Personalitytrait: If you do me injury, I will crush you, ruin your name and salt your fields.
Ideal: It is my duty to protect and care for the people beneath me.
Bond: The common folk must see me as a hero of the people.
Flaw: I secretly believe that everyone is beneath me.
That's the write up of my PIBF for one of my characters. Now, let's say he's in court and he sees someone condemned to death the next day for a violating a bogus law. We can probably agree that he's unhappy with the situation. Does he try to spring them from jail during the night, or does he allow the sentence to be carried out?
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I'd say probably spring them. This character wants the common folk to see them as a hero of the people, and helping an innocent person avoid an unjust death seems to fit that, rather than doing nothing and tacitly condoning the corrupt status quo. Also with the ideal of protecting people beneath them, a random towns person being sentenced to an unjust death I'd say also counts there.
That said, I don't play the character and I'm not in the character's head the same way the actual player would be. And just like alignment, these are general guidelines and not things a PC must hold to under every conceivable circumstance. There could be situations where a lawful evil character would have reason to try and save this person, and circumstances where a chaotic good might have to let it happen. None of this is absolutist and depends on the context.
Personalitytrait: If you do me injury, I will crush you, ruin your name and salt your fields.
Ideal: It is my duty to protect and care for the people beneath me.
Bond: The common folk must see me as a hero of the people.
Flaw: I secretly believe that everyone is beneath me.
That's the write up of my PIBF for one of my characters. Now, let's say he's in court and he sees someone condemned to death the next day for a violating a bogus law. We can probably agree that he's unhappy with the situation. Does he try to spring them from jail during the night, or does he allow the sentence to be carried out?
That's totally up to you because you're the player. If the DM wants to remove all agency and say 'you're thus and so Alignment so you'd likely do this' then that's wrong. It's no fun for the player because now a set of guidelines on paper with broad scope and meaning are limiting his options.
I consider myself to be pretty Lawful Good. Some days, I'm more Chaotic than Lawful. On at least one occasion, I feel like I could have killed someone. I have crippled someone in my own defense. How does this stat me out Alignment-wise?
One bad deed does not make an otherwise good man evil just as one good deed cannot redeem a truly evil person. Life is complex. Decisions and reasons for making them can be complex. I don't feel that a simple system can properly grasp that.
Besides...I follow the Rule of Cool and if something is going to stifle the fun, I won't use it.
Personalitytrait: If you do me injury, I will crush you, ruin your name and salt your fields.
Ideal: It is my duty to protect and care for the people beneath me.
Bond: The common folk must see me as a hero of the people.
Flaw: I secretly believe that everyone is beneath me.
That's the write up of my PIBF for one of my characters. Now, let's say he's in court and he sees someone condemned to death the next day for a violating a bogus law. We can probably agree that he's unhappy with the situation. Does he try to spring them from jail during the night, or does he allow the sentence to be carried out?
I'm not playing the character, but if I were (and this was the only context to go on, i.e. I don't know his backstory, I don't know what else he's been involved in, nor do I have prior experience playing him, etc. etc.):
I depends on how well I know the condemned, and how publicly visible my action or inaction would be. If I know and like them, I spring them free. If a lot of eyes are already on me, I spring them free. If there's an easy opportunity and strategic reason, I spring them free. If I'm just another bystander in a crowd of bystanders, and there's no easy opportunity, I let the sentence happen --- they're probably beneath me anyway, and it's real easy to find an excuse to avoid risk --- and there's the bystander effect.
That said, within the tropes of heroic fantasy and DM-contrived situations, I probably have ample opportunity to spring them, and do so. Few people actually roleplay "bystanders" because bystanders generally aren't PCs.
First of all, that's an interesting spread. So very few people manage to combine Duty and Arrogance in a way that works. I'd be curious to hear your take on the notion.
Second of all: I imagine it depends in part on who the condemned is and what popular opinion of the bogus law is. A commoner convicted on a lark because somebody in court is a sick ******* who enjoys executing people? A deeply unpopular law that's caused a lot of grumbling and discontent? Flouting it is a Hero of the People moment waiting to happen, and a man beneath this guy is being discarded for poor reason. But this guy strikes me as the sort who knows that springing someone from the clink and saying "you're free now, enjoy life again!" means the guy winds up executed on the spot by the first guard he runs across.
I don't know the character's station, status, or anything else, but my brain constructs a scenario where your character breaks the man free, then hands him a slip of paper. "Go here, give the passphrase written on this paper. Ask for a job. You'll be fed, sheltered, and cared for so long as you work for me at this place. They threw you away, I picked you back up. You're mine now." Heh, probably entirely wrong, but frankly it's just proof positive for me that QIBF do a much better job than Alignment of getting someone into the beginnings of a character's headspace. Those four lines suggest a number of stories to me, where the words 'Lawful Evil' would suggest entirely nothing.
Personalitytrait: If you do me injury, I will crush you, ruin your name and salt your fields.
Ideal: It is my duty to protect and care for the people beneath me.
Bond: The common folk must see me as a hero of the people.
Flaw: I secretly believe that everyone is beneath me.
That's the write up of my PIBF for one of my characters. Now, let's say he's in court and he sees someone condemned to death the next day for a violating a bogus law. We can probably agree that he's unhappy with the situation. Does he try to spring them from jail during the night, or does he allow the sentence to be carried out?
Not enough information to make an informed decision - one could easily argue either position with the limited fact pattern and snapshot of personality.
Since the above addressed why the character might do something, one could also make the argument the character cares more about being a folk hero than doing what the character might think is right. After all, if the entire town likes the law, even if the character does not, is his folk hero dream really really served if he loses the support of an entire town (and possibly other towns in the vicinity who might have similar moral outlooks and legal systems) just to save one person?
As I have said before, any single snapshot is going to be insufficient to address every situation, nor should they be. They are tools for helping people figure out their character, particularly if they are new or bad role players. Which is precisely why Wizards gives players multiple tools, including alignment, flaws, traits, etc, to figure out who their character is (all of which can be ignored if you do not need them) - each player can use whatever combination resonates with them personally.
Personalitytrait: If you do me injury, I will crush you, ruin your name and salt your fields.
Ideal: It is my duty to protect and care for the people beneath me.
Bond: The common folk must see me as a hero of the people.
Flaw: I secretly believe that everyone is beneath me.
That's the write up of my PIBF for one of my characters. Now, let's say he's in court and he sees someone condemned to death the next day for a violating a bogus law. We can probably agree that he's unhappy with the situation. Does he try to spring them from jail during the night, or does he allow the sentence to be carried out?
Not enough information to make an informed decision - one could easily argue either position with the limited fact pattern and snapshot of personality.
Since the above addressed why the character might do something, one could also make the argument the character cares more about being a folk hero than doing what the character might think is right. After all, if the entire town likes the law, even if the character does not, is his folk hero dream really really served if he loses the support of an entire town (and possibly other towns in the vicinity who might have similar moral outlooks and legal systems) just to save one person?
As I have said before, any single snapshot is going to be insufficient to address every situation, nor should they be. They are tools for helping people figure out their character, particularly if they are new or bad role players. Which is precisely why Wizards gives players multiple tools, including alignment, flaws, traits, etc, to figure out who their character is (all of which can be ignored if you do not need them) - each player can use whatever combination resonates with them personally.
Something else that has to be considered is the character's past experiences. If they've been in a similar situation before, what did they do then and how did that work out? If it went well last time, they might be inclined to do the same thing again which is only natural.
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.
(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.
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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!
First of all, that's an interesting spread. So very few people manage to combine Duty and Arrogance in a way that works. I'd be curious to hear your take on the notion.
It really is not all that unusual or that uncommon. In fact, this combination of duty (particularly toward those seen as beneath you) and arrogance is so commonplace we have a term for it: having a messiah complex (i.e. the idea you could excel because you are so good at everything, but are sacrificing your own prosperity to do your duty to help others). There are plenty of folks out there who think “I am superior, therefore it is my duty to use my superiority to benefit others.”
On its own, it tells you little about the person. Toss alignment into the mix, and you know a bit more. Lawful Good? They are more leaning toward the duty, than the arrogance, and are likely to be a bit more willing to self-sacrifice in order to do their duty (which also fits into their messiah views). Lawful evil? They will lean more on the “complex” side of things—doing this more for their own feeling of superiority, their own feeling that they are the benevolent person the ignorant masses (as they see them) should worship, rather than actually doing something to help.
Or you could combine it with something else. Not everyone would find alignment a good way to flesh out this character. But plenty do also, and no real reason to take this tool of individual character creation away from them.
Personalitytrait: If you do me injury, I will crush you, ruin your name and salt your fields.
Ideal: It is my duty to protect and care for the people beneath me.
Bond: The common folk must see me as a hero of the people.
Flaw: I secretly believe that everyone is beneath me.
That's the write up of my PIBF for one of my characters. Now, let's say he's in court and he sees someone condemned to death the next day for a violating a bogus law. We can probably agree that he's unhappy with the situation. Does he try to spring them from jail during the night, or does he allow the sentence to be carried out?
Not enough information to make an informed decision - one could easily argue either position with the limited fact pattern and snapshot of personality.
Since the above addressed why the character might do something, one could also make the argument the character cares more about being a folk hero than doing what the character might think is right. After all, if the entire town likes the law, even if the character does not, is his folk hero dream really really served if he loses the support of an entire town (and possibly other towns in the vicinity who might have similar moral outlooks and legal systems) just to save one person?
As I have said before, any single snapshot is going to be insufficient to address every situation, nor should they be. They are tools for helping people figure out their character, particularly if they are new or bad role players. Which is precisely why Wizards gives players multiple tools, including alignment, flaws, traits, etc, to figure out who their character is (all of which can be ignored if you do not need them) - each player can use whatever combination resonates with them personally.
That was largely my point. PBIF is a very focused tool. Where it applies, it's great, but it quickly becomes less useful outside of those focused areas and doesn't even really help at all in some areas. If I told you he was lawful or chaotic, you could start making more educated guesses as to what he would do. At the moment, it's just a giant question mark. That doesn't say PBIF is useless as well as alignment, it says that they have their uses. I know how the character likely react because I know him on a deeper level but also because I know whether he's lawful, chaotic, neutral, good, evil, etc.
Alignment is also useful in developing a character. At least the lawful-chaotic. We generally automatically think in terms of good-evil without thinking, but lawful chaotic is actually an important aspect of a personality that shapes how people prioritise things, interprets the world around them. It's also something we don't often think of when trying to understand people's personalities, so it's been really useful to me in developing my characters and not having to completely make things up on the spot when moral dilemmas occur. It's not a perfect system, in part due to silly.own goals by the writers, but it is a useful tool.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Personalitytrait: If you do me injury, I will crush you, ruin your name and salt your fields.
Ideal: It is my duty to protect and care for the people beneath me.
Bond: The common folk must see me as a hero of the people.
Flaw: I secretly believe that everyone is beneath me.
That's the write up of my PIBF for one of my characters. Now, let's say he's in court and he sees someone condemned to death the next day for a violating a bogus law. We can probably agree that he's unhappy with the situation. Does he try to spring them from jail during the night, or does he allow the sentence to be carried out?
This type of personality will raise up a crusade of people, manipulated through propaganda, to march to the prison and demand they be released and that the law be overturned. They will make themselves the figurehead of this crusade and leverage the publicity in order to put themselves in power. I would peg this character as similar to Alma Coin, from The Hunger Games.
That's my take on it, at least.
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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!
For an explanation, the guy is lawful. While he feels that the execution isn't ideal, the people need to recognise that the law is the law. This particular law, while stupid, was in place and should have been obeyed. Removed via legal and lawful action maybe, but you should obey it while it is law. He is an ex leader who seeks to be restored to his correct position. He sees a leader as someone who serves his people, but there is a definite social strata that should be obeyed. The common people should follow him out of love, but they should be following him and their leaders because that is righteousness - even if they don't like their leaders. He sees the execution as being for the good of the people, who will be split, but will recognise his wisdom in the long run and see it as the right thing to do - and develop a love for him as a result.
I'll hasten to add that these are not my personal views and I disagree with him in many ways, but he is modelled on people I know, both public figures and personally. That's a bit more of the fluff than alignment provides, but hopefully you can see how these different aspects tie together.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
The Personality speaks of someone who is ruthless with their enemies, but the Ideal points to someone caring for their own people. Combined with the Bond and Flaw, this is a person who would insist on being the boss of whatever group they found themselves in. They don't want to destroy everyone, just those who will not bend the knee, so their first tact will be diplomatic, and they will almost always have lackeys working for them or try to get lackeys. Once they feel comfortable in power, however, they will flex that power since everyone is actually beneath the, they feel no restraint in using their own people and absolutely crushing their opposition.
This is a pretty full and complex character persona, made possible because PFIB gives enough to work with, as opposed to Alignment.
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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!
PBIF is a very focused tool. Where it applies, it's great, but it quickly becomes less useful outside of those focused areas and doesn't even really help at all in some areas. If I told you he was lawful or chaotic, you could start making more educated guesses as to what he would do. At the moment, it's just a giant question mark.
(So, I'm not telling you how to play your characters. You do you, et al.)
There's nothing stopping you from putting "I strongly believe in the rule of law" or "I want to make the world a better place for everyone" or "I'll do whatever it takes to achieve my ends" or whatever else in PBIF. Everything useful that alignment encodes can be written down, in more depth, in PBIF. If the law/chaos axis is important to consider for you, think about what exact position your character has, and write it down, for example.
(Alignment values are usually so abstract that they can fit just about anything. In your particular example, I could easily retroactively claim any and all alignments as justification, after deciding what I actually want the character to do --- "I freed them because I got to kill law enforcement, because I'm eeeevil," "I freed them because It Was The Right Thing To Do, because the law was unjust, because I'm good," "I freed them because I know bad laws when I see them, because I'm lawful," "I freed them because All Cops Are Bastards, because I'm chaotic," etc. Now, I'm probably practiced enough at roleplaying that I could do the same for many PBIF, which is fair, but PBIF can be written with more detail and nuance which can really help inform decisions like this.)
If I were forced to put an alignment on this character, I would definitely say she is Lawful, but on the other axis it would depend. If everything were going her way, with her power base firmly established and her enemies properly cowed she would look Lawful Good, obeying the laws (that she made) and caring for the people even at moderate to great cost to herself. The more danger she and hers were in, though, the more ruthless and Evil she would look. She would absolutely use up her people to get her way, fully believing and able to convince her subjects that their sacrifice was to ensure the survival of the rest. If it came down to it, she might sacrifice even the very last of her subjects to save herself because, "The Head must survive in order to build again." How deeply she is convinced of that and how much guilt she suffers would be a crucial inflection point in the character arc.
So how does Alignment handle that level of complexity? Do you assign Good based on current actions even knowing the character can very much swing the other way? Do you average it out to Neutral? Do you plan an arc where she slides from Good to Evil? If so, how important was the Good tag in the first place? I will posit that it wasn't important or useful at all. It tells me how she looks to people from the outside, so something like a reputation meter, but even that depends on pretty subjective factors like who even knows her plans or her motivations. I mean, is the Alignment chart dependent on omniscient telepathic knowledge?
No, I would say that this character defies the Good/Evil spectrum and that it is not a good or useful metric to use.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
...This is a pretty full and complex character persona, made possible because PFIB gives enough to work with, as opposed to Alignment.
The thing is, PBIF didn't have enough to work with. You're the only one that came out with (kind of) the "right" answer (obviously everyone can interpret a character their own way and I'm always reluctant to say it's wrong, but the "right" answer according to how he was conceived) - he wouldn't spring them. I mean, I put the constraint of a day in so organising such a rally would be unfeasible - and maybe, if he'd had time, he would. But in the time constraint of less than a day, the choice would be to spring him or let him die.
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.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
PBIF is a very focused tool. Where it applies, it's great, but it quickly becomes less useful outside of those focused areas and doesn't even really help at all in some areas. If I told you he was lawful or chaotic, you could start making more educated guesses as to what he would do. At the moment, it's just a giant question mark.
(So, I'm not telling you how to play your characters. You do you, et al.)
There's nothing stopping you from putting "I strongly believe in the rule of law" or "I want to make the world a better place for everyone" or "I'll do whatever it takes to achieve my ends" or whatever else in PBIF. Everything useful that alignment encodes can be written down, in more depth, in PBIF. If the law/chaos axis is important to consider for you, think about what exact position your character has, and write it down, for example.
Sure...but then you're not abolishing alignment, you're reformatting it. And as I commented to Ophidimancer, without that distinct thing prompting me to think about his alignment, he would have lacked a lot of the complexity that he had. I couldn't be as confident in how he'd react without the creation prompt of alignment because I wouldn't have considered that aspect of his mentality. In fact, the character would never have existed had it not been for alignment - I've always played chaotic, and I wanted to play a lawful character and combined with other desires, came out with this one as I tried to harmonise all the details together.
If people want to incorporate things like chaotic v lawful into the TBIF bit then I have no issue with that. It even makes sense. But I've found it to be a really useful tool in creating characters - alongside PBIF.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
...This is a pretty full and complex character persona, made possible because PFIB gives enough to work with, as opposed to Alignment.
The thing is, PBIF didn't have enough to work with. You're the only one that came out with (kind of) the "right" answer (obviously everyone can interpret a character their own way and I'm always reluctant to say it's wrong, but the "right" answer according to how he was conceived) - he wouldn't spring them. I mean, I put the constraint of a day in so organising such a rally would be unfeasible - and maybe, if he'd had time, he would. But in the time constraint of less than a day, the choice would be to spring him or let him die.
I mean, this character wouldn't be too crushed if the wrongly accused died (Flaw). She would care that she could use his imprisonment for political gain(Bond). So she would act immediately, because to not do so would tarnish her image. She would act immediately and publicly (Bond) to try and free the prisoner whether that be drumming up all her lackeys, or just shouting about it in the town square to wake everyone up and starting as big of a protest as she could. She wants to change the law because it is bad for the people at large(Ideal), but she doesn't personally care for the individuals it impacts(Flaw).
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.
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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!
PBIF is a very focused tool. Where it applies, it's great, but it quickly becomes less useful outside of those focused areas and doesn't even really help at all in some areas. If I told you he was lawful or chaotic, you could start making more educated guesses as to what he would do. At the moment, it's just a giant question mark.
(So, I'm not telling you how to play your characters. You do you, et al.)
There's nothing stopping you from putting "I strongly believe in the rule of law" or "I want to make the world a better place for everyone" or "I'll do whatever it takes to achieve my ends" or whatever else in PBIF. Everything useful that alignment encodes can be written down, in more depth, in PBIF. If the law/chaos axis is important to consider for you, think about what exact position your character has, and write it down, for example.
Sure...but then you're not abolishing alignment, you're reformatting it. And as I commented to Ophidimancer, without that distinct thing prompting me to think about his alignment, he would have lacked a lot of the complexity that he had. I couldn't be as confident in how he'd react without the creation prompt of alignment because I wouldn't have considered that aspect of his mentality. In fact, the character would never have existed had it not been for alignment - I've always played chaotic, and I wanted to play a lawful character and combined with other desires, came out with this one as I tried to harmonise all the details together.
If people want to incorporate things like chaotic v lawful into the TBIF bit then I have no issue with that. It even makes sense. But I've found it to be a really useful tool in creating characters - alongside PBIF.
To be clear, that's exactly what I want. I don't want to "abolish" the concepts of morality or law, I just want a way to define them for a character that wasn't (historically) built around the idea that they are objective, cosmic axes to align to. And I want a way to define them that recognizes nuance and allows me to address it. PBIF just does such a better, more thorough job, and alignment has so much baggage for anyone familiar with older versions of the game.
To me, the prompts for PBIF more than suffice to raise questions about morality and law, so I don't need those called out as special. "Ideals" is in part about declaring what you stand for. But maybe alignment-ish questions need to be raised more explicitly for some players. No problem there.
(OK, I do want to abolish the idea that whole peoples or cultures can be summed up by an alignment, but that's already getting taken out of the game and not what we're really discussing.)
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.
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I'm curious:
Personality trait: If you do me injury, I will crush you, ruin your name and salt your fields.
Ideal: It is my duty to protect and care for the people beneath me.
Bond: The common folk must see me as a hero of the people.
Flaw: I secretly believe that everyone is beneath me.
That's the write up of my PIBF for one of my characters. Now, let's say he's in court and he sees someone condemned to death the next day for a violating a bogus law. We can probably agree that he's unhappy with the situation. Does he try to spring them from jail during the night, or does he allow the sentence to be carried out?
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I'd say probably spring them. This character wants the common folk to see them as a hero of the people, and helping an innocent person avoid an unjust death seems to fit that, rather than doing nothing and tacitly condoning the corrupt status quo. Also with the ideal of protecting people beneath them, a random towns person being sentenced to an unjust death I'd say also counts there.
That said, I don't play the character and I'm not in the character's head the same way the actual player would be. And just like alignment, these are general guidelines and not things a PC must hold to under every conceivable circumstance. There could be situations where a lawful evil character would have reason to try and save this person, and circumstances where a chaotic good might have to let it happen. None of this is absolutist and depends on the context.
That's totally up to you because you're the player. If the DM wants to remove all agency and say 'you're thus and so Alignment so you'd likely do this' then that's wrong. It's no fun for the player because now a set of guidelines on paper with broad scope and meaning are limiting his options.
I consider myself to be pretty Lawful Good. Some days, I'm more Chaotic than Lawful. On at least one occasion, I feel like I could have killed someone. I have crippled someone in my own defense. How does this stat me out Alignment-wise?
One bad deed does not make an otherwise good man evil just as one good deed cannot redeem a truly evil person. Life is complex. Decisions and reasons for making them can be complex. I don't feel that a simple system can properly grasp that.
Besides...I follow the Rule of Cool and if something is going to stifle the fun, I won't use it.
I'm not playing the character, but if I were (and this was the only context to go on, i.e. I don't know his backstory, I don't know what else he's been involved in, nor do I have prior experience playing him, etc. etc.):
I depends on how well I know the condemned, and how publicly visible my action or inaction would be. If I know and like them, I spring them free. If a lot of eyes are already on me, I spring them free. If there's an easy opportunity and strategic reason, I spring them free. If I'm just another bystander in a crowd of bystanders, and there's no easy opportunity, I let the sentence happen --- they're probably beneath me anyway, and it's real easy to find an excuse to avoid risk --- and there's the bystander effect.
That said, within the tropes of heroic fantasy and DM-contrived situations, I probably have ample opportunity to spring them, and do so. Few people actually roleplay "bystanders" because bystanders generally aren't PCs.
Hm.
First of all, that's an interesting spread. So very few people manage to combine Duty and Arrogance in a way that works. I'd be curious to hear your take on the notion.
Second of all: I imagine it depends in part on who the condemned is and what popular opinion of the bogus law is. A commoner convicted on a lark because somebody in court is a sick ******* who enjoys executing people? A deeply unpopular law that's caused a lot of grumbling and discontent? Flouting it is a Hero of the People moment waiting to happen, and a man beneath this guy is being discarded for poor reason. But this guy strikes me as the sort who knows that springing someone from the clink and saying "you're free now, enjoy life again!" means the guy winds up executed on the spot by the first guard he runs across.
I don't know the character's station, status, or anything else, but my brain constructs a scenario where your character breaks the man free, then hands him a slip of paper. "Go here, give the passphrase written on this paper. Ask for a job. You'll be fed, sheltered, and cared for so long as you work for me at this place. They threw you away, I picked you back up. You're mine now." Heh, probably entirely wrong, but frankly it's just proof positive for me that QIBF do a much better job than Alignment of getting someone into the beginnings of a character's headspace. Those four lines suggest a number of stories to me, where the words 'Lawful Evil' would suggest entirely nothing.
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Not enough information to make an informed decision - one could easily argue either position with the limited fact pattern and snapshot of personality.
Since the above addressed why the character might do something, one could also make the argument the character cares more about being a folk hero than doing what the character might think is right. After all, if the entire town likes the law, even if the character does not, is his folk hero dream really really served if he loses the support of an entire town (and possibly other towns in the vicinity who might have similar moral outlooks and legal systems) just to save one person?
As I have said before, any single snapshot is going to be insufficient to address every situation, nor should they be. They are tools for helping people figure out their character, particularly if they are new or bad role players. Which is precisely why Wizards gives players multiple tools, including alignment, flaws, traits, etc, to figure out who their character is (all of which can be ignored if you do not need them) - each player can use whatever combination resonates with them personally.
Something else that has to be considered is the character's past experiences. If they've been in a similar situation before, what did they do then and how did that work out? If it went well last time, they might be inclined to do the same thing again which is only natural.
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.
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.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
It really is not all that unusual or that uncommon. In fact, this combination of duty (particularly toward those seen as beneath you) and arrogance is so commonplace we have a term for it: having a messiah complex (i.e. the idea you could excel because you are so good at everything, but are sacrificing your own prosperity to do your duty to help others). There are plenty of folks out there who think “I am superior, therefore it is my duty to use my superiority to benefit others.”
On its own, it tells you little about the person. Toss alignment into the mix, and you know a bit more. Lawful Good? They are more leaning toward the duty, than the arrogance, and are likely to be a bit more willing to self-sacrifice in order to do their duty (which also fits into their messiah views). Lawful evil? They will lean more on the “complex” side of things—doing this more for their own feeling of superiority, their own feeling that they are the benevolent person the ignorant masses (as they see them) should worship, rather than actually doing something to help.
Or you could combine it with something else. Not everyone would find alignment a good way to flesh out this character. But plenty do also, and no real reason to take this tool of individual character creation away from them.
That was largely my point. PBIF is a very focused tool. Where it applies, it's great, but it quickly becomes less useful outside of those focused areas and doesn't even really help at all in some areas. If I told you he was lawful or chaotic, you could start making more educated guesses as to what he would do. At the moment, it's just a giant question mark. That doesn't say PBIF is useless as well as alignment, it says that they have their uses. I know how the character likely react because I know him on a deeper level but also because I know whether he's lawful, chaotic, neutral, good, evil, etc.
Alignment is also useful in developing a character. At least the lawful-chaotic. We generally automatically think in terms of good-evil without thinking, but lawful chaotic is actually an important aspect of a personality that shapes how people prioritise things, interprets the world around them. It's also something we don't often think of when trying to understand people's personalities, so it's been really useful to me in developing my characters and not having to completely make things up on the spot when moral dilemmas occur. It's not a perfect system, in part due to silly.own goals by the writers, but it is a useful tool.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
This type of personality will raise up a crusade of people, manipulated through propaganda, to march to the prison and demand they be released and that the law be overturned. They will make themselves the figurehead of this crusade and leverage the publicity in order to put themselves in power. I would peg this character as similar to Alma Coin, from The Hunger Games.
That's my take on it, at least.
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!
For an explanation, the guy is lawful. While he feels that the execution isn't ideal, the people need to recognise that the law is the law. This particular law, while stupid, was in place and should have been obeyed. Removed via legal and lawful action maybe, but you should obey it while it is law. He is an ex leader who seeks to be restored to his correct position. He sees a leader as someone who serves his people, but there is a definite social strata that should be obeyed. The common people should follow him out of love, but they should be following him and their leaders because that is righteousness - even if they don't like their leaders. He sees the execution as being for the good of the people, who will be split, but will recognise his wisdom in the long run and see it as the right thing to do - and develop a love for him as a result.
I'll hasten to add that these are not my personal views and I disagree with him in many ways, but he is modelled on people I know, both public figures and personally. That's a bit more of the fluff than alignment provides, but hopefully you can see how these different aspects tie together.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
My reasoning for my take on that character:
The Personality speaks of someone who is ruthless with their enemies, but the Ideal points to someone caring for their own people. Combined with the Bond and Flaw, this is a person who would insist on being the boss of whatever group they found themselves in. They don't want to destroy everyone, just those who will not bend the knee, so their first tact will be diplomatic, and they will almost always have lackeys working for them or try to get lackeys. Once they feel comfortable in power, however, they will flex that power since everyone is actually beneath the, they feel no restraint in using their own people and absolutely crushing their opposition.
This is a pretty full and complex character persona, made possible because PFIB gives enough to work with, as opposed to Alignment.
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, I'm not telling you how to play your characters. You do you, et al.)
There's nothing stopping you from putting "I strongly believe in the rule of law" or "I want to make the world a better place for everyone" or "I'll do whatever it takes to achieve my ends" or whatever else in PBIF. Everything useful that alignment encodes can be written down, in more depth, in PBIF. If the law/chaos axis is important to consider for you, think about what exact position your character has, and write it down, for example.
(Alignment values are usually so abstract that they can fit just about anything. In your particular example, I could easily retroactively claim any and all alignments as justification, after deciding what I actually want the character to do --- "I freed them because I got to kill law enforcement, because I'm eeeevil," "I freed them because It Was The Right Thing To Do, because the law was unjust, because I'm good," "I freed them because I know bad laws when I see them, because I'm lawful," "I freed them because All Cops Are Bastards, because I'm chaotic," etc. Now, I'm probably practiced enough at roleplaying that I could do the same for many PBIF, which is fair, but PBIF can be written with more detail and nuance which can really help inform decisions like this.)
If I were forced to put an alignment on this character, I would definitely say she is Lawful, but on the other axis it would depend. If everything were going her way, with her power base firmly established and her enemies properly cowed she would look Lawful Good, obeying the laws (that she made) and caring for the people even at moderate to great cost to herself. The more danger she and hers were in, though, the more ruthless and Evil she would look. She would absolutely use up her people to get her way, fully believing and able to convince her subjects that their sacrifice was to ensure the survival of the rest. If it came down to it, she might sacrifice even the very last of her subjects to save herself because, "The Head must survive in order to build again." How deeply she is convinced of that and how much guilt she suffers would be a crucial inflection point in the character arc.
So how does Alignment handle that level of complexity? Do you assign Good based on current actions even knowing the character can very much swing the other way? Do you average it out to Neutral? Do you plan an arc where she slides from Good to Evil? If so, how important was the Good tag in the first place? I will posit that it wasn't important or useful at all. It tells me how she looks to people from the outside, so something like a reputation meter, but even that depends on pretty subjective factors like who even knows her plans or her motivations. I mean, is the Alignment chart dependent on omniscient telepathic knowledge?
No, I would say that this character defies the Good/Evil spectrum and that it is not a good or useful metric to use.
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 thing is, PBIF didn't have enough to work with. You're the only one that came out with (kind of) the "right" answer (obviously everyone can interpret a character their own way and I'm always reluctant to say it's wrong, but the "right" answer according to how he was conceived) - he wouldn't spring them. I mean, I put the constraint of a day in so organising such a rally would be unfeasible - and maybe, if he'd had time, he would. But in the time constraint of less than a day, the choice would be to spring him or let him die.
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.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Sure...but then you're not abolishing alignment, you're reformatting it. And as I commented to Ophidimancer, without that distinct thing prompting me to think about his alignment, he would have lacked a lot of the complexity that he had. I couldn't be as confident in how he'd react without the creation prompt of alignment because I wouldn't have considered that aspect of his mentality. In fact, the character would never have existed had it not been for alignment - I've always played chaotic, and I wanted to play a lawful character and combined with other desires, came out with this one as I tried to harmonise all the details together.
If people want to incorporate things like chaotic v lawful into the TBIF bit then I have no issue with that. It even makes sense. But I've found it to be a really useful tool in creating characters - alongside PBIF.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I mean, this character wouldn't be too crushed if the wrongly accused died (Flaw). She would care that she could use his imprisonment for political gain(Bond). So she would act immediately, because to not do so would tarnish her image. She would act immediately and publicly (Bond) to try and free the prisoner whether that be drumming up all her lackeys, or just shouting about it in the town square to wake everyone up and starting as big of a protest as she could. She wants to change the law because it is bad for the people at large(Ideal), but she doesn't personally care for the individuals it impacts(Flaw).
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.
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!
To be clear, that's exactly what I want. I don't want to "abolish" the concepts of morality or law, I just want a way to define them for a character that wasn't (historically) built around the idea that they are objective, cosmic axes to align to. And I want a way to define them that recognizes nuance and allows me to address it. PBIF just does such a better, more thorough job, and alignment has so much baggage for anyone familiar with older versions of the game.
To me, the prompts for PBIF more than suffice to raise questions about morality and law, so I don't need those called out as special. "Ideals" is in part about declaring what you stand for. But maybe alignment-ish questions need to be raised more explicitly for some players. No problem there.
(OK, I do want to abolish the idea that whole peoples or cultures can be summed up by an alignment, but that's already getting taken out of the game and not what we're really discussing.)
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.