains, fighting with pistols in hand. Several of them died in the battle as well. All sacrificed, and bled in a terrible slaughter.

When the smoke finally cleared, and the battle was over. The Japanese retreated with their few remnants left. The U.S. Navy had stood in the breech, had stood in the fire, and won. Their selfless and heroic sacrifice, to a man, saved the Marines on Guadalcanal, and helped to turn the tide against the Japanese Empire. Such a victory was going to be costly, and bloody, and everyone knew this before the first shells were fired. No one retreated, and no one wanted to give up, even though the fighting would cost them their lives. They knew they were going to die, in the thousands. It was a savage and bloody battle, that America won. The U.S. Navy sacrificed thousands of their brave and noble sailors so that we would have a chance at victory. Every man knew the hour of their reckoning had come.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1133016But you're reverting now to Chainmail, which isn't part of the discussion, we're talking about D&D where Law/Order are shorthand for Good/Evil and are eminently and obviously religious since you have gods from both sides.

You even have classes that must follow the Lawful/Chaotic code to a T or loose their powers.

If the inherent conflict is among gods this makes the alignment issue a theological one (in world, I care little for IRL theology), and by extension, given a Medieval/Pseudo-Medieval setting, a moral one.

So a "Neutral" individual is one that put's his religious values, his morals side for profit/personal gain. Which doesn't really sound like something a good person would do from a POV of a Medieval/Pseudo-Medieval population.

For Chainmail, it's one thing. For a D&D game, it's a slightly different thing.  For my D&D game, it's a slightly different thing than someone else's D&D game.  Because it is a very coarse grained measurement.  Alignment has no exactly consistent meaning outside the setting--and thus these slightly different takes inform how it is supposed to work.  

Yes, for some settings, it can have a strong theological component.  If that's the way the setting works, then that's the way alignment works in that setting.  

I bring up Chainmail specifically because there's this lingering unspoken premise going on in much of this discussion as if D&D was a set thing--with alignment mostly unchanged across all versions of the game, never mind the settings. Pat's earlier statement about the guys with the white hats is I think much closer to the truth.

Isn't there an old quote from Gary Gygax himself to the effect that taking "alignment" as a philosophical or ethical framework is essentially shallow?

D&D campaigns runs fine without alignment. See my Majestic Wilderlands supplement for one way to make it work.

As for why it began in the first place it started with Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign. The side of Law defended Castle Blackmoor from the side of Chaos who were led by the evil Egg of Coot. The neutrals who those nearby that were not allied with either and could be recruited provided there was something in it for them.

Oh and unlike later campaigns both sides had PCs. I believe Dave Arneson handled the neutrals.

From Page 4 First Fantasy Campaign
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Good find estar! Thank you!

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1133038So what happens in your game if the Paladin ever encounters a trolley problem? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfIdNV22LQM)

Divine guidance is given if sought via a note to the player.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1133066Good find estar! Thank you!

No Problem.

I have to stress both sides were PCs. There wasn't a lot of NPCs as we understand it in the early days of Blackmoor. Dave was literally a referee between two nebulous groups of players. I say nebulous because player could and did switch sides as one player did (Dave Fant) when he became a Dracula style Vampire. Which was the most powerful creature in the campaign at the time.

And at one point, Blackmoor was lost because the players defending Blackmoor were too busy exploring the dungeon while the chaos players swooped in. As a result they were exiled to Lock Gloomen where they promptly started trying to find the local dungeon.

As for what happened later. What Gygax experienced and what inspired D&D was Dave bringing down the Blackmoor dungeon to run for the Lake Geneva crew. According to the story it was because out of all the things he did with Blackmoor it was most portable thing he could bring from the Twin cities to Lake Geneva.

So while Law and Chaos made it into D&D and the Greyhawk Campaign. What it meant at first was that Law was the upper world where the PCs hailed from and Chaos were all the monsters in the underworld trying to kill them. Unlike Dave and Blackmoor, it was the players and Gary running everything else as NPCs.

Of course the campaign expanded beyond the dungeon, both before and after D&D was published. Thus the old setup of your allies, neutrals, and enemies was too simplistic. Like many later editions and RPGs, people overthinked it and forgot what the original system was for and the nine-fold alignment system was born.

The way I "fixed" back in the day and now, was to jettison alignment. Paladin and clerics had a creed set by deity that I wrote up. Where it mattered "Evil" was interpreted as hostile intent. Some stuff like Protection from Evil were left virtually unchanged as specific types of creatures were named.

You can see some of this in the free basic rules I put out.
http://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/MW%20Majestic%20Fantasy%20Basic%20RPG%20Rev%2010.pdf

Quote from: estar;1133070As for what happened later. What Gygax experienced and what inspired D&D was Dave bringing down the Blackmoor dungeon to run for the Lake Geneva crew. According to the story it was because out of all the things he did with Blackmoor it was most portable thing he could bring from the Twin cities to Lake Geneva.

So while Law and Chaos made it into D&D and the Greyhawk Campaign. What it meant at first was that Law was the upper world where the PCs hailed from and Chaos were all the monsters in the underworld trying to kill them. Unlike Dave and Blackmoor, it was the players and Gary running everything else as NPCs.

Of course the campaign expanded beyond the dungeon, both before and after D&D was published. Thus the old setup of your allies, neutrals, and enemies was too simplistic. Like many later editions and RPGs, people overthinked it and forgot what the original system was for and the nine-fold alignment system was born.

The way I "fixed" back in the day and now, was to jettison alignment. Paladin and clerics had a creed set by deity that I wrote up. Where it mattered "Evil" was interpreted as hostile intent. Some stuff like Protection from Evil were left virtually unchanged as specific types of creatures were named.

You can see some of this in the free basic rules I put out.
http://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/MW%20Majestic%20Fantasy%20Basic%20RPG%20Rev%2010.pdf

Neat, thanks for the free rules, will read them and buy the paid ones when I have some disposable income.

That is one solution, a different one is to go with Good vs Evil with innocent civilians trapped in the middle.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1133052I gave you the example of the Lawful Neutral Modrons. These guys are all about totalitarian order without care whether that order achieves good or evil. I also mentioned he Slaadi, poster children for Chaotic Neutral. They are about promoting total chaos without concern for good or evil.
....
While we're at it, the Daemons/Yugoloths are Neutral Evil personified. They are no less evil than Demons or Devils, and they pursue their evil ends without any concern for whether it promotes order or chaos (that's just an incidental).

Which are made up planar beings from a game that works backwards from the idea that alignment can be an objective force (within the game world) that can shape the planes, or some crap like that. That doesn't prove that alignment makes sense or is an effective RP tool. Only that the designers have made an effort to include planar creatures of every alignment.

I also gave specific reasons why I thought that Nazis couldn't be neutral on the Law/Chaos axis specifically.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1133052You may not buy the "bullshit notion" of this, but it's been in D&D for decades.

And the correct interpretation and usefulness of alignment has been debated throughout that entire time (often ending many a game session in the process). This thread isn't the first time this dead horse has been powdered to dust, and alignment has been so well received throughout D&D's history that it's even been progressively demoted in importance for the last three editions. But sacred cows never die.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1133052By your description, you make the Nazis sound as though they (as a generalization) are an example of Lawful Neutral intent that became Lawful Evil in practice.

I don't think that Nazis neatly fit into any alignment, cuz I don't think alignments make sense or can properly represent human nature. But almost nobody in real life sees themselves as "evil" and sets out to promote evil specifically. Rather they tend to be motivated by something else, which may ultimately lead to "evil".

Nazism is a form of fascism, which are authoritarian nationalistic ideologies that are opposed to liberty and seek to control every aspect of society through intimidation and force, and the establishment of dictatorial regimes. Which I suppose could be considered "lawful" in D&D (it certainly isn't "neutral"), except Nazis also came to power through chaos, and their ranks were often highly disorganized with everyone tripping over themselves trying to anticipate and satisfy Hitler's whims, which sounds very "chaotic", and has lead some (in this thread even) to classify them as such in D&D terms.

Personally, I think it just proves how alignment is incapable of encompassing the complexities of human nature, because as far as I can tell the Nazis were both; highly controlling and highly chaotic in the extreme. It wasn't that they were trying to find a balance between order and chaos (actual Law/Chaos neutrality), but that they were obsessed with order and driven by chaos. So they were constantly fluctuating between the two at extreme levels.

Quote from: Shasarak;1133053If the Players are "doing it be default" then maybe they really are grasping alignment easily.  Maybe you could say intuitively even.

Almost like they don't need it spelled out for them in their character sheets. But the only one axis of the two they intuitively understand is Good/Evil. The Law/Chaos axis is counterintuitive nonsense. Which was the point of the OP.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1133072Almost like they don't need it spelled out for them in their character sheets. But the only one axis of the two they intuitively understand is Good/Evil. The Law/Chaos axis is counterintuitive nonsense. Which was the point of the OP.

I would agree that Law/Chaos is the weakest of the two axis and on the other hand was no more complicated to understand then you would expect for someone aged 11 and up.

I liked this, too.

http://easydamus.com/alignmentreal.html

"I'm not neutral evil, I'm just... ambitious!"

Quote from: VisionStorm;1133072That doesn't prove that alignment makes sense or is an effective RP tool.

I won't argue that Alignment makes sense. Like Hit Points, its a game mechanic that tries to achieve a goal. In this case, it's goal is to be an effective RP tool. For me, Alignment is an excellent shorthand. Players know where their PC stands in the grand scheme of things. It gives them a basic premise for how their PC sees the world.

As I run mostly public games and often one-shots with strangers, the table swiftly gets in sync when we know who the Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic characters are. It's an easy touchstone for them and we're off to the races. Also, it declares the lines of division in the party which encourages banter, rivalry and drama.

Can you achieve this without alignment? Sure, but Alignment is a shorthand like white, gray, and black hats in a Western.

Alignment is proof that D&D is inescapable.  Even after 4 decades of alternatives, some people itch to say the same things they've said negatively about it since it first assigned a label they disagreed with.  There will be gamers arguing about alignment on their deathbeds, as if alignment could hear them and change to suit them; focused not on the games serving their needs, but on the one they most wish did (in this area) but doesn't.

I find the concept silly myself. Something fit to a Masters of the Universe cartoon.

Quote from: Itachi;1133106I find the concept silly myself. Something fit to a Masters of the Universe cartoon.

Or one of the myriad of fantasy novels that inspired D&D.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1133081I won't argue that Alignment makes sense. Like Hit Points, its a game mechanic that tries to achieve a goal. In this case, it's goal is to be an effective RP tool. For me, Alignment is an excellent shorthand. Players know where their PC stands in the grand scheme of things. It gives them a basic premise for how their PC sees the world.

As I run mostly public games and often one-shots with strangers, the table swiftly gets in sync when we know who the Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic characters are. It's an easy touchstone for them and we're off to the races. Also, it declares the lines of division in the party which encourages banter, rivalry and drama.

Can you achieve this without alignment? Sure, but Alignment is a shorthand like white, gray, and black hats in a Western.

I find that the shorthand doesn't particularly shorten anything. As the disagreement over nazi alignment earlier shows, even experienced D&D players often don't have clear conceptions about what different alignments mean beyond the obvious. Using plain English like "selfish bastard" is much more clear than the supposed shorthand of alignment.

Lots of games use hit points. But even among fantasy games, alignment is a D&Dism -- like beholders or mind flayers. To the extent that it appears in other games at all, it seems more like a holdover.

Quote from: jhkim;1133146I find that the shorthand doesn't particularly shorten anything. As the disagreement over nazi alignment earlier shows, even experienced D&D players often don't have clear conceptions about what different alignments mean beyond the obvious. Using plain English like "selfish bastard" is much more clear than the supposed shorthand of alignment.

So call them shirts and skins and be done with it. Or just use Lawful/Chaotic because it's already in the game and stop worrying.

Greetings!

I have always liked Alignment. It's simplistic, and easy to get a snapshot of whatever individual character's basic moral tendencies are, and perhaps a stronger touchstone to their religious, social, and political allegiances. Definitely not a "straightjacket" but a set of functional guidelines to the character's values, beliefs, and likely behavior.

With all the players I have gamed with over the years, most seem to have embraced such. I have seldom seen such deep-seated debate over the Alignment system--except online. I know it's always existed, I'm just pointing out that gamers at my table have seldom debated the meaning or worthiness of the Alignment system. Most seem to have accepted it sincerely, and haven't ever worried about it.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: jhkim;1133146I find that the shorthand doesn't particularly shorten anything. As the disagreement over nazi alignment earlier shows, even experienced D&D players often don't have clear conceptions about what different alignments mean beyond the obvious. Using plain English like "selfish bastard" is much more clear than the supposed shorthand of alignment.

The discussion over Nazi Alignment is a feature of Alignment, it is not a flaw.

Its the kind of thing that uber Geeks like to talk about, kind of like sports statistics among uber Jocks.

Quote from: jhkim;1133146As the disagreement over nazi alignment earlier shows, even experienced D&D players often don't have clear conceptions about what different alignments mean beyond the obvious.

Alignment is a game mechanic. It doesn't track to the complexities of the real world. Thus, the Nazi argument. Humans in the real world can rarely be pidgeonholed like fictional characters in melodrama.

I avoid the misunderstanding by defining what I mean by Lawful, Neutral and Chaos in terms of particular setting and being very upfront with the players. That's why I use Neutral and Unaligned as interchangeable terms for players who don't want to deal with alignment. Lawful is for players who want moral conundrums and being part of something bigger that themselves in the society of the setting. Chaos is for players who want to be the obvious outsider, the troublemaker, the rogue element.

Quote from: jhkim;1133146Using plain English like "selfish bastard" is much more clear than the supposed shorthand of alignment.

True, but there's a team aspect to alignment. AKA, where does your PC stand in the world vs. other PCs and NPCs?

"Selfish bastard" is good to explain the PC's personality, and its easy for any player to visual and understand.

Chaotic alignment describes not just the PC's world view, but cosmic allegiances in the greater scheme.

I totally understand why that's not necessary (or desirable) for many RPGs.

Speaking of Selfish Bastards, it would be fun to have an RPG mechanic that keyed off of your characters parents marriage status when your character was born.

When I run AD&D, I use the AD&D alignments. I think it's imperfect, but it works okay within the context of the game.

When I run my original D&D homebrew, I use Law/Neutrality/Chaos, where "Law" is "generally promoting humanity and human society", Chaos is "opposed to humanity and human society", and Neutrality is anything in the middle (which could be pure disinterest, or a search for balance/harmony, or whatever).

Quote from: Spinachcat;1133190True, but there's a team aspect to alignment. AKA, where does your PC stand in the world vs. other PCs and NPCs?

"Selfish bastard" is good to explain the PC's personality, and its easy for any player to visual and understand.

Chaotic alignment describes not just the PC's world view, but cosmic allegiances in the greater scheme.

I totally understand why that's not necessary (or desirable) for many RPGs.

None of the settings I've played in the last 20 years (at least) go with the ideas of 'cosmic allegiances' based on alignment. The idea that all lawful beings are on some kind of team seems silly, and the idea that all chaotic beings play well together is even more absurd. Of course, this might have been some weird take on things in the olden days of alignment languages and such, but I can happily say D&D has left that nonsense far behind.

Quote from: jhkimUsing plain English like "selfish bastard" is much more clear than the supposed shorthand of alignment.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1133190True, but there's a team aspect to alignment. AKA, where does your PC stand in the world vs. other PCs and NPCs?

"Selfish bastard" is good to explain the PC's personality, and its easy for any player to visual and understand.

Chaotic alignment describes not just the PC's world view, but cosmic allegiances in the greater scheme.

I totally understand why that's not necessary (or desirable) for many RPGs.

This is something that varies from game to game, but in my experience, the teams haven't corresponded very closely with alignment. Maybe the gnolls and orcs are aligned in a cosmological sense from both being chaotic evil, but they aren't on the same team in a practical sense. Likewise, sphinxes and myconids aren't necessarily on the same team just because both are lawful neutral. Maybe it's different in other people's games.

The closest is that good will tend to ally with good, but even that's subject to practicalities and/or rivalries.

I still technically use alignment in my D&D games - but that's mostly just because it's more work to write and explain house rules getting rid of alignment than it is to just largely ignore it.

Quote from: Shasarak;1133195Speaking of Selfish Bastards, it would be fun to have an RPG mechanic that keyed off of your characters parents marriage status when your character was born.

I've almost done that in an rpg I'm working on. The attributes are, Social class, Health and Education, and Steadiness. You can just roll them all up, or there's a lifepath method - where you start with rolling up Soc and go from there. Higher Soc people are more likely to have good Education, but Health has chances of being awful at both low Soc (poor healthcare, family neglect, etc) and high Soc (coddled, plus some very sick children who would have died if they were poor are kept alive by high Soc parents). Steadiness is a game mechanic determining basically how good you are at overcoming the friction of combat, and that's affected by Soc, too -  the higher the Soc, the lower the Steadiness you're likely to start with, since part of the point of rising in social class is so you can insulate yourself from the brutal realities of the world.

In some societies, a bastard would have a lower Soc.

I'm using the full 9-point Alignment as a setting feature in my 1e Forgotten Realms campaign. They just met a horned demonette and discussed having a priest use Know Alignment:

"I'm ok, I register as Chaotic Neutral!" :D

It's a bit meta, but it works as an in-universe feature of a specific setting. I take it people don't necessarily know for sure what they 'ping' as to magic.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1133207None of the settings I've played in the last 20 years (at least) go with the ideas of 'cosmic allegiances' based on alignment.

Really? Not a single setting had the CG elves and LG dwarfs and the NG halflings presented as natural allies against the CE orcs and LE hobgoblins? And none of the settings had gods with alignment restrictions on the followers? Were there LG gods with CN followers?

Quote from: HappyDaze;1133207The idea that all lawful beings are on some kind of team seems silly, and the idea that all chaotic beings play well together is even more absurd.

Why? If Lawful beings meet up and interact, they may disagree on how to uphold civilization, but all of them seek to uphold civilization. Whereas a bunch of Chaotics may be happy to kill each other, but they're also happy to band together (temporarily) to burn down the nearest village.  

Of course, that's using Lawful/Neutral/Chaos and not the dual axis 9 alignments.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1133052By your description, you make the Nazis sound as though they (as a generalization) are an example of Lawful Neutral intent that became Lawful Evil in practice.

That sounds like Tomas de Torquemada, the Jewish 'Converso' to Catholicism who became a fanatical Inquisitor for the Spanish Inquisition.

The 'Order' the Nazis wanted to build was a highly Chaotic 'Order', ergo they class as Chaotic in the L-N-C system. Less clear are the Communists, who aspire to what looks like a Lawful system (Marx's Communist society), but use Chaotic methods and are highly Chaotic in practice. It's notable that post-Modernist Marxists of the Frankfurt School et al greatly de-emphasise the nominally Lawful end-goal, in favour of highly Chaotic Permanent Revolution.

Conversely, the version of Robin Hood who's fighting Chaotic King John to restore the rightful and Lawful King Richard is a Lawful rebel against Chaotic rule.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1133227Really? Not a single setting had the CG elves and LG dwarfs and the NG halflings presented as natural allies against the CE orcs and LE hobgoblins? And none of the settings had gods with alignment restrictions on the followers? Were there LG gods with CN followers?



Why? If Lawful beings meet up and interact, they may disagree on how to uphold civilization, but all of them seek to uphold civilization. Whereas a bunch of Chaotics may be happy to kill each other, but they're also happy to band together (temporarily) to burn down the nearest village.  

Of course, that's using Lawful/Neutral/Chaos and not the dual axis 9 alignments.

The only one that is close is Warhammwr, but there Chaos means something very different (IMO).

Quote from: SpinachatAlignment is a game mechanic. It doesn't track to the complexities of the real world. Thus, the Nazi argument. Humans in the real world can rarely be pidgeonholed like fictional characters in melodrama....

Actually it does track to the "complexities" of the real world and it does so quite well. The real problem is many people fail to differentiate between empirical thinking and holistic thinking. The whole purpose of religion and story-telling is to render the complexities of objective reality into a wholly apprehensible subjective reality. Stop trying to parse alignment using science-based logic and think in terms of mythic story-telling.

Listen very carefully to Nazi propaganda without bias. What is the story they are trying to tell? They talk repeatedly about the "savage" races and the superior "noble" Aryan race. They talk about building a grand German empire and sweeping away the more primitive Slavic races. Civilization vs Nature, order vs chaos, known vs unknown, Men vs Orcs. Nazism is very clearly of Lawful alignment, assuming of course it is practiced as it is preached.

Additionally it aggressively rejects the mythic story of Christianity. If we accept Christianity as axiomatically good (i.e. a story of good triumphing over evil -- Horus over Set, Marduk over Tiamat, Jesus over Satan, etc.), then Nazism is obviously evil.

The story of Nazi Germany is really the story of conflict between two saviors and two crosses, two lawful forces against each other.

For alignment to work as it should, it must be paired with religion, with a mythic story that fits within the DM's world.

Show me someone who thinks AD&D alignment is broken, and I'll show you someone who doesn't understand AD&D alignment.

Since the alignment system works fine for some people (even if only for me), it's definitely not broken. That doesn't mean you have to like it. You can dislike something without thinking it broken. But thinking something is broken that definitely isn't is a clear indicator that somewhere along the way, you've missed the mark pretty badly.

Quote from: S'mon;1133232That sounds like Tomas de Torquemada, the Jewish 'Converso' to Catholicism who became a fanatical Inquisitor for the Spanish Inquisition.

Torquemada was never himself a convert. He was born into Catholicism. On his father's side, he was descended from Jewish converts but four generations earlier.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1135067Torquemada was never himself a convert. He was born into Catholicism. On his father's side, he was descended from Jewish converts but four generations earlier.

   And much of his reputation, as I understand it, has been exaggerated and warped by the Black Legend.

What if you just don't have alignment at all? What if you don't have spells that can detect good and evil, because if you did, you could detect evil and simply arrest anyone who was detected as evil. No need for trials, just have clerics go around looking for evil, and if they find any, call the city watch and have them arrested!

Quote from: Tom Kalbfus;1135105What if you just don't have alignment at all? What if you don't have spells that can detect good and evil, because if you did, you could detect evil and simply arrest anyone who was detected as evil. No need for trials, just have clerics go around looking for evil, and if they find any, call the city watch and have them arrested!

My answer to that has been, anyone can cast a cantrip and then claim they "detected evil". You're basically taking one person's word for the results of the spell.
Also, on a principled standpoint, a person should be arrested for a crime, not their thoughts.

In practice, I usually run Detect Evil/Good as detecting supernatural good and evil. Just to nip that in the bud. Because it can short curcit a lot of investigative adventures, and giving everyone amulets or shielding spells against Detect Alignment to prevent that gets silly.

Quote from: Tom Kalbfus;1135105What if you just don't have alignment at all?

Works fine in my game, I don't miss it at all.

Alignment is fine as description of, say, a monster's expected behavior though I find specific motivations much more useful in the game.

Alignment used to proscribe player-character behavior is something I don't particularly enjoy. In essence, it tells a player that they have to emulate one of 3 (or 9) different moral outlooks, and if they don't, they'll be punished. If you're aiming for a sort of Noh play where the goal is embody a predetermined set of characteristics I suppose alignment could work well for that, but it's not the sort of roleplaying that makes me happiest.

Alignment, ultimately, describes behavior -- it's why we say that a player character can "change" alignment. But this notion of "change" presupposes that characters "have" an alignment that is somehow separate and apart from their behavior to begin with. And that "having" is nothing but a mechanic to punish players that deviate from their elected pre-set role. I have never felt that enforcing PC alignment added anything fun to the games I play.

Personally, I prefer the simpler maxim of "actions have consequences". Because I enjoy "the local baron got wind of your thieving exploits and has sent out a posse to capture you" much more than "Nuh-uh, it doesn't matter if you tithed, stealing is still Evil so subtract some numbers from your character sheet."

Quote from: Tom Kalbfus;1135105What if you just don't have alignment at all? What if you don't have spells that can detect good and evil, because if you did, you could detect evil and simply arrest anyone who was detected as evil. No need for trials, just have clerics go around looking for evil, and if they find any, call the city watch and have them arrested!

I pretty much replaced Alignment with the Mutants & Masterminds concept of Allegiances... these might be to principles like Law or Chaos, Good or Evil, but might also include a State, Religion, Family or even an individual. You can hold up to three allegiances and when they come into conflict its up to you to rank them (Do you hold Law above Good or Good above Law? Do you hold your family above or beneath either or both?).

You get bonuses to your reaction rolls based on the number of allegiances you share and penalties for each opposed allegiance you have. If two soldiers from opposing sides both had allegiances to Good, Law and their respective countries, they'd probably get along rather well (net reaction bonus) and probably be looking for any excuse to not have to kill each other ("Lets both go back to our respective camps" and a better respect for the line soldiers of the other side not wanting to be there any more than you do being a viable option if no one else is around to screw it up).

As to detection spells... the only ones I have in my game detect origins, not allegiances. A spell could detect creatures with the Abyssal origin (demons and those invested with sufficient demonic power), Astral origin (astral servitors, gods and most divine spellcasters), Primal origin (primal spirits and most primal spellcasters) or Shadow origin (undead and wielders of necromancy)... but wouldn't tell you whether the creature was helpful or harmful to you (though to be fair, in-universe demons and undead* are always irredeemably evil).

* Ancestor spirits who have passed on naturally have the Primal origin, only those who willingly choose to Embrace the Shadow rather than pass on become undead).

Quote from: Tom Kalbfus;1135105No need for trials, just have clerics go around looking for evil, and if they find any, call the city watch and have them arrested!

Ah, but you can only cast them on one person at a time, and while you're busy detecting evil on Anna, well her hubby Bob decides to go for a walk. And it'd take rather a long time to go through a city of 10,000 people, and in the time you're doing that some people have left the city, and some others come in, and who the hell is going to remember if they tested this guy or not before after they've tested 1,000 people?

So you could only really do it if you insisted everyone carry personal identification, if you kept strict records of who'd been tested, and if you strictly controlled who entered and left your city. Basically, a magical fantasy DPRK. Would a good cleric be willing to participate in a magical DPRK?

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1135218Ah, but you can only cast them on one person at a time, and while you're busy detecting evil on Anna, well her hubby Bob decides to go for a walk. And it'd take rather a long time to go through a city of 10,000 people, and in the time you're doing that some people have left the city, and some others come in, and who the hell is going to remember if they tested this guy or not before after they've tested 1,000 people?

So you could only really do it if you insisted everyone carry personal identification, if you kept strict records of who'd been tested, and if you strictly controlled who entered and left your city. Basically, a magical fantasy DPRK. Would a good cleric be willing to participate in a magical DPRK?

Not to mention all of the other ways that you can mask your alignment.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1133009As I only use L/N/C, Neutral exists in a dual role. First, its for players who really want "Unaligned", aka no alignment, perhaps no strong moral convictions. Second, it exists in the setting for cults and gods whose focus isn't about civilization.




You may.




Is Evil a choice or innate in your campaign? AKA, can that Red Dragon change its alignment?

In my game, those players just invited a time bomb into their midst. The scorpion will be true to itself.

Funny enough, we had the same thing in my campaign with a Black Hatchling.  

I've decided to re-evaluate... they're starting to get hints that maybe color-coded for your convenience is more than just a funny crack from D&D nerds.  I'm hinting that dragon's might be more akin to the player character in Star Wars CRPG - maybe there's only five kinds of dragons, and they fall into Tiamat's sway or rise to Bahumut's heights.

...or it could be me fucking with them again.

I use alignment for cultural shorthand, it's more likely to be on my planning map, than on a character sheet.

Quote from: Tom Kalbfus;1135105What if you just don't have alignment at all? What if you don't have spells that can detect good and evil, because if you did, you could detect evil and simply arrest anyone who was detected as evil. No need for trials, just have clerics go around looking for evil, and if they find any, call the city watch and have them arrested!

FWIW, Basic D&D only had Law/Chaos alignments, but still had the Detect Evil spell.  It only worked to identify evilly enchanted objects, or creatures that might want to harm the spell-caster.  You can easily dispense with alignment but still return Detect Evil/Good.

Anyway... my main experiences with alignment is either that; (a) players typically pick an alignment, and then pretty much forget about it, or (b) explicitly use alignment as an excuse to be an asshat.  As a GM, it had some minor value in reading through the monster manual to basically figure out whether a monster was a potential enemy or foe when it wasn't otherwise obvious.  But nothing that couldn't have been handled in the description.

Quote from: Tom Kalbfus;1135105What if you just don't have alignment at all? What if you don't have spells that can detect good and evil, because if you did, you could detect evil and simply arrest anyone who was detected as evil. No need for trials, just have clerics go around looking for evil, and if they find any, call the city watch and have them arrested!

That's why Detect Evil was a 1st level spell, not a cantrip. The old school Cleric can't detect evil at will (a Paladin could in AD&D) and since it was a spell, it was obvious the cleric was casting magic. As spells are more precious in old school and high level clerics more rare, clerics had to be more tactical about their castings.

A Paladin walking through town noting evil dudes works for me...but I like to ping back. AKA, now the evil dudes know the Paladin knows and now its about to go all Tarantino! Also, I like visual and audio signs of magic. When Paladins in my games activate detect evil, the Paladin glows with obvious angelic energy.

Many DMs back in the ancient time limited Detect Evil to supernatural monsters which brought it into line with Protection from Evil which makes total sense. That's how it works in my OD&D campaign. As I use only 3 alignments - Lawful, Neutral, Chaotic - you won't get Capital-E evil vibes off a mortal creature. That's the energy from demons, undead and truly vile enchantments.

Also, RuneQuest which has no alignment had Detect Enemies as a spell, aka is there someone in the area with intent to do immediate harm? Monsters stalking, assassins waiting, etc.