To go back to the OP, I was originally going to say that I've been, over the years, slowly coming to grasp that Mr. Laws was a somewhat overhyped game guru.

Having read  the article I have to say instead that Mr. Laws is not just a seriously Overhyped Game Guru, but a seriously lucky motherfucker to have gotten where he is, because he sure as shit doesn't have much of a clue.

But: Since the conversation has moved on to killing Orc Babies instead of Tasers and the swollen nutsack of one Mr. Laws (those are some big stones!) I'll just leave you too it.

I've made my decisions long ago and feel no need to justify them with further debate.

I think Tasers are more or less nuetral but the M107 is an evil bugger:)

With alignment it's all about context and culture. If you were for example to play in a Nipponesque game with the values of Bushido the approach to captives and defeated opponents is totally different to a French Muskateer's game. Is a Samurai by defintion impossible to be good because his idea of morality and ethics are very different from a Cavalier ? No of course not. In an Hindu game a Lawful Good Prince would in all likelihood refuse to eat with an untouchable and might regard the loss of 30 or 40 of them in a village as worth the life of one Brahman priest. Remember the dead villagers will have a chance at reincarnation and a better life. You can apply similar rules to the Christian Holy Orders remember Pope Innocent the whatever claimed that Holy Violence was legitimate against heretics and that meant Muslins, cathars, slavs etc etc and you have the crusades. Would some of the Knights Templar be paladins ... well of course they would. Would they have regarded killing the innocent as acceptable... well yeah they did.  
So good and evil are only absolutes in a particular campaign in a particular context. I actually think D&D is excellent at exploring these ethical issues because it has alignment and I for one love throwing in orcish children or werewolf cubs and seeing what the rangers and clerics decide to do with them.  

Should you give Paladins tasers though... I think not. I mean most of them are wearing full plate armour so tha this just asking for trouble.

Quote from: Spike;219361Having read  the article I have to say instead that Mr. Laws is not just a seriously Overhyped Game Guru, but a seriously lucky motherfucker to have gotten where he is, because he sure as shit doesn't have much of a clue.

Well, anyone can have a bad day...

Nah, forget that. Except for some ideas he got from others- this is my opinion of him as well.

Quote from: jibbajibba;219380So good and evil are only absolutes in a particular campaign in a particular context. I actually think D&D is excellent at exploring these ethical issues because it has alignment and I for one love throwing in orcish children or werewolf cubs and seeing what the rangers and clerics decide to do with them.

I think it's not just a particular campaign in a particular context.  I think it's more ingrained in the game itself... at least in some editions.  Alignment isn't just a rough suggestion of how your character might be played, it actually gives you examples and if you don't follow them -- you change alignment, and/or the DM gives "a punishment or penalty".  Alignment is important for things like alignment languages and aligned weapons, traps, and spells.

Quote from: D&D Basic Rules - B11Example of Alignment Behavior

THE SITUATION A group of player characters is attacked by a large number of monsters. Escape is not possible unless the monsters are slowed down.

A Lawful character will fight to protect the group, whatever the danger. The character will not run away unless the whole group does.

A Neutral character will fight to protect the group as long as it is reasonably safe to do so. If the danger gets too great, the character will try to save himself (or herself), even at the expense of the party.

A Chaotic character might fight the monsters, or might run away. The character will not care what happens to the rest of the party.

Some other interesting points:

* You don't need to tell the other players your character's alignment, but you must tell the DM
* It says "A Chaotic character does not work well with other player characters"
* All characters and monsters that can speak know their alignment language and can talk to one another with it.
* If you change your alignment you immediately forget your old alignment language and learn your new one(!)

Then there's this example of play

Quote from: D&D Basic Rules - B28Before the party leaves the gag the hobgoblins,, to make sure that no alarm will be raised. Morgan is Neutral in alignment, and argues that it is not safe to leave a sure enemy behind them, even if that enemy is temporarily helpless. Silverleaf is also Neutral, but he believes that the hobgoblins are too terrified to be of any further threat. If Morgan wants to kill the prisoners he won't help her, but he won't stop her, either.

Sister Rebecca, a Lawful cleric, is shocked by Morgan's suggestion. She tells Morgan that a Lawful person keeps her word, and that she promised the hobgoblins that they would be spared. Her god would never allow her to heal someone who killed helpless prisoners.

Morgan agrees that killing captives is wrong, and that it was only the great pain from her wounds which caused her to say such things. Sister Rebecca casts her cure light wounds spell on Morgan. It does 5 points of healing, bringing Morgan back to her normal 6 hit points.

Considering how they describe Alignment in the Basic rules (only 64 pages to the book) I think it treats them as more absolute and wasn't really meant for exploring subtleties of morality.  At least not in this edition. And since all my D&D has been more-or-less adding bits from other editions to the core of B/X D&D I guess it's not surprising that I've kept this view on Alignment in D&D.

Actually, what's really interesting is that it includes "Bravery" as well.  Lawful characters don't run.

Quote from: Jackalope;219323And then I revealed the womb thrall.  Khrule had kileld the girl, hooked her up to a bunch of necrotech, and turned her into something straight of an H.R. Giger painting, a massive bloated zombie woman that generated a seemingly endless stream of flying undead fetus zombies that shot out of her crotch with a wet popping sound. "Splurch.  Splurch.  Splurch."

One of my players actually turned green.  We really thought he was going to blow chunks.  That I was actually able to find minis of little flying demon babies made it all that much worse.

Awesome monster. Reminds me of the 52-mini-series Chinese superhero whose superpower is to consciously and rapidly gestate and birth a mass of henchlings.

One of the more brutal-but-moving story arcs in a great campaign during university involved the unrequited-love-interest of one of the PCs being raped by a group of god-killing wizards who intended to turn her child into a demigod / anti-christ using the energy they'd gathered from murdering another demigod. The love interest went pretty crazy, and refused to believe that she was going to give birth to a demon baby who would kill us all when it grew up. We had to figure out what to do with the demon baby once it was born, and how to kill it (our eventual decision) without screwing over our buddy's chance for love.

@jackalope: Thanks for the detailed reply. Sounds like fun gaming!
@stuart: so, this is a quote from original D&D rules and they imply that it is not ok for lawful characters to just kill prisoners, yes?
I think the D&D creators saw the potential in exploring issues of morality.

Quote from: Stuart;219440I think it's not just a particular campaign in a particular context.  I think it's more ingrained in the game itself... at least in some editions.  Alignment isn't just a rough suggestion of how your character might be played, it actually gives you examples and if you don't follow them -- you change alignment, and/or the DM gives "a punishment or penalty".  Alignment is important for things like alignment languages and aligned weapons, traps, and spells.

* You don't need to tell the other players your character's alignment, but you must tell the DM
* It says "A Chaotic character does not work well with other player characters"
* All characters and monsters that can speak know their alignment language and can talk to one another with it.
* If you change your alignment you immediately forget your old alignment language and learn your new one(!)

Considering how they describe Alignment in the Basic rules (only 64 pages to the book) I think it treats them as more absolute and wasn't really meant for exploring subtleties of morality.  At least not in this edition. And since all my D&D has been more-or-less adding bits from other editions to the core of B/X D&D I guess it's not surprising that I've kept this view on Alignment in D&D.
Actually, what's really interesting is that it includes "Bravery" as well.  Lawful characters don't run.

Well the allignment in D&D was linked directly to the assumed Judeo-Christian setting and it was aimed at younger players. The idea that a lawful character can not be cowardly is simply daft or you have never met a lawyer :-)
Also you have to look at what they were trying to use allignment for which is basically a guide to roleplaying. They wanted to encourage role playing without getting into a load of old bollocky rubbish about motivation, backstory, ethics etc. In a ver simple way it works but it works for games where the plot is fairly straightforward and the characters have no difficult choices.
Alignment languages were a daft idea from the outset and should be condemned. I can see that a religious group might have a cant especially if they have been historically oppressed but anything else ...

I often wonder if some of early D&D's allignment strucutre wasn't just put in as a sop to the 'D&D is satanism' crew or just to prevent groups of 12 year old players having their charcters butcher each other (which we know happened an awful lot on MMORPG games with open PvP and rewards for so doing and was in the end tempered by restricted pvp rules).

At the end of the day alignment is a philisophical perspective and as such is totally influenced by its cultural context whatever the rule book actually says.

Quote from: Saphim;219517@stuart: so, this is a quote from original D&D rules and they imply that it is not ok for lawful characters to just kill prisoners, yes?
I think the D&D creators saw the potential in exploring issues of morality.

It's from the Basic Rules (Moldvay edition) which came out after AD&D.

It shows Alignment as proscriptive rather than descriptive.

Um, D&D has had alignment since the very beginning.  Well before there were cries of devil worship or satanism and well before the average player age dipped with the introduction of the basic sets.  Alignment simply comes from the idea that their are sides- good guys and bad guys, Axis and Allies, Yankees and Rebs- if you play a game about conflict you need to identify the sides involved.  That's what Law and Chaos are at the most basic level.

Edit: explained better below...

Quote from: jibbajibba;219567Well the allignment in D&D was linked directly to the assumed Judeo-Christian setting and it was aimed at younger players.

I'd say it was linked to Western-Judeo-Christian ideas about good / evil, yes.

AD&D (not aimed at younger players) also had a lot of rules about alignment -- alignment languages, Paladins who become fighters if the change alignment, XP penalties, and even your magic sword could start causing damage to you if you change your alignment.

Quote from: jibbajibba;219567The idea that a lawful character can not be cowardly is simply daft or you have never met a lawyer :-)

I think if you want more nuanced positions on the alignment graph that's where AD&D would work better.  (eg. the Lawyer might be Lawful Neutral)

If you want really deep and complex characters that are hard to classify as "good" or "evil" then not using the alignment system altogether might be a better choice.  I don't remember any alignment systems in Top Secret or Shadowrun, and the Palladium games had no mechanical affects of not following your "alignment" that I can think of.

Quote from: jibbajibba;219567Also you have to look at what they were trying to use allignment for which is basically a guide to roleplaying. They wanted to encourage role playing without getting into a load of old bollocky rubbish about motivation, backstory, ethics etc. In a ver simple way it works but it works for games where the plot is fairly straightforward and the characters have no difficult choices.

No difficult choices about morality...

Quote from: jibbajibba;219567Alignment languages were a daft idea from the outset and should be condemned. I can see that a religious group might have a cant especially if they have been historically oppressed but anything else ...

It's not a bad idea... it's just misunderstood.

As is I agree they break my suspension of disbelief / don't contribute to verisimilitude. Especially when characters who change alignment instantly forget the old language and learn the new one. :confused:

If characters *didn't* change alignments then you could make them more like factional languages.  Chaotic is the Black Language of Mordor, and Lawful could be something complementary (maybe even Elvish).  Hmm. :hmm:

Quote from: jibbajibba;219567I often wonder if some of early D&D's allignment strucutre wasn't just put in as a sop to the 'D&D is satanism' crew or just to prevent groups of 12 year old players having their charcters butcher each other (which we know happened an awful lot on MMORPG games with open PvP and rewards for so doing and was in the end tempered by restricted pvp rules).

Could be. Although I got the feeling that really came later... but I'm not entirely sure.

Quote from: jibbajibba;219567At the end of the day alignment is a philisophical perspective and as such is totally influenced by its cultural context whatever the rule book actually says.

Well you can certainly play it like that... but you can take any game book and do all sorts of customization to them, right?

What I think we can agree on is that some game systems use alignment in a descriptive way -- and if the player has their character act in a way not included in that description, there's no in-game effect to that.  The GM (and other players) are not required to make judgements about whether things are in or out of scope for a characters morality (aka alignment).  

Other games (like some editions of D&D) use alignment in a more mechanical way.  It limits the scope of actions you can choose for your character without incurring some sort of in-game penalty.  In these games the GM (and other players) have to make judgements about whether actions fall within the bounds of a characters alignment.  Can the Paladin do X without changing alignment, becoming a fighter, and taking damage from his +5 Holy Avenger?

I feel that I have done a disservice to this site by simply doing a driveby on Robin Laws without bothering to explain my position/impression in more detail.

More relevant to the OP:

His commentary regarding combat pacing, the example of Coen Brothers films (regarding Cell Phones) and similar items in the article linked show that Mr. Laws has an extremely limited grasp of fiction and writing.  Normally this is not a particularly damning statement of a game designer, however, he is presented as a particularly clued in, insightful and even 'leading edge' designer, and his commentary and decisions have a weight that impacts far more than his own (limited) games.  

First we have the already commented on factor of his treatment of Tasers in general. Tasers are like guns in that they CAN end a fight in a single shot in real life. They are also like guns in that they can FAIL to end a fight in a single shot.  Yet he has not managed to notice this basic similarity, with the implication that Tasers can be 'managed' just the same as Guns.  This is a very basic thing. I expect my 'gurus' to be able to handle such simple solutions with aplomb.

His comments about cell phones, and his treatment of tasers (treating them as 'antiheroic' and therefore inappropriate for his game) shows a deeper problem, however.

The world changes. Faster now than ever before, certainly. Previous generations of authors may have had years to adapt to a single new innovation, while current authors might recall a world without pervasive recording devices, cell phones, or even live television debates between politicians, or space travel, or home computers... the list threatens to become endless.

I view it as a sort of Osterich behavior, head in the sand, sloppy writing to not take into account realities of daily life in your writing.  If the only reason you set your stories 50 years in the past is that you can't accomodate cell phones (for example) then you have a singular glaring fault as a storyteller.  There are valid reasons to write more historical stories, but avoiding reality is not one of them.

This, however, is exactly what Mr. Laws is suggesting we do, not just for 'Gumshoe', but in general as gamers and even game designers.  Rather than address reality he advocates avoiding it utterly.  It might work. Once in a while.  As a philosophy, however, it fails miserably.

There is more, however.  A single flaw, no matter how glaring, is rarely worthy of the venom it can earn.

In order to keep this short, however, I will restrain myself to pointing out only a second major flaw in his article, and that is his default assumption mode.

I don't mind if a game designer wants to be traditional, doesn't want to break 'new ground' or think of 'new thoughts'.  I'm fine with that, many serviceable games came from just such a workman-like ethic. No one, however, tries to claim such auteurs are groundbreaking masters of the craft, or are leading edge designers.  No one holds them up as scions, worthy of note or emulation. They just quitely go about putting out their games and surviving on the strength of their craftsmanship. The cabinet makers of game design.

Mr Laws may not have all the praise I've implied for him, but we treat him, in many ways, as the sculpter, the genius, the template for what we should be as game masters and game designers. Feng Shui gets praise for innovative design in genre emulation and creative design, Heroquest is held up as the very first (and most successful?) narrative game. Robin's Laws are cited over and over as a great collection of game mastering wisdom. In short, he is the celebrity gamer we can all wish to be.

Yet: Feng Shui had one slightly innovative mechanic (the dice minus dice) of dubious value and simply codified the existing trend towards easy to handle mooks.  Having played and run it I have found it is not without deep and even crucial flaws, however. Its mostly flash with little substance.

Robin's Laws? Is there anything in there that hadn't been said before?

So, when I read his article and Mr. Laws talks about why tasers break the game with their instant combat resolution (a bit of reasoning that utterly ignores the practical limits of tasers (single shot, abysmal range and accuracy, and easily defeated by heavy clothes, not to mention a notorious failure rate even on successful hits... at least as evidenced by youtube and anecdotal evidence (all you need to justfy game rules that present them as weakly effective at best)... I don't see innovative game designer, I see a man who works according to a formula.

Fights need to have x amount of give and take.  That's formula. Stating that Tasers short circuit the formula for combat shows a lack of flexibility, a lack of innovative design. In short, it is a sterling example of hype, of his undeserved reputation.

At the end of the day, however, I've got nothing against Mr. Laws personally. I'm sure he's a swell guy. I may, in fact, have hung out with a cousin of his (or some sort of semi-distant relative...) for a while a few years back... in the time between when Feng Shui came out and Mr. Laws became something of a celebrity.  I'd be willing to game with him, and give him a shot at GMing... heck, his name in the credits of a book won't even keep me from buying it if it looks interesting.

On the other hand, however, if someone tells me that X is good or bad BECAUSE of Mr. Laws (saying it, writing it, saying its good...) I'm rather more inclined to look at it with an extra critical eye. The fault isn't so much his, but his fan's.  They have made him out to be something he just is not.

Quote from: Spike;219730Mr Laws may not have all the praise I've implied for him, but we treat him, in many ways, as the sculpter, the genius, the template for what we should be as game masters and game designers.... In short, he is the celebrity gamer we can all wish to be.

For what it's worth, I've been roleplaying for a couple decades, developing for roleplaying games for about half that, and I'd never heard of him until now. One thing about niche celebrity is that it doesn't overflow the niche.

Quote from: Engine;220075For what it's worth, I've been roleplaying for a couple decades, developing for roleplaying games for about half that, and I'd never heard of him until now. One thing about niche celebrity is that it doesn't overflow the niche.

It is quite possible to play D&D for 20 years and not know who Gary Gygax is. Not having heard of an individual can say as much about you as it says about that individual's fame, or lack thereof.

Both true statements.