Something else that intrigues me. This is being offered as a solution when it doesn't seem to actually address the problem.
Replace systems as you wish, but as long as there is any hint that "so-and-so is more likely to do such-and-such", the problem will exist.
So, I'm curious to what this exercise is seeking to achieve. The problem is less the system but more those who use it. 5e has bent over backwards to try to tell people they can fix whatever they don't like, but for some reason, people are still choosing not to do it. No new system will fix that.
I don't know if any system will ever perfectly fix this issue, but remember that there still something to be said about making something better, even if its not perfect. "Better" is still an improvement, and to me this exercise seems to be one in "Hey, don't you think this could be better?" rather than "Hey, don't you think this fixes everything?"
Yep. Perfect is the enemy of Good. If all change is rejected because it still has some problems even though it improves the situation, nothing will ever improve.
Also, while "5e has bent over backwards to try to tell people they can fix whatever they don't like", the written rules are the first point of call. Particularly for newer players, if they see "Chaotic Evil" on a monster stat block, they will play that monster as their version of Chaotic Evil.
The motives system on this thread would also be the first point of call. However, it is much more nuanced and flexible. Worded as "Suggested Motives" (especially combined with renaming the monsters to be specific members of the races instead of just the races/species themselves), it would be an encouragement to think outside the box in a way that I doubt even a change to "Suggested Alignment" could.
This topic's grown nicely, thank you all for your inputs!
Firstly, to address this:
Labeling an entire group, species or what ever as greedy, ruthless, savage or any other descriptor is not better.
I think that it is. "Good" and "Evil" implies that the things that motivate a creature are subject to some cosmic judgement. The idea that a Red Dragon, whose instinct is to hoard gold, because it's a mythical creature that has long been established in the lore to hoard gold, being labeled as "Greedy" is a bad thing, is weird to me. I also notice that the more humanoid these fictional, mythical creatures are, the more people object to applying labels to them.
Goblins are territorial - seen as bad to label them. Gnolls are always hungry - not seen any objection yet Red Dragons are greedy - why would anyone refute this? Beholders, written as seeing themselves as the pinnacle of creation, are vain - again, unlikely to get objections.
It's also important to consider where the judgement comes from. "Evil" implies some cosmic judgement against a set of standards applied to the world. "greedy" is only judgment if you bring the judgment yourself. Seeing the Pharmaceutical companies selling drugs for thousands is them being Greedy, and widely regarded as Evil. Your grandma seeing you with a healthy appetite for her homemade cookies is you being greedy, but she doesn't judge you to be evil.
IE, if you see "Greedy" as a judgmental statement, that is you doing the judging, not the person who wrote the word "Greedy". You decided that Greedy is a bad thing to call someone. But I can also see that labeling a species as such, whilst it may fit by the Lore, implies you are putting them in a box (which is bad, apparently, even if the box fits, and they are a fictional species written to fit into the box in the first place...). But I digress.
I daresay that, by combining the idea of applying a title to any sentient species, EG "Goblin Raider", and by also adding a single word "Typically" before the motivations, the issue goes away:
Goblin Raider: Typically Sneaky, Greedy, but cowardly when alone.
Red Dragon: Typically vain, greedy, and highly territorial.
Orc Raider: Typically Aggressive, Savage, Organized.
I would definitely say that this is far more informative and far less judgmental than any shade of "Evil".
I also want to add that I have seen across the many other threads relating to Alignment, people saying things like "what's evil to you isn't evil to me" or "you're not taking into account their motives", and so on. I'm not going to go and drag quotes in here, but I think that at least half the objection to Alignment seems to come from the idea that something is judging these creatures as evil, regardless of why they do what they do. Moving to motivations leaves the judgement of how good or bad a creature is to those interacting with it.
Example: a merchant is amassing gold. A red dragon tries & fails to steal it, and develops a grudging respect of the merchant. A starving Xorn tries and fails to steal it, and develops a hatred of the merchant. The dragon probably views the merchant as a rival in the same goal. The Xorn sees the merchant as a man keeping food from the starving. To the dragon, the merchant is neutral. To the Xorn, he is evil. In both cases, the merchant is Greedy and Selfish. The red dragon judges these as good things, the Xorn judges these as bad things. Do you see the difference between that and simply labeling him as "Neutral" or "Evil"?
I love this idea. Makes perfect sense. Then it's up to the table to decide whether the motives are good or evil given the context etc. We don't really use alignment much at our table anyway. I use it personally to remind myself that my character is neutral when I roleplay and decide what he'd do in a given scenario, because I'm myself chaotic good as a player/person in the real world.
While it does still have some issues with negative stereotyping*, I do think that this combined with a relabelling so that it is not entire races makes for a massive improvement.
* look at how Jews have been described throughout the centuries and compare with some of the motivations described, for example
This topic's grown nicely, thank you all for your inputs!
Firstly, to address this:
Labeling an entire group, species or what ever as greedy, ruthless, savage or any other descriptor is not better.
***Snip***
I daresay that, by combining the idea of applying a title to any sentient species, EG "Goblin Raider", and by also adding a single word "Typically" before the motivations, the issue goes away:
Goblin Raider: Typically Sneaky, Greedy, but cowardly when alone.
Red Dragon: Typically vain, greedy, and highly territorial.
Orc Raider: Typically Aggressive, Savage, Organized.
I would definitely say that this is far more informative and far less judgmental than any shade of "Evil".
That is why I made the suggestion in the first place. Push back about using broad stroke to label an entire species is part of why they are removing alignments from monster entries. I don't disagree with the idea that providing possible motivations would be useful to DMs, but breaking down from "All Goblins" to "Goblin Raiders" alleviates a large part of the problem.
I find the discussion interesting. I’ve been following it since the original post, and held off while I saw what other people have had to say. I rarely do well otherwise.
I don’t like any part of it.
The most popular set of suggestions has been to apply 3 Motivations to each and every character, non-player character, and monster. The idea is that you won’t have to dig into the “lore” to know how to run any of them. It has to be each and every one because to do otherwise is bigotry.
Let’s start out with Goblins. We want to change their names to specify which type, a kind of “caste” system. Goblins might have a Warrior caste who does most of the fighting both for attack and defense. Then there is a Raiding caste that goes out, kills stuff, and brings it back for the benefit of all. Then there is a Professional caste that does most of the work to support the others and will largely avoid fights. Goblin Warrior, Goblin Raider, Goblin Professional. Each with 3 Motivations
So we have gone from a single stat block and a two word description of the morals and ethics of Goblins in general, to 3 words on each of three castes.
What have we gained? Can we avoid looking at the lore? We know the Motivations, but we don’t know the whys and wherefores. We only know that if we look at the lore. Since we have to do that for every single Goblin we use, all we have done is complicate things immensely.
Now on to the Non-Player Characters. Every one of them needs those three words. In order to understand their Motivations we have to have lore, a backstory that explains things. Once again we are not gaining anything. On close examination, the three words are going to need to be put in a specific order so we know their Primary Motivation, Secondary Motivation, and Tertiary Motivation. We will need that for all the monsters too.
Player Characters present more challenges. One of the first things that jumped out at me was the word “fool”. Does anyone ever consider themselves a fool? I know that I am one. I constantly do things that I know better than to do, which is pretty much the definition of “fool” but I only recognize this on reflection, after I do something foolish.
It was suggested that Magic Items might also trigger on Motivation, there would need to be a list, and that list would need to be epic in length given how many possible Motivations there are. This means re-writing the spells and effects to account for it. Every magic item is now unique, and that’s great I guess, but at the expense of all the complications and revisions needed is it worth it?
I suggest leaving things alone. No matter how woefully the Alignment system covers the morals and ethics of characters it’s still a useful guideline, and removing it takes away a part of the legacy, which is devoutly to be avoided after what happened with 4 Edition. Rather than completely revise the core books, might I suggest using something already in place? Inspiration.
This is something that provides a mechanical effect in play to reward behavior that the DM likes. The DM's doesn’t use it themselves though, it’s best if it is voted on and awarded by the other players. If the DM's hand it out they may be accused of favoritism. You can only ever have one point of Inspiration. They do not stack, no matter where they come from, and shouldn’t provide many problems if the other players are handing them out.
I think it is worth noting that my idea of have "Goblin Raiders" vs just "Goblins" is not a cast system. For example Bandits are not part of a cast system for humans and are in fact just a group of individuals acting of their own accord and are a threat that adventurers may face.
I think assigning motivations to characters shouldn't need to be stated? Like, that's character writing 101. Is it a good idea and does it work? Yes, obviously. Is it a good idea as a replacement for alignment, and does it work as a replacement for alignment? No. Motivations tell me what characters want and (maybe) why they want it. That's very important to know, but it doesn't tell what alignment tells me, which is whether a character is good or evil.
A big complaint people seem to have about alignment is that it's used as a replacement for motivations, which is not something that has ever occurred to me to do. I think motivations work better at being motivations than alignment does, but they're different things that are designed to do different things, so I really don't see either as an appropriate replacement for the other.
...So we have gone from a single stat block and a two word description of the morals and ethics of Goblins in general, to 3 words on each of three castes.
What have we gained? Can we avoid looking at the lore? We know the Motivations, but we don’t know the whys and wherefores. We only know that if we look at the lore. Since we have to do that for every single Goblin we use, all we have done is complicate things immensely.
I sort of see where you're coming from here. My original thought was to try and summarize the lore for the goblins with a set of motivations (which has been 3 in most examples but that's not for any reason, it could be more or less).
So if the lore for a monster described, for example, that the monsters are vain, obsessed with gold, highly territorial and adverse to venturing out of their lairs, this can be summarized in a few bullet points so a DM doesn't have to read all their lore to get the basics of how they normally behave. If you see the word "Vengeful" on a creature, you know to treat it differently to one which says "Territorial". It would speed things up to have the summary of how a creature normally behaves, in a few words, and be a whole lot more useful than "good" or "evil".
Let's put it another way - currently, you have to read the lore and get given "Chaotic Evil" as an alignment. If instead you have to read the lore and get given "Territorial, brave in packs, undisciplined", you have not lost anything. Knowing their alignment doesn't help a DM, but if the DM is dragged into the world of improvisation by the party (as so often happens) and has a single encounter with a monster, then it will be smoother for them to just read "Hungry, vengeful, relentless" and know that this monster is hunting to eat, will hold grudges, and will never stop. The lore could take some time to read, and skim-reading can miss important details out, such as perhaps the vengeful side of the monster.
Splitting creatures into castes is not entirely necessary in the way you're implying. I would propose simply renaming "Goblin" and "Goblin raider", no need to add different goblins in as well - they could be added in the lore text, EG "There are also goblin farmers who are motivated by defending their property and are prone to hide until their property is attacked". 90% of the time, if the DM reaches for the monster manual to get the stats for a Goblin, it's going to be a raider that the party is going to fight.
Player Characters present more challenges. One of the first things that jumped out at me was the word “fool”. Does anyone ever consider themselves a fool? I know that I am one. I constantly do things that I know better than to do, which is pretty much the definition of “fool” but I only recognize this on reflection, after I do something foolish.
Player characters would be able to write their own motivations. If they wanted to, there could be a big list of them which they can choose from. Perhaps the logical approach would be to make a list of them, and have them select at least 1 from the list.
So a player might select "Show-off", "Defender of Allies", and "To find the perfect cup of tea". The first 2 are from this big list, the last is unique to them, and is a good key for them to roleplay by, and for the DM to use in creating plot hooks, but won't interact with magic items.
It was suggested that Magic Items might also trigger on Motivation, there would need to be a list, and that list would need to be epic in length given how many possible Motivations there are. This means re-writing the spells and effects to account for it. Every magic item is now unique, and that’s great I guess, but at the expense of all the complications and revisions needed is it worth it?
There aren't many spells or magic items which have effects that trigger based off of alignment. Those that do could have a brief list of the common motivations which trigger them. But in order to move away from "Good" and "Evil", the game would need to completely remove spells which say things like "This spell does >this damage< to good creatures and >that damage< to evil creatures". Instead, you would have to consider a complete rewrite of this sort of thing. I agree that it would be a big undertaking, but what it would accomplish would be to remove the pre-judged status of alignment and instead focus on the motives of people. A spell which is designed to punish the selfish would focus on motives like "Greed", "Personal Power", "Personal Welfare". One designed to harm the selfless would focus on "Protecting the Innocent", "Helping Others" that sort of thing. Notice how there is no judgement in there other than what you bring yourself - to a dragon, Selfishness is a good trait. To a Beholder, Selflessness is a bad trait.
Would it be such a bad thing to ditch things which work based on prejudiced views of what is "Good" or "Evil"? Is someone who is starving who steals bread to eat evil? What about if they steal caviar and a prime steak? Both the same crime, and the same motive, but one feels different to the other, doesn't it?
I suggest leaving things alone. No matter how woefully the Alignment system covers the morals and ethics of characters it’s still a useful guideline, and removing it takes away a part of the legacy, which is devoutly to be avoided after what happened with 4 Edition.
The Legacy argument is one worth considering - whilst it bears no weight on the mechanical and psychological improvements that could be achieved, it should always be considered in these things. But I wonder, what do we stand to keep by maintaining the black & white clear-cut system of "this is Evil" and "That is Good" that DnD uses? It's clearly sparked something of a big feeling in people, as evidenced in other threads. All I see the alignment system as doing is judging.
The main difference between the two is that the current alignment says "These creatures are Violent, Territorial Bullies, and that is Evil". Moving to motivations just stops after the word "Bullies", removing all that judgement from the text. It literally moves to just the facts, and none of the prejudice.
The main difference between the two is that the current alignment says "These creatures are Violent, Territorial Bullies, and that is Evil". Moving to motivations just stops after the word "Bullies", removing all that judgement from the text. It literally moves to just the facts, and none of the prejudice.
I completely agree, here.
This system can get much more information across in a few words than alignment can in 1-2, with little-to-none of the judgement or prejudice. However, if players or DMs wish to apply judgements, they are still free to do so. In fact, I would suggest that it would be significantly easier to assign an alignment based on these motivations than it would be to work out an NPC/Monster's motivation from their alignment.
Same problems as alignment with different words. Chaotic Evil. PC I kill the guard for asking for 2 cp to enter the town. DM Why. PC Because I am Chaotic Evil. Motives Bloodlust. PC I kill the guard for asking for 2 cp to enter the town. DM Why. PC Because I have bloodlust as a motive.
Either Alignment or Motives, or what ever you want to do help your PC be a three d person, and what ever cliff notes description for monsters needs to be handled in session 0.
I think one of the many problems with the alignment system is that there isn't an in depth explanation of the nine choices. There are only a few paragraphs in the MM and a one page summary in the PHB. If they plan on keeping alignment in the game while removing them from stat blocks (which I am fine with) I would like to see a much more fleshed out and nuanced discussion of what each of the nine choices are and how a DM can use them to flesh out a creature's motivations, in a style like the Horror Monsters section of Van Richten's Guide.
The main difference between the two is that the current alignment says "These creatures are Violent, Territorial Bullies, and that is Evil". Moving to motivations just stops after the word "Bullies", removing all that judgement from the text. It literally moves to just the facts, and none of the prejudice.
That's a pretty useless change. The problems with assigning a racial personality don't go away because you change the words you're using. There are two structural problems with alignment:
Assigning racial alignments is problematic.
Alignment isn't a particularly good guide to what any given monster or NPC is likely to actually do.
Replacing alignment with a more precise system helps with problem 2, above. Problem 1 requires somewhat more structural changes to how you're actually using creatures.
I can see the use of such a system, for instance redcaps and quicklings are both listed as evil, but redcaps are outright serial killers while quicklings prefer to ruin lives without killing. You wouldn’t really tell the difference at a glance.
My stake is in overall world building than in a specific how to play X beastie. Do the motivations have their own planes or does, say, the Abyss have a selection of motivations tied to it? More to the point, do the motivations exist in of themselves or are they only in the mind of those having them? If the later, it’s not truly a replacement for alignment.
There’s also another point for the overall collection of conversations this one plus part of: mortal humanoids only make up a fraction of the Monster Manual, and and even smaller one of all D&D creatures. IMO, the way creature statistics are presented should not revolve around them.
The main difference between the two is that the current alignment says "These creatures are Violent, Territorial Bullies, and that is Evil". Moving to motivations just stops after the word "Bullies", removing all that judgement from the text. It literally moves to just the facts, and none of the prejudice.
That's a pretty useless change. The problems with assigning a racial personality don't go away because you change the words you're using. There are two structural problems with alignment:
Assigning racial alignments is problematic.
Alignment isn't a particularly good guide to what any given monster or NPC is likely to actually do.
Replacing alignment with a more precise system helps with problem 2, above. Problem 1 requires somewhat more structural changes to how you're actually using creatures.
So because it only solves one problem and not all problems, it is "useless"?
Personally, I see it as partly solving the first issue too. A race being Evil is much more problematic than a race being Territorial. Also, I believe they would be much less likely to be taken as absolutes than Good and Evil. It is not perfect, but would be helpful.
Combine it with naming, such as the example of "Goblin Raider", and you are no longer describing a whole race, just the typical motivations of a member of that race who chooses that occupation.
So because it only solves one problem and not all problems, it is "useless"?
It's useless for the purpose it was being suggested as being useful for. Calling a race 'bullies' is not significantly less judgmental than calling them 'evil'.
The main difference between the two is that the current alignment says "These creatures are Violent, Territorial Bullies, and that is Evil". Moving to motivations just stops after the word "Bullies", removing all that judgement from the text. It literally moves to just the facts, and none of the prejudice.
That's a pretty useless change. The problems with assigning a racial personality don't go away because you change the words you're using. There are two structural problems with alignment:
Assigning racial alignments is problematic.
Alignment isn't a particularly good guide to what any given monster or NPC is likely to actually do.
Replacing alignment with a more precise system helps with problem 2, above. Problem 1 requires somewhat more structural changes to how you're actually using creatures.
Well, first & foremost this is about creatures, not races. As stated earlier, the issue of "goblins are greedy" is remedied by "Goblin Raiders are Greedy". the creature in the book would be "Goblin Raider", and the book would offer typical motivations for goblin raiders. Whilst we can always say "but not all >X<'s are like that!", that is then a job for the DM to amend the creature to suit their needs - perhaps making a group of selfless, overenthusiastic, show-off goblins instead of greedy, territorial and only brave in groups goblins.
If you refrain from offering any guidelines for behaviour at all, then what does the book even do?
So, let's step away from Goblins, as it seems to be offending people, and say "Beholder", "Dragon", and "Roper".
All of these are evil. But all 3 of these have different motives. Looking at a roper and seeing "Neutral Evil" doesn't tell you anything about how the creature would behave. A roper wouldn't steal the lollipop from a child because it wanted it, like a neutral evil thief - it would pick up and eat the child.
A Red Dragons motives are Personal Wealth, Greed, Vengeance, Power.
A Beholders motives are Knowledge, Power, Aggressive
A Roper is Hunger, Territorial
Now, at a glance you can see which of the 3 you are most likely to be able to reason with - the Red Dragon could be swayed with promises of wealth or power. The Beholder might be swayed with knowledge or power, but is aggressive so less likely to be approachable. The Roper is hungry and territorial - if you are near it, it wants to eat you.
Notice again that none of these things indicate any judgement, only description. Whether you deem these good or bad traits is personal opinion, not pre-written into the fabric of the universe.
Same problems as alignment with different words. Chaotic Evil. PC I kill the guard for asking for 2 cp to enter the town. DM Why. PC Because I am Chaotic Evil. Motives Bloodlust. PC I kill the guard for asking for 2 cp to enter the town. DM Why. PC Because I have bloodlust as a motive.
Either Alignment or Motives, or what ever you want to do help your PC be a three d person, and what ever cliff notes description for monsters needs to be handled in session 0.
In fairness, this isn't the problem this was laid out to solve. This player will always find a reason to kill that guard:
Alignment - it's because of my alignment Motives - it's because of my motives Do away with both - it's what my character would do force them to be good - I thought the guard was evil Make the guard their best friend from childhood - They did something unforgivable that I just added to my backstory to make it justified to stab them. Make the guard an adorable dog called corporal woofs - they suddenly hate dogs
So because it only solves one problem and not all problems, it is "useless"?
It's useless for the purpose it was being suggested as being useful for. Calling a race 'bullies' is not significantly less judgmental than calling them 'evil'.
To be fair, the opening post didn't actually say it was useful for that purpose. It proposed this as an alternative to alignment, and mostly talked about how much better it was at helping you to understand how a character/monster would behave.
That said, I do think it is significantly less judgemental to call someone a bully than to call them evil, or even an entire race (although possible additional solutions to this have been mentioned). Even calling them savage, violent and bloodthirsty is less judgemental than evil.
So no, it doesn't solve all the problems on its own, but it solves one big one (alignments are bad for determining what an NPC/monster would do without reading the flavour text) and helps with the other with slightly less judgemental language. Combined with something like the name changes suggested, or even just wording it as "typical motives", it could go a long way towards improving both.
It's certainly not a perfect solution (especially on its own) but as the saying goes "perfect is the enemy of good".
So because it only solves one problem and not all problems, it is "useless"?
It's useless for the purpose it was being suggested as being useful for. Calling a race 'bullies' is not significantly less judgmental than calling them 'evil'.
I just want to say that the words I'm picking aren't necessarily there for the final draft ;) but...
Calling a species bullies is descriptive, not judgmental. For example, Crows, Killer Whales, and Lions. Crows will mob other birds, they will drive smaller birds away from their nests to eat their young, and they will peck the eyes out of lambs so that they will starve, allowing them to eat the carrion. Killer whales will allow a seal to climb back onto an ice floe, just so that they can knock it off again. They will drag them down and release them just to chase them back to the surface and drag them down again, and they will throw them 60ft. into the air, just to see who can throw it further. Lions will chase cheetahs off their kills so that they can eat them themselves, and will kill the babies of other male lions when they find them.
All of these creatures I would consider "Bullies". Not because I consider their actions a bad thing, but because I would consider their actions to be Bullying. "Bullying" is a behaviour, and whilst it has negative connotations in western culture, a tribe of Orcs who are inclined to shun the weak and favour the strong will not see their actions as wrong, nor will they Bully because they are "Evil" (or be Evil because they Bully) - it would just be their culture. Might makes right, don't associate with the weak because they cannot help you in a fight, thus the weak get shunned and bullied. If this sort of thing is commonplace, then it's a fitting description.
Consider the point of view of the class bully - the one who doesn't consider their bullying to be wrong, that they consider their being stronger than everyone else to be reason enough to throw that strength around to get what they want. If they read a race of Orcs who shun the weak, take what they want etc. and are described as "Bullies", they will not consider the motive "Bullies" to be a negative one. They will just think "cool, I can relate". If instead they see it say "Evil", then they might take offense that the actions they would consider normal are here considered evil.
In short, if you consider "Bully" to be a bad thing, then that's your decision. It's certainly a lot less pre-judged than "Evil".
Hmm... my fundamental problem with alignment >> motivation is that, fundamentally... alignment isn't really personality, motivation, or the like. Alignment is a karma meter. Its an attempt to model ethics and morality (and the lack thereof) in the D&D universe.
I mean, I agree that trying to say that all members of certain races are "evil" or "chaotic" is bad (likewise, saying that all "goodly" races are Good is a problem). And I do feel that the social aspects of D&D are sorely lacking, especially if its supposed to be one of the three pillars of the game.
But I just feel that, if you're going to replace alignment, it should either be with another karma meter, or just ditch it altogether. If you want to expand on personality and motives and aspirations of characters, as well as how the Interaction Pillar functions? I'm totally down with that, but it should be unrelated to alignment.
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Yep. Perfect is the enemy of Good. If all change is rejected because it still has some problems even though it improves the situation, nothing will ever improve.
Also, while "5e has bent over backwards to try to tell people they can fix whatever they don't like", the written rules are the first point of call. Particularly for newer players, if they see "Chaotic Evil" on a monster stat block, they will play that monster as their version of Chaotic Evil.
The motives system on this thread would also be the first point of call. However, it is much more nuanced and flexible. Worded as "Suggested Motives" (especially combined with renaming the monsters to be specific members of the races instead of just the races/species themselves), it would be an encouragement to think outside the box in a way that I doubt even a change to "Suggested Alignment" could.
This topic's grown nicely, thank you all for your inputs!
Firstly, to address this:
I think that it is. "Good" and "Evil" implies that the things that motivate a creature are subject to some cosmic judgement. The idea that a Red Dragon, whose instinct is to hoard gold, because it's a mythical creature that has long been established in the lore to hoard gold, being labeled as "Greedy" is a bad thing, is weird to me. I also notice that the more humanoid these fictional, mythical creatures are, the more people object to applying labels to them.
Goblins are territorial - seen as bad to label them.
Gnolls are always hungry - not seen any objection yet
Red Dragons are greedy - why would anyone refute this?
Beholders, written as seeing themselves as the pinnacle of creation, are vain - again, unlikely to get objections.
It's also important to consider where the judgement comes from. "Evil" implies some cosmic judgement against a set of standards applied to the world. "greedy" is only judgment if you bring the judgment yourself. Seeing the Pharmaceutical companies selling drugs for thousands is them being Greedy, and widely regarded as Evil. Your grandma seeing you with a healthy appetite for her homemade cookies is you being greedy, but she doesn't judge you to be evil.
IE, if you see "Greedy" as a judgmental statement, that is you doing the judging, not the person who wrote the word "Greedy". You decided that Greedy is a bad thing to call someone. But I can also see that labeling a species as such, whilst it may fit by the Lore, implies you are putting them in a box (which is bad, apparently, even if the box fits, and they are a fictional species written to fit into the box in the first place...). But I digress.
I daresay that, by combining the idea of applying a title to any sentient species, EG "Goblin Raider", and by also adding a single word "Typically" before the motivations, the issue goes away:
Goblin Raider: Typically Sneaky, Greedy, but cowardly when alone.
Red Dragon: Typically vain, greedy, and highly territorial.
Orc Raider: Typically Aggressive, Savage, Organized.
I would definitely say that this is far more informative and far less judgmental than any shade of "Evil".
I also want to add that I have seen across the many other threads relating to Alignment, people saying things like "what's evil to you isn't evil to me" or "you're not taking into account their motives", and so on. I'm not going to go and drag quotes in here, but I think that at least half the objection to Alignment seems to come from the idea that something is judging these creatures as evil, regardless of why they do what they do. Moving to motivations leaves the judgement of how good or bad a creature is to those interacting with it.
Example: a merchant is amassing gold. A red dragon tries & fails to steal it, and develops a grudging respect of the merchant. A starving Xorn tries and fails to steal it, and develops a hatred of the merchant. The dragon probably views the merchant as a rival in the same goal. The Xorn sees the merchant as a man keeping food from the starving. To the dragon, the merchant is neutral. To the Xorn, he is evil. In both cases, the merchant is Greedy and Selfish. The red dragon judges these as good things, the Xorn judges these as bad things. Do you see the difference between that and simply labeling him as "Neutral" or "Evil"?
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I love this idea. Makes perfect sense. Then it's up to the table to decide whether the motives are good or evil given the context etc. We don't really use alignment much at our table anyway. I use it personally to remind myself that my character is neutral when I roleplay and decide what he'd do in a given scenario, because I'm myself chaotic good as a player/person in the real world.
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While it does still have some issues with negative stereotyping*, I do think that this combined with a relabelling so that it is not entire races makes for a massive improvement.
* look at how Jews have been described throughout the centuries and compare with some of the motivations described, for example
That is why I made the suggestion in the first place. Push back about using broad stroke to label an entire species is part of why they are removing alignments from monster entries. I don't disagree with the idea that providing possible motivations would be useful to DMs, but breaking down from "All Goblins" to "Goblin Raiders" alleviates a large part of the problem.
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I find the discussion interesting. I’ve been following it since the original post, and held off while I saw what other people have had to say. I rarely do well otherwise.
I don’t like any part of it.
The most popular set of suggestions has been to apply 3 Motivations to each and every character, non-player character, and monster. The idea is that you won’t have to dig into the “lore” to know how to run any of them. It has to be each and every one because to do otherwise is bigotry.
Let’s start out with Goblins. We want to change their names to specify which type, a kind of “caste” system. Goblins might have a Warrior caste who does most of the fighting both for attack and defense. Then there is a Raiding caste that goes out, kills stuff, and brings it back for the benefit of all. Then there is a Professional caste that does most of the work to support the others and will largely avoid fights. Goblin Warrior, Goblin Raider, Goblin Professional. Each with 3 Motivations
So we have gone from a single stat block and a two word description of the morals and ethics of Goblins in general, to 3 words on each of three castes.
What have we gained? Can we avoid looking at the lore? We know the Motivations, but we don’t know the whys and wherefores. We only know that if we look at the lore. Since we have to do that for every single Goblin we use, all we have done is complicate things immensely.
Now on to the Non-Player Characters. Every one of them needs those three words. In order to understand their Motivations we have to have lore, a backstory that explains things. Once again we are not gaining anything. On close examination, the three words are going to need to be put in a specific order so we know their Primary Motivation, Secondary Motivation, and Tertiary Motivation. We will need that for all the monsters too.
Player Characters present more challenges. One of the first things that jumped out at me was the word “fool”. Does anyone ever consider themselves a fool? I know that I am one. I constantly do things that I know better than to do, which is pretty much the definition of “fool” but I only recognize this on reflection, after I do something foolish.
It was suggested that Magic Items might also trigger on Motivation, there would need to be a list, and that list would need to be epic in length given how many possible Motivations there are. This means re-writing the spells and effects to account for it. Every magic item is now unique, and that’s great I guess, but at the expense of all the complications and revisions needed is it worth it?
I suggest leaving things alone. No matter how woefully the Alignment system covers the morals and ethics of characters it’s still a useful guideline, and removing it takes away a part of the legacy, which is devoutly to be avoided after what happened with 4 Edition. Rather than completely revise the core books, might I suggest using something already in place? Inspiration.
This is something that provides a mechanical effect in play to reward behavior that the DM likes. The DM's doesn’t use it themselves though, it’s best if it is voted on and awarded by the other players. If the DM's hand it out they may be accused of favoritism. You can only ever have one point of Inspiration. They do not stack, no matter where they come from, and shouldn’t provide many problems if the other players are handing them out.
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I think it is worth noting that my idea of have "Goblin Raiders" vs just "Goblins" is not a cast system. For example Bandits are not part of a cast system for humans and are in fact just a group of individuals acting of their own accord and are a threat that adventurers may face.
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I think assigning motivations to characters shouldn't need to be stated? Like, that's character writing 101. Is it a good idea and does it work? Yes, obviously. Is it a good idea as a replacement for alignment, and does it work as a replacement for alignment? No. Motivations tell me what characters want and (maybe) why they want it. That's very important to know, but it doesn't tell what alignment tells me, which is whether a character is good or evil.
A big complaint people seem to have about alignment is that it's used as a replacement for motivations, which is not something that has ever occurred to me to do. I think motivations work better at being motivations than alignment does, but they're different things that are designed to do different things, so I really don't see either as an appropriate replacement for the other.
I sort of see where you're coming from here. My original thought was to try and summarize the lore for the goblins with a set of motivations (which has been 3 in most examples but that's not for any reason, it could be more or less).
So if the lore for a monster described, for example, that the monsters are vain, obsessed with gold, highly territorial and adverse to venturing out of their lairs, this can be summarized in a few bullet points so a DM doesn't have to read all their lore to get the basics of how they normally behave. If you see the word "Vengeful" on a creature, you know to treat it differently to one which says "Territorial". It would speed things up to have the summary of how a creature normally behaves, in a few words, and be a whole lot more useful than "good" or "evil".
Let's put it another way - currently, you have to read the lore and get given "Chaotic Evil" as an alignment. If instead you have to read the lore and get given "Territorial, brave in packs, undisciplined", you have not lost anything. Knowing their alignment doesn't help a DM, but if the DM is dragged into the world of improvisation by the party (as so often happens) and has a single encounter with a monster, then it will be smoother for them to just read "Hungry, vengeful, relentless" and know that this monster is hunting to eat, will hold grudges, and will never stop. The lore could take some time to read, and skim-reading can miss important details out, such as perhaps the vengeful side of the monster.
Splitting creatures into castes is not entirely necessary in the way you're implying. I would propose simply renaming "Goblin" and "Goblin raider", no need to add different goblins in as well - they could be added in the lore text, EG "There are also goblin farmers who are motivated by defending their property and are prone to hide until their property is attacked". 90% of the time, if the DM reaches for the monster manual to get the stats for a Goblin, it's going to be a raider that the party is going to fight.
Player characters would be able to write their own motivations. If they wanted to, there could be a big list of them which they can choose from. Perhaps the logical approach would be to make a list of them, and have them select at least 1 from the list.
So a player might select "Show-off", "Defender of Allies", and "To find the perfect cup of tea". The first 2 are from this big list, the last is unique to them, and is a good key for them to roleplay by, and for the DM to use in creating plot hooks, but won't interact with magic items.
There aren't many spells or magic items which have effects that trigger based off of alignment. Those that do could have a brief list of the common motivations which trigger them. But in order to move away from "Good" and "Evil", the game would need to completely remove spells which say things like "This spell does >this damage< to good creatures and >that damage< to evil creatures". Instead, you would have to consider a complete rewrite of this sort of thing. I agree that it would be a big undertaking, but what it would accomplish would be to remove the pre-judged status of alignment and instead focus on the motives of people. A spell which is designed to punish the selfish would focus on motives like "Greed", "Personal Power", "Personal Welfare". One designed to harm the selfless would focus on "Protecting the Innocent", "Helping Others" that sort of thing. Notice how there is no judgement in there other than what you bring yourself - to a dragon, Selfishness is a good trait. To a Beholder, Selflessness is a bad trait.
Would it be such a bad thing to ditch things which work based on prejudiced views of what is "Good" or "Evil"? Is someone who is starving who steals bread to eat evil? What about if they steal caviar and a prime steak? Both the same crime, and the same motive, but one feels different to the other, doesn't it?
The Legacy argument is one worth considering - whilst it bears no weight on the mechanical and psychological improvements that could be achieved, it should always be considered in these things. But I wonder, what do we stand to keep by maintaining the black & white clear-cut system of "this is Evil" and "That is Good" that DnD uses? It's clearly sparked something of a big feeling in people, as evidenced in other threads. All I see the alignment system as doing is judging.
The main difference between the two is that the current alignment says "These creatures are Violent, Territorial Bullies, and that is Evil". Moving to motivations just stops after the word "Bullies", removing all that judgement from the text. It literally moves to just the facts, and none of the prejudice.
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I completely agree, here.
This system can get much more information across in a few words than alignment can in 1-2, with little-to-none of the judgement or prejudice. However, if players or DMs wish to apply judgements, they are still free to do so. In fact, I would suggest that it would be significantly easier to assign an alignment based on these motivations than it would be to work out an NPC/Monster's motivation from their alignment.
Same problems as alignment with different words. Chaotic Evil. PC I kill the guard for asking for 2 cp to enter the town. DM Why. PC Because I am Chaotic Evil. Motives Bloodlust. PC I kill the guard for asking for 2 cp to enter the town. DM Why. PC Because I have bloodlust as a motive.
Either Alignment or Motives, or what ever you want to do help your PC be a three d person, and what ever cliff notes description for monsters needs to be handled in session 0.
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I think one of the many problems with the alignment system is that there isn't an in depth explanation of the nine choices. There are only a few paragraphs in the MM and a one page summary in the PHB. If they plan on keeping alignment in the game while removing them from stat blocks (which I am fine with) I would like to see a much more fleshed out and nuanced discussion of what each of the nine choices are and how a DM can use them to flesh out a creature's motivations, in a style like the Horror Monsters section of Van Richten's Guide.
That's a pretty useless change. The problems with assigning a racial personality don't go away because you change the words you're using. There are two structural problems with alignment:
Replacing alignment with a more precise system helps with problem 2, above. Problem 1 requires somewhat more structural changes to how you're actually using creatures.
I can see the use of such a system, for instance redcaps and quicklings are both listed as evil, but redcaps are outright serial killers while quicklings prefer to ruin lives without killing. You wouldn’t really tell the difference at a glance.
My stake is in overall world building than in a specific how to play X beastie. Do the motivations have their own planes or does, say, the Abyss have a selection of motivations tied to it? More to the point, do the motivations exist in of themselves or are they only in the mind of those having them? If the later, it’s not truly a replacement for alignment.
There’s also another point for the overall collection of conversations this one plus part of: mortal humanoids only make up a fraction of the Monster Manual, and and even smaller one of all D&D creatures. IMO, the way creature statistics are presented should not revolve around them.
So because it only solves one problem and not all problems, it is "useless"?
Personally, I see it as partly solving the first issue too. A race being Evil is much more problematic than a race being Territorial. Also, I believe they would be much less likely to be taken as absolutes than Good and Evil. It is not perfect, but would be helpful.
Combine it with naming, such as the example of "Goblin Raider", and you are no longer describing a whole race, just the typical motivations of a member of that race who chooses that occupation.
It's useless for the purpose it was being suggested as being useful for. Calling a race 'bullies' is not significantly less judgmental than calling them 'evil'.
Well, first & foremost this is about creatures, not races. As stated earlier, the issue of "goblins are greedy" is remedied by "Goblin Raiders are Greedy". the creature in the book would be "Goblin Raider", and the book would offer typical motivations for goblin raiders. Whilst we can always say "but not all >X<'s are like that!", that is then a job for the DM to amend the creature to suit their needs - perhaps making a group of selfless, overenthusiastic, show-off goblins instead of greedy, territorial and only brave in groups goblins.
If you refrain from offering any guidelines for behaviour at all, then what does the book even do?
So, let's step away from Goblins, as it seems to be offending people, and say "Beholder", "Dragon", and "Roper".
All of these are evil. But all 3 of these have different motives. Looking at a roper and seeing "Neutral Evil" doesn't tell you anything about how the creature would behave. A roper wouldn't steal the lollipop from a child because it wanted it, like a neutral evil thief - it would pick up and eat the child.
A Red Dragons motives are Personal Wealth, Greed, Vengeance, Power.
A Beholders motives are Knowledge, Power, Aggressive
A Roper is Hunger, Territorial
Now, at a glance you can see which of the 3 you are most likely to be able to reason with - the Red Dragon could be swayed with promises of wealth or power. The Beholder might be swayed with knowledge or power, but is aggressive so less likely to be approachable. The Roper is hungry and territorial - if you are near it, it wants to eat you.
Notice again that none of these things indicate any judgement, only description. Whether you deem these good or bad traits is personal opinion, not pre-written into the fabric of the universe.
In fairness, this isn't the problem this was laid out to solve. This player will always find a reason to kill that guard:
Alignment - it's because of my alignment
Motives - it's because of my motives
Do away with both - it's what my character would do
force them to be good - I thought the guard was evil
Make the guard their best friend from childhood - They did something unforgivable that I just added to my backstory to make it justified to stab them.
Make the guard an adorable dog called corporal woofs - they suddenly hate dogs
etc.
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To be fair, the opening post didn't actually say it was useful for that purpose. It proposed this as an alternative to alignment, and mostly talked about how much better it was at helping you to understand how a character/monster would behave.
That said, I do think it is significantly less judgemental to call someone a bully than to call them evil, or even an entire race (although possible additional solutions to this have been mentioned). Even calling them savage, violent and bloodthirsty is less judgemental than evil.
So no, it doesn't solve all the problems on its own, but it solves one big one (alignments are bad for determining what an NPC/monster would do without reading the flavour text) and helps with the other with slightly less judgemental language. Combined with something like the name changes suggested, or even just wording it as "typical motives", it could go a long way towards improving both.
It's certainly not a perfect solution (especially on its own) but as the saying goes "perfect is the enemy of good".
I just want to say that the words I'm picking aren't necessarily there for the final draft ;) but...
Calling a species bullies is descriptive, not judgmental. For example, Crows, Killer Whales, and Lions. Crows will mob other birds, they will drive smaller birds away from their nests to eat their young, and they will peck the eyes out of lambs so that they will starve, allowing them to eat the carrion. Killer whales will allow a seal to climb back onto an ice floe, just so that they can knock it off again. They will drag them down and release them just to chase them back to the surface and drag them down again, and they will throw them 60ft. into the air, just to see who can throw it further. Lions will chase cheetahs off their kills so that they can eat them themselves, and will kill the babies of other male lions when they find them.
All of these creatures I would consider "Bullies". Not because I consider their actions a bad thing, but because I would consider their actions to be Bullying. "Bullying" is a behaviour, and whilst it has negative connotations in western culture, a tribe of Orcs who are inclined to shun the weak and favour the strong will not see their actions as wrong, nor will they Bully because they are "Evil" (or be Evil because they Bully) - it would just be their culture. Might makes right, don't associate with the weak because they cannot help you in a fight, thus the weak get shunned and bullied. If this sort of thing is commonplace, then it's a fitting description.
Consider the point of view of the class bully - the one who doesn't consider their bullying to be wrong, that they consider their being stronger than everyone else to be reason enough to throw that strength around to get what they want. If they read a race of Orcs who shun the weak, take what they want etc. and are described as "Bullies", they will not consider the motive "Bullies" to be a negative one. They will just think "cool, I can relate". If instead they see it say "Evil", then they might take offense that the actions they would consider normal are here considered evil.
In short, if you consider "Bully" to be a bad thing, then that's your decision. It's certainly a lot less pre-judged than "Evil".
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Hmm... my fundamental problem with alignment >> motivation is that, fundamentally... alignment isn't really personality, motivation, or the like. Alignment is a karma meter. Its an attempt to model ethics and morality (and the lack thereof) in the D&D universe.
I mean, I agree that trying to say that all members of certain races are "evil" or "chaotic" is bad (likewise, saying that all "goodly" races are Good is a problem). And I do feel that the social aspects of D&D are sorely lacking, especially if its supposed to be one of the three pillars of the game.
But I just feel that, if you're going to replace alignment, it should either be with another karma meter, or just ditch it altogether. If you want to expand on personality and motives and aspirations of characters, as well as how the Interaction Pillar functions? I'm totally down with that, but it should be unrelated to alignment.