My concerns are about people misinterpreting it to justify their hatred, and about people once more using at as reason to justify whatever crusade they are currently engaged on without even having the honesty to recognise that if they were actually intending to correct the evils of the world (reference intended), they would do so through something else than alignment in a fantasy roleplaying game (and actually not all fantasy games, just D&D because it's the most visible, which in itself says a lot about these crusades)...
How do you know that people are not doing anything else to "correct the evils of the world"?
In particular because there is a tolerance (or even an enjoyment) for other medias depicting exactly the same thing, whereas, of course, D&D (but mind you, just D&D because it's slightly visible, but not PF2e because much fewer people play that game, although alignment is much stronger there). Before sweeping other people's doors, make sure that you have minded your own first.
Yes, there are big issues in the world, but this doesn't mean we shouldn't try to solve the small ones, too. Especially when you have no control over the bigger issues, but may be able to have an effect on the smaller ones.
My issue is about the selectivity of the small ones, assuming that it's even a real problem, because even that is strongly debatable, and of course the fact that this is done through a large strawman of the game feature considered.
I speak of issues in D&D 5e because that's a game I play. I don't and haven't played any other TTRPGs, so I can't comment on them.
As for your final sentence, I cannot understand what you mean by that, especially "the fact that this is done through a large strawman of the game feature considered".
This is where the absolutist morality which the alignment system encourages falls down. A savage and brutal society may be attempting, for the good of the whole world, to eliminate the weak and thereby leave everyone stronger. They could be acting in what they believe to be the good of society, following the rules of their society. Hence, the savage and brutal character is actually, from their own perspective, lawful good.
And again, this shows that alignment is not understood. It's not because the CHARACTER thinks he is lawful good that he is. This is not reality. This is a FANTASY RPG, and there is a player, and when applying the absolute definitions of alignement (because the rules tell you that they are absolute).
Let's make a clear distinction between a gaming environment in a fantasy world and the reality in which I hope you will allow me to join you in saying that it's complex, and messed up and relative and in which empathy and respect are amongst the best ways to live.
It is this absolute set of definitions which I find to be most problematic (as well as simplistic, lazy and boring).
Remember that this isn't just a board game. This is a game in which, while playing the game, you are encouraged to think as your character, to play the role. In encouraging a fixed, simplified, absolute regime in the game to a complex real-world issue, you encourage thinking like that in the real world. When you get used to making snap judgements when acting out what a complex, involved character will do, you will become more likely to do so in the real world.
This is ignoring the issue of people being upset or uncomfortable by this and put off playing. Many groups out in the real world are viewed as not far from "inherently evil". Many religions view the world from an absolute standpoint, where only their definition of Good is correct and anyone who goes against that is "doing Evil". It is not just an abstract concept which only appears in a game, it mirrors harmful behaviours which exist and do damage in the real world. If someone has run into this bigotry before and then sees it being promoted in a game they play, this will be off-putting to them.
All those orc descriptors are pretty bad, and arguably racist (or speciesist, whatever). But using the alignment system to declare all orcs as evil? That's a big step. That says "if you're a good character, you can fight and kill orcs without your alignment flipping."
No it does not. Once more, to criticise alignment, you have to strawman it.
"It's a fantastic system for high fantasy heroic play, with cosmic conflicts between good and evil or between law and chaos. It is also the basic support of the standard D&D cosmic wheel cosmology, and therefore of Planescape, which is not only the greatest D&D setting ever, but also works extremely well in parallel with most other settings." Your words, not mine.
Good and evil, as "cosmic" forces, are opposed. They fight. They define each other. Tying whole species, cultures, races, etc. to them is a recipe for very messy and reductive things.
Fighting evil is something good does, so good characters are supposed to fight orcs. It's basically encoding genocidal propaganda into the very fabric of the world. It's messed up.
And still, it's an extremely strong trope of the genre, that you find in most if not all of the book/movies of the genre. D&D only allows you to simulate this. There is a precise term for someone who says that it does not detracts from his fun when watching the genre and enjoying it immensely and at the same time points the fingers at other people for just using a simulation of it...
The only way out of it is to do this in a mature way, dealing at the rightly different levels between real world problems and what is just a fantasy game using fantasy tropes, not forcefully mixing the two and accusing only alignment of all evils on this earth (statistically, fi you look at the charts, it's only 33.3333% anyway :p ).
My point is, basically, that those fantasy tropes are bad. I do not enjoy them, and I especially don't want to roleplay them. That is part of my personal critique of the system; this thread literally asked for personal critiques of the system.
What I don't get is why you are so defensive about this. I'm not critiquing you, nor any other players or DMs. Like what you like.
I think that WOTC is declining to put alignment tags on stat blocks is a good sign. It leaves alignment as a guideline and a roleplay aid rather than a hard mechanical rule, which is about right where it belongs.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I find the idea that motivations and morals are interchangeable somewhat wrong. How much you believe something is right does not change how right it is.
I can't think of a case where people set out to be evil for the sake of making things worse from their own perspectives. Everyone's motivations lead to what they consider good. A person skiving off work to binge-watch TV is doing so because they want to watch TV, not because they want to earn less money for that day and have to file a sick report. Peoples motives will always drive towards their own idea of "good".
Whatever motivations they have, a person who does stuff without caring for the consequences of their actions to other people I would regard as Evil. There are way too many real world situations which I would consider "Evil", most of which would be highly controversial, but we can all agree at least that whatever "reasoning" behind it (and, whilst I won't directly mention anything here, "weeding out the weak to make the world better" is a very topical point for those who are against the main enemies in most of the Indiana Jones films), there are acts which can only be regarded as evil, no matter how much the person thought they were doing good.
Perhaps "Evil" is too strong a word for the chart, and it should be replaced with "Bad", as an opposite to good. That or change "Good" to "Divine" or some equally over-the-top word.
Hypothetical "good/Neutral/Evil" scenario - an innocent old lady is trying to cross the street. She's healthy but old, and doesn't have a bomb or any other silly scenario - just a nice old lady, needing help. A Good person helps, Neutral walks past, and Evil pushes her in front of a car. Does it matter what their reasons were for pushing her? I would say not.
And how could I NOT be defensive when you use vocabulary such as "very messy", "reductive" and "bad" about what I like IN MY FANTASY GAMES ? Do you realise how offensive that is ?
I, for one, don't. If people don't like the movies or books or games I like I don't take it personally. I will disagree and may debate on the finer points of something, but in the end it's their opinion. It reflects nothing on me. You know there are people in this world who don't like chocolate? For chocolate lovers that seems almost crazy, but really it's just someone having a different taste. Nothing to get upset about.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
And what does it say about your perspective when you say that, actually, you enjoy exactly the same thing, only when it's in a movie instead of a TTRPG ?
When did I say that? (Personally, I agree with what the other poster, UrthTheThoughtless, said about the difference between passively watching something and actively participating in it via roleplaying. But I also don't really enjoy those tropes in movies, books, etc, either.)
I'm not replying to the rest of your reply, on purpose, because I feel no need to.
Hypothetical "good/Neutral/Evil" scenario - an innocent old lady is trying to cross the street. She's healthy but old, and doesn't have a bomb or any other silly scenario - just a nice old lady, needing help. A Good person helps, Neutral walks past, and Evil pushes her in front of a car. Does it matter what their reasons were for pushing her? I would say not.
It might.
What if the person you label as evil truly believed that the old lady was about to kill a bunch of people? What if that person truly believed that the old lady was the woman who had kept them locked up for decades, torturing them? What if they pushed the old lady in order to get them out of the way of something else, and pushing them in front of the car was accidental? Even if these are not true and only what the person believed, how can the motivations of the person not be involved in making a determination as to whether they are "good" or "evil"?
Not entirely caught up on this, but I will speak to the original thrust of the thread. Since it seems to've otherwise devolved into the same tired old "racism is okay as long as it's not real racism" argument we've seen ever since Tasha's Cauldron released.
Pro: the Alignment system is ingrained in popular nerd culture, which makes it accessible and easy to use. How often have you seen a "[Popular Show Here] Alignment Chart" meme? It's one of those things even people who aren't gamers know about, which makes it a handy tool for helping to onboard new players. That's always a super dicey process, so anything that can help is...well, a help. The tool is also a necessity for all the old-school gamers for whom alignment is a cosmological constant and free will does not exist, so there's that.
Con: the Alignment system ******* sucks. It provides nine, exactly nine, and ONLY nine motivations to pick between for every entity that has ever existed in the whole entire span of D&D Creation, and three of those motivations are commonly held to be Terrible For Game and banned for PC use. That means every last single PC that's ever been created in the history of D&D is supposed to've chosen one of exactly six Core Motivations as their thing and a DM is expected to brutally punish any PC that strays from that motivation for any reason. I shouldn't have to tell you how absolutely awful that is.
The traditional Alignment system is terribly restrictive and unintuitive, and people who try to closely follow the system end up producing flat, uninteresting cardboard-cutout caricatures of characters that Follow Their Alignment(TM) to the exclusion of actually being real people. Alignment precludes actual motivation, and it obstructs a player's ability to try and understand their character or pursue that character's own development. I won't go so far as to say that telling someone to Follow Their Alignment guarantees they'll play their character poorly, but I will absolutely say that Following Your Alignment(TM) rather than following your character is one of the easiest roads to playing poorly. The system is vestigial and unnecessary until and unless a book comes out that actively requires it, a'la Planescape. And even then, I'd argue that telling the table "nobody has free will in my game universe anymore" is a great way to swiftly be out of players to run a game for.
Hypothetical "good/Neutral/Evil" scenario - an innocent old lady is trying to cross the street. She's healthy but old, and doesn't have a bomb or any other silly scenario - just a nice old lady, needing help. A Good person helps, Neutral walks past, and Evil pushes her in front of a car. Does it matter what their reasons were for pushing her? I would say not.
It might.
What if the person you label as evil truly believed that the old lady was about to kill a bunch of people? What if that person truly believed that the old lady was the woman who had kept them locked up for decades, torturing them? What if they pushed the old lady in order to get them out of the way of something else, and pushing them in front of the car was accidental? Even if these are not true and only what the person believed, how can the motivations of the person not be involved in making a determination as to whether they are "good" or "evil"?
Okay, granted that if someone genuinely thought the old lady was going to kill everyone, then perhaps killing her would qualify as good? It's a very edge case though, and there were a lot of better alternatives to killing her.
What about if they thought that the old lady deserved to die so that the people working in her care home weren't so overworked? Does the ends justify the means? is a person who kills people without compassion ever considered "good"? Because a lack of feeling is psychopathy, and psychos are rarely held in high regard morally.
Hypothetical "good/Neutral/Evil" scenario - an innocent old lady is trying to cross the street. She's healthy but old, and doesn't have a bomb or any other silly scenario - just a nice old lady, needing help. A Good person helps, Neutral walks past, and Evil pushes her in front of a car. Does it matter what their reasons were for pushing her? I would say not.
It might.
What if the person you label as evil truly believed that the old lady was about to kill a bunch of people? What if that person truly believed that the old lady was the woman who had kept them locked up for decades, torturing them? What if they pushed the old lady in order to get them out of the way of something else, and pushing them in front of the car was accidental? Even if these are not true and only what the person believed, how can the motivations of the person not be involved in making a determination as to whether they are "good" or "evil"?
So like ... deep and genuine discussions about morality and ethics are exactly what the alignment system is terrible at and terrible for. This doesn't seem like a useful use of your time and is likely to derail this entire thread. WOTC is already removing alignment tags from creature stat blocks. This, along with their stated goal of trying to represent people as people and not monolithic stereotypes seems like a good indicator that they are moving away from essentialism. Which I think is a good thing.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
It is this absolute set of definitions which I find to be most problematic (as well as simplistic, lazy and boring).
I mean, I think "alignment is subjective" is useless from a gameplay perspective and lazy and boring from a narrative perspective. It tends to be an excuse people use to avoid engaging with moral philosophy. This is a really important point: alignment's usefulness is entirely metatextual; two characters may argue between themselves about what is or isn't good, but for alignment to be useful, the GM needs to decide which one (if either) is correct. If a GM isn't actually interested in having a firm stance on whether or not a society that violently culls its population to weed out the weak is really evil, then I agree that they shouldn't be using alignment, and also they're probably a coward. Characters can believe they are good and also be wrong, and that's usually better storytelling than "who knows, I mean, I wrote them and also I define the rules of the setting, but thinking about that is hard, so I don't wanna."
Remember that this isn't just a board game. This is a game in which, while playing the game, you are encouraged to think as your character, to play the role. In encouraging a fixed, simplified, absolute regime in the game to a complex real-world issue, you encourage thinking like that in the real world. When you get used to making snap judgements when acting out what a complex, involved character will do, you will become more likely to do so in the real world.
I don't know that it really does encourage a fixed, simplified, absolute regime, though. I think a lot of people are just going to use that kind of thinking regardless of whether or not "alignment" is something they're considering. Somebody who wants orcs to be evil is going to make orcs evil, regardless of whether or not "evil" is a game mechanic, and I don't think having an alignment grid actually makes it any easier for them, so I have difficulty accepting that it's bad. Whether or not someone gets used to making snap judgments when acting out what a complex, involved character will do is going to be dependent on how the GM and the story respond to those snap judgments. I don't think alignment has anything to do with it.
This is ignoring the issue of people being upset or uncomfortable by this and put off playing. Many groups out in the real world are viewed as not far from "inherently evil". Many religions view the world from an absolute standpoint, where only their definition of Good is correct and anyone who goes against that is "doing Evil". It is not just an abstract concept which only appears in a game, it mirrors harmful behaviours which exist and do damage in the real world. If someone has run into this bigotry before and then sees it being promoted in a game they play, this will be off-putting to them.
Saying that good and evil exist is a far cry from saying anyone is inherently evil. Most people will agree that good and evil exist, and most people broadly agree on what good and evil are. I just find very little value in a position that seems to be saying I shouldn't say genocide is evil just in case someone says the gays are evil too.
Saying that good and evil exist is a far cry from saying anyone is inherently evil. Most people will agree that good and evil exist, and most people broadly agree on what good and evil are. I just find very little value in a position that seems to be saying I shouldn't say genocide is evil just in case someone says the gays are evil too.
This is a fair point and a good argument for the existence of alignment in world. Still I think it is a good thing that hard coded alignments were taken away from people and left to extra planar beings, because any sort of moral ambiguities or plot arcs where characters are forced to make and consider their ethical decisions is hamstrung if someone can just cast a spell and say, "yep, you just went from Good to Neutral, that is verifiably a Not Good act."
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
This is where the absolutist morality which the alignment system encourages falls down. A savage and brutal society may be attempting, for the good of the whole world, to eliminate the weak and thereby leave everyone stronger. They could be acting in what they believe to be the good of society, following the rules of their society. Hence, the savage and brutal character is actually, from their own perspective, lawful good.
And again, this shows that alignment is not understood. It's not because the CHARACTER thinks he is lawful good that he is. This is not reality. This is a FANTASY RPG, and there is a player, and when applying the absolute definitions of alignement (because the rules tell you that they are absolute).
Let's make a clear distinction between a gaming environment in a fantasy world and the reality in which I hope you will allow me to join you in saying that it's complex, and messed up and relative and in which empathy and respect are amongst the best ways to live.
It is this absolute set of definitions which I find to be most problematic (as well as simplistic, lazy and boring).
And again, here, someone else's fun is simplistic, lazy and boring. Be careful, mate, it's getting very close to open criticism of someone else's way of playing...
Remember that this isn't just a board game. This is a game in which, while playing the game, you are encouraged to think as your character, to play the role. In encouraging a fixed, simplified, absolute regime in the game to a complex real-world issue, you encourage thinking like that in the real world. When you get used to making snap judgements when acting out what a complex, involved character will do, you will become more likely to do so in the real world.
This is totally unproven, and you might start thinking about some of your own words abovel in particular "simplistic". You know, some of us are actually able to differentiate between fantasy and reality. And to actually ROLEPLAY instead of BECOMING the character. I'm sorry, but the link is very strong with the satanic panic of the previous century here. Because I play in a game where there are demons and devils, I must be into devil worship. Sure...
This is ignoring the issue of people being upset or uncomfortable by this and put off playing. Many groups out in the real world are viewed as not far from "inherently evil". Many religions view the world from an absolute standpoint, where only their definition of Good is correct and anyone who goes against that is "doing Evil". It is not just an abstract concept which only appears in a game, it mirrors harmful behaviours which exist and do damage in the real world. If someone has run into this bigotry before and then sees it being promoted in a game they play, this will be off-putting to them.
And then, despite its proven strong stance on alignment, 5e is the most successful edition ever.
What I will say at this stage is that, indeed, D&D is not for everyone. You need to be able to differentiate between fantasy and reality. And between roleplaying and reality.
This is why, after creating LARPs for literally thousands of people, games which are admittedly possibly even more immersing than D&D, i am glad that I had numerous discussions in particular with a pediatrician who was actually the first one to bring his children to the game. Because before 7 years old (on average), a child will not distinguish between fantasy and reality, and he himself had the problem with his second son (and despite that, when my turn came, I skirted really close with my second daughter as well).
So yes, you need to be careful. But my perspective is that it's not about what you think.
I'll start by restating what I said back at the beginning: These are my opinions. I am not telling anyone else that their game is wrong. I, personally, find the alignment chart problematic, lazy, boring, and simplistic. This is purely stating my own opinion, not criticising anyone. I shouldn't need to repeat this yet again, when I have said this to you and others multiple times in this thread alone, but hey ho...
I'll put aside my arguments of how people behave in a game filtering through to real life. I admit that I have no evidence to support this. I disagree that it's like the Satanic Panic, though.
As for the rest...
despite its proven strong stance on alignment, 5e is the most successful edition ever
I would strongly suggest that, given that alignment is not core to the rules or strongly part of the game except in certain settings, this is no evidence that alignment doesn't put people off.
What I will say at this stage is that, indeed, D&D is not for everyone. You need to be able to differentiate between fantasy and reality. And between roleplaying and reality.
Patronising much?
People can "differentiate between fantasy and reality". They can still find themes within that fantasy off-putting, upsetting, damaging, hurtful or offensive. If I made up a story about the Holocaust, from the point of view of some young Nazis, although fantasy it would still upset some people. Even if I changed the Nazis to Elves and Jews to Goblins (to make it fit from that point of view with the Fantasy genre), the similarity to what happened could still be upsetting to people. Why is it any different with D&D mirroring discriminating tropes from throughout history? Why are they accused of not being able to "differentiate between fantasy and reality"?
It is this absolute set of definitions which I find to be most problematic (as well as simplistic, lazy and boring).
I mean, I think "alignment is subjective" is useless from a gameplay perspective and lazy and boring from a narrative perspective. It tends to be an excuse people use to avoid engaging with moral philosophy. This is a really important point: alignment's usefulness is entirely metatextual; two characters may argue between themselves about what is or isn't good, but for alignment to be useful, the GM needs to decide which one (if either) is correct. If a GM isn't actually interested in having a firm stance on whether or not a society that violently culls its population to weed out the weak is really evil, then I agree that they shouldn't be using alignment, and also they're probably a coward. Characters can believe they are good and also be wrong, and that's usually better storytelling than "who knows, I mean, I wrote them and also I define the rules of the setting, but thinking about that is hard, so I don't wanna."
You see, I normally see the reverse: "I know there are complex moral issues in the real world, but thinking about them is hard. Therefore, I will simplify everything down to a grid of 9 alignments so I don't have to think about them".
I also don't necessarily mind there being people who are wrong about their beliefs. I don't mind the extremes, like genocide being defined as evil, because most people will agree on those. However, the closer you get towards the "middle", the more vague things get. Is a thief evil? What if he is stealing to feed his family? What if, in stealing, he causes a m,erchant to go bankrupt and commit suicide? All these complex questions are normally brushed aside by those using alignments. It doesn't often encourage debate. It does provoke arguments, particularly when a character concept is built around an alignment and the DM has a different view on that alignment, but that's very different to debate.
Saying that good and evil exist is a far cry from saying anyone is inherently evil.
That's kind of the point though. Given the absolute nature of the Alignment chart, it is often used to pidgeon hole certain groups into being inherrently, often irredeemably, evil. Others groups get lumped in to being wholy good and righteous. While some will already think this way, the fact that there are 9 distinct boxes to place people in encourages this lazy, unimaginative behaviour.
Most people will agree that good and evil exist, and most people broadly agree on what good and evil are.
It is the "broadly" which can cause problems, and arguments, when an absolute alignment system is imposed but the definitions do not line up. There are so many grey areas, so many where one person would consider it good and another evil. That's without treading the woefully badly defined lawful/chaotic axis, or debating what neutral is on each.
Everyone can agree that killing a child is almost always going to be wrong/Evil. Most will agree that killing the warlock to prevent him from killing the child is right/Good. But there are such a vast array in between that people will not agree on, because good and evil are not absolutes, they are subjective
The other problem is that assigning alignments to monsters that should have free will is problematic. It's okay for creatures that lack free will, or where they are what they are by choice, but it gets into trouble with things like orcs.
5e made a clear choice, evil races have less free will. It's a conscious decision on the part of the designers, one that fits well the fantasy trope one that makes it really easy to design further and requires few further explanations and, if I may, a courageous and controversial one in this day and age.
I agree with you that WOTC made that choice, even if they might not necessarily have viewed it that way. I suspect, though of course I don't know for sure, that the decision was made as a marketing one, to recapture the classic feel of D&D and thus the market for "classic" D&D. Rather than any sort of statement about morality itself.
It is a decision they have since rescinded, too, may I point out. In a very conscious and conscientious effort to portray people as free willed beings, with the freedom to decide their own morality and run the diverse gamut of alignments rather than being saddled with the overwhelming expectations of past portrayals. Useful because D&D is a system expected to run stories in a multiverse and not just Forgotten Realms. As well, it was a conscious effort to make the game a more welcoming platform for players of all kinds as stated here: https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/diversity-and-dnd
I agree with you that the portrayal of an entire group of people as a particular alignment denotes a lessening of their free will. I vehemently disagree with you about the courageousness of such a decision, though. In fact I find it fairly abhorrent because whenever you start saying that one group of people has inherently less free will than another group of people you are denigrating their very personhood. You are all but saying that one group of people is less like people and more like animals. I don't care that this is fiction, that kind of rhetoric is disgusting and I think WOTC is rightly distancing itself from that kind of portrayal.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
"What I will say at this stage is that, indeed, D&D is not for everyone. You need to be able to differentiate between fantasy and reality. And between roleplaying and reality."
Hypocritical statements here...you want people to embrace your way of playing but you are saying that others way of playing is so antithetic to the way its "suppose" to be played that they should stop?
What I will say at this stage is that, indeed, D&D is not for everyone. You need to be able to differentiate between fantasy and reality. And between roleplaying and reality.
The traditional Alignment system is terribly restrictive and unintuitive, and people who try to closely follow the system end up producing flat, uninteresting cardboard-cutout caricatures of characters that Follow Their Alignment(TM) to the exclusion of actually being real people. Alignment precludes actual motivation, and it obstructs a player's ability to try and understand their character or pursue that character's own development. I won't go so far as to say that telling someone to Follow Their Alignment guarantees they'll play their character poorly, but I will absolutely say that Following Your Alignment(TM) rather than following your character is one of the easiest roads to playing poorly. The system is vestigial and unnecessary until and unless a book comes out that actively requires it, a'la Planescape. And even then, I'd argue that telling the table "nobody has free will in my game universe anymore" is a great way to swiftly be out of players to run a game for.
[REDACTED]
*sigh*
It's not that people are incapable of having more than a cardboard cutout, but that presenting a set of defined boxes encourages people to play in those boxes. If you make alignment a key part of the game, especially, many will try to play the alignment the want to be, not the character they want to be. The nuance of the individual is lost or diluted in favour of "being Lawful Good".
Because, as demonstrated extremely clearly by Jojo Rabbit, it's about the way you do it and how you approach the problem, possibly even more than the problem itself in this day and age.
And, finally, the main problem that I have is that the problem is not even about alignment, once more it's a scapegoat on only a small part of alignment (namely the labelling of some FANTASY races as evil, which is something that mature gamers have been dealing with without any problem for decades) causing all these raised eyebrows.
I have made my views on alignment, outside of that one issue, perfectly clear. I will also repeat, for the umpteenth time, that I am not telling you that your way is wrong, or trying to stop you playing your game the way you want. I am explaining my own issues with alignment, and why I don't use it within my game.
I agree with you in one respect: It is about how you include these concepts which determines how they are received. I would argue that the way alignments, and particularly their use to define entire groups irrevocably, is not the right way to address them.
As for:
something that mature gamers have been dealing with without any problem for decades
You have heard from several people who have told you that they have only been "dealing" with topics like this by suffering through them. They now feel empowered to speak about how things have been for them, where in the past the "dealt" with it by keeping quiet and hiding their problems. That's certainly not "without problems", but it likely appeared to be "without problems" to everyone who wasn't having to hide their problems.
Also, by wording this the way you have, you imply that those of us who think differently to yourself are somehow immature. If this was not your intent, fair enough, but it is certainly how it reads.
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I speak of issues in D&D 5e because that's a game I play. I don't and haven't played any other TTRPGs, so I can't comment on them.
As for your final sentence, I cannot understand what you mean by that, especially "the fact that this is done through a large strawman of the game feature considered".
It is this absolute set of definitions which I find to be most problematic (as well as simplistic, lazy and boring).
Remember that this isn't just a board game. This is a game in which, while playing the game, you are encouraged to think as your character, to play the role. In encouraging a fixed, simplified, absolute regime in the game to a complex real-world issue, you encourage thinking like that in the real world. When you get used to making snap judgements when acting out what a complex, involved character will do, you will become more likely to do so in the real world.
This is ignoring the issue of people being upset or uncomfortable by this and put off playing. Many groups out in the real world are viewed as not far from "inherently evil". Many religions view the world from an absolute standpoint, where only their definition of Good is correct and anyone who goes against that is "doing Evil". It is not just an abstract concept which only appears in a game, it mirrors harmful behaviours which exist and do damage in the real world. If someone has run into this bigotry before and then sees it being promoted in a game they play, this will be off-putting to them.
"It's a fantastic system for high fantasy heroic play, with cosmic conflicts between good and evil or between law and chaos. It is also the basic support of the standard D&D cosmic wheel cosmology, and therefore of Planescape, which is not only the greatest D&D setting ever, but also works extremely well in parallel with most other settings." Your words, not mine.
Good and evil, as "cosmic" forces, are opposed. They fight. They define each other. Tying whole species, cultures, races, etc. to them is a recipe for very messy and reductive things.
My point is, basically, that those fantasy tropes are bad. I do not enjoy them, and I especially don't want to roleplay them. That is part of my personal critique of the system; this thread literally asked for personal critiques of the system.
What I don't get is why you are so defensive about this. I'm not critiquing you, nor any other players or DMs. Like what you like.
I think that WOTC is declining to put alignment tags on stat blocks is a good sign. It leaves alignment as a guideline and a roleplay aid rather than a hard mechanical rule, which is about right where it belongs.
Canto alla vita
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I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I find the idea that motivations and morals are interchangeable somewhat wrong. How much you believe something is right does not change how right it is.
I can't think of a case where people set out to be evil for the sake of making things worse from their own perspectives. Everyone's motivations lead to what they consider good. A person skiving off work to binge-watch TV is doing so because they want to watch TV, not because they want to earn less money for that day and have to file a sick report. Peoples motives will always drive towards their own idea of "good".
Whatever motivations they have, a person who does stuff without caring for the consequences of their actions to other people I would regard as Evil. There are way too many real world situations which I would consider "Evil", most of which would be highly controversial, but we can all agree at least that whatever "reasoning" behind it (and, whilst I won't directly mention anything here, "weeding out the weak to make the world better" is a very topical point for those who are against the main enemies in most of the Indiana Jones films), there are acts which can only be regarded as evil, no matter how much the person thought they were doing good.
Perhaps "Evil" is too strong a word for the chart, and it should be replaced with "Bad", as an opposite to good. That or change "Good" to "Divine" or some equally over-the-top word.
Hypothetical "good/Neutral/Evil" scenario - an innocent old lady is trying to cross the street. She's healthy but old, and doesn't have a bomb or any other silly scenario - just a nice old lady, needing help. A Good person helps, Neutral walks past, and Evil pushes her in front of a car. Does it matter what their reasons were for pushing her? I would say not.
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I, for one, don't. If people don't like the movies or books or games I like I don't take it personally. I will disagree and may debate on the finer points of something, but in the end it's their opinion. It reflects nothing on me. You know there are people in this world who don't like chocolate? For chocolate lovers that seems almost crazy, but really it's just someone having a different taste. Nothing to get upset about.
Canto alla vita
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I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
When did I say that? (Personally, I agree with what the other poster, UrthTheThoughtless, said about the difference between passively watching something and actively participating in it via roleplaying. But I also don't really enjoy those tropes in movies, books, etc, either.)
I'm not replying to the rest of your reply, on purpose, because I feel no need to.
It might.
What if the person you label as evil truly believed that the old lady was about to kill a bunch of people? What if that person truly believed that the old lady was the woman who had kept them locked up for decades, torturing them? What if they pushed the old lady in order to get them out of the way of something else, and pushing them in front of the car was accidental? Even if these are not true and only what the person believed, how can the motivations of the person not be involved in making a determination as to whether they are "good" or "evil"?
Sooo...yeah.
Not entirely caught up on this, but I will speak to the original thrust of the thread. Since it seems to've otherwise devolved into the same tired old "racism is okay as long as it's not real racism" argument we've seen ever since Tasha's Cauldron released.
Pro: the Alignment system is ingrained in popular nerd culture, which makes it accessible and easy to use. How often have you seen a "[Popular Show Here] Alignment Chart" meme? It's one of those things even people who aren't gamers know about, which makes it a handy tool for helping to onboard new players. That's always a super dicey process, so anything that can help is...well, a help. The tool is also a necessity for all the old-school gamers for whom alignment is a cosmological constant and free will does not exist, so there's that.
Con: the Alignment system ******* sucks. It provides nine, exactly nine, and ONLY nine motivations to pick between for every entity that has ever existed in the whole entire span of D&D Creation, and three of those motivations are commonly held to be Terrible For Game and banned for PC use. That means every last single PC that's ever been created in the history of D&D is supposed to've chosen one of exactly six Core Motivations as their thing and a DM is expected to brutally punish any PC that strays from that motivation for any reason. I shouldn't have to tell you how absolutely awful that is.
The traditional Alignment system is terribly restrictive and unintuitive, and people who try to closely follow the system end up producing flat, uninteresting cardboard-cutout caricatures of characters that Follow Their Alignment(TM) to the exclusion of actually being real people. Alignment precludes actual motivation, and it obstructs a player's ability to try and understand their character or pursue that character's own development. I won't go so far as to say that telling someone to Follow Their Alignment guarantees they'll play their character poorly, but I will absolutely say that Following Your Alignment(TM) rather than following your character is one of the easiest roads to playing poorly. The system is vestigial and unnecessary until and unless a book comes out that actively requires it, a'la Planescape. And even then, I'd argue that telling the table "nobody has free will in my game universe anymore" is a great way to swiftly be out of players to run a game for.
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Okay, granted that if someone genuinely thought the old lady was going to kill everyone, then perhaps killing her would qualify as good? It's a very edge case though, and there were a lot of better alternatives to killing her.
What about if they thought that the old lady deserved to die so that the people working in her care home weren't so overworked? Does the ends justify the means? is a person who kills people without compassion ever considered "good"? Because a lack of feeling is psychopathy, and psychos are rarely held in high regard morally.
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So like ... deep and genuine discussions about morality and ethics are exactly what the alignment system is terrible at and terrible for. This doesn't seem like a useful use of your time and is likely to derail this entire thread. WOTC is already removing alignment tags from creature stat blocks. This, along with their stated goal of trying to represent people as people and not monolithic stereotypes seems like a good indicator that they are moving away from essentialism. Which I think is a good thing.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I love this contraction!!!!
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I mean, I think "alignment is subjective" is useless from a gameplay perspective and lazy and boring from a narrative perspective. It tends to be an excuse people use to avoid engaging with moral philosophy. This is a really important point: alignment's usefulness is entirely metatextual; two characters may argue between themselves about what is or isn't good, but for alignment to be useful, the GM needs to decide which one (if either) is correct. If a GM isn't actually interested in having a firm stance on whether or not a society that violently culls its population to weed out the weak is really evil, then I agree that they shouldn't be using alignment, and also they're probably a coward. Characters can believe they are good and also be wrong, and that's usually better storytelling than "who knows, I mean, I wrote them and also I define the rules of the setting, but thinking about that is hard, so I don't wanna."
I don't know that it really does encourage a fixed, simplified, absolute regime, though. I think a lot of people are just going to use that kind of thinking regardless of whether or not "alignment" is something they're considering. Somebody who wants orcs to be evil is going to make orcs evil, regardless of whether or not "evil" is a game mechanic, and I don't think having an alignment grid actually makes it any easier for them, so I have difficulty accepting that it's bad. Whether or not someone gets used to making snap judgments when acting out what a complex, involved character will do is going to be dependent on how the GM and the story respond to those snap judgments. I don't think alignment has anything to do with it.
Saying that good and evil exist is a far cry from saying anyone is inherently evil. Most people will agree that good and evil exist, and most people broadly agree on what good and evil are. I just find very little value in a position that seems to be saying I shouldn't say genocide is evil just in case someone says the gays are evil too.
This is a fair point and a good argument for the existence of alignment in world. Still I think it is a good thing that hard coded alignments were taken away from people and left to extra planar beings, because any sort of moral ambiguities or plot arcs where characters are forced to make and consider their ethical decisions is hamstrung if someone can just cast a spell and say, "yep, you just went from Good to Neutral, that is verifiably a Not Good act."
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I'll start by restating what I said back at the beginning: These are my opinions. I am not telling anyone else that their game is wrong. I, personally, find the alignment chart problematic, lazy, boring, and simplistic. This is purely stating my own opinion, not criticising anyone. I shouldn't need to repeat this yet again, when I have said this to you and others multiple times in this thread alone, but hey ho...
I'll put aside my arguments of how people behave in a game filtering through to real life. I admit that I have no evidence to support this. I disagree that it's like the Satanic Panic, though.
As for the rest...
I would strongly suggest that, given that alignment is not core to the rules or strongly part of the game except in certain settings, this is no evidence that alignment doesn't put people off.
Patronising much?
People can "differentiate between fantasy and reality". They can still find themes within that fantasy off-putting, upsetting, damaging, hurtful or offensive. If I made up a story about the Holocaust, from the point of view of some young Nazis, although fantasy it would still upset some people. Even if I changed the Nazis to Elves and Jews to Goblins (to make it fit from that point of view with the Fantasy genre), the similarity to what happened could still be upsetting to people. Why is it any different with D&D mirroring discriminating tropes from throughout history? Why are they accused of not being able to "differentiate between fantasy and reality"?
You see, I normally see the reverse: "I know there are complex moral issues in the real world, but thinking about them is hard. Therefore, I will simplify everything down to a grid of 9 alignments so I don't have to think about them".
I also don't necessarily mind there being people who are wrong about their beliefs. I don't mind the extremes, like genocide being defined as evil, because most people will agree on those. However, the closer you get towards the "middle", the more vague things get. Is a thief evil? What if he is stealing to feed his family? What if, in stealing, he causes a m,erchant to go bankrupt and commit suicide? All these complex questions are normally brushed aside by those using alignments. It doesn't often encourage debate. It does provoke arguments, particularly when a character concept is built around an alignment and the DM has a different view on that alignment, but that's very different to debate.
That's kind of the point though. Given the absolute nature of the Alignment chart, it is often used to pidgeon hole certain groups into being inherrently, often irredeemably, evil. Others groups get lumped in to being wholy good and righteous. While some will already think this way, the fact that there are 9 distinct boxes to place people in encourages this lazy, unimaginative behaviour.
It is the "broadly" which can cause problems, and arguments, when an absolute alignment system is imposed but the definitions do not line up. There are so many grey areas, so many where one person would consider it good and another evil. That's without treading the woefully badly defined lawful/chaotic axis, or debating what neutral is on each.
Everyone can agree that killing a child is almost always going to be wrong/Evil. Most will agree that killing the warlock to prevent him from killing the child is right/Good. But there are such a vast array in between that people will not agree on, because good and evil are not absolutes, they are subjective
I agree with you that WOTC made that choice, even if they might not necessarily have viewed it that way. I suspect, though of course I don't know for sure, that the decision was made as a marketing one, to recapture the classic feel of D&D and thus the market for "classic" D&D. Rather than any sort of statement about morality itself.
It is a decision they have since rescinded, too, may I point out. In a very conscious and conscientious effort to portray people as free willed beings, with the freedom to decide their own morality and run the diverse gamut of alignments rather than being saddled with the overwhelming expectations of past portrayals. Useful because D&D is a system expected to run stories in a multiverse and not just Forgotten Realms. As well, it was a conscious effort to make the game a more welcoming platform for players of all kinds as stated here: https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/diversity-and-dnd
I agree with you that the portrayal of an entire group of people as a particular alignment denotes a lessening of their free will. I vehemently disagree with you about the courageousness of such a decision, though. In fact I find it fairly abhorrent because whenever you start saying that one group of people has inherently less free will than another group of people you are denigrating their very personhood. You are all but saying that one group of people is less like people and more like animals. I don't care that this is fiction, that kind of rhetoric is disgusting and I think WOTC is rightly distancing itself from that kind of portrayal.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
"Dont tell me my Fantasy is wrong!"
also
"What I will say at this stage is that, indeed, D&D is not for everyone. You need to be able to differentiate between fantasy and reality. And between roleplaying and reality."
Hypocritical statements here...you want people to embrace your way of playing but you are saying that others way of playing is so antithetic to the way its "suppose" to be played that they should stop?
*sigh*
It's not that people are incapable of having more than a cardboard cutout, but that presenting a set of defined boxes encourages people to play in those boxes. If you make alignment a key part of the game, especially, many will try to play the alignment the want to be, not the character they want to be. The nuance of the individual is lost or diluted in favour of "being Lawful Good".
I have made my views on alignment, outside of that one issue, perfectly clear. I will also repeat, for the umpteenth time, that I am not telling you that your way is wrong, or trying to stop you playing your game the way you want. I am explaining my own issues with alignment, and why I don't use it within my game.
I agree with you in one respect: It is about how you include these concepts which determines how they are received. I would argue that the way alignments, and particularly their use to define entire groups irrevocably, is not the right way to address them.
As for:
You have heard from several people who have told you that they have only been "dealing" with topics like this by suffering through them. They now feel empowered to speak about how things have been for them, where in the past the "dealt" with it by keeping quiet and hiding their problems. That's certainly not "without problems", but it likely appeared to be "without problems" to everyone who wasn't having to hide their problems.
Also, by wording this the way you have, you imply that those of us who think differently to yourself are somehow immature. If this was not your intent, fair enough, but it is certainly how it reads.