The issue is that you're using the word "opposed". O don't think anyone is saying just used alignment. Of course an alignment wouldn't give that kind of detail. But then...the PBIF didn't either. It was combining the both tools that lead to his development and complexity. Without the alignment, I'd have had a simpler concept and...I'd be making his decisions up on the spot. Which we've seen, has lead to some quite different understandings according to TBIF...that nuance wouldn't be there.
I mean, I think I demonstrated just an example of how PFIB does, in fact, give that level of detail in how the four points of the persona play against each other. There are of course different ways to take it, since it's open to interpretation, but I think there is more than enough there to actually get a pretty full person.
There’s that word “I” again, so popular among those who assume alignment must be useless because they are unwilling to see another perspective. You were literally told “I personally, as an individual player, would have struggled with this, but alignment helped me” and your response was little more than “well, I could have done it.”
But, hey, keep ignoring the dozens of posts that either say “it was helpful to me” or “it is helpful to my players (even if I do not find it helpful), just because you do not see how it can be helpful.
So if you go back and add Linklite's contribution back to the exchange you just quoted, you'll see that Linklite wasn't talking about Alignment being useful, they were talking about PFIB not being detailed enough and my response was, "Well it was certainly detailed enough for me to work with."
And again I do think that people can use Alignment productively, after they've done some work researching it and internalizing the various internet debates about it. Even after that you can still go to half a dozen D&D veterans about their definitions of the finer details of the Alignments and come away with as many different definitions. Just because people have made it work for them doesn't mean it's a well made system. Just because people like it doesn't mean there isn't a demonstrably better system.
I state my opinions in strong terms because I believe in them strongly, but I've never called anyone wrong because they disagree with me. Go ahead and disagree with me, I won't be offended. Just as I hope you are not offended when I state what I believe and back it up with reasoning. Why do I need to account for everyone else's opinion? Everyone is entitled to their opinion. I'm not going to respond to everyone just because they state an opinion I don't agree with, I will just lay out my own reasoning for everyone to look at.
I'm not trying to attack anyone, I'm debating the ideas and the system itself. Please don't feel like I'm somehow coming after you if you happen to like the system. If you like olives, that's fine. I think they're disgusting and ruin any dish they touch, but that shouldn't have any bearing on you.
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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!
The issue is that you're using the word "opposed". O don't think anyone is saying just used alignment. Of course an alignment wouldn't give that kind of detail. But then...the PBIF didn't either. It was combining the both tools that lead to his development and complexity. Without the alignment, I'd have had a simpler concept and...I'd be making his decisions up on the spot. Which we've seen, has lead to some quite different understandings according to TBIF...that nuance wouldn't be there.
I mean, I think I demonstrated just an example of how PFIB does, in fact, give that level of detail in how the four points of the persona play against each other. There are of course different ways to take it, since it's open to interpretation, but I think there is more than enough there to actually get a pretty full person.
There’s that word “I” again, so popular among those who assume alignment must be useless because they are unwilling to see another perspective. You were literally told “I personally, as an individual player, would have struggled with this, but alignment helped me” and your response was little more than “well, I could have done it.”
But, hey, keep ignoring the dozens of posts that either say “it was helpful to me” or “it is helpful to my players (even if I do not find it helpful), just because you do not see how it can be helpful.
So if you go back and add Linklite's contribution back to the exchange you just quoted, you'll see that Linklite wasn't talking about Alignment being useful, they were talking about PFIB not being detailed enough and my response was, "Well it was certainly detailed enough for me to work with."
And again I do think that people can use Alignment productively, after they've done some work researching it and internalizing the various internet debates about it. Even after that you can still go to half a dozen D&D veterans about their definitions of the finer details of the Alignments and come away with as many different definitions. Just because people have made it work for them doesn't mean it's a well made system. Just because people like it doesn't mean there isn't a demonstrably better system.
I state my opinions in strong terms because I believe in them strongly, but I've never called anyone wrong because they disagree with me. Go ahead and disagree with me, I won't be offended. Just as I hope you are not offended when I state what I believe and back it up with reasoning. Why do I need to account for everyone else's opinion? Everyone is entitled to their opinion. I'm not going to respond to everyone just because they state an opinion I don't agree with, I will just lay out my own reasoning for everyone to look at.
I'm not trying to attack anyone, I'm debating the ideas and the system itself. Please don't feel like I'm somehow coming after you if you happen to like the system. If you like olives, that's fine. I think they're disgusting and ruin any dish they touch, but that shouldn't have any bearing on you.
I’m not sure how you got “wasn't talking about Alignment being useful” from “Without the alignment, I'd have had a simpler concept”… their post literally said that alignment was useful to them.
Here’s the reality - literally no one is saying alignment is perfect, just that many people find it useful in their or their player’s character creation. Their position is “this is useful enough to justify its existence in spite of its flaws, and no one is required to use it if they don’t find it helpful.” Yelling “but it has flaws and I don’t need it” isn’t debating - that’s you acknowledging a point made by the other side, then trying to extrapolate your personal opinions on others.
What you are doing is not debating, for a debate requires you acknowledge the other side and recognise what they are saying. What you are doing is standing on a soapbox shouting… and failing to realise you are actually agreeing with everything the other side is saying (your most recent post literally says that it can be useful, it just isn’t perfect - the same point the pro-alignment crowd has been saying since the thread’s first page)…. Just concluding “well, who cares if I acknowledge it is helpful to others, they should just deal without it because I don’t need it.”
Hot take: you don't need to limit yourself to one Ideal, Bond, or Flaw. The game already wants you to pick two Quirks, and it states in multiple places that these things can grow, change, or even disappear throughout play. Linklite's character could have had an additional Ideal: "the law is the Law - right or wrong, it must be obeyed", and that Ideal would've conveyed the same idea as a 'Lawful' alignment as well as indicating that for this character 'Law' is stronger than 'Good'. That single line defines the character's 'alignment' more completely and thoroughly than any two-word descriptor could.
QIBF can be modified and expanded however it needs to for a given character. If your character is a Byronic ******* riddled with flaws, then QIBF allows you to literally riddle them with Flaws. If you experience a tremendous, poignant moment in the course of a game, you can change/add to your QIBF to reflect it. The game already has rules in place to add temporary or permanent Flaws for the sake of mental afflictions in more horror-focused games.
Alignment will never be anything but two words that try to summarize the entirety of a character's essential personality - or the character of an entire species - in the most reductive possible terms. If you enjoy it, great. Fine. Have fun. But alignment does not do anything QIBF cannot do, and it does cause harm on a broader scope. Nobody's ever looked at the QIBF system and said "wow, that's not okay...I don't think I want to play this game anymore." People have absolutely said that when entire sapient species have been tarred with the Chaotic Evil brush and described as nothing but primitive, murderous savages who spend all their time plundering, pillaging, and graping-with-a-silent-G.
I’m not sure how you got “wasn't talking about Alignment being useful” from “Without the alignment, I'd have had a simpler concept”… their post literally said that alignment was useful to them.
True., maybe I should have snipped that a little closer then because I was specifically responding to these portions of Linklite's post:
The thing is, PBIF didn't have enough to work with.
...
Of course an alignment wouldn't give that kind of detail. But then...the PBIF didn't either.
By showing that, yes, there was more than enough provided to work with.
Does that make it clearer what exactly I was responding to?
Here’s the reality - literally no one is saying alignment is perfect, just that many people find it useful in their or their player’s character creation. Their position is “this is useful enough to justify its existence in spite of its flaws, and no one is required to use it if they don’t find it helpful.” Yelling “but it has flaws and I don’t need it” isn’t debating - that’s you acknowledging a point made by the other side, then trying to extrapolate your personal opinions on others.
Ok, but I disagree with Alignment being useful enough to justify its existence, at least for the purpose of PC's. I mean I see the point that has been made, I just disagree with it. I have nothing against the people who think so, I just think differently than they do.
What you are doing is not debating, for a debate requires you acknowledge the other side and recognise what they are saying. What you are doing is standing on a soapbox shouting… and failing to realise you are actually agreeing with everything the other side is saying (your most recent post literally says that it can be useful, it just isn’t perfect - the same point the pro-alignment crowd has been saying since the thread’s first page)…. Just concluding “well, who cares if I acknowledge it is helpful to others, they should just deal without it because I don’t need it.”
I'm pretty sure even right from the beginning I acknowledged that The Nine can be useful to people, but only after they have spent time doing their own research, or have been lucky enough to be mentored enough I suppose, to come to an understanding of it. Which is a barrier to entry that detracts from its value as a gaming system.
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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 you are doing is not debating, for a debate requires you acknowledge the other side and recognise what they are saying. ...
While we're talking about things people are refusing to acknowledge, what about the point that I've raised a few times now - the idea that alignment is harmful enough from adiscrimination standpoint that Wizards has been taking steps to de-emphasize it even more than it already was?
Wizards isn't doing this on a lark. They have data telling them people are not okay with dismissing entire species as Always Chaotic Evil free-murder monsters anymore. Given that, why do people think it's okay to still print alignment prominently and indelibly in every book, tell people "this thing is bad and you shouldn't use it as an excuse to mistreat others!...but we're totally gonna keep printing it and using it as a way to let people bully, mistreat, and ostracize others."
... What you are doing is not debating, for a debate requires you acknowledge the other side and recognise what they are saying. ...
While we're talking about things people are refusing to acknowledge, what about the point that I've raised a few times now - the idea that alignment is harmful enough from adiscrimination standpoint that Wizards has been taking steps to de-emphasize it even more than it already was?
Wizards isn't doing this on a lark. They have data telling them people are not okay with dismissing entire species as Always Chaotic Evil free-murder monsters anymore. Given that, why do people think it's okay to still print alignment prominently and indelibly in every book, tell people "this thing is bad and you shouldn't use it as an excuse to mistreat others!...but we're totally gonna keep printing it and using it as a way to let people bully, mistreat, and ostracize others."
That is literally in my first (possibly second) post on this thread.
Which brings me to my second issue--while individual alignments have their roots in helping individual players address their individual characters, racial alignments have a much, much, much darker history in this game. Gary Gygax, one of the game's creators, was a big fan of "biological determinism"--the idea that your chromosomes decide your personality. This often manifested itself in problematic and stereotypical ways (some of the early rulebooks discussing tribal races and such are... painful to read), including Gygax's using racial alignment as a tool of promulgating some fairly problematic ideas on race.
Broadly speaking, the minimum requirements for deciding what a character will do are:
What do they want?
What are they willing to do in order to get what they want?
Alignment is fairly marginal for #1 (sure, some people have a primary goal of helping or harming others, but many goals are not intrinsically good or bad), so for most people you'll need more detail than alignment. It's a bit more helpful for #2, but in practice most creatures have a bit more complex limits than "yeah, sure, I'll hurt people" or "no I won't", and you really need a sentence or two.
And yet here you are, five pages later, arguing strongly for retention of alignment as a core, intrinsic, and necessary mechanic in D&D that all creatures must at all times adhere to.
And yet here you are, five pages later, arguing strongly for retention of alignment as a core, intrinsic, and necessary mechanic in D&D that all creatures must at all times adhere to.
Which is it gonna be, Caerwyn?
Given the preference, you reading my posts, since I did not say any of those things.
I said that alignment at an individual level can be helpful to players and should be part of the game (though a part folks can choose to ignore). I also said that alignment as an absolute feature of a race is not helpful and is rooted in problematic history, and should be excised from the game. Those are not incompatible statements, anymore than me saying psychology (individual analysis) is a useful field, but sociology (group analytics) borders on pseudoscience would be contradictory. The simple reality is that you are arguing about oranges (racial alignment) when the thread is currently discussing apples (alignment on a case-by-case basis).… and you are apparently unable to tell the difference between the two.
Also, Ophidimancer, I genuinely don't understand, why, if you are fine with alignment for NPC's, are you not fine with it for PC's? What's the major difference on alignment between these two?
Player Characters and Non-Player Characters are fundamentally different and the tools and techniques we use with them are of course going to be different
Yes, I get that, but just as alignment can be used to help determine a PC's actions, it can be used in the same way to help determine an NPC's. I don't understand the difference on how alignment can help PC's but not NPC's. Yes, they are different, but alignment can still be used to help you predict what your NPC could do, and help you get a better sense of them. Why use it for PC's but not NPC's?
It's the other way around, by the way, I prefer not to use The Nine with PC's but I'm okay with using it on an NPC. That is because most NPC's don't need to be understood so deeply. A something shallow and broad strokes will suffice for NPC's that are like extras in a movie or show. I actually probably wouldn't use The Nine with important NPC's either, but rather write out their motivations in a more detailed and customized way, similar to PC's. Because Alignment is very shallow and does not do well for a PC, which is the vessel for a player's roleplaying and thus deserves something more in depth and actually useful as a roleplay aid.
Alignment is only shallow on its own, if you use it in conjunction with other factors, then it can help with roleplaying your PC. As a player, I fill out my PTIFB's, I write a backstory, and I write my alignment. The latter of these, I have found to be an invaluable tool in helping flesh out my character and getting a better sense of them as the campaign goes on. Start your painting with broad, shallow strokes, in order to get an outline, and then you can fill in the rest later.
In session one, you don't need a complete understanding of your character. You can play them using the information you wrote, but eventually, they will come to life as a completely new and different person than what you predicted them to be. I often start a new character and find that my PTIFB's don't make sense or are to restricting. In those times, it's good to have my alignment as another tool that I can fall back on.
Also, when using alignment with PTIFB's, I find that my alignment is a broad general, and my PTIFB's are more specific. It is good to have both areas of a character, their quirks and flaws don't match up in nearly as many situations as my alignment does. And yes, some of my ideals have come up slightly more, but a lot of my ideals are derived from my alignment, and work together with it.
(C) Just because the DM can abuse alignment to unattune magic items from their doesn't mean they will. DM's have dozens and dozens of ways to remove items from their players and millions of powers that they could abuse.. Just because the DM technically has that power, doesn't mean they're going to see it and forget how DMing works, and then use it to hurt their players as best they can.
If a DM feels a character is straying from their alignment, while equipped to something like a Robe of the Archmagi, then they'll talk to their player and explain, that if they keep acting in this way, their alignment may change, and then they may not be able to still remain attuned to the robe. If a player ignores numerous warning's and continues down this course anyway, then worst comes to worst, another member of the party attunes to the item.
No, this is awful. This leads to arguments about intention versus consequence and a whole lot of other philosophical ethics debates at the table and is why Alignment should not have this kind of mechanical enforcement to it. This is exactly the kind of thing that needs to go away. Even a well meaning DM can fall into this trap trying to make their world immersive but really just fouling up their game with a badly explained and argument prone system.
(A) How can being unnattuned from a magic item because your alignment changed lead to philosiphical debates?
(B) This trap is not easy to fall into. Here are solutions and ways to prevent it from happening accidentally and/or to stop it from becoming a big deal:
A decent DM would talk to their players and explain to them that their alignment is on course to change, and that could end their attunement with X magic item. If one party member is unattuned from.
Should the player persist, it doesn't make a big difference since when they're unattuned, another party member can probably just attune to the item as well.
If you don't like this magic item attunement system, then as DM, you can always get rid of it.
With magic item's such as the one you gave as an example, Robe of the Archmagi, you can decide that, since your DM, the robe's form and color changes with the attuned creatures alignment to match them. I personally wouldn't do this, but it is always a solution available to you.
And yet here you are, five pages later, arguing strongly for retention of alignment as a core, intrinsic, and necessary mechanic in D&D that all creatures must at all times adhere to.
Which is it gonna be, Caerwyn?
I just wanted to say, I'm fine with eliminating alignment for large groups. Also, no one said that alignment is "a core, intrinsic, and necessary mechanic in D&D that all creatures must at all times adhere to." We said it's a helpful tool that, if you don't like you don't have to use.
Broadly speaking, the minimum requirements for deciding what a character will do are:
What do they want?
What are they willing to do in order to get what they want?
Alignment is fairly marginal for #1 (sure, some people have a primary goal of helping or harming others, but many goals are not intrinsically good or bad), so for most people you'll need more detail than alignment. It's a bit more helpful for #2, but in practice most creatures have a bit more complex limits than "yeah, sure, I'll hurt people" or "no I won't", and you really need a sentence or two.
Of course, that's why alignment works in conjunction with other factors and not on its own. Alignment provides a general basis for how the character/creature probably will act, but it all depends on the situation/and how that situation interacts with their PTIBF's, motivations, goals, and backstory (which alignment ties into).
Alignment helps a lot with this, but as I have been trying to explain for more than half a dozen pages on this thread now, it works in conjunction with other features. No tool work's completely on it's own, and no tool is completely fail-proof. But in these situations, alignment helps a lot, it's just not the only thing in these situations that helps.
PS. Why does this have to be such a heated debate? If you don't like alignment, you don't have to use it, but many people here (such as me) have found it to be a helpful tool. If 1% of D&D players use alignment in a ridiculous way, why does the system have to be taken out for the 99% that actually use it correctly?
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Of course, that's why alignment works in conjunction with other factors and not on its own.
The point is: alignment doesn't actually add anything to those other factors. It typically doesn't do any harm to note that a given creature is CE or whatever, but if you've given a competent description of its motivations and methods it also doesn't tell you anything you didn't already know (and conversely, if alignment does tell you something important, go back and fix the description because you did a bad job).
Alignment is only shallow on its own, if you use it in conjunction with other factors, then it can help with roleplaying your PC.
Okay, but you agree that Alignment is shallow, then?
(A) How can being unnattuned from a magic item because your alignment changed lead to philosiphical debates?
Because the player is going to ask why they got unattuned to an item they presumably earned and then the DM is going to explain why they think the character has shifted Alignment and then the player is going to argue about how they were actually following the precepts of their original alignment based on how they viewed it and then the DM is going to argue back about how it's not the intentions of their actions, but the consequences and so on and so forth ad infinitum until the player quits the game or the DM ends the campaign. Believe me, I have seen the fights that start over alignment even when both parties are well meaning. And those fights over "well what if my character thought it was Good to kill the goblin baby because they would grow up to attack the halfling village" very quickly lead nowhere good.
(B) A well meaning DM can fall into many traps, but I don't see how they'd fall into this one. Any half-decent DM would talk to there players about there alignment changing and how it works mechanically with the magic item, and worst come to worst, another member of the party can always attune to the item.
That is not the worst outcome from these kinds of things, believe me. These fights can end campaigns.
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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!
That sounds like two stubborn people finally letting it all out. Which is actually a good thing for the group. Get all troubles out in the open.
In our groups we can normally settle things like that with a quest of redemption or the character just accepts it. We also warn the player long before it actually happens.
I have never been in a situation were it just happened. In that case even the other players would be upset with the DM and would talk it over with him away from the table.
That sounds like two stubborn people finally letting it all out. Which is actually a good thing for the group. Get all troubles out in the open.
We're going to have to disagree on that, because I don't think it's good at all. My point is that alignment is so vague and subjective that it's easy for people to disagree on their definitions, even people who have been immersed in the culture for years, let alone rookies. And that kind of vague subjectiveness is bad for cohesiveness between members of a gaming group. Most especially when it can lose you a magic item. If it was just on your sheet for fluff and could be ignored that would be one thing, but when it starts affecting stuff like attunement to valuable items or damage against dangerous foes, that's when it becomes intrusive and needs to go.
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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!
Thats why you have a 0 session for the DM and players.
I am reasonable enough to accept the DM's ruling with little to no argument at the start then I watch as we play to see how things are going. I can always walk away. I am not glued to the game or that group. If in my opinion the DM is pulling favorites( the worst) or outright blasting the rules. We will still be friends but just not play that game together. My D&D group,car group, motorcycle group, bowling group and my shooting group are totally different but I am friends with all of them.
If you never get problems out out in the open your going to have far more troubles latter in real life.
Thats why you have a 0 session for the DM and players.
The vagueness of Alignment is not easily cleared up. I have had groups do a Session 0 and talk about Alignment and think they are in agreement, only to later find out they were not on the same page at all.
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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!
So if you go back and add Linklite's contribution back to the exchange you just quoted, you'll see that Linklite wasn't talking about Alignment being useful, they were talking about PFIB not being detailed enough and my response was, "Well it was certainly detailed enough for me to work with."
And again I do think that people can use Alignment productively, after they've done some work researching it and internalizing the various internet debates about it. Even after that you can still go to half a dozen D&D veterans about their definitions of the finer details of the Alignments and come away with as many different definitions. Just because people have made it work for them doesn't mean it's a well made system. Just because people like it doesn't mean there isn't a demonstrably better system.
I state my opinions in strong terms because I believe in them strongly, but I've never called anyone wrong because they disagree with me. Go ahead and disagree with me, I won't be offended. Just as I hope you are not offended when I state what I believe and back it up with reasoning. Why do I need to account for everyone else's opinion? Everyone is entitled to their opinion. I'm not going to respond to everyone just because they state an opinion I don't agree with, I will just lay out my own reasoning for everyone to look at.
I'm not trying to attack anyone, I'm debating the ideas and the system itself. Please don't feel like I'm somehow coming after you if you happen to like the system. If you like olives, that's fine. I think they're disgusting and ruin any dish they touch, but that shouldn't have any bearing on you.
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’m not sure how you got “wasn't talking about Alignment being useful” from “Without the alignment, I'd have had a simpler concept”… their post literally said that alignment was useful to them.
Here’s the reality - literally no one is saying alignment is perfect, just that many people find it useful in their or their player’s character creation. Their position is “this is useful enough to justify its existence in spite of its flaws, and no one is required to use it if they don’t find it helpful.” Yelling “but it has flaws and I don’t need it” isn’t debating - that’s you acknowledging a point made by the other side, then trying to extrapolate your personal opinions on others.
What you are doing is not debating, for a debate requires you acknowledge the other side and recognise what they are saying. What you are doing is standing on a soapbox shouting… and failing to realise you are actually agreeing with everything the other side is saying (your most recent post literally says that it can be useful, it just isn’t perfect - the same point the pro-alignment crowd has been saying since the thread’s first page)…. Just concluding “well, who cares if I acknowledge it is helpful to others, they should just deal without it because I don’t need it.”
Hot take: you don't need to limit yourself to one Ideal, Bond, or Flaw. The game already wants you to pick two Quirks, and it states in multiple places that these things can grow, change, or even disappear throughout play. Linklite's character could have had an additional Ideal: "the law is the Law - right or wrong, it must be obeyed", and that Ideal would've conveyed the same idea as a 'Lawful' alignment as well as indicating that for this character 'Law' is stronger than 'Good'. That single line defines the character's 'alignment' more completely and thoroughly than any two-word descriptor could.
QIBF can be modified and expanded however it needs to for a given character. If your character is a Byronic ******* riddled with flaws, then QIBF allows you to literally riddle them with Flaws. If you experience a tremendous, poignant moment in the course of a game, you can change/add to your QIBF to reflect it. The game already has rules in place to add temporary or permanent Flaws for the sake of mental afflictions in more horror-focused games.
Alignment will never be anything but two words that try to summarize the entirety of a character's essential personality - or the character of an entire species - in the most reductive possible terms. If you enjoy it, great. Fine. Have fun. But alignment does not do anything QIBF cannot do, and it does cause harm on a broader scope. Nobody's ever looked at the QIBF system and said "wow, that's not okay...I don't think I want to play this game anymore." People have absolutely said that when entire sapient species have been tarred with the Chaotic Evil brush and described as nothing but primitive, murderous savages who spend all their time plundering, pillaging, and graping-with-a-silent-G.
Please do not contact or message me.
True., maybe I should have snipped that a little closer then because I was specifically responding to these portions of Linklite's post:
By showing that, yes, there was more than enough provided to work with.
Does that make it clearer what exactly I was responding to?
Ok, but I disagree with Alignment being useful enough to justify its existence, at least for the purpose of PC's. I mean I see the point that has been made, I just disagree with it. I have nothing against the people who think so, I just think differently than they do.
I'm pretty sure even right from the beginning I acknowledged that The Nine can be useful to people, but only after they have spent time doing their own research, or have been lucky enough to be mentored enough I suppose, to come to an understanding of it. Which is a barrier to entry that detracts from its value as a gaming system.
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!
While we're talking about things people are refusing to acknowledge, what about the point that I've raised a few times now - the idea that alignment is harmful enough from adiscrimination standpoint that Wizards has been taking steps to de-emphasize it even more than it already was?
Wizards isn't doing this on a lark. They have data telling them people are not okay with dismissing entire species as Always Chaotic Evil free-murder monsters anymore. Given that, why do people think it's okay to still print alignment prominently and indelibly in every book, tell people "this thing is bad and you shouldn't use it as an excuse to mistreat others!...but we're totally gonna keep printing it and using it as a way to let people bully, mistreat, and ostracize others."
Please do not contact or message me.
That is literally in my first (possibly second) post on this thread.
Broadly speaking, the minimum requirements for deciding what a character will do are:
Alignment is fairly marginal for #1 (sure, some people have a primary goal of helping or harming others, but many goals are not intrinsically good or bad), so for most people you'll need more detail than alignment. It's a bit more helpful for #2, but in practice most creatures have a bit more complex limits than "yeah, sure, I'll hurt people" or "no I won't", and you really need a sentence or two.
And yet here you are, five pages later, arguing strongly for retention of alignment as a core, intrinsic, and necessary mechanic in D&D that all creatures must at all times adhere to.
Which is it gonna be, Caerwyn?
Please do not contact or message me.
Given the preference, you reading my posts, since I did not say any of those things.
I said that alignment at an individual level can be helpful to players and should be part of the game (though a part folks can choose to ignore). I also said that alignment as an absolute feature of a race is not helpful and is rooted in problematic history, and should be excised from the game. Those are not incompatible statements, anymore than me saying psychology (individual analysis) is a useful field, but sociology (group analytics) borders on pseudoscience would be contradictory. The simple reality is that you are arguing about oranges (racial alignment) when the thread is currently discussing apples (alignment on a case-by-case basis).… and you are apparently unable to tell the difference between the two.
Alignment is only shallow on its own, if you use it in conjunction with other factors, then it can help with roleplaying your PC. As a player, I fill out my PTIFB's, I write a backstory, and I write my alignment. The latter of these, I have found to be an invaluable tool in helping flesh out my character and getting a better sense of them as the campaign goes on. Start your painting with broad, shallow strokes, in order to get an outline, and then you can fill in the rest later.
In session one, you don't need a complete understanding of your character. You can play them using the information you wrote, but eventually, they will come to life as a completely new and different person than what you predicted them to be. I often start a new character and find that my PTIFB's don't make sense or are to restricting. In those times, it's good to have my alignment as another tool that I can fall back on.
Also, when using alignment with PTIFB's, I find that my alignment is a broad general, and my PTIFB's are more specific. It is good to have both areas of a character, their quirks and flaws don't match up in nearly as many situations as my alignment does. And yes, some of my ideals have come up slightly more, but a lot of my ideals are derived from my alignment, and work together with it.
(A) How can being unnattuned from a magic item because your alignment changed lead to philosiphical debates?
(B) This trap is not easy to fall into. Here are solutions and ways to prevent it from happening accidentally and/or to stop it from becoming a big deal:
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
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HERE.I just wanted to say, I'm fine with eliminating alignment for large groups. Also, no one said that alignment is "a core, intrinsic, and necessary mechanic in D&D that all creatures must at all times adhere to." We said it's a helpful tool that, if you don't like you don't have to use.
Of course, that's why alignment works in conjunction with other factors and not on its own. Alignment provides a general basis for how the character/creature probably will act, but it all depends on the situation/and how that situation interacts with their PTIBF's, motivations, goals, and backstory (which alignment ties into).
Alignment helps a lot with this, but as I have been trying to explain for more than half a dozen pages on this thread now, it works in conjunction with other features. No tool work's completely on it's own, and no tool is completely fail-proof. But in these situations, alignment helps a lot, it's just not the only thing in these situations that helps.
PS. Why does this have to be such a heated debate? If you don't like alignment, you don't have to use it, but many people here (such as me) have found it to be a helpful tool. If 1% of D&D players use alignment in a ridiculous way, why does the system have to be taken out for the 99% that actually use it correctly?
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.The point is: alignment doesn't actually add anything to those other factors. It typically doesn't do any harm to note that a given creature is CE or whatever, but if you've given a competent description of its motivations and methods it also doesn't tell you anything you didn't already know (and conversely, if alignment does tell you something important, go back and fix the description because you did a bad job).
Okay, but you agree that Alignment is shallow, then?
Because the player is going to ask why they got unattuned to an item they presumably earned and then the DM is going to explain why they think the character has shifted Alignment and then the player is going to argue about how they were actually following the precepts of their original alignment based on how they viewed it and then the DM is going to argue back about how it's not the intentions of their actions, but the consequences and so on and so forth ad infinitum until the player quits the game or the DM ends the campaign. Believe me, I have seen the fights that start over alignment even when both parties are well meaning. And those fights over "well what if my character thought it was Good to kill the goblin baby because they would grow up to attack the halfling village" very quickly lead nowhere good.
That is not the worst outcome from these kinds of things, believe me. These fights can end campaigns.
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!
That sounds like two stubborn people finally letting it all out. Which is actually a good thing for the group. Get all troubles out in the open.
In our groups we can normally settle things like that with a quest of redemption or the character just accepts it. We also warn the player long before it actually happens.
I have never been in a situation were it just happened. In that case even the other players would be upset with the DM and would talk it over with him away from the table.
We're going to have to disagree on that, because I don't think it's good at all. My point is that alignment is so vague and subjective that it's easy for people to disagree on their definitions, even people who have been immersed in the culture for years, let alone rookies. And that kind of vague subjectiveness is bad for cohesiveness between members of a gaming group. Most especially when it can lose you a magic item. If it was just on your sheet for fluff and could be ignored that would be one thing, but when it starts affecting stuff like attunement to valuable items or damage against dangerous foes, that's when it becomes intrusive and needs to go.
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!
Thats why you have a 0 session for the DM and players.
I am reasonable enough to accept the DM's ruling with little to no argument at the start then I watch as we play to see how things are going. I can always walk away. I am not glued to the game or that group. If in my opinion the DM is pulling favorites( the worst) or outright blasting the rules. We will still be friends but just not play that game together. My D&D group,car group, motorcycle group, bowling group and my shooting group are totally different but I am friends with all of them.
If you never get problems out out in the open your going to have far more troubles latter in real life.
The vagueness of Alignment is not easily cleared up. I have had groups do a Session 0 and talk about Alignment and think they are in agreement, only to later find out they were not on the same page at all.
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!
Thats no big deal people learn if they are willing to. Its just a game.
'Good' and 'Evil' are loaded terms that people take seriously, whether or not you think they 'should'.
Like everyone else has said and I agree.
Play however you want.