TheRPGSite

Spun off from the mission adventure thread.

One problem with running an evil campaign (one where the PCs are the stereotypical villain types) is things devolving into what I call "petty evil". Evil characters are viewed as not having to put up with those namby-pamby things like manners, and go in expecting to be able to kill the innkeeper, rape his donkey and ride off on his daughter.

So while playing a Sith character in the MMORPG Star Wars, The Old Republic, I noticed a few things. 1. There is a heiarchy of masters who demand performance from their subordinates. If you don't get results, you risk getting your ass force-choked. 2. There is competition among the apprentices. You might get back-stabbed if you don't back-stab first, but you also might make useful allies. It's a tightrope of risk and reward, benefit and betrayal.
There are a lot of pressures from various directions to keep a sith damn busy in a world like that. In short, they don't have much time for tormenting innkeepers to no useful end.

I find in my games of WH40K (RPGS I mean, mostly the Inquisition one), I tend to play characters who would under other circumstances be considered evil, and kinda bastards at that. But the framework of the game is that they dont think of themselves as evil, and the structure still motivates them to work within the society. So that works.


Generally speaking I don't like "Evil" campaigns, for the reasons you say and because "Chaotic stupid" seems to be the default for a lot of people in those sorts of games.

All things sentient and effective are organized. Remember that. Even chaos has its own form of order, it's just one not immediately apparent.

Those who defy organization, even the loose and in-fighting ones, gets the horns. There's a reason for the idea "honor among thieves." There's an acceptable and unacceptable way of doing things; to belong you must accept such received taboos.

Things hostile to the standing order have competition. Things selfish enough to assume expansion of their standing order upon nearby others makes more competition. Those who have competent competition do not survive long if they tolerate petty bullshit. In short, holders of power have real things to do lest all things fall apart. Holders of power are not so patient with petty bullshit.

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Alignment is one of my favorite things, as is world building. I like to run IN SJG, D&D, and WW stuff because of such morality meters. In group v. out group morality, and the delicate hell of tightrope walking it, is meat and drink to my gaming. What advice would you like to explore?

Quote from: Ratman_tf;830432Evil characters are viewed as not having to put up with those namby-pamby things like manners, and go in expecting to be able to kill the innkeeper, rape his donkey and ride off on his daughter.

In such a world I'd think innkeepers would have evolved to survive this. Think about how people survive the Mafia and similar groups - be very nice to strangers, and any known or apparent bad-guy groups get all the free food, drink & board they want. Keep your daughter out of sight, with some available serving wenches to keep the brigands distracted.
'Killing all the NPCs' tends to be a combination of CE players with NE GMs who play NPCs as surly and obnoxious, when evolution should have weeded out the surly NPCs long ago.

as i said in the thread that caused this one having a master is a great way to stop this sort of problem.

the idea i have had in mind is a party being assistants to a lich first mission would be going out to collect the hearts of children for spell components this is a nice way for the lich to test basic competence and to make sure that his underlings will do what needs to be done then they will start getting real missions.

another thing i think can help is have a few things that arent evil the easy way to do that is a sudden good thing for no reason but thats jarring the trick is to remember that when it comes to powerful individuals there are many things that both good and evil have to deal with (e.g well i cant auctualy think of any examples right now i will get back to you on that one)

I deliberately set out to GM an "evil" campaign, once, as one of my two GURPS playtest groups; it wasn't so much that I was planning on running Evil Plots as I greenlighted the players to be as dark as they wanted, and solve scenarios as darkly as they pleased.

Looking back over my records, only one of the originals was a Screaming Evil type, a necromancer with a propensity for gruesome rituals and with the highest social rank anyone's attempted in the 29 years I've GMed GURPS.  The rest ran the gamut between Nasty Bastard Merc, Amoral Assassin, Amoral Barbarian and Doesn't Give A Damn Martial Artist.

They were, in the main, smart players, all of whom had played in my campaigns for three years, and certainly didn't play Chaotic Stupid.  A couple of the PCs wound up being the signature characters for their players for several years to come.

The so-called All-Evil Group didn't last.  Back in those days, I never ran fewer than two groups, and at that stage I was running four.  It wasn't uncommon for someone to say "Hey, Bob, listen.  My work schedule's changed and I can't make Saturdays any more.  I hear Paul had to drop out of the Friday group; can I move my character over?"

In that particular instance, Laura wanted to keep running her goody-two-shoes elf, and the premise I had to concoct was her hiring the AEG to help rescue her sister, who'd been kidnapped by slavers and sold to the barbarians of the interior, with enough nasty details slipping out to have steam coming out of her elf's ears and suspend any qualms she had about the group torturing people for information or exacting sickening revenge.

But that was the bit which started the AEG off to history, and I haven't yet repeated the experiment.

Mafia movies and shows like the sopranos give a good model of how an evil party might function. I've taken a lot from that kind of gaming when parties end up evil in my fantasy or historical settings. Basically if they want to torment an Innkeeper, fine, but there ought to be a good reason for it (like they are shaking the inn down), or that kind of behavior is likely to catch up with them eventually if they're just randomly going around causing mayhem.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;830463Mafia movies and shows like the sopranos give a good model of how an evil party might function. I've taken a lot from that kind of gaming when parties end up evil in my fantasy or historical settings. Basically if they want to torment an Innkeeper, fine, but there ought to be a good reason for it (like they are shaking the inn down), or that kind of behavior is likely to catch up with them eventually if they're just randomly going around causing mayhem.

Catching up with them may require a society that is organized to include laws with penalties for tax evasion. ;)

Quote from: Bren;830470Catching up with them may require a society that is organized to include laws with penalties for tax evasion. ;)

They are different settings so the consequences will be different. In a fantasy setting, there are still going to be organized groups who don't want that kind of instability in town (The series Rome has some cool ideas here). In a fantasy setting an out of control evil party that just randomly slaughters innkeepers will make a lot of enemies and even attract adventuring parties after them. You need to excersize some restraint but eventually they'll murder the wrong innkeeper (maybe one whose brother is a powerful Mage for example).

Quote from: Opaopajr;830446All things sentient and effective are organized. Remember that. Even chaos has its own form of order, it's just one not immediately apparent.

Those who defy organization, even the loose and in-fighting ones, gets the horns. There's a reason for the idea "honor among thieves." There's an acceptable and unacceptable way of doing things; to belong you must accept such received taboos.

This is precisely the reason I always called bullshit on the Drow being called Chaotic Evil as their racial alignment. It made no sense to have the civilization they had.

Quote from: Opaopajr;830446Things hostile to the standing order have competition. Things selfish enough to assume expansion of their standing order upon nearby others makes more competition. Those who have competent competition do not survive long if they tolerate petty bullshit. In short, holders of power have real things to do lest all things fall apart. Holders of power are not so patient with petty bullshit.

Quote from: Opaopajr;830446Alignment is one of my favorite things, as is world building. I like to run IN SJG, D&D, and WW stuff because of such morality meters. In group v. out group morality, and the delicate hell of tightrope walking it, is meat and drink to my gaming. What advice would you like to explore?

That's funny. I am exactly the same way... which is why I don't use alignment. Alignment to me is "meta" - characters don't go around with signs on their heads saying LE, or CG or whatever. Actions and intent speak for themselves in my games. But yeah I see where you're coming from.

I played a game set in the Star Wars universe that the GM named "Star Basterds."  The game was set right after Return of the Jedi, and so we were the assholes who went and did the New Republic's dirty work.

We were a group of misfits who got to indulge our dark sides as players.  The game took some crazy dark turns, but it was overall a hell of a lot of fun.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;830475They are different settings so the consequences will be different. In a fantasy setting, there are still going to be organized groups who don't want that kind of instability in town (The series Rome has some cool ideas here). In a fantasy setting an out of control evil party that just randomly slaughters innkeepers will make a lot of enemies and even attract adventuring parties after them. You need to excersize some restraint but eventually they'll murder the wrong innkeeper (maybe one whose brother is a powerful Mage for example).

Agreed.

I don't run worlds where the PCs are above the law. Nor where the PCs are more powerful than the entire society they operate in. So PCs may murder people, but if they don't take care to make it look like the people they killed deserved it, or hide the bodies, or align themselves with someone or thing powerful enough to shield them from society's wrath, then their career will end in a hail of bullets (or the in universe equivalent) just like Bonny and Clyde.

Sounds like Edge of the Empire. We did something similar for Westend SW. One of the group was a Czerka employee... his job was to go to planets with his other co-workers, that had been located by Czerka Corp's scouts, and "clean" the planet of any distractions.

I got to play a Chiss agent infiltrating the Hutt cartels for one of the Darths. Everyone else was just a meat-and-potatos merc-crew. Much fun. Much dark.

Quote from: tenbones;830476This is precisely the reason I always called bullshit on the Drow being called Chaotic Evil as their racial alignment. It made no sense to have the civilization they had.

I am going to answer this RPG tidbit of setting with an observation I received from one of my history class textbooks and then relay it to a video game experience. Humanities major, we are allowed to work discordant magic (also known as "interdisciplinary studies" :p):

The medieval lands of France were compared to newly conquered medieval lands of the Turks. France, and much of Europe, diffused power through feudal nobility with significantly more autonomy. It was not uncommon for the nobility to fight amongst themselves continuous, with alliances ever shifting. Turks, and similar Sultanates and Caliphates, stratified feudal power with far less autonomy, and often lands remanded to the top leader's demesne. Scheming alliances were the norm as well, but this time highly focused within the capital's court, and often more oblique.

This made France a mess to get organized and mount offenses at the same caliber as the Turks. However, it meant everyone had a stake fighting for their own backyard and very difficult to retain peace. Conversely this made the Turks a mess to get organized and mount "guerrilla" warfare (more like continuous warfare) to oust invaders at the same caliber as the French. One's strict hierarchy and the other's lack of it offered different advantages and disadvantages.

Nonsensical it seems at first, but perhaps true when it comes down to logistics. Afghanistan and Vietnam are fantastic historical examples of fluid, nay seemingly chaotic, shifts of power alliances always grinding down colonizers to a standstill. Maybe there is a method to this madness.

Then, since simulations are good attempts to feel another unknown experience, there is Crusader Kings video game produced by Paradox Games. Suddenly you thrust yourself from typical Europa Universalis immortal mind behind world conquest and slip into dynastic feudal mindset. Suddenly the chaos of attacking your neighboring count while your duke or king is battling for his life seems like a sensible idea. Hey, it's all about marriages and prestige and piety, so as long as the religion or culture remains the same who cares?

Scattered into pieces like mercury droplets the nation of France falls apart and rebuilds constantly in CK, akin to history. Up until a foreign religion or culture threatens, then there shall never be peace again for the alien invader. Like a bee hive they pester and sting anywhere and everywhere until the bear backs off. Not explicitly organized in a hierarchy, but implicitly organized in a conspiracy.

Such is the logic of law and chaos organized.

Quote from: tenbones;830476That's funny. I am exactly the same way... which is why I don't use alignment. Alignment to me is "meta" - characters don't go around with signs on their heads saying LE, or CG or whatever. Actions and intent speak for themselves in my games. But yeah I see where you're coming from.

:) Characters don't walk around with alignment signs on their heads in my games either. And their actions usually speak for themselves. Though I do allow for subtlety, so seeming kindness or cruelty may have a different intent behind it.

Asking alignment, or using magic to reveal it, is considered the height of bad form in my game worlds. No one does it lightly, if they cannot at all avoid it. Besides, not all acts are filled with aligned intent, nor are they filled with pivotal importance to world view. Content, context, and degree matter. In example, sometimes being nice to an animal is its own reward and means little else. I don't run alignment as an always rigidly on, stark contrast, trip alarm or booby trap — that's shallow to me.

Though I understand why people forego these tools.

Despite the multi-level hierarchy, feudal states do seem rather chaotic. Chaotic Christians and Lawful Ottomans...I like it. :)

You should really play the game. It's such a head trip. You start thinking in this alien way without noticing, and when you catch yourself it is such a "whoa!" moment.

Another video game head trip is Cosmology of Kyoto. At first you go around and explore, die a lot, go through routines, read up on sites like a tourist. But then you wanna see more and try to solve the game, and that requires thinking in that medieval Japan frame of mind. By the 50th death, and now quite deep into Kyoto itself, you take a break and everything around you has to slip back into modern logic. Very much a "whoa!" moment, where you realize how fast the human mind can drop one framework for another.

Oh definitely. I understand exactly what you're saying. (I loves me some 4x games too - EU in particular is awesome.)

I think that the ultimate hierarchical nature of Drow society's religious theocracy demands more order than chaos if you're going to make the assumptions that D&D does about the size and scope of Drow civilization. Menzoberranzan for example is heralded for the world as the example when in reality it's a small Drow city by comparison to Eryndlyn and Ched Nassad or Guallidurth which sports over a million-drow each. And of course that's just the tip of the iceberg.

If they were chaotic-evil as a general pretext to social mores - they would have imploded down to much smaller, much more fractious but manageable sizes. Like your orc-tribes etc.

I'm glad that WotC changed them to Neutral Evil. It was more fitting given the conceits of circumstances.

I think we're pretty much on the same grounds, I just choose to dispense with the labels - though such magic like Detect Evil/Good do exist in my games, and work exactly the same way, I find the labels of Alignment have historically gotten in the way of genuine character reactions in regards to many of my player's interactions with others. Not *all* Drow are CE, nor are all Elves good. But the meta-aspect has over-ridden those intereactions fairly often enough to justify behavior that their character otherwise might not have done. After removing Alignment in play - Drow are still "evil", Elves are still generally "Good" - but my PC's have learned to take things a little less "surface-view" only.

I don't know about that assessment of the drow due to city population, either. Aztec territory was a patchwork of conquered city states constantly fighting each other, even when under the heel of Tenochtitlán. And each peripheral city was easily 100k plus to Tenochtitlán's 250k. Paris, the largest European city at the same time, was merely 80k. (This was as per my MesoAmerican college textbooks as of 1999. New info may have surfaced. Yes, I ran the gamut of college classes).

I readily give chaos its due.

As for FR, Calimport is a mess of a city, the largest on Faerûn at 2 million people. It is 52 major semi-autonomous districts who occasionally even go against each other. It holds itself together from sheer opportunity and pride of a glorious past mixed with paranoia of surrounding enemies and a hostile natural environment that ensures density. It sounds so very much like the Underdark on land it's funny.

I have no interest in convincing you my interpretation is the one true way. (Oh, who am I kidding, I'm a gamer. Of course you are a heretic to be burned. Why must we all lie about it? ;) ) But I found the alignment very plausible with things considered.

Quote from: Opaopajr;830498I don't know about that assessment of the drow due to city population, either. Aztec territory was a patchwork of conquered city states constantly fighting each other, even when under the heel of Tenochtitlán. And each peripheral city was easily 100k plus to Tenochtitlán's 250k. Paris, the largest European city at the same time, was merely 80k. (This was as per my MesoAmerican college textbooks as of 1999. New info may have surfaced. Yes, I ran the gamut of college classes).

I readily give chaos its due.

Interesting point. I don't think I'd classify the Aztecs as Chaotic Evil though for the very same reasons I don't think of Drow as Chaotic Evil. For me - Chaotic Evil means constant strife in order to establish a pecking order that only lasts as long as the current King of the Hill can keep their spot. That precludes an awful lot of organization and rules required to maintain large populaces under the direct control of someone.

I'm not convinced (but I could be with a good nudge) the Aztec culture hadn't already reached the "critical-mass" of size that moved the culture past "chaotic" and into "neutral" or even "lawful". My knowledge of Mezo-American cultures is a bit rusty but as I recall despite the fact they were indeed a feudal-like conglomeration of city-states, there was still a set of rules that transcended the immediacy of "chaos-might-makes-right" that I associate with more primitive social structures. I would personally look at the Aztecs as NE or LE.

I readily give chaos its due. I believe that large-scale "chaotic-evil" social structures are pretty rare. By large scale, I mean those that exist on their own under the rule of a singular entity and everyone gunning for them. Your mileage may vary.

Quote from: Opaopajr;830498As for FR, Calimport is a mess of a city, the largest on Faerûn at 2 million people. It is 52 major semi-autonomous districts who occasionally even go against each other. It holds itself together from sheer opportunity and pride of a glorious past mixed with paranoia of surrounding enemies and a hostile natural environment that ensures density. It sounds so very much like the Underdark on land it's funny.

I have no interest in convincing you my interpretation is the one true way. (Oh, who am I kidding, I'm a gamer. Of course you are a heretic to be burned. Why must we all lie about it? ;) ) But I found the alignment very plausible with things considered.

hahah!! I'm a gaming heathen to everyone.

Interesting that you bring up Calimport. I'm a big fan of Calimport - and while you're right it's made up of 52 different districts - they're not autonomous. Most of the leaders of these districts are appointed and/or are directly related to the big cheese. Again - I'm in agreement with you in that it's very much like Drow society (my current Spelljammer game has a half-drow who is from Calimport, yeah it's fucked up), but Calimport is closer to a NE/LE society than CE.

It's got rules man!!! RULES!!!

Quote from: tenbones;830522Interesting point. I don't think I'd classify the Aztecs as Chaotic Evil though for the very same reasons I don't think of Drow as Chaotic Evil. For me - Chaotic Evil means constant strife in order to establish a pecking order that only lasts as long as the current King of the Hill can keep their spot. That precludes an awful lot of organization and rules required to maintain large populaces under the direct control of someone.

But is that chaotic? It's not a very nice system, but it has order and structure. The strong rule the weak, and the underlings can challenge their way up the social ladder. I'd think that would fall more on the good-evil axis than the law-chaos one.

In that vien, is a society with laws always a lawful one? I think it's another case of not taking the alignments as cosmic laws of nature and more as guidelines to behavior.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;830537But is that chaotic? It's not a very nice system, but it has order and structure. The strong rule the weak, and the underlings can challenge their way up the social ladder. I'd think that would fall more on the good-evil axis than the law-chaos one.

In that vien, is a society with laws always a lawful one? I think it's another case of not taking the alignments as cosmic laws of nature and more as guidelines to behavior.

The funny thing is that in Real Life (r), law and chaos are far from mutually exclusive, as anyone who has filed their own tax return ca attest.

I would also second the idea of Mesoamerican society as the closest analogue of being a real-life CE society; although there are also good arguments for saying the same regarding Colonial Britain or Spain as its LE equivalents.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;830537But is that chaotic? It's not a very nice system, but it has order and structure. The strong rule the weak, and the underlings can challenge their way up the social ladder. I'd think that would fall more on the good-evil axis than the law-chaos one.

In that vien, is a society with laws always a lawful one? I think it's another case of not taking the alignments as cosmic laws of nature and more as guidelines to behavior.

Hehe now as we near the crux of the problem that I have with "Alignment" - you are getting into heart of the question.

IS it chaotic? Subjectivity is a bitch. For me - I'm not a believer in moral-relativism. I think there is a spectrum of "best practices" for ethics and likewise the sliding-scale downward of "worse practices". If someone does human-sacrifices for the best reasons and it's socially acceptable, that does not make it "good", for example. Even if everyone, including the sacrificial-goat does it willingly. But it is clearly "more good" than say - Cthulu-spawn eating random people in our village at random times during the year in the most horrible and violating ways possible in order to assuage the Great Old Ones...

So if you have a society that's Chaotic Evil - that means, *in general* EVERYONE is out to get theirs by any means necessary. Might and the means to get away with meeting those needs *is* the rule. And little else.

The curious things about social rules and laws, is that they create these little oases that allow the physically (usually) weaker to proliferate usually for a reason. By dint of this fact alone, you're creating a "less Chaotic Evil" society. This is not to say that large tribal ass-beating orcs can't have rules. Sure. But the way I see it, it's always going to come down to how those rules get enforced. It it's arbitrary and ends invariably with a club to the skull... then the point of the "rules" go flying out the window. You're in CE territory.

The hallmark of civilization is continuity of tradition. That might be your cue right there. If there are "traditions" of rules... then you're probably (but not always) out of the CE-society range. Look at Demons... they don't have "civilizations" in the Abyss... it's dog-eat-dog at all times.

Quote from: crazyfunster;830547The funny thing is that in Real Life (r), law and chaos are far from mutually exclusive, as anyone who has filed their own tax return ca attest.

I would also second the idea of Mesoamerican society as the closest analogue of being a real-life CE society; although there are also good arguments for saying the same regarding Colonial Britain or Spain as its LE equivalents.

did a little poking around (i.e. I read it on the interwebz) Man it's a close call. Due to the structure of the Aztec culture... they had all the hallmarks of going Lawful. They had courts and everything. But invariably rulings were Club-to-the-Head. But the thing is they had a lot of other accepted rules of conduct that doesn't remove the evil shit, but certainly creates a system of order that I don't attribute with Chaotic Evil cultures.

So yeah -there is a strong case of Aztec culture being CE. Of course it could be that they're just in the long social transition to LE or NE.

LOL the mere fact we're having this conversation on this topic is *exactly* why I don't use Alignment. Because if you walked around and cast Detect Evil in Aztec-Fantasy Land - you're gonna get the GREEN LIGHT.

That it's Chaotic/Lawful/Neutral - ultimately is irrelevant in terms of gameplay. What happens in-game is what happens. What do the PC's do?

As for playing EEEEEVIL Campaigns - my current game is a party of Drow in Spelljammer. Evil? Oh hell's to the yes. It can be done, you just have to stay on your toes as a GM and be even-handed.

Quote from: tenbones;830559That it's Chaotic/Lawful/Neutral - ultimately is irrelevant in terms of gameplay. What happens in-game is what happens. What do the PC's do?

I've been approaching alignment as a statement of intent by the player. I view it not as something to enforce on the character, but something to explore. Just as a merchant character might be interested in buying and selling goods, a good character might be interested in doing good deeds. It's not necessary, but neither is encumbrance or weapons versus armor tables. I wanted to see if I could make alignment work and be a fun part of the game, before tossing it aside.

I tend to go with 'there's as much Chaos as Law' in the world, I use a Classic D&D type Moorcockian framework, and there certainly can be Chaotic large scale societies, some of which like Nazi Germany & Maoist China are highly organised. Lawful societies have things like security of property rights and rules which bind rulers as much as ruled. They may have light laws and be lightly governed, while Chaotic societies may be totalitarian and oppressive  - though if the rules are entirely predictable and you can be sure of a fair trial it's not Chaotic.

Quote from: tenbones;830476This is precisely the reason I always called bullshit on the Drow being called Chaotic Evil as their racial alignment. It made no sense to have the civilization they had.

acording to drow of the underdark there only chaotic evil on there own those that live in drow society (which is most drow) are actually neutral evil

Quote from: Ratman_tf;830562I've been approaching alignment as a statement of intent by the player. I view it not as something to enforce on the character, but something to explore. Just as a merchant character might be interested in buying and selling goods, a good character might be interested in doing good deeds. It's not necessary, but neither is encumbrance or weapons versus armor tables. I wanted to see if I could make alignment work and be a fun part of the game, before tossing it aside.

Sure that's perfectly valid. I think the only time the real rubber for Chaotic/Law hits the proverbial road is when you do it like S'mon describes where they are actual metaphysical forces in the game acting upon the world. At that point - definitely it matters. (and I should mention I do use alignment for religious classes for this reason).

Quote from: tuypo1;830584acording to drow of the underdark there only chaotic evil on there own those that live in drow society (which is most drow) are actually neutral evil

Yeah I'm referring to classic Fiend Folio 1e and 2e drow. They made the NE switch in 3e.

ah i see.

Quote from: tenbones;830607Sure that's perfectly valid. I think the only time the real rubber for Chaotic/Law hits the proverbial road is when you do it like S'mon describes where they are actual metaphysical forces in the game acting upon the world. At that point - definitely it matters. (and I should mention I do use alignment for religious classes for this reason).

Yes, I think you need to make a decision in a game, are the Alignments real forces? If they are, as in Moorcock's Multiverse, then great. That's what I'm doing in my new Mystara campaign, and the Law vs Chaos conflict provides a lot of structure and explains many weird things about the setting & classic D&D (like how the Churches are only tangentially related to the Immortals).

If Alignment is not a real force in your world, I think it's better not to use it, at least not in any mechanical way.

I think that you, tenbones, have an implied hierarchy of stability attached to prosperity and conflate that upon the alignment grid. Which, since I am totally for GM determination of setting, works out perfectly well for you and your games. However do be aware of what assumptions you are baking into it.

The alignment grid is the entirety of moral thought and its relation to the world baked down to a two-axis Cartesian plane with nine convenient buckets. Something must get lost in translation. And the only one to interpret it is the creator/manager of the world, the GM.

For me, I bake into Law and Chaos the assumption that Law is structured upward instead of being diffused outward like Chaos. There is also my assumption of the tension between explicit versus implicit expectations (Code of Hammurabi stelae v. unspoken cultural taboos and mores). Further I assume tension between contiguous and/or overlapping contained life facet borders, and the lack thereof. (That would be the difference of military, law, econ, faith, culture, etc. homogeneity of boundaries -- very unlike feudal overlaps, weird pockets of distant representation, or boiling cosmopolitan centers.)

Again, running Birthright or Crusader Kings, or even personal travel, you see again and again the functioning chaos of life. I personally find it a disservice for my settings to render it cornered to violent, anarchic tribal states in the hinterland. As I layer alignment too, it gives me flexibility to state great cosmopolitan cities can feel more chaotic and have chaotic tendencies even though they are the seat of power in a very explicitly lawful society (e.g. Thyatis City within Thyatis Empire). I feel that an accessory or two of these ideas does not make the man, and similarly not make any nation or its territories under it.

But that's how I keep the two-axes alive and interesting in my games. It keeps my evil and good more complex when I turn down the contrast dial, and asks more from my players than "petty evil." (Oh, and you're a heretic who must be burned. XOXO :p)

Quote from: Opaopajr;830680I think that you, tenbones, have an implied hierarchy of stability attached to prosperity and conflate that upon the alignment grid. Which, since I am totally for GM determination of setting, works out perfectly well for you and your games. However do be aware of what assumptions you are baking into it.

Nope. I don't use the alignment grid as anything other than a general signpost. PC's don't have them on their character-sheets for anything other than an arbitrary doodle that happens to look exactly like the english letters that spell an "alignment".

I think you're grossly, but respectfully overstating (and overthinking) my position on Alignment. To me - it serves no purpose unless you're manifesting these labels as functioning "social structures" - albeit on a cosmic scale within your game. If these labels are actually forces that one "signs up with" for example. If you're running a Moorcock-flavored game with Law vs. Chaos, then Alignment absolutely makes sense to me.

I generally don't (but have in the past).

Quote from: Opaopajr;830680The alignment grid is the entirety of moral thought and its relation to the world baked down to a two-axis Cartesian plane with nine convenient buckets. Something must get lost in translation. And the only one to interpret it is the creator/manager of the world, the GM.

Certainly. But the discussion is NEVER about this fact that you can contain the entirety of the abstract concept of moral thought in nine categories. I can do it on line too. Or I can do it in three boxes - no one is debating that morality can be quantified and codified for the purposes of a game. I certainly am not.

It's about where the boundaries of your labels actually have mechanical use in your game that adds to the game vs. being representative of some thing that people generally aren't uniform in their understanding. This is precisely why people argue about stupid shit like Batman's alignment, the alignment of ALL the Nazis, the alignment of my rear-differential (joke) etc.

I think it's perfectly fine to use Alignment as a general descriptor of a culture with the blunt assumption that how that alignment might be manifest might still be different on an individual basis.

Quote from: Opaopajr;830680For me, I bake into Law and Chaos the assumption that Law is structured upward instead of being diffused outward like Chaos. There is also my assumption of the tension between explicit versus implicit expectations (Code of Hammurabi stelae v. unspoken cultural taboos and mores). Further I assume tension between contiguous and/or overlapping contained life facet borders, and the lack thereof. (That would be the difference of military, law, econ, faith, culture, etc. homogeneity of boundaries -- very unlike feudal overlaps, weird pockets of distant representation, or boiling cosmopolitan centers.)

This is actually how I approach it without the labels, because I find the labels useless in terms of the game. Cultures are rarely so homogenous that each individual member of each culture holds the exact same values.There is usually some drift from that harder center. Likewise cultures have different forms of consciousness and experience that actually flavor their outlook of "alignment". How Lawful Good manifests among tribal folks and sophisticated city dwellers doesn't necessarily mean cultural taboos of one aren't crossed with the other and they find themselves at odds for example. There is, as you've stated overlap.

I find that when people discuss alignment, it generally gets into these tedious one-off examples as representative of the norm. When in reality, they're just signposts of general abstraction that really doesn't impact the game beyond the needs of the conceits of your particular game.

Quote from: Opaopajr;830680Again, running Birthright or Crusader Kings, or even personal travel, you see again and again the functioning chaos of life. I personally find it a disservice for my settings to render it cornered to violent, anarchic tribal states in the hinterland. As I layer alignment too, it gives me flexibility to state great cosmopolitan cities can feel more chaotic and have chaotic tendencies even though they are the seat of power in a very explicitly lawful society (e.g. Thyatis City within Thyatis Empire). I feel that an accessory or two of these ideas does not make the man, and similarly not make any nation or its territories under it.

When I travel the US, or when I'm in Asia - I don't see signs about alignment. Some places are much more chaotic than lawful, likewise I can portray that in my campaigns without needing to be explicit (but I can and do if the players ask in general, because the use of shorthand - which alignment is - is useful). Beyond that - outside of Gods and religion or organizational mandates, I simply don't have much for it.

Quote from: Opaopajr;830680But that's how I keep the two-axes alive and interesting in my games. It keeps my evil and good more complex when I turn down the contrast dial, and asks more from my players than "petty evil." (Oh, and you're a heretic who must be burned. XOXO :p)

I don't think anyone in my games has ever told me my use/non-use of alignment is an issue. In fact, I've had more WHOA! positive-moments when I've had players play without worrying what I think their alignment is and vice versa and just playing the game. Some have found themselves drifting from the moral centers they thought their characters possessed, only to fight to get back there - and it has produced some fantastic gameplay. Most times people who don't give alignment enough thought - like you obviously have, use it to justify their actions instead of exemplifying it.

The irony is - if everyone DID that... alignment would not need to exist. But of course that will never happen.

As a curiosity - do you use alignment in all your RPGs that don't have it?

I tried to make a game setting for a player who wanted to play a GURPS Bale (a fantasy race that drinks blood, but isn't a vampire). Being a simulationist, detail-oriented GM, I made a map of the fortress, the prison for keeping blood slaves, and started detailing the blood slave population... when I was confronted by how horrible the lives of the blood slaves would be.  It showed clearly how horrible the consequences of the idea were, and the abomination rose up and destroyed the desire to play that situation, before I could go any farther with the setup. And I stopped.

I find that when games admit the detailed humanity of the victims, my interest in gaming the situation gets killed, in a good way, but a way that also has me stop playing. It was a good thing to learn, but it didn't lead to a game.

I've had similar experience with combat games that have detailed people for the combatants on both sides, detailed violence, and high casualty rates. I no longer wanted to play war, probably akin to how real veterans don't want to fight or talk about war after having seen the reality, loss and suffering of it.

...

As for alignments, I've always thought D&D alignments were a crude artificial construct, though perhaps needed to help organize the thousands of monsters and character types and their behavior in an efficient way.

I mostly play systems that don't use alignments, and have pretty much never wanted to. What I do use is honor codes and cultural mores and character traits and so on, but they're not simple grid values like in D&D. Chaos/Order and Good/Evil rarely describe the morality or alignment of the people or creatures in my worlds.

Quote from: Skarg;830820I've had similar experience with combat games that have detailed people for the combatants on both sides, detailed violence, and high casualty rates. I no longer wanted to play war, probably akin to how real veterans don't want to fight or talk about war after having seen the reality, loss and suffering of it.

I like those games - long as I can play a regular grunt just trying to stay alive, keep his friends alive, and dream of home. I recall a Wehrmacht WW2 game I played in like that fell apart when the GM wanted my PC to join the elite Brandeburgers, and I was  horrified at the notion.

Quote from: Skarg;830820I tried to make a game setting for a player who wanted to play a GURPS Bale (a fantasy race that drinks blood, but isn't a vampire). Being a simulationist, detail-oriented GM, I made a map of the fortress, the prison for keeping blood slaves, and started detailing the blood slave population... when I was confronted by how horrible the lives of the blood slaves would be.  It showed clearly how horrible the consequences of the idea were, and the abomination rose up and destroyed the desire to play that situation, before I could go any farther with the setup. And I stopped.

I find that when games admit the detailed humanity of the victims, my interest in gaming the situation gets killed, in a good way, but a way that also has me stop playing. It was a good thing to learn, but it didn't lead to a game.

I've had similar experience with combat games that have detailed people for the combatants on both sides, detailed violence, and high casualty rates. I no longer wanted to play war, probably akin to how real veterans don't want to fight or talk about war after having seen the reality, loss and suffering of it.

...

As for alignments, I've always thought D&D alignments were a crude artificial construct, though perhaps needed to help organize the thousands of monsters and character types and their behavior in an efficient way.

I mostly play systems that don't use alignments, and have pretty much never wanted to. What I do use is honor codes and cultural mores and character traits and so on, but they're not simple grid values like in D&D. Chaos/Order and Good/Evil rarely describe the morality or alignment of the people or creatures in my worlds.

Well, the good news is that the blood slave campaign can totally be turned around if the players want to be good guys rescuing them. Wouldn't be the same of course but your background material could come to great use.

Playing the "bad guys" most often sounds like a bad idea, no pun intended. Except I kinda want to play the Cosa Nostra. No, wait bad, baaad. But ooooh, what about Vikings?? :D Oh shoot, let people play whatever they want.

If you want to see Dark Elves (Drow) done excellently, I highly recommend Dan Abnett's Chronicles of Malus Darkblade, especially if you are fan of Warhammer. Malus is utterly Chaotic Evil (far worse than Elric), yet he works as the protagonist because the other characters are equally bad, if not worse, than him.

Every Vampire campaign I played was an Evil Campaign, because every PC was an bloodsucking monster seeking power. It worked fine, but of course, there was plenty of backstabbing too.

As for alignment, I really like it. It's an easy shorthand, but it was never meant to be the be-all, end-all of your PC's personality.

Quote from: tenbones;830714Nope. I don't use the alignment grid as anything other than a general signpost. PC's don't have them on their character-sheets for anything other than an arbitrary doodle that happens to look exactly like the english letters that spell an "alignment".

I think you're grossly, but respectfully overstating (and overthinking) my position on Alignment. To me - it serves no purpose unless you're manifesting these labels as functioning "social structures" - albeit on a cosmic scale within your game. If these labels are actually forces that one "signs up with" for example. If you're running a Moorcock-flavored game with Law vs. Chaos, then Alignment absolutely makes sense to me.

I generally don't (but have in the past).

Your own usage of alignment within your campaign, and your position on its purpose to a campaign, is irrelevant for this conversation as you have already expressed an opinion on what CE seems like to you. That is not what I am talking about or interested in. We are having a GM-to-GM disagreement on the manifestation CE and whether drow society would fit that conception.

I am explaining how I see that CE works for drow society in my view.

I am deducing what assumptions you are baking into your view of CE that inclines you to disagree.

There is no more to read into it than that.

Quote from: tenbones;830714Certainly. But the discussion is NEVER about this fact that you can contain the entirety of the abstract concept of moral thought in nine categories. I can do it on line too. Or I can do it in three boxes - no one is debating that morality can be quantified and codified for the purposes of a game. I certainly am not.

I do believe I have stated that I am aware of other game systems and their conception of alignment and morality within their system.
:)

Quote from: tenbones;830714It's about where the boundaries of your labels actually have mechanical use in your game that adds to the game vs. being representative of some thing that people generally aren't uniform in their understanding. This is precisely why people argue about stupid shit like Batman's alignment, the alignment of ALL the Nazis, the alignment of my rear-differential (joke) etc.

That is the point, it isn't uniform. To understand it, and setting, you are to turn to the GM who is final arbiter of all definitions. There is no argument about who defines the GM's rules in Imagination Land -- its the GM's imagination, you're just playing in it, you offer trust in turn that you won't get arbitrarily screwed. Want clarity, ask. (Even received canon material habitually lays final arbitration at the table GM's feet.)

One big difference between the mechanic existing and not is it brings up this conversation faster than relying on floating table assumptions. All IC groups have boundaries, and there's OOC interpretations of said boundaries. Better to hash out that conversation before than later. The GM should be communicating constantly about what PCs know IC to their players.

Quote from: tenbones;830714I find that when people discuss alignment, it generally gets into these tedious one-off examples as representative of the norm. When in reality, they're just signposts of general abstraction that really doesn't impact the game beyond the needs of the conceits of your particular game.

Yes, they are signposts of general abstraction (to be clarified at the table). But what do you mean about them not impacting "the game beyond the needs of the conceits of your particular game?" That reads to me as the world's context, its atmosphere, and the likely manner of its responses. Those are to me very in-game impacts. I am likely reading you wrong, what is it you are trying to say?

Quote from: tenbones;830714I don't think anyone in my games has ever told me my use/non-use of alignment is an issue. In fact, I've had more WHOA! positive-moments when I've had players play without worrying what I think their alignment is and vice versa and just playing the game. Some have found themselves drifting from the moral centers they thought their characters possessed, only to fight to get back there - and it has produced some fantastic gameplay. Most times people who don't give alignment enough thought - like you obviously have, use it to justify their actions instead of exemplifying it.

The irony is - if everyone DID that... alignment would not need to exist. But of course that will never happen.

As a curiosity - do you use alignment in all your RPGs that don't have it?

I find alignment, in its various system forms, highly motivating to my play and my world motion. I honestly could care less about "adventure," or "loot," until it is tied into the framework of something more expressive in manner. It's just an imaginary name on paper. Its interest is in its attached impact  outside of a mechanical sense. Things to do with history, atmosphere, character motivation, etc. move me.

So, I view CoC and Sanity as alignment. You are team humanity, in all its glorious foibles (hence gangster and dilettante playing with nun and professor). Lose too much and you become the monster.

But I get into issues when I game concepts that have multiple implied assumptions but no one bothered to openly define and select which ones they are applying. A big challenging one here for me is Supers. There's a diverse array of representing cartoons, Supers, and their genre assumptions. I try not to assume, but then am left with operating on logical coherence. For example, there's no logical justification of continually leaving the more modern and homicidal Joker alive... Without morality explicit, and coherence flouted, I'm left in the wind.

As for games without an alignment, I'm at a bit of a loss to think of one I play at the moment. Those that I did were joke sessions where I fucked around and waited for a better game for me. Again, trinkets and derring-do is not what I play for, I want character motivation and exploration. I am OK with emergent characterization, but again a concept sketch helps (and that's where alignment tools shine once more).

What game were you thinking of?

Quote from: Opaopajr;830935That is the point, it isn't uniform. To understand it, and setting, you are to turn to the GM who is final arbiter of all definitions. There is no argument about who defines the GM's rules in Imagination Land -- its the GM's imagination, you're just playing in it, you offer trust in turn that you won't get arbitrarily screwed. Want clarity, ask. (Even received canon material habitually lays final arbitration at the table GM's feet.)

Sure. Again, I don't think we're saying much different. I do pretty much exactly this.

Quote from: Opaopajr;830935One big difference between the mechanic existing and not is it brings up this conversation faster than relying on floating table assumptions. All IC groups have boundaries, and there's OOC interpretations of said boundaries. Better to hash out that conversation before than later. The GM should be communicating constantly about what PCs know IC to their players.

Right. I need to clarify that before I start any campaign, we usually have a big sit-down to discuss the starting parameters. I take extra care to make sure that my players understand the cultural backdrop of where they're playing and/or where they're from to inform their character choices during chargen. Sure - as a GM you should give the general ethical disposition of the respective cultures as you interpret them so the PC's can act accordingly.

A good example is my current game I'm running...

In my FR game - Lolth died about 150-years ago. The major cities of the Drow essentially imploded. Without the immediate power-structure of the Lolth matriarchy, the Houses fell upon one another with wild abandon, to the point that by the time anyone of significance had taken a breather to look at the big picture, the Drow's enemies were sharpening their knives and waiting.

So essentially the Drow 'civilization' is in utter shambles. It's different from city to city. So I drilled down into specifics based on some of the PC's are from different Underdark cities. Let's say the last 150-years has been Chaotic Evil. Completely post-apocalyptic. They've survived by extreme measures in bands and armed groups. Some have eventually tried making it out of the Underdark to havens they've heard rumors about. But essentially I reflected what Chaotic Evil is in the purest tribal sense - where "tribal" only exists as a term of a group of individuals pack-fighting together through force of strength and will.

ALL that said... I did not require that my players tell me explicitly *they* are CE. They can play how they feel is appropriate for their characters given those circumstances. Much like Drizzt Do'Urden is "good" despite the cultural probability that demands the unlikeliness of such a fact - it is what it is.

Now we're in Spelljammer (the Drow here have a very different culture). The PC's are blind to a lot of that and are being forced to learn the hard way. At no point do I bludgeon them with the idea that "alignment" is a necessary factor. The scheme of "law and order" and "evil and good" are most definitely in play, but it's something to be explored in-game.

Having said all that - I recognize the desire for GM's to use Alignment to provide that shorthand (I use it in a much more shorter-hand by not using the general labels implicitly). It does require a certain amount of work or awareness and attention detail to it my way that many GM's probably don't want to do. But I find it very rewarding to it this way, as do my players.

Currently my campaign is squarely and "EEEEEVIL Campaign". Most of the PC's are hard-bitten survivors of a race that is essentially an "endangered species". And they are overcoming great distrust for one another and the world to explore how their ruthlessness might be channeled into hope for the survival of their race among the stars. Yep. It's pretty epic in scope.

Quote from: Opaopajr;830935Yes, they are signposts of general abstraction (to be clarified at the table). But what do you mean about them not impacting "the game beyond the needs of the conceits of your particular game?" That reads to me as the world's context, its atmosphere, and the likely manner of its responses. Those are to me very in-game impacts. I am likely reading you wrong, what is it you are trying to say?

What I mean is by saying the Kingdom of Alpha is Lawful Good - whereas next door, the Caliphate of Beta is Chaotic Good, does nothing to impact the on-the-ground play of the game where the PC's are doing whatever PC's do. It's more of a convenience for the GM who *should* know this stuff. Yes as you pointed out the atmosphere and context is most certainly impacted. But PC's don't play on the State-Level in my games. As I've said - it's perfectly fine to label your cultures alignment. I'm more of a rubber-meets-the-road kinda GM. *I* know what a cultures general alignment is, I don't presume that all my PC's do (depends on their background). Most of that stuff is fodder for the PC's to base their character from or to interact with as their character.

At no point do I need to correct a player on their alignment. The alignment of a culture will do that for me. If they're playing CE assholes... the Magistrate will show up and deal with them. If the locale they're at has a cultural tone and rules that are accordingly different - then the PC's will have to deal with them at that level in play.

It's for the same reason I don't ask the GM when I'm playing in a modern game what the alignment of New York City is and base my behavior on that. I just play based on my character's background. I don't begrudge a player to slap an Alignment on their sheet either. If that helps them - rock on.

Quote from: Opaopajr;830935I find alignment, in its various system forms, highly motivating to my play and my world motion. I honestly could care less about "adventure," or "loot," until it is tied into the framework of something more expressive in manner. It's just an imaginary name on paper. Its interest is in its attached impact  outside of a mechanical sense. Things to do with history, atmosphere, character motivation, etc. move me.

Same here. All I'm saying is I don't need to implictly label anything an "alignment". That's all. I'm more into building consistency of atmosphere and letting the PC's run wild.

Quote from: Opaopajr;830935So, I view CoC and Sanity as alignment. You are team humanity, in all its glorious foibles (hence gangster and dilettante playing with nun and professor). Lose too much and you become the monster.

I think Sanity and Alignment are different. Sanity has a direct impact on CoC play. Alignment mechanical impact is negligible. I also don't think Sanity and Alignment are the same (and you're not making that claim technically either) - but in my old age I've become wary of games that implicitly try to make demands about the morality of a character in play without real mechanical significance. Sanity works in CoC because, well, Cthulu Mythos are all about the fact that they drive you batshit nuts when confronted with extra-dimensional horrors and whatnot. This is why they put optional Sanity rules in D&D... because lets face it, if Sanity in CoC were "real" - then everyone in D&D would be batshit nuts on day three. We make excuses based on the context of the genre. To me this underscores my general feeling that Alignment is less important.

Quote from: Opaopajr;830935But I get into issues when I game concepts that have multiple implied assumptions but no one bothered to openly define and select which ones they are applying. A big challenging one here for me is Supers. There's a diverse array of representing cartoons, Supers, and their genre assumptions. I try not to assume, but then am left with operating on logical coherence. For example, there's no logical justification of continually leaving the more modern and homicidal Joker alive... Without morality explicit, and coherence flouted, I'm left in the wind.

As for games without an alignment, I'm at a bit of a loss to think of one I play at the moment. Those that I did were joke sessions where I fucked around and waited for a better game for me. Again, trinkets and derring-do is not what I play for, I want character motivation and exploration. I am OK with emergent characterization, but again a concept sketch helps (and that's where alignment tools shine once more).

What game were you thinking of?

Ahh! This is exactly what I was thinking of. Supers. This is what broke me of using Alignment in D&D because in FASERIP I was finding myself perturbed at the way the Karma system worked. It was keeping some of my players from playing the kinds of characters they wanted to play, and from me to run the kinds of games I wanted to run. (I revamped the Karma system entirely).

Essentially it wasn't so much that I wanted to give players the ability to kill people (obviously, it's Supers, right?) But I wanted some "texture" vs. only incentivizing them to try and act like a "Captain Trueheart". If you're doing Silver-Age style Supers, fine, but that's not what I'm doing. Some of my players were like Batman and they simply could make no progress by beating that ass in back-alleys and still be considered heroes by that standard. And exploring the ethics and morality of being a superhero is kinda interesting for me as a GM.

That's when I decided to make things more flexible and react to the PC's like in the comics naturally vs. mechanically. Popularity and how they are perceived is a big part of it. If they go around smashing shit up - they WILL look like Villains. Spiderman, Daredevil, Batman - all of them were perceived as such early in their careers (some longer). And if players toss their hands up and say "Well I may as well be a villain because no one is treating me like a hero" - then go that route... don't be surprised when the sky's go dark and a lightning-shooting hammer clubs your ass upside the head for robbing a bank, or whatever because you don't have the intestinal fortitude to go the extra mile to be the hero you want to be.

Not to say that everyone ends up like this. I'm just saying - if the game fully accepts the abilities and capacities of the PC's in play, then there will always be checks and balances that render Alignment largely (but not always) unnecessary to be implicit. Of course this is in my games... YMMV.

Yeah I'd second the idea that Dark Heresy is a great framework for evil as fuck PC campaigns that "work".

No matter what, all of my friends played their characters as sadistic, if not cold-heartedly cruel, murdering opportunists. Yet, they somehow worked together consistently.

Well, not entirely true: distrusting and murdering the party's Psyker was always a recurring theme.

Evil Campaigns *generally* are hard for GM's to either run or players to play, simply because most people aren't *eeevvvil* to the degree that it can sustain the "fun-factor" for prolonged periods of time without a real goal.

But I could say the same thing about "good campaigns"...

I played a short-lived Necessary Evil campaign that probably could have worked for a while if our player schedule had worked. Necessary Evil is a Savage Worlds Superheroes setting where aliens tricked the Good Guys to leave the planet to save them, and then the aliens whacked them. So all that's left to save the Earth are the villains...cuz no alien scum is going to rule my planet that I plan to subjugate to my will!

I played a tentacle blob mutant villain and it was a blast. We saved a school bus full of kids from the aliens and before the kids could thank us, I ate one of them. But hey, we saved the other 29! I was just taking my cut!

Quote from: Spinachcat;831027I played a tentacle blob mutant villain and it was a blast. We saved a school bus full of kids from the aliens and before the kids could thank us, I ate one of them. But hey, we saved the other 29! I was just taking my cut!

:rotfl: That made me laugh. Then I read it to my wife and we both laughed. :D

Quote from: Spinachcat;830899If you want to see Dark Elves (Drow) done excellently, I highly recommend Dan Abnett's Chronicles of Malus Darkblade, especially if you are fan of Warhammer. Malus is utterly Chaotic Evil (far worse than Elric), yet he works as the protagonist because the other characters are equally bad, if not worse, than him.

Every Vampire campaign I played was an Evil Campaign, because every PC was an bloodsucking monster seeking power. It worked fine, but of course, there was plenty of backstabbing too.

As for alignment, I really like it. It's an easy shorthand, but it was never meant to be the be-all, end-all of your PC's personality.

I think you're saying everything I've been trying to convey in like 1% of my words. The only difference, I just shrugged and tossed Alignment out, mostly.

Quote from: tenbones;830947What I mean is by saying the Kingdom of Alpha is Lawful Good - whereas next door, the Caliphate of Beta is Chaotic Good, does nothing to impact the on-the-ground play of the game where the PC's are doing whatever PC's do. It's more of a convenience for the GM who *should* know this stuff. Yes as you pointed out the atmosphere and context is most certainly impacted. But PC's don't play on the State-Level in my games. As I've said - it's perfectly fine to label your cultures alignment. I'm more of a rubber-meets-the-road kinda GM. *I* know what a cultures general alignment is, I don't presume that all my PC's do (depends on their background). Most of that stuff is fodder for the PC's to base their character from or to interact with as their character.

At no point do I need to correct a player on their alignment. The alignment of a culture will do that for me. If they're playing CE assholes... the Magistrate will show up and deal with them. If the locale they're at has a cultural tone and rules that are accordingly different - then the PC's will have to deal with them at that level in play.

Quote from: tenbones;830947I think Sanity and Alignment are different. Sanity has a direct impact on CoC play. Alignment mechanical impact is negligible. I also don't think Sanity and Alignment are the same (and you're not making that claim technically either) - but in my old age I've become wary of games that implicitly try to make demands about the morality of a character in play without real mechanical significance. Sanity works in CoC because, well, Cthulu Mythos are all about the fact that they drive you batshit nuts when confronted with extra-dimensional horrors and whatnot. This is why they put optional Sanity rules in D&D... because lets face it, if Sanity in CoC were "real" - then everyone in D&D would be batshit nuts on day three. We make excuses based on the context of the genre. To me this underscores my general feeling that Alignment is less important.

Fascinating. I think this captures our divergent opinions. I find alignment affecting on down through the glazed layers and having mechanical impact. I actually do run the alignment penalty of XP reset and relearn your alignment through a "wasted level." As the rubber meets the road, each glaze greater tints the actions of the smaller including the descriptors of PCs actions and perceptions.

Like, I will describe how an NPC or PC's combat style is shaped by their attitude, their boundaries of "honorable" body targets and the like (going for the 'nads, sand in the eyes, etc.). Or how an NPC divergent from the general society will seem furtive in their alignment approach to day to day activities, like being conspiratorial when offering charity. It sometimes affects how I clue in PCs on that sixth sense, such as LG general suspicion to people from notorious regions (that are OOC knowledge LE) leading to more Insight checks ("He seems like he's telling the truth, this time, but y'know when in Thay...").

As world view shapes attitude and approach, it begins to conflict on down and shape responses. Then masking demeanors become useful feints from discovery. It then colors some side descriptive commentary I feed my players (i.e. good more trusting, evil more paranoid). There are rewards to each approach; paranoia has more caution, though it insults proffered trust, and vice versa.

It also explains why I find the alignment XP penalty useful. You learned one way to approach the world. Changing your world view changes your core, which changes your approach to the world. Re-seeing the world with new eyes, and acting upon this new lens, takes time.

That said, a lot of the labeling stays off scene even as it tints its own slice of the world. Players should know about why I feed their IC biases, and whether to stick with or change as they see fit. Then the shorthand as tinted lenses atop each other is a quick shorthand for me about responses and agendas.

Quote from: Opaopajr;831048Fascinating. I think this captures our divergent opinions. I find alignment affecting on down through the glazed layers and having mechanical impact. I actually do run the alignment penalty of XP reset and relearn your alignment through a "wasted level." As the rubber meets the road, each glaze greater tints the actions of the smaller including the descriptors of PCs actions and perceptions.

Like, I will describe how an NPC or PC's combat style is shaped by their attitude, their boundaries of "honorable" body targets and the like (going for the 'nads, sand in the eyes, etc.). Or how an NPC divergent from the general society will seem furtive in their alignment approach to day to day activities, like being conspiratorial when offering charity. It sometimes affects how I clue in PCs on that sixth sense, such as LG general suspicion to people from notorious regions (that are OOC knowledge LE) leading to more Insight checks ("He seems like he's telling the truth, this time, but y'know when in Thay...").

As world view shapes attitude and approach, it begins to conflict on down and shape responses. Then masking demeanors become useful feints from discovery. It then colors some side descriptive commentary I feed my players (i.e. good more trusting, evil more paranoid). There are rewards to each approach; paranoia has more caution, though it insults proffered trust, and vice versa.

It also explains why I find the alignment XP penalty useful. You learned one way to approach the world. Changing your world view changes your core, which changes your approach to the world. Re-seeing the world with new eyes, and acting upon this new lens, takes time.

That said, a lot of the labeling stays off scene even as it tints its own slice of the world. Players should know about why I feed their IC biases, and whether to stick with or change as they see fit. Then the shorthand as tinted lenses atop each other is a quick shorthand for me about responses and agendas.

See? We're actually saying/doing the same thing with one minor difference - you're using Alignment exactly how I think it should be used. You're tying it directly to the mechanics of how your campaign operates and giving it what I think is fine attribution.

I don't use that mechanic, and therefore don't need Alignment. I think either one of us would feel perfectly at home in one another's game. Even if we were... EEEEEEEEEEVIIIIL!

Edit: I should note - the mechanical point where I do use "alignment", softly, is through Faction. I've been exploring creating Factions for my campaign, and some factions are most definitely going to require taking a ethical/non-ethical approach to rank up in. I've pushed alignment to the social impact of play, you're doing it directly tied to progression. General level progression is something I'm currently de-emphasizing in my game. This is our first campaign where we're doing Milestone leveling.

Well, to be fair, I also level players excruciatingly slow, so though the mechanic is there its importance fades through distance. Granted that makes it an even larger time-out penalty. But there is so much time in between there's room for atonement before too heavy a shift accrues to new alignment.

I'd recommend Complete Handbook Thieves for a good primer on guild/faction creation. They also mention alignment as well as both competing social approaches in the face of different merchant guild and law enforcement alignments. Useful all around to sketch social play and internal faction-izing.

My big thing for running 1st time team evil is "short leash" and "keep idle hands busy." That sets the paranoid tone of leaders and keeps players from slipping into boredom induced petty evil. Also a powerful, yet resented boss in the in-group keeps the pressure on, curbing in-fighting through mutual oppression. It's a finesse thing, be sure to not oppress too hard and keep up the value of belonging -- though feel free to stunt growth by the occasional item losses or wild goose chases.

I have zero interest in running an "EEEEVIL" type of campaign. A campaign of good vs. evil? Sure.  A campaign of morally-shady assholes? No problem. But one where everyone's a sith lord? Just seems adolescent and dumb to me.

Quote from: RPGPundit;831387I have zero interest in running an "EEEEVIL" type of campaign. A campaign of good vs. evil? Sure.  A campaign of morally-shady assholes? No problem. But one where everyone's a sith lord? Just seems adolescent and dumb to me.

I think all three of those things can fall under an "EEEEVIL" campaign. Most of my "evil" campaigns are purely situational. I don't demand my players be "good" (or evil for that matter) - but some things are natural fits.

Drow <> Sith Lord. It all depends on how it's handled. Anything can be adolescent, the care given has to, invariably, rest with the GM to make the repercussions, both good and bad, be meaningful. I could very much run a Sith campaign and it would not be adolescent at all. I would point to the possibilities found in the context of the Old Republic series. It is not only possible, it might damn well be glorious... The best part about doing Sith is the possibility of redemption, or even the possibility of forging a new path with the Force. It's been done - even among the Sith (though they're usually hunted down and killed for it. But hey! that's part of the fun!)

Quote from: Skarg;830820Being a simulationist, detail-oriented GM, I made a map of the fortress, the prison for keeping blood slaves, and started detailing the blood slave population... when I was confronted by how horrible the lives of the blood slaves would be.  It showed clearly how horrible the consequences of the idea were, and the abomination rose up and destroyed the desire to play that situation, before I could go any farther with the setup. And I stopped.

The most chilling RPG product I've ever seen is GURPS Banestorm: Abydos, which for those who haven't seen it takes a city permeated with necromancy, slavery and a high degree of callousness to some logical conclusions.  It's the only RPG book that ever, IMHO, justifies its front page content warning.  It's a brilliant work, and at times a sickening one.

When I GM I barely bother with alignment. Then again, I barely bother with D&D as a GM.... most games don't have alignment systems.

As a player I've only played in one 'Evil' campaign, which was Drow specific. It degenerated very quickly into Chaotic-stupid, and the GM eventually whacked the party, I think deliberately.  Then again, I think his take on 'evil parties' was part of the problem.

I don't have a problem, conceptually, with an 'all sith' party. Hell, I've seen world building 'team evil' from the Starwars MMORPG that works just fine.

I think an important lesson can be learned here for non-evil campaigns.  Villains should be rather more complex than 'slaughter the innkeeper and rape his daughter because... tuesday' in most cases.  If chaotic stupid parties are dumb and boring, than chaotic stupid bad guys are just as dumb and boring. That shit doesn't get out of the 'local bandit/thug' level.

Quote from: Spike;831842I think an important lesson can be learned here for non-evil campaigns.  Villains should be rather more complex than 'slaughter the innkeeper and rape his daughter because... tuesday' in most cases.  If chaotic stupid parties are dumb and boring, than chaotic stupid bad guys are just as dumb and boring. That shit doesn't get out of the 'local bandit/thug' level.

Exactly right.

It's the same lesson to learn about Good on Crusade/Jihad. Paladins reduced to evil radars smiting everything, down to impure thoughts in the playground, are as dumb. If the game revolves around how big your virtual combat penis is, then everything will be fucked over as a matter of course.

The challenge? Make the setting real, cohesive, functional. ROFLStomp dumb combat bunnies through overwhelming numbers until they know that shit don't fly. Setting means something, your character sheet not so much.

Why would that behavior be tolerated in any society that can feed itself through the next spate of harsh seasonal weather? Alignment doesn't even factor in that level of dysfunction. It's an issue of player interpretation: violence hammer smites all problem nails. It's a GM's job to change that paradigm.

a lot of people seem to forget that the reason drow society works is because lolth makes it work. She carefuly watches the drow and whenever somebody gets to powerful she kills them and she is always doing other subtle things to keep things running.

Quote from: tuypo1;832165a lot of people seem to forget that the reason drow society works is because lolth makes it work. She carefuly watches the drow and whenever somebody gets to powerful she kills them and she is always doing other subtle things to keep things running.

The presumption of thousands of years of this kind of behavior would almost demand Neutral/Lawful evil to dominate as a cultural alignment. Being Chaotic Evil is doable - but it would attract unnecessary attention. No one in Drow society (RAW) is unaware or above the scrutiny of Lolth. And for that reason alone - they would be forced to establish as much order as possible to retain their position without moving so fast that Lolth would destroy them. Order is necessary. Brute force can exist - surely, but it's a quick way to a knife in the back or a trip to the Demonweb Pits if you're "too good" at it.

At least that's how I see it.

pretty much yeah

edit: although i think most drow dont know what happens when you get to strong but i could be wrong

Lots of hot air here (in my post, I mean), because I like both topics (alignment & evil campaigns).

I've never run or played in an evil campaign, but I've thought a bit about it. I think it probably comes down to having a smart, socially well-adjusted group. People who don't have a decent handle on human nature* and morality would probably make a hash of it (Chaotic Stupid). I think one way to get into the right frame of mind would be to get players to buy into the idea that they're playing characters much like they'd normally play, except much more willing to get dirt on them, and much less willing to do good for its own sake.

(*rule #1: almost nobody thinks of himself as evil (though many evil people might very well recognize themselves as someone "the ignorant masses" would consider evil))

That said, I had an idea for an evil campaign that would play a lot like a normal campaign, but with a twist; the PCs are evil, but they pose as heroes. And they do a good enough job of it to get by, but with hijinks. They're in it strictly for the money, fame, glory, and women, but they make sure to smile for the cameras. Sometimes they have to scramble to maintain the illusion for the masses. Sort of like Marvel Comics' Thunderbolts if they'd been straight villains, not villains with hearts of gold, or Dark Avengers, but with more unit cohesion, instead of barely-under-wraps. When you think about it, a disciplined evil party after gold, glory, and power could look a hell of a lot like a traditional D&D adventuring party. Except they're much more likely to cut deals with or work for the BBEGs than a traditional party typically is.

QuoteIn that particular instance, Laura wanted to keep running her goody-two-shoes elf, and the premise I had to concoct was her hiring the AEG to help rescue her sister, who'd been kidnapped by slavers and sold to the barbarians of the interior, with enough nasty details slipping out to have steam coming out of her elf's ears and suspend any qualms she had about the group torturing people for information or exacting sickening revenge.

Sort of like Jolt or whatever her name was, the naive, good-hearted newbie in T-Bolts, who didn't know the rest of the "heroes" were just faking it.

Another is the obvious "don't hate the player, hate the game" schtick; everybody's evil. An underdark campaign where the PCs are Drow fighting other evil, underdark races. Or "we're not that bad," like how people (leftists) still think the Soviets weren't as bad as the Nazis, using whatever bullshit rationalizations and self-deceptions people (leftists) use.

QuoteOne problem with running an evil campaign (one where the PCs are the stereotypical villain types) is things devolving into what I call "petty evil". Evil characters are viewed as not having to put up with those namby-pamby things like manners, and go in expecting to be able to kill the innkeeper, rape his donkey and ride off on his daughter.

I see what you did there. :)

This is what I meant by intelligent & well-adjusted players, or rather, the lack thereof (Chaotic Stupid Clause). If they can't understand that evil != stupid (on the contrary, stupid + evil = executed/imprisoned), they're probably going not going to be able to make an evil campaign work. This is similar to my problems with a lot of people's interpretation of alignment. IMO, alignment is what you are in the dark, i.e., when no one's watching.

IMO:

Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic characters will all obey law/tradition/convention when there are negative consequences for failing to do so (often even slightly negative ones, like loss of reputation). Lawful characters will tend to do so in the dark, as well. In the dark, Neutral characters will be on middle ground. Chaotic characters will tend to do precisely as they please in the dark (they are not compelled or even necessarily likely to thwart the law, however; but the more chaotic they are, the more thoroughly they just don't care about law/tradition/convention).

Good, Neutral, and Evil characters will tend to behave as if they are good (or maybe neutral, in the case of evil characters) with the lights on. Good characters will continue doing so with the lights off. Neutral characters will occupy a middle ground. Evil characters will tend to not give a flip about morality once the lights go out.

I think maybe part of the problem is that humans, by nature, tend to be much closer to neutral on the good-neutral-evil axis, but think of themselves as good. They tend to narrow the definition of evil a lot, because they don't want to think of a lot of people as evil (Judging! That's bad!), or even neutral, especially themselves (then there are the people and cultures who are much quicker to judge, and label everything The Great Satan). So, they tend to think of evil in terms of the exceptions: serial killers, murderous dictators, torture experts, etc. They tend to perceive neutral more as good, good as very good, and evil as neutral, with extreme evil standing in for evil. Me, I think the guy who spreads lies for a living (journalists, anyone?) is evil, if not strongly so. The grifter as evil. The guy who dumps toxic waste and knowingly drives the rate of birth defects up by 1% as evil. The record company guy who routinely swindles his acts as evil. Etc. Not just Stalin, but Bernie Madoff, too. Can anyone really imagine Bernie Madoff sacrificing innocents to the blood god? Shooting an innkeeper for the hell of it?

(Apropos of nothing, but someone mentioned the Sith, which reminds me of Vader. He's supposed to be this BBEG, right? But I can't help but notice that throughout the trilogy, he spends most of his time killing Imperials. It's like he's on a mission to destroy the upper ranks of the Imperial officer corps, all by himself. He kills no innocent civilians, AFAIR, just Imperials, the odd rebel pilot or crewman, and Obi-Wan. Worst thing he ever did was a) not do good (like stopping Tarkin from destroying Alderaan), and b) be in the room, off camera, while Leia was being chemically interrogated. In D&D terms, he seems a lot like what most players think of as lawful neutral with evil tendencies.)

QuoteAll things sentient and effective are organized. Remember that. Even chaos has its own form of order, it's just one not immediately apparent.

Those who defy organization, even the loose and in-fighting ones, gets the horns. There's a reason for the idea "honor among thieves." There's an acceptable and unacceptable way of doing things; to belong you must accept such received taboos.

This is why I play alignment as an internal thing - i.e., what you are in the dark.

QuoteMafia movies and shows like the sopranos give a good model of how an evil party might function. I've taken a lot from that kind of gaming when parties end up evil in my fantasy or historical settings. Basically if they want to torment an Innkeeper, fine, but there ought to be a good reason for it (like they are shaking the inn down), or that kind of behavior is likely to catch up with them eventually if they're just randomly going around causing mayhem.

This. Evil people are just regular folks in most senses, they just are willing to go much further, and do more harm, to achieve their goals. They aren't necessarily turned on by hurting people (that's sadism), and don't generally commit crimes strictly for the fun of it. They don't have to be compelled to do evil, just willing.

It's also a good idea to remember that most fantasy RPGs take place in an era far removed from our own, with its very long arm of the law. In short arm of the law settings, justice tends to be swift and terrible. They catch you, and they string you up, for pretty much anything resembling a felony. If not, they maim, beat, torture, or exile you. Very few people (the rich ones, or their loved ones or cherished servants) are worth the cost of imprisonment. In other words, people should be more careful to avoid the appearance of impropriety in such a setting, than they are in our world.

QuoteThis is precisely the reason I always called bullshit on the Drow being called Chaotic Evil as their racial alignment. It made no sense to have the civilization they had.

The Drow work well with my concept of chaotic alignment; they have a dense, urban civilization, so the lights are usually on for them, so they usually act like everyone else, and obey law and custom. But, turn out the lights, and they are quick to do what they please. Ancient Rome, on the other hand, offers a decent approximation of Lawful Evil, in many cases. E.g., slavery's fine, forcing captives to fight to the death for the mob's amusement is fine, raping and pillaging alien cultures is fine, but by the same token, Romans had a strong sense of honor, and weren't the types to just throw the law and convention out the window when the lights went out. On the contrary, I see them as tending to be sticklers, even in the dark.

QuoteThat's funny. I am exactly the same way... which is why I don't use alignment. Alignment to me is "meta" - characters don't go around with signs on their heads saying LE, or CG or whatever. Actions and intent speak for themselves in my games. But yeah I see where you're coming from.

I use alignment, but it's descriptive (DM fiat), not proscriptive; PC acts a certain way, DM adjusts alignment to reflect PC's behavior over time. Players don't get to choose the alignment assigned, only their behavior.

QuoteI am going to answer this RPG tidbit of setting with an observation I received from one of my history class textbooks and then relay it to a video game experience. Humanities major, we are allowed to work discordant magic (also known as "interdisciplinary studies" ):

Good post, definitely food for thought.

QuoteI don't run alignment as an always rigidly on, stark contrast, trip alarm or booby trap — that's shallow to me.

Very true.

QuoteParis, the largest European city at the same time, was merely 80k. (This was as per my MesoAmerican college textbooks as of 1999. New info may have surfaced. Yes, I ran the gamut of college classes).

Right around the time of the Black Plague, by any chance?

QuoteInteresting point. I don't think I'd classify the Aztecs as Chaotic Evil though for the very same reasons I don't think of Drow as Chaotic Evil. For me - Chaotic Evil means constant strife in order to establish a pecking order that only lasts as long as the current King of the Hill can keep their spot. That precludes an awful lot of organization and rules required to maintain large populaces under the direct control of someone.

Sounds like you're a bit caught up with extremes, at least in comparison to my interpretation. For me, chaotic evil starts closer to neutral evil/true neutral than that. Which is not to say that I couldn't see the Drow or the Aztecs as NE or LE, mind you. Again, for me it's the "what you are in the dark" thing. And it's descriptive, not proscriptive; chaotics don't "live by chaos," or anything like that. They just don't give a damn for convention when the lights are out.

QuoteIn that vien, is a society with laws always a lawful one?

That's another way of getting toward what I'm getting at; my answer is a resounding "no." All societies have laws, traditions, conventions, something. Doesn't make them lawful, in my book.

QuoteEvil Campaigns *generally* are hard for GM's to either run or players to play, simply because most people aren't *eeevvvil* to the degree that it can sustain the "fun-factor" for prolonged periods of time without a real goal.

That's why I like my idea for an evil campaign, above; the PCs generally behave like your typical, "good" adventuring party, except, they're actually complete bastards at heart.

QuoteI played a tentacle blob mutant villain and it was a blast. We saved a school bus full of kids from the aliens and before the kids could thank us, I ate one of them. But hey, we saved the other 29! I was just taking my cut!

This.

I have trouble sympathizing with torturers and sadists. That's one of my main blocks to the Eeeevil campaign.

However I can enjoy playing or reading about / watching a good sympathetic or selfish villain / protagonist in some contexts. I have enjoyed this in semi-RPG strategy computer games such as Evil Genius and Illwinter's Dominions series (and Conquest of Elysium), where (in addition to non-evil types) you can lead undead armies which blight the land and eradicate life to generate more undead, or demon-summoning blood-slave-collecting soul-contracting types, or mind-controlling ancient undersea aliens, or a dragon king, or... I don't know that I'd want to roleplay those types at a more zoomed-in role-playing level though, except perhaps the tactical combats.

Whoever wrote "chaos has its own kind of order": bullshit, buy a dictionary and stop trying to be profound.

Quote from: tenbones;832195The presumption of thousands of years of this kind of behavior would almost demand Neutral/Lawful evil to dominate as a cultural alignment. Being Chaotic Evil is doable - but it would attract unnecessary attention. No one in Drow society (RAW) is unaware or above the scrutiny of Lolth. And for that reason alone - they would be forced to establish as much order as possible to retain their position without moving so fast that Lolth would destroy them. Order is necessary. Brute force can exist - surely, but it's a quick way to a knife in the back or a trip to the Demonweb Pits if you're "too good" at it.

At least that's how I see it.

   WotC seems to agree with you. Drow in the SRD are "usually Neutral Evil" and the statblocks for 4E drow in the MM1 and Underdark give an "Evil" alignment instead of "Chaotic Evil".

Quote from: Morlock;835419Sounds like you're a bit caught up with extremes, at least in comparison to my interpretation. For me, chaotic evil starts closer to neutral evil/true neutral than that. Which is not to say that I couldn't see the Drow or the Aztecs as NE or LE, mind you. Again, for me it's the "what you are in the dark" thing. And it's descriptive, not proscriptive; chaotics don't "live by chaos," or anything like that. They just don't give a damn for convention when the lights are out.

I think we have our targets placed in different places of the spectrum. To me when something is labeled as a GM I'm assuming this is the "typical". Normal. The Median. So if an entire race and culture is labeled something, I assume that's the median, with simple rule of all generalizations - there are always outliers.

So if the median of 1e Drow society is Chaotic Evil... as written... then it's Chaotic Evil. And what does that mean? Well that's for you the GM to decide. And of course as we've been discussing, there are lots of ways that you can rationalize it, the problem is Chaotic Evil as cultural alignment in D&D doesn't describe 1e/2e Drow culture at all. That individuals DO good/evil in any culture behind the scenes do not change the overall label directly attributed to the culture (but if you had enough of them, they would. And then the median of the alignment of that culture would likewise change). That's my problem with your assertion above.

"For me, chaotic evil starts closer to neutral evil/true neutral than that." Well if you do that - you're saying the culture is neutral evil/true neutral. Remember - we're talking about an entire culture. Not individuals. The notion being that Chaotic Evil IS/WAS the cultural alignment of Drow in 1e/2e.

Of course that's changed now. As I've mentioned for the same exact reasons you say, and I say - Chaotic Evil as a cultural alignment couldn't work as indicated. They would look like Orcish tribal society. Because if might makes right - no law will long stand up to that. That's the point of chaotic predilections.

Having said all this - I still stand by my current view that alignment as popularly used in D&D is unnecessary. I think it can be handled better especially if you want to give it some mechanical weight by other systems. I wouldn't even call Alignment in D&D a "system".

Quote from: Morlock;835419Lots of hot air here (in my post, I mean), because I like both topics (alignment & evil campaigns).

I've never run or played in an evil campaign, but I've thought a bit about it. I think it probably comes down to having a smart, socially well-adjusted group. People who don't have a decent handle on human nature* and morality would probably make a hash of it (Chaotic Stupid). I think one way to get into the right frame of mind would be to get players to buy into the idea that they're playing characters much like they'd normally play, except much more willing to get dirt on them, and much less willing to do good for its own sake.
[snip]
Another is the obvious "don't hate the player, hate the game" schtick; everybody's evil. An underdark campaign where the PCs are Drow fighting other evil, underdark races. Or "we're not that bad," like how people (leftists) still think the Soviets weren't as bad as the Nazis, using whatever bullshit rationalizations and self-deceptions people (leftists) use.

Historically speaking, Soviets vs. Nazis is a prime example of "smart" evil vs. Chaotic Stupid. ;)

JG

Regarding that question of "every villain is the hero of his own story", that's something that I think is sometimes overplayed as well, but that I'd be much more interested in running than a game where everyone just plays mustache-twirling diabolic evil-guys.