I mean yes, of course everyone should play how they want, but that's not the discussion at hand, is it? The discussion at hand is "Alignment: Reasons For and Against."
And I think D&D would be a better game if PC's didn't have Alignment on character sheets or anywhere near them. I think what vague use people can get out of the system is outweighed by the time and energy spent going outside of the books to do their own research, by the subjective and argument prone nature of its definitions, and by the possibility for harm done in portraying bigotry against whole groups of people. I also think there is a viable and working alternative in place already so really there's no real reason to keep it. I'm Against, if that had to be made clear.
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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!
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?
I've said this ever since I joined this debate, no tool can work completely on its own, and alignment is certainly no exception. Alignment is fairly shallow if you try to use it on its own, so the answer to your question would technically be yes.
It still can be very helpful in conjunction with other things, and moderately helpful on its own though.
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.
Again, this is why you talk to your players. If you explain to them that their alignment is going of course, and it would interfere with their attunement to the magic item, then you can solve the problem before it becomes a big deal.
As I said in my previous post, here are various methods of stopping this from badly influencing or ending the campaign, (their copy and pasted from that post, I don't think you saw them since I was editing them in around the time you posted):
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.
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).
(A) A description of someone's motive's and methods can help, but alignment is broader than just that. For example, you're more likely to understand where someone is coming from if they're of a similar alignment, even if your exact methods differ in a few ways.
(B) You can use alignment to help determine those methods, when you're creating them in character/NPC creation. And then modify it to fit with your character/NPC. If someone model's a character/NPC's methods off an alignment but makes it more in depth so it works in better situations, then I'd say you're using alignment well.
Most descriptions of a persons behavior can fit somewhat into an alignment, and if you combine that with the alignment then you'll have a more flavorful and in depth description of them. This doesn't always work, but it can help. (Though again, if you just want to use this instead of alignment and not combine the two, you can.)
"Alignment" IS 'a description of a person's behavior'. It's just a short, bad, incomplete one. The choice between alignment and description of motivation is a choice between a short, bad, incomplete description of motivation and a longer, better, more complete description of motivation.
We get it. You love alignment. You can't imagine D&D without it. Fine. Use it. Please stop repeating "if you use it in conjunction with other tools it's better". No, it is not. *Those other tools* are better. Alignment adds nothing to them, unless you go out of your way to FORCE alignment to matter to them by twisting those tools through the lens of alignment. And continuing to try and insist alignment does no harm when it clearly and obviously has and does is disingenuous. You can consider those to be pointless edge cases. Ophidimancer, myself, and many others clearly do not. We're not fans of a harmful system with no real upside remaining in print. We clearly get to deal with it because traditionalists would rather burn the books than let them advance beyond The Word of Gygax, but that doesn't mean we have to like it.
Okay, but you agree that Alignment is shallow, then?
I've said this ever since I joined this debate, no tool can work completely on its own, and alignment is certainly no exception. Alignment is fairly shallow if you try to use it on its own, so the answer to your question would technically be yes.
It still can be very helpful in conjunction with other things, and moderately helpful on its own though.
And I think what vague use people can get out of the system is outweighed by the time and energy spent going outside of the books to do their own research, by the subjective and argument prone nature of its definitions, and by the possibility for harm done in portraying bigotry against whole groups of people. I also think there is a viable and working alternative in place already so really there's no real reason to keep it.
I just bought Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel and noticed that for key NPC's they use PFIB rather than Alignment and it is so much more of a help in portraying those characters that Alignment was truly and absolutely unnecessary.
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.
Again, this is why you talk to your players. If you explain to them that their alignment is going of course, and it would interfere with their attunement to the magic item, then you can solve the problem before it becomes a big deal.
Yes, of course talking to your players is good practice, but that is besides the point of how much use a tool like Alignment is. I'm here doing a critique of a tool we have been given. Talking to your players is good practice no matter what tool you're using.
As I said in my previous post, here are various methods of stopping this from badly influencing or ending the campaign, (their copy and pasted from that post, I don't think you saw them since I was editing them in around the time you posted):
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.
None of these address the issue that I don't think something so subjective and ill defined should be affecting mechanics this way.
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 this is just advice to ignore the Alignment system, but only in regards to this item. If we're going to do that I'd rather disregard Alignment entirely.
(A) A description of someone's motive's and methods can help, but alignment is broader than just that. For example, you're more likely to understand where someone is coming from if they're of a similar alignment, even if your exact methods differ in a few ways.
I have not found this to be the case, at all. The Nine are broad almost to the point of uselessness, honestly.
(B) You can use alignment to help determine those methods, when you're creating them in character/NPC creation. And then modify it to fit with your character/NPC. If someone model's a character/NPC's methods off an alignment but makes it more in depth so it works in better situations, then I'd say you're using alignment well.
Most descriptions of a persons behavior can fit somewhat into an alignment, and if you combine that with the alignment then you'll have a more flavorful and in depth description of them. This doesn't always work, but it can help. (Though again, if you just want to use this instead of alignment and not combine the two, you can.)
I don't think we're having the same discussion here. I'm trying to actually critique the strengths and weaknesses of Alignment as a roleplaying tool. The fact that you're going to increasing lengths to show me how the tool might be of use is just proving how much work needs to go into Alignment to make it an actually useable tool.
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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!
Ultimately, I think this conversation cannot go any further. I think everyone acknowledges alignment can be useful and also has flaws, but there are different opinions on whether its probative value outweighs its flaws.
Milage will differ on that. In my experience on individual alignments, the benefits outweigh the flaws. It is a simple, easy tool a new player might use to help them get in character. Yes, it is vague, but I am not overly concerned with one of my players getting a “correct” answer, just the answer that helps them. I also have several players who simply are not going to fill out a more complicated set of quirks and traits, and I see no reason to force them to do so, so alignment is perfectly serviceable to them.
Other groups might have different experiences which would colour their perception. Those calling for individual alignment to be removed from the game seem to have bad experiences they perceive as stemming from alignment. I would postulate that the kind of player who is an ass about alignment is all but certainly an ass generally, so if it was not alignment something else would have doomed those campaigns, and that it is a bit unfair to blame the catalyst for the agent’s reactivity, but each person is welcome to draw what conclusions they might from their experiences.
I think Wizards’ current plan of having individual alignment be an option with increasingly less actual effect on the game is a great compromise. It keeps it as a tool for groups who want it, while making it very clear that you can discount it or remove it if you do not. Everyone wins, except those who sycophantically insist it “must” be part of the game (and if they reveal themselves as such in session zero, there’s still plenty of time to kick them out of the group and find someone worth playing with).
And, of course, I am more than happy racial alignments are being removed from the game. Unlike with individual alignments, where having it be in the rulebook clearly delineated as something optional gives everyone (who is worth playing with) what they want, the stain of Gygax’s racism and self-professed “biological determinism” taints the concept itself, eclipsing any utility it might have.
I went and checked. Nowhere in the PHB's character creation section does it mention that alignment is optional. In fact, it directs players to choose their alignment even before directing them to choosing a Background.
How is it "very clear" that you're allowed to discard it?
We all know we can in this thread because we're advanced users. We're dialed in, we know our shit. A new user would have no clue. Furthermore, as Ophidimancer has pointed out multiple times, the only reason we know the Nine Personality Boxes as well as we do is that most of us grew up in the nerd culture zeitgeist where this stuff is an endless font of low-quality memes. We've spent years or decades internalizing it. The Nine Personality Boxes do not necessarily make any sense at all to someone who hasn't spent those years soaking up nerd culture. If you haven't done that you need to do a bunch of independent research, and everybody you could ask will have a different answer.
And to the point of "only ******** use alignment in an ******* way"...duh? The question is, as Caerwyn said, whether the tool's existence justifies letting ******** keep their ******* Button. Because yes, ******** will be ******** regardless, but boy does alignment make it so much easier for them. They can justify any amount of assholishness with it until they get tossed from the table, so why are we letting them get away with it?
The harm outweighs the benefit, mostly because there IS no benefit outside of niche circumstances or Traditionalists feeling warm fuzzies when they put Lawful Good on their sheet. Ate those fuzzies worth letting ******** have such an easy, time-tested way to continue holing ass?
You know my opinion. Maybe ask yourself why yours is different, and why you deserve to inflict ******** on other tables for your own fuzzies.
*shrugs*. As I said, Yurei, you weigh factors differently based on your experiences and apparent bad luck choosing patties. I’ve been playing for years with dozens of players, and, more often than not, they find it helpful. They didn’t have to do any research or anything, just a twenty second blurb on what true a axises are, and it ended up being more helpful to them than other tools available due to its relative simplicity. It’s simplicity and its openness to interpretation makes it a useful tool in my pocket as someone who always has some new players I am DMing for. Given the data, I think we can be pretty clear that “new players” are a norm, not a niche, so making sure DMs have multiple tools to help different types of player who respond differently to different metrics? That has utility, even if you refuse to recognise it and dismiss all the folks on this thread who have said “Alignment might not help everyone, but it has helped me/my players” as “niche.”
And, while I agree the PHB is not great on how it handles alignment, the message from Wizards has been clear - it is being downplayed in a lot of regards and wasn’t even addressed in Tasha’s “all about character creation and session zero” book. I expect we will see a much more optional alignment rule in the new version of the PHB, which should address anyone who is pointing to the first book released in 5e, rather than looking at now years-old tends.
As for why I choose to give asses a tool? I am not going to let a few jerks colour my impression of something the overwhelming majority of my party members have benefited from and actively enjoy; not when I can show them the door and kick them out of my group.
I’ve been playing for years with dozens of players, and, more often than not, they find it helpful. They didn’t have to do any research or anything, just a twenty second blurb on what true a axises are, and it ended up being more helpful to them than other tools available due to its relative simplicity. It’s simplicity and its openness to interpretation makes it a useful tool in my pocket as someone who always has some new players I am DMing for.
Ahh, see as far as I remember this is literally the first time in this thread that anyone has related an experience counter to my claim that it takes an onerous research period for new players to understand The Nine. I wish I could get someone's firsthand recounting as a new player learning The Nine. Are any of them forum members?
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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!
When I started oh so many years ago in highschool we ignored alignment at first. We just wanted to play and added in the flavor as we got past our first characters.
We took it as a challenge to play a lawful good character or an evil character or trying to balance things in your local world to a true neutral state.
And personally having the racial animosities, traits and alignments was flavor. We viewed it as similar to the differences between nations in RL. Without it we would lose 80% of all literature.
We didn't equate Orcs to black people.Or goblins to Asians. That would be bigoted. By the way there is only one human race in real life and we knew that then. We actually equated Orcs and the like more to cro-magnon man in their social structure and intelligence. They have tried to remove all of those aspects in the new versions and I can live with it.
I’ve been playing for years with dozens of players, and, more often than not, they find it helpful. They didn’t have to do any research or anything, just a twenty second blurb on what true a axises are, and it ended up being more helpful to them than other tools available due to its relative simplicity. It’s simplicity and its openness to interpretation makes it a useful tool in my pocket as someone who always has some new players I am DMing for.
Ahh, see as far as I remember this is literally the first time in this thread that anyone has related an experience counter to my claim that it takes an onerous research period for new players to understand The Nine. I wish I could get someone's firsthand recounting as a new player learning The Nine. Are any of them forum members?
None of them post on the forums, nor would be inclined to post on the forums. However, I’ll be happy to inquire about their experiences if you want me to and can report back - feel free to let me know if you have any specific questions.
This is a non argument. The simple reality is Gygax’s views were outdated even if we look at them in the context of the 70s. He actively put his racism in the game (which still appears from time to time, like the recent characterisation of Strahd’s Romani based folk)
Don't think that's Gygax's fault (other than, presumably, giving it a thumb's up for publishing), Tracy and Laura Hickman came up with Ravenloft. The Drow are a better example for Gygax.
This is a non argument. The simple reality is Gygax’s views were outdated even if we look at them in the context of the 70s. He actively put his racism in the game (which still appears from time to time, like the recent characterisation of Strahd’s Romani based folk)
Don't think that's Gygax's fault (other than, presumably, giving it a thumb's up for publishing), Tracy and Laura Hickman came up with Ravenloft. The Drow are a better example for Gygax.
Nope, not his fault directly, but he did create the early game’s culture where things like that could flourish. I added it as a parenthetical and an illustration of how his early intolerance for racial or cultural stereotyping still persisted as of a 5e book, which forced errata that was more culturally appropriate. I, for one, hope the recent Radiant Citadel, with its celebration of cultures Gygax looked down on, is causing him to spin in his grave. Quite pleased with the book and the direction it took.
I don't seem to remember any anti female rules or comments in the original rules. They might have been there I will have to look again.
What he said outside the game does not effect the game to me.
As for the drow being black we also questioned that one. Not for racist reason but biological ones. Most subterranean creatures tend to lose coloring the longer the species is out of the sun. We always thought they should have been shades of ashen white.
I don't seem to remember any anti female rules or comments in the original rules. They might have been there I will have to look again.
What he said outside the game does not effect the game to me.
I welcome you to look at the extremely problematic (and very NSFW) piece of art used in the already cringy official rules on conducting orgies. The early game was full of things that were very hostile toward women.
I don't seem to remember any anti female rules or comments in the original rules. They might have been there I will have to look again.
What he said outside the game does not effect the game to me.
I welcome you to look at the extremely problematic (and very NSFW) piece of art used in the already cringy official rules on conducting orgies. The early game was full of things that were very hostile toward women.
I'm sorry what? D&D had rules for orgies? Is this for real?
... didn't the original rules have a strict system of mechanical penalties imposed on female characters, with the explicit idea that female adventurers more or less didn't exist save as Shy Healer Maidens because their strength and constitution scores were penalized in "exchange" for bonuses on seduction rolls?
Here's some coverage on how D&D has portrayed gender differences throughout the editions, along with some very cringey commentary from Gygax: https://dungeonsdragons.fandom.com/wiki/Gender
Mechanically, AD&D 1st Edition is the only one that had a rules enforced difference, capping women's Strength scores lower than men's but even if they removed those rules with AD&D 2nd, that didn't stop Gygax from defending it as "realism."
I don't seem to remember any anti female rules or comments in the original rules. They might have been there I will have to look again.
What he said outside the game does not effect the game to me.
I welcome you to look at the extremely problematic (and very NSFW) piece of art used in the already cringy official rules on conducting orgies. The early game was full of things that were very hostile toward women.
I'm sorry what? D&D had rules for orgies? Is this for real?
Veering a little off topic, but I think it is important to recognise and illustrate that the game was full of hostility in its early days, of which racial alignments are one of the last major vestiges.
Yes. It is real. Yes. It is as cringy as you think. It was a set of suggested rules in the official D&D magazine, which served as mini supplements to the core book. It was characterised as “do your players have too much money? Send them to a brothel and have them spend all their money on prostitutes for an orgy so they lose some of their gold.” The art depicts a bunch of naked female elves with a bunch naked goblins. It is.. pretty bad on every front. Probably the easiest to recognise example of early cringe, but there were plenty of other aggressions and micro aggressions on racial, cultural, and gender grounds.
Probably the easiest to recognise example of early cringe, but there were plenty of other aggressions and micro aggressions on racial, cultural, and gender grounds.
It's in a fairly marginal source, though; the evil black-skinned matriarchal spider-themed dominatrixes are core.
My group must have just ignored that female rule and I have since forgotten it in the last 40 years.
By the way EGG dropped the female strength penalty long before he was out of the game. As for any seduction rule it was, as they often say optional, and was eventually dropped before he left also.
I for one would forgive the man for his past youthful mistakes.
The man left TSR and D&D in 1989. 90% of the people playing were not around then so anything he said is moot.
As for the magazine it was the official TSR magazine because their were about a hundred other mags very much like it. It was never intended as a rules book. And it covered other games than D&D. Even games TSR owned but EGG never developed.
I mean yes, of course everyone should play how they want, but that's not the discussion at hand, is it? The discussion at hand is "Alignment: Reasons For and Against."
And I think D&D would be a better game if PC's didn't have Alignment on character sheets or anywhere near them. I think what vague use people can get out of the system is outweighed by the time and energy spent going outside of the books to do their own research, by the subjective and argument prone nature of its definitions, and by the possibility for harm done in portraying bigotry against whole groups of people. I also think there is a viable and working alternative in place already so really there's no real reason to keep it. I'm Against, if that had to be made clear.
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've said this ever since I joined this debate, no tool can work completely on its own, and alignment is certainly no exception. Alignment is fairly shallow if you try to use it on its own, so the answer to your question would technically be yes.
It still can be very helpful in conjunction with other things, and moderately helpful on its own though.
Again, this is why you talk to your players. If you explain to them that their alignment is going of course, and it would interfere with their attunement to the magic item, then you can solve the problem before it becomes a big deal.
As I said in my previous post, here are various methods of stopping this from badly influencing or ending the campaign, (their copy and pasted from that post, I don't think you saw them since I was editing them in around the time you posted):
(A) A description of someone's motive's and methods can help, but alignment is broader than just that. For example, you're more likely to understand where someone is coming from if they're of a similar alignment, even if your exact methods differ in a few ways.
(B) You can use alignment to help determine those methods, when you're creating them in character/NPC creation. And then modify it to fit with your character/NPC. If someone model's a character/NPC's methods off an alignment but makes it more in depth so it works in better situations, then I'd say you're using alignment well.
Most descriptions of a persons behavior can fit somewhat into an alignment, and if you combine that with the alignment then you'll have a more flavorful and in depth description of them. This doesn't always work, but it can help. (Though again, if you just want to use this instead of alignment and not combine the two, you can.)
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"Alignment" IS 'a description of a person's behavior'. It's just a short, bad, incomplete one. The choice between alignment and description of motivation is a choice between a short, bad, incomplete description of motivation and a longer, better, more complete description of motivation.
We get it. You love alignment. You can't imagine D&D without it. Fine. Use it. Please stop repeating "if you use it in conjunction with other tools it's better". No, it is not. *Those other tools* are better. Alignment adds nothing to them, unless you go out of your way to FORCE alignment to matter to them by twisting those tools through the lens of alignment. And continuing to try and insist alignment does no harm when it clearly and obviously has and does is disingenuous. You can consider those to be pointless edge cases. Ophidimancer, myself, and many others clearly do not. We're not fans of a harmful system with no real upside remaining in print. We clearly get to deal with it because traditionalists would rather burn the books than let them advance beyond The Word of Gygax, but that doesn't mean we have to like it.
No matter how often you try and insist we do.
Please do not contact or message me.
And I think what vague use people can get out of the system is outweighed by the time and energy spent going outside of the books to do their own research, by the subjective and argument prone nature of its definitions, and by the possibility for harm done in portraying bigotry against whole groups of people. I also think there is a viable and working alternative in place already so really there's no real reason to keep it.
I just bought Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel and noticed that for key NPC's they use PFIB rather than Alignment and it is so much more of a help in portraying those characters that Alignment was truly and absolutely unnecessary.
Yes, of course talking to your players is good practice, but that is besides the point of how much use a tool like Alignment is. I'm here doing a critique of a tool we have been given. Talking to your players is good practice no matter what tool you're using.
None of these address the issue that I don't think something so subjective and ill defined should be affecting mechanics this way.
And this is just advice to ignore the Alignment system, but only in regards to this item. If we're going to do that I'd rather disregard Alignment entirely.
I have not found this to be the case, at all. The Nine are broad almost to the point of uselessness, honestly.
I don't think we're having the same discussion here. I'm trying to actually critique the strengths and weaknesses of Alignment as a roleplaying tool. The fact that you're going to increasing lengths to show me how the tool might be of use is just proving how much work needs to go into Alignment to make it an actually useable tool.
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!
Ultimately, I think this conversation cannot go any further. I think everyone acknowledges alignment can be useful and also has flaws, but there are different opinions on whether its probative value outweighs its flaws.
Milage will differ on that. In my experience on individual alignments, the benefits outweigh the flaws. It is a simple, easy tool a new player might use to help them get in character. Yes, it is vague, but I am not overly concerned with one of my players getting a “correct” answer, just the answer that helps them. I also have several players who simply are not going to fill out a more complicated set of quirks and traits, and I see no reason to force them to do so, so alignment is perfectly serviceable to them.
Other groups might have different experiences which would colour their perception. Those calling for individual alignment to be removed from the game seem to have bad experiences they perceive as stemming from alignment. I would postulate that the kind of player who is an ass about alignment is all but certainly an ass generally, so if it was not alignment something else would have doomed those campaigns, and that it is a bit unfair to blame the catalyst for the agent’s reactivity, but each person is welcome to draw what conclusions they might from their experiences.
I think Wizards’ current plan of having individual alignment be an option with increasingly less actual effect on the game is a great compromise. It keeps it as a tool for groups who want it, while making it very clear that you can discount it or remove it if you do not. Everyone wins, except those who sycophantically insist it “must” be part of the game (and if they reveal themselves as such in session zero, there’s still plenty of time to kick them out of the group and find someone worth playing with).
And, of course, I am more than happy racial alignments are being removed from the game. Unlike with individual alignments, where having it be in the rulebook clearly delineated as something optional gives everyone (who is worth playing with) what they want, the stain of Gygax’s racism and self-professed “biological determinism” taints the concept itself, eclipsing any utility it might have.
I went and checked. Nowhere in the PHB's character creation section does it mention that alignment is optional. In fact, it directs players to choose their alignment even before directing them to choosing a Background.
How is it "very clear" that you're allowed to discard it?
We all know we can in this thread because we're advanced users. We're dialed in, we know our shit. A new user would have no clue. Furthermore, as Ophidimancer has pointed out multiple times, the only reason we know the Nine Personality Boxes as well as we do is that most of us grew up in the nerd culture zeitgeist where this stuff is an endless font of low-quality memes. We've spent years or decades internalizing it. The Nine Personality Boxes do not necessarily make any sense at all to someone who hasn't spent those years soaking up nerd culture. If you haven't done that you need to do a bunch of independent research, and everybody you could ask will have a different answer.
And to the point of "only ******** use alignment in an ******* way"...duh? The question is, as Caerwyn said, whether the tool's existence justifies letting ******** keep their ******* Button. Because yes, ******** will be ******** regardless, but boy does alignment make it so much easier for them. They can justify any amount of assholishness with it until they get tossed from the table, so why are we letting them get away with it?
The harm outweighs the benefit, mostly because there IS no benefit outside of niche circumstances or Traditionalists feeling warm fuzzies when they put Lawful Good on their sheet. Ate those fuzzies worth letting ******** have such an easy, time-tested way to continue holing ass?
You know my opinion. Maybe ask yourself why yours is different, and why you deserve to inflict ******** on other tables for your own fuzzies.
Please do not contact or message me.
*shrugs*. As I said, Yurei, you weigh factors differently based on your experiences and apparent bad luck choosing patties. I’ve been playing for years with dozens of players, and, more often than not, they find it helpful. They didn’t have to do any research or anything, just a twenty second blurb on what true a axises are, and it ended up being more helpful to them than other tools available due to its relative simplicity. It’s simplicity and its openness to interpretation makes it a useful tool in my pocket as someone who always has some new players I am DMing for. Given the data, I think we can be pretty clear that “new players” are a norm, not a niche, so making sure DMs have multiple tools to help different types of player who respond differently to different metrics? That has utility, even if you refuse to recognise it and dismiss all the folks on this thread who have said “Alignment might not help everyone, but it has helped me/my players” as “niche.”
And, while I agree the PHB is not great on how it handles alignment, the message from Wizards has been clear - it is being downplayed in a lot of regards and wasn’t even addressed in Tasha’s “all about character creation and session zero” book. I expect we will see a much more optional alignment rule in the new version of the PHB, which should address anyone who is pointing to the first book released in 5e, rather than looking at now years-old tends.
As for why I choose to give asses a tool? I am not going to let a few jerks colour my impression of something the overwhelming majority of my party members have benefited from and actively enjoy; not when I can show them the door and kick them out of my group.
Ahh, see as far as I remember this is literally the first time in this thread that anyone has related an experience counter to my claim that it takes an onerous research period for new players to understand The Nine. I wish I could get someone's firsthand recounting as a new player learning The Nine. Are any of them forum members?
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!
When I started oh so many years ago in highschool we ignored alignment at first. We just wanted to play and added in the flavor as we got past our first characters.
We took it as a challenge to play a lawful good character or an evil character or trying to balance things in your local world to a true neutral state.
And personally having the racial animosities, traits and alignments was flavor. We viewed it as similar to the differences between nations in RL. Without it we would lose 80% of all literature.
We didn't equate Orcs to black people.Or goblins to Asians. That would be bigoted. By the way there is only one human race in real life and we knew that then. We actually equated Orcs and the like more to cro-magnon man in their social structure and intelligence. They have tried to remove all of those aspects in the new versions and I can live with it.
None of them post on the forums, nor would be inclined to post on the forums. However, I’ll be happy to inquire about their experiences if you want me to and can report back - feel free to let me know if you have any specific questions.
[REDACTED]
Don't think that's Gygax's fault (other than, presumably, giving it a thumb's up for publishing), Tracy and Laura Hickman came up with Ravenloft. The Drow are a better example for Gygax.
Nope, not his fault directly, but he did create the early game’s culture where things like that could flourish. I added it as a parenthetical and an illustration of how his early intolerance for racial or cultural stereotyping still persisted as of a 5e book, which forced errata that was more culturally appropriate. I, for one, hope the recent Radiant Citadel, with its celebration of cultures Gygax looked down on, is causing him to spin in his grave. Quite pleased with the book and the direction it took.
I don't seem to remember any anti female rules or comments in the original rules. They might have been there I will have to look again.
What he said outside the game does not effect the game to me.
As for the drow being black we also questioned that one. Not for racist reason but biological ones. Most subterranean creatures tend to lose coloring the longer the species is out of the sun. We always thought they should have been shades of ashen white.
I welcome you to look at the extremely problematic (and very NSFW) piece of art used in the already cringy official rules on conducting orgies. The early game was full of things that were very hostile toward women.
I'm sorry what? D&D had rules for orgies? Is this for real?
... didn't the original rules have a strict system of mechanical penalties imposed on female characters, with the explicit idea that female adventurers more or less didn't exist save as Shy Healer Maidens because their strength and constitution scores were penalized in "exchange" for bonuses on seduction rolls?
Please do not contact or message me.
Here's some coverage on how D&D has portrayed gender differences throughout the editions, along with some very cringey commentary from Gygax: https://dungeonsdragons.fandom.com/wiki/Gender
Mechanically, AD&D 1st Edition is the only one that had a rules enforced difference, capping women's Strength scores lower than men's but even if they removed those rules with AD&D 2nd, that didn't stop Gygax from defending it as "realism."
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!
Veering a little off topic, but I think it is important to recognise and illustrate that the game was full of hostility in its early days, of which racial alignments are one of the last major vestiges.
Yes. It is real. Yes. It is as cringy as you think. It was a set of suggested rules in the official D&D magazine, which served as mini supplements to the core book. It was characterised as “do your players have too much money? Send them to a brothel and have them spend all their money on prostitutes for an orgy so they lose some of their gold.” The art depicts a bunch of naked female elves with a bunch naked goblins. It is.. pretty bad on every front. Probably the easiest to recognise example of early cringe, but there were plenty of other aggressions and micro aggressions on racial, cultural, and gender grounds.
It's in a fairly marginal source, though; the evil black-skinned matriarchal spider-themed dominatrixes are core.
My group must have just ignored that female rule and I have since forgotten it in the last 40 years.
By the way EGG dropped the female strength penalty long before he was out of the game. As for any seduction rule it was, as they often say optional, and was eventually dropped before he left also.
I for one would forgive the man for his past youthful mistakes.
The man left TSR and D&D in 1989. 90% of the people playing were not around then so anything he said is moot.
As for the magazine it was the official TSR magazine because their were about a hundred other mags very much like it. It was never intended as a rules book. And it covered other games than D&D. Even games TSR owned but EGG never developed.